iPhone Spellcraft - Collectable Card Game - by Three Goblins Ltd

Discussion in 'iPhone and iPad Games' started by sladeums, Aug 31, 2012.

  1. Sheinfell

    Sheinfell Well-Known Member

    May 14, 2012
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    #241 Sheinfell, Dec 19, 2012
    Last edited: Dec 19, 2012
    Very nice update, great job, Goblins!

    I especially like the new colors on the cards, the darker tones look extremely good.
    Plus, everything looks much crisper/sharper. Do you use higher graphic resolution now?

    About the new app icon I am not sure. Something about it is bumping me off, but I cannot tell what yet.
    Need to give the Undead a try sometime soon, and build a deck :)
    Right now I am enjoying my old killer deck. Interesting that the Undead did not change much in terms of AI opposition, they still fall very quick.

    Small nitpick: For the "Deepwood" level, I think the spiders icon looked better. But as the focus of that AI seems to have shifted away from spiders, and to trees (namely the Deepwood Ash), I guess the new icon fits.

    Oh yes, that was the one thing I really do not like:
    Might be related to my level (42), but *every* AI enemy deck uses Undead cards now.
    Seems a bit boring, the earlier diversity with the secondary faction was more interesting.
     
  2. Lechatcurieux

    Lechatcurieux Well-Known Member

    Sep 12, 2012
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    "about the new app icon I am not sure. Something about it is bumping me off, but I cannot tell what yet."

    THANK YOU!!! I hate the new icon too. I've written about 5 emails to the goblins, them deleted them as I thought I was just being over-picky.

    It's a good card, but I feel like its the wrong choice for the icon;
    A) it gets lost on my home page, I have to hunt for it
    B) I think it's a bit dark and ominous setting the wrong impression for the game.

    Of course the new cards (how great are the graphics and noises lol!) are rather sinister in their theme, but there's also fluffy fairies and goblins and more light hearted stuff. I've always thought of it as a family friendly game and I feel that card doesn't reflect that.

    Personally, I'd vote for the swamp card Captured Soul. It stands out nice and bright.
     
  3. Lechatcurieux

    Lechatcurieux Well-Known Member

    Sep 12, 2012
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    Sorry about that game Sheinfell, I had the most awful game centre lag. I had cards flying in and out when it wasn't even my turn.

    Can we agree that when we are inviting, we send an invite so it pings, then cancel it and resend another invite 1-2 minutes later?

    That way I have time to make sure Im not lurking in the auto match, and near enough to my signal to function. It's really annoying the way the game centre invites clash and you get stuck in no mans land.

    I just tried the auto match and got nothing, come on the iPhone goblins!!!
     
  4. Sheinfell

    Sheinfell Well-Known Member

    May 14, 2012
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    Hi curious cat,
    sorry to hear gamecenter is still causing you trouble.
    Sure we can do that with the double invite.
    What you can also do is set GC to notify with "banners". They do not block your screen, as the alerts do. And you can just finish whatever you are doing, move to a place with better connection, etc.; and as long as I keep the invite open, or it doesn't timeout (think timeout is after 5 minutes), you can accept it later.

    I found some odd behaviour of a few of the Swamp cards already, but feel to sick to write a detailed bugreport now. Will do so later.
    Short one:
    1) The Bone Dragon's "destroy" ability does not always work. I had it fail repeatedly vs. a Sea Dragon.
    2) The Shadowfiend does some weird stuff when the AI brings it into play, especially against the Aquamancers. Need to test some more, before I can give more details.

    By the way: Level 50 :p

    Reminds me: Lvl50 should have its own title, like "Supreme Warmage". Just counting up the circles is fine for the in-between levels, but major milestones should have a special title.

    @Goblins: If you want, you can send me the whole list of titles, and I can see if I can come up with some good additional ones.
     
