I love card games, but can never find opponents in my small hometown. My girlfriend will occasionally, if I've behaved, plays some Magic with me, but neither of us has the income to keep up with that game too seriously... So naturally, I looked to video games to solve my problem. Here are some of my experiences:
I almost bought a PS3 specifically for Eye of Judgement. All told, in the old days, the PS3, plus the entire set up, plus maybe a few boosters packs, I was out nearly what? A bit less than a thousand dollars?
Of course, I needed time to save up the cash, and thank goodness I did, because it wasn't long after the game launched that stories came up of people "photocopying" cards and breaking the system. That was a scary enough prospect to deter me.
I DID make the much smaller investment for Marvel Trading Card Game on the PSP. I enjoyed it immensely while I was unlocking cards in the single player campaign, but once I signed online I found that the all internal model had a problem. I quickly found that there were only a couple decks I ran into online, over and over again. With every card at the fingertips of every player, it wasn't difficult to create one of these few "uber" decks.
Magic Online had all the same problems as the real game, and a lot of online browser based or client based cards games are incredibly expensive to keep up. The real world card game model is well designed process meant to accomplish one thing: Separate you from your money.
The best card game I've seen, which only costs about 40 dollars, has great online, and uses a random element to break the "uber" deck dynamic, is Culdcept Saga on the 360. It's by far, my favourite card-based video game but the random element does sometimes make me feel like I'm not actually in control. Maybe it's not my killer strategy thats winning me this, but the roll of the dice?
So as you can see, there are lots of systems for card-based video games but none of them are perfect. The creation of limitless cards and limitless strategic possibilities means you need near endless incomes. Self-contained models, with entire catalogues of cards built into the game, like Marvel: TCG, lead to a swiftly "perfected" deck that dominates completely. And new experiments like the Culdcept series, and Eye of Judgement create new problems
What system do you guys prefer? Did I miss an awesome one?
I almost bought a PS3 specifically for Eye of Judgement. All told, in the old days, the PS3, plus the entire set up, plus maybe a few boosters packs, I was out nearly what? A bit less than a thousand dollars?
Of course, I needed time to save up the cash, and thank goodness I did, because it wasn't long after the game launched that stories came up of people "photocopying" cards and breaking the system. That was a scary enough prospect to deter me.
I DID make the much smaller investment for Marvel Trading Card Game on the PSP. I enjoyed it immensely while I was unlocking cards in the single player campaign, but once I signed online I found that the all internal model had a problem. I quickly found that there were only a couple decks I ran into online, over and over again. With every card at the fingertips of every player, it wasn't difficult to create one of these few "uber" decks.
Magic Online had all the same problems as the real game, and a lot of online browser based or client based cards games are incredibly expensive to keep up. The real world card game model is well designed process meant to accomplish one thing: Separate you from your money.
The best card game I've seen, which only costs about 40 dollars, has great online, and uses a random element to break the "uber" deck dynamic, is Culdcept Saga on the 360. It's by far, my favourite card-based video game but the random element does sometimes make me feel like I'm not actually in control. Maybe it's not my killer strategy thats winning me this, but the roll of the dice?
So as you can see, there are lots of systems for card-based video games but none of them are perfect. The creation of limitless cards and limitless strategic possibilities means you need near endless incomes. Self-contained models, with entire catalogues of cards built into the game, like Marvel: TCG, lead to a swiftly "perfected" deck that dominates completely. And new experiments like the Culdcept series, and Eye of Judgement create new problems
What system do you guys prefer? Did I miss an awesome one?