What's the best mobile CCG?

[Man_Over_Game]

So my favorite mobile Collectible Card Game, The Elder Scrolls: Legends, is officially dead. They've been given the official notice to pull the plug, likely due to poor mechanical decisions that resulted in a trend of lost players. And I'm looking for something that fits a similar niche.




I'm a Magic the Gathering veteran, but I stopped playing when I realized I played it because of the challenge and the social circles, rather than the "gaminess" of actually playing it. The most effective MTG cards are the ones your opponent cannot interact with (Hexproof, graveyard pulls, Indestructible, Split Second), which creates less of a "game" (in terms of Player vs. Player interactivity) the higher tier of player you are. In the context of Chess, it'd be like studying books and replays of veteran players was more important than actually playing Chess. For example, if your opponent is running a Battle of Wits deck, you either have the solution, or you don't, or it doesn't matter. None of those scenarios make for a good game, and...well, that happens a lot in MTG. Sure, Battle of Wits is very niche, but Artifact Tribals are not, and despite the diversity in their options, they all play the same: Play cards efficiently, Build a board state, utilize an artifact-specific buff that prevents your opponent from ruining your board state, continue until game. Note how the most you interact with your opponent isn't based on what he did, but what he will do. The same "defensive wall" strategy will either work against that opponent, or it won't, and neither is something either of you had much to do with.
I played Hearthstone for a long time, but it had the same exact problems as MTG (e.g. Battlecry). However, diversity between decks/cards is a lot less in Hearthstone, and so you'd end up seeing cards decide a game, where MTG had decks. These are similar, except you'd see the same winning scenario in Hearthstone over-and-over again, to the point where, win-or-lose, it feels boring.
Tried Shadowverse, which wasn't bad, but it relied heavily on combo mechanics and Positive Feedback Loops. For example, if the opponent cannot stop you from doing X (like, say, he has a losing board state), and after enough events X becomes X2, your opponent will continually have an uphill battle. While many strategy games have PFLs, Shadowverse stands out as almost *requiring* them. Most of the winning plays I see are from PFL combos that the opponent can't interrupt, rather than through attrition or tactical gambits. And while I didn't play very long, the fact that I encountered this issue often as a brand new player didn't bode well (as it seems every CCG eventually relies on PFLs, and low interactivity, in high level play).



The thing that made TESL stand out was the fact that:

It used Negative Feedback Loops, meaning that a losing player was given slight advantages to maintain tension and strategy throughout the game. This also helped balance the natural Positive Feedback Loop of almost every strategy game.
This was done in the form of extra draws based on lost life. Losing health below the starting value rewarded the loser more cards at specific intervals.
This did not exclude the option for Aggro decks. For example, many creatures actually benefited the aggressor when an opponent drew a card from life-loss.

Most of your actions can be interacted with by your opponent.
TESL used a 2-lane system, where units in one lane cannot interact with the other. Do you place your units based on combo potential of what you have in that lane, to avoid a lane-wipe, to avoid a dangerous buff, or to divide your opponent's solutions? Before even considering something like a creature's Enter-the-battlefield effect, which has a trend of low-interactivity in CCGs, you have to make an active decision based on your opponent's actions and the current board state.
It only had 3 card types. Fewer overall card types means fewer restrictions on interaction. When everything has health and uses damage, anything can be used to respond to anything. This translates into players always having multiple decisions they can make in-game (with just varying degrees of efficiency). This also means that several decks that utilize consistent, non-interactive win conditions (like comboing 0-cost spells, a notorious TESL deck that deals direct damage and plays like Solitaire), can easily be countered with a few specific tech counters that can also apply against many other decks.
Most combos or powerful cards (at least, in earlier sets) were heavily telegraphed, which allows the opponent to know what to expect.

An example I always was fond of were Shouts. They were spells that became increasingly more powerful the more times that same spell was cast in the same game (capping after 2 uses, max power on use 3). Their costs were balanced based on their 2nd use, so they had high costs when you were first casting them. However, they would easily pay for themselves if you could find a way to cast them 3+ times in a game. It's not a secretive strategy, since your opponent knows what happens when he allows you freedom to throw money at your win condition.

That's the gist of it. I want to be outmatched, not outdecked.



TLDR: I'm looking for a mobile CCG that promotes interactivity and decision making in-game.

What are your suggestions ?

[LansXero]

From experience, interactivity and decision making is someone you always try to trim away in deckbuilding. What you're looking for is not a new game, is a community of users focused on playing rather than winning, as every game will eventually be solved back into 'whatever you cant answer wins'.

[Blackdrop]

I have no suggestions for you friend, for I too mourn the vegetative state of TESL. There's still like a .5% chance the game comes back if the Asian market launch goes well, but I don't have much hope that it will.

[Silfir]

It sounds like you might enjoy Faeria. It doesn't just have two "lanes", it has a full on hex grid tactical map. Players vie for territory, resources and positioning. Since you can only summon your creatures on your own tiles, you typically have more than one turn to react to aggressive plays. It's legitimately well-thought-out and leads to gameplay that is still very reminiscent of straight-up card games, but gives additional avenues of interaction.

... I say that, but the most recent reviews on Steam read like eulogies. The developers committed CCG seppuku by moving it from free-to-play to an upfront fee, while also charging additional money for expansions.

Thus, I can't really help you. The second best online CCG I've ever played is MtG:Arena and I low key hate that game, too. I've got a friend who's deep into it and Magic is a very good game, it's just that Arena only really supports Standard, and Standard is often just awful.

EDIT: Oh crap, mobile CCG. Disregard. Apparently a mobile version of Faeria was out at some point, but later removed last year.

[Man_Over_Game]

From experience, interactivity and decision making is someone you always try to trim away in deckbuilding[...]

Well, I am still looking for these things in a game. TES:L had them, and it was a completely random CCG that very few people actually knew about. If an unknown game had these favorable traits, it'd make sense that someone would know of another that did, too. But it seems that's not the case.

Pokemon, weirdly enough, comes pretty close. With the fact that Energy takes time to stack and that most of your board state is bottlenecked onto a single Active slot, it seems like it encourages a lot of the telegraphing and limitations on Positive-Feedback-Loops that I'm really interested in. Although I'm not a fan of the inherent Weakness/Resistance system that can decide a game before it starts, but at least it's obvious. I'm also not a big fan of the fact that newer sets are reliant on GX Pokemon that are entirely focused on dealing massive damage without much drawback. I've always felt that damage should always be balanced around poison (~20 damage per round) as a reference point, as it's a set amount of damage defined by a specific status effect in the rules, but that ceases to be a possibility when you can do 200+ damage in one turn by turn 3.


I have no suggestions for you friend, for I too mourn the vegetative state of TESL[...]

I kinda felt it happening since the Moons set release. With cards that generated resources from your graveyard, or cards in hand that gained different powers based on whether the current turn number was odd/even, it felt like they were pulling more and more away from the things that made TESL interactive and fun. Additionally, I think like only 40% of that set was Common, meaning people would constantly get duplicates whenever they'd open a pack, and it felt like a blatant money grab (since people would need to buy more packs to get more of the set complete).

I think the "peak" of the game was during the first tri-color sets (Houses of Morrowind). Coincidentally, these sets also had heavily telegraphed, easily countered effects:

Redoran: Buff cards in hand, but only after you attack.
Solution: Blockers, removal, or forcing favorable trades (easy, since Redoran cards are weak without their handbuffs).
Dagoth: Certain creatures get stronger when you have other creatures with 5+ power, but most creatures with 5+ power are easily killed or expensive.
Solution: Silence, removal, aggro. Since many players get early 5-power creatures by buffing their damage, they're generally susceptible to direct damage, being blocked, or just being silenced.
Tribunal: Creatures had "kicker" costs that made them more powerful and versatile, to solve a variety of problems.
Solution: Be more aggressive. Tribunal relies heavily on ramp in order to afford their expensive Kicker effects. By forcing an early defense, you can stop them from being able to afford buying ramp, as well as forcing them to play their creatures without kicking them (which means they're playing very inefficiently).
Telvanni: Sacrifice your creatures to fuel powerful late-game spell combos
Solution: Commit to early trades. Most Telvanni cards relied on sacrificing or dealing direct damage to the opponent, and were exceptionally bad at trading without sacrifice support. Heck, several Telvanni creatures had a power of 0.


In fact, most of the deck strategies from the Houses could be easily countered by just putting generic brutes in your deck (Bleakcoast Troll, 5/5, gets +1/+1 whenever it kills a creature it attacks, 4-cost, Uncommon).

But compare that with something like Illusionist from the Moon set (Odd turns, being played gives it +1/+2 and Defender. On Even turns, being played puts a copy of it into the other lane, Epic, a powerful staple you'd see in every deck that could afford it), there's not really anything from stopping your opponent from doing anything about it. He can't even tell you have Illusionist in hand in order to prepare for it.

They could have done something that had Odd turns trend towards Aggression, and Even turns trend towards Defense, and then reveal what phase each of your opponent's Moon cards are while they're in his hand, and that would have saved the set, I think. Interactivity and telegraphing is what set TESL apart, and it stopped having anything special about it once it didn't remember that.


It sounds like you might enjoy Faeria[...]

Well, I appreciate the suggestion. I'll take a look into it. If it seems worthwhile enough, I might invest some time/money into the Steam version. But, honestly, I might just have better luck getting my card-game fix from Slay the Spire once it goes mobile.

