Kongai Released!
What is this virtual card game that I've been working on forever? Now you can find out for yourself here. It's deceptively simple in that you only make about two clicks per turn: first choose your fighting range, then choose amongst attack / inercept / rest / switch characters. And yet I think you'll find it tests the interesting skills of yomi (reading the mind of the opponent) and valuation (judging the relative value of moves in a game).
I take full responsibility for how good or bad the game balance is. ;) Oh, and I already know you think that Tafari is too good and that the random number generator is broken. Neither is true and everyone says both of those things when they start.
You can discuss the game on my forums, if you like.
Good luck!
--Sirlin
July 10th, 2008 at 7:14 pm
Hey, maybe I can actually try it out now. :P
July 10th, 2008 at 8:40 pm
Kongregate is being pretty laggy. :(
July 10th, 2008 at 9:42 pm
yeah, it disconnected me twice i n 7 games :/
July 10th, 2008 at 9:42 pm
Yeah, laggy.
I’ve gotten the game stuck couple of times in practice mode. Just now it happened when I chose Switch, then misclicked the switch button on the other character so it turned around instead, and right then the “waiting for server” popup thing appeared - and the switch button on my other character disappeared! When the popup went away, all skills are disabled and I cannot continue the fight.
The other time, which happened very early in my first fight, was something similar too. Lag, popup, moves disabled. I can go to Options and start a new one. :/
July 11th, 2008 at 12:11 am
Tafari is a miserable character and nowhere as near as good as you think he is. But the RNG is broken!
July 11th, 2008 at 12:13 am
The lag has passed and I dared to play my first match against a human. Fun!
It was my Amaya, Andromeda and Higashi versus extreme-melee of Helene, quarterback guy (Cain?) and life draining melee vampire. I got dominated early on and Amaya had a lot of trouble landing his -hit curse, as well as setting the fighting range for the others. I revealed Andromeda fairly late into the match and she turned the tide with some careful play, along with some unlucky miss on my opponent’s part. Only character alive at the end was Andromeda with high health.
I had played all my computer practice games on a guest account. It was pretty tough to have no items at all against level 2 player who had items for everybody. (I assume because beta accounts/decks haven’t been wiped.) I think starting characters should come with an item each - if they do, I’ve somehow missed that in deck building. To get items there’s only 3% chance per match or you have to play other Kongregate games for achievement. :/
July 11th, 2008 at 12:59 am
Congrats Sirlin!
July 11th, 2008 at 1:32 am
Three percent? Seriously Sirlin? Three percent? And I don’t even get to pick the card?
Wow sirlin. Blizzard themselves could not have thought of a more tedious grinding scheme.
July 11th, 2008 at 1:38 am
The 3% was Kongregate’s decision, not Sirlin’s. Be glad it was buffed; it was 2% chance for most of the beta.
July 11th, 2008 at 1:53 am
sorry for double(triple) post, thought first one didnt go through.
July 11th, 2008 at 2:00 am
what’s a good way to get started in this game? i’ve heard that you have to pick your cards before you have any clue.
i’m not asking for a list of cards i should pick, i just mean is there a good way to get a taste of the game before choosing myself? read cardlists, observe games, play “random deck” games before picking?
or should i just jump in and pick something? what does it take to get, say, another 3 character cards if i hate all of the first batch i choose?
July 11th, 2008 at 2:27 am
Well, now that the lags gone, I’m immensely enjoying the game. Maybe it’s just that my opponents aren’t quite up to par, but I haven’t lost yet, or perhaps I’m ‘in the zone’. Anyway, great job you’ve done Sirlin.
July 11th, 2008 at 3:02 am
critical hits, barf
July 11th, 2008 at 3:39 am
Well I did some math/data collection, and 3 card matches take me about 5-20 minutes to complete. At an average of 10 minutes per match, and 33.3 matches per card, it would take an average of five and a half hours to gain one card.
If you never lose.
Plus as I understand it the card you get is random, and cannot be traded for any other cards.
How was this not a problem during beta?
July 11th, 2008 at 5:04 am
Doesn’t… the game itself make me visit kongregate’s site?
It’s nice to know there will be more challenges, but it still wrecks of WoW style aristocracy where most players are kept out of high level play.
July 11th, 2008 at 5:40 am
If it’s this important to you, hit up Sirlin’s forum… there has been serious talk about creating additional ways for players to obtain cards. I don’t know how much of it is actually being considered by kongregate staff, or how long any of the ideas might take to implement… but there are definitely people in power that share your concerns (such as Sirlin, himself).
July 11th, 2008 at 6:01 am
The most annoying is how I can’t challenge specific people. If I want to play a game with my friend then I have to host a game and hope he is able to join.
July 11th, 2008 at 8:19 am
How you earn cards is not my department. If you don’t like it, complaining to me is not going to help. The design and balance of the game itself is my department. Regarding earning cards, you’ll have to tell Kongregate how you feel. They are increasing the number of challenges to 2 per week though (so you can earn two cards per week) and possibly allowing you to buy cards too (without removing any of the free ways to buy cards, so it’s purely an exra option). Again, not my department.
July 11th, 2008 at 1:08 pm
I’ve been playing with the Random (All Cards) option, it is a fun way to become acquainted with the various cards without having to actually earn them.
July 11th, 2008 at 1:35 pm
why not 100% hit rates? Missing key abilities is pretty annoying when it’s purely chance based.
July 11th, 2008 at 2:41 pm
This may sound stupid but is there a way to log in or out?
July 11th, 2008 at 3:08 pm
Sirlin, I hate you and your stupid, stupid game. I had my dinner all ready to eat tonight, and remembered this post during the few minutes I had while the food cooled to an edible temperature. Three hours later I discovered the entire dinner was spoiled, and it makes me shudder to think how much more lost time awaits me and others in the future. orz
July 11th, 2008 at 4:42 pm
Fun stuff.
Heh heh, pilebunker (slayer rocks! maybe too much in AC).
Tafari really isn’t very good at all.
*insert another card unlocking complaint here that you have no control over*
July 11th, 2008 at 5:28 pm
I’d disagree… I’d say that Tafari is extremely powerful for finishing people off, and is also a highly effective counter to melee users. He isn’t *too* powerful, of course, because his only consistent damage dealer is kind of weak, particularly against anybody with dark resist. It is useful for counteracting healing items, however, and it’s got a low energy req. He’s not overpowered–I don’t understand how anybody could think that–but he certainly has his place.
I’m really enjoying it; every time I accurately read an opponent’s move, I feel good. Every time I analyze a situation and find the sure-fire way to win it, I feel good. Each time I beat somebody who has items on all their characters… I feel really good.
As for missing… origami crane. Tadaahhh… not that I have any items, of course, but I’m looking through the blog to figure out which items I might want to use with which characters.
July 11th, 2008 at 7:23 pm
I’m sort of curious as to why DoT debuffs were allowed to be stacked - While I’ve only played against the computer practice rounds so far, getting someone posion darted 3 times means 3 poison effects go off every turn. A single DoT debuff doesn’t hurt that much either, so it must have been a deliberate decison to encourage DoT stacking, as opposed to, say, the DoT debuff timer resetting when the same debuff is reapplied, and for the DoTs to do more damage.
Another thing that bothers me is that The Shaman (Juju, was that his name?) Touch of Death’s skill seems slightly too good - switching the Shaman in while the enemy is at close range seems like a pretty effective way of setting up the Touch, and it doesn’t seem like there are that many ways to remove debuffs.
Again, I haven’t played against real people online yet, so I probably don’t really know what I’m talking about, but it’d be interesting to hear the rationale for the design decisons you made. Perhaps another article detailing the design decisions taken in the development of Kongai is in the works already?
July 11th, 2008 at 8:42 pm
yeah, wtf sirlin, i am all groggy at work today from staying up way too late!
July 11th, 2008 at 9:39 pm
Lol Pilebunker is a good name indeed.
But what made me really laugh is Yoshiro’s Rising Dragon attack.
July 11th, 2008 at 9:40 pm
I’m addicted, played 20 matches last night. Great game…
…except for the miss rates. Why make such a great mentally tactical, open information game, then put 5-10% miss chances on skills? I get upset when it happens to me, and guilty when I win because it happened to an enemy. I’m very curious why this is in the game, and what design aspect it is intended to address.
July 11th, 2008 at 10:02 pm
So, I just played one more match, and lost because of a miss, then an enemy crit (there were no other crits or misses in the round.) I outplayed the guy, but I still lost because the “balance” of the game includes random failure.
Random failure is not fun. I beseech you Sirlin, do away with it. I was expecting Kongai to be a 100% mental game, and random chance introduces un-enjoyable elements into the mix. Imagine if 1 our of 10 Hadukens failed to do damage or knock back you opponent in SF2? Granted, there would be different balancing going on, but balance can be maintained without resorting to such frustrating mechanics.
PS: Yes, I’m aware none of this will change, and that this is only my personal opinion, and that some people like randomness in tactical games. I don’t :/
July 11th, 2008 at 10:03 pm
10% miss seem light, but rely on it 5 times in a row and you’ll miss at least once. 100%, high speed, damage moves exist : just play character who use them. 100% certainty is avialabnle … at a price.