  5. Krossek

    Krossek Member

    Dec 20, 2012
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    Germany
    Problem

    Hello all

    short introduction: i m from germany nearly 50 years old and try to play your game as often i can. its my favourite card game on the ios.

    i think you made a good job on your first expansion but since i installed it i have a big problem. i installed the iphone app, tested it and when i launched it on my ipad all my different decks were gone. i had spare gold (about 1k) and bought different card packs....all is gone I hade lvl 17 and now im on 1

    Is there a solution...i think you can check former level on game center and check gold buys on the store....

    A little help would be appreciated.....Thanks
     
  6. Lechatcurieux

    Lechatcurieux Well-Known Member

    Sep 12, 2012
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    London
    Hi Krossek, I'm sure the goblins will help you out. There's a Contact Us form on the News icon which might get to them sooner than waiting for them to read here.

    I had the same thing so I thought I'd point out what I'd done wrong incase it helps anyone.

    I was backing up to iCloud on both devices, but the problem was that in settings>iCloud> I did not have 'documents and data' checked (and (i think) this is the one that stores data about previous purchases and decks).

    I'm not very technical, but I'd say anyone setting up on iPhone should do an iCloud backup (with docs and data turned on) first, that way you can always get back to where you were.




    Good game there Sheinfell though you caught me on the hop. I had my anti-Titonia deck installed and after every game I was scrabbling round trying to change deck then your invites were overriding it lol. I got a message saying 'you have no valid decks installed'.

    Next time my friend. Congratulations on level 50! We can all refer to you as 'Supreme Warmage' on the boards here if you like :)
     
  7. Sheinfell

    Sheinfell Well-Known Member

    May 14, 2012
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    Hi Krossek,

    nice to see another German around :) if you feel like it, we can play sometime. My GamecenterID is Null/Zone.
    Like the Cat said, best to contact the Goblins. They are really nice and helpful. While I am quite technical, I cannot come up with any good idea what could cause this behaviour.

    @Cat: Really good games, thanks. Sorry I had to hop after game four, but our little one decided to fill his diapers big time, so I had some biohazard containment duties to do ;)
    And you got me well enough in games 2 and 3, the deck you used is pretty good. Might have to finetune my new Undead deck, I only scrapped it together quickly yesterday.

    Question: What happened in one of the last rounds of game 3 with your Underdark Worm? If I saw that right, it went straight through my Bone Dragon, doing direct damage to me, without you using a Burrowing Under card.
     
  8. Sheinfell

    Sheinfell Well-Known Member

    May 14, 2012
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    Bugs and Feedback for the new version

    Bugs first:
    On top of the ones I mentioned earlier comes this one:
    Except for the Triton Aquamancer, I can activate all abilities that specifically say "against enemy minion only" against enemy barriers. They use up the minion's action and mana if needed, but do not have any effect. As the Aquamancer can correctly distuingish between minions and barriers, all other cards should do the same.
    Example cards: Bone Dragon, Darkling Assassin.

    Feedback/Questions:
    Ravenous Ghoul:
    How exactly does the Ravenous Ghoul's ability work? Does it only trigger when a minion is the top card of the enemy discard pile? From the description, I take it that he should take the first minion in the discard pile he encounters. Also, what happens when you have several of the Ghouls out? And what happens to the minion? Does it disappear from the pile, and thus from the match, completely?

    Flesh Golem:
    The Flesh Golems shouldn't cause damage to you upon playing: For the -1 lifeloss alone, they are about the worst 1 mana card around. The 2/1 stat hardly can set that off.

    Necromages:
    Their ability is horribly unbalanced/underpowered.
    Let's compare them to the Aquamancer, the card that has almost the same ability, only better:
    Both cost 2 mana. Aqua only has 1/1, but quick. Necro's ability costs 1 mana, while Aqua only needs a use. Worst of all, the Necro ability does 1 life damage to you, while the Aqua's ability adds +1 health to the minion.
    For the cost of 1 mana AND 1 life, I would expect 2 damage to enemy minion.
    How about turning the "1 damage to you" into "gives you 1 life", like a lifedrain? That is the best I can come up with right away.