[LansXero]

Well, I am still looking for these things in a game. TES:L had them, and it was a completely random CCG that very few people actually knew about. If an unknown game had these favorable traits, it'd make sense that someone would know of another that did, too. But it seems that's not the case.

Pokemon, weirdly enough, comes pretty close. With the fact that Energy takes time to stack and that most of your board state is bottlenecked onto a single Active slot, it seems like it encourages a lot of the telegraphing and limitations on Positive-Feedback-Loops that I'm really interested in. Although I'm not a fan of the inherent Weakness/Resistance system that can decide a game before it starts, but at least it's obvious. I'm also not a big fan of the fact that newer sets are reliant on GX Pokemon that are entirely focused on dealing massive damage without much drawback. I've always felt that damage should always be balanced around poison (~20 damage per round) as a reference point, as it's a set amount of damage defined by a specific status effect in the rules, but that ceases to be a possibility when you can do 200+ damage in one turn by turn 3.

As I said, if you have people like yourself focused on playing instead of winning, even Pokemon can work. However, competitive Pokemon has no limit on energy (attack from discard, attach from deck, multi-attach from hand) or goes without energy at all (Yanmega from 2 years ago, which won worlds). Further, its all built around dealing insane damage or making an unbreakable board state from turn 1 if possible, and cheating you out of prizes (like with Kartana's GX attack) or simply not allowing for a come back. With Tag-Team Pokemon having huge HP pools and giving up 3 prizes, games are more rocket tag than ever. By design, since interaction means the enemy might turn things around and who in their sane mind builds for that if they can at all avoid it?

[Man_Over_Game]

As I said, if you have people like yourself focused on playing instead of winning, even Pokemon can work. However, competitive Pokemon has no limit on energy (attack from discard, attach from deck, multi-attach from hand) or goes without energy at all (Yanmega from 2 years ago, which won worlds). Further, its all built around dealing insane damage or making an unbreakable board state from turn 1 if possible, and cheating you out of prizes (like with Kartana's GX attack) or simply not allowing for a come back. With Tag-Team Pokemon having huge HP pools and giving up 3 prizes, games are more rocket tag than ever. By design, since interaction means the enemy might turn things around and who in their sane mind builds for that if they can at all avoid it?

I only just got my feet wet with the Pokemon CCG very recently (knew how to play many years ago, learned again for a young family member), and I didn't know a lot of the things you were describing.

And I agree. From what you say, a lot of those things are not very likable. But I think Pokemon, outside of competitive play and poor management, has a good foundation that's designed for interactivity (persistent damage, bottlenecked board state, limited energy per turn, evolving Pokemon requires specific cards and more energy). I feel that MTG, even at the very lowest power levels, relies heavily on avoiding interaction (landwalk, Flying, Trample, Regeneration).

And while having a group of friends to play these games, exactly how I think they should be played, would be preferable, I think it'd be easier to find an online CCG that maintains similar values.

[Amechra]

I feel that MTG, even at the very lowest power levels, relies heavily on avoiding interaction (landwalk, Flying, Trample, Regeneration).

I think Trample actually increases the level of interaction - or, at least, it lets tall decks (i.e. a few big beefy guys) compete with wide decks (i.e. a bunch of little guys). Unlike, say, Hearthstone, it's ridiculously easy to pump out chump blockers in MTG.

That's more of an indictment of Magic's combat loop, though.

[Man_Over_Game]

I think Trample actually increases the level of interaction - or, at least, it lets tall decks (i.e. a few big beefy guys) compete with wide decks (i.e. a bunch of little guys). Unlike, say, Hearthstone, it's ridiculously easy to pump out chump blockers in MTG.

That's more of an indictment of Magic's combat loop, though.

Maybe. I do feel that Trample succeeds when the opponent can't do anything, and fails everywhere else. It does allow more decision making, I suppose, but I generally find that it basically defaults to:


Do I have to Block to survive?
Yes: Can I do enough damage to kill it?
Yes: Kill it
No: Block just enough to survive
No: Can I kill it?

Yes: Is it worth it?

Yes: Kill it.
No: It hits me.

No: It hits me.




But if you were to try to do the same thing with chump blockers, it'd be a lot more complex when considering possible synergies. Trample seems to default to "your creature deals full damage" or "your creature dies", and there's not much room for anything in-between. Sure, it allows more decisions, but it removes a whole lot more.

[Amechra]

Maybe. I do feel that Trample succeeds when the opponent can't do anything, and fails everywhere else. It does allow more decision making, I suppose, but I generally find that it basically defaults to:


Do I have to Block to survive?
Yes: Can I do enough damage to kill it?
Yes: Kill it
No: Block just enough to survive
No: Can I kill it?

Yes: Is it worth it?

Yes: Kill it.
No: It hits me.

No: It hits me.




But if you were to try to do the same thing with chump blockers, it'd be a lot more complex when considering possible synergies. Trample seems to default to "your creature deals full damage" or "your creature dies", and there's not much room for anything in-between. Sure, it allows more decisions, but it removes a whole lot more.

Trample literally exists to prevent big ol' fatties from being entirely irrelevant. Because without it, huge creatures only succeed when it's impossible for the opponent to block them, and they really don't do anything else. Chump blocking is not meaningful interaction, because the creatures you're using for it are entirely replaceable - either they've already used their ETB effect or they're some random 1/1 token. It'd be different if, say, you had to block with one of your utility creatures, but when "I create a 1/1 vanilla creature" is such a common effect, you have to have ways of getting around that.

Granted, this is a side effect of some very bad design decisions on MTG's part. If it had a limit on the number of creatures you can have out (like in Yugioh or Hearthstone), or required some kind of upkeep cost as a general rule, "I can make a tiny dude once per turn" wouldn't be such a hard counter to "I make one huge dude". Similarly, the fact that interaction is initiated by the defender is a big part of why MTG's combat boils down to something so non-interactive. Honestly, Menace is a much better mechanic for what Trample is supposed to be - something that makes blocking a more difficult choice.

MTG has all kinds of dumb design decisions, honestly. It's also Turing complete, so... (https://www.toothycat.net/~hologram/Turing/index.html)

(I'll shut up and let people who know more about mobile card games say stuff.)

[Man_Over_Game]

Trample literally exists to prevent big ol' fatties from being entirely irrelevant. Because without it, huge creatures only succeed when it's impossible for the opponent to block them, and they really don't do anything else. Chump blocking is not meaningful interaction, because the creatures you're using for it are entirely replaceable - either they've already used their ETB effect or they're some random 1/1 token. It'd be different if, say, you had to block with one of your utility creatures, but when "I create a 1/1 vanilla creature" is such a common effect, you have to have ways of getting around that.

Granted, this is a side effect of some very bad design decisions on MTG's part. If it had a limit on the number of creatures you can have out (like in Yugioh or Hearthstone), or required some kind of upkeep cost as a general rule, "I can make a tiny dude once per turn" wouldn't be such a hard counter to "I make one huge dude". Similarly, the fact that interaction is initiated by the defender is a big part of why MTG's combat boils down to something so non-interactive. Honestly, Menace is a much better mechanic for what Trample is supposed to be - something that makes blocking a more difficult choice.

MTG has all kinds of dumb design decisions, honestly. It's also Turing complete, so... (https://www.toothycat.net/~hologram/Turing/index.html)

(I'll shut up and let people who know more about mobile card games say stuff.)

Maybe you're right on Trample. I absolutely agree with what you said about Menace. It's something I think they should implement more of.

And on the contrary, you seem to know more about game design than most people I've talked to.

Question: What's your opinion on MTG's Counters? Do they promote interactivity or stifle it? Are they good for the game?

[Amechra]

Maybe you're right on Trample. I absolutely agree with what you said about Menace. It's something I think they should implement more of.

And on the contrary, you seem to know more about game design than most people I've talked to.

Question: What's your opinion on MTG's Counters? Do they promote interactivity or stifle it? Are they good for the game?

Aww, thanks. :smallredface:

On counters: That's kinda complicated, honestly. I think soft counters are perfectly fine. Hard counters, however, start pushing the game to be less interactive.

1) The game designers introduce some kind of hard answer to a strategy (Doom Blade vs. single powerful creatures, Cancel vs. playing powerful spells, etc).
2) The players start using this new strong card, because it helps them deal with those situations while allowing them to continue working on their own strategy.
3) Players who use the countered strategy start avoiding cards that don't let them deal effectively with that "answer".
4) At some point, the game designers want to make new cards that fall inside that "answered" strategy. They want to make a big scary creature or a big flashy spell.
5) The designers want players to use their new card, so they have to make it so that it's harder to use the answer against ("This creature has Hexproof!" or "This spell can't be countered!")
6) They release their big flashy cards, and players start using them.
7) They notice that those cards are dominating the meta, so they release answers to them (goto #1).

Repeat that cycle a few times, and you have a game where people are essentially playing Solitaire... except for when they're occasionally throwing sand into each-other's engines.

I mean, MTG has a couple other things that creep in and spoil its interactivity, too:

1) The game is built from the ground up with the assumption that your opponent will be the one supplying interactivity. For example, artifacts and enchantments generally can't be removed from play without cards that specifically deal with them.
2) Replacing Shroud with Hexproof was a mistake. They are both equally hard for your opponent to deal with, but Shroud also prevents you from stacking buffs on top of something your opponent can't deal with.
3) Lands being a card type that you have to draw from your deck is a problem. Mana droughts/floods reduce your ability to interact with your opponents, and there are ways to create those situations for your opponents.

