General Emotional Spikes in Cube Design

[Grillo_Parlante]

Thank you gifts, thats really great, and I agree investment is a big part of what triggers an emotional response for a player. Maybe thats a big part of why I dislike value plays, where the reward is so much greater than the players investment.

 

[GiftsForgiven]

Thank you gifts, thats really great, and I agree investment is a big part of what triggers an emotional response for a player. Maybe thats a big part of why I dislike value plays, where the reward is so much greater than the players investment.

I'm curious as to what you consider a value play. (everyone's got different definitions of that kinda stuff)

 

[Grillo_Parlante]

Mmmmm my most hated magic card of all time, Mr. Thragtusk. Pay 5 mana, get 3 spells.

What other definitions have you heard?

 

[GiftsForgiven]

Mmmmm my most hated magic card of all time, Mr. Thragtusk. Pay 5 mana, get 3 spells.

What other definitions have you heard?

Haha, yeah that's fair. I'm not a fan of Mr. Tusky either. I kind of mistyped, there. I just meant a card example.

 

[Onderzeeboot]

I once reduced a competitive player to near tears in a cube game by going Wolfir Silverheart

 

[japahn]

Thank you gifts, thats really great, and I agree investment is a big part of what triggers an emotional response for a player. Maybe thats a big part of why I dislike value plays, where the reward is so much greater than the players investment.

That is the reason why cards like Tireless Tracker that combo with themselves are much less satisfying than pulling interactions that you had to identify and build a deck around. That's where value cards fail to be fun. Tirelass Tracker comboes with lands, Swords combo with creatures. It's too easy to be satisfying.

 

[Onderzeeboot]

That is the reason why cards like Tireless Tracker that combo with themselves are much less satisfying than pulling interactions that you had to identify and build a deck around. That's where value cards fail to be fun. Tirelass Tracker comboes with lands, Swords combo with creatures. It's too easy to be satisfying.

Tireless Tracker still poses a nice management game of when to cash in your clues though, precisely because he grows when you do.

 

[sigh]

And Tireless Tracker has a cool micro-interaction with fetchlands. First time I popped an Evolving wilds with one out felt awesome . I don't think Tracker is the Droid we are looking for.

Flametongue Kavu is a good example, I think, of just strapping a spell to an efficient creature without having to think too much.

 

[Grillo_Parlante]

Tireless Tracker still poses a nice management game of when to cash in your clues though, precisely because he grows when you do.

I think thats worth expanding on a little bit. Part of trackers appeal is that cracking clues just feels so good. Its a powerful enough card where someone could justify banning it on the basis that functionally cantriping every land, while growing a threat, overly predetermines game outcomes.

And thats probably true to an extent, as there is a lot of free value here. But maybe the sheer fun of cracking clues is enough reason to justify the include, even if the power level of the card occasionally makes the person across the table grumble.

 

[sigh]

I love investigate as a mechanic. Having this cool card drawing mechanic that can give tool into Green and White is just so cool. The management aspect of it is one of the highlights of the mechanic, putting a small sub-problem in front of you, where you have to think about ~tempo~ versus card advantage, and that's fun in of itself. Very sad they didn't further it in SOI block, but the flavor would've been off in EMN. Oh well.... one day.

Anyway, loving the discussion on here, and one thing I've definitely noticed is that basically everyone is framing it from their own perspective. It's easy and natural to do that, but also easy to fall into a trap of narrow-mindedness. Basically, I ended up doing what I warned myself I might do a page ago, and actually did some real life "market research" on (so far) one of my more regular drafters. COnversation went something like (bold text is me):

what excites you most/has excited you most about cube drafting?
this is legit for science

I like cube drafting because, if the cube is built right, it gives the greatest opportunity for players to make a similar power level deck, it does depend on some luck, but the potential is there.
it also helps people like me who don't draft regularly to get a better feel for what I can do, because the cards become something I know more about, if that makes sense

great. That's more answer than I ever could have hoped for
now
when you are sitting there
eating oreos
looking at 15 shiny greensleeved cards
which sorta thing makes you go "oooo"
which I realize is super context dependent

I mean hell seeing a signed card makes me go "ooo" or a full art card, haha

yeah that's always nice to hear haha
more like "super cool planeswalker" or "mana tithe" or "huge creature"
the sort of card you look at and think you could have a lot of fun with this card

I mean of course a super cool planeswalker would be nice, haha
I think the thing that gets me most excited about a particular card in a pack is the potential for a combo
Like, if I see a card and think about what I have, or what I could run into because of knowing the cube a little bit it's fun to try and make synergies

any card you can think of that you picked for this reason?

