Concerning Divination Cards: One Supporters Insight Into The Issues

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blightedmythoss wrote:

What about a random 20% quality gem as a card? I think both new players and experts would still enjoy that.

That's exactly what my card does, and I personally love it. :)



@OP: excellent post, thank you! :)

Thank you for your card, Ceri :)

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Ceri wrote:

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blightedmythoss wrote:

What about a random 20% quality gem as a card? I think both new players and experts would still enjoy that.

That's exactly what my card does, and I personally love it. :)

The text on that card is great, even though it totally is not in line with what is happening in the PoE economy ;).

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Char1983 wrote:

The text on that card is great, even though it totally is not in line with what is happening in the PoE economy ;).

Yeah.. Erasmus is really me. ;)

@Gingerbeast, thank you for this post sir, in my absence (read = probation) this was one of the post's i actually enjoyed reading the most.

Well defined, structured and actual relevant feedback presented in a nice manner.

As to your post itself, it was quite apparent to me early on that high-gate supporters are exactly that.

"supporters"

This in itself is an "issue" depending on how you view it, since they are not "high-gate game designers"

It stands to reason that a big portion of the cards introduced by such players will be done so on the assumption that it benefits them personally. And as such, will have very little relevant impact on the community as a whole. Neither will they contemplate it's relevance to the community as a whole, from a balance perspective.

This results in what you noted in your OP, lack-luster and "un-creative" card designs.

It is true that GGG failed on this front as-well, but then again if we look at the unique creation debacle, i sort of understand they have no other choices when it comes to trying to re-create such a process then to create distance between themselves and the purchasers.
(i gather it is common knowledge by now that the price for a unique creation and the actual work put into it is not a beneficial scenario for GGG)

Simply put, if GGG is to be more "hands-on" with the creators of such cards, they would have to price them accordingly, which most likely is not feasible or would yield very low profit margins.

So while your feedback is astute and correct, it is questionable if another submission format would actually yield better results, both for the player purchasing it and for GGG as a company.

Now do i blame the creator of the card for making a lack-luster one? I suppose i do, mildly though, it's more a sense of disappointment then it is blame.
Disappointment for the fact they couldn't foresee how these would be implemented. And how their specific cards would interact with such an implementation.

Ceri's card is a perfect example of a solid and reasonably thought out divination card.

1) is it beneficial to the community as a whole?
Yes it is, it provokes a re-roll and everybody loves a 20% skill gem.

2) can it drop frequently or be farmed at a reasonable pace?
Again, the answer is yes. It only requires 3 cards for a complete set, but even past that simple observation, it gives a "RNG based" out-come that does not target an imbalanced out-come.
It doesn't provide the most OP skill in the current meta with 20% for example :'), which would severely undermine it's availability.

Similarly "the summoner" is a card exactly like it, though it's availability is undermined due to the restrictions on the card itself.

So if your aiming for a "fun" card, then consider that "fun" in this scenario from a community point of view simply is "reasonable farm time to complete a set".

I can personally attest for this definition, having played in closed beta and turning in multiple "battle-born" sets when the drop rates where actually quite high for them. It never mattered to me if a battle-born would give me a "kaoms primacy" or a "soul taker".

The fun came from actually turning in the sets at a reasonable pace, giving that gamblers effect to the player of "ooo this can be the one <3".

Obviously i got a few limb-splits and relentless fury's :p. But nobody can take away those moments of joy when you turn in a set hoping for that lovely top-end unique to appear :D.

So uhm, maybe to provide some personal suggestions on cards that could be fun/solid.

A card like Ceri's but for support gems, nothing much needs to be said about this one. It's great for the people that turn it in and it can have quite a substantial drop-rate due to it's random reward nature.
Some support gems will be ballers to get, others will provoke a frown :p.

A 5-link reward card, again, this could have quite a substantial drop-rate given there economical value and place in the game. And due to it's random nature (5-link armors/weapons etc/ different bases)
Inherent potential to be sweet and crap at the same time.

Last suggestion



Peace and thanks for the read,

-Boem-

Well, GingerBeast, you had some interesting ideas for cards, but you lacked the understanding programming to see the problems with your suggestions.

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GingerBeast wrote:

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I think that these are fairly good goals to strive for from a designer point of view. I am not looking to make something that is game breaking (a super powerful, perfect unique for example), I am not looking to make something that only benefits me (a niche item that I only want right now, or a troll item just to ‘grief’ other players), and I am not looking to create a design that breaks rules.

All this talk about design, but you didn't realize that there is two types of design going on: 1) Game design, and 2) Software design. What might be feasible in the first cause, might cause the code to introduce bugs, be hard to maintain, break the rules of good software design or just 'grief' the programmers.

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GingerBeast wrote:

Meeting these goals, heck even meeting two of these goals, is much tougher than I originally envisioned. My initial idea was to have cards drop ‘map-only’ uniques outside of map zones.

Define 'map-only' uniques in a way that stays valid when act 5 is added and zone levels are changed. Not so easy now, is it?

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GingerBeast wrote:

I even suggested that the card be made available only once each day (when the vendors reset the ability for the card to drop could reset) to avoid players being able to over-farm the card. This was in an effort to prevent the cards from being so rare that you had a better chance of just getting one of the items to drop.

So, now GGG have to rewrite the whole item drop code, to add time-limited drops? Sure, it can be done, but an additional month of beta is needed to bugtest it.

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GingerBeast wrote:

Apparently the idea to have the card only drop once a day was outside of my lane as the designer because “unfortunately we are unable to accept both your requests for a 'map-only unique' category and for a card based on a timer. This is as the divination cards theme, flavor and item are decided by the player, however the development team take the onus as to how frequently and where the card drops to maintain both consistency and balance.” (quoted from email).

Translation: "Our programmers said 'hell no!'"

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GingerBeast wrote:

To be honest I am not sure why the idea for a map-only unique was turned down. It seems to me that that is a well-defined subset of items (similar to the card that provides a league specific item).

Sorry, but it isn't a well-defined subset. Now, if you suggested a card gave only uniques that required itemlevel 71+, then it would have been well-defined.

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GingerBeast wrote:

My next idea was to have a card that gave a rotating set of rewards based off of the time the card was tuned in. If the card was turned in in the morning, you would get a morning-themed item (maybe a morning star base); if the set was turned in during the midnight block, then you got Midnight Bargain (kind of a no-brainer there). I had envisioned 4-6 periods of time each with a corresponding reward.

Morning? Who's morning? GGG's morning? GMT morning? EST morning?
If you go with server morning, then you have problem with cross-continental partying. So, suddenly you need to query the client about the timezone settings of the player's computer.

I agree with the general sentiment that the main contributors to the "fun" feeling of Divination Cards is an intersection of drop rate and usefulness.

Like others, Gemcutter's Promise is also my favorite. The first reason for this, of course, is that Ceri was very wise to identify the reward as something universally useful. The second, and just as important reason, is that GGG simply didn't balance the drop rate into oblivion. In that, Ceri was at least as lucky as talented. Other good designs like the Battle Born and Jack in the Box were not so fortuitous.

Once my initial distaste for the supporter-exclusive status of cards subsided, I was quite close to getting a Highgate pack myself. I only didn't do so for the reasons you outlined in your post: It didn't seem likely that my intended designs would be common enough for actual targeted farming. Please be mindful that Divination Cards expose PoE for what it is: A Korean grinder designed by nice guys in New Zealand. Be very careful that your design is shown clemency by GGG, lest the playerbase judge you unimaginative.