July 11th, 2008 at 10:22 pm
@Sirlin: I see, I was under the impression you were the architect of the entire game. I guess you probably share our concerns then.
@Miss chance people: The problem with the (near) universal miss chance is that it increases frustration and randomness without increasing skill. Because of the low chance of missing with normal attacks, there is rarely a way to factor their accuracy into your strategy. The difference between my attacks all being 95% and my attacks all being 100% means nothing to most strategies. However, when the misses inevitably happen, they often swing the course of the entire game. I would love to hear what these small chances do. To me, it just feels like being cheated.
July 11th, 2008 at 10:28 pm
IMO Energy costs and the ability to switch out should be enough to balance powerful moves already.
If you know that your opponent will use Pilebunker, you can switch out and he wastes 50 energy.
July 11th, 2008 at 11:07 pm
Sirlin,
Great balance! I’ve been looking forward to playing this game since I joined Kongregate. Its like dueling texas hold’em with cards. I love it!
July 12th, 2008 at 1:02 am
Yeah, I hate you now, Mr. Sirlin. You’ve successfully robbed me of all my Guilty Gear practice time, and now I’m gonna lose this weekend’s local tournament, and it’s all your fault. :D :P
~Z
July 12th, 2008 at 1:37 am
The advantage of miss/crit rates, the game would just come down to pure math… you would just count how many attacks until your enemy dies, and in many situations the game would essentially be over long before the final round, especially when both players only have one character left.
The point of the game is properly evaluating both your own and your opponent’s possible moves, which becomes much more difficult when varying miss rates, and proc rates are included, and properly using switching and intercepting to avoid the maximum amount of damage possible, while simultaneously dealing the maximum amount of damage possible.
If you have a match that actually comes down to the final round, it probably means you and your opponent weren’t displaying any noticeable difference in skill level, so the match might as well have been a draw. It happens that drawing isn’t possible, but it’s purposely arbitrary who wins at that point… if you don’t want a match to come down to the final round, then learn to play better so you don’t get put in that situation.
July 12th, 2008 at 2:22 am
I’ve been a kongregate user for a while, and I’ve been having fun collecting cards and badges for a while before the game was released. Personally, I think its a cool way to earn the cards, and the whole metagame aspect of kongai, along with the badges/achievements adds to the overall experience.With only 46 cards total, its not going to take long to get a good amount at 2 challenges per week.
but I’m definitely biased since I already had a small stack of cards when it was released
July 12th, 2008 at 2:29 am
Actually, Claytus, a draw is possible, but the conditions are fairly specific. Such a case actually occurred during a match I was in, where I finished off my opponent’s last warrior with my attack, but then took enough continual damage to KO my own.
July 12th, 2008 at 2:46 am
Well, yeah, double KO is possible. I meant no draw as opposition to something like chess. Where two players of truly equal skill will just get into a deadlock long before checkmate is possible by either player.
July 12th, 2008 at 2:48 am
I had a draw, without DOTs. If you and your opponent both do moves with the same speed, they happen simultaneously.
July 12th, 2008 at 2:53 am
Oops, spoke too soon, you meant THAT kind of draw.
Closest I came to that was my Helene (9hp) vs his Helene (full HP), where I had two players on the bench and he had one.
Fighting was obviously not in my interest, and every turn that went by was in my favor as I healed two benched players to his one.
So I did an awful lot of get far –> rest or intercept. Thing about helene is she needs to get enough energy to get close, and still have enough to pay for her expensive attacks, plus I had that foot totem, so I was able to keep my distance for a long time with a good number of intercepts to scare him out of swapping to a ranged fighter while my bench healed.
After many turns like this, I looked down at the range-changing options, and IT WAS FREE TO GET CLOSE!!!
The game must have decided we were in some kind of stalemate, and that it should offer my opponent a little freebie to shake things up.
July 12th, 2008 at 2:56 am
—-
Yeah, I hate you now, Mr. Sirlin. You’ve successfully robbed me of all my Guilty Gear practice time, and now I’m gonna lose this weekend’s local tournament, and it’s all your fault. :D :P
—-
Conspiracy!
—-
draws and blah blah
—-
It might also happen when both you and your opponents have each only one warrior left and both attack at the same time (aka moves have the same speed). It happened to me, if my memory is not being manipulated.
Also, winning a game with only one character left with mask of death’s 1 hp is pretty epic.
July 12th, 2008 at 2:56 am
I totally agree with you Claytus and I also feel that the randomness has its place in the game.
However, it really sucks to lose momentum just cause you miss on a 95% acc move, just to miss again 2 rounds later… I know it’s an extreme example but it did happen to me.
Randomness is good when it can affect someone’s decision, but you don’t need it when it doesn’t.
A player will think twice before using a move if the proc rate is set at 50%… he knows that he is gambling.
On the other hand, a 5% miss rate won’t discourage a player from using the attack since the gamble is so much in his favor. If he fails, then the player will only feel that he has been screwed.
July 12th, 2008 at 3:19 am
I see what you’re seeing, I’m just hard pressed to believe it matters that much. I was in a match last night where me and my opponent had TomeBrosias in our deck. He probably used spiked boots about 10 times, got 0 procs. I used spiked boots twice the whole match, got a stun and a tome proc both times. Of course, on the second proc, he complained loudly in chat about how stupid lucky I was getting.
And then, he proceeded to completely wreck me… like, the match wasn’t even close, he basically had two full life characters left when I went down. So, it’s gonna be pretty hard to convince me that luck really makes that much of a difference.
I’m also pretty convinced, that it’s always, always, always better to switch to avoid damage, then to purposely trade attacks that aren’t 100%acc/0%crit (with a few caveats to that rule based on weird character matchups, but still…). If you’re stuck relying on the math of trading damage to win, then it seems likely that your deck doesn’t contain characters with varied enough abilities.
ricefrog: The 0 energy movement was put in place to break a few weird stalemates in the game… it’s possible for both players to only have 1 character left, while a far range. And be in a situation where all the close attacks cost more than 50 energy, so whoever chooses to go close basically automatically loses the next turn because they’re forced to rest.
July 12th, 2008 at 4:36 am
If the random factors don’t really affect who wins and mostly serve to frustrate people why have them?
July 12th, 2008 at 5:14 am
Because they allow a larger design space to create more game states and can force players to strategize about things that would otherwise be impossible to.
July 12th, 2008 at 5:22 am
“The advantage of miss/crit rates, the game would just come down to pure math… “
Adding an element of random chance does nothing to change that, it’s still pure math, the only difference is that you have to multiply by a decimal.
And I agree that extremely lopsided percentages are the worst kinds, as they will always be viewed as either an unearned gift or a screwjob when the low percentage outcome occurs.
July 12th, 2008 at 9:04 am
It’s less about the game actually being any different and more about player perspective. You need to really nail the switches and intercepts, because just having a better character matchup, or more health remaining, or other advantages can be cancelled out by a random miss. There’s no point at which a player can just sit back, and say “I’ve got this in the bag”.
July 12th, 2008 at 9:54 am
I really have to agree with the 95% hit rate stuff… I mean, I’m cool with debuffs that decrease accuracy, and I’m fine with moves with serious hit rate risks, like Popo’s Slingshot. My main irritation comes from me having a victory secured against an opponent, my Tafari and Yoshiro versus his last two characters, a Zina and another Yoshiro. I fired a poison dart with Tafari which would have killed the Zina, but it missed, letting him Tiger Frenzy my Yoshiro while he was on the bench. This put me too far behind in math to win, especially considering that his Yoshiro, once he came in, had guaranteed hits against me. Poison dart was the only smart move I had in that situation, and it bailed on me.
If there’s a concrete risk factor involved with the hit rate, no problem. If you’re debuffing the opponent to introduce that risk factor, then no problem. If my smart moves can still screw me over by the winds of fortune, then I have a problem.
July 12th, 2008 at 11:47 am
[…] All the cards I earned by playing Kongregate’s Card Challege games these past months will finally be put to use! David Sirlin announced in his website that Kongai, one of the games he’s been designing, is already released to the public! […]
July 12th, 2008 at 4:26 pm
Yeah, the RNG is pretty darn annoying. I’m also surprised at how slippery slope the game is. If you get down a character it is extremely crippling in 3-card. Combined with silly things like 90% hit rates for really no reason, you can lose the game early in math terms and never be able to come back without outplaying the opponent. Today I dodged one physical attack today out of like 4 using popo + elusive feather (against onimaru in close), didn’t proc with poison dart or herbs, and got a whiffed slingshot all in one match. If I’d rolled right on the RNG (all 50/50 trades) even once more it would have won me the game. Sure Popo is kinda a gambly character but you don’t play him thinking you’re going to roll bad 7 times in a row.
July 12th, 2008 at 6:20 pm
I think people need a sobering swim in the world of statistics before they’ll understand the implications. Really get immersed. You shouldn’t ever expect to lie simply near the probabilities. Expect to notice and remember missing 95% attacks twice, three times in a row, especially since you wont remember hitting the last 30 pile bunkers in a row across 20 games without a miss.