Hornet Queen is the one that comes to mind
like so much so, I remember just being super giddy during the whole time I played the deck, just wanting to get the combo off, haha
I honestly can't remember what I synergized with it off the top of my head

oh I know the combo
Hornet queen + Cathar's Crusade

YEAH
was just sitting there, so giddy knowing I had it, waiting to get it off, haha

haha so perfect. I'm going to get so many likes on the forums tonight
anything else?
I know you've had at least one first pick because you really wanted to try it out, but then it didn't really pan out, I think?

yeah that happens
usually I see something powerful I want to grab
most times it doesn't work out for me, haha
Other times my first grabs are so I can dabble in a different color kind of Forcing myself to try something new

I do like that about your drafting. Always trying to try something new

I try, I usually treat it as a time to try stuff outside of my comfort zone

I was honestly floored that the conversation went this well. Drafter basically walked me right into what we've been talking about on here, talk about validation. My biggest take away was definitely in the middle where they just dropped the bomb about loving looking for synergies. I almost died. Couldn't have scripted that better if I wanted. I don't run either of those cards right now, but it makes me damn tempted to put the Cathar's Crusade back in so they can still look for cool stuff to do with it, like Battle Ball. I also really think their opening is important. Textbook insight into why balancing your format can be so damn important. This is an arena where people go in thinking that they are on a level playing field, that they can go on any random/cool tangent they find, and as long as the deckbuilding is solid they can be at least interactive and somewhat competitive. Letting that expectation down would be tragic, I think.

I'm sure there's a lot more to unpack, and I could go into more conversations with this drafter, but I'm just thrilled with these few lines above. Talking to your drafters is important! You learn a lot about them.

One of the major things I'm taking away from this so far is that, if anything, format diversity and inclusiveness is important above all else. Focus too much on one aspect, one overarching goal, and you can leave people with different inclinations a little in the dust. Have some cool timmy strategies, have the near-combo-level interactions, have the punishingly efficient synergies, have elegant and simple building blocks. That's not to say we shouldn't be focusing on a theme, I definitely think we should, but having too much of a focus is probably where this "blandness" can come from.

 

[GiftsForgiven]

Part of the problem with hyper-efficient synergy-based cube archetypes is that it can sometimes feel like there's no room for giving a deck a personal touch. If it's too rigid, then all your drafters are doing is just unpacking the prebuilt decks you put in the cube.

 

[Grillo_Parlante]

Yes, yes, yes...that is exactly what I mean. Hornet Queen is a BS card, that brings miserable gameplay for one player, but its exciting in the way it polarizes people. As a bomb card, it spikes the game both negatively and positively, and does so in an extreme fashion. When that card resolves, you remember it.

Sure there are limits, we have to be reasonable, and not take away the experience of skillfully managing a game. Maybe hornet queen does do too much in that sense, and it would be interesting to hear if the player would be happy with just any army in a can card, or if there is something about hornet queens top-down flavor that makes her resonate more. Its interesting to me that they fixated on queen, rather than crusade.

 

[japahn]

I would love Tireless Tracker if it did not grow with cracking clues.

I'm experimenting with a modular cube, and the major challenge right now is the same that other Riptidecubes have: how to have viable archetypes without feeling the draft is on rails.

 

[Grillo_Parlante]

Stepping back a bit, since the topic of cathar's crusade came up, and we've back firmly in the spike/johnny/timmy paradigm. Here is an article from WOTC development that I always enjoyed, which I think provides some perspective on the design challenge of catering towards these different play styles.

Wait a minute. What if they were actually huge creatures? What if you could play them despite their size? And what if the inhabitants of Zendikar could get just as big and powerful to match them? Could we engineer incredible, memorable battles between fatties? Could we solve the equation to maximize drama? How far would we have to warp the environment for this to work? It was truly a radical suggestion.

For most of the set's design and development we had a common called Blocky the Troll. It was a

2/2 that could regenerate for

. If you're familiar with Rise of the Eldrazi you can see that its role was to block 3/3s until you could cast your eight-mana 8/8 annihilator creatures. We even gave it the playtest name "Blocky" as a hint. It regenerates with colorless mana so you can even use your Eldrazi Spawn to save it when you're tapped out. However, it's not a win condition. It's a means to reach your finishers.

When playtesters outside the design team looked at Blocky, they saw it as an aggressive attacker. They filled their decks with Blocky and its 2-power friends and left the eight-drops in the sideboard thinking they were unplayable.