    Howling Banshees:
    As much as I like them, but when played right they feel a bit overpowered. Mostly because you can get a chain going, when you have several of them out, and one is not opposed. In some fights vs. AI, I managed to juggle an enemy minion between 3 Banshees, which is quite devastating. Even for the cost of 1 power, this ability is brutal when used right.
     
  9. Steve at ThreeGoblins

    Steve at ThreeGoblins Well-Known Member

    Sep 10, 2012
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    Game Designer and Teacher
    Tokyo

    Firstly hello all.

    I have just got home from a long-haul flight so I actually missed the update by about 16000 feet and 16 hours.

    Krossek, very happy to hear you like the game.

    The scenario you describe is what happens when players updates iOS software on a new device before updating it on an older device. I've done then same myself on another game (not a CCG). We need to make players aware of this.

    Try this :

    (1) update your ipad version
    (2) run it so it does a sync
    (2) stop it running from the ipad run menu
    (3) run it again and let it sync again

    That should fix it.

    If not, don't panic, just email us on [email protected]
    I have told Mike (tech goblin extraordinaire) and he will help you out ASAP.


    Regards
    Steve, ThreeGoblins
     
  10. Steve at ThreeGoblins

    Steve at ThreeGoblins Well-Known Member

    Sep 10, 2012
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    Game Designer and Teacher
    Tokyo
    Spellcraft Icon.

    OK, mostly people don't like it. Even on of us doesn't like it on reflection.
    The idea was to change it with it each expansion but ..well..scrap that!

    We will restore the fey lady with the next update - which will be early 2012.


    After that small update, we then aim to release the Air faction about 2 months after that.


    Steve @ ThreeGoblins
     
  11. Steve at ThreeGoblins

    Steve at ThreeGoblins Well-Known Member

    Sep 10, 2012
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    Game Designer and Teacher
    Tokyo
     
  12. Steve at ThreeGoblins

    Steve at ThreeGoblins Well-Known Member

    Sep 10, 2012
    173
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    Game Designer and Teacher
    Tokyo
    Hi Sheinfell.

    Thank you for your very excellent post. I will attempt to answer many of your points now.

    Briefly:

    Cards are not necessarily precisely balanced with each and every other card.

    What! Why?

    (1) Because difficult to achieve and actually impossible to prove. It might look balanced in situations A B and C, but suddenly D is discovered where it is totally overpowered.

    (2) A cards faction will determine if it gets a slight edge or not. Eg expect direct damage Fire spells to be the best for the mana, compared to say a Forest card that might exist to do direct damage.

    (3) Casting cost in SC is quite deceiving when compared to other mana-games which can have open-ended mana pools. SC costs are more non-linear than others, if maths is your thing.

    (4) It doesn't always matter since if you are playing Ocean , you will be generally using Ocean cards for the bulk of the deck. The fact that a Swamp exists that might be slightly better or worse doesn't affect you massively, since you won't be using it. If you really think its better, you can use it.

    (5) Some cards on first viewing seem weak. There are circumstances where they perform savagely. It is those circumstances we prepare for as best we can. I known you know this , but I include for completeness!

    But yes, if after lots and lots of games, when we can analyse the results more, we are not above making slight changes. The odd mana cost here and there, that kind of thing, as you saw from this update. And your comments have been carefully noted.

    Hope that gives an insight into our approach.

    Steve @ ThreeGoblins
     
  13. Steve at ThreeGoblins

    Steve at ThreeGoblins Well-Known Member

    Sep 10, 2012
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    Game Designer and Teacher
    Tokyo
    And specific answers to the lovely Ravenous Ghoul....


    How exactly does the Ravenous Ghoul's ability work? Does it only trigger when a minion is the top card of the enemy discard pile? From the description, I take it that he should take the first minion in the discard pile he encounters.

