Deck-Builders: Game Theory (Part 3)
Have you been following along? I know I am a verbose writer, and often ramble about this and that and …
I’m doing it again.
So. We’ve been spending a bit of time talking about the Game Theory behind deck builders and what makes them so interesting. We’ve been using Monster Train as our example because it has been my deck builder digital game of choice for a while. Let us now dive into a bit more of Monster Train and see what some of the interesting things that make it tick.
First, what is UX?
UX is short for User Experience. This is more inclusive than just the user interface (UI). It also includes how different directions are laid out. How fast or easy it is to navigate through various parts. It is the whole experience of using a product or a site. It is all encompassing of a users interaction. UI obviously is part of this, and large part. So too are mechanics that keep the game flow moving.
With Monster Train this matters because … ?
I am pretty sure those masks are not for some fire based beauty regimen
The most exciting thing to me about Monster Train is some of the UX choices they made that help keep the game moving quickly as well as prevent analysis paralysis. There are also a couple of UX aspects that really help the game keep a good pace and not drag out to the point where the Problem to be solved (the Round, as we discussed in the last two blog entries) does not refresh fast enough to keep the game interesting.
The UI of Monster Train has this lovely optional feature that is on by default. Because Combat happens in an ordered fashion and everything will take place in the same order every time, the game automatically calculates for you which of the units on a floor will live or die, as well as the damage they take if they survive. This is incredibly useful to prevent Analysis Paralysis.
After all, each round is a puzzle to figure out, as we’ve repeated ad-nauseum. A large chunk of that puzzle will be figuring out if your units survive to continue to the next round, especially given their limited nature. We certainly could do the math in our heads - with the exception of some Trigger abilities (that could fire when damaged or killed) it is straightforward math. Their attack damage against your health and then in reverse.
This however, is time consuming, easy to make mistakes, and frankly just boring. I don’t want to do the math - I want to decide if I need to use this spell or that one. I want to play the pretty cards and win! This little UI element is something I’ve not seen in other deck builders before and it makes the battles that much faster. It keeps me from having to double check my math or hope my mental acuity is up to par today that I didn’t make any mistakes. It reduces an avenue for error and mistakes that make the game un-fun. Plus, as the turns go by faster, we get that Reward Loop closing tighter!
Onward, to Victory!
We all wish we were a little bit more Relentless.
The second thing is the Auto Round. When the boss of the battle finally decides to enter combat themselves, the player has one round of action to play cards - then the battle proceeds back and forth on that floor until the boss is defeated or your units are. If you fail to defeat him then he freezes that floor and moves up a level, getting closer to damaging (or destroying!) your Shard.
This is a mechanical decision, but very much one that affects the UX of the game. If this didn’t happen those boss fights would be horrendously boring. With bosses at some of the higher difficulty levels reaching 4k, 5k, and much much higher hit-points, doing that round by round would be brutally slow. The game would extend far longer than it should.
Certainly my auto fighting each attack/counter attack sequence until the floor is cleared of one side of the battle reduces the player options. It does make it so that it can be brutally obvious if that fight is going to be won or not. However, this mechanic is known by the player and because it is always this way, for every battle and every boss unit, then strategy and tactics can be developed for how to deal with it.
This in turn creates a second puzzle reward loop. A single round is one, and a very exciting one. However, all the rounds together make up a larger puzzle - are the players units and the combos going to be enough to handle an enemy unit that is much larger than others? This in turn contributes to yet another, larger loop. The final boss of the run is larger by far than any others. Is the strategy being developed in the trip down the rails enough to deal with that? Is the puzzle we’re slowly putting the pieces together for going to be enough? Three levels of puzzles, three levels of reward loops nested within each other. The combination of these different levels creates a much stronger draw on the player.
It’s not all sherry and champagne though.
And this is only the middle of the run boss at the lowest difficulty. There are 25 difficulty levels…
I mentioned it briefly, but there is a large con to the auto fighting round of the bosses, when combined with the UI tokens of ‘live or die and damage’ on units. It becomes extremely obvious when the boss arrives if this is going to be enough to handle that unit or not. When you see the boss with 1000 hp and only a -20 for damage on the first floor it is very disheartening. Then if you take a quick stock and realize you have no way of actually dealing with that boss on the higher floors, the game is pretty much over without needing to hit the ‘End Round’ button to watch it happen.
This is a problem. The idea that you never know, you might just be able to pull it off is a concept that Variance brings to the forefront and is one that can keep players pushing forward even when all seems lost. It is also a concept that opens up the ability for the stories of amazing saves that came out of nowhere. Things you did not expect to happen that every card landed your way and you managed to win! You can see this in games like Darkest Dungeon, when you thought you were a goner and that random crit or the unexpected stun came out at just the right moment to save the day. This is far rarer in Monster Train.
For Glory!
It is not impossible of course. The right card being drawn at the right time can still cause that effect. Because there is no RNG in the actual combat however, it is a known possibility that can be easily intuitively calculated by the player. They can know they have to have a certain card to have a chance at winning, and with a glance at how many cards are left in the deck know the possibility of drawing it.
For Death …
The two features that I spoke of, though very intriguing and good when done separately, come together to form a very big issue. When you add in the dash of knowing your chances at drawing a certain card in an intuitively, mostly accurate manner, you end up with a situation that completely removes any chance of that completely unforeseen clutch win from behind. The situation that stories are made from. Without that, it is very easy to see the end of the game before it arrives and quit before playing it through.
As a quick counterpoint, lack of RNG in combat damage is not a bad thing. It makes a game in general more smooth and results in far less “RNG BULL@^&#” cries from players which can frustrate some people to no end. Less frustration is usually good, but in this case with some other mechanics it comes at the cost of less ‘wow’ moments.
This is undoubtedly why, despite it being a great game, it has fallen off the radar on Twitch and other content sites. Without that “holy $%@# did you see that?” moment it is hard to keep viewers interested in continuing to watch. Without those stories unless the game or the content creator has a huge base of supporters, it just won’t draw the crowds.
Overall, Monster Train is a well done game with some very great aspects. It also has some flaws, but at least the ones I spoke of don’t stop it from being a great game. It may not be the best game to stream or make videos for but it certainly has some of the best aspects of a deck builder that I’ve played in a long while. If by this third week of blog posts about it you haven’t checked it out, you really should.
Monster Train by Developer Shiny Shoe and Published by Good Shepherd Entertainment.