The Wulven Apprentice

After Nocturnal Advantage's loss last week and the firing of Brandon, their team was down one member and had to compete against the confident Random Heroes. Will they be able to work together and make a comeback, or will the Heroes continue to dominate?



Task 2 Details

The task for week 2 was to design a new hero and 10 class cards for that hero.

Task: Select an existing class and work together in your team to design a new hero and 10 cards for that class.

Constraints:
The class must be one of the existing seven classes.
The hero must have an ability activated with between 3 and 5 shadow energy.
The class cards can be of any existing type apart from hero (i.e. ally, ability, support ability, attachment, armor, weapon, artifact, trap).
The class cards should be distributed as 1 Rare, 3 Uncommon, 6 Common.
At least 3 cards should be designed to aid your new hero specifically.
You may introduce at most two new mechanics/keywords.
No new card should be strictly better than an existing card for the same class.

External help: No external help is allowed, although you do not need to do your own artwork. You can select any existing unlicensed work to use on your cards, providing you give credit to the artist and the artist has not explicitly stated you are not allowed to use their work.

Format: Ideally, you will mock up cards to look like Shadow Era cards. Wulven can give you assistance with this, but towards the end of the task. Start out with simple text version.

Reason: Shows off organization, co-ordination, understanding a class, card design and balancing, art selection, creativity, confidentiality, attention to detail, standards of quality. What is produced could end up valuable beyond the contest, and make it into a future set!

Winner: 80% determined by public poll, 20% by Wulven judges.


The Results

After viewing the new cards the teams produced, the public voted for Random Heroes with a slight margin, but the Wulven judges decided to give their votes to Nocturnal Advantage for the win. This team will have immunity to elimination this week, while the losing team must face Kyle in the Wulven Lair. As the project manager of the losing team, Steven chose to take Daryl and Jazz with him into the Lair, where they were given a final chance to beg for their lives!






Steven

How do you think your team did on the task?
While the outcome was obviously not what I would have liked, I was happy with how we did overall. The only thing I was truly frustrated with were the errors in the final submission.


How do you think you personally did on the task? (Be sure to mention specific parts you were responsible for.)
I was chosen to be the project manager on this task since I have the most experience with executing this type of task in my skillset. As the project manager, I was tasked with making decisions about the composition of our cards in terms of card types, overall mechanical direction, and ensuring that the feel of the cards was kept firmly within the scope of what our chosen class should be able to do, as well as keeping the team running smoothly and organizing our efforts. I also contributed card designs o the file, searched for art, and generally participated in each step in the process of he task with the rest of the team. In order to be able to do all this I put a massive number of hours into the task, and I feel that they were well spent. The way our designs (as they were intended to be submitted) came out I felt was great, and I was a huge part of making sure we kept our set of cards focused and all feeling like they contributed to each other and added in a way that interacted with Shadow Era thus far.



Why do you think your team lost?
The primary thing remarked upon by the design team judges that made us fall short was the abundance of errors in our submission. Not having rarities on our cards as well as missing a cost and having the wrong name of a card in-text were all issues that I think tipped the scales on this one.



Who do you think should be fired?
The person who I think needs to be fired is Jazz, for a couple reasons:

The first issue was teamwork. Most of the big discussions about creating, balancing, and changing cards were conducted on our skype chat in this task, and Jazz especially in the first couple days just wasn't there for that, insisting that he be on IRC, which throughout the week was unavailable to different members of the team at different times, and was generally just not the preferred. Jazz mentioned that work was an issue for him, and that he could had scheduling issues, but with our team being around the world it was necessary for all of us to make some changes to our normal routines to be able to work together as a team(more than one of us, myself included, have made significant changes to our sleep schedule to accomodate the variance in time zones), and at least on this task Jazz was either not willing or not able to do so.
The second issue I believe directly cost us the task: Several hours before the submission was due, Jazz and i had been working to refine the copy of our final submission. Jazz had offered to put everything into the zip file and submit it, and we spent about two hours going through the text of the cards and checking for errors. I had to go offline for a bit, and while I was gone Jazz attempted to make several changes to card names and artwork, as well as flavoring. Why this was not brought up during the time I was present I do not know, but having to deal with arguing with Jazz over last-minute changes that he wanted to make cost us critical time that was intended to be used for further checking. when I returned intending to take a final quick look at the submission, I was met with several posts on our forum of arguing over the last-minute suggested changes, and had to rush through a combination of looking through the text and considering further changes when everything was supposed to be final prior to that point. This was the culmination of an issue that came up repeatedly throughout the task, where Jazz was constantly trying to change decisions that had been made by recommending that huge changes to the direction we had chosen to take after we had moved on to the next phase of the process. Part of this was due to his lacking presence in major discussions, but it was primarily because Jazz was unwilling to let go of his ideas, even after several teammates (including me) said that we did not want to use them. Having to explain to him over and over again why particular ideas did not fit the direction the rest of the team wanted to take took a lot of time away from the task at hand. We all had different ideas going into this task, but everyone except Jazz seemed willing to let ideas that the team didn't like go and instead work on making what we had chosen better.


