Share ideas how to use community more in new card design

Well, the best way to create a set is to have a competent designer with a vision, and consult the community to have an idea of the problems, not to get solutions.

But of course, "competent [any jobs] with a vision" is extremely rare, if at all possible. Still, the main and very real problem with trying to create cards with a whole forum is that the cards will be way too consensual and will not have a precise direction or vision.

In short, the process can gain being visible, so that the decisions are motivated. It will not gain from being consultative, because I highly prefer the work of a focused man with a vision than the common ground between the members of a forum.

Ashur wrote:

Do you have any good examples of "a competent designer with a vision" being better than using a community?

To be frank, it's more the reverse : I never seen a community-driven project being really of top quality, while I have seen non-community-driven project being crazy good.

I have seen the community feedback well used, but not the community doing a better job than a central designer.

If you want a somewhat known example, I would point to the Call to Arm extension for Warlord (the deceased fantasy CCG of AEG). It was an entire extension designed by players submissions, and for me it was clearly subpar for Warlord.

You may argue that filtered card submission is not the same as what you want. I don't care. I have seen a lot of RPG materiel based on the cooperative community system, and it never, ever, was as good as what a dedicated team could do.

It can also be seen in cooperative programs. Even with all the love for Linux that I have, I have seen numerous problems that all were coming from the lack of direction.

The main problem here again is that without a definitive leader, you will have consistency, direction, and "politically correct"* problems, while not adding a suffisant amount of imagination, or anything else that really compensate.

* by "politically correct", I mean that a leader can force decisions based on its visions even if it is highly controversial. A community-driven decision, by definition, will curb any controversial decisions. And a lot of excellents ideas appears really bad before being executed.

Ashur wrote:

1.) Official card design contest. Cards are posted, discussed, playtested, taken through jurys and polls. One card like once each 3 months, to be included in next set.

This is somewhat difficult to manage effectively, and needs some thought.

(I'll proceed assuming that only the top card - one card - gets through. But it's similar if you have the best N cards get through.)


Say there are 8 cards released to be discussed, voted upon, playtested, and amended. One gets through. This is (roughly speaking) fine.

Now, a few months later, the designers release a new batch to be considered in the same way. What do you do with the previous set? Do you throw them all away? What if two, three, four of them were pretty damn good, it's just that Floppy's Dentures really captured the zeitgeist, or addressed a really critical need? Do the designers throw away Mystic Pizza Slice because it came third, even though they now have it pretty darn perfect? On the one hand, not throwing it away can be read as 'ignoring the community'. On the other, knowing that the other 7 cards will get thrown away can unintentionally encourage a mentality of 'packing peanuts' - put in only one or two really good cards and several mediocre cards (the peanuts), so that the good ones get through.

Similarly, if the designers decide to put a 'runner-up' into a set anyway, you can end up with howls of anguish about it being a slap in the face to the community - why spend time playtesting X, Y and Z when the designers are just going to put in what they want anyway? But when a worse card gets into the set, there are howls of anguish about that.

Managing expectations is hard.

Ashur wrote:

Do you have any good examples of "a competent designer with a vision" being better than using a community?

Steve Jobs. In both eras.