[Man_Over_Game]

Aww, thanks. :smallredface:

On counters: That's kinda complicated, honestly. I think soft counters are perfectly fine. Hard counters, however, start pushing the game to be less interactive.

1) The game designers introduce some kind of hard answer to a strategy (Doom Blade vs. single powerful creatures, Cancel vs. playing powerful spells, etc).
2) The players start using this new strong card, because it helps them deal with those situations while allowing them to continue working on their own strategy.
3) Players who use the countered strategy start avoiding cards that don't let them deal effectively with that "answer".
4) At some point, the game designers want to make new cards that fall inside that "answered" strategy. They want to make a big scary creature or a big flashy spell.
5) The designers want players to use their new card, so they have to make it so that it's harder to use the answer against ("This creature has Hexproof!" or "This spell can't be countered!")
6) They release their big flashy cards, and players start using them.
7) They notice that those cards are dominating the meta, so they release answers to them (goto #1).

Repeat that cycle a few times, and you have a game where people are essentially playing Solitaire... except for when they're occasionally throwing sand into each-other's engines.

I mean, MTG has a couple other things that creep in and spoil its interactivity, too:

1) The game is built from the ground up with the assumption that your opponent will be the one supplying interactivity. For example, artifacts and enchantments generally can't be removed from play without cards that specifically deal with them.
2) Replacing Shroud with Hexproof was a mistake. They are both equally hard for your opponent to deal with, but Shroud also prevents you from stacking buffs on top of something your opponent can't deal with.
3) Lands being a card type that you have to draw from your deck is a problem. Mana droughts/floods reduce your ability to interact with your opponents, and there are ways to create those situations for your opponents.

Oops, I actually meant the mechanical term Counter (Like through Cancel or Counterspell).

Although you make great points, and I agree with everything you said.

I mention Counter effects specifically because of the mindgame element that comes with them.

Green player isn't playing anything big, so Blue player leaves mana open to respond. Is Green Player waiting for an opening to play an important card, or is he just stalling Blue's board state by forcing mana to be open because Green doesn't actually have anything in hand? Does Blue actually have an answer, or is he just bluffing to prevent Green from building his own board state?

Mindgames aren't something I've seen a lot of in card games:


Android: Netrunner uses Ice (AKA Firewalls) as traps to protect your assets (and sometimes your assets can just be well-dressed, well-guarded booby traps).
YuGiOh had trap cards (which are generally not much more than delayed sorceries, from my experience)
MtG has Counters and the occasional Morph.


The reason I bring it up is because I regularly heard players complaining about Counter-focused MtG decks back when I was heavily involved (about 15 years ago). People feel that they aren't playing the game when they can't put things on the field, and Counter-Blue was specifically designed to do that. I heard much fewer complaints about Direct-Damage Lighting Bolt Red decks that erased your board state after the fact, which generally were a lot easier to play (than Counter-Blue).

Do you feel that Counters add more to the game, and that these players were unable to adjust their thinking to accommodate the Counter-spell metagame? Or is Counter a mechanic that's oppressive and limits real gameplay?

(For reference, I'm referring to fairly casual decks/plays. Not ridiculous Lullmage Mentor shenanigans.)

[Amechra]

Oops, I actually meant the mechanical term Counter (Like through Cancel or Counterspell).

Although you make great points, and I agree with everything you said.

I mention Counter effects specifically because of the mindgame element that comes with them.

Green player isn't playing anything big, so Blue player leaves mana open to respond. Is Green Player waiting for an opening to play an important card, or is he just stalling Blue's board state by forcing mana to be open because Green doesn't actually have anything in hand? Does Blue actually have an answer, or is he just bluffing to prevent Green from building his own board state?

Mindgames aren't something I've seen a lot of in card games:


Android: Netrunner uses Ice (AKA Firewalls) as traps to protect your assets (and sometimes your assets can just be well-dressed, well-guarded booby traps).
YuGiOh had trap cards (which are generally not much more than delayed sorceries, from my experience)
MtG has Counters and the occasional Morph.


The reason I bring it up is because I regularly heard players complaining about Counter-focused MtG decks back when I was heavily involved (about 15 years ago). People feel that they aren't playing the game when they can't put things on the field, and Counter-Blue was specifically designed to do that. I heard much fewer complaints about Direct-Damage Lighting Bolt Red decks that erased your board state after the fact, which generally were a lot easier to play (than Counter-Blue).

Do you feel that Counters add more to the game, and that these players were unable to adjust their thinking to accommodate the Counter-spell metagame? Or is Counter a mechanic that's oppressive and limits real gameplay?

(For reference, I'm referring to fairly casual decks/plays. Not ridiculous Lullmage Mentor shenanigans.)

Hearthstone also has Secrets (to toss on the mindgames pile).

The issue with counters is that hard counters (like, say, Cancel) are basically the best removal possible - they don't even allow "enter the battlefield" effects to trigger. Counter-Blue (which I believe doesn't work anymore, at least not the way it used to) also has the additional aspect of preventing you from ever playing with your cool toys (as opposed to Lightning Bolt, which at least gives you the chance to use hasty tap abilities or whatever). Counters also tend to be much more broadly applicable - if I have a Cancel in my hand and three mana open, I have an answer to practically anything you might want to play other than lands and the rare "this can't be countered" card.

To use your example - there are mind games going on in the Blue/Green example you've got up there, but they're almost entirely on the Blue player's side. Blue's removal options were designed around denying your opponents tempo (hence why they have bounces and counters) - if the Green player is holding back their big critters, they aren't making progress towards their win condition. Blue also has access to Flash and other instant-speed options, so they should be fully capable of taking advantage of the mana they left open if their opponent didn't do anything worth countering. Blue is more and more likely to win the longer this goes on.

You can get similar gameplay to counters by running instant-speed removal. The issue there is that A) that encourages people to run less interactive cards and B) you can't deal with instants/sorceries that way. The fact that Blue is the only color that regularly gets counterspells is also an issue, since it means that decks that aren't running Blue don't get to fully interact with this kind of play. Counters are also just plain better if you run lots of them (it's easier to convince someone that you're holding a counter if they know that you've got a bunch of them), so that gives you an incentive to turn "a deck with a few counters in it" into a control deck that uses a bunch of them. And control decks are definitely on the "more fun to play than to play against" side of things.

Softer counters like Delay (https://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?multiverseid=132228) or Mana Leak (https://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?multiverseid=438632) still allow for mindgames, while being generally less oppressive. Which is why those types of counters (or counters that are otherwise restricted in terms of what they can target) are more common these days.

---

It doesn't hurt that counterspells interact with one of the less intuitive areas of MTG's rules (priority and the stack), and that they're almost entirely restricted to one color (which also happens to have the best card draw, the best access to stacking the top cards of your deck, and the almost-exclusive ability to reverse plays by bouncing things to your hand). If everyone got access to counterspells, I think that there would be fewer complaints about Counter-Blue... but this is MTG we're talking about, where "Black and Red are incapable of dealing effectively with enchantments" and "White and Red aren't allowed to get general card advantage" are built-in design issues.

[Man_Over_Game]

Forgot about Secrets, thanks for reminding me of them. Although, due to their effects, I rarely thought of them as "Gotcha" moments. Generally, they seemed to be used for an on-the-spot solution or board state action (Casting Fog to prevent lethal damage. Or, in HS, Ice Block) rather than a Mindgame mechanic.


--------

You make a very good point, especially in regards to the card draw. I mentally justified it as "Well, I spent mana, you spent mana, we both lost a card, so we're both roughly in the same scenario as we were in before. I played the board-state equivalent of Fog"...

Except Blue players can draw extra cards, and other players cannot. So while we both spent a card, I'll get 3 cards in the time that my opponent gets 2, and I'll almost always have the upper hand.

I do agree that Counters should definitely be focused around specific requirements (or at least make Cancel more expensive, like 3B?).

I feel like Flash is something that really should have been used more with other colors. It'd create some interesting scenarios where someone reacts to a Blue Player's End-Of-Your-Turn shenanigans to gain tempo and to screw over Blue.

I don't fully agree that Lightning Bolt, and ETB's, are a good example for why Counters are bad, though. ETB's are generally impossible to interact with beyond Counters, and Lightning Bolt is a much more accessible tool (very cheap, can be combined with monsters to be removal, can even be cast on a player when you don't have options). But it does show how the opponent (Green, in this case) would see a Cancel vs. a Lightning Bolt.

[Slayn82]

The best mobile CCG is Yu-Gi-Oh Duel Links, but it ain't everyone's cup of tea. And the Meta, to tell the truth, isn't very diverse.

[Man_Over_Game]

The best mobile CCG is Yu-Gi-Oh Duel Links, but it ain't everyone's cup of tea. And the Meta, to tell the truth, isn't very diverse.

Interesting suggestion!

Question for you, then. How well do you think it accommodates the things that I am looking for?

From the original post:




Negative Feedback Loops.
More interactivity toward your opponent than your board state.
Telegraphed win conditions.

[Amechra]

Speaking of telegraphed win conditions, MTG actually has a really good example in the form of Suspend. When you suspend a Heroes Remembered (https://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?multiverseid=122438) on turn 1, you're signaling that they have a time limit to beat you within. If you suspend a Shivan Meteor (https://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?multiverseid=426590), you're telling your opponent that maybe they should hold out on dropping their big creature.

There are a few others (like "]levelers (https://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Search/Default.aspx?output=spoiler&method=visual&action=advanced&text=+["level+up) or "]Sagas (https://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Search/Default.aspx?output=spoiler&method=visual&action=advanced&subtype=+["Saga)), but they're pretty rare within MTG because the game is generally so fast that they don't get used unless they're also being abused.