Why do you think you shouldn't be fired?
Everyone came into this with a different background and skill set, but the thing I consider most important to this position that I bring to the table is ability and willingness to learn. No one in this contest is completely prepared for what will be necessary to succeed in the design team. I am passionate about Shadow Era and am prepared to take on the challenge of learning new skills. I will make mistakes- we all do, but I am prepared to accept being wrong at times and to choose to learn from it. In addition, I feel I can bring a unique perspective to the design team. I bring experiences in a variety of games with me into this, and while I firmly believe Shadow Era needs to capitalize on its own unique characteristics, there is a lot to be learned in the mistakes and successes of others. The hours I have put into this contest show I am willing to put in as much work as is necessary.



Any other comments to Kyle?
Regardless of how this turns out, designing for a game as great as this one is my dream and greatest goal, so thank you for this opportunity to make that happen.




Daryl

How do you think your team did on the task?
I think the team did very well on the task. Steven worked well as the project manager all the team seemed to work well together.


How do you think you personally did on the task? (Please include details of what you were specifically responsible for.)
I was personally responsible for Yari Scout which in reflection should of stayed at 2 attack & 1 health. The hero ability came from an idea I had originally. I also helped design Hydra Kiss which I think was on of our best cards. Also came with the idea for Ulrich the Rich to give resources back when his base attack increases.


Why do you think your team lost?
The team didn't all seem to behind the hero idea. Which led to some idea that just were not going to work with the new hero plus the other 4 warrior heroes. Also leadership seemed not as good this week compared to last week. (especially from some who has experience of designing card for magic)


Who do you think should be fired?
I think Jazz should be fired because seemed to disagree with the whole team on numerous occasions and just didnt feel part of the team. Also when we wanted to talk to him we had to go on irc (which was having server issue's for the first few days of the task). Also he along with Shawn and Stefano were the people who submitted the zip.file so he is partially responsible for the rarities missing and Hydras Kiss cost missing


Why do you think you shouldn't be fired?
I don't think I should be fired because I helped stop one of our been very over powered and also the main reason I'm probably in here is because for the later part of the task I wasn't active due to been Sick & and bedridden for 1 and half days plus a trip to Accident & Emergency and 2 trips to an emergency dentist so i couldn't use my phone to communicate with the team since you can use 3G or Wi - FI in NHS buildings. I'm also a very hard worker and was staying up till 4 am GMT+0 to help the team out.


Any other comments to Kyle?
This has been a great experience so far and i don't want it to end just yet. Also since i found this game via Totalbiscuit (Youtube personality) i been in love with the game and want to be part of the game future.






Jazz

How do you think your team did on the task?
Far from great, but there were some bright moments still (I mean some of the suggested cards and the majority of art and flavour)

How do you think you personally did on the task? (Please include details of what you were specifically responsible for.)
- The thing is there were no responsibilities assigned, so there definitely was a lack of coordination, there was no plan & thus the spontaneous activity of our team's members achieved us much less than it could have;

- I tried to develop a scope of work, so I highlighted that before creating the cards we needed to decide on the hero & his ability, but even before that we had to decide on the faction & class (providing some suggestions myself);

- I also prepared a breakdown on the class-specific cards introduced in DP, so everyone would better understand what is expected of us and the diversity of choices we need to make and I think it helped;

