GW Skill cards & Sealed Deck Generator

[Snowman]

Call me a noob but..

How can you be sure that players wont cheat and take skills they dont have via the 'sealed deck' tourny :S

Easily done at a LAN party I suppose, with a referee.. but how can it be done online?

[FrogDevourer]

Originally Posted by Furfoot

Where did you get all those factions skill icons as they're obviously not ingame shots.

They come from the new fan kits that ANet kindly released a little earlier than expected. As far as I know, only two icons are missing: Bull's Charge from Prophecies and Tenai's Heat from Factions.

[Zexion]

One minor bug: The icon for Stonesoul Strike is used for Shield Guardian (and NOT vice versa, Stonesoul uses the correct icon).
Otherwise, nice. And I have the same question as snowman.

_Zexion

[NinjaKai]

I'd love it if you could make a program for PDAs with the images of the original skill cards. Just a suggestion.

[Argen]

Nice work Frog and SoF! Thanks for the great job with stuff! I'll be talking with some of the folks of our alliance and seeing if we can assist you guys in some way.

[Studio Ghibli]

About time.

I remember pushing for this exact feature when Prophecies first came out, hoping Anet would take it up and incorporate it into the game.

Both nice and surprised to see player-content driving it. ;P

[Lateralus]

Sorry but this is pointless imo... Nice work on this, it looks like it took a lot of time and effort for just the samples but what’s the point? Online cards don’t make any sense unless you want to waist a lot of ink printing them all out. Besides, we have GuildWiki for this.

[Makkert]

Originally Posted by Zexion

One minor bug: The icon for Stonesoul Strike is used for Shield Guardian (and NOT vice versa, Stonesoul uses the correct icon).
Otherwise, nice. And I have the same question as snowman.

_Zexion

Thanks for reporting. We'll fix the bug.

Originally Posted by Lateralus

Sorry but this is pointless imo... Nice work on this, it looks like it took a lot of time and effort for just the samples but what’s the point? Online cards don’t make any sense unless you want to waist a lot of ink printing them all out. Besides, we have GuildWiki for this.

Yes, Guildwiki is great. The cards are a way of showing the skill one gets when playing sealed. Or do you rather want a long list of links to Guildwiki? Or a very slow generator that tries to pick up all info from GWiki?
Yes, you can chose to have only the icon and name. But not everybody is a walking encyclopedia that remembers everything.

Besides, IMHO they look a tiny bit prettier then GWiki....
Yes, for if you want to look something up normally, use GWiki by all means. But I disagree the cards are pointless.

Originally Posted by Argen

Nice work Frog and SoF! Thanks for the great job with stuff! I'll be talking with some of the folks of our alliance and seeing if we can assist you guys in some way.

Any help is welcomed. Feedback on how you experience the sealed play would be dandy. Especially on what you think is a viable format (how many skills randomly pulled? proffesion wise? proph/faction wise?
We have been given some info from iQ on what they used with testing sealed, we'll probably start with that. But any help on what works and what doesn't is greatly appreciated.
FrogDevourer made a long post on other ways to help our, such as SS of characters. I suggest you read that if you want to help out .

Originally Posted by NinjaKai

I'd love it if you could make a program for PDAs with the images of the original skill cards. Just a suggestion.

I don't think FrogD will be aiming for this on the short term tbh. First get things worked out before porting ideas.... At least, that seems logical to me....

Originally Posted by Snowman

Call me a noob but..

How can you be sure that players wont cheat and take skills they dont have via the 'sealed deck' tourny :S

Easily done at a LAN party I suppose, with a referee.. but how can it be done online?

A very good question. I think the best way is to take it in steps. What you ask here is basicly how this will operate in a tournament scenery. I think it's more important at this point in time to make a FORMAT to play with, before even thinking of tournaments. In Magic the Gathering for instance, a sealed format is: X boosterpacks and X bigpacks. Or X from set A and X from set B. This gives them a cardpool that is workable to make a fun sealed game.
Like I said before to Argen, we've received some info on a possible format, but I think it will take some time to establish one...
When that happens, your concern will be become a valid one if this would be taken to tournamentlevel. The options to check in-game are almost zero. I don't have an answer for you ready at this point in time. It would need some time and brainstorming.

[LightningHell]

I think...

8 regular skills and 1 Elite would constitute a Booster Pack equivalent in Magic: the Gathering, while 25 skills and 3 Elites would constitute a Tournament Pack equivalent in Magic: the Gathering. A usual Sealed Deck would have 3 Boosters and a Tournament Pack for each player.

Or we could try having a Draft. Drafting, in Magic: the Gathering, is to have three booster packs per person (in general Tournament format) (note, I'm talking about Booster Draft, I don't like Rochester Drafts in general. Too slow), and at first each person opens a pack, chooses a card, and passes it round to the next player. When one pack is exhausted, repeat the same process again except this time reverse the draft order.