Blocky is utterly nullified by countless commons in Rise of the Eldrazi. These players had built their decks using normal Magic deckbuilding models instead of building decks for a battlecruiser world. They had no way to break through the ground stall and sat helplessly as either their opponent pummeled them with fatties or, if they both had weak decks, they ran out of cards. It was an awful experience. It wasn't easy for them to learn the solution either. Even after repeatedly seeing five-mana Auras and giant monsters winning games, those players couldn't unlearn their old deckbuilding habits. They squirmed with frustration.

I have to admit I was secretly delighted to see the callow Timmies and casual playtesters have no hesitation about playing eight-mana creatures and then slapping around the more experienced players who were "too smart" to run those giant fatties. Nevertheless, those experienced players are also important to us. They need to have fun too. We decided to go easier on them.

I can attest that this is hard to do. For example, cathar's crusade is a card that produces memorable game states, but as a 5 mana do nothing enchantment, it can have a hard time fitting into a more efficiency focused environment. In addition, you have the challenge of how many of these more narrow and specialized cards you can support, before you start watering down a format's draft options. This can make things miserable for everyone if executed poorly, as more casual players aren't able to achieve an emotional state in-game, and more outcome focused players quickly realize that the way to win is to just min/max the format by ignoring the more cute cards.

I'm also not sure if using the idea of spike, Timmy, and johnny is helpful or an intellectual shortcut that over generalizes to make these concepts more accessible/easier to communicate (same to the bartle test he uses).

With any hobby we are looking for an escape from a droll world, and step 1 of that is generating some kind of strong, stimulating emotion--how do you maximize drama?

 

[GiftsForgiven]

how do you maximize drama?

I think that on some level, interesting cards need to also have boring cards in the same deck (or draft) to stand out. For example, olivia voldaren is an absolute goddess in a field of vanilla fliers and ground creatures, but in many powerful cubes she's just another value card.

To crib the theme of the movie The Incredibles, when everyone is special, nobody is. Exciting moments need to not only be cool and wacky, but also need to stand out to elicit drama from players. Remember, players can get desensitized to powerful cards, so including too many of them may adversely impact the intensity of the player's emotions.

This is something that seems like kind of an anathema to Cube design (why am I building a specialized product just to put vanilla flyers and doods in it?!), but it may be that a heavily curated environment can allow the draft bombs and big moments to truly shine.

It's just a thought, and may be the wrong way of looking at it. I'm really not sure, but that's what the point of a discussion is, right?

 

[safra]

sigh's post about a balanced format crystallizes some of my own thoughts about my own format. If you want to encourage creativity in deckbuilding, there are two major factors as a designer, imo:
1) make sure that there is no 'correct' Platonic build of an archetype, only competing builds with different strengths and weaknesses
2) reduce or eliminate GRBS cards (Good Rare Bad Slot) and false depth ('traps')

These mean that:
a) the strongest synergies available to each drafter will determine the strength of any particular build of an archetype
a2) these synergies are in a sense determined by your Cube design and the drafting process, which randomizes the strength of your archetypes so that Any Given Sunday Prowess will be stronger than Pod or vice versa
b) drafters aren't punished for following 'incorrect' design decisions (oops you played a creature deck, gonna Oath you out; nice Savannah Lions but I'm running x/3s BRUH; you thought incremental creature damage would work but I am storming you out behind a Moat) but are still punished for ignoring the goals of your environment (you can't take those turns off and not die to aggro; you should hold up a counterspell if you think your opponent is on combo; you chose not to draft Skullclamp / assorted GRBS (Gamers Really Buy Shit) and lose to it)
b2) the flatter your power band is the more impressive the extra power from synergistic plays is; the, if you'll pardon me, spikier your power band is the less synergy matters
c) as a designer you need to actively purge your cube of 'traps' that inexperienced drafters will try to build around, or they'll invalidate your carefully seeded archetypes/synergy

Speaking to Grillo's argument that Spikes are interested in balanced games because it allows edge-case planning to swing games: um, yes, obviously? This is why most people are interested in balanced games.

An anecdote: my brother and I both like to play cards, especially iterative hand games like poker, euchre, and cribbage. I like to be good enough at cards that I don't have to expend significant effort to win sometimes. He's much better than I am and becomes actively uncomfortable when people play suboptimally, because it disrupts his mental picture of how the game will go, and invalidates his edge-case strategic planning. He has more fun when people play optimally - and I do, too - than when people are just screwing around. This is not only because he likes to win (and since when is that a bad thing? winning feels nice) but because he likes to succeed.

