Quote:
Originally Posted by dkgo
How can one design the game so that the levels are both somewhat balanced and provide users with reasons to use a variety of cards? Since there is no real skill involved like FIFA to close the gap it seems like an impossible question to answer. Maybe the whales are OK with it as is.
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I think it's certainly possible to do this. You need to have a pretty good idea of how cards play, and offer the community a wide variety of playable options with different ratings shapes. You could even go one further with player-specific batting sliders like "play cautiously" (+5 EYE -10 POW... or something that's a roughly equivalent exchange of stats). Then if you have a robust strategic layer like allowing to turn stuff boost on/off at will, early batting subs, embracing the tactical value of the pseudo, you can add a lot of strategic and tactical diversity AND make it so every card doesn't play the same.
Some of that might need more server support than others. A lot of it means extensive testing pre-launch and maybe in-year balancing if one of the switches gets too powerful or too overutilized. But it's definitely possible, and that's even before talking about how you can make a thriving eSports scene by using tourney formats that are interesting and unprecedented (only 2000s+ players but in deadball ERA with no DH... go) along with dedicated casting of both PeL and tournies that creates community storylines for people to follow.
Those things are basically my wishlist for PT22. I don't think a fraction of it makes it in, and I don'[t think OOTPD's strategic vision for how to create an eSport out of PT is really in alignment with where I think it should be as a player. But you never know, and I'm holding out to see what they have rolled up just in case they blow everyone away.
That said:
PT20: 6
PT21: 10 at the beginning, 7 now
PT22: 2 (probably will not play unless they make the competitive scene, esp. esport casting and PTCS formats, way more interesting)