Monday, July 13, 2009

Quest Mode

I can’t think of anything technical to write about so this is just going to be a fluff piece about MTG Forge’s awesome quest mode. I think of the quest mode as a stripped down version of Shandalar, you start with a few cards and you win more by playing against computer opponents.

MTG Forge is “graphical challenged” so it only uses menus instead of full scale animation like Shandalar. To begin with you pick how many games that you have to win in order to finish the quest and quests vary from 10 (easy) to 40 (very hard).

On paper the quest mode seems almost trivial but it adds a lot of replay value to MTG Forge. The cardpool that you have is always different so this challenges you to use different colors and cards than you normally would. If you were using the constructed mode which has all of the cards you would always select Lightning Bolt over Shock since Lightning Bolt does more damage but in quest mode you would might be forced to use Shock or something even worse.

MTG Forge only has so many cards and the quest mode lets the player experience cards that he normally never would. In essence the quest mode is a “flavor” of Magic much like drafting or sealed deck. I also wanted to mention that the AI decks that you play against in the quest mode are divided into three categories of difficultly so after you win a few games the challenge is increased.

When you start the quest mode you are given 75 cards. At first I wanted to only give the player a smaller cardpool of 50 cards but that seemed a little too restrictive, so I chose 75 because it is the same as sealed deck tournaments. And when you win more cards you only get 12 because I didn’t want to make it too easy.

7 comments:

Mosschop said...

Just a quick note to point out that the game as it was when I downloaded it a few weeks ago is heavily biased towards white in the card pool. I think from memory that white had about 20% more cards in its pool so every deck I built in in Qeust mode ended up being Wx.

I eventually sorted it out by using the card editor to add more cards of other colours to the pool.

Otherwise, an excellent bit of entrtainment only slightly marred by the fact that the game gets slower and slower the longer you play.

Also the application has problems with a couple of cards - winder in particular causes the game to grind to a crawl as soon as it hits the graveyard. Also issues playing gemhide sliver when anyother slivers are in play - similar slow down problem.

Unknown said...

Game's colors really need to be balanced. For one, the amount of blues cards is way too low. Two, Get rid of scorching spear. That card is just horrible. Seriously, every time I see it I die a little on the inside.

Rorik said...

I actually want to congratulate you for this excellent idea. The quest mode is a perfect addition to the mtgforge, as one is now forced to use cards and colors, and even strategies, one may have never used if it were not for the reduced card pool. Additionally having to win the cards gives is a meaning to every winning and every match.

The only think that I actually did not enjoy as much was not being able to choose which cards you got. I would personally like more a system where you got credits for winning against the computer and could “buy” cards, or boosters to give the card acquisition a more strategic feel.

Thank you very much for all the effort you have clearly laid down in this software.

Forge said...

I tried to make sure that all of the colors are balanced in the quest mode. Some cards that have state effects like Gemhide Sliver do cause slowdown.

I would love to implement a shop where you could buy cards, maybe I could do that in the future.

crussellsprout said...

What is supposed to happen once you finish a quest? For some reason, nothing special has ever happened when reaching any of the quest "won games" milestones, and the games won just keep accumulating beyond that.

Also, it would be great if you could highlight or identify which new cards were won after each game, as it can be time consuming to try to figure it out.

Otherwise, I have really enjoyed playing quest mode. Nice job!

Forge said...

"What is supposed to happen once you finish a quest?"

Nothing really. You have different "ranks" like mana mage and Lands = Friends which was supposed to be funny. When you finished the quest it used to say that you were the world chamption.

"Also, it would be great if you could highlight or identify which new cards were won after each game, as it can be time consuming to try to figure it out."

I thought of that and the deck editor shows an "n" in the rarity column which stands for "new". After you win some cards, click on the rarity column name, actually click on the word rarity, and all of the new cards will be at the bottom.

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