When 1024 people flip a coin 10 times, odds are one of them will get 10 heads. What would be much stranger is if they all got 50/50.
Worry less about individual games, and more about your consistancy in winning and upping your skill rank over 100, 200, 500 games.
July 12th, 2008 at 9:57 pm
All I see is the standard “It’s part of the game, I can win with it, you should be able to if you are not a scrub” argument. I don’t think anyone railing against random failures would argue that it’s designed in a balanced way.
The problem with it is that it isn’t any fun. If there were a few jackpot characters like Popo, that’s fine. But pretty much every character has random failure chance built in. Frankly, it’s not fun to fail on what is basically a bread and butter move, and it’s not gratifying to win because that happened to my foe.
July 13th, 2008 at 12:01 pm
I can’t find it right now, but IIRC in the thread “a game for pollo”, one of the things he lists for his ideal game was not losing to randomness or somesuch. I do feel Kongai is a bit too random….
I’m still pretty impressed with it otherwise, though.
July 13th, 2008 at 1:19 pm
I don’t even know where to begin with all this, you guys are totally focused on the wrong things.
The real intended format is 3-card best 2-out-of-3 so that reduces the randomness somewhat. Even now, the best players are able to win with high percentages, so it demonstrates the lack of an actual problem. Next, the design space for the game is very small due to the conscious decision to keep it two only 2 clicks per turn. With many, many more nuances, clicks, and chances for tricky timing on abilities, randomness would not be needed. But with a game this simple, it is needed to avoid it from being solveable too easily. Furthermore, it reduces the emphasis on memorization of sequences you need to know ahead of time to even play effectively. It creates situations you wouldn’t otherwise be in when misses happen, and they happen the same on each side so it evens out over the long run.
Meanwhile removing all randomness would create many major problems. Now it’s one less variable to tune with, and two attacks that have equal hit rates (of 100%?) and equal proc rates (of 100%) now have to have effects on hit that are lot closer to even with each other. More homogeneous moves, more memorization, more solveability, less testing of calculated risks. Not exactly a great trade.
Finally, the game is far less random than Pokemon or Poker (a game that Pollo plays professionally, fyi).
To put this into perspective an *actual* issue is whether intercepts should prevent the victim from gaining their usual 20 energy that turn. As it stands now, it’s entirely possible that you intercept correctly but end up *worse* after the exchange because the enemy gained enough energy to do Yoshiro’s Chi Blast or Ubuntu’s Spirit Assist at the correct range. It feels a bit dirty when this comes up and this kind of change would have real effect on the game in general. But I see no discussion of issues like that in here, only complaints about random numbers.
If you want random numbers removed, you’re going to have to explain how that is even possible without a whole lot of bad side effects that are worse than the original problem. You’ll also have to explain why there is a problem at all in the first place, because the best players really can win quite a bit, and more than in other card games even.
July 13th, 2008 at 1:45 pm
Also fyi, Kongai was just updated a couple minutes ago. Now a 30-second timer per turn instead of 60-second. New feature to challenge your friends directly (click Browse Games, then Host to get to it). Drop rate on getting new cards by playing Kongai has been increased, especially for those with few cards in their collection (no I don’t know the exact numbers on that). Finally, you don’t have to pick your starter cards before you can play the game anymore. You might want to mess around by using the random-deck feature first, then you’ll have a better idea which 3 cards you’d like to pick for real to start with.
Enjoy!
July 13th, 2008 at 3:02 pm
Whatever the “intended” game mode was, what we get are 3 or 5 card matches. Balanced or not, the random miss mode isn’t fun.
July 13th, 2008 at 5:00 pm
Hey guys,
Did you know that most good players plan for two 90% misses or one 95% miss in a game? I mean, if you are doing on average 10 90% moves, you’ll miss one.
If your gameplan depends on landing every 90% and 95% move, well, your gameplan sucks.
Also, there is not much slippery slope in 3 vs 2 characters.
I know the problem!
Your problem is that you haven’t played it at a competitive level. Basically you are just playing with losers and owning people by using Touch of Doom on their whole team or something. If you played against decent opposition, you’d see what you are wrong about
July 13th, 2008 at 5:03 pm
Also, 90% and 95% hit rate moves actually make the game more fun for me. My win rate would go up a lot if every major move was 100% hit, but it would be less challenging.
A guy with a huge ego once said “If there was no luck in poker, I’d win every tournament!”
So like, wat.
July 13th, 2008 at 6:41 pm
I actually hella like the energy gain when intercepted. It means that, in some circumstances, switching is safe even if it’s obvious. I don’t think landing an intercept should always put you in a perfect scenario, just like landing a pilebunker or a chi blast doesn’t always get you closer to winning (although most of the time it does).
July 13th, 2008 at 7:10 pm
I agree removing all randomness would be a bad idea. It just seems when you can get 4 stuns in a row or somesuch, it feels like you won not because you outsmarted your opponent but because the game decided to let you.
I know this fits the definition of true randomness, but it makes for some annoying situations. 2 out of 3 would solve a lot of that, but as the game is right now that just doesn’t happen ever. Even that wouldn’t solve the all-or-nothing situations that happen sometimes, particularly with that kid with the slingshot who’s name I forget right now…
Don’t take this the wrong way, I think it’s a great game, and as a testament to that I’ve been playing for about 6 hours straight. It’s an awesome feeling when you land an intercept and crush your opponent. The mix of outsmarting and outguessing your opponent is great. And it does a lot of other things right too. I just feel like it’s got a few minor details that stop it from being perfect is all.
July 13th, 2008 at 8:39 pm
And as far as the intercept thing: There’s really no situation in which switching and getting intercepted puts you in a better position than if you rested and your opponent missed the intercept, is there?
July 13th, 2008 at 11:16 pm
While the miss percentages also annoy the hell out of me (though I’ll leave Sirlin the ‘design space’ he requires), there is one area where I think slightly more randomness could make the game more interesting: Move speed.
Right now, it’s quite possible to know for certain your move will hit before your opponent’s, so picking your even faster move to make sure offers no advantage. A variance of +/-1 to speed on both moves would mean, for example, that Helene’s Shield Bash is no longer a 100% proposition when the enemy only has slow moves, but it could occasionally counter a fast move from the martial arts clan. And a speed difference doesn’t mean you completely waste your attack, it just changes the timing of it. Call it 50% chance Speed, 25% Speed+1 and 25% Speed-1.
All said, I love the game, and before this morning (I apparently didn’t sleep enough) I maintained an average that supported the claim that skill is highly relevant.
July 14th, 2008 at 12:19 am
Archon: interesting idea. Fyi, ChadMiller has made good points about increasing the hit rate on some long range moves that cost over 50 energy because there are so many ways to avoid them with range changing that perhaps 100% hit rate on those would be ok. Don’t know if that would change your mind about anything or not.
gxx: The kid with the slingshot is a conscious exception. That character is there for all the Makoto players in 3s. ;) Also, you are correct that rest would always be better than switch in the situation we described, but that doesn’t change that even a successful intercept is really terrible in those situations (when your opponent then can Chi Blast you or Spirit Assist you or whatever). Still up for debate whether that’s ok or not, but I’ll tell you that top players like garcia abuse the hell out of this so they can switch with very little risk all the time.
Thanks to those who said they actually liked the game. ;)
July 14th, 2008 at 1:33 am
Well I’m just a newbie to be sure, but it seems to me as long as there is more than one option for either player to take, then it just leads to more mind-reading games… i.e. if a switch-out for your opponent is safe to do even if intercepted then you should consider switching out yourself, or resting, or whatnot; and if the advantage you get from that isn’t enough to help you, you’re probably already pretty far behind. Maybe I’ll change my mind in a couple of weeks though. :)
OTOH, having an item that lets you drain energy on a successful intercept is maybe not a bad idea. (If one doesn’t exist already? I don’t remember seeing one so far…)
Regarding randomness, what do you think of a “randomness-balancer” type stat that would prevent extreme runs of good/bad luck? i.e. if and when you miss an attack, for the next few turns you have a greater chance than normal (beyond being purely statistical) of not missing again, and if you do actually miss again, your next bunch of attacks are guaranteed? Hopefully that’s clear… Perhaps something like this exists in the game already, but I’ve seen some fairly absurd strings of luck (mostly good luck) in the limited time I’ve played so far.
Thanks for the reply.
July 14th, 2008 at 1:52 am
It’s hard to make a good opinion on the intercepting thing. I mean, it’s definitely abusable occasionally, Sirlin is right. But, there are also many characters… like, maybe an ashi at long range, with extremely low energy, where not getting that energy when you attempt a switch seems like it might noticeably lower the character’s power level.
It also sounds like it would generally strengthen intercepts, which in turns weakens attacks, so maybe people will mind miss rates less, when attacks are less of the percentage of damage being dealt? But that’s not really a good reaon to make the change by itself.
