Hi, everyone! I just realised that the article I wrote on the design processes we use is only available in the Updates section of the Shattered Fates Kickstarter, so I'm reposting it here (trimmed a little to fit under 10,000 characters).
This won't exactly match what happens for set 4, since we'll revise the processes as required to stay as efficient and effective as possible, but it's a pretty good starting point for your understanding. (The main difference with set 4 is that it has been designed to support the possibility of releasing it in parts, if we decide we want to do that.) Here goes:
Conception
As card designers, we’re collecting ideas for individual cards all the time which could come from anywhere, but designing a whole set needs to have a very deliberate starting point, so that it can lay solid foundations for everything that will be built on top.
In practice, that takes the form of a set specification, detailing all of the following: any major new mechanics/rules we want to use; the setting and theme(s) that will be represented; and less interesting things like set size and breakdown. (A decent approximation of the set specification for Shattered Fates can be seen in the Shattered Fates Set Breakdown article.)
How do we go about putting that specification together though? Well, when NachyoChez joined our team back in February 2012, we did some lengthy forward planning, sketching out a rough gameplay progression for the game through several years worth of sets and Shadow Era's story was developed alongside that.
This has allowed us to tackle each set specification for a given set in a very holistic fashion, taking into account two main things: the gameplay impact that we're aiming for and where we are in Shadow Era's overarching story. Ideally, both match up and no compromises need to be made; if not, well, we've not run into that situation yet, thanks to the forward planning!
With the set specification in place, we can get started on purposefully designing cards for the set.
Card Creation
As mentioned already, we collect card ideas all the time, which are stored in a general card ideas pool, but they are usually unconstrained and unrefined ideas. This stage of the set design process is about deliberate card creation in line with the set specification, and everyone on the team is encouraged to go into ideas generation mode to accumulate relevant ideas, from a variety of sources.
The best ideas are captured in groups, in line with the set breakdown - e.g. Warrior card, Weapon - and their “design intent” is always included. For example, under Mage Item/Abilities for Shattered Fates, the card now known as Abomination Factorywas suggested with the following design intent: “The idea is to give mages the ability to pump their Homunculus allies, while adding a way for Gravebone
We aim to have roughly double the number of ideas compared to the number of slots available in that group before we move onto the next phase, but that’s just a guideline. In practise, we will return to this phase for additional individual cards as needs become apparent from later phases. The important thing is that we’ve got enough potential cards somewhere that the team can see them.
A note on flavor at this point: Some cards can be quite flavorful from the outset - with great coherency between the name, stats and effects - but others might have a placeholder name initially because the idea is predominantly geared towards meeting a gameplay need.
Card Review and Refinement
With our ideas collected in their groups, the review and refinement phase can begin. This always starts with self-review. The person who put up the idea needs to check the format to ensure all required details have been given, that the design intent was specified and that the wording is as clear as possible. In terms of quality that’s aimed for, the guidance is “Pretend we’re printing the set tomorrow and everyone else just got hit by a bus”, which ensures that the ideas start out the best they can be and saves a lot of time later. At that point, the card can be marked Ready for Review.
On a daily basis, as more cards become Ready for Review, the rest of the team will review them, giving comments for the original card creator to respond to and then more discussion flows from there.
The three main things we look at are balance, flavor and clarity of wording. As such, whilst the creator will have aimed for the highest quality from the outset, being able to work together as a team on each card will usually lead to refinement of many of the following: name, concept/flavor, cost, stats, theme, story setting, lore, abilities, wording.
Beyond this, some cards will just be axed and others will get shifted to a different group, usually as a result of some contravention of the "styles-of-play" that are being established for each faction and class.
As cards get refined and re-reviewed, they accumulate votes, where a vote signifies the voter believes the card is good enough to be in the set and is ready for testing. Cards that get at least three votes are progressed to a Final Review stage by the card creator.
Final Review
This stage is there for due diligence, to act as a second-level check. The Project Lead checks over each card at Final Review to ensure that: there are no unaddressed comments; everyone on the team has seen the card and given their input; the right format has been used; the balance appears sane compared to existing cards; the card is flavorful; the wording is clear. If all is good, the card progresses to Ready for Testing!
Candidate Selection
Ideally, we have at least as many cards at Ready for Testing as we have slots available. Sometimes there will be more. Either way, the cards in a group are now reviewed together in a team meeting to see if they make sense together. For example, under Mage Items/Ability, if we end up with 10 artifacts and no abilities, that’s likely going to be an issue. Or if we’ve just created a hero that can summon free items, but we don’t have any valid items for her, then that’s also an issue.
Those are pretty obvious issues though and will likely have already been spotted earlier on. The main thing we have to pay attention to is whether each hero (old or new) got something from the set and how their potential card pool is going to interact. So, returning to the Abomination Factory
What tends to happen here is that a subset of the group earn their slot and are moved onto the next stage. The rest of the slots are left unassigned and we head back to Card Creation in the background to fill them.
Alpha Playtesting
Up until this point, all testing has taken place in our heads; we've done our best to "theory-craft", but that's never a substitute for actually playing with the cards, so that's what we aim to do here.
If this were not a digital card game and we all worked in the same office, we could just have some blank cards that we'd write on and play with. But since the Design Team and our testers are spread around the world, we need to use an online variant of that rapid prototyping approach. It starts out as a lot of work to set up, but scales really well compared to making up your own physical cards, so, given the option, I'd actually use the online approach whether we were in the same office or not!
How does it actually work? Well, we make up the card images to match our designs and set the Alpha Playtesting Group loose on them, with the aim of giving us balance feedback and any other comments they have. We listen to that feedback and revise the cards accordingly, leading to a new iteration of cards.
Closed Beta Testing
You've probably heard the term PFG or Players' Focus Group mentioned here and there. Well, this is where they do their work. The card designs are implemented and players test them on the Design Server. From a design perspective, we're looking at balance and intangible things like enjoyment here, although there's a good side-effect that we can find bugs and get them solved as well.
During this period, we also take the opportunity to tie the cards more closely in with the story, in both directions: card names, artwork and flavor text are tweaked in line with the story and lore; meanwhile, particularly flavourful and interesting cards that were not previously part of the story are weaved into it!
Open Beta Testing and Beyond
When the set hits the public test server, the assumption is that no more changes will need to be made other than balance tweaks (and bug fixes). So our design involvement is almost entirely about tracking balance and consists mostly of balance meetings at that point. Then, once the set hits the live server and is getting close to being locked down for printing, we can have a nice vacation! If only! We are already working on the set that will come after!
I hope you found that interesting. Feel free to ask questions about it.
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Originally Posted by oggtheman
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