An option to define the value of 'X" costs?

[CMDR Shven]

(I know there isn't one, I'm wondering what people think about it)

Very often I find that playing an X value card would be much more advantageous if I could play it first using only some of my energy, then play other cards. Like the way MtG handles X values. I get that knowing the card will exhaust all your energy is part of the strategy of playing one but I think it opens up more complex strategies if you allow the user to choose a value. Seeing how a lot of the end game relies on very specific turn execution due to active relics/powers.

[Hedera]

So suggest a relic that does that.

[Seltin]

Dunno, if you assign a vakue to the card, it basically becomes a regular card. I like it the way it is.

[CMDR Shven]

Originally posted by RegularBloke:

So suggest a relic that does that.

I feel like that would be a waste of a relic. There aren't that many X cost cards. Having the relic would be literally useless without them.

Originally posted by Seltin:

Dunno, if you assign a vakue to the card, it basically becomes a regular card. I like it the way it is.

I think you missed my point. I'm saying let the user choose a value between 1 and X when using the card.

[EternalEllipsis]

Originally posted by CMDR Shven:

Originally posted by RegularBloke:

So suggest a relic that does that.

I feel like that would be a waste of a relic. There aren't that many X cost cards. Having the relic would be literally useless without them.

Originally posted by Seltin:

Dunno, if you assign a vakue to the card, it basically becomes a regular card. I like it the way it is.

I think you missed my point. I'm saying let the user choose a value between 1 and X when using the card.

0 and X

[CMDR Shven]

*Yes

[Xardas]

I think X cost cards are designed with this limitation in mind. Also I don't see a clean way to implement it. For instance what would happen when the player has 30 energy? Are we typing in a number? Mouse wheel scroll? What about when porting to mobile? EternalEllipsis's suggestion is more likely due to it being limited to two easily displayed choices. Then again I think that is an incredibly niche relic that would feel really bad to get 90% of the time.

[CMDR Shven]

Originally posted by Xardas:

I think X cost cards are designed with this limitation in mind. Also I don't see a clean way to implement it. For instance what would happen when the player has 30 energy? Are we typing in a number? Mouse wheel scroll? What about when porting to mobile? EternalEllipsis's suggestion is more likely due to it being limited to two easily displayed choices. Then again I think that is an incredibly niche relic that would feel really bad to get 90% of the time.

I think for as rare as it would be that a player would be playing an X card with more than 5 energy, they could get away with simple up and down arrows.

Also I believe Eternal was correcting me in saying that the range should be 0 - X as opposed to 1 - X, as 0 should be a choice, not that there should only be two choices. But having it be a relic would definitely be irritating. There are already a few bum relics that people don't want to get.

[MechaTails]

Assuming it wasn't a conscious decision to balance those cards, I don't see a problem with letting us pick how much energy to spend. I don't think it's necessary, but whatever.

[Arti_Sel]

Think it would make the x cards easier to sequense which makes them more generically powerful while introduce extra calculation complexity (this is kind that gives headache) and slow down the game. Also annoying to handle on a controller. I don't like any of that.

[CMDR Shven]

All the MtG games have had controlling for X costs and it's never clunky or difficult to figure out. And how much time does it really cost? If you're going for a WR speed run and the extra one and a half seconds needed to press the up button a couple times to select a value is going to make or break your time, then yeah I guess you can complain. But for the overwhelmingly vast majority of plays, it simply allows more versatility.

[Sines]

As far as the interface goes, it could just pop up a list of multiple seperate versions of the cards with different costs.

And I do overall support this. It's not like this game is finely balanced around relics anyway, if this lets a few X cards get much better with the right other cards or relics, that's fine.

[Arti_Sel]

Originally posted by CMDR Shven:

All the MtG games have had controlling for X costs and it's never clunky or difficult to figure out.

You haven't played enough magic then, but well this is beside the point.

Originally posted by CMDR Shven:

And how much time does it really cost? If you're going for a WR speed run and the extra one and a half seconds needed to press the up button a couple times to select a value is going to make or break your time, then yeah I guess you can complain.

Every time it's automatically cast it's stopping time and forcing you to take action.

Every time you play it from your hand you have to chose a number, instead of simply playing it. So it's going to take a bit longer than twice as long to cast it than other spells.

The most annoying part is going to be calculating where in the sequense you want to cast it and for how much mana. It's effectively multiple cards in one for the purpose of determining when you want to cast it. This is going to be extra annoying in decks with multiple x spells and ways to increase energy while casting. Devs should be careful not to turn this into "math, the game".

Originally posted by CMDR Shven:

But for the overwhelmingly vast majority of plays, it simply allows more versatility.

For the overwhelmingly vast majority of plays it's not going to do anything more than it does now. In a few niche cases it's going to give the player more generic power.

Right now x spells have a unique disadvantage because they force your hand, imo this is interesting for the purpose of deckbuilding. Makes it less likely to pick them up as generically good cards if you can't count on using them anywhere in the sequense (ensuring balance between cards).

OK It's obvious this is a straight buff, why do you think x-spells need a buff?

Originally posted by Sines:

As far as the interface goes, it could just pop up a list of multiple seperate versions of the cards with different costs.

And I do overall support this. It's not like this game is finely balanced around relics anyway, if this lets a few X cards get much better with the right other cards or relics, that's fine.

Oh you have thought this through carefully. Just make a new card for every point of energy. Good thing there isn't a card named DOUBLE ENERGY which grants DOUBLE ENERGY for 0 cost that often slots into x decks and break the energy balance. Cause that would make you have to sift through a whole deck of near identical cards just to pick the one with correct energy cost. Oh wait... nevermind game would probably just break to desktop. Good thing we don't have to worry about that.

