Introduction
Incorporating statistics, short term objectives, long term achievements, and seasonal leaderboards makes the game more engaging. It gives players additional goals beyond just competing with highly optimized decks, especially if tied to rewards. They add more variety and depth to the experience.
This is part of a series of posts that collect ideas for game features that have yet to be implemented and I believe would be very beneficial to the game.
Account stats
I enjoy having a lot of detailed stats like in Rimworld, for example. The stats could be linked to achievement tracks and rewards like in Guild Wars 2 - see a screenshot in the next section. Here's some examples:
- For every card, track
- how many times it was used in a deck,
- how many times it was used in a winning deck,
- how many times it was played,
- how many times it was played in a winning deck.
- how much cumulative damage dealt / healed or any other relevant stat
- Track how many creatures played
- by tribe
- by domain, including neutrals
- Track how many creatures killed / died
- by tribe
- by domain, including neutrals
- with spells
- with other creatures
- with relics
- with end of turn effects
- with poison
- Track lifetime
- Face and creature damage dealt with relics
- Face and creature damage dealt with spells
- Face and creature damage dealt with your creatures
- HP recovered with heals
- HP recovered with leech
- Wins / defeats by fatigue
- Tied matches
- Stand off with locked board
- Order you applied / applied to your creatures
- Mints for each quality
- Track how many creatures you pulled from your void
- Track how many creatures you pulled from your opponent’s void
- Track trades
- favorable
- equal
- gave favor to opponent
- Number of times your creatures survive for more than 1..n turns
- Most mana spent in 1 turn
- Most damage dealt in 1 turn
- Tallest creature you created for each Domain
- Most order on the board during a turn
Achievements linked to account stats
Achievements would track long term progression, but also hard to reach or uncommon game events. The number of times a player hits those events would be tracked in the achievement as shown in the example below: I took inspiration from the achievement system in Guild Wars 2. Here are some examples adapted to GU:
Deal 18 lethal damage with Corpse Explosion
Kill Polyhymnia without using spells
Have at least 2 Polyhymnias on your side of the board at the same time survive 1 opponent’s turn (more is unlikely as many opponents would concede before being dealt lethal damage)
Win games with the Gods Unchained legendary card
Play Crab Rave at zero mana
Play manasurged Foodchain on top of Crab Rave full board
Play max mana Demetrios' Final Draft (5 mana)
Trigger the secondary effect of Amazon Heart Seeker
Deal lethal damage with Ray of Disintegration
Win a match with 1 HP left
Win a match at maximum health
Play Antemion's Reflection to the board with at least 3 status effects
Play Leyhoard Hatchling at 9 mana
Play Lootable Corpse with more than 7 stat points
Obliterated 6 creatures or more with Dread Marauder
Track winning matches while having each Legendary card in your deck. The tiered rewards could be automatically adjusted in the inverse order of card popularity, following a formula. For example winning with Eris or Anagreos would yield more rewards than winning with Demetrios. Hitting higher tiers would yield increasingly better achievement rewards and unlock a title for display under the player's name. This would be displayed for example before or after a match (depending on whether deck peeking is fixed or not)
Objectives linked to rewards
Could be daily, weekly, seasonal (Battle Pass)...
In any game mode players could complete objectives that in turn could be tracked long term as achievements. These objectives would incentivize playing with a larger variety of cards. For example,
Play with a (manual or automatic) selection of a small group of cards that see little play. Rotate this card list on a regular interval. Track wins while having the cards in the deck. Offer daily rewards and also achievement rewards upon reaching a threshold
Win games with 10/15/x off meta cards, determined by their ranking in a card usage tracking list
Sleep a minimum number of creatures in a single match
Kill with poison a minimum number of creatures in a single match
OTK for at least x/15/30/30+ damage in a single turn
Themed objectives tied to the lore. For example track matches where one opponent plays an Olympian themed deck against another deck archetype that would fit the Hortuk horde, either playing Hortuk itself or Nether creatures
go through the list of tribal creatures (ex. Olympians) and make a deck that includes at least 5 of the 25% least popular. Win x matches
for a certain archetype, win with a high variety of cards - for example 15 different Olympians
Tiered reward track for playing every card for each tribe
Sleep at least 5 creatures during a winning match with God x. Repeat y times for tiered rewards and titles (ie, achievements)
1k total damage dealt
objective-linked learderboards with exclusive rewards (see future post)
There could be a separate game mode to facilitate completing objectives, or perhaps players could use Casual mode for this. Tiered objectives could be offered for different time spans and kept updated in reward tracks.
Profile picture trim linked to achievements
Next is the example from Hades' Star. Firstly, here's how the trims work in leaderboards, around the player's level:
Notice how elements of the trim get repeated for some players but not others. Each trim element represents a particular Distinction (achievement). Players can inspect other player's profile and get a more detailed view of their distinctions by inspecting the trim elements individually.
On the left side is an example of such a profile. From here you can also visit their domain (Yellow Star) and view the Corporation (guild / team) they belong to, among other details.
Below is the result of inspecting a few trim elements. I highlight where they appear in the final, composite trim. The adaptation of this idea to GU is to create similar trims to place around the PFP to distinguish players that have excelled in a competitive setting at least once. Here's a few examples:
º First place in Weenkend Ranked
º Top 20 in Weekend Ranked
º First place in a GU sponsored tournament
º Top 5 in a GU sponsored tournament
º Reached first place in the Ranked leaderboard more than 30 different days
º Similar top ranking in a Sealed season
º First place in a team championship
End of match detailed statistics
I don't have a screenshot for this, but I think Guild of Guardians is doing more or less what I intend with this suggestion. Stats could include for each player
number of cards played
number of cards taken from the Sanctum
average time taken per turn
total damage dealt
total healing
how many spells, relics and creatures were played
biggest creature
most damage dealt in a single turn
number of friendly creatures played
number of enemy creatures destroyed