Messages

16

Announcements / Re: How can I help?

« on: November 21, 2013, 12:17:36 AM »

Wow... it's great to see all these names I remember from back in the day coming back to SpiritWars.

FYI - my SpiritWars name was "Kevin"

17

General Development Notes / Re: Looking for Beta Testers

« on: November 20, 2013, 01:42:15 AM »

HAPPY BIRTHDAY LYN!!!!!

18

General Development Notes / Wikia page

« on: November 03, 2013, 03:50:28 AM »

Not sure which forum to put this in, but I was thinking about a wikia page for the upcoming re-release of SpiritWars.  I wrote almost the entire wiki page a couple years ago, but it isn't a true wiki page.

I was curious if there was ever a wikia page and found this...

http://spiritwars.wikia.com/wiki/Spirit_Wars

Apparently, there's another game called Spirit Wars and it has a wikia page.

I don't really know the difference between a wiki page and a wikia page to be honest. Just wanted to bring this to your attention.

19

Announcements / Re: How can I help?

« on: October 27, 2013, 06:34:19 PM »

Unfortunately, not many of my friends IRL or online are into CCG's, but I've already told the few who are about SW coming back.

Is there anywhere online that we can go advertise (not literally) about the return of SW, such as CCG forums, etc? 

I'd be glad to post my own reviews and opinions somewhere.  I might be able to capture some video as well of a couple games or a basic tutorial and post it YouTube.  I used to do a a tiny bit of video editing, but never was very successful at capturing video and not having it end up being a zillion Gigabytes.

I'd also be glad to help with writing a wikia page, or tutorial page, etc., once the game is back online.

20

Announcements / Re: How can I help?

« on: October 26, 2013, 11:41:34 PM »

I know a lot of people use Twitch nowadays to stream their games.  I've never streamed a game before, but have watched a lot of videos on Twitch of other people playing games.  It can be a lot of fun to watch some of the top players play and comment on their live games.  Someone should find The_Alchemist, Xerin, Minmaxer, etc. and talk them into streaming some games on Twitch.

Having players stream games and also posting a couple videos on YouTube of high quality games or even a tutorial might be a good way to get generate players and publicity.

21

Announcements / Re: Will I be able to buy and sell spirits (playing pieces)?

« on: October 26, 2013, 11:37:00 PM »

Yay!

I know I was one of the people who was talking about other possible revenue models, but one of the features I liked the most about the subscription model was that everyone had completely unique collections and you didn't see very many identical decks.  Of course you always see a lot of the common/uncommon cards like Spotted Leopards, Barbarian Raiders, Arabian Knights, etc, but the rare cards were pretty rare and a lot of them were pretty fun and unique to build your decks around.  I think you see a lot more variety with the subscription model, including within your own collection.  I was the kind of player that enjoyed resetting my population every 30 days no matter what because I enjoyed the variety.

22

General Development Notes / Re: The Resume of a G33k

« on: October 25, 2013, 03:14:47 PM »

LOL... I remember the good ole days of DOS.  I'm not old enough to remember DOS 1.0, I'm 42, but I  know I was using DOS 2.x when we got our brand new 286 IBM clone with a 24-pin dot matrix printer and 5 1/4 inch floppy drive for the low price of $3500. Prior to that I remember programming games in BASIC on my Atari 800XL a few years after my Intellivision was obsolete. I also remember connecting to the internet in the early 1990s on my 1200bps modem through BBS's when no one knew what the hell the internet was and there was nothing on it.  Ahh, the good ole days of local BBS's, with trivia, MUDs, TradWars 2002, etc.

Believe it or not, I bet you'll run into a lot of old timers on here that started playing in the late 1990s who also have a g33ky background.

23

News / Re: BIG BIG BIG NEWS!!!

« on: October 23, 2013, 10:49:04 PM »

Hello Bret and welcome to SpiritWars! 

And most of all, thanks for taking on this project. I'm sure a lot of people will love to hear the great news and will be looking forward to the beta test.

24

News / Re: BIG BIG BIG NEWS!!!

« on: October 20, 2013, 12:54:57 AM »

OMG!!!!  This is great news and I'm glad to hear that you are staying with the subscription format.  Where do I sign up?!?!?!? 

I've probably tried at least 100+ CCG's on the internet since SpiritWars went offline and none of them are close to as good as SpiritWars.  The one thing I really appreciated about SpiritWars compared to all these other CCG's is that it wasn't pay-to-win or whoever plays the most and collects the most cards wins.  Rare and ultra rare cards, dieties, etc. were actually rare and you didn't play against 15-20 of them every game. There were positive and negative migrations so each player's card collection was dynamic and frequently changing which helped the game to stay fresh.

Lyn, let me be the first of many people to say...

THANK YOU, THANK YOU, THANK YOU to you and your family for not giving up and keeping Randy's creation alive. Randy was a great guy that I was fortunate enough to get to know online and play several games against.

25

News / Re: Progress???

« on: October 07, 2013, 02:07:57 PM »

Good luck! 

I keep checking back in here every once in a while because I fell in love with this game back in 1998-99 shortly after it came online and played it for 7 or 8 years until it was taken down.  Over the years I have tried and played hundreds of online CCG's.  The best CCG's I have played have been the hybrids that combine CCG's with Board Games (map).  I have only played a handful of CCG's that were also board games similar to SpiritWars, but SpiritWars was clearly the best of those. The random maps and Fog of War are so much better than the vanilla CCG's with the boring battlefields that most CCG's have where you just drop a creature card onto a board position or lane.  There's so much more strategy with the map, terrain (homelands), castle, etc, that is lacking in regular CCG's that will be a fresh and welcomed feature to many new players.