[Man_Over_Game]

Speaking of telegraphed win conditions, MTG actually has a really good example in the form of Suspend. When you suspend a Heroes Remembered (https://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?multiverseid=122438) on turn 1, you're signaling that they have a time limit to beat you within. If you suspend a Shivan Meteor (https://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?multiverseid=426590), you're telling your opponent that maybe they should hold out on dropping their big creature.

There are a few others (like "]levelers (https://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Search/Default.aspx?output=spoiler&method=visual&action=advanced&text=+["level+up) or "]Sagas (https://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Search/Default.aspx?output=spoiler&method=visual&action=advanced&subtype=+["Saga)), but they're pretty rare within MTG because the game is generally so fast that they don't get used unless they're also being abused.

I really liked Suspend cards for that very reason. One of my first and favorite decks once I started really getting into MTG was this Blue/Red Time Spiral prebuilt deck that used Storm effects mixed with Suspend to cheaply get cards out and create a powerful and delayed swarm of monsters and buffs.

Unfortunately, the deck itself was atrociously bad and impossible to use, but it was still a lot of fun. Still definitely one of my favorite MTG mechanics, barring something like Jhoira of the Ghitu.

[Amechra]

I really liked Suspend cards for that very reason. One of my first and favorite decks once I started really getting into MTG was this Blue/Red Time Spiral prebuilt deck that used Storm effects mixed with Suspend to cheaply get cards out and create a powerful and delayed swarm of monsters and buffs.

Unfortunately, the deck itself was atrociously bad and impossible to use, but it was still a lot of fun. Still definitely one of my favorite MTG mechanics, barring something like Jhoira of the Ghitu.

Aww, but suspending a Worldfire for 2 mana is totally "fun"! If Jhoira's "suspend all the things" ability factored in the mana costs (like if she gave Worldfire the equivalent of "Suspend 6 - RRR"), then it wouldn't be nearly as broken. I could see a game with Suspend as a built-in core rule being pretty interactive - bigger cards would have a delay, giving people time to figure out how to deal with them.

On a slightly different note - I'm going to frame challenge the other two things you're looking for (interactivity over board state, negative feedback loops), because I think they're missing the forest for the trees. A general game design note: engine building games (a genre that a lot of CCGs at least partially fall under) effectively have two different phases to them. You have a start-up phase, where you want to focus your efforts on securing more resources, and you have the payoff phase, where you want to dismantle the parts of your engine that you don't need anymore and convert as many of your resources into winning as possible.

To use MTG's three deck types (Aggro, Control, Combo) as an example:

• Aggro decks have a weak payoff phase, but they compensate for it with a quick start-up phase. Their goal is to win while their opponent is still trying to set-up their own engine.
• Control decks have a strong payoff phase, but in exchange they have a slow start-up phase. Their goal is to slow their opponent down, since they'll win the long game.
• Combo decks have a strong payoff phase and a quick start-up phase, but their weakness is that their engines are unreliable and delicate due to needing specific parts to work.

Control decks love interactivity, Aggro decks are neutral towards it, and Combo decks hate it with a passion. Combo decks rely on individual combo pieces to the degree that losing one of them could be the difference between a solid win and a complete loss, so they want to interact as little as possible. So you'll probably be happiest if you find some game that has minimal-to-no Combo-style play.

On the topic of negative feedback loops, CCGs (and engine-building games in general) are so focused on setting up positive feedback loops as a basic part of their design that you don't have much space to put catch-up mechanics in there. They have a very narrow band between "basically pointless" and "so strong that it isn't worth actually building your engine". It sounds like TESL threaded that needle, but that kind of thing is going to be really hard to design, and all it would take is a single designer going "Hey, you know what would be a good gimmick for a deck? Benefiting from being at low health!" for your catch-up mechanic to turn into another positive feedback loop.

[Man_Over_Game]

On the topic of negative feedback loops, CCGs (and engine-building games in general) are so focused on setting up positive feedback loops as a basic part of their design that you don't have much space to put catch-up mechanics in there. They have a very narrow band between "basically pointless" and "so strong that it isn't worth actually building your engine". It sounds like TESL threaded that needle, but that kind of thing is going to be really hard to design, and all it would take is a single designer going "Hey, you know what would be a good gimmick for a deck? Benefiting from being at low health!" for your catch-up mechanic to turn into another positive feedback loop.

I've seen a few real examples, but...regrettably, one of them was a mistake on my part:

Dual Masters uses face-down cards as "Shields". These are effectively your life. When you would take damage you instead draw one of your Shields, until you have no Shields left and lose. Some cards even have special triggers that occur when you draw them as a Shield, allowing you to play them instantly for free.
Dual Masters also had an interesting mechanic where your "land" was just a random card you chose to put face-down as your mana, which fixes your concern with mana/lands being slotted into specific colors/archetypes.

In a way, Dual Masters was ahead of its time. Unfortunately, the game was shallow and catered too much to the noobie, and didn't generate enough of a competitive scene to actually stay self-sufficient. Looking back on it now, though, a lot of online CCGs stole concepts from it that you don't see much elsewhere, so clearly it was on to something. Probably just needed to be more accessible to casual gamers.



I accidentally created a Negative Feedback Loop with Pokemon, drawing Prize Cards when you lost Pokemon as opposed to when you knocked out your opponent's. I had read the rules incorrectly and then taught others the same mistake. Although, I actually liked this ruling more than the default, and it segways easily into having multiple players in the same game (so Prize Cards are Lives instead of Rewards, easier to track in free-for-alls).



They've implemented Negative Feedback Loops as core MtG mechanics (Monarch and Dethrone are some of my favorite MtG mechanics), they just happen to not be very good. It's a lot more profitable to encourage winning than it is interactivity. People don't spend millions of dollars on MtG to play, they spend that much money to win.


all it would take is a single designer going "Hey, you know what would be a good gimmick for a deck? Benefiting from being at low health!" for your catch-up mechanic to turn into another positive feedback loop.

I don't think that's necessarily a problem, as long as all other builds can use that playstyle as a reference point. Monarch is a similar concept (a Positive Feedback Loop that is naturally weak to interference from your opponent, and can reward your opponent instead), but Monarch doesn't do well in competitive MtG because few other MtG mechanics have massively inherent weaknesses or even reward your opponent. Why bother using Monarch when you could just have Howling Mines and an artifact untap engine/Forced Fruition and turn their benefit into pain.

If everything was balanced around something like Monarch being a reference point (Positive Feedback Loops are possible, but fragile), I think that'd make for a very interesting and fun system. I guess a better way of putting it is having an ideal where Negative Feedback Loops are slightly less effective as Positive Feedback Loops, and making Positive Feedback Loops easy to dismantle/punish is one way of achieving that. On the other hand, Mario Kart is the poster child of Negative Feedback Loops, yet we have world champions.


Aww, but suspending a Worldfire for 2 mana is totally "fun"! If Jhoira's "suspend all the things" ability factored in the mana costs (like if she gave Worldfire the equivalent of "Suspend 6 - RRR"), then it wouldn't be nearly as broken. I could see a game with Suspend as a built-in core rule being pretty interactive - bigger cards would have a delay, giving people time to figure out how to deal with them.

I'd like that idea, too. Almost like a versatile version of Flash: The more you pay, the less it's telegraphed. Although something like that seems really hard to balance. How would Ramp decks be stoppable, considering Ramp in most games has pretty low interactivity? How do you encourage early game interactivity?


Control decks love interactivity, Aggro decks are neutral towards it, and Combo decks hate it with a passion. Combo decks rely on individual combo pieces to the degree that losing one of them could be the difference between a solid win and a complete loss, so they want to interact as little as possible. So you'll probably be happiest if you find some game that has minimal-to-no Combo-style play.

I think a happy medium would just be to have combo cards be less powerful but more general in use. Prowess is a good example in MtG. Technically a Positive Feedback Loop, and technically a Combo effect, yet it has a lot of inherent weaknesses while also being fairly low in power. It's consistent, but fair. Even if your opponent managed to stop one aspect of your gameplay (say Counter Spells), you can still rely on Prowess to pick up the slack. That's the perfect kind of Combo piece I'd like to see more of. In a hypothetical perfect game, it wouldn't be that its Prowess equivalent couldn't be countered, but doing so is almost more specialized than the combo piece itself (for example Ruric Thar), and those counters can still be dealt with at a high cost (After Bouncing Ruric Thar to hand and countering it, you've lost 5 HP and 2 cards).

[Amechra]

I've seen a few real examples, but...regrettably, one of them was a mistake on my part:

Dual Masters uses face-down cards as "Shields". These are effectively your life. When you would take damage you instead draw one of your Shields, until you have no Shields left and lose. Some cards even have special triggers that occur when you draw them as a Shield, allowing you to play them instantly for free.
Dual Masters also had an interesting mechanic where your "land" was just a random card you chose to put face-down as your mana, which fixes your concern with mana/lands being slotted into specific colors/archetypes.

In a way, Dual Masters was ahead of its time. Unfortunately, the game was shallow and catered too much to the noobie, and didn't generate enough of a competitive scene to actually stay self-sufficient. Looking back on it now, though, a lot of online CCGs stole concepts from it that you don't see much elsewhere, so clearly it was on to something. Probably just needed to be more accessible to casual gamers.