[Cherry]

Originally posted by Arti_Sel:

Originally posted by CMDR Shven:

All the MtG games have had controlling for X costs and it's never clunky or difficult to figure out.

You haven't played enough magic then, but well this is beside the point.

Originally posted by CMDR Shven:

And how much time does it really cost? If you're going for a WR speed run and the extra one and a half seconds needed to press the up button a couple times to select a value is going to make or break your time, then yeah I guess you can complain.

Every time it's automatically cast it's stopping time and forcing you to take action.

Every time you play it from your hand you have to chose a number, instead of simply playing it. So it's going to take a bit longer than twice as long to cast it than other spells.

The most annoying part is going to be calculating where in the sequense you want to cast it and for how much mana. It's effectively multiple cards in one for the purpose of determining when you want to cast it. This is going to be extra annoying in decks with multiple x spells and ways to increase energy while casting. Devs should be careful not to turn this into "math, the game".

Originally posted by CMDR Shven:

But for the overwhelmingly vast majority of plays, it simply allows more versatility.

For the overwhelmingly vast majority of plays it's not going to do anything more than it does now. In a few niche cases it's going to give the player more generic power.

Right now x spells have a unique disadvantage because they force your hand, imo this is interesting for the purpose of deckbuilding. Makes it less likely to pick them up as generically good cards if you can't count on using them anywhere in the sequense (ensuring balance between cards).

OK It's obvious this is a straight buff, why do you think x-spells need a buff?

Originally posted by Sines:

As far as the interface goes, it could just pop up a list of multiple seperate versions of the cards with different costs.

And I do overall support this. It's not like this game is finely balanced around relics anyway, if this lets a few X cards get much better with the right other cards or relics, that's fine.

Oh you have thought this through carefully. Just make a new card for every point of energy. Good thing there isn't a card named DOUBLE ENERGY which grants DOUBLE ENERGY for 0 cost that often slots into x decks and break the energy balance. Cause that would make you have to sift through a whole deck of near identical cards just to pick the one with correct energy cost. Oh wait... nevermind game would probably just break to desktop. Good thing we don't have to worry about that.

You could just say you don't like the idea, you don't need to be a prick about it.

And it would actually make playing the defect in particular really interesting.
And if it suuuuch a big deal about interfering with gameplay, why not make it an option in the custom mode.

[Arti_Sel]

Originally posted by seriously?:

You could just say you don't like the idea, you don't need to be a prick about it.

And it would actually make playing the defect in particular really interesting.
And if it suuuuch a big deal about interfering with gameplay, why not make it an option in the custom mode.

I chose to present arguments instead of feelings. Just like you could have chosen to address the issues but instead chose to attack my character.

But ye sure I got no problem with you arguing to make it a custom option. I'm sure the devs would love to reprogram the way x cost spells work just so that people playing customs can have an additional toggle option.

Honestly though I don't think the people positive to this idea are being realistic, and I haven't seen any good arguments why it would be beneficial to make this change in the first place. The only thing you got is "this will make x spells stronger", but why would you want to do that?

Here are the standing counterarguments in case you forgot.

-It would slow down the game
-make deckbuilding less interesting
-make calculations harder
-It doesn't work in any theory you guys have presented and will likely be hard and ugly to implement
-takes away a unique disadvantage of a card and makes it more generically powerful for ???? reason

[CMDR Shven]

Originally posted by Arti_Sel:

Originally posted by CMDR Shven:

All the MtG games have had controlling for X costs and it's never clunky or difficult to figure out.

You haven't played enough magic then, but well this is beside the point.

Originally posted by CMDR Shven:

And how much time does it really cost? If you're going for a WR speed run and the extra one and a half seconds needed to press the up button a couple times to select a value is going to make or break your time, then yeah I guess you can complain.

Every time it's automatically cast it's stopping time and forcing you to take action.

Every time you play it from your hand you have to chose a number, instead of simply playing it. So it's going to take a bit longer than twice as long to cast it than other spells.

The most annoying part is going to be calculating where in the sequense you want to cast it and for how much mana. It's effectively multiple cards in one for the purpose of determining when you want to cast it. This is going to be extra annoying in decks with multiple x spells and ways to increase energy while casting. Devs should be careful not to turn this into "math, the game".

Originally posted by CMDR Shven:

But for the overwhelmingly vast majority of plays, it simply allows more versatility.

For the overwhelmingly vast majority of plays it's not going to do anything more than it does now. In a few niche cases it's going to give the player more generic power.

Right now x spells have a unique disadvantage because they force your hand, imo this is interesting for the purpose of deckbuilding. Makes it less likely to pick them up as generically good cards if you can't count on using them anywhere in the sequense (ensuring balance between cards).

OK It's obvious this is a straight buff, why do you think x-spells need a buff?

Originally posted by Sines:

As far as the interface goes, it could just pop up a list of multiple seperate versions of the cards with different costs.

And I do overall support this. It's not like this game is finely balanced around relics anyway, if this lets a few X cards get much better with the right other cards or relics, that's fine.

Oh you have thought this through carefully. Just make a new card for every point of energy. Good thing there isn't a card named DOUBLE ENERGY which grants DOUBLE ENERGY for 0 cost that often slots into x decks and break the energy balance. Cause that would make you have to sift through a whole deck of near identical cards just to pick the one with correct energy cost. Oh wait... nevermind game would probably just break to desktop. Good thing we don't have to worry about that.

Been playing MtG since 1997 sir. Calculating X costs has never been a problem. If you think it's terribly complex maybe you're just not good at arithmetic in your head? And I still don't buy the time argument. If the card by default is set to pay one energy, it does not take very long to hit up twice to change it to three energy before casting it. It really doesn't.