Top 5 Mistakes Designing Your Card Collection

Rovio © 2018 . All rights reserved
Show me the Loot!
Top 5 mistakes designing F2P collectibles
Elad Drory, 2018

Rovio © 2018. All wrongs reversed
❖ I’m Elad Drory
❖ Senior game designer at Rovio 🎲
❖ Focused on F2P RPGs
❖ Previously at TabTale and SideKick ✡
❖ Just had a baby 👶
About me

❖ What we mean by “Collectibles”
❖ Our top 5 mistakes
➢ Cards that are too useful
➢ No use for duplicate cards
➢ Drops that are too random
➢ Emphasizing drops instead of upgrades
➢ Reducing complexity and limiting yourself
❖ Q&A
What are we talking about?

❖ Items the player can use in the core game
❖ I’m going to call these Cards, but in some
games they can be Heroes, Gear pieces,
Runes, etc!
❖ Not resources like currencies or craft
materials!
What are “Collectibles”?

❖ We’re going to talk about the elements that
feed into the “collection” part of this loop
❖ What makes players want to continue
collecting and enjoying for years?
Collect
The Collection Loop
PlayUpgrade
Collect
GachaExchangeEvents

❖ We will focus on mid-core F2P games, such as:
➢ Angry Birds Evolution
➢ Star Wars: Galaxy of Heroes
➢ Clash Royale
❖ Many lessons are relevant for any game with
collection loops, including more casual fare:
➢ Idle Miner Tycoon
➢ Pokemon Go
What do I mean by “RPG”?

Let’s get going :)

Mistake #1
Making some cards TOO useful

❖ A classic mistake is allowing players to get through
the game with only a few strong cards
❖ If you make cards that are UNIVERSALLY USEFUL,
or overpowered, all other items will be less desirable
#1 - Making some cards TOO useful
Overpowered Cards

❖ You should also make items DISTINCTLY USEFUL
❖ Even if your cards are balanced, you don’t want any
good card to fit any challenge
❖ The fun in an RPG is collecting, upgrading, and
strategizing about best teams - if that stops after one
good team, players become bored
❖ We made this mistake at the launch of AB Evolution -
players only needed one team of 5 birds
Non-Distinct Cards

❖ Give players the incentive to keep enjoying
collection and progression
❖ We do this via game rules:
➢ Gates
➢ Boosts
➢ Meta Balance
Encourage collection diversity

❖ A “gate” is a hard requirement, for example “Only
red birds can enter this dungeon”
❖ Star Wars Galaxy of Heroes uses this extensively
❖ It’s also how the AB Evolution team solved the
initial diversity problem! Suddenly players needed
5 teams (1 for each color)
Diversity via GATES

❖ A boost is a gameplay bonus for a specific card
❖ For example, “Red birds get double damage in this
dungeon!”
Diversity via BOOSTS

❖ Gates are easier to understand for players, “You
need this to play”
❖ I recommend using gates most times
❖ However, boosts are better for multiplayer or
leaderboard based competition
❖ When you want as much participation as possible,
it’s best not to gate players
❖ Legendary Game of Heroes uses boosts really well
in their Raid Boss events
What to use - Gates or Boosts?

❖ “The metagame” is the strategies players create around
the game - what are the best cards for what situation?
❖ Creating a diverse metagame is the toughest, but most
rewarding way of encouraging collection diversity
❖ Special abilities, counter-attacks, and synergy all create
need for diverse cards
❖ Every new card increases the matrix of possible teams,
and breathes life into your old cards
Diversity via metagame balance

❖ It’s easy to introduce new cards that are better than
the previous ones, creating power creep
❖ Power creep is inevitable over time, especially in
more PvE based games, but keep it contained
❖ Players won’t want to keep collecting if you keep
making their hard-earned cards obsolete
❖ Make sure to re-use older cards in your event
schedule
Try not to de-value past cards

Summary:
Don’t make cards broadly useful,
encourage a diverse collection
through new rules

Mistake #2
No use for duplicates

❖ If your game has no use for duplicate items,
getting them again will just be frustrating
❖ If you remove duplicates from the drop tables
entirely, you’ll mess up your economy
❖ So we need duplicates, but what do they do?
#2 - No use for duplicates
Your Economy Needs Duplicates

❖ Each time a player gets a collectible, it has value, even
if it’s a LOWER EXCHANGE VALUE
❖ There are 2 basic models of doing this:
➢ Fusion Model
➢ Token Model
❖ Each of these models requires additional layers in the
end-game, which I’ll discuss
Exchanging Cards

❖ In a fusion game you can get multiple copies of
the same card
❖ Cards can be sacrificed to power up others
❖ In theory, any card you acquire but don’t use, is
still useful as fusion material
Fusion model