I think SpritWars was a game well before its time.  Back when this game first came online, we were still connecting to the internet via 56kbps modems and there were barely over 100 million people online worldwide, now there's over 3 billion.  Online CCG's weren't popular at the time and probably because not many people knew about them or had played any of them at the time. Nowadays even the crappiest of online CCG's have thousands of players.

I really think this game, which came online about 15 years ago, is still the best online CCG I've ever played BY FAR and would be incredibly popular.  I hope you can get this game back online again in the near future because I think it would be a huge success with very minimal modifications (mostly graphical and UI updates).

Lyn, I've talked to you on the phone before in the past (a few years ago) and at the time I wasn't sure if I had the time or programming experience to try to revive the game.  If things don't work out with the programmers you're talking to, please let me know.  I would be interested in giving it a shot or helping out in any way possible to get the game back online.

Once again, good luck and I hope all is well with you and your family.

26

Forum Bugs, Suggestions, Complaints / Re: Suggestions for SpiritWars 2013

« on: February 09, 2013, 03:35:07 PM »

There were definitely first move decks that worked, but it was the exception and not the norm.  I really think the combat system needs to be tweaked/revamped to remove the first turn/second turn disparity. 

There really shouldn't be a difference between 1st and 2nd move.  It just creates waaaaay too many problems with balancing, fairness, exploiting, fun, etc.

27

News / Re: Status update + input needed

« on: January 07, 2013, 02:57:53 PM »

Tomato, tomato.  I recall at one point they even put some sort of "equivalent trading value" rule in place, to try to prevent players from ripping other players off and/or giving away valuable cards away by mistake.  Any sort of trade mechanic that requires so many crutches and scotch tape to be held together is probably better off ceasing to exist altogether.

I agree. I thought the non-trade version of the game was 100x better.

28

News / Re: Status update + input needed

« on: January 07, 2013, 10:09:21 AM »

I could see a pack having a chance for a rare... or some deal where with every 2-3 packs you buy you get a rare. But the problem there still is if you don't put out enough new spirits a person with enough money can basically buy their self an amazingly powerful dungeon.

And I would, if at all possible, avoid a scenario where he who has the most money has all the toys.

But you also have to make money too.

I could see having packs of cards that are only flatlands/drylands, or other combinations like that. I dunno... it will be a work in progress... and it will need to be fluid with the current gaming situations.

But first I hope Mom is having some luck with a programmer.

Neo, I've played a lot of different CCG's.  Some of them are pretty good at minimizing the Pay-to-Win (P2W) scenario of "he who has the most money has all the toys".

Remember, 256 out of 506 of the spirits currently in SW are Rare or Ultra Rare.  As long as you limit how easily/quickly someone can earn/accrue rares, then I don't think it will get out of hand.  Even if someone can buy a pack that is guaranteed to contain 1 rare/ultra card, they'd still have to buy hundreds of packs (probably ~$1000) to get them all.  Also, remember that currently a lot of the rare cards aren't that great/powerful, so getting an ultra rare card doesn't mean that you're automatically getting an extremely powerful card like Diana/Baldur/Grim Reaper, you might get a weak ultra rare like Tribute/Sunken Warship/Forest Chapel.

Of course, as a business, you can't limit how many packs of cards someone buys with real money.  If someone wants to spend $500-$1000 hundreds of packs of cards, they're going to end up with almost every card in the game.   

One way some CCG's keep things from getting out of hand is by offering different game options/rulesets.  I'm not one of them, but there are A LOT of CCG players out there that love playing with uber decks filled with rares/ultra rares/dieties/etc.  If we're talking about rebuilding a game based on hundreds or thousands of players being online at a time, then you can easily offer multiple options for rulesets/game-types.  For example...

     Beginner Ruleset - 30+ card deck, limit 4 Rares
     Limited Ruleset - 30+ card deck, limit 2 Ultra Rares, 6 Rares
     Open Ruleset - 30+ card deck, no card limits
     Weekly (Rotating) Ruleset - Varying rulesets, eg - "no archers", "no dieties", "Open but no Ultra Rares", or maybe a theme

I think the other thing is that a lot of CCG's are now offering is tournaments.  Drafts and Sealed Pack tournaments are extremely popular in most CCG's that I've played and use a population of cards unique to that tournament.  Other tournaments can be something like the old themed tournaments SW used to run, or use your own spirits but various different rulesets.

These types of options (rulesets and tournaments) will allow players to play the types of games that they prefer. 

We want to encourage players to purchase card packs.  The only way people are going to be interested in purchasing card packs is to get the rare and ultra rare spirits.

29

News / Re: Status update + input needed

« on: January 07, 2013, 07:28:58 AM »

@Xaxyx... That's not trading, that's exploiting.

As for migrations, I also believe they should be eliminated.  I think the negative migrations were a huge turn-off for people and probably led to a lot of /ragequit when someone had a few bad migs in a row. 

I don't think the old system/model of population migrations will work.  I think the best way to go is selling packs of cards like almost every other CCG.  Give players the option to either buy or earn cards.  No migrations between players and no loss of cards.

30

SpiritWars Discussion / Re: Spirit Gallery

« on: January 04, 2013, 01:38:23 PM »

I did upload it as an Excel spreadsheet. 

I believe you can download the spreadsheet from that link.  There's a download icon in the top left corner.  The spreadsheet also has filters built-in for easy sorting.  The spreadsheet is in Excel 2007/2010 format, so people with Excel 2003 might not be able to open it.  If that's the case, let me know and I'll upload an older version as well.