u/perfectpencil

I apologize if this is mildly off topic but i wanted to share a recent experience as it made me think about something you guys mention a lot whenever GGG nerfs something. The dreaded "GGG Triple Tap".

I've been hobby designing a card game for myself and friends for about 8 years (Not plugging anything here, I'm a hobbyist). I've borrowed many ideas from poe2 recently (it's a dungeon crawler) and I've paid close attention to what GGG has been doing with each patch. Often I see problem interactions as something that can be resolved with small tweaks/nerfs and i rarely understand why GGG goes as hard as they do. Why they go so scorched earth.

Then it happened to me. Recently one of my friends found an unusual interaction between cards I had never considered. Without breaking any rules in gameplay, she was able to completely negate any costs on her ability to play and replay multiple cards multiple times a turn. And amazingly, not even on her own turn! I was blown away. One card with an obscure interaction allowed her to even beat a deck which is meant to be the scissors to her paper.

I went through my spread sheets and searched for the cards she used. I needed to change how a whole category of cards function (1 tap). I needed to add a limit to how that class could interact with those cards (2 taps) and finally I needed to go back to the one card she was using and raise its costs (3 taps). I needed to murder this monster in the womb because now that she showed me how this one thing could loop, i instantly could think of how a dozen other cards and classes that could also loop in similar ways. It could destroy the game.

After i was done my thoughts went back to GGG. Although I know the parts and pieces of my game, i don't know all the combinations of things all these components can do (its 28 classes x 320 unique cards) but as soon as I see something, i can extrapolate out. I imagine it must be exactly the same for GGG. Players find some weird interaction that puts two mechanics together that normally never interact and suddenly things break. Like weapon swapping from a league or two back creating infinite damage with infinite minions dying due to weapon swap. I'm now positive that something when like that is brought to GGG's designers attention they see a dozen other possible interactions that also needed to be fixed before players can find them. It's like players are phenomenal at finding cracks in a bridge, but the moment they do the designers will know exactly all the parts that are creating those cracks and are able to identify where other cracks would be in relation.

The "GGG Triple Tap" makes sense. I get it now.

I figured with all the streaming services out there, someone has to have created an offline and local version of this style app. Something kinda like a music player app but just for video on your hard drive that is easy to navigate with that "streaming" style interface. A netflix at home, if you will.

Is there anything like this out there? Although I have a PC, I'd want to build/buy hardware to dedicate to something like this for my kids. If that means buying a mac mini or building a linux machine I'd be willing.

My project is doing a lot. It's an all-in-one-box card game that has pvp, co-op, solo & GM co-op. As such I'm CONSTANTLY looking to simplify and hide complexity away from the player as much as I can to make their experience smooth as butter. Cards are letting me scurry away the majority of complexity from the player so they only need to worry about what is in front of them. I'm unsure if I can get rid of the need for scratch paper for roleplaying, but I'm trying.

What are some tricks you've found that help make complex systems feel simple / easy to digest?