Might/might not work...

I can help also on the formats. I hope. :P

[Makkert]

Note that it's hard to make a format based of MtG because of many differences.
Unlike MtG, it's not possible to make a bar of 3 proffessions.
There are currently 8 proffessions instead of 5 colors.
The attributelines further complicate things.

[LightningHell]

Originally Posted by Makkert

Note that it's hard to make a format based of MtG because of many differences.
Unlike MtG, it's not possible to make a bar of 3 proffessions.
There are currently 8 proffessions instead of 5 colors.
The attributelines further complicate things.

Which is why the ratio of cards to skills are a lot higher.

And why I like the draft idea more.

[Makkert]

Originally Posted by LightningHell

Which is why the ratio of cards to skills are a lot higher.

And why I like the draft idea more.

Draft is fun. But GW is a team game. Personally (not talking for projectleader FrogD) I'm thinking of TEAM sealed as a format therefore. Draft can also be done, but can be tedious with say....4v4 play? Not to mention that would require a draftengine, but that's a technicality I'm sure could be worked out... Still, draft would probably be a workable format... maybe 2 groups of 4 to draft with... ? A possibility...

Team sealed allows for compacter cardpools as opposed to the idea of individual sealed games.

[FrogDevourer]

Originally Posted by Lateralus

Sorry but this is pointless imo... Nice work on this, it looks like it took a lot of time and effort for just the samples but what’s the point? Online cards don’t make any sense unless you want to waist a lot of ink printing them all out. Besides, we have GuildWiki for this.

May be this project is useless. Time will tell. Guildwiki is unarguably a great source of knowledge with dynamic links and all. But the GW cards are assuredly not trying to compete with wiki content. They serve two purposes:

- An easily maintainable and complementary source of information for minor fan sites (typically a guild or a personal site) or even for major fan sites who don't want to reinvent the wheel. Many fan sites out there want to host their own skill list, and most of the time, these skill lists are outdated and very hard to maintain.

The first strength of GW cards is that their users can update their entire skill list by uploading a new release package on their website. That's a big improvement over most content management systems with which you must update each skill description manually. GW cards are simply the most user-friendly installable skill list for GW fan sites who can't afford the time or the energy to keep their database up-to-date. GW cards allow them to rely on a trustworthy skill list, and to spend their time on something more exciting updating their database with each game update.

- An eye candy that can be used to highlight specific skills (new features, contests, articles, discussions...). Yes you could probably do that with a link to guildwiki, but you would lose the sexiness of GW cards.




Ideally, Guildwiki and GW cards would live in symbiosis. Guildwiki would provide such a usable database based on their dedicated contributors, and in return we would dynamically create the graphical material when eye catching pictures and installable kits are needed. Creating a new card release can be done in less than 15 min once the DB is updated, so we could take much benefit from such a synergy.

Unfortunately the wiki format involves a lot of manual editing and many heterogeneous pages. It's not user-friendly and creating an installable skill list from guildwiki would be hard and complex. That's why both projects will probably remain separated and complementary for the time being, even though all people involved in the Sealed Deck project are heavy users (and sometimes minor contributors) of GuildWiki.

Originally Posted by NinjaKai

I'd love it if you could make a program for PDAs with the images of the original skill cards. Just a suggestion.

That's an interesting idea. GW cards are just pictures, so I guess there are some interesting software out there to display them on a PDA (if you can spare 50 MB of pictures, that is). Now if you mean an integrated software to browse them in a user-friendly way, I fear that's beyond the scope of the current project. However if someone has PDA programming skills and want to use this graphical material to develop a (free) GWfreaks-like software, that would be a great addition to this project.

Originally Posted by Zexion

One minor bug: The icon for Stonesoul Strike is used for Shield Guardian (and NOT vice versa, Stonesoul uses the correct icon).
Otherwise, nice. And I have the same question as snowman.

There's indeed a duplicate icon in the official fan kit. The next card release will probably use a correct screenshot instead the wrong official icon.

Originally Posted by Snowman

How can you be sure that players wont cheat and take skills they dont have via the 'sealed deck' tourny :S Easily done at a LAN party I suppose, with a referee.. but how can it be done online?

Yes it is a potential problem, and players will have to find a way to control what was given by the sealed deck generator, and what it used by each player. For casual tournaments, honor rules can be enough since the idea is to have fun.

Originally Posted by LightningHell

Which is why the ratio of cards to skills are a lot higher. And why I like the draft idea more.

