Transcription
[Music] Wonders of the First is the first CCG to create a sustainable play environment model without the need for reprints or functional reprints. We have two meta design methods for this: nested set design and dynamic balance score. I'll save nested set design for another video. Today, I'll cover dynamic balance score.
I want to explain how DBS works, how it shapes the meta, and how it can create sustainability. Let's jump into the world of tabletop balance updates. Every card in the game is assigned a balance score. The score is not on the card; it lives in the card database. When you build your deck, you add up the points of all the cards in your deck to find its DBS. And we plan to have management tools for this, like a website where you can paste in a deck list and have it show you the points for every card in your deck and add them up.
So, what is DBS used for? First, the score tiers define the formats you can play in. The 500 points and under category is a popper-style format. Would be 200 points and under for casual games. You can use DBS for tabletop matchmaking. And in other games, players are already trying to do tabletop matchmaking when they see things like, "My deck is a 6 out of 10," "7 out of 10." And some people try to say a deck is a little weaker than it really is. And if somebody does underrate their deck, it's hard to call it out because if you don't think it's a six out of 10, they can argue. And if you have a true six out of 10, but then you get lucky and pull off a big win, everyone might still suspect you of being that player who's lowballing. So DBS gives an objective measure of decks and no suspicion or arguing. It gives a better chance of fair matchups in the long run. And that's the problem we're really trying to solve here. All of us just want fair matchups. We want a new player to have a good game against a veteran player. And notice that in other games, overpowered cards have been viewed as a power balance problem. But DBS lets us address it as a matchmaking problem. OP cards don't get banned, and we just have them matched against other OP cards.
So those are the basics of DBS. But what happens when we update the scores? Because every season, at predictable intervals, we gradually tune the scores based on their impact on the meta. If cards are dominating, they will have their time at the top. But after a while, their points will go up until there's a new balance. So deck builders will have to choose whether to keep those cards and make the rest of the deck weaker, or preserve their deck and just play at a higher weight category. And when this happens, it opens up space for other low-score cards to come in and have their time at the top. And for a lot of deck builders, this is one of the best things about CCGs: the meta is always evolving.
Now, I'll talk about how DBS convinced us it was possible to have a sustainable game with no reprints. Traditionally, if a CCG card was powerful, it became a staple that every player needs. But now we can tune a card gradually so it doesn't go in every deck because there's a cost-benefit to putting it in. Each playgroup can choose the tier they like best depending on the cards that they want to use. And if your little brother just started playing, the group will know how bad his deck is and bring out their low-tier decks to match it. So imagine it's 10 years in the future. The Existence set from way back in 2024 has power cards. They're scarce, but they don't show up too much in the 500-point deck tier. And when they do, the rest of those decks are balanced so they aren't needed to be competitive unless you want to play in the infinite points format. In this future world, there are new cards that are similar to the basic cards of Existence. So the game still retains the identity of the orbitals and strategies, but all new cards are mechanically different in some way. We don't do functional reprints, which refers to an old card with a different name and art. But we will do near-functional reprints for basic, fundamental cards when needed.
Another factor is always going to be collection size. Even if we both have low-score decks, but I build from a pool of 500 cards and you build from a pool of 5,000, you'll still have an advantage. And we don't have a perfect solution to this, but we do have steady, incremental changes for the worst offender cards, always giving space for the new cards to fight back. So that's why we use the word sustainable. The meta will not always be finely balanced, but it will be in the ballpark and ever-changing. Not necessarily smooth, but sustainable. And we'll always be working to improve it. And when I say "we," I mean we, the dev team, and the community. When certain cards are loved or hated, that should be reflected in the updates. Salt scores should have an impact.
Okay, a few more things you can do with DBS. DBS can tell you who had the guts to bring the lowest score deck to the table. If you win with the lowest point deck, that's extra prestige. You can also use it like a golf handicap: cap play a low-score deck against a beginner with a high-score deck if you like. Cube type formats: DBS lets you measure the power level of a cube, so you'll know what's the highest score cube you ever played. You can also use DBS to score pack rips. Open a pack in front of your friends, add up your score. If you get foils or serialized cards, you get a score multiplier, so you can compare high scores for pack opening.
The Wonders community is really passionate about the DBS approach. And I want to give credit to Horlet, Jich, the legend Loco 4, and our other members for helping us with the name, Dynamic Balance Score, DBS. It's cool, it's brandable, it can stick in people's minds. Good job, guys. The ideas from players are incredibly valuable, and I'm proud we're developing the game as a community. That wraps it up for now. Hope to see you next time for more Wonders of the First game design.
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