I accidentally created a Negative Feedback Loop with Pokemon, drawing Prize Cards when you lost Pokemon as opposed to when you knocked out your opponent's. I had read the rules incorrectly and then taught others the same mistake. Although, I actually liked this ruling more than the default, and it segways easily into having multiple players in the same game (so Prize Cards are Lives instead of Rewards, easier to track in free-for-alls).

They've implemented Negative Feedback Loops as core MtG mechanics (Monarch and Dethrone are some of my favorite MtG mechanics), they just happen to not be very good. It's a lot more profitable to encourage winning than it is interactivity. People don't spend millions of dollars on MtG to play, they spend that much money to win.

Fair enough - honestly, the Pokemon one seems like a pretty decent houserule.


I don't think that's necessarily a problem, as long as all other builds can use that playstyle as a reference point. Monarch is a similar concept (a Positive Feedback Loop that is naturally weak to interference from your opponent, and can reward your opponent instead), but Monarch doesn't do well in competitive MtG because few other MtG mechanics have massively inherent weaknesses or even reward your opponent. Why bother using Monarch when you could just have Howling Mines and an artifact untap engine/Forced Fruition and turn their benefit into pain.

If everything was balanced around something like Monarch being a reference point (Positive Feedback Loops are possible, but fragile), I think that'd make for a very interesting and fun system. I guess a better way of putting it is having an ideal where Negative Feedback Loops are slightly less effective as Positive Feedback Loops, and making Positive Feedback Loops easy to dismantle/punish is one way of achieving that. On the other hand, Mario Kart is the poster child of Negative Feedback Loops, yet we have world champions.

Fair points.


I'd like that idea, too. Almost like a versatile version of Flash: The more you pay, the less it's telegraphed. Although something like that seems really hard to balance. How would Ramp decks be stoppable, considering Ramp in most games has pretty low interactivity? How do you encourage early game interactivity?

You probably wouldn't have ramp decks, or they'd take the place of aggro decks. As for early game interactivity... if you make a slow deck and don't put anything in to deal with the early game, then anyone who makes a faster deck will roll right over you. You'd just have to make sure that those early-game answers are something more exciting than "I play removal. Again."



I think a happy medium would just be to have combo cards be less powerful but more general in use. Prowess is a good example in MtG. Technically a Positive Feedback Loop, and technically a Combo effect, yet it has a lot of inherent weaknesses while also being fairly low in power. It's consistent, but fair. Even if your opponent managed to stop one aspect of your gameplay (say Counter Spells), you can still rely on Prowess to pick up the slack. That's the perfect kind of Combo piece I'd like to see more of. In a hypothetical perfect game, it wouldn't be that its Prowess equivalent couldn't be countered, but doing so is almost more specialized than the combo piece itself (for example Ruric Thar), and those counters can still be dealt with at a high cost (After Bouncing Ruric Thar to hand and countering it, you've lost 5 HP and 2 cards).

Prowess is not a capital-C Combo mechanic - Prowess is very much an Aggro/Control mechanic. A Combo deck is something like a Laboratory Maniac deck that tries to deck themselves within a turn of the Maniac dropping, or a Storm deck that spams non-interactive spells until they can Grapeshot/Tendrils of Agony you to death. It's a playstyle built around executing a single game-winning combo (usually something that "goes infinite").

Prowess also isn't a positive feedback loop. A positive feedback loop specifically refers to situations where doing X ultimately makes it easier/more likely for you to do X again. Creatures with Prowess benefit whenever you cast a noncreature spell, but they don't make it easier for you to cast noncreature spells, if that makes any sense. Conversely, something like Ramp is a positive feedback loop - you spend mana to play things that give you more mana to spend on later turns.

[Man_Over_Game]

I just want to say that this has probably been the most constructive and enlightening discussion on game design that I've ever had. I'm used to a lot of blind zealotry or apathy, from both the internet and real-life, and the change is....nice.

Thank you.

[Amechra]

I just want to say that this has probably been the most constructive and enlightening discussion on game design that I've ever had. I'm used to a lot of blind zealotry or apathy, from both the internet and real-life, and the change is....nice.

Thank you.

No, thank you. I don't get much of an opportunity to blather on about this kind of stuff, to be honest - I'm also used to the zealotry/apathy thing.

[rcom12]

- I'm also used to the zealotry/apathy thing.
That is great :cool:.

[Man_Over_Game]

Prowess is not a capital-C Combo mechanic - Prowess is very much an Aggro/Control mechanic. A Combo deck is something like a Laboratory Maniac deck that tries to deck themselves within a turn of the Maniac dropping, or a Storm deck that spams non-interactive spells until they can Grapeshot/Tendrils of Agony you to death. It's a playstyle built around executing a single game-winning combo (usually something that "goes infinite").

Prowess also isn't a positive feedback loop. A positive feedback loop specifically refers to situations where doing X ultimately makes it easier/more likely for you to do X again. Creatures with Prowess benefit whenever you cast a noncreature spell, but they don't make it easier for you to cast noncreature spells, if that makes any sense. Conversely, something like Ramp is a positive feedback loop - you spend mana to play things that give you more mana to spend on later turns.

Then you were right. Ideally, there wouldn't be any Combo potential. The concept itself, of "Play Solitaire, hope to god my opponent can't play the game", seems like a toxic way to develop a PvP game.

---------------

I disagree with the fact that Prowess isn't a Positive Feedback Loop, because the trigger for those effects (Play a Noncreature Spells) costs resources, and making resources more efficient can mean more than just "Gain Mana when X".

For example, if I were to have a card that said "All of my Instants/Sorcereries cost 1 less", that would be a Positive Feedback Loop, even if I were in a Green deck. My overall goal is to drain my Opponent's HP to 0, keep my HP high, and maintain a board state that assists me in doing so. Even if that effect only helps me with casting spells for card draw or ramp, it's still allowing me to spend mana more efficiently, so that I can spend it on other things.

Similarly, buffing a creature through Prowess means that a creature may stay on the board, or hit for more damage, or might not need its opponent to be hit with a bounce effect. It's giving you more reward for your expenses, which is allowing you to afford to do more things. Given, it's a fairly small advantage most of the time, but it's still a Positive Feedback Loop.

Green player has a 3/3 for (3), gets blocked by 2/2 with Prowess for (2), Blue Player plays Brainstorm. Both Green and Blue lost and gained the same value in cards, monsters and mana, yet Blue was allowed to reorganize his top 3 cards of his deck because he had Prowess.

[Amechra]

Then you were right. Ideally, there wouldn't be any Combo potential. The concept itself, of "Play Solitaire, hope to god my opponent can't play the game", seems like a toxic way to develop a PvP game.

---------------

I disagree with the fact that Prowess isn't a Positive Feedback Loop, because the trigger for those effects (Play a Noncreature Spells) costs resources, and making resources more efficient can mean more than just "Gain Mana when X".

For example, if I were to have a card that said "All of my Instants/Sorcereries cost 1 less", that would be a Positive Feedback Loop, even if I were in a Green deck. My overall goal is to drain my Opponent's HP to 0, keep my HP high, and maintain a board state that assists me in doing so. Even if that effect only helps me with casting spells for card draw or ramp, it's still allowing me to spend mana more efficiently, so that I can spend it on other things.

Similarly, buffing a creature through Prowess means that a creature may stay on the board, or hit for more damage, or might not need its opponent to be hit with a bounce effect. It's giving you more reward for your expenses, which is allowing you to afford to do more things. Given, it's a fairly small advantage most of the time, but it's still a Positive Feedback Loop.

Green player has a 3/3 for (3), gets blocked by 2/2 with Prowess for (2), Blue Player plays Brainstorm. Both Green and Blue lost and gained the same value in cards, monsters and mana, yet Blue was allowed to reorganize his top 3 cards of his deck because he had Prowess.

More value =/= a positive feedback loop. If I seem a bit finicky about this, it's because "positive/negative feedback loop" is a term with a very specific meaning, and spreading that umbrella more widely isn't going to be particularly useful. To define my terms (because I think I was being mucky about it yesterday):

A feedback loop is specifically a process that takes its output as part of its input. A positive feedback loop is one where the output enables the process, while a negative feedback loop is one where the output inhibits the process. It's in the name - it's a feedback loop.

To put it in CCG related terms, you have a little equation:


Pay X → Get Y

If you run a bunch of Prowess creatures, you're adding more to the "Get Y" side for each noncreature spell you cast. If you run "Instants and Sorceries cost 1 less to cast", then you're subtracting from the "Pay X" side.

A positive feedback loop would look like this:


Pay X → Get X AND Y

---

To give an example, let's say we have a Dredge card, and it's the only Dredge card in our deck:


Dredge Card in Graveyard, Skip a Card Draw → Dredge Card in Hand, More Cards in Graveyard

In a deck with many Dredge cards, it probably looks more like:


Dredge Card in Graveyard, Skip a Card Draw → Dredge Card in Hand, More Cards in Graveyard AND More Dredge Cards in Graveyard

Dredging a card back from your graveyard has the potential to set you up to dredge more cards back from your graveyard. There's a loop there.

Meanwhile, let's look at the difference between Drown in Shapelessness (https://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?multiverseid=447063) (not using Brainstorm, because it has the potential to draw into more cards that draw cards¹):


Play Drown in Shapelessness, 1U, Creature on Battlefield → Creature in Hand

And Drown in Shapelessness with a Prowess creature out:


Play Drown in Shapelessness, 1U, Creature on Battlefield → Creature in Hand, Prowess Creature gets +1/+1

Or Drown in Shapelessness with your "instants or sorceries" card out:


Play Drown in Shapelessness, U, Creature on Battlefield → Creature in Hand

See the difference?.