July 14th, 2008 at 2:04 am
It’s saddening to me that I can’t choose what extra cards I get. If I see a character (or item) I find interesting being used by someone else, I have no way of trying to obtain that card. I know it’s not your decision but maybe you can put in a good word for being able to choose your cards sometimes.
As far as the randomness goes, I think it’s necessary, but the impact of a bad roll should be lessened a bit. Maybe when someone misses an attack, he or she doesn’t lose the energy from doing that attack? It’ll still hurt you badly to miss an attack, but at least you won’t be left potentially out of options next turn because of it. This would require some re-balancing of certain high miss attacks, but it’d be worth it I think.
July 14th, 2008 at 2:39 am
Well, the energy is based on WoW rogues, right… I believe in that game if you miss with an attack, you only take half the normal energy loss. Wonder if that would make a difference here.
July 14th, 2008 at 8:49 am
I never liked card games, but when kongai was released I played like 30 games in one day lol
I just love this game.
Good job Sirlin o/
July 14th, 2008 at 2:31 pm
Let’s look at Yoshiro for the example of intercepting:
If you intercept an opponent and he gains enough energy for a Chi Blast (you were in a safe position, because Yoshiro has only Chi Reflect at long range), you can still avoid the Chi Blast by switching out. If you successfuly switch, that’s 3 more safe turns for you in that particular situation. I think that’s enough of safe space for you and I personally prefer if the mind reading games shift more offen from “now I am a threat to you and you are likely to switch” to vice versa. It’s not like “Oh, he has a Chi Blast, now I have to die!” it’s only “OK, now 1 mind game in your favor and if I win, then 2-3 mind games in my favor.”.
July 14th, 2008 at 9:17 pm
First, I’d like to make a big distinction here, btw - we’ll see if people are with me on that: misses due to items (feather), abilities (hide), or switching should keep working exactly like they do right now. “Normal” misses? I’d say you don’t expend energy on a “normal” miss unless it’s a special feature of the move (like Popo’s 50% hit attack probably would get - the move is probably costed to miss half the time).
Preventing multiple misses is tricky, btw - in some situations, missing would create a future certainty that’s far more significant than the original miss was. The idea feels good, but I’ve written enough rules to know it doesn’t work out without adding clicks.
Sirlin: Are miss percentages cumulative or rolled separately? (i.e. is a 90% hit Vs. feather+hide 90%x75%x70%, or is it 90%x45%? or 35%) I assume the first or second (otherwise you could bring some moves to 0% hit) but I’m not sure.
Again, I don’t disagree that misses should be there- they just annoy the hell out of me. That’s very different. Like erratic flying enemies, say.
That said, I believe they make the game less accessible: it’s very hard for a new player to plan for a 5% event (which is actually rather likely), and makes them feel like they lost the game because of random chance, whereas the better players will plan and get over it anyway, making the new player feel like the bad luck only affects him. I would encourage as few <20% events as possible: most attacks would either hit all the time, or 80% or less - you have attacks that significantly miss, which you have to plan for, and attacks that just hit. There could still be this move that’s 95%, but it would be unusual. Energy costs on some moves could be adjusted slightly to reflect the change.
Finally, I’ll address the Intercept to Chi Blast thing: If you read your opponent’s mind, intercepting does damage, then you either switch out, avoiding the blast, or hit him for free as he tries to intercept you. You don’t end up worse because you intercepted, you end up worse because he recovered energy, which is what happens every turn.
Okay, one final question: Do all lasting effects (poison, buffs, etc.) keep working and counting turns while switched out?
July 14th, 2008 at 10:44 pm
Intercepting doesn´t really need a boost. It prevents from switching AND if it hits the opponent wasted a opportunity to rest. Also if the 20 energy is so bad - you don´t HAVE to intercept.
I wouldn´t mind energy “return” on moves that have a misschance due to being standart - the 95 - 90 range. Missing with these often means that even though you were “right” you lose the mind game anyway. But missing most of these isn´t gamedeciding even in 3ers.
100% hit is a special benefit just as lower scores are a bigger risk. When you miss here your enemy either applied missdebuffs or you consciously took a miss into consideration.
I mean, landing a Trueshot in the first place is hard enough, why does it have to miss? People consciously avoid it by getting Andromeda into situations where she can´t use it. Setting it up is a effort in itself. Missing that to the innate chance is worse than missing a open palm since it occurs less often and has very often not a “deciding” character.
Open Palms don´t carry as much weight to the game, if you miss these you reasses the situation and move on. Their misschance is also more “accurate” since they appear much more often.
Missing (not to a switch!) a Trueshot means that a highrisk tactic simply evaporated - so why try for that at all?
That makes me wonder, how are hitdebuffs calculated? Simply suptracted from the hit chance (so you could give certain moves 0% in rare cases) or are they applied as percentage of the percentage?
What about dodges like Popo´s, does that “add” a misschance on the enemy attack or is it seperate on a “hit”?
July 15th, 2008 at 12:05 am
what unentschieden said except I don’t think ‘energy return’ on missed moves is necessary.
I.e. Big moves like Trueshot, Power lash shouldn’t miss.
Regular moves like Open palm can miss.
July 15th, 2008 at 12:57 am
The fact that Andromeda can miss a Trueshot is actually pretty funny. ;)
On a more serious tone, why the 100% hit rate on Rising Dragon?
July 15th, 2008 at 3:43 am
I guess since it is a lot weaker. On the other hand it´s the very core of the Yoshiro Card. The damage is the closest thing to guarranteed you can get in this game. It´s very easy to set up, there is not much a Player can do to prevent taking RD damage.
Regaining energy on (most) misses isn´t really that important (hey that´s a item idea - %of energy back on misses). Most of the time missing is a factor you can work with, with “small” misses it´s just a desicion between switching or resting.
July 15th, 2008 at 3:55 am
Seriously Sirlin, you and kongregate have outdone yourselves, I understand why you have to unlock the cards, more options coming for the future is awesome. The 3 and 5 card matches are brilliant, a brilliant true test of Yomi. Seriously man, get a budget, make the deck 200+ cards, add a couple more frames to the action animations and sell this maddness on Live/PC/PSN, I would LOVE to pay for a brilliant piece of software such as that.
For the first time in 6 years my expectations were exceeded, bravo man, bravo.
I eagerly anticipate new cards, I now spend more time on Kongai then Street Fighter (HDR beta and GGPO). Sick man, sick.
July 15th, 2008 at 6:44 am
Wow AudioCG, high praise there. Thanks.
July 15th, 2008 at 8:19 am
I’m sorry but why would Makoto players enjoy playing Popo?
July 15th, 2008 at 9:48 am
Because they are both for gamblers.
July 15th, 2008 at 1:53 pm
I have been an avid pokemon player for years because I loved the idea of creating a team that you thought through, then using prediction skills to explore and defeat your opponent. I feel I can taste the distillation of everything I used to love in that game anew.
That is the thing I like most, how pure kongai is. Pokemon is a deep game on top of an RPG framework, guilty gear is a deep game on top of a flawed action game.
I play some deep games for a long time to look for those sweet spots; the times where a decision made or broke your match. I can stay at a game tournament or party for hours just to marvel at those moments.
In kongai, every turn feels like this. It’s an overwhelming experience for a person who is used to seeking out the intricacy of a game to be instead, beaten over the head with it.
The bad: There is simply very little incentive to intercept. Attempting to intercept against a rest causes the enemy to gain energy, against attacks you lose HP, and against another intercept nothing happens. The only payoff is for an action that can be replaced by resting or using an ability most of the time. Then, after resting against your intercept, they may be able to change ranges or use a powerful attack, making you the person who is now lacking options.
July 15th, 2008 at 7:55 pm
vesu on intercepts: Precisely. Isn’t this game great?
If intercept was an actual /good/ move, it would be too dangerous to attempt switching as a dodge, since attacking at least lets you do some damage as well. Now, there is very little incentive to do it, making a switch quite safe overall, and you can always attack after the switch and they can’t dodge twice. Except if the enemy outguesses you they score a pretty good 35 damage. It’s the terrible (on average) payoff that makes the move great.
July 15th, 2008 at 9:16 pm
I dunno, I think intercepting rocks.
There’s nothing like leading off with corny and playing get close -> intercept. If that guy tries to switch out of your pilebunker/hypnostare games, BLAMMO he’s half dead and sucked back into the fight.
Now he is sweating it, because he would love to get the hell out of there, but you’ve already shown your willingness to intercept. So he’s pretty scared, is it pilebunker or intercept? If he guesses wrong, he’s dead.
July 15th, 2008 at 9:23 pm
Sirlin: what does Kongai teach players? “Investing a lot of time in something is worth more than actual skill. If you invest more time than someone else, you ‘deserve’ rewards. People who invest less time ‘do not deserve’ rewards. ” These are your words describing how bad WoW is - and yet, here you are, working on a game that’s built on exactly the same premise. A game that requires endless hours of slaving away at Kongai and other Kongregate games just to gain more characters, buffing- and stat-boosting items. Substitute “leveling up” with “deck building” and it’s all WoW again.Where did your “winning is a meritocracy” attitude go? That only skill and knowledge matters?
