[Ardanet-developers] Reporting on Worlds 2007

[Ris M. <rm...@ne...>]

Hi Team,

 

I'm home from MECCG Worlds 2007.  I told everyone there about Ardanet, and
though I only managed to pass off a couple of the "not-in-business" cards, I
left a stack of them lying around and a few more may have been picked up.

 

One person I met said he was a programmer with lots of spare time on his
hands, and to meet one such person was the best I could have expected.  He
took a card and hopefully he will visit the website and contact us.
Unfortunately, having met 20 people that day, all in the span of an hour, I
can't remember his name, but might recognize it from the email list.  I
couldn't tell if I had recruited him completely, but I have hope that he
will show up.

 

I was surprised to find that everyone I talked to seemed thoroughly
satisfied with GCCG, and it was more difficult than I expected to sell
people on the idea that it's worth having something better like Ardanet and
why.  Of course now in hindsight I have thought of better things I could
have said to sell people on it, but oh well.  A common response I got was
"Well, have you tried GCCG?" and in the discussions that followed, I tended
to suggest some of our feature ideas, which would follow into "well I can do
that in GCCG by doing X, Y, and Z" and I learned about some features of GCCG
that I was unaware of which must have been added since the last time I used
it a couple of years ago.  So I intend to download the latest version and
try it again for research purposes.  However, these discussions of Ardanet
vs. GCCG tended to get cut short before I could hit on one of our ideas that
made the person say "oh yeah now that would be sweet!" which was somewhat
disappointing.

 

However, though I was unable to really sell many people on how wonderful
Ardanet is going to be, watching all the games reinforced my opinion of how
badly Ardanet is needed.  One thing stands out in my mind: even the most
expert players of MECCG and even the World Champion winner must spend a good
deal of every game debating the rules and the playability of cards.  I have
thought for a long time that this game is so complex that a computer would
be invaluable to improving the pace of the game by settling these debates
before they occur, and though the full extent of those features is farther
down the road for Ardanet, watching the world champion debate the rules made
me more confident that Ardanet will be a boon to the MECCG community (though
we may have to make it to version 3.0 to prove it LOL)

 

Along those lines, searching the cards and tallying the bonuses and the
score is also a struggle for even the most expert player, and again, points
to a computer to assist these efforts.  Where I thought I needed a computer
to help me play my "Indiana Jones" decks with a monolothic hero company of
3-6 characters, the final 4 in the world finals were all playing minion,
balrog, or fallen wizard decks with numeruos small-mind companies, upwards
of 5 or even 6 companies, and more cards in play than I had ever seen in one
game where even a large table seemed too small.  I also played some 2v2
games where I found checking for uniqueness was more difficult because of
the number of cards in play.  All this goes to show how helpful it will be
to have a computer search the cards in play for applicable bonuses (when the
rules knowledge and card details are programmed in eventually).

 

To drive the point home further, there was a running gag we shared at Worlds
this past weekend which sprung out of this constant problem with MECCG that
the cards can be unintuitively worded sometimes, and/or the rules can
sometimes play out in strange ways. sometimes in a way that catches you by
surprise and is disappointing, or even game-losing.  This led to a
half-joking exclamation of anger, said with a smile by someone with
German-accented English, "Thees eez - Boolshit!" which would then be
repeated in echoes by the gathering of giggling nerds in the room, followed
by much laughter.  You probably have to hear it said to think it's funny
because the inflection doesn't really come across in how I typed it.  But my
point is that, as funny as that running gag became, I personally feel those
moments detract from the game, and I believe Ardanet can help with that
problem.

 

So in summary, the GUI enhancements we have planned are not widely desired
by GCCG fans who seem to have learned and accepted the GCCG GUI.  However I
still believe that "play-assisting features and guides" is where Ardanet
will shine.  Unfortunately, we still have to build the GUI first in order to
get there from here, which means it may be difficult to recruit much more
support before we get into an alpha or beta release with version 1 and have
something that's minimally capable of playing a game.  From that point, the
most important thing we'll have moving forward is a MECCG-specific code base
for building this kind of game, which will allow us to work towards a piece
of software that fully implements all aspects of the game and knows the
special rules of every card.  The most important features will be those
which streamline play and quicken the pace, which I believe will bring more
fun to the game for even the most expert players who don't need
"play-assisting guides" as well as beginning players who do.  A faster paced
game would also be more fun in my opinion.

 

There you have it. my rambling thoughts about Ardanet after my experience at
Worlds 2007.

 

-- Ris

 

P.S. My gaming results from Worlds. I only won 1 game out of 8 that I played
all weekend, but I played some really good games nonetheless, and had a lot
of fun, so it was definitely worth it.  I got some good cards from the
sealed deck games and trades, some dragons, spanish dark minions, french and
english limited and unlimited wizards, and I picked up a bunch of lidless
eye: a starter and 9 boosters, adding to the weakest set in my collection,
though I haven't sorted it all out to see if I have the complete set yet.
Oh and I got some special cards too, drinking game cards, a couple of signed
cards, and a french promo I had never seen before.  It was cool to see so
many minion and fallen decks in action, and one guy playing balrog into the
finals with a good shot at the title - I don't know yet who won because I
had to leave a little early to make my flight.  I wish I had a chance to
play against the Balrog deck, but I saw so many strategies I'd never seen it
was great and I want to try them all!