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[popsofctown]

I played Seasons the other night, and it was yet another time I saw this recurring mechanic in non-Dominion games, that you spend the resource that directly determines who wins and loses in order to get stuff, generally stuff that will get you more of that resource than you invested.


In Terra Mystica you kinda do that with power gains.  Sometimes that turned things into calculations where you could turn around and reclaim the VP right back somehow, but most of the time it is a pretty abstract investment.  In seasons the investment was not really that abstract at all.  The game lasts 12 seasons, and I had this one card that said, "Pay 3 VP chips to use this.  Every time the seasons change, steal 1 VP chip from your opponent. Worth 7 VP"  It takes up a slot, which is somewhat of a strategic choice thing going on, you might want to save your slots for other ongoing things like this.  But overall it just kinda seemed like 24+7-3, ok yeah, I wanna play this at some point in the game, probably sooner rather than later.  Later in the game it's worth less, so maybe I want the slot for something else.  But overall it's mostly a calculation thing.  It could say "Worth 4 VP, gain 2 VP chips for each season left to go this game", and it would be the same thing, but it feints this whole illusion of depth. 

I don't have an issue with Seasons in particular, Terra Mystica does this too, somewhat, and Smallworld does it, it's just phrased in a positive way instead of a negative way when you pick a race that doesn't have some bonus VPs on it.  What tends to be the biggest downer is that these games all had fixed lengths, which simplified the calculation when you deal with that stuff.  Seasons, Terra Mystica, and Smallworld all last X number of turns.  Which I guess is important to some people, but it's like, man maybe these are the people that are the reason I go to a movie and it cuts off after 2 hours and 10 minutes with a rapidly hustled climax and epilogue I have to leave disappointed. How long it takes is how long it takes.  The chick who had Seasons had quoted the amount of time all of her games are supposed to take as if that might be the most pivotal factor in how I choose which one to play with her, so maybe it's just that brand of people.  A lot of my favorite games like MtG, Dominion, and League of Legends take however long they take.

When games take however long they take, the spend-VP mechanic works quite a bit better, because there's this counterplay where the opposing player can push the game to its conclusion before you reclaim the lost ground.  You can spend life in MtG but it's risky, there's a delay before you can turn that into an equal life loss for your opponent.  Painlands were a cool popular thing in MtG, for the uninitiated those are cards that are not aligned with your chosen team, but let you use effects from another team (color) for a small life penalty. 

That wasn't very focused.  Stuff on my mind.  I think fixed length games really really pay a premium in terms of design freedom.  MtG games regularly go to time because of their poor length control, though.  That's why computerized implementations of games are pretty awesome, you can set up a timer, and players can adjust their play so that they think faster when the game is going mechanically slow, and think slower when the game is going mechanically fast, and be on time for the next step of their tournament or whatever. 

Making VP spends interesting is really important.  I think games that use it should be careful. 

[scott_pilgrim]

This is something that drives me crazy in games as well.  Like, in In the Year of the Dragon, you can buy a privilege that gives you 1 VP every turn for the rest of the game.  That sounds interesting, but then you realize that that's just like if you scored 12-x VP right now, where x is the current round number (there's a fixed 12 rounds per game).  I mean, it doesn't really make it any less interesting as a strategic choice, it's just that it feels like the designer was trying to obscure a straightforward option of "12-x VP" by calling it "1 VP per turn".  Plus, it means that you have to remember to score for privileges each round.

It can be an interesting mechanic though in games which have negative feedback mechanics that depend on players' relative scores throughout the game (like, games that penalize the current winning player or whatever).

[DG]

This is hidden in Dominion but it is still there. When you buy a victory card you have to think how many vp it will lose you in future draws (compared to spending from a treasure you could have bought instead). This is one way of determining when to buy duchies and estates.

[Kirian]

This is hidden in Dominion but it is still there. When you buy a victory card you have to think how many vp it will lose you in future draws (compared to spending from a treasure you could have bought instead). This is one way of determining when to buy duchies and estates.

Sure, but there's a big difference between "will this economic choice pay off in the long run," and "this will get me 8 points, but it's disguised as 'costing' 4.  A large part of that difference in the limited-rounds thing.

[WanderingWinder]

You can spend life in MtG but it's risky, there's a delay before you can turn that into an equal life loss for your opponent.