¹ Yo dawg, I heard you like cards...

[Man_Over_Game]

I see it a bit more clearly now.
I thought that a Positive Feedback Loop meant: Do something, Get better at doing things.
But instead it means: Do something, Get better at doing that thing again.

Not sure if you're familiar with them, but a few excellent games you should check out are CRAWL, Pyre, and Valkyrie Profile: Covenant of the Plume. They all have some really deep mechanics on topics like these that I think you might enjoy.


CRAWL is a multiplayer 4-player local coop/competition game that uses a great combination of Negative and Positive Feedback Loops to make sure tensions run high.

The "party" starts with a free for all with all players being alive, armed, and ready to kill one another. Eventually, one player is alive while the rest are dead. Dead players can spawn a random monster based on their chosen God (Selected at the start of a round) with each monster having their own powers and abilities. The monsters try to kill the living player, while the living player reaps gold and experience from the monsters. The monster who deals the finishing blow on the living player now swaps roles. As the Living Player earns experience, Dead Players earn experience for their monsters that allow you to evolve them into more powerful versions with new abilities. As a result, the more you lose, the more powerful your monsters are. Once the current living player is Level 10, they can take on the Boss, which is a special encounter where all 3 Dead Players control one big enemy with multiple parts.

Valkyrie Profile: CotP is probably the hardest tactics game I've ever played, despite being relatively simple. You're a "hero" championed by the Norse God Hel to destroy your enemies. Along the way, you'll gather allies who can receive your "blessing" and unleash their ultimate potential in a fight. Once the fight is over, the "blessed" ally dies and then you permanently gain the blessing they received for the rest of the game. On the hardest difficulty, the game is really friggin' hard to beat without sacrificing a few allies. Of course, if you want the best ending, you have to keep everyone alive. Good luck, though.

The game happens to use some kind of team-combo system that makes using multiple allies worthwhile, but it's not nearly as easy as "Become Invulnerable and destroy everything for 3 turns" like using a Blessing would do. If you do happen to get the best ending, the game has a secret tower mode at the end where you get a nearly endless roster of allies from several games and fight your way up an infinitely deadly tower.


I don't know much about Pyre, but I know that it has a similar concept to Valkyrie Profile. It's an action-strategy-sport-fantasy game where you lose your allies when you win. From my understanding, you're in Limbo and winning means you get to escape. However, since your allies gain experience from losing, the game becomes easier the more you lose. Of course, this means that a good player gets challenged to the best of their abilities, since you'll be stuck with low-level characters if you didn't lose much. I've heard the game has a ton of dialogue changes and scenarios depending on when you win or lose, or who you keep and vice-versa, so it feels extremely organic. Of course, anything by Supergiant Games is nothing less than stellar, so I'm not surprised.

[Amechra]

I see it a bit more clearly now.
I thought that a Positive Feedback Loop meant: Do something, Get better at doing things.
But instead it means: Do something, Get better at doing that thing again.

Not sure if you're familiar with them, but a few excellent games you should check out are CRAWL, Pyre, and Valkyrie Profile: Covenant of the Plume. They all have some really deep mechanics on topics like these that I think you might enjoy.

I'll take a look at those when my time isn't being devoured by the project I'm working on. Two thoughts to leave you on:

1) Is life gain an interactive mechanic? Why or why not?

2) A (paraphrased) conversation I've seen a lot of when people discuss cards:

"That doesn't sound very fun to play against."
"It isn't my job to make sure that my opponent has fun. My job is to win."

How much of that attitude is the game community's fault, and how much of it is the game's?

[deuterio12]

Valkyrie Profile: CotP is probably the hardest tactics game I've ever played, despite being relatively simple. You're a "hero" championed by the Norse God Hel to destroy your enemies. Along the way, you'll gather allies who can receive your "blessing" and unleash their ultimate potential in a fight. Once the fight is over, the "blessed" ally dies and then you permanently gain the blessing they received for the rest of the game. On the hardest difficulty, the game is really friggin' hard to beat without sacrificing a few allies. Of course, if you want the best ending, you have to keep everyone alive. Good luck, though.

The game happens to use some kind of team-combo system that makes using multiple allies worthwhile, but it's not nearly as easy as "Become Invulnerable and destroy everything for 3 turns" like using a Blessing would do. If you do happen to get the best ending, the game has a secret tower mode at the end where you get a nearly endless roster of allies from several games and fight your way up an infinitely deadly tower.


Oh yeah that game's good stuff. There's also the bit where Hel expects you to kick your opponent while they're down and bleeding (aka keep attacking after they reached 0 HP, which isn't as easy as it sounds since you get a limited number of attacks per combat round so gotta chain them properly), with lots of overkill getting you extra rewards and low overkill meaning Hel is displeased and adds her personal demons to the next battle (in hard mode's pulling overkill is, well, pretty hard, increasing the chance Hel starts throwing uber demons at you leading you to need to start sacrificing your allies to actually pull through).

Plus the story is quite nice, the protagonist basically going "So what if dying in battle and being taken by a Valkyrie is deemed a great honor? An honored dead doesn't put food on the table." Also if you go too sacrifice-happy you earn a premature bad end.



How much of that attitude is the game community's fault, and how much of it is the game's?

It's technically both, but the devs should take responsibility to prevent it as much as possible. Like in Magic The Gathering they stopped reprinting stasis not because it was that OP but because it was plain unfun to play against. Ditto for nerfing non-creature control measures and buffing creatures over the years, since MTG is plain more fun when there's a bunch of creatures on the table instead of only lands.

[LansXero]

How much of that attitude is the game community's fault, and how much of it is the game's?

100% the game designer's, although this is more of a 'how do you feel' test than something with a clear correct answer. Still, expecting people to not want to win is self-defeating, people cant be expected to self-police on 'unfun' mechanics because fun is asimetric and also subjective.

[Man_Over_Game]

I'll take a look at those when my time isn't being devoured by the project I'm working on. Two thoughts to leave you on:

1) Is life gain an interactive mechanic? Why or why not?

2) A (paraphrased) conversation I've seen a lot of when people discuss cards:

"That doesn't sound very fun to play against."
"It isn't my job to make sure that my opponent has fun. My job is to win."

How much of that attitude is the game community's fault, and how much of it is the game's?

1: Not in the MTG ruleset, but otherwise it could have been.

It can apply to anything to be almost as equally as useful, and it doesn't cause your opponent to think much differently. If anything, it provides incentive for your opponent to do fewer things, to avoid granting you extra HP. I feel it slows down the game and it doesn't do anything tactically other than make a creature more valuable.

If MTG had a targeted-based attack system, where the opponent can choose to attack a creature, I'd see Lifesteal as an interactive option. Or make it so that Lifesteal only applies when dealing combat damage to creatures. Either one of those changes would have made Lifesteal a better mechanic, I feel. As of right now, it just pushes people to find ways to make their creatures more non-interactive (unblockable, indestructible) than before, and further rewards those decks that already do.


2: Absolutely the game's. What else is a game's culture than the collective opinions of its gameplay? The reality is, it's profitable to make mechanics that are powerful and win. We know this because MTG is the most successful CCG in the world, and its most expensive/valuable cards are the ones that make you win.

For a personal anecdote, my wife and I started getting into Cockatrice, which is a program on PC that is an MTG simulator that comes complete with matchmaking and card database. If you dreamed of playing a particular deck, you can with Cockatrice. I did research for weeks into finding a decent interactive commander deck that was relatively powerful. However, I found that even Hug decks like Zedruu, or a Olero Pillowfort deck, just ended up being effective at crippling your opponent in ways that gave the illusion of "choice". In the end, their effectiveness was all based on denying your opponent from having options, not necessarily making those options less effective. There's a difference there. MTG is so full of synergistic powers that either your combo works, or it doesn't, and there's not a lot of room for "kinda". Although I think the push towards more combat focus will help that.

I don't think the players should ever be at blame. The player's goal of a competitive game is to Win, and anything less than that isn't a competition. If the player is winning in a way that isn't good for the game (for example, Grapeshot combos), it's the responsibility of the developers to fix it. The winning player will only ever think about how clever he is, not about how toxic his playstyle is to everyone else. MTG, at its core, rewards preventing your opponent from playing the game, so why should a player feel bad about doing that well?




After thinking about it for a while, I would have really liked to see a CCG where every powerful synergy was based around stuff like Monarch or the Phantasmal creatures, where high-level games don't get more refined but instead become more chaotic. Gain powerful bonuses off of fragile sources, so high-level players can either invest into their easily-lost bonuses or played it safe with a more generalist approach. Would be a lot of fun to watch.

I think that highlights the big problem I have with MTG: While Power and Indestructibility can be two different things, MTG often pairs them hand-in-hand. I'd like to see the opposite: With power comes fragility. The more powerful the effect, the more easily it can be lost.

[LansXero]

I think that highlights the big problem I have with MTG: While Power and Indestructibility can be two different things, MTG often pairs them hand-in-hand. I'd like to see the opposite: With power comes fragility. The more powerful the effect, the more easily it can be lost.

