week #10 battle battle

This week I was introduced to a lot of new games and lessons. Getting to watch the video over the Harry Potter card game was really cool. I'm a huge fan of the franchise. I liked the video that showed us how to play. At first it seemed very complicated but after the video I feel like I got a good understanding of what the gameplay is like. Battle Battle is another game we discussed and played this week and I was also not familiar with this game. It was a great game experience because it tied into the lesson, which is balance. I feel like all my classmates had a good experience with Battle Battle and we all learned what balance means in a game setting. When playing Battle Battle, we got into two separate lines and played the person that was sitting across from us. While we played, we had time to go up against 3 different people and it was very different with each matchup. With the first person I played against, we didn't even get to finish three rounds because each round took so long. I would say it was very balanced though because we each got a win on each other. Neither one of us had a card that was completely overpowered, whether it was powers or number of hit points. The last two people that I played against, things were a lot harder. I think I lost every single round, but one. I sort of discovered that my card could use a little tweaking to make it stronger. The card that I primarily used was the Vampire card, which is one of the characters I created. At the start of class my vampire card had three hit points and 1 token. His powers granted you to add three to your roll, with the use of a token. I didn't realize at the time how weak of a card it was until actually playing against others in the class. After so many losses, I decided to up the hit points and also increase the tokens. After making those changes, the rounds were a lot closer and took a lot longer. I learned that no one had perfect cards. They all could use some feedback and some adjustment. When playing a game like this, it is not very fun winning every round so easily. It's also not very exciting when your card loses every time as well because it stands no chance. "Players want to feel that the forces working against them do not have an advantage that will make them impossible to defeat." (Schell, Ch. 13). I feel like I put so much effort into making sure my card wasn't too overpowered, that I didn't make my card strong enough. It's very hard to keep things balanced because everyone's cards were created by them selves and everyone wants to win. I think most of us were thinking the goal is to create a card that will get us a win instead of making a balanced card. “Whether to introduce this kind of balancing depends on whether your game is meant to be a standard measure of player’s skill.” (Schell, Ch.13) In conclusion, it was very fun getting to put our created characters to the test and see how well they matched up against others. Battle Battle is very creative game and does not get repetitive. It will help us a lot in making our own game and coming up with villains.