All I can think of is Necropotence

[popsofctown]

You can spend life in MtG but it's risky, there's a delay before you can turn that into an equal life loss for your opponent.

All I can think of is Necropotence

Is your point that you don't think there are other cards like that, or that Necropotence and it's friends don't have a similar function?

If it's the former, you can look up Sign in Blood, Dismember, Gitaxian Probe, Noxious Revival, Ad Nauseum, Bitterblossom, and Dark Confidant.

[WanderingWinder]

You can spend life in MtG but it's risky, there's a delay before you can turn that into an equal life loss for your opponent.

All I can think of is Necropotence

Is your point that you don't think there are other cards like that, or that Necropotence and it's friends don't have a similar function?

If it's the former, you can look up Sign in Blood, Dismember, Gitaxian Probe, Noxious Revival, Ad Nauseum, Bitterblossom, and Dark Confidant.

My point is that life is a very very expendable resource in MtG, and it's not often something that, at least in general, you feel that tense about giving up.

[Drab Emordnilap]

Well, not at that exchange rate, no. But "pay 5 life: draw a card" wouldn't be nearly as much of a given. The concept is the same; numbers are development's job.

[DG]

Remember also that many finance games award victory for accumulating cash. In some games any purchased assets retain value, in some games they do not, but the theme of paying victory points for assets is not new.

[Watno]

Yeah, I wanted to mention that. If the VP are called "money", I'm kinda confused if there is no such mechanic.

About Seasons: I think you're missing a lot of it's depth.
I'll list points where your suggessted rewording would differ. These aren't obscure edge cases, all of this has mattered in the less than 10 games I played.
1) You don't always have VP to pay for a card.
Most importantly, you don't have any VP at the start of the game. So, in order to get a VP-cost card into play, you first need to either sell elements, take a die that gives VP, or play a card that gives immediate VP. All of these are things you wouldn't want to do early if you wouldn't need the Vp to play a card. I've had games were VP for cards were extremely tough to get (there were 2 cards in play that require you to pay an extra VP to the owner whenever you play a card)
2) You're taking the VP away from your opponent(s)
This might lead to them not being able to play cards.
3) Your opponent(s) might not have VP to steal
If there is a lot of stealing going on, you can often delay getting VP until later, thus pereventing them from being stolen. There's even a card that steals a VP/turn, but destroys itself if there's nothing to steal.
4) If you get all the VP at once, you can dump the card at some point.
If the card effect is continuous, you can't just sacrifice the card for something.
5) There's a card that can turn back the time and thus cause additional changes of season (not that relevant though)
6) It works totally different with a different number of players (though you might argue that that's better)

Similar things apply to other cards with VP costs, and the benefit of most can't be easily calculated, since they respond to events of which you don't know how often they'll happen (When someone plays a card, or at the end of a turn)

Also, I don't think you can say that Seasons has a fixed game length. It lasts 12 seasons, but the important  thing is the number of turns, which varies depending on the dice that get take.
Length of a game also often correlates to its complixety and heaviness, I guess that's whyyou were told about them.

I really feel like üplaying Seasons some more now

[popsofctown]

You can spend life in MtG but it's risky, there's a delay before you can turn that into an equal life loss for your opponent.

All I can think of is Necropotence

Is your point that you don't think there are other cards like that, or that Necropotence and it's friends don't have a similar function?

If it's the former, you can look up Sign in Blood, Dismember, Gitaxian Probe, Noxious Revival, Ad Nauseum, Bitterblossom, and Dark Confidant.

My point is that life is a very very expendable resource in MtG, and it's not often something that, at least in general, you feel that tense about giving up.

It's a little more complicated than that.  Something in the ballpark of like 80% of decks play for card advantage and board position.  When those decks fight eachother, they spend life like a sailor on leave, the battle is to see who can get enough 2 for 1s to be that guy that has one more creature than the other and hold that 3 damage per turn advantage turn after turn.  Paying six life to reset that situation and go back to the 2-for-1 war is easily worthwhile.

Then there is aggressive decks, and "burn" decks.  They play a role in most standard metas, they have been part of the balance since I started following MtG back in Shards of Alara.  (Well, actually, I think they might have been underrepresented during SoA, can't recall, but they definitely came back and mattered after Volcanic Fallout http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?multiverseid=220512 was released in Conflux).  Burn decks are pretty much designed to punish these decks for trading life for card advantage all the time.  It's not always a straight up necropotence they are punishing, sometimes they punish how Rampant Growth spam does little in the way of blocking, or somesuch.