That... makes no sense. Isnt losing their powerful effect the same crap you've been complaining about of how toxic players dont let others do their things? At its core any risk taking involves the failure a portion of times, so it devolves back at the same. What you actually want is, again, something that goes against people's nature, that is, playing with kid gloves and always stopping short of ruining other people's fun, and at the same time that they stop from ruining yours a proportional amount of times. This goes against your 'powerful effects easily lost' proposal because then everyone who actually cares to win would pack ways to make you easily lose them so its either rocket tag (I get my effect off first, you lose) like YuGiOh, or everyone plays generalist safe builds that just do their own thing like parallel solitaire.

[Man_Over_Game]

Isnt losing their powerful effect the same crap you've been complaining about of how toxic players dont let others do their things?

A little bit different. I'm comfortable with people doing things to actively deny someone a good thing. Counterspells, for instance.

However, I'm of the belief that these kinds of abilities should be temporary, expensive, or otherwise unreliable. For example, I believe Privileged Position is a card that should have never seen print. However, Harm's Way is an excellent method of protecting your stuff. Both are forms of denial, but one is a "Set it and Forget It" effect that works on...well, everything, and the other is a temporary and unreliable piece of protection that can cause something to seriously backfire against your opponent. One's lazy, and the other's fun.

Additionally, my crap is not about protecting your own stuff, but damaging your enemy's. Cause players to focus their actions on their opponent's board states rather than their own, as a way to get players involved with one another.

I actually think MTG's stack system is a gaming marvel, WotC really did themselves a disservice by not honing in more on their Counter effects (and also limiting counters, heck, the stack itself, to 1/5 of the game's colors). Part of that is due to its ability to nullify one's actions with an action of your own. That's the key point there. A current action stops a current problem, not a past action stopping a future problem. The first scenario requires both players to take action and be able to take an action and leaves the opportunity of more action. The second scenario requires action from a single player and the decision-making process ends there, which is why I think that set-it-and-forget-it defensive solutions are bad for games.


At its core any risk taking involves the failure a portion of times, so it devolves back at the same.

Fair, but MTG resolves this by removing risk. "It's not risky if I can't lose". So while it's risky to have your creatures out that give you passive bonuses, you mitigate those risks by having means of nullifying board wipes or removal. What was a 50 worth of loss and a 50 worth of gain now becomes a 10 worth of loss and a 50 worth of gain. The risk of playing something becomes smaller as you find ways of keeping it alive.

I'm encouraging the opposite. "It's totally worth it if I win". Not any less risk, just more reward. So you never can protect your board state, but you can get a lot of value out of it if you're lucky. This would be the equivalent of 50 worth of loss and 250 worth of gain.



What you actually want is, again, something that goes against people's nature, that is, playing with kid gloves and always stopping short of ruining other people's fun, and at the same time that they stop from ruining yours a proportional amount of times. This goes against your 'powerful effects easily lost' proposal because then everyone who actually cares to win would pack ways to make you easily lose them so its either rocket tag (I get my effect off first, you lose) like YuGiOh, or everyone plays generalist safe builds that just do their own thing like parallel solitaire.

There's a few extremes in there, but I don't think a real-life example would be all that extreme at all.

Taking MtG as an example, player generally try to focus on their own playstyle, but they also want to accommodate a random opponent's. So they make sure to throw in a few Lightning Bolts, a few Doom Blades, maybe a Cancel or a Krosan Grip. The best decks generally had a balance of stopping a random opponent's play vs. improving your own. MtG did have a situation where they had decks that were centered entirely around controlling the enemy board state (Blue), and as a result, those decks had major problems generating their own. Coincidentally, Blue vs. Blue made for some exciting and unpredictable gameplay. I think that's a very valid scenario for a pure-control playstyle, where going pure-control ends up limiting your own options.

As for Rocket Tag...I dunno. Slo-mo Rocket Tag sounds like a lot of fun. Anyone ever play Superhot? On a serious note, it'd be hard to see how good/bad something like this could be without a proof of concept. My ideal is something like Jenga, where big plays require big risks, and you can bite off more than you can chew. On top of that, if your opponent manages to outplay you, it can turn into a reversal where you're the one in a bad position. The winning play would boil down to whoever could either get lucky through a winning combo, or attrition their opponent after they gambled too hard. There's not enough interactivity in most card games that I've seen that makes anything really feel all that risky, besides maybe stacking your board too heavy in a board-wipe-heavy game (like MTG Commander).

And as for the generalist builds, I'm not sure why they'd equate to parallel solitaire. Even something like two classic MtG Green Decks have their own playstyles, limited synergies, and yet have multiple player-to-player decisions to make. I think that'd be about the most "Generalist" of a playstyle I could see, and using the Green vs. Green example, it wouldn't be a bad one.

I guess a conceptual MTG equivalent would be to have nothing but varying degrees of Blue/Green decks, with the only Permanent buffs being Auras, and your instant-cast spells are either Bounces, Counters, Shrouds and combat buffs.

[Amechra]

1: Not in the MTG ruleset, but otherwise it could have been.

It can apply to anything to be almost as equally as useful, and it doesn't cause your opponent to think much differently. If anything, it provides incentive for your opponent to do fewer things, to avoid granting you extra HP. I feel it slows down the game and it doesn't do anything tactically other than make a creature more valuable.

If MTG had a targeted-based attack system, where the opponent can choose to attack a creature, I'd see Lifesteal as an interactive option. Or make it so that Lifesteal only applies when dealing combat damage to creatures. Either one of those changes would have made Lifesteal a better mechanic, I feel. As of right now, it just pushes people to find ways to make their creatures more non-interactive (unblockable, indestructible) than before, and further rewards those decks that already do.

Not Lifelink - I'm talking "Target player gains 5 life" or the like. They fill very different niches in the design.

Honestly, the lack of a targeted attack system is what forces you to have unblockable/indestructible creatures. If you didn't have evasive creatures, you'd have a strict hierarchy of token spam > a few big guys > a few small guys


2: Absolutely the game's. What else is a game's culture than the collective opinions of its gameplay? The reality is, it's profitable to make mechanics that are powerful and win. We know this because MTG is the most successful CCG in the world, and its most expensive/valuable cards are the ones that make you win.

For a personal anecdote, my wife and I started getting into Cockatrice, which is a program on PC that is an MTG simulator that comes complete with matchmaking and card database. If you dreamed of playing a particular deck, you can with Cockatrice. I did research for weeks into finding a decent interactive commander deck that was relatively powerful. However, I found that even Hug decks like Zedruu, or a Olero Pillowfort deck, just ended up being effective at crippling your opponent in ways that gave the illusion of "choice". In the end, their effectiveness was all based on denying your opponent from having options, not necessarily making those options less effective. There's a difference there. MTG is so full of synergistic powers that either your combo works, or it doesn't, and there's not a lot of room for "kinda". Although I think the push towards more combat focus will help that.

I don't think the players should ever be at blame. The player's goal of a competitive game is to Win, and anything less than that isn't a competition. If the player is winning in a way that isn't good for the game (for example, Grapeshot combos), it's the responsibility of the developers to fix it. The winning player will only ever think about how clever he is, not about how toxic his playstyle is to everyone else. MTG, at its core, rewards preventing your opponent from playing the game, so why should a player feel bad about doing that well?

Ah, Cockatrice. I've used it as a solitaire program for literal years now (the online stuff doesn't work too well on Linux). It's... different to play a game like MTG as both sides.

The issue with Commander is that doubling starting health heavily nerfs aggro decks (so they need to get off some dumb combo to just compete), and the effect of having a card that you automatically get to tutor over and over pushes the entire format towards combo-based play. Expecting to find a "good" Commander deck that interacts well with opponents is like trying to find a "good" Modern deck that reliably wins on turn 10 - it's just not realistic for the game as she is played.

That being said, I have some suggestions for decks I've enjoyed playing that more-or-less hug your opponent to death. I reliably go back to Generosity Tribal (Generous Patron (https://scryfall.com/card/bbd/70/generous-patron) + Proliferate = boost their creatures and make it work for you) and Mill Forest (ramp everyone, then follow through with Undercity Informer (https://scryfall.com/card/gtc/82/undercity-informer)). Neither of them are super good, mind you, but they can be some goofy fun to play with.

[r2d2go]

You could try stuff that isn't technically a cardgame, e.g. auto chess games. You trade a bit of the out-of-game deckbuilding aspect for mid-game deckbuilding but let's be honest, these days either you're playing a meta deck or you're not competing. Unfortunately the only game that lets you know who you're up against is also the one that doesn't let you see their board (hearthstone battlegrounds), but either of those things increases the level of planning around your opponent a lot. And, while occasionally someone will win streak to victory, it's pretty rare, and otherwise actually maintaining a disadvantage is how to win a lot of games.

Really my favorite is TFT, because it has a stronger comeback mechanic, but the mobile's not out until "early 2020".

[Chen]

A little bit different. I'm comfortable with people doing things to actively deny someone a good thing. Counterspells, for instance.

However, I'm of the belief that these kinds of abilities should be temporary, expensive, or otherwise unreliable. For example, I believe Privileged Position is a card that should have never seen print. However, Harm's Way is an excellent method of protecting your stuff. Both are forms of denial, but one is a "Set it and Forget It" effect that works on...well, everything, and the other is a temporary and unreliable piece of protection that can cause something to seriously backfire against your opponent. One's lazy, and the other's fun.


Privileged Position is hardly a broken card and has its own weaknesses (including its 5 mana cost that doesn't actually do anything when you play it). It turns off spot removal (aside from itself) but still leaves a board vulnerable to all sorts of things. I'm not sure why something like that would considered a problem.



