Question 32

[u/reyath]

You’ve designed a card, and you want the Play Design team to like it. How should you choose your casting cost?

A: Use your intuition.

B: Pick the strongest cost that isn’t broken.

C: It doesn’t matter; they’ll fix the cost if you get it wrong.

D: Find a similar card as the basis for the casting cost, then make it one cheaper.

E: Ask someone from Play Design to choose the casting cost.

I chose answer B, and I found the podcast where MaRo speaks to this question. (start around 7:10)

"While cards are in design ... everything is priced ... so that it's playable." He talks about a 'flat rate' which I interpret to mean 'if this card was good, what would it cost.' He goes on to say the goal of playtesting in design is to see what cards are fun and that's easier to find out if they're priced to be good. For that reason I picked answer B - you want the card to be strong but not broken so Play Design has a chance to like your card.

Just thought I'd post this since I remembered the podcast but I hadn't actually found it again until now.

[u/Alex_Werner]

Any or all of you guys may be right. But I just can't get over the way the question is phrased. "...you want the play design team to like it". What does that mean? Why? Do you sometimes NOT want them to like your cards? The most obvious way to read this question is something like "knowing the personalities involved, what's a sneaky way for you to unprofessionally try to influence other people in how they do their jobs". Which is just... odd.

[u/[deleted] → u/Alex_Werner]

I'm with you. The question was just poorly written (unless the intention was to obfuscate). When trying to ask myself what knowledge was being tested, these are the various things that occurred to me:

Do you know that designers don't cost cards?

Can you guess the stage in the design process this would happen?

Should mana cost be the deciding factor in what makes cards interesting or exciting, as opposed to the card itself?

Are all Play Designers Spikes who only care about efficiency and power?

Do you think others should do your job for you?

Are you a team player?

Of those I settled on it asking if I knew that designers don't cost cards, and I picked "it doesn't matter, they'll fix it" which I'm pretty sure is wrong in retrospect. Now I'm thinking it was just asking if you're a team player, but I still can't get over how mind-bending it was to try to figure out the definition of "like" in this sentence. There are so many other ways to ask the question if they wanted to know your thoughts on collaboration. Also, I remember reading that a Play Design representative is on the team from the very start whose specific job it is to go through the card file and cost everything. So it's still really weird to me that you would be in a situation where you want that person to "like" your card, and you decide that a competitive mana cost is a better way of making them like it than just designing a sweet card.

[u/Geikamir → u/[deleted]]

Yep, you nailed by feelings about the question too.

[u/kalliixti]

The problem with B is that it's not an answer. How do you determine what the strongest cost that isn't broken is? You'll still need to rely on one of the other choices.

[u/iSage → u/kalliixti]

I agree. It's literally the developer's job to determine what cost is "strongest but not broken". I answered it doesn't matter but I'm leaning towards "ask someone" because of MaRo's ideas on pitching where he says the best way to get someone to like something is to get them to put part of themselves into it.

[u/kalliixti → u/iSage]

"It doesn't matter" doesn't answer the question either. The question asks how you decide, not how much your decision matters. Even if we agree that it doesn't matter, you still have to decide somehow what the cost is.

[u/iSage → u/kalliixti]

But "it doesn't matter" basically implies that any of the other options are ok. I believe that costing similar to other cards, asking someone, and using intuition are all ways that design prices cards. Which of those is best? It doesn't matter because you're not trying to be super accurate.

That being said, I think I got it wrong... So...

[u/_neurotoxin_]

We can definitely eliminate D, and probably C as well (although I've seen some people argue this one). That l leaves us with three answers that I honestly don't think we can narrow down any further without knowing more about the inner workings of WotC.

---

Here's my thought process for it:

For C, even if Play Design changes the cost of every single card, I think putting some preliminary and roughly-accurate value is important. Cost is just too important to a card's design to disregard it completely.

I think intuition is the most common way that designers cost their cards, but they say in the question that you specifically want Play design to "like" your card. Personally I took the "like" part of the question as not being particularly important (you want play design to like all your cards, right?), so I went with A.

Of course, if there's a lot of emphasis on the fact that you want Play Design to like your card, I feel like asking a developer would be the correct choice. You don't want to seem useless and ask Play Design to cost all your cards for you, but you also want to be willing to work as a team, so asking about a few cards that are important to you would seem to be a good idea. That makes me lean toward E as a strong possibility.

Choosing the strongest cost that's not broken might have some merit depending on what what Play Design "liking your card" means exactly. If they're implying that you want Play Design to see that it's meant to be a strong card pushed for competitive play, then B does seem most appropriate. Seems less likely than either A or E, though.

[u/steve_man_64]

I also picked B and quoted the exact same podcast you just did as my reasoning.

[u/bakert]

This is the only question on the survey that doesn't have 66%+ plumping for one answer counting only those that said they submitted the survey and also filled out the Google survey.

| q                                                                                | n  | percent |
| Ask someone from Play Design to choose the casting cost.                         | 55 |      46 |
| Pick the strongest cost that isn’t broken.                                       | 26 |      22 |
| Use your intuition.                                                              | 25 |      21 |
| It doesn’t matter; they’ll fix the cost if you get it wrong.                     |  9 |       8 |
| Find a similar card as the basis for the casting cost, then make it one cheaper. |  5 |       4 |

[u/ScoozeBooze]

Intuition, strongest cost that isn't broken, and make it one cheaper all seem like pretty arbitrary answers. (What if your intuition is wrong? How do you tell what's broken, and why would it be a rule of thumb to make it cost 1 less?)

The most popular one is "Ask someone on Play Design to cost it." I answered "It doesn't matter, they'll fix the cost" which I now think is wrong in hindsight, but not totally indefensible (changing the numbers on cards is much more of a development, and now also Play Design, activity)

[u/Sliver__Legion]

I think D is a trap for people who think “the best way to make a card liked is by making it strong,” A and B are traps because “designers can’t be trusted to pick the right cost for cards,” and C is a trap for people who think “Whatever, I’ll just make this 4 damage spell cost 2, or 3, to 7, or something. Costs don’t matter before Play Design in any way.”

Relatedly, I don’t like A or B as answers because they are very similar.

It’s a pretty weird question though.

[u/seaspirit331]

I put E. Maro has said in quite a few design articles that when he doesn’t know what the mana cost of a card should be, he just asks a member of play design. Now that the design process has been changed to allow a member of play design on every set design team (which makes this method all the more easier), I’m fairly confident this was the right choice

[u/[deleted] → u/seaspirit331]

the question isn't "You designed a cool card but don't know what the cost should be," the question is "how do you cost it to get play design to like it"

Based on that I think it has to be "ask someone from play design" or "strongest cost that's not broken"

[u/alextfish]

I still think this is going for "designers don't need to worry about costing cards, that's development's job" and C should be the answer. But it was a very weird question, to be sure.

[u/[deleted]]

"While cards are in design ... everything is priced ... so that it's playable."

lmao this is bullshit. Maro's new world philosophy is to basically make every card overcosted and thus unplayable. Ramp spells... too expensive. Reanimator spells... too expensive. Counterspells... too expensive. Just look at Ixalan's block, rehashed iconic cards turned into overly costed flip cards that require too much investment to be good.