💰 Resource System

Draft

This page is a draft and is subject to change.

The resource system is the core functionality in the game which provides a balanced experience for all players.

Due to the nature of this game, a complex resource system is required, because players are allowed to compose their own cards and decks.

Basic resource sytem idea

Players receive Runes as a currency to play cards.

1. Equal Start:

   • All players begin with an even resource allocation for a fair start.

2. Turn-by-Turn Growth:

   • Resources steadily increase with a small increment each turn.

3. Card Recycling:

   • Played cards can be sold for resources, offering dynamic resource management.

4. Combat Rewards:

   • Destroying opponent cards in combat phases yields additional resources, encouraging strategic gameplay.

Challenges

• Balanced gameplay. While players are allowed to create their own cards, creating overpowered cards should be counteracted by driving up the cost of the card.
• Dynamic card actions. Since card actions can come into play at any time, the resource system needs to be able to handle dynamic card actions.

Solution

Traditional card games often use a resource system when playing cards. This would not hold up in Rune Rising, because a player could easily create a broken card, which for example, have a huge damage output depending on the game state.

To counteract this, the resource system is not just used for playing cards, but also for card actions. This means that every card action has a cost, which is deducted from the player's resources.

Let's say a player has a card in the game that "deals 1 damage to the opponent for every card in the opponent's hand". The cost of this card action could be proportional to the number of cards in the opponent's hand.

But for this idea to work, there needs to be a way in the game to increase the player's resources, otherwise the gameplay would be very limited to similar action strengths.

How to progress during a game

To allow a player to make stronger moves later in a game there are a few options:

• Growing resources. Give the players an option to increase their resources pool.
• Buffing actions
  • For example one card could affect how much damage another card does.
  • Or a card's cost could to deal damage could be reduced by some factor.

How can we prevent a player to play a card that infinitly buffs another card? Simply by also increasing the cost to play a card that buffs another card.

By giving players some default resources, and the resources reset every turn, they can slowly start playing buff cards, which in turn will allow them later to play stronger cards or better buff cards.

Card actions and their costs or rewards

Costing actions:

• Deal damage to enemy player. The cost could be proportional to the damage dealt.
• Deal damage to enemy creature. The cost could be proportional to the damage dealt.
• Heal friendly creature. The cost could be proportional to the amount of health healed.
• Heal friendly player. The cost could be proportional to the amount of health healed.
• Draw a card. The cost could be proportional to the number of cards drawn.
• Move cards. The cost could be proportional to the number of cards moved.

Rewarding actions:

• Deal damage to friendly player. The reward could be proportional to the damage dealt.
• Deal damage to friendly creature. The reward could be proportional to the damage dealt.
• Heal enemy creature. The reward could be proportional to the amount of health healed.
• Heal enemy player. The reward could be proportional to the amount of health healed.
• Discard a card. The reward could be proportional to the number of cards discarded.

Buffs and effects that could make a game interesting

@wip