Game Testing Blog

[jtakenaka]

This section will be used to reveal some of the details of Bandai game testing and the eventual outcome of the erratas.

[jtakenaka]

This card was basically in all of the top decks at almost every higher level tournament that Bandai ran and is one of the key cards that has caused the dominance of fire cards in almost all of the top decks.

The main issues were the ability to remove a Ninja from play and not be removed from play until the end of the turn. We wanted to keep the card as close to it's existing effect as possible, try not to devalue the card too much since this is probably the most expensive card in the game in the secondary market, but balance it so it was not such a better card than other cards in the game.

We mainly used Joe Colon and Joshua Lu's Sannin decks to test against our other decks. We can't recreate the player but we could recreate their decks.
(Sidenote: we don't want to involve top players in game testing because we would ask them to quit higher level tournament play and we don't necessarily want them to quit higher level play. We also want Southern CA game testers so that we can see the game problems in person. Yuya and Gary do talk to 2 other out of state people for their opinions but that is it as far as I know. Right or wrong that is how it was done.)

In game testing we originally had it as "Valid: While in Injured Status, you can move 1 Ninja Battling against this Ninja to the bottom of its original owner's Deck. In that case, discard this Ninja." We felt that this met with the flavor of the anime a little bit more and balanced the card. It seemed to work all right until we started play testing against two upcoming Series 7 cards: Jiraiya (N-US046) and Tsunde (N-US049), which I will post in the Card Previews section of the website over the next few days. I believe Lightning and Wind decks will get better with Set 7. Lightning for it's pumps and Wind for some of it's Jutsu negation. Top players will have to show me if I'm right or wrong.

This caused us to rethink the "While in Injured Status" because new cards and the Inherit errata were going to weaken Fire and we didn't necessarily want to destroy Fire. So we ended up deciding to not have Fire wait that extra step to have access to APW ability. It seemed to test all right and Fire did not dominate.

If Fire continues to dominate their are other erratas that are on the watch list: Sasuke Uchiha (N-155). This would cause an additional weakening of Fire decks and as of now, we don't believe it necessary because other decks have been successful against it. Fire/Lightning is on the watch list because of the set 7 Reunion with the Former Teacher (M-209) but we want to see how players use it because it currently is not working that well in our game testing. It seems better to run mainly Lightning rather than mix the two elements. We have a wait and see attitude on it right now.

Please feel free to post responses in a different thread, as my ultimate goal is to have lots of playable decks at our tournaments and I'm willing to listen to "constructive" feedback.

[jtakenaka]

This card obviously had incredible draw power and showed up in almost all the top decks at the Sannin. The Sannin winning deck felt card draw was so important that it ran 3 copies of Inherit and 3 copies of Pet Tora (M-006).

Most of our game testing that we did was draw up to 4 and not draw up to 3 like the card ended up becoming. Drawing up to 4 was not too bad because you almost always had 1 or 2 cards you wanted to keep in your hand when you played it so it ended up probably averaging 2.75 cards drawn when played. Still very good but not too devastating during our game testing. Of course, game testing was against fire/earth vs. fire/earth and fire/earth vs. decks including set 7 or set 8.

This card was the most difficult decision for us because the card could possibly still be broken at draw up to 4 and we didn't want to errata a card twice. The 4 was just a more dangerous situation compared to making it 3 so we started leaning toward 3 even though 4 didn't "seem broken".

My gametesters told me that this card did not have a huge secondary market value because it was only a rare and not that difficult to obtain. Also, about 10,000+ copies of this card are entering the market with the release of the tins. We put card value aside compared to our concern with the Third Hokage card value.

Next up, was the fundamental game design concept of whether Fire should have great card draw abilities. The majority answer among our group was "no". Therefore, the final decision was made to make this card draw up to 3.

[jtakenaka]

A lot of my personal game testing is with Yuya. The other game testers play against Yuya and the eachother. In my personal game testing the Ino card did cause problems in early game but not much at all in late game. The biggest pain for me was to have to declare the effect on a Ninja on EVERY single turn. I personally hate these cards that have no cost, restriction, hand cost, etc. They just get to use their effect whenever they want to. Hate 'em.