Success is far more rewarding than winning is, in my opinion. I'm defining 'success' as gambling in such a way that your gamble pays off and is worth the costs incurred. A Cube built to optimize successful play over game-winning play will be one where edge case planning ('playing to your outs', gestalt/synergistic swing plays, knowing which mode of a spell is correct for your matchup) both has a real effect on win% and is not invalidated by elements of Cube design (game-ending combo, GRBS (Grillo Rejects Big Swings) cards, critical toughness and average power/burn damage).

I don't think it's possible to perfect Cube design, but we mustn't let the perfect be the enemy of the good. I will never stop trying to capture that nostalgic high from the first time I Cubed or played Legacy and everything felt possible, and ahadabans and Meltyman won't stop trying to capture an idealized version of early Magic, and I don't think even Grillo will ever find the El Dorado of a static Innistrad-themed format that improves on the original in every way with no faults. We're all chasing that Shivan Dragon and that's okay. It's a striving.

finally:

how do you maximize drama?

Invite Michelle but not her boyfriend, and then get crunk

 

[Dom Harvey]

I have but one like to give

 

[Onderzeeboot]

So...



I've heard some people call this too good. Though I've never had this experience, this might be true. What I do know for sure, however, is that it is a card that BU control afficionados can cling to if they see it early and they definitely get a kick out of protecting Ashiok and riding his -X to victory!

 

[sigh]

Wow! Lots of good discussion over here on the emotions thread.

Grillo: I like the quote on testing with Blocky the Troll. This is exactly what I'm getting at with Viridian Emissary vs. Primal Druid, that druid is better because it achieves it's goal by looking right for the way you'd want to use it (it's a good blocker). Moral here, I think, is that you always have to keep player expectations in mind.

Gifts: I think your "gotta have the boring to make the special shine" argument is spot on. The wording might be a little drastic, and I think the way I'm looking at it is: "you can't have the special stuff without the basic building blocks there". They don't necessarily have to be vanilla, or boring in the slightest, but if every card is weird and techy, I could see the format getting muddy fast.

Lemme also say that I think one good way of letting this building block/"cool card" pairing happen is ~elegance~, which is basically just another way of saying to have some Simple and Clean pieces that leave room for the #tech

 

[GiftsForgiven]

So...



I've heard some people call this too good. Though I've never had this experience, this might be true. What I do know for sure, however, is that it is a card that BU control afficionados can cling to if they see it early and they definitely get a kick out of protecting Ashiok and riding his -X to victory!

There's an issue with Ashiok though, which is that while it can feel really good to land it on curve and ride it out, that feeling for the player is countered often by a feeling of true hopelessness for the opponent. Seeing Ashiok plus herself up to 7 mana while exiling s dreadbore off the top is as riveting as it is damning.

The question is, do the good feelings for the Ashiok player outweigh the bad feelings she can create for the opposing player?

 

[Grillo_Parlante]

The question is, do the good feelings for the Ashiok player outweigh the bad feelings she can create for the opposing player?

I think I read just this question in The Prince.

 

[Mondschwein]

I really like Ashiok, so much that someone calling Ashiok a female is giving me an emotional high right now.

Seriously, I love its design, it's much more interesting than Nephalia Drownyard as an UB finisher, but it seems very busted for a three-mana planeswalker. On the other hand, I wouldn't even think twice if it would be four mana. Should have costet UUB or something like that.

 

[Grillo_Parlante]

So...



I've heard some people call this too good. Though I've never had this experience, this might be true. What I do know for sure, however, is that it is a card that BU control afficionados can cling to if they see it early and they definitely get a kick out of protecting Ashiok and riding his -X to victory!

Thank you for this example, it really is perfect.

Ashiok is a polarizing card. The tragedy of milling is that its one of the most fun things you can do in mtg, but it almost never is correct. Ashiok provides a way for people to experience this in an efficiency focused setting, without it sucking, and its exciting that you also get rewarded by using an opponent's monsters against them. Best of all, the flavor and top-down design is just spot on.

On the other hand, if Ashiok comes down turn 3 in certain matchups, beating her can feel like you're wading into the block morass.

Ashiok can create these really extreme positive and negative emotion spikes depending on which side of the table you are on, as well as depending on the predilections of the player. If your playgroup isn't really outcome focused, than you might be laughing and enjoying the milling results right along with the player that cast Ashiok: after all, next draft you might have a chance at the fun. However, if you're outcome focused and playing competitively, you might be really frustrated at a potential turn 3 play that feels like it effectively decides certain matchups on the spot.