I think Makkert gave a very good answer. I'm a sucker for MtG draft tournaments, but here are a few reasons why we won't work on that in the near future:

- Draft is great for experienced players, but it's one of the worst formats you can offer to newbies and to average players. The base idea with the Sealed Deck project is to offer alternatives for wannabe PvP-ers for whom the large panel of skills is intimidating. And draft isn't a good candidate for this.

- Technically, a robust and automated draft software would be a little long and complex to develop. Moreover, the current sealed deck generator is good enough for CCG veterans. Just use the generator export (base deck) and pass it along through PMs/emails like you would with physical cards.

- I have no idea how a team-based draft would work in practice even if we had enough players in the same room and even if we had physical cards to use for a draft tourney (read: no problem with online software). How does team draft work in 4v4 or 8v8? Common pool? Player by player draft? I think we need a lot of testing and feedback before we can work on an online software to support GW draft tournaments.

[Pyrthas]

Team-based would be pretty easily solved with a rochester draft. I think that I'd actually really, really enjoy a GW rochester draft. 8v8 would take forever, but 4v4 could be a lot of fun, imo.

Of course, you're right that it would be for experienced players. You'd have to be comfortable playing a wide variety of classes (because who knows what the people feeding you will be drafting), you'd have to be familiar with at least most of the skills in the game, and you'd have to have a good understanding of what goes into a good build (both individual characters and the team as a whole). I don't mean, by the way, to say that I'd meet all of these conditions. They're just things that would be very helpful.

I'm thinking here that people would be drafting their own bars, but I suppose you could also have teams drafting for a common pool. That might be interesting, too.

[LightningHell]

Originally Posted by FrogDevourer

- Draft is great for experienced players, but it's one of the worst formats you can offer to newbies and to average players. The base idea with the Sealed Deck project is to offer alternatives for wannabe PvP-ers for whom the large panel of skills is intimidating. And draft isn't a good candidate for this.

Ah.

Originally Posted by FrogDevourer

- Technically, a robust and automated draft software would be a little long and complex to develop. Moreover, the current sealed deck generator is good enough for CCG veterans. Just use the generator export (base deck) and pass it along through PMs/emails like you would with physical cards.

Actually, I was going to ask you if you had asked Nimion for his code...chances are he won't give it to you, though. (I'm a complete, utter newbie at programming. My friends' are a lot better though.)

- I have no idea how a team-based draft would work in practice even if we had enough players in the same room and even if we had physical cards to use for a draft tourney (read: no problem with online software). How does team draft work in 4v4 or 8v8? Common pool? Player by player draft? I think we need a lot of testing and feedback before we can work on an online software to support GW draft tournaments.

We could:

Draft within a team. Like, with a 4-person group it would be very easy to identify who wants to be what. Well, fine, not that easy, but easy enough for me. I'm sure this won't work, though, and it'll crumble in 8-P teams.

For sealed, we could just give individual packs, and let discussion in the team itself. I'm not sure how that would work out (i.e. would it be viable).

[FrogDevourer]

PROJECT UPDATE

2006/06/18: Random Sealed Deck Updated (Link & Mirror):
- New feature added (campaign filters)
- New feature added (skills are now sorted by attribute)

2006/06/17: Project Part C is now official. An online illustration of you what you can do with minicards and tooltips can be found here. The full distribution package (cards, minicards, icons, tooltip source) can be found on filefront.com: here

[FrogDevourer]

2006/06/20: Random Sealed Deck Updated (Link & Mirror):
- New feature : dynamic link to guild wiki & gwfreaks (when more information, or related content is needed)
- New feature : fuzzy search in skill names (ex: melan* -shot)
- New feature : optional control of random seed (can be used to reproduce a random selection)
- New display format : when the icon is clicked a text tooltip appears with more controls (show minicard, show full card, external link to guild wiki, external link to gwfreaks, external link to SoF Database)
- New display format : icons without name now have a tiny text tooltip with the skill name
- Two new repositories (courtesy of Clint O and Zero Moonshadow )

[FrogDevourer]

2006/07/16: New official release. The distribution package (GW cards, minicards, skill icons, and the sofBBcode) can be found on filefront.com: click here.
- Skills updated as per the latest GW update (skill balance 2006/07/13)
- 40 New models based on screenshots submissions from GW fans (*)
- Minor bug fixes on script descriptions

* credits: Inferno Jack, Cathy, Jenosavel, Cloud, Arya Nibelrund, Witchblade, Miss Temptress, Nightsorrow, Mancha, Osiris, Tumi, Nimerra, Sol, FrogDevourer

[Arya Nibelrund]

Thanks Frog for giving my toons their moment of celebrity
Stella:



And Stella PvP:



Can't wait to give my ranger 15k Canthan armor :love:

[gangguard]

These looks amazing, do u know where i can post my Character image so it goes on a skill card :'( i'd be great if i get to.