We tried to keep the effect as close to the same as possible and all agreed pretty easily that we could change it to "your opponent's Mission Phase". Game testing went all right with that so we pretty much all agreed to it right away.

The biggest issue for me is that this same effect is coming back again on a Turn 5 Platoon card. I haven't game tested against this particular card and don't really know that this card isn't broken again but we'll see. I'm hoping that the Platoon requirement and turn 5 will keep it all right.

I hope everyone is having more fun playing.

[jtakenaka]

Based on concerns of the new Release of Chakra deck we've begun testing this type of deck a lot more. So far, the deck is not being nearly consistent enough for me to believe that this is a consistent winner. We aren't getting the 95%-80% Turn 0-1 success rate. That kind of % is the only way I could believe that this would be a consistent tournament winning deck. It is dangerous though so we will continue to test it. Obviously, card draw is just too dangerous to mess around with so we have to be more careful with the card draw effects. Probably more posts to come on this issue.

[jtakenaka]

I actually had to evacuate my house tonight due to wildfires in the Irvine area. I'm surprised that the uproar has started so late on this card because it is a Japanese card and so many of you seem to know the Japanese cards already.

I'm glad I'm a little in tune with the rest of the community because I thought this card was the most unfair card among QFP. I barely got to test this card and when I did, the card helped delay my defeat but I would still end up losing. so it never made me win the game just delay the loss. I was told this card did not cause a problem in Japan so it shouldn't cause a problem in the US. I've been wrong before so I moved on to my sales work.

I probably won't go to work on Monday but we'll start looking into this card this week. Right now I'm more concerned with the Five Prong issue since you might never get to this card if that deck works as well as people are posting.

Until the next post.

[jtakenaka]

We've read and received numerous requests for erratas on many, many cards from Quest for Power. I just wanted to let you know that we are examining all of them. Unfortunately or fortunately among the Bandai staff, game testers and a few top players that have been consulted there is not a consensus on any card yet regarding an errata. Therefore, we have to take a little bit of a wait and see from results of the various Chunins and probably the NY Jonin.

Here is a sample of what's happening:

FPS - Release of Chakra
Biggest concern because you might not have a chance to respond to anything by Turn 0 or 1. All other "broken" cards won't matter if this deck is too good.

The FPS decks that we've been testing are not hitting the high %s that we've been told they can achieve. I would say around 80 - 85% by turn 2, 95% by turn 4 is what we've been getting even though we've been told 90%+ by Turn 1. Temari (N-US025), Gigantic Fan (J-US015), Neji Hyuga (N-US017), Wind Scythe Jutsu (J-054), Hidden Mist (J-013), Disguise Jutsu (J-066), etc. have been working sometimes to negate FPS from happening.
Also, in our game testing even if FPS goes off before Turn 2 it has not necessarily been winning the game. The opponent starts getting some decent Ninja in play and the FPS deck Ninjas can't keep up with the Combat Powers and starts to slow down or fizzle out.
Results so far: the decks have not been dominating and there is no consensus on an errata for this card. Continue testing.

Your comments and deck lists are welcome. Note: Most everyone's FPS deck lists have been very similar.

[jtakenaka]

This post may show my lack of expertise in the game but I'll try to give some background into the current erratas.

I've become very anti-card draw and have started voting against card draw effects when asked.

Reunion I think will still be the best card draw card in the game but I'm being told that Sakura's Decision could make a case with upcoming sets. I'm hoping this will be the cap in terms of future card draw effects. So Permanent (3) was agreed upon so that it has the possibility of triggering twice and still has a small negative of going into the Exchange of Jutsu with limited cards to get it's full effect. In our experience we think it will generally create an average of 4 extra draw cards. I still think it is a good card draw mission but I think all deck types could run it if they want to but there are Mission card options that are close to equal.

Release of Chakra was first considered for errata once we saw the power