Yes, I know that card distribution is beyond your control. But surely you knew well ahead of time how Kongregate wants to use this game: as a bait to lure in more people to spend more time at their site playing their games. You knew you are working on yet another “health and safety danger”, as you called WoW’s business model of rewarding time spent, at the expense of skills.
Sure, money is important, we all gotta make a living somehow. Principles are also important. For example, as a webdesigner I flat-out refuse to build certain kinds of sites, no matter how lucrative their contract may be.
The sad truth is, once you sold your principles, no money can buy them back. :/
July 15th, 2008 at 10:25 pm
I think all that intercepting needs is no energy regain for opponent on successful intercept
July 15th, 2008 at 10:53 pm
Why not make it so that characters who are intercepted gain back 10-15 energy instead of 20 on that turn?
July 15th, 2008 at 11:27 pm
Or intercepting didn´t do any damage (expect through innates/items) but triggered the switch cooldown?
July 16th, 2008 at 12:34 am
SiamJai Hater: Nice try there. There are no rares in Kongai. There are no cards that are intentionally powerful than any other cards either, it’s all designed to be at one power level. The balance has gotten better and better over time, closer to achieving this. So since day 1, the idea has been that you can be competitive with only a very few cards. By earning more cards, you are accessing more and more possible variety of gameplay, as opposed to more and more power.
Furthermore, it’s very intentional that you have so few cards in a deck. If you had 60 card decks, you’d have to win a whole lot of cards before you could change your deck around, but here even 1, 2, or 3 cards makes a new deck.
Your actual complaint is that you can’t win cards fast enough, and winning cards is not my department so you’re complaining in the wrong place. But even on this front, you have little to stand on. First, you get 3 cards for free right off the bat and you can win more from the weekly challenges. Now, these challenges happen 2 times per week rather than 1 time per week. Also, you can win cards from playing Kongai itself. I wanted this and it was indeed implemented. The drop rate started at 2%. Then it went to 3%. Now it uses a more complex formula that gives cards at a very high rate if you don’t have many cards (my friends tell me they get multiples in an hour, even when they are new). And finally, a extra option to just buy the cards will be added (all the free options will still be there).
And again, by design, you increase your variety of gameplay rather than your power level by earning cards. Of course you increase your power level slightly just because you find better combinations of cards, but to whole design and balancing effort is to make all cards a level playing field. You know who else in the card game field is doing that? No one, I think. So enough of your righteous indignation and insults.
July 16th, 2008 at 12:48 am
Siam, have you honestly found that starting with 3 bare characters and no items has caused you to lose and lose and lose to players with better cards, regardless of skill?
I haven’t. I started with nothing but my 3 freebies, never played random, and my quickmatch record was 55-22 last time I noticed. I’m not trying to win a prize for that record, but it does show that I didn’t have to grind out a giant collection before I could throw down. I faced players with items almost immediately, but I was able to win a lot of those matches.
Now, it IS frustrating when my Helene is mirror-matched by a Helene with the speed boost item (which I don’t own), or when I face some of the other powerful items I haven’t got access to.
But even in those worst-case scenarios, it is still within range to out-play those people and win. NOBODY has a guaranteed unthinking win against me just because they’ve done the grind and accumulated more cards.
Maybe they’ll slaughter me through the skill they have also acquired in that time, but that’s not a problem.
Given the game’s business model as an intial design constraint, I think Sirlin did a pretty good job of making new collections able to hang.
July 16th, 2008 at 1:01 am
I’m fine with intercepting being a move that you need high prediction skills to gain any return at all, what I am not fine with is when my opponent ends up with more options than me after a successful intercept. Intercepting yoshi and then being threatened by chi blast is just terrible.
At samjai: Lets continue with the analogy of you refusing to work for certain kinds of websites. Any mature, forward thinking human being knows morality cannot be set in stone. Ann frank’s family was hidden and protected by a lie, but isn’t lying wrong?
What if you had the chance to give people something wonderful by working for a website you deemed immoral? No, that would be selling out. You’re too good for that. You are too pure and just to consider getting your hands dirty. Oh we must praise samjai for he is morally perfect; even though he has done nothing for us.
July 16th, 2008 at 1:15 am
well, he’s done SOMETHING. he’s got some tutorials up on his website for using adobe fireworks, which is more than i can say for myself.
July 16th, 2008 at 4:46 am
To furthere debunk SiamJay: Don’t forget you can also go with a random deck, built from the entire pool of cards, at any time. Maybe this won’t be quite as powerful as a deck put together by an expert, sure, but it’s not *that* far off. Certainly a winnable fight if you’re good in the mindgames department. And there’s a good chance you’ll get some powerful items in there.
July 16th, 2008 at 1:37 pm
Sirlin: “righteous indignation and insults” are what you hurled at Blizzard when you called its WoW business model “health and safety danger”. At that time you blasted the game from the position of a Street Fighter developer, moralizing on how much better your game is because it teaches the right things, has all the characters available to everyone from the start, no items but only skills matter etc.
A little empathy: there could have been developers in the Blizzard WoW team who might have felt that your insults were unjustified, and that they tried to do the best they could, given the limitations their employers posed on the project. It’s ironic then, that you bring up these very same points when your own derogative words are raised here.
To people who say they can win even when outmatched: great, I did too! I found though that many times there was little skill involved in such wins, unless you call a lucky strike of switch-intercept (aka rock-paper-scissors) a “skill”. Honestly, doesn’t it suck when your opponent deals +10 extra damage and heals +10 just because he has the Magical Shield of Shielding… khm, I mean, the Necronomic Tome? An item that any rich kiddo will be able to buy soon, with daddy’s credit card? How would something like that fare in the Street Fighter community? They’d perhaps say something like this:
“playing a fair game is what it’s all about. It would never occur to us to play a game where one player gets to do 50% more damage because he has a level 60 Chun Li.” Again, Sirlin’s own words <a href=”http://www.gamasutra.com/features/20060222/sirlin_01.shtml”>from that article</a>.
Eh, I couldn’t care any less about this nonsense. I simply wondered how an esteemed developer could turn around like that, and now I got my answer.
July 16th, 2008 at 1:48 pm
unless you call a lucky strike of switch-intercept (aka rock-paper-scissors) a “skill”.
Well, yes. It’s called yomi. http://www.sirlin.net/archive/yomi-layer-3-knowing-mind-of-the-opponent/.
July 16th, 2008 at 2:22 pm
On the positive side, at least we can add “necronomic tome hax” to the lexicon
July 16th, 2008 at 3:45 pm
Thanks for linking to that interesting article.
July 16th, 2008 at 6:08 pm
SiamJai, one thing you’re not considering, imo, is that the whole “time > skill” and “health/safety danger” implied by Warcraft’s grind requirements that Sirlin preached against are IN NO WAY comparable to the Kongregate challenge per week card-earning system. The problem with WoW (and nearly every other MMO) is that in order to stay competitive, you have to *constantly* keep playing the game every day because putting in more time leads you to rewards, and if you don’t put in as much as everyone else you will be sliding backwards in relative strength in-game.
Kongregate’s one-card (now two-cards) a week is a method for encouraging traffic to their site - despise it if you wish, but it’s not even close to the same thing. For one, each challenge can generally be completed in about twenty minutes of play. Not very much to ask of anyone, wouldn’t you agree? Also, once you’ve earned the card, *further time does NOT get you any additional benefits* unlike in any MMO. All that’s being asked is a minimum level of participation in the site - someone who’s on Kongregate 24/7 will have no more cards than someone (like me) who logs in once every couple of days for half an hour.
July 16th, 2008 at 6:25 pm
I’d like to echo audioCG’s praise. You’ve really outdone yourself, Sirlin, creating one of the purest expressions of yomi I’ve ever seen. This is the game I knew you’d create when I first encountered your website some 7 years ago.
Kudos, man. Just wish it was on XBLA or something, so we didn’t have to play kongregate to play the game.
July 16th, 2008 at 8:49 pm
I see SiamJai didn’t restrict himself from posting his… imaginative… thinking to just the Jayisgames site.
July 16th, 2008 at 11:12 pm
I really like the game so far. I play Pokémon competitively (no money involved, though) and I think your goal to make a game based on Pokémon Netbattle has been successfully achieved.
The game pace is a bit sluggish, though. I’d eliminate all animations, they are unnecessary and aren’t exactly eye candy either, so they only contribute to delay the game. The interface is a bit unclear, also, since many useful information is spread out in the different tabs. But that’s really the only serious complaints I have, and overall the game looks really good. I don’t know if I’ll devote much time into it because I don’t intend to touch the rest of kongregate to get more cards, and playing with (mostly) the same cards over and over can get boring, but that’s something coming from a personal decision of mine (ie, not playing in kongregate).
Also, I’d like to praise, even if it isn’t your merit, the wonderful artwork of the game. All the designs are cool and even if stereotyped, they are of the “good” kind of stereotype, like Street Fighter designs are.
