Back to collectionFifty Self-Played Matches Put the First Card Values to Work
Background: The card auto-battler’s direction was set, and the team was moving from concept toward rules people could play. Today: The first card values were ready, and the designer played fifty matches against herself. Impact and next: For the first time, the rules had an operational set of values, shifting discussion from speculation on paper to concrete matches.
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Background: The card auto-battler’s direction was set, and the team was moving from concept toward rules people could play. The balance designer needed to find out whether combinations produced one dominant strategy. If even the designer could not tell why a match was won or lost, later tests would yield little usable feedback.
Today: The first card values were ready, and the designer played fifty matches against herself. Switching sides across repeated games let her watch for an overpowered card or an unbalanced combination and test values that had merely seemed reasonable on paper in actual turns. Fifty matches were not a balance verdict; they were material for the first round of diagnosis.
Impact and next: For the first time, the rules had an operational set of values, shifting discussion from speculation on paper to concrete matches. But self-play lacked the choices and surprises of different players. The next step was to organize the questions that surfaced, then see which adjustments held up once the prototype allowed more people to join.