In some of my latest post, I've been trying to develop a method to map the strength and weakness between cards of certain categories. The pilot method is to make a graph which maps card position in term of health/mana-ratio and damage/mana-ratio. The tendency between these traits will show whether a card is a "Tanker" or "Striker" type. Health and Damage tend to scale in parallel with mana value, thereby ratio would make high and low mana card more comparable (however note must be taken that with equal ratio, high mana card would endured more thus more preferable).
Speed, armor, and abilities are also important factors. But considering the complexity of chart with 3-axis or more; therefore I stay with the grid, and find alternative ways.
The first addition would be Speed. Speed have a value which doesn't commensurate with the mana value. On every cards across all levels, speed value mostly varied between 1 to 6. I grouped this value into 3 categories associated with certain color, which is Red (Low - 1 & 2), Yellow (Mid - 3 & 4), and Blue (High - 5, 6, and more).
The next addition would be Abilities. The available abilities are many and various, which make it far too complex to assess and maps the benefit of each and everyone. Rather than use qualitative approach, I rather took simple way using quantitative approach by totaling the number of abilities attaching to each cards. The least one would be no abilities at all, and the most would be 4 abilities.
Armor are the last traits in my mind, which I would set aside for now so just to focus on the two traits above.
All these traits will be summarized using graph, node, and reference table. The graph would be self-explained. The tendency for "Tanker" would scale along X-axis, while "Striker" would scale along Y-axis. The graph will have a grid spaced by quarter digit starting from zero up to three. There will be 2 (two) graph, one for the Level 1 card and the other for Max Level.
Node will mark the position of the card within the graph. The node, as you can see above, will have design of a numbered-circle. The number will have reference to the card showed in the reference table. Each circle will have color which correspond to the speed traits as explained before. On the right side of each node there will be small circles which sign the number of abilities of each card.
Here we show how this system implemented to maps Fire Splinter's melee card collections.
Let's take example on card No.8 (Tusk The Wide) which have 6 mana, 1 melee damage, and 12 health. You can found the node in the Level 1 Chart, on the border between south and south-east grid. This show that compared to the other card, this card is great Tanker card but a weak striker. It is red card, thus have either 1 or 2 speed, and 1 abilities. Once the card develop to max level, the node position will shift entering the south-east grid. Health grow fairly, which still surpass most of the card. Meanwhile damage grow quite substantially, which surpass card No.1 and No.9.
In addition the graph will give a bird view about the average stats of a certain collection. Again for example, the graph have shown that even though Fire Splinter's melee card mostly started with slow speed, we could see at later level a quarter of the shown card have potential to reach 5 speed and above.
This method is just the initial form. There's still a lot of drawback, especially on how abilities could be qualitatively taken into account in the graph. In the further post, I will try to polish up the design and appearance, while making additional graph based on other collection. By making various graph for an entire collection based on certain damage type or certain faction, we could make aggregate comparison to see if certain group have a particular tendency. The importance is to learn the drawback, and then sort out if this could be supported by flexible Neutral card.