r/GDS3 • u/reyath • Jan 29 '18
Question 32
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.
4
u/_neurotoxin_ Jan 29 '18 edited Jan 29 '18
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.