July 16th, 2008 at 11:25 pm
Is this SiamJai guy a joke or for real? The old PvP system in World of Warcraft did *literally* have health and safety concerns. It pushed people to play more than 12 hours a day, every day for months. I have rank 14 friends who sacrificed much of their life (and yes, health) to achieve that. That you would bring that up in relation to Kongai tells me this must be a joke.
Also, your own complaint seems to be how you earn cards in Kongai, which I don’t control. What I do control is that I made a design where with hardly any cards at all, you are at basically top power level. I think you aren’t getting that concept. You can use the random deck feature and be close to top power level the very first time you play the game. By the time you earn even a few cards you can be about as powerful as you can be without using random-deck anymore. It’s the most lenient system of any customizeable card game ever created in the world, that I know of. It’s actually quite a blow to the old-guard thinking of artificial rares so you’re really on the wrong side of all this. You’re missing an iconoclastic strike against the usual way of doing this stuff.
I also think you must be simply unaware that playing the game for like an hour or something would give you a full deck (equivalent of max level WoW character). So instead of a system that requires 14 hours a day for months to reach a good power level, you can do it in like, an hour–a figure unheard of in the card world. Would it be even more philosophically nice if you could do it instantly? Yes, and that is why (with my urging), Kongregate will offer an option in the future to just buy the cards. I’m guessing that for less than the price of an XBLA game that would let you instantly get a max power deck without spending even that one hour and without removing the ability to get the cards for free.
You’re just hating because the internet allows you to be an obnoxious hater. Comparing apples to oranges (Kongai to World of Warcraft!!!) is just making you look stupid in front of everyone here.
July 16th, 2008 at 11:27 pm
Time Mage: thanks. The art is from Udon, though I was pretty much the art director as well as designer / balancer of Kongai.
July 16th, 2008 at 11:56 pm
So who’s design was it to have all the womens’ boobs sticking out like that? ;)
July 17th, 2008 at 12:15 am
“The game pace is a bit sluggish, though. I’d eliminate all animations, they are unnecessary and aren’t exactly eye candy either, so they only contribute to delay the game.”
Time Mage: From what I’ve seen, the timer for the current turn starts ticking before the animations, not after them. So technically, there is no additional time being added to the game for simply that reason. Have you played since this weekend when the 30sec timer was implemented? It actually makes the game extremely fast paced, enough so that it’s likely their going to further increase the turn again soon, as people are complaining about not being able to make an appropriate move decision that quickly.
gxx: that’s pretty much standard udon, lol
July 17th, 2008 at 2:01 am
Sirlin Said:
“I also think you must be simply unaware that playing the game for like an hour or something would give you a full deck (equivalent of max level WoW character). So instead of a system that requires 14 hours a day for months to reach a good power level, you can do it in like, an hour–a figure unheard of in the card world. Would it be even more philosophically nice if you could do it instantly? Yes, and that is why (with my urging), Kongregate will offer an option in the future to just buy the cards. I’m guessing that for less than the price of an XBLA game that would let you instantly get a max power deck without spending even that one hour and without removing the ability to get the cards for free.”
I wonder if that’s really the case. Certain characters like Yoshi, CC, and Helene seem to be a cut above the field, while others like Juju and Tafari seem to be a cut worse. There seems to be an even larger range for equipment - the Jade Statue is generally considered pretty weak, while the Ninja Scroll is very popular.
July 17th, 2008 at 2:55 am
So basically you’re saying that Kongai and its system doesn’t have health and safety concerns? Who are you kidding, Sirlin? That game made me spend 9 freaking hours on it yesterday. God, did my head hurt. You, kind sir, are a genius.
Thank you for this game, much appreciated. Just something I needed over the summer vacation. I was about to study some matchup theory on srk wiki, then BAM, suddenly Kongai comes out. And there is even a big street fighter tournament I’m attending in one week. Crap.
July 17th, 2008 at 4:14 am
The drop rates are actually quite good compared to other online card games. Magic/LOTR Online require you to be good at the paper game or pay large amounts of money to get cards; Cardmaster Conflict gives you a terrible starting deck and requires you to grind your way up to rare cards.
Also: Kudos to Sirlin for solving the problem of large decks. (I tried to solve this myself, but only got halfway there.)
July 17th, 2008 at 5:13 am
NateTG, now you are debating the specifics of balance, rather than the general plan to make the tiers as compressed as possible. You mentioned Yoshiro, Helene, and Cornelius as very good. Well ok. What about Ashi? What about Rumiko? What about Ubuntu? Ambrosia? Those are all very strong. Ironically, Tafari and Juju are by far the most complained about as “overpowered” by new players. Tafari is and always has been fine. Juju is not bad either, though will be slightly better in the next patch. And fyi, Jade Statue is good on Amaya.
July 17th, 2008 at 7:02 am
Just out of curiosity, Sirlin, is there any chance you guys will implement drafting functionality? It seems like it would be a good fit.
July 17th, 2008 at 8:23 am
Absolutely magnificent. Needless to say, I’m addicted!
July 17th, 2008 at 9:51 am
Sirlin, I must admit that I initially had quite a few issues with the game when I looked at it “on paper”. But then I actually played it… and I’m very impressed!
The fact that I can pull *at least* a 50% win ratio with just my starter cards (and no items!) is a testament to how well balanced the game is. If I tried playing other CCGs with just one of their starter decks, that ratio would be close to 0% instead. Yes, it would be nice to have access to the entire card set from the get go, but it’s great that there are no *deliberately* bad cards and I’m not completely hopeless simply because I didn’t spend hundreds of dollars on the latest rares. Seriously, this is probably the most balanced CCG ever made! Of course, that’s probably because just about all the other CCG developers prefer to sacrifice balance out of greed.
In any case, thank you for making this game as it is.
~Z
July 17th, 2008 at 1:23 pm
Sirlin, it took me a little bit to get going, but now that I have the hang of it I think it’s really a lot of fun. Great game.
July 17th, 2008 at 1:47 pm
Avatar Z: makes you wish that I would make a game to directly compete with MTG, doesn’t it?
July 17th, 2008 at 3:31 pm
Dear Sirlin,
I been visiting your site for a while now (I used to play 3s in tournaments), and testing Kongai ever since 1.5. I really want to congratulate you for making a CCG that tries to capture how fighting games work, and yet is so accessible to a potentially large audience.
July 17th, 2008 at 3:33 pm
BTW here’s a glowing review of Kongai from the popular casual games site, jayisgames.
http://jayisgames.com/archives/2008/07/kongai.php
The reviewer seems to grasp that yomi is really important in this game.
July 17th, 2008 at 6:49 pm
My experience with this game is that intercepting gets a lot weaker against the best players, who both switch rarely and try to save it for situations like the “build of for Chi Blast” Sirlin was talking about.
I had a deck that, at one point, could beat all but like 3 people, and I figured out the reason why was because I was intercepting FAR more than what is optimal in the game theory sense, but since nearly everyone else switched too much I was able to destroy them.
As to the comments about winding up for a Chi Blast isn’t an autowin; it’s not, but that doesn’t make it not a problem. To say they “only” end up in an advantageous spot after you use the only counter to their move is still sorta dumb.
July 17th, 2008 at 7:01 pm
Oh, and ROFL at the guy going on about not having all the cards. WoW was a game that you had to pay a monthly fee AND THEN ALSO GRIND, and at the time Sirlin complained about it, wanting to pay for a game where you didn’t require this grind was considered somehow unwholesome by the entire MMO genre (although this is changing, in PvP at least).
Kongai, on the other hand, is a FREE GAME. If it wasn’t free, or if there were a pay version, I would also demand all the cards. As it stands…I recently created an alt and after THREE GAMES of Random (All) + challenges I had enough cards for a reasonable deck (Ashi/Remedy, Ubuntu/Chalice, Yoshiro/Scroll with a card to spare).
Siamjai, speaking as possibly the most vocal critic of the card unlock system during the beta, you’re completely in the wrong here.
http://www.sirlin.net/forums/showthread.php?t=447
July 17th, 2008 at 8:14 pm
Sirlin: If you are the art director, then kudos for you. As I said, I love the stereotyped designs. since the game doesn’t have any story at all, a design that tells everything about a character is important.
Claytus: Hm, I didn’t notice the timers starting running before the attacks finish, bu anyway, that doesn’t matter much, since you need to wait for the animations to end to know the results of the round. But now that I think of it, probably the slowness that I’m perceiving is because the game needs two steps, unlike Pokémon that only needs one step (either choose one of the 4 attacks, or switch) per round. I can finish a close Pokémon battle in less than 10 minutes, with 6 pokémon per team and many actions involved. But anyway, they are different games, and what I’m saying will probably only apply to those like me who played Pokémon (like seeing the Alpha games as “floaty” after playing ST, for example).
And BTW, I’m having a hard time remembering you can’t switch twice in a row: A lot of my strategies in Pokémon consist in two or even three switches in a row, and I’ve lost a match or two in Kongai for trying to apply that there :P I definitely have to play more Kongai, now I’m pretty mediocre.