Burn and aggro decks usually aren't headliners, or exciting to talk about, they might not even flood top-8 all that much, but their presence does have an effect on what decks people choose to play.  Decks that can't transition to a defensive state in order to battle burn are less popular, and some of the reckless life payment is discouraged.  Cards that give you an option about whether or not to be defensive or trade life for 2-for-1's are really good for that reason.  That's among the (many, many, many) reasons that Jace, the Mind Sculptor (http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?multiverseid=373316) was a powerful card, he was able to ignore attacks and draw cards if he wanted to, or send enemy attackers back to hand if he found himself in a matchup against aggro.

Formats matter a lot with this stuff, as our palindromic friend remarks it's largely how the cards were designed.  In some formats, especially limited, life gets pretty expendable. 

Overall, MtG doesn't do an outright stellar job of making pay-life risky enough.  I have played another CCG that handled it much better, and intertwined card advantage and life totals more closely (stuff along the lines of, hey, we are both card advantage decks but he's kind of pressuring me, I have to block with Archivist. Doesn't happen as much as it should in Magic, and when it does it's a pretty hopeless affair).  But it's a card design issue more than a game structure issue. 

People really will side out Necropotence effects though.

[popsofctown]

Yeah, I wanted to mention that. If the VP are called "money", I'm kinda confused if there is no such mechanic.

About Seasons: I think you're missing a lot of it's depth.
I'll list points where your suggessted rewording would differ. These aren't obscure edge cases, all of this has mattered in the less than 10 games I played.
1) You don't always have VP to pay for a card.
Most importantly, you don't have any VP at the start of the game. So, in order to get a VP-cost card into play, you first need to either sell elements, take a die that gives VP, or play a card that gives immediate VP. All of these are things you wouldn't want to do early if you wouldn't need the Vp to play a card. I've had games were VP for cards were extremely tough to get (there were 2 cards in play that require you to pay an extra VP to the owner whenever you play a card)
2) You're taking the VP away from your opponent(s)
This might lead to them not being able to play cards.
3) Your opponent(s) might not have VP to steal
If there is a lot of stealing going on, you can often delay getting VP until later, thus pereventing them from being stolen. There's even a card that steals a VP/turn, but destroys itself if there's nothing to steal.
4) If you get all the VP at once, you can dump the card at some point.
If the card effect is continuous, you can't just sacrifice the card for something.
5) There's a card that can turn back the time and thus cause additional changes of season (not that relevant though)
6) It works totally different with a different number of players (though you might argue that that's better)

Similar things apply to other cards with VP costs, and the benefit of most can't be easily calculated, since they respond to events of which you don't know how often they'll happen (When someone plays a card, or at the end of a turn)

Also, I don't think you can say that Seasons has a fixed game length. It lasts 12 seasons, but the important  thing is the number of turns, which varies depending on the dice that get take.
Length of a game also often correlates to its complixety and heaviness, I guess that's whyyou were told about them.

I really feel like üplaying Seasons some more now

If an opponent doesn't have VP to steal, then you played the card so early that it is being crazy good.

The turn dependent VP cards have a fluctuating value, that's why I'm not criticizing them, just the change of seasons familiar dude.

Denying people from playing their cards because they have no VP seems like a longshot as a strategical choice since you can't see your opponent's hands.  Plus, players are probably less likely to select cards that cost VP for year 1 anyway.

I still think it's a pretty crappy card.  Doesn't mean it's a crappy game, I think Scout is a crappy card too.

[WanderingWinder]

You can spend life in MtG but it's risky, there's a delay before you can turn that into an equal life loss for your opponent.

All I can think of is Necropotence

Is your point that you don't think there are other cards like that, or that Necropotence and it's friends don't have a similar function?

If it's the former, you can look up Sign in Blood, Dismember, Gitaxian Probe, Noxious Revival, Ad Nauseum, Bitterblossom, and Dark Confidant.

My point is that life is a very very expendable resource in MtG, and it's not often something that, at least in general, you feel that tense about giving up.

It's a little more complicated than that.  Something in the ballpark of like 80% of decks play for card advantage and board position.  When those decks fight eachother, they spend life like a sailor on leave, the battle is to see who can get enough 2 for 1s to be that guy that has one more creature than the other and hold that 3 damage per turn advantage turn after turn.  Paying six life to reset that situation and go back to the 2-for-1 war is easily worthwhile.