I'm also not sure I would describe Ashiok as broken. On the grand scheme of things you could run in cube, Ashiok is very fair by comparison, and a reputation for being broken is probably more reflective of prior balancing efforts having pushed a new crop of cards forward to define the new busted. A format's strongest cards will always elicit negative emotions to some extent, and trying to continually prune a format's power cards, can just result in the card population consisting of progressively less exciting cards defining the format.

Presumably, we've cut the most blatantly polarizing GRBS cards and plays; and now we're seeing a new layer of power plays emerging, to the point where this grindy control card is starting to feel like a problem.

How long can this approach of competitively balancing really be sustained, before we acknowledge that our card population is becoming less and less interesting, out of a fear of offending competitive purity? And is it actually bad for this card to elicit the strong feelings it does, or does this simply work to make it an iconic card of the format by being so memorable?

Or, to put it philosophically,

The question is, do the good feelings for the Ashiok player outweigh the bad feelings she can create for the opposing player?

 

[sigh]

Not leaving myself to be satisfied with what I learned and discussed yesterday, I did some following up on my "research" yesterday. Went back to the same drafter as before (bold = me):

The market research was well taken to, as hoped

that's good

follow up question:
any particular reason you focused in on the Hornet queen half of the combo?

cause it was the one I remembered

that's what I thought.
Do you remember if you already had the Crusade, or if you saw the queen and thought of the other piece?

I saw the queen and thought of the other half, didn't have it yet

Not particularly exciting or profound conclusion to the conversation, but still cool learning that they picked up the queen because of prior knowledge of the Crusade, and generated a gameplan towards that. It was a busy day today otherwise I could have gone more in depth, particularly about whether or not this decision broadly impacted their strategy, and what the impact was.

Far be it from finishing my own growing crusade. I soon moved on to another drafter, this one brand new to the game and asked him what's up. The highlights from the convo from them were that the game was very enjoyable to play, the deckbuilding part was tedious, and the memorable moments were and the Nissa, Worldwaker in their deck. I think particularly when they had Titania out, so all the 4/4 land dudes would leave behind friends if they were killed.

What to do with all this cool info I'm gleaning from my play groups? Heh, I don't frickin' know yet. If anything, this is the part that goes deeper than basically any cube design has ever gone. The real third leg (out of how many?) of the design process, where you actually have to intimately involve the psychology of the group, and the individuals in it, if you want that extra touch of awesomeness. Phew, what sort of free time would holistically doing that to an entire environment take??????

It's the sort of thing though, like my favorite word that starts with E, that I hope can be applied to a partial degree and still yield positive results. First example that comes to mind is leaving

in my cube, even if there may be some more efficient card at lower cost. SS is cool. It's really cool. I know safra's mentioned that there was at least one individual who had an immediate response to seeing it in her cube. Same goes with cards like sidisi, brood tyrant or jeskai ascendancy, where they may not optimally fit into as many decks, but they are freakin' awesome. Furthering that, I think bonus points for developing solutions that help work those cards more naturally into environments, so they aren't even really that fringe.

I do like what Safra is saying above about flatter power level opens up synergies to being more awe-inspiring or whatever. To wit, I don't think Hornet Queen has to be the card of choice, it really seems like Cathars' Crusade is the winner for "card that's relevant to this discussion". It's relatively in line with my cube's power level (maybe even a little slow?), but it opens up some really evocative deckbuilding ideas and in-game plays.

In any case, it's really fucking hard, so major props to anyone who accomplishes any cool format goal in their cubes. Really, props to everybody.

 

[shamizy]

I have never lost with nor won against a T3 Ashiok in Cube. Unless you have a way to deal with it in hand, it is one of the most uninteractive cards I've ever played with. 3 mana walkers that jump up to 5 loyalty on deployment are damn near unstoppable that early in the game unless you're playing aggro and have already put 3-4 power on board. If you have ways of protecting it via removal or bodies to stick in front of attackers, it will just carry you to victory. If it was 2UB, I would cube it in a heartbeat. By turn 4, you can expect your opponent to have some board presence unless they're straight up durdle control (which Ashiok was designed to punish). I don't know how many of you have had to deal with a T3, sometimes even a T2, Ashiok on the play but there are fewer things more demoralizing than a card that can kill you without affecting the board or costing additional resources.

It is a cool card that I had a lot of fun with in Standard and own a foil copy because I love the art, but two cube sessions a year and a half back were enough to confirm how busted it was. Maybe if I employed more GRBS it would be tame in comparison, but I don't want to do that.