July 17th, 2008 at 10:42 pm
Sirlin,
I’m a big fan of the actual implementation of Kongai. When I first heard about Kongregate I was immediately hooked when I learned I could earn cards from playing new games. Great idea!
As for game play balance and game play, here are my observations:
- Kudos for making the game easy to pick up and play. Your IPM work here is astounding. I can really tell while engaging an opponent whether they are a novice player or an experienced player.
- There is a definate difference in play style between someone who uses a character well and someone who uses their deck well. My best matches are when I play someone who uses both.
- I love the emphasis on resource control. Potential energy use is prime in my play style.
- I would like to see a readout when an innate ability fires. Maybe the innate ability icon can flash or something.
- Allowing an intercepted character to gain their 20 energy is fine. It allows the player to decide to try and fight back(with a chance of success) or to try and retreat again. Being intercepted is already penalizing enough, further penalizing the player for that choice, would take away from the fun of the match.
- I’m very happy that the distance phase and attack phase timer has been reduced.
- If the intent of a match is to be best of 3, why is ranked match only one fight?
Overall, I love the game. I try and play at least a couple matches a day. I’m looking forward to more cards and tournaments!
July 18th, 2008 at 2:10 am
Why does Timeout result in a draw? You never lose the game than. It sucks that most player just t/o when they’re losing and I dont get any wins >.<
July 18th, 2008 at 2:49 am
Timeout doesn’t result in a draw… the only time an opponent ever timed out against me, an message popped up saying “Would you like to declare victory, or continue to wait?”, I choose declare victory, and got a win.
July 18th, 2008 at 7:20 am
Hey Sirlin, you had mentioned that Kongai was going to have cards available for “purchase”, since I cannot find this info on the website, do you know if it will be cash or points? (just curious, I am happy with it either way)
July 18th, 2008 at 7:30 am
Kongai is pretty awesome. I got steered over to Kongregate after you talked about your card game there, and I’m very impressed overall. Very cool.
July 18th, 2008 at 11:27 am
Hey guys,
I think one reason why there is so much complaining about 90% and 95% hit chances is because of how the game was marketed. Blah blah, rewards the person who can read the other person’s mind, etc etc. Nowhere is it mentioned “with a dash of luck for even more exciting white-knuckle matches!”
If it was made explicit that there was luck in the game, then the largest class of luck complaints (due to mismatched expectations) would disappear.
July 18th, 2008 at 12:34 pm
Garcia, I wish you hadn’t told me that Siamjai posted on the jayisgames site. The absurdity of that range-dancing discussion makes my head hurt.
July 18th, 2008 at 1:05 pm
I think the fact that you can obtain any 3 characters from the very start balances it quite a bit. Items are nice, yes, but it’s completely possible to beat people without them. I would suggest that people get a handle on the game before they choose their first 3 characters. Kongai isn’t something you can understand by reading about it, and it’s easier for new players to figure out what the billion symbols mean on the card when they’re in a game. Maybe a tutorial mode/suggest new players to do a practice game against the computer first?
I’m not sure I understand the problem with intercepts:
You pull off a successful intercept, do 35 damage. Other person now has enough energy to do their bomb.
You have two choices: Switch out or stay in.
They have two choices: Do their bomb or intercept.
It’s a four layer yomi situation, so isn’t this perfectly fine?
July 18th, 2008 at 2:13 pm
Think of the situation where your opponent has two characters left, but you only have one. You’ve successfully intercepted on the previous turn, but now you’re not allowed to switch out yourself, so they have a guaranteed victory with their high energy attack. It means even though you “guessed right” on the previous turn, you didn’t gain anything from it.
July 18th, 2008 at 2:28 pm
Claytus: Well, arguably that’s ok because it means your opponent did something earlier that gave them that advantage in the first place. It depends how much slippery slope is acceptable or desirable. I don’t really know well enough to say either one is better, but I can accept it as being part of the game for now.
July 18th, 2008 at 3:10 pm
It would be better because intercept is already a very unattractive option. Not to spoil the game for you, but usually, resting or switching is a better option than intercepting, even if you are 50% sure that he will switch. There are of course a lot of variables, such as how much he can hurt you if you guess wrong, if he can switch to a counter-character, etc. But in general, resting or switching are better options.
The change would make intercept more viable. thus rewarding mn-dreading!
July 18th, 2008 at 3:25 pm
@Claytus: Well if that’s the case, then resting would’ve probably been the better move. If you have nothing to gain from intercepting, you probably shouldn’t do it. Having one person left is a deadly situation in the first place.
July 18th, 2008 at 4:06 pm
I just thought about something. Specifically, ranking point farming. That’s possible if you have 2 computers. You create a fake account, and constantly play vs. your real account over and over. That way you don’t have to risk anything, your ranking increases and you get cards. Is there something that prevents players from abusing that? Does some kind of moderator check that out on a regular basis and ban such people?
Then there’s the second option. “Smart” farming. You play 60% of your matches regularly (without cheating), and 40% of them you just farm wins. Or maybe 70/30, that’s even harder to detect. Is there some mechanism restricting that?
July 18th, 2008 at 8:52 pm
That has to be pretty damn boring. And since ranking only tells how good you are at the game, once the cheater asks for a game, and a legitimate player of his rank appears, he will be shredded into little tiny pieces.
Yeah, it can get you extra cards… But no extra skill.
July 18th, 2008 at 9:22 pm
Some guy tried that and got caught. Big Brother is watching!!
July 19th, 2008 at 9:36 am
@ Fapko: Thanks for giving everyone who has no cards an easy way to obtain all of them so they can stop bitching about their lack of cards when I completely outclass them. Honestly though, why even use to computers? You could just open up Kongai in two different browsers or even better use firefox and proxy one of the tabs, or proxy a page in the sidebar. I have absolutely ZERO problem with anyone who wants to do this.
July 19th, 2008 at 3:59 pm
This game is very well designed, but Yoshiro seems to suffer from “Shoto Noob” syndrome. SHORYUKEN SHORYUKEN SHORYUKEN SHORYUKEN etc
July 19th, 2008 at 5:07 pm
I do believe this is a widely known abuse. And chances are, people who are not ‘hardcore’ enough and just want some easy wins/cards probably won’t be patient enough to read through god-knows-how-many comments here. So I really don’t know what is your problem. Personally, I don’t consider cheating as a viable option, because if I use it, then my rankings would be a lie. I want to use them as an indicator of my actual skill. They serve an informational purpose only to myself however, because others can easily accuse me of being a cheater, as they can never know for certain that anyone’s rankings are really legit. And that’s really a problem. When someone plays a specific other person whose win/loss record is good, they can either think “wow, he’s a great player!” or “c’mon… what a cheater”.
July 19th, 2008 at 9:11 pm
With a few more games under my belt, it’s become clear that Intercept can often make or break a match. It’s powerful enough, and if you’d like it to be more powerful, just put the Mindreader’s Chalice on the Higashi…
Farming cards or victories: So this game even offers something for the grinders! Sirlin, you truly are a genius!
In other words, so long as they don’t stop me playing my way by getting cards too powerful for me to compete, I don’t mind — My own win-loss record, even in fights against them, still accurately represents my skill at the game and the reliability of my Internet connection.
July 19th, 2008 at 11:32 pm
@Fapko: Level is never a measure of a person’s skill. Just a measure of how much time this person has poured into this game. Assuming even novices get a win every once in a while, beginners could be level 99 as well, as long as they spend enough time playing the game.
Besides, why do you need an extra number to determine how you rank towards another person? Just challenge them to a game. That’s your measure of skill.
July 19th, 2008 at 11:47 pm
@Archon: Intercept is the quintessential ability that defines Kongai. At higher levels of play, it determines the course of the game.
The way I see it, lots of games boil down to one side putting out a stronger threat, and the other trying to best figure out how to bring out their threat, and how to evade the intercept. Sure, sometimes people will go for even trades, but more often than not, they’ll be aiming to get the upper hand. This comes up a lot in my games: I have no especially strong ranged people to counter cannons like Phoebe or Axen, so I rely on evasive manuvers (ranged changing, switching, and only tiny pokes to weather down their characters).
@Sirlin: I really have to say, Kongai bares quite a lot in similarity to Pokemon, but with single change of dodge-switching and intercepts, you’ve created an entirely higher level of gameplay. Props to you, sir.
July 20th, 2008 at 2:57 am
@Pzychotix: You aren’t taking losses into equation. I never said level, I said win/loss ratio. As far as I know, losses don’t decrease it, so yeah, it only means how much time one puts into the game. But a win/loss record shows you the exact thing. It’s your indicator of success, and that objectively measures your level of skill. Well, since luck is often a part of the game, I guess you can put -10%/+10% into the equation when determining one’s skill, but whatever. It’s approximately correct.
July 20th, 2008 at 4:34 am
Really, you should just be looking at your skill rank. Ranked matches are there for a reason you know.
July 20th, 2008 at 6:40 am
Can’t argue with that.
July 20th, 2008 at 1:34 pm
Man, I havn;t been here for about 2 months, but just saw this game was released on Jay is Games. Been waiting for it for like 2 years now, and am quite excited….
