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Ark Age CCG's Card Names:

Started by yudencow, November 12, 2010, 07:40:26 PM

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Which is the best trio of names for Character-Weapon-Action cards respectively?

Character-Weapon-Action
Company-Arsenal-Barricade
Guardian-Covenant-Augury
Juggernaut-Regalia-Ultimate
Familiar-Provision-Summoning

yudencow

Ark Age CCG is a game I work for quite a while. It is about parellel dimensions where in each one there is a strong motif of godhood and morality. You win the game by accumulating enough points from mostly smiting and other battle-specific objectives.

Please comment for other options or why either option

Trevor

#1
Unless you have a good reason for doing so, stick with the intuitive terminology.

Instead of winning by scoring a certain amount of points, instead I suggest you have your opponent lose that same amount of points. Mechanically, it's essentially the same thing. But flavorwise, it is more combative. Gaining points and winning is more like solitaire.

That reminds me of how initially world of warcraft characters originally got a debuff that made them tired and only get 50% experience after a while. They changed it so that you initially got a 200% buff to your experience, and it went away after a while. It's actually the same exact thing, but in the perception of players, the latter "feels" a lot better.

yudencow

Just to be sure, do anyone knows what Augury means?

Dragoon

#3
Quote from: yudencow on November 13, 2010, 10:33:03 AM
Just to be sure, do anyone knows what Augury means?

Omen, divination according to my dictionary.. Why do you write it while you don't know what it means? -_-

But keep it simple... Just go with the most basic terminology (character, weapon, action.)

yudencow

I know what it means, wtf would you think i would propose it without even knowing. Jews aren't as psychic as told in Red Alert 2 hefe.

The reson I asked because it was pretty one sided, and I wanted to know if it is a vocabulary barrier. The fact that you looked it up, means it was...

I wanted not to keep it simple because i wanted to integrate the cards themselves as unique assets in the game's world.

Quote from: Trevor on November 12, 2010, 07:55:34 PM
Instead of winning by scoring a certain amount of points, instead I suggest you have your opponent lose that same amount of points. Mechanically, it's essentially the same thing. But flavorwise, it is more combative. Gaining points and winning is more like solitaire.

I undersrand your arguement, but it doesn't fit well to the vision of my game. I chose that you need to gain points rather than to make your opponent lose them is because:
A. The player can't be targeted, so it is redundent to remove all the time.
B. The psychological factor of gaining something and not losing something you already have.
C. It is not like solitaire, Pokemon CCG did something similar which was really fun (every time you defeat the enemy pokemon you take a prize card).
D. Sure like in FPS games, survival mode like you said, can be done, but in the end, you play cowardly to keep your points.
E. Gaining points by smiting/defeating opponents is the most combative than the other way around because you focus is on killing for victory not killing for survival.

Quote from: Dragoon on November 13, 2010, 10:49:09 AM
But keep it simple... Just go with the most basic terminology (character, weapon, action.)

If the most basic terminology works best, any other options than Charater, Weapon and Action?

Trevor

QuoteIf the most basic terminology works best, any other options than Charater, Weapon and Action?

There's lots of other ways to referring to those kinds of cards. Take a look at other CCGs to get some examples.

Character, unit, person, player, hero, companion, soldier...

Weapon, Item, Artifact, equipment, tool, possession...

Action, Event, Spell, Sorcery, Act, surprise, trap, effect, trick...

It really depends on what feeling you want to convey. Person would be appropriate it they were all people, but a zombie isn't a person. Character can be any kind of character, but characters tend to be important. A soldier without a name might not be well thought of as a character, but more like a unit. Units don't have to be people, but can be ships and vehicles, like in star wars where there are characters and space and ground vehicles, but they are all units.
Whatever you choose, the most important thing is it makes sense.

Regarding augury, that's an awful term for a card type. First, most people don't know what it is. Second, due to its multiple meanings, it could be thought of as connected to lots of different effects. If you want to use interesting flavorful terms like that, use them in card names. Card names can be zany and obscure. Card names can even be made up words, but the cool thing is people don't need to know what they mean to play the game correctly. Card type names on the other hand are important and need to be simple to understand and informative.

I've actually learned a number of obscure words from reading magic cards. Hermetic, Frenetic, Taiga, Fumarole, are just some examples.

For card name theory, read this article.
http://www.wizards.com/magic/magazine/Article.aspx?x=mtgcom/daily/db12
http://www.wizards.com/magic/magazine/Article.aspx?x=mtgcom/daily/db12

richperng

I agree with Trevor.

It really depends on what you want to convey.  Also, I believe these are card "types"? and not just card "names".  A card name would be something like "Fanatic's Sword" or "Gladiator's Net" or "Old Trident".

When I saw each of the following:
  Character-Weapon-Action
  Company-Arsenal-Barricade
  Guardian-Covenant-Augury
  Juggernaut-Regalia-Ultimate
  Familiar-Provision-Summoning

They gave me a different perspective on the game.
Unfortunately, your tag line/description that you wrote does not help narrow down the selection.

I would say that, the more generic the name type, the better it is to fit more "items" under it's umbrella.  And that way you can have better rules with how to interact with them.  However, the more generic the type, the less it conveys.  (which is kind of obvious).

I'll just take the first 5 and I'll give you my initial response:
Character - okay... it does not tell me anything about your game except that there are characters in your game.
Familiar - Ah.. now you are saying that this card is "accompanying" you or somehow tied to you, something that you summoned.
  - maybe your game has wizards? or minions that do your job for you?
Company - ah, now these are things that you hang out with.
  - maybe you are soldiers in an army or a band of fighters/people ..
Guardian - ah... spirits ..
  - maybe you can summon them? protection?

Anyway, those are my initial thoughts.