I actually think MTG's stack system is a gaming marvel, WotC really did themselves a disservice by not honing in more on their Counter effects (and also limiting counters, heck, the stack itself, to 1/5 of the game's colors). Part of that is due to its ability to nullify one's actions with an action of your own. That's the key point there. A current action stops a current problem, not a past action stopping a future problem. The first scenario requires both players to take action and be able to take an action and leaves the opportunity of more action. The second scenario requires action from a single player and the decision-making process ends there, which is why I think that set-it-and-forget-it defensive solutions are bad for games.

Again I'm confused as to how you distinguish set-it-and-forget defenses vs things like creatures. Or artifacts. I mean any permanent is basically set-and-forget. They all need to dealt with in particular ways.



Fair, but MTG resolves this by removing risk. "It's not risky if I can't lose". So while it's risky to have your creatures out that give you passive bonuses, you mitigate those risks by having means of nullifying board wipes or removal. What was a 50 worth of loss and a 50 worth of gain now becomes a 10 worth of loss and a 50 worth of gain. The risk of playing something becomes smaller as you find ways of keeping it alive.

I'm encouraging the opposite. "It's totally worth it if I win". Not any less risk, just more reward. So you never can protect your board state, but you can get a lot of value out of it if you're lucky. This would be the equivalent of 50 worth of loss and 250 worth of gain.

I'm not clear how 10 worth of loss and 50 worth of gain is any different than 50 worth of loss and 250 worth of gain. That's the same ROI in the end.



I guess a conceptual MTG equivalent would be to have nothing but varying degrees of Blue/Green decks, with the only Permanent buffs being Auras, and your instant-cast spells are either Bounces, Counters, Shrouds and combat buffs.

Seems like this would get stale rather fast. Almost all permanent effects have some way to counter them (or are just game winning in and of themselves) so I'm not sure WHY they are a problem. If your board gets locked down until the person kills you, is it any way different than them sticking a big creature and killing you with it? In both cases you lose if you don't have an answer.

[Man_Over_Game]

Privileged Position is hardly a broken card and has its own weaknesses (including its 5 mana cost that doesn't actually do anything when you play it). It turns off spot removal (aside from itself) but still leaves a board vulnerable to all sorts of things. I'm not sure why something like that would considered a problem.



Again I'm confused as to how you distinguish set-it-and-forget defenses vs things like creatures. Or artifacts. I mean any permanent is basically set-and-forget. They all need to dealt with in particular ways.



I'm not clear how 10 worth of loss and 50 worth of gain is any different than 50 worth of loss and 250 worth of gain. That's the same ROI in the end.



Seems like this would get stale rather fast. Almost all permanent effects have some way to counter them (or are just game winning in and of themselves) so I'm not sure WHY they are a problem. If your board gets locked down until the person kills you, is it any way different than them sticking a big creature and killing you with it? In both cases you lose if you don't have an answer.

The biggest thing I was trying to focus on is "Don't limit options for counterplay". Limit efficiency for counterplay, maybe (for example, targeting my stuff costs you 1 extra mana), but don't provide anything that works as a hard Yes/No form of denial.

Privileged Position works against this by preventing roughly 50% of the means that someone would have to deal with your permanents. Unless they have something that might work around it (such as a board wipe), or they have some means of removing your Enchantment (good luck to Red and Black), you have successfully denied your opponent the option of playing the game.

Most Set-it-and-forget-it defenses provide other forms of full-denial. That is, they make things "impossible" to interact with, instead of just "expensive". Artifacts are much less more interactive than Creatures, due to the number of cards that can impact them. There are fewer board wipes that include Artifacts than Creatures, fewer targeted spells that impact Artifacts than Creatures, fewer ways of forcing someone to sacrifice. In almost every way, Artifacts are harder to remove, and so are harder to play with. If an Opponent has an Artifact, I generally either:


Ignore it, as it doesn't matter that much
Invest towards removing it
Suck it up since I don't have a solution


Of those 3 options, #2 is the only one that promotes interactivity, and is generally so inexpensive/necessary of a choice that it doesn't feel like an investment. Rather, it feels like I'm rewarded for being overprepared for the actions I took before the match, not because of any decision-making during it. Removing that Artifact, and how, never feels like a hard choice in-game. Considering whether to remove a Creature is a much different story, and I believe the difference comes from the fact that creatures have more options for being interacted with.

But beyond that, Creatures are a constant cause of decision-making. Do you sacrifice it? Attack with it? Attack and then buff it? Keep it for defense? Additionally, while they add to your boardstate, they don't inherently synergize with one another. Just because you have two 4/4 creatures doesn't necessarily mean that they keep one another alive. Their lethality increases when blocking, but not their overall durability, and they don't generally limit your opponent's means for interacting with them. Two opponents with a creature boardstate that's balanced has a dozen different questions flying around based on what you believe your opponent is capable of. Two opponents with a balanced artifact/enchantment boardstate might not have a single question if those permanents don't have a temporary action that impacts the opponent (especially true if a card like Privileged Position is in play).


In both cases you lose if you don't have an answer.
Your last line is particularly important, since it brings up a good point. Not having an answer is kinda the thing that I've been griping about.

But there's a difference between running out of answers and never having one. People lose when they don't have an answer in Chess. That does not mean that there were not a series of challenges-to-answers to get there, or that there wouldn't have been a scenario where they could have answered the current dilemma.

I never meant to imply that someone shouldn't lose. I just mean to imply that someone should always have the option to make a difference. Pillowfort decks are the example I used before, since they never say "You Cannot Do That". Rather, they simply say "You Cannot Do That As Well". Denial needs to be on a sliding scale, not a Yes/No question, as this encourages more interactivity and decision-making instead of less.

[LansXero]

With only 60 cards, there is never going to be enough answers to all kinds of things. So you know how it works for the millions that do play Magic and dont run into this issue? Its because of...

The Meta

knowing what your opponents likely play, because of the format, scene, income, etc. helps you make informed choices during deckbuilding and answer the most likely win conditions. This of course keeps changing, and precludes the 'I build with what I like' mindset, but is the common answer: doing your homework, staying active, making changes as needed, adapting and learning.

[Amechra]

With only 60 cards, there is never going to be enough answers to all kinds of things. So you know how it works for the millions that do play Magic and dont run into this issue? Its because of...

The Meta

knowing what your opponents likely play, because of the format, scene, income, etc. helps you make informed choices during deckbuilding and answer the most likely win conditions. This of course keeps changing, and precludes the 'I build with what I like' mindset, but is the common answer: doing your homework, staying active, making changes as needed, adapting and learning.

Ah yes, the borderline-predatory business model CCGs/TCGs are built on.

[Man_Over_Game]

With only 60 cards, there is never going to be enough answers to all kinds of things. So you know how it works for the millions that do play Magic and dont run into this issue? Its because of...

The Meta

knowing what your opponents likely play, because of the format, scene, income, etc. helps you make informed choices during deckbuilding and answer the most likely win conditions. This of course keeps changing, and precludes the 'I build with what I like' mindset, but is the common answer: doing your homework, staying active, making changes as needed, adapting and learning.


To provide the contrary, I believe you've adapted your sense to suit MtG, not that MtG has adapted towards sense.

You see 60 cards as a restriction to having enough answers to all of the endless things you might need to counter. But I see what could have been 60 different answers. The reason 60 answers isn't enough is because MtG has made it normal to need more than 60 different answers, because each answer can only solve 1 problem.

If 1 card could counter 3 problems with varying efficiency, you wouldn't need 60 answers. 60 cards in a deck would be more than enough. You would strategize to eliminate major weaknesses, but specific cards wouldn't hold as much weight. You could play what you wanted, because every deck could work (to a varying degree based on matchup).




But, as Amechra alluded to, that doesn't make profits. Saying "Your old deck doesn't work" is a lot more profitable than saying "Your old deck has new weaknesses, but also new strengths". If any deck had a chance of success against anything else, and it mostly boiled down to how you played in the game, you wouldn't really have much of a reason to buy new cards, would you?



I think an alternative would be possible, following how online games have done it: Purchased content doesn't provide an advantage, but rather a new way of playing. New mechanics to suit new ways of having fun. Any new mechanics don't prevent old mechanics from being applicable, only make them somewhat more-or-less effective. This does end up putting more work on the developer, but most good products do.

An example that comes to mind is Gauge from Borderlands 2. She was a paid DLC that had a lot of popularity. Although she was less effective than, and had a similar goal to, Salvador, her unique mechanics were enough to warrant Gauge's success with the community. It's an imperfect analogy, since BL2 isn't a PvP game, but you catch my drift.




I don't think MtG could ever use that kind of design plan, as it already is locked into a rigid interaction scheme:


Creatures only are interactive with specific abilities that state it, generally Sorceries and Instants. Creatures can only attack another Creature when the Defender chooses it.


Instants and Sorceries can't generally be interacted with, with the exception of very few tap abilities, instant effects, and powerful passive abilities.


Artifacts and Enchantments can't be interacted with without specific abilities that state it, generally Sorceries and Instants.


Lands cannot be interacted with without specific abilities that state it, generally rare Sorceries.


In fact, the only "General rules" on interaction that I think of are:


The Player who's turn it is can Attack during his Combat Phase. Creatures with more than 0 power can Attack. If this hits a player, reduce their Life by the creature's Power.
The Player being attacked can block an attacking Creature with one of his own Creatures.
A player can interrupt an instance on the stack with a card effect. Instants are the only card type that can inherently do this.

And the rest are all card-dependent, with 6 or so basic card types. That doesn't seem like a good foundation for interactivity.