Might have a reason to play a good bit of Kongregate now.
July 20th, 2008 at 8:55 pm
To Sirlin: I’ve found one thing that I think is rather abuseable and it has to do with multi-target attacks. When you hit with a multi-target attack it shows you how much damage you did to each character on their team even if you don’t yet know what that character which can give you a huge knowledge advantage that I’m not sure you intended for.
For this example I’ll use Vanessa Voss and her attack Radiance Burst. The main reason I’m choosing her over Zina’s Tiger Frenzy is because of Reinforced Breastplate but Radiance Burst also has the advantage of being cast at either range and has a 100% chance to hit. This means that unless the opponent switches or canceling move on their first turn I can basically figure out their team. Radiance Burst does 10 Light damage to each character and Vanessa’s ability is that she deals 1 extra damage for every Dark Res the opponent has. This means, since as far as I know there is no way to change Dark or Light Res with items, if I just keep a chart of each character’s Light-Dark+10 I can get a rather good picture of their team on the first turn.
0 Vanessa
5 Yoshiro or Anex (but since Yoshiro is far more played…)
8 Andromeda or Phoebe (I generally am more worried about Phoebe)
9 Helene
10 Higashi, Onimaru, Rumiko, Ashi, Ubuntu or Zina (if I hit a 10 I just cry)
11 Juju
13 Tafari
14 Popo, Ambrosia, Cain
16 Amaya, Cornelius (I don’t think I’ve ever seen someone play Amaya)
20 Marquis
Obviously it’s not perfect but it does absolutely give away their Vanessa, Helene, Juju, Tafari and Marquis. It also makes a Yoshiro switch fairly obvious and, more importantly tells me what they don’t have. Let’s say even worst case they have someone like Helene in and I hit one 10 and a 14. Even in that case I’ve lowered their possible team form 19 to 9 and done 33 damage for 40 energy. Unless she shield bashes, but I find most Helene’s go for the 42 damage and I generally try to go far against a Helene (though I rarely see them as starters).
Anyway as much as I like being a cheater I think that until a card I’ve seen the card in battle I shouldn’t be allowed to know how much damage I’m doing to it. I’d love to hear your thoughts on this.
Also for anyone who cares, Zina’s Tiger Frenzy:
0/3 Helene+P/Helene
1 Onimaru or Ashi+P
5 Andromeda+P, Anex+P, Phoebe+P
6 Tafari
8 Ambrosia, Cain, Cornelius
9 Amaya, Higashi, Rumiko, Andromeda, Anex, Phoebe
10 Marquis, Vanessa
11 Yoshiro, Juju, Popo, Ubuntu.
As you can see in best case you do 11 damage to their starter and find out that they have a Helene+P and a Tafari, using a total of 80 energy and doing 17 damage total. In worst case you use 80 energy to do 20 damage and lower the possibilities to 10/19. Plus they can also stop you by choosing close and you can miss. Also you don’t weed out as many good options this way (like Yoshiro for example).
July 21st, 2008 at 8:54 am
Hmm, I use Zina (AoE attacks + items that leave dots = OP) and thought about that for a bit, though I was too lazy to ever figure the exact distribution of damage. I didn’t think it would be spread out so much as to give the user such a good idea at what hidden cards are what.
Then again, hitting for 20 on Marquis as well as everyone else is pretty godly.
@Sirlin: Has the Kongai team ever considered giving players a choice of cards to pick from when they earn cards? For example, when a player “wins” a card, they’re given a choice from 3 cards to choose from instead of 1.
July 21st, 2008 at 3:38 pm
@ Pzychotix: Honestly as Zina you don’t gain much useful info from it so it’s not really worth relaying on but it’s something you might as well keep in mind just in case.
For the sake of being complete I’ll also include Amaya’s Shadow Wrath:
2 Marquis
6 Amaya, Cornelius
7 Juju, Popo, Ambrosia, Cain
9 Higashi, Tafari, Ubuntu
10 Andromeda, Phoebe, Zina
11 Yoshiro, Anex, Ashi
12 Onimaru, Rumiko, Helene, Vanessa
As you can see Amaya’s Shadow Wrath has some problems. First it can only give away a Marquis and only gives you a good guess at Amaya/Cornelius. He only has 55 HP which means about half the cast can kill him first turn (give or take depending on items) and since the move’s speed is 2 it’s possible that he’ll die before he can even use it. If he does get it off you’re left with a best case of knowing the have Marquis and and a guess of 2 or 3 characters. One nice thing is that the worst guess you have is a one in four but that still only limits their team to 8/19 members. Even if you do scope their Marquis, there’s not allot of good he can do as a starter with this strat.
A few more numbers:
Vanessa’s Radiance Burst -
Total Damage Range: 10-52, Average: 10-11 Average Damage/Energy: .26
Amaya’s Shadow Wrath-
Total Damage Range: 14-36, Average: 9, Average Damage/Energy: .23
Zina’s Tiger Frenzy (ignoring Reinforced Breastplate)
Total Damage Range: 10-33, Average: 7-8, Average Damage/Energy: .25
July 22nd, 2008 at 4:43 am
If you want to experience truly bad randomness in a CCG, check out Yu-Gi-Oh. I played one of the Yu-Gi-Oh games for DS, and one of the AI opponents had a deck entirely designed around random elements. Probably 2/3 to 3/4 of his cards involved some sort of dice roll or coin flip. In some games against that guy, you simply have no way to win because roll after roll will end up in his favor and pretty much prevent you from being able to do anything.
A 10% miss rate on some abilities sounds pretty reasonable by comparison.
July 22nd, 2008 at 5:21 am
@ Forty: I’m shamed to admit it but I actually play… or well played (as I disapprove of the current ban list) Yu-Gi-Oh competitively and your impression of the game is way off. The game is about graveyard control, hand control and OTKs. Yes there are some random elements to some cards but there’s only one I can think of that’s ever been used at any legitimate level of play. To be honest I’d say that Yu-Gi-Oh at a competitive level is less random than magic (which probably isn’t a good thing).
The game you should be using for comparison is pokemon.
July 22nd, 2008 at 5:39 am
Well, be aware that the video game adaptations of yu-gi-oh, and the actual physical card game don’t seem to hold as much in common as they probably should…
July 22nd, 2008 at 5:45 am
I beg to differ. I was a competitive YGO player too (my UDE ranking is 2900) and I quit because when you reach a high level of play, the game just crashes. It becomes one huge randomness because it comes down to whoever draws the most broken bullshit first. Yes, the game is unbalanced and even though there is a ban-list, it still doesn’t help. Also, it’s poorly designed. 95% of released cards are useless. Furthermore, those rares are hard to get, because they are sold at higher prices than magic rares for example. And even when you have all the cards you need, the game is still random. There are hardly any mindgames and most of the time you can’t even create the illusion of having a deadly trap card by setting a normal spell card, because in most cases it’s the most optimal decision for your opponent to just attack you anyway. The problem with the game is, even if you know what your opponent is thinking and/or doing, you can do nothing to counter him. It’s not a good idea to invest time in this game (or even play it for that matter), because it doesn’t reward the skill well enough.
July 22nd, 2008 at 12:11 pm
@ Fapko: I don’t know when you played but it sound like pre-chaos era and if so then you are WAY out of the loop. Anyway I’m not trying to defend Yu-Gi-Oh here, my point is that Yu-Gi-Oh isn’t very random. You have 40 cards in you deck and start with 5. Most decks run 2-3 of all their core cards which is generally about 8 cards. Any deck worth anything is running thinners, drawers and searchers. It’s very easy to get things back from the graveyard. What this all adds up to is that in a best 2/3 match duel you are going to see your entire deck at least once. Yu-Gi-Oh is a game where it’s very easy to get most of the cards you want, the problem is that since both players can do it, a match is often resolved by deck choice and what you can/choose to side, which yes does often detract from how much “skill” the game takes to play. I’ll admit that I’m out of the loop for the current meta and basically anything post DDT era.
July 22nd, 2008 at 5:09 pm
this game’s a lot of fun, but I’m apparently missing several key factors, as I’m losing like mad. But then again, I played against a play whose score was 54:25 or smt and I completly owned him when I intercepted him twice and read his fake switches. Was fun to play =)
July 22nd, 2008 at 5:12 pm
edit the upper: I play againt a guy*
July 22nd, 2008 at 8:07 pm
@ bbobjs: Seeing your whole deck doesn’t necessarily take away from randomness or skill or whatever, as long as the game is designed that way. The best example is the Lord of the Rings TCG, where any good deck will see 60 cards by turn 7 without intentional thinning or searching. Randomness and reading the opponent are still a big part of the game, because the cards have such narrow applications and strict timing limits that you’re not guaranteed to draw them in the right mix to do anything.
July 23rd, 2008 at 2:23 am
Well, I’ve never played the Pokemon CCG, so from my experience at the casual level, Yu-Gi-Oh has been the most disastrously random card game I’ve ever played.
July 23rd, 2008 at 4:08 am
DS games don’t count.