Then there is aggressive decks, and "burn" decks.  They play a role in most standard metas, they have been part of the balance since I started following MtG back in Shards of Alara.  (Well, actually, I think they might have been underrepresented during SoA, can't recall, but they definitely came back and mattered after Volcanic Fallout http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?multiverseid=220512 was released in Conflux).  Burn decks are pretty much designed to punish these decks for trading life for card advantage all the time.  It's not always a straight up necropotence they are punishing, sometimes they punish how Rampant Growth spam does little in the way of blocking, or somesuch.

Burn and aggro decks usually aren't headliners, or exciting to talk about, they might not even flood top-8 all that much, but their presence does have an effect on what decks people choose to play.  Decks that can't transition to a defensive state in order to battle burn are less popular, and some of the reckless life payment is discouraged.  Cards that give you an option about whether or not to be defensive or trade life for 2-for-1's are really good for that reason.  That's among the (many, many, many) reasons that Jace, the Mind Sculptor (http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?multiverseid=373316) was a powerful card, he was able to ignore attacks and draw cards if he wanted to, or send enemy attackers back to hand if he found himself in a matchup against aggro.

Formats matter a lot with this stuff, as our palindromic friend remarks it's largely how the cards were designed.  In some formats, especially limited, life gets pretty expendable. 

Overall, MtG doesn't do an outright stellar job of making pay-life risky enough.  I have played another CCG that handled it much better, and intertwined card advantage and life totals more closely (stuff along the lines of, hey, we are both card advantage decks but he's kind of pressuring me, I have to block with Archivist. Doesn't happen as much as it should in Magic, and when it does it's a pretty hopeless affair).  But it's a card design issue more than a game structure issue. 

People really will side out Necropotence effects though.

I'm quite familiar with all of this - I *stopped* following MtG around the time Shards came out, and started again much more recently.
The thing is, my point was that life gain is not something which is inherently risky - Necropotence is one of the best cards in essentially every format you could ever play it in. It's just bonkers good. I mean, it's also that life is just very different than VP because it doesn't at all matter how much you have, as long as it's more than 0.
Card advantage is something that's really misunderstood. Card quality is also important. A deck of 25 divination and 15 island is really terrible, even though it has great card advantage. I mean, Lava Spike is just not a good card. Nor is Lava Axe, really. Reach Through Mists is card neutral (hey, I played a lot in Kamigawa block, deal with it), but it's awful if you aren't splicing. Healing Salve is AWFUL - especially if you're using it as lifegain.

But none of these mechanics are strong or weak in the abstract - it's all about the actual versions of cards which are made. If you printed a WG sorcery that gained you 50 life, it would be insanely good. Lava Spike is bad, but up it even one damage and it would be good - until good lifegain comes around, which actually counters burn-to-face really well. But generally, burn to your head is better than lifegain (in equal amounts!) because of the existence of creatures. Lifegain pushes the game longer, which gives more creatures more time, which isn't good.

So basically, at least from a historical/theoretical perspective, the aggro decks are just more important. Very roughly, you want to be just a little bit slower than your opponent. Your spells will be a little bigger, a little better, and you use that to win in the long haul. But of course, if you're too much slower, you'll get steamrolled by the aggressor before you can stabilize. Without doubt, it's a lot more complicated than that, but this is the general shape of things. But things are largely a power level of the specific implementations - i.e. the numbers matter. Necro shows, for instance, that 1 card is worth WAY more than 1 life. So, whatever, long story short, it's just another resource, and not really riskier, at least inherently, than any other resource.

[Tables]

This is slightly an aside but... I only know a bit about Magic, but what makes Necropotence even a vaguely good thing? The first two effects sound downright terrible for you, you permanently lose cards you'd otherwise maybe be able to still use, and Magic is primarily about cards, skipping your draw step is mostly bad unless you're afraid of getting decked. Then it gives you a gimped drawing ability back at the cost of life... I'm sure I must be missing something (probably multiple somethings) about this.

Edit: Aaand I just noticed there's a discussion tab, which mentions stuff like 'spend 19 life, draw 1/3rd of your deck', which made me realise that ability isn't limited to once per turn. Okay, right. Yeah. Wow.

[popsofctown]

You can spend life in MtG but it's risky, there's a delay before you can turn that into an equal life loss for your opponent.