    Yes,it finds the topmost minion. The topmost minion might well be 4 cards down, but it finds it.

    Also, what happens when you have several of the Ghouls out?
    They each search the discard pile for good, one after another. Probably left to right.

    And what happens to the minion? Does it disappear from the pile, and thus from the match, completely
    It is removed from the match forever.


    Steve, ThreeGoblins
     
  14. Talbs

    Talbs Well-Known Member

    May 1, 2011
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    Having a go at the iPhone version now. So far pretty much a reflection of the iPad app,waning it works well, but things can be hard to read.

    One thing? How do we get our progress from our iPad version over to this?
    Is that possible and how does it work? I think I remember seeing this would be possible. But not seeing how to do it right now.
     
  15. Sheinfell

    Sheinfell Well-Known Member

    May 14, 2012
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    Yes, that is exactly what I meant. That the Assassin and Bone Dragon, for example, can only target minions make sense to me as well (I arrived at the same explanation you gave :p ) .

    As for the card balance:
    I think you explained that once already, that you aim to balance faction against faction, and not card vs. card. And I really like that approach, quite refreshing and makes for a nice difference.
    With the Necromages I could not help to compare them to the Aquamancer. Simply because I use the Aquamancer alot, so the differences were rather obvious to me. I still think the Necromage should be improved, but will of course trust your judgement on the matter.

    And thanks for clarifiying on the Ravenous Ghoul ability.

    Last for now, one more question:
    Does the "have 20 minions in your discard pile" achievement only trigger when you win the match? Or is it enough to just have them in there? Also, if triggers only at win, do it have to be exactly 20 minions, or is it 20+x?

    Will put that one on the backburner, and work on the other two new brainteaser achievements. I like the challenges you bring with those special achievements, they really force me to think out of the box, and come up with solutions for each one.
     
  16. Steve at ThreeGoblins

    Steve at ThreeGoblins Well-Known Member

    Sep 10, 2012
    173
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    Game Designer and Teacher
    Tokyo

    Yes the iPhone version is of course pretty small. However, I am confident that after playing quite a lot of games, you don't need to read the cards very often. At that point only the strength/health is of prime immediate importance, which I believe (and hope!) is big enough to read. When you really need to check a card's wording, the zoom-in feels big enough to me. Do you agree?

    We could've resigned the game to zoom about different areas of the board but I feel that's clumsy, not consistent with the iPad version and a nightmare as we'd have two quite seperated apps.

    Let us know if you still feel the same way after a few days. I am not a regular iPhone user myself so I find everything on the iPhone too small, after coming from an iPad background.

    Regards
    Steve, Three Goblins
    http://www.spellcraft-ccg.com/
     
  17. Steve at ThreeGoblins

    Steve at ThreeGoblins Well-Known Member

    Sep 10, 2012
    173
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    Game Designer and Teacher
    Tokyo
    Spellcraft animated trailer

    Not sure if anyone has noticed the Spellcraft animated trailer on the website. :)

    It's on the left, under the title.

    http://www.spellcraft-ccg.com/
     
  18. Steve at ThreeGoblins

    Steve at ThreeGoblins Well-Known Member

    Sep 10, 2012
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    Game Designer and Teacher
    Tokyo
    20 or more. Triggers anytime something goes to the discard pile.


    Steve, ThreeGoblins
     
  19. Krossek

    Krossek Member

    Dec 20, 2012
    16
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    Germany
    Thanks for the fast answers. i will try it this evening cause teh ipad is at home. I hope i will be able to rescue my beloved blue/green ocean deck :)
     
  20. Krossek

    Krossek Member

    Dec 20, 2012
    16
    0
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    Germany
    Just had few moments to test the iphone version. The AI seems to be much more clever now. Grats ! Blocking the shark has now higher priority and now it moves defensive cards to avoid attacking...:)
     

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