❖ The token model only allows owning one copy
of each card
❖ Cards are unlocked, then upgraded when
duplicates are collected
❖ Heroes aren’t transferable and don’t tie into
each other’s progression, so there is more risk
of getting a “useless” drop
❖ Token games use more collection diversity
features for this reason
Token model

❖ No one actually uses high end gacha monsters
as feed
❖ In Puzzle and Dragons - rare monsters can be
sold for Monster Points, which can be used to
purchase valuable items
❖ In Summoners War you can “Craft” awesome
monsters out of other monsters
Fusion model - endgame

❖ What happens when you go past the max
tokens on a card?
❖ Need an overflow currency
❖ For example - “Shard fragments” that you get
for every token above max
❖ Not having this in the early days of your game
can be a disaster to fix in Live
❖ You can also add exchanging of cards as in
Clash Royale
Token model - endgame

Summary:
Don’t forget to make duplicate cards
useful, and make sure you plan for
end-game

Mistake #3
Drops that are too random

❖ Your players aren’t stupid - and they don’t like
throwing money away
❖ If the gacha is too random and frustrating, you’re
going to see very low engagement with it
❖ This relates to the above mistakes! Less need to
roll if drops are “worthless” or I don’t need new
cards
#3 - Drops that are too random
Players understand value

Safety Nets
❖ A safety net is any system that mitigates risk.
In this case the risk of random spin,
❖ We want to help players progress towards the
collectibles they’re chasing

❖ Hidden pity counter - behind-the-scenes, ensures
you will get something valuable after X spins
Example safety nets

❖ Visible pity counter - same, but players can see it
counting
Example safety nets

counting
❖ Guarantees on 10-spin - encourages buying
higher amounts, and guarantees certain item like
4-star+ hero, or featured/event hero
Example safety nets

counting
❖ Guarantees on 10-spin - encourages buying higher
amounts, and guarantees certain item like 4-star+
hero, or featured/event hero
❖ Currency drops - dust, ether, credits, etc. This
currency will allow you to buy specific items directly
Example safety nets

❖ Gacha is never truly safe, and everyone prefers a
guaranteed item
❖ This is where the fear and random nature of gacha
acts as a value anchor for real money offers
❖ If I know I could spend real money to buy a
collectible that takes forever to drop randomly, I’m
more likely to find the value
Gacha as a value anchor

Summary:
Don’t make your gacha so scary,
help players chase cards with
safety nets!

Mistake #4
Focusing on drops instead
of upgrades

❖ Chasing something for a long time, then not being
able to do much with it, leads to a disappointed feeling
❖ This feeling gets worse the longer you chase the item
❖ It’s better to be generous with your drops - But how do
we do that without damaging monetization?
#4 - Focusing on drops instead of upgrades
The drop is not the goal

❖ If you design your systems right, you can afford to
be more generous
❖ Upgrading the card to useful state requires more
time and money than unlocking
❖ Getting the drop is a hook - now you have a shiny
new toy to play with and upgrade
❖ Hook for new synergy opportunities, so you want to
unlock more cards to match
Make it about the UPGRADE

Example Unlock vs Upgrade costs
Tokens Level Gear Skills
Low
Unlock
3 days
Level 45
250k gold
Tier 5
4 days
Beta
2 days
Mid
5 star
19 days
Level 60
1.1mil
Tier 9
14 days
Gamma
15 days
Max
7 star
42 days
Level 85
6.5mil
Tier 12
89 days
+ Raids
Omega and Zeta
Raids + Events
❖ Total: 131 days worth of stamina, 6.5 million gold, months of raids+events
❖ For a simple farmable character - rare characters cost much more time!

Summary:
Don’t make getting the card the goal,
let players enjoy it, and invest in
the journey to upgrade!

Mistake #5
Limiting yourself for simplicity

❖ The reason players want to spend in the first place,
is that the cards are powerful and desirable
❖ You want to see your players theory-crafting
around the best teams and combos!
#5 - Limiting yourself for simplicity
A Deep Metagame is Key

❖ At Rovio, we think a lot about how to make
approachable games for the whole world
❖ With our mid-core games, we have to find a
balance between approachable and deep
❖ It’s easy to mistake “dumbed down” for
approachable, but you should never sacrifice depth
Don’t confuse simple with
approachable

Example of deep but approachable
A wealth of parameters lets Clash Royale introduce fresh, interesting cards

❖ There’s really no easy fix to making your own
game great
❖ Make sure you create enough depth of
parameters to play with, upgrade, and make
choices around
❖ If you’re having fun with your design, your
players will too!
Give yourself a big enough toolbox!

Good luck
&
Thank you!

Top 5 Mistakes Designing Your Card Collection

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