All I can think of is Necropotence

Is your point that you don't think there are other cards like that, or that Necropotence and it's friends don't have a similar function?

If it's the former, you can look up Sign in Blood, Dismember, Gitaxian Probe, Noxious Revival, Ad Nauseum, Bitterblossom, and Dark Confidant.

My point is that life is a very very expendable resource in MtG, and it's not often something that, at least in general, you feel that tense about giving up.

It's a little more complicated than that.  Something in the ballpark of like 80% of decks play for card advantage and board position.  When those decks fight eachother, they spend life like a sailor on leave, the battle is to see who can get enough 2 for 1s to be that guy that has one more creature than the other and hold that 3 damage per turn advantage turn after turn.  Paying six life to reset that situation and go back to the 2-for-1 war is easily worthwhile.

Then there is aggressive decks, and "burn" decks.  They play a role in most standard metas, they have been part of the balance since I started following MtG back in Shards of Alara.  (Well, actually, I think they might have been underrepresented during SoA, can't recall, but they definitely came back and mattered after Volcanic Fallout http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?multiverseid=220512 was released in Conflux).  Burn decks are pretty much designed to punish these decks for trading life for card advantage all the time.  It's not always a straight up necropotence they are punishing, sometimes they punish how Rampant Growth spam does little in the way of blocking, or somesuch.

Burn and aggro decks usually aren't headliners, or exciting to talk about, they might not even flood top-8 all that much, but their presence does have an effect on what decks people choose to play.  Decks that can't transition to a defensive state in order to battle burn are less popular, and some of the reckless life payment is discouraged.  Cards that give you an option about whether or not to be defensive or trade life for 2-for-1's are really good for that reason.  That's among the (many, many, many) reasons that Jace, the Mind Sculptor (http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?multiverseid=373316) was a powerful card, he was able to ignore attacks and draw cards if he wanted to, or send enemy attackers back to hand if he found himself in a matchup against aggro.

Formats matter a lot with this stuff, as our palindromic friend remarks it's largely how the cards were designed.  In some formats, especially limited, life gets pretty expendable. 

Overall, MtG doesn't do an outright stellar job of making pay-life risky enough.  I have played another CCG that handled it much better, and intertwined card advantage and life totals more closely (stuff along the lines of, hey, we are both card advantage decks but he's kind of pressuring me, I have to block with Archivist. Doesn't happen as much as it should in Magic, and when it does it's a pretty hopeless affair).  But it's a card design issue more than a game structure issue. 

People really will side out Necropotence effects though.

I'm quite familiar with all of this - I *stopped* following MtG around the time Shards came out, and started again much more recently.
The thing is, my point was that life gain is not something which is inherently risky - Necropotence is one of the best cards in essentially every format you could ever play it in. It's just bonkers good. I mean, it's also that life is just very different than VP because it doesn't at all matter how much you have, as long as it's more than 0.
Card advantage is something that's really misunderstood. Card quality is also important. A deck of 25 divination and 15 island is really terrible, even though it has great card advantage. I mean, Lava Spike is just not a good card. Nor is Lava Axe, really. Reach Through Mists is card neutral (hey, I played a lot in Kamigawa block, deal with it), but it's awful if you aren't splicing. Healing Salve is AWFUL - especially if you're using it as lifegain.

But none of these mechanics are strong or weak in the abstract - it's all about the actual versions of cards which are made. If you printed a WG sorcery that gained you 50 life, it would be insanely good. Lava Spike is bad, but up it even one damage and it would be good - until good lifegain comes around, which actually counters burn-to-face really well. But generally, burn to your head is better than lifegain (in equal amounts!) because of the existence of creatures. Lifegain pushes the game longer, which gives more creatures more time, which isn't good.

So basically, at least from a historical/theoretical perspective, the aggro decks are just more important. Very roughly, you want to be just a little bit slower than your opponent. Your spells will be a little bigger, a little better, and you use that to win in the long haul. But of course, if you're too much slower, you'll get steamrolled by the aggressor before you can stabilize. Without doubt, it's a lot more complicated than that, but this is the general shape of things. But things are largely a power level of the specific implementations - i.e. the numbers matter. Necro shows, for instance, that 1 card is worth WAY more than 1 life. So, whatever, long story short, it's just another resource, and not really riskier, at least inherently, than any other resource.

I follow you.