- I came up with a hero (not Cassius), his ability, name, art & flavour, as well as the reasoning for introducing him (he would’ve helped some of the underused cards see more play and thus make players want to buy those cards, which in return would generate some profit for Wulven), however the majority of our team dismissed the idea without much consideration (I too agree, that the original concept was raw, but I managed to come up with balancing ideas on my own & communicated some of them to the team, I still have a ground-breaking idea in that regard I haven't posted yet, because we were already working on the released card set by then);

- since the cards suggested by myself did not see much support from the other members of the team, I had to focus on finding the best art for the already suggested cards and I think I did pretty well (most of the card art was either found or suggested for particular cards by me);

- some of my ideas / work actually made it to the released set, namely 5 art images (including hero), 1 card name, 1 +1/2 flavour texts;

- I also came up with 4 non-hero cards with stats, names, flavours & even some art (some of it would’ve been greatly appreciated both by Wulven & the players), but there was lack of feedback on them as well, so they didn't make it into the released set as well as the hero;

- pointed out to certain SE-lore inconsistencies in the card's names (using human allies for shadow heroes);

- voiced my concern (to say the least) on the hero's ability & the use of tokens (both eventually were criticized both by some players & Wulven) as well as some other card-related ideas


Why do you think your team lost?
- lack of communication / collaboration (including proper planning) which led to hasty decisions without proper discussion / analysis (I personally am quite surprised that some particular cards made it to the final release both in general or stats-wise), I also think that some might have been overly excited with the idea of Kyle making their cards and posting them on the forums, so they did not focus on the authentic style of SE and the usefulness of the new cards (i.e. when I suggested my hero options, I voiced my reasons to be - underplayed class / faction that could benefit from the diversity of the card pool as well as trying to make use of the underplayed cards & creating combos with the already existing cards, both CotC & DP)

Who do you think should be fired?
- in football when the team's results do not meet the expectations / it loses badly, usually the manager gets fired - in our case it is pretty similar, I mean neither did I enjoy the chaotic work on Task 2, nor did it bring us victory... in the end I had to compile the results of our work and send it to Wulven myself (around 2 AM on a working day), despite it being our Project Manager's job, also from my point of view it seems Steven lacks knowledge / experience with SE itself, so all things considered I think he should be fired

Why do you think you shouldn't be fired?

- The reason is that I tried to object many of the things we were heavily criticized after the cards' release (while suggesting a different direction for our set, warrior hero or not), if my opinion wasn't a minority, we would have released a totally different card set and in my opinion Nocturnal Advantage wouldn't stand a chance with it

Any other comments to Kyle?
- Take care!


Kyle's Decision

Alright folks, it's that time again. And with my Speedstrike I'm going to hit you guys twice as fast.

Right from the start I had a really bad feeling about your team's work this week. Saying it was sloppy would be an understatement. This wasn't some random post in the card suggestion forum, it was meant to be a professional task completed as part of a job interview process, and your submission seemed rushed and slapped together. Not only did you fail to mention any of the card rarities (a specific requirement of this week's task), but you were missing a casting cost and left an old name in a card's effect text. You also had one Yari ally with the Yari tribe specified, and one without. While the forum goers might have overlooked this, it was painfully obvious to me as I was making the card images.

Since you were the losing team this week, I'm also going to comment on your card designs. Basically you were asked to come up with 11 new cards. And to do that you had to introduce 3 new mechanics: the Rapid Strike keyword, token allies, and deck searching (a "tutor" from MTG).

Now, most people might not realize this, but one of my most important jobs is saying NO to our card designers. New mechanics need to be introduced very slowly and only a few at a time. For a task like this, perhaps 1 new mechanic would be appropriate, but it's far more important to see how you can use the existing themes from Shadow Era rather than just copying ideas from another game.

If we could ignore all that though, the cards you presented did have a certain cohesive style and could probably work in the game a few sets down the road. But getting there is an important journey, and one that the Design Team makes together. I can't stress how important teamwork is, especially when working with people from around the globe. (Did I mention that our weekly DT meeting is at 4am for me?)

The tasks in the Wulven Apprentice are designed to get a feel for all of your abilities and personalities, and how you might fit with the existing team. Someone might be a brilliant game designer, but if they can't work well on a team they will only lead to conflicts and cause problems, and that's something that I can't ignore.

Jazz, now you're mine!