A Better Match

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Authors: Nichilas, Xaether

Last revision: 3 Oct, 2021 at 05:55 UTC

File size: 479.23 KB

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Description:
A Better Match

This mod is meant to redesign the Event "Match And Keep" into something more useful and fun for the player.

Effects

The Event "Match And Keep" has been reworked to better encapsulate and encourage the three core themes of the event with those themes being Memorization, Discovery, and Matching.

The core matching part of the event has been reworked such that curses are no longer offered in the pool, making all possible rewards positive outcomes. Instead, the player will pay a flat gold fee up front. Additionally, instead of matching to acquire a specific card, matches are based on card rarity levels, and the player will be given a choice of 3 cards from that rarity pool for each successful match at the end of the game.

Furthermore, instead of automatically playing the match game, the player will first be presented with a set of options. Those options will offer a different number of matches for the player to attempt, with a greater reward relative to the number of matches used.

And if you’re really lucky, you might even get a little something extra too! 😉

Lastly, for players who want an experience closer to the base game, the mod contains a configuration option to remove the additional two options, and keep just the base option with 5 matches and standard rewards, but while still using this reworked minigame system that "A Better Match" provides.

Design Goals

The base event is unique in that it offers a very different gameplay experience from the rest of the game, mixing memorization with matching and gambling. The event in its existing state, however, does not function very well at its goal.

By default, the card options have even less diversity than a standard combat card reward due to only offering a single option from a tier instead of a choice of three. This creates a situation where the vast majority of the time, there will be no useful cards offered. The player also automatically gains the card upon matching it, with no option to decline. What this means is that most of the time the player will just match the first two non-matching cards all 5 times in order to avoid adding filler cards to their deck. There is also an additional problem in that the player has a small chance of accidentally matching the first two cards that they reveal and adding a card they probably don’t want (or possibly even a curse) without any choice or decision making.
What these issues boil down to is a situation where the game itself is fun, but the rewards are very rarely positive, and often negative, so the player is instead incentivized to play as little of the game as possible.

As a solution, "A Better Match" seeks to alleviate these issues while also staying true to the core themes of the event. As mentioned earlier, the core themes identified were Memorization, Discovery, and Matching. Memorization refers to the central idea of the event wherein the entire event is based around remembering where cards are in order to find pairs. Discovery refers to the notion of reveal cards and finding out what was beneath that card. Matching is the most obvious, and refers to the small victory feeling of successfully finding a pair of cards.

In order to redesign the event in a way that stays true to those three aspects, while also alleviating the issues present, "A Better Match" reimagines the event by removing the curse cards from the pool, and transitioning the single card rewards into an optional choice of three cards. This means that the player no longer has to worry about matching negative rewards, and will always be incentivized to at least play the minigame, even if they aren’t able to make use of the rewards. This also deals with the issue of the player accidentally matching the first two cards that they blindly picked and through no fault of their own adding a useless card to their deck that they now have to find time to remove later on. Lastly, this change creates a situation where the better the player is at the matching game, the better their pool of reward options will be, thus rewarding skilled play and strong memory while still keeping the gambling nature of the event.

In order to offset the removal of the curses from the card pool, an upfront gold cost was added (that increases above Asc 15) so that the gameplay power balance of the event remains similar. The player might still not find any useful cards, but they will never be forced to take a bad card, and they are always incentivized to play the minigame. The rewards are still dependent on the player’s ability to memorize card locations and find matches, and the thrill of discovering what’s under each card has been exacerbated due to only positive cards being discoverable.

These changes all combine to create a similarly balanced event that incentives the player to actually play the fun and unique minigame. But why stop there? What kind of gambling den doesn’t allow the player to opt for better rewards with a higher risk? In the theme of risk versus reward, and to increase the player decision making space, "A Better Match" adds two more variants of the matching game to choose from.

The player can choose the default game with 5 matches and collect their rewards as normal, but now the player can also opt to increase their rewards, at the cost of lowering their chances of success. The second option gives the player only 3 matches, but will upgrade any rewards found. With fewer matches, the likelihood of finding a match decreases, but getting a free upgrade, or even two if the player is lucky, can be quite enticing. And lastly, the third option presents the player with the classic all in, double or nothing option. They will be given just one match, but if they managed to get a match, their reward will be upgraded, and tripled! This means that if the player matches a pair of uncommon cards, they will be given three sets of upgraded uncommon cards to look at in their rewards.

Thanks

I hope you have a good time with this mod, and I welcome any and all feedback.
Special thanks to 旅渚Lastcel for the Simplified Chinese translation!

If you enjoyed this mod, consider checking out some of my other mods:
A Better Note
A Better Sensory Stone
A Better Knowing Skull
A Better Forgotten Altar
A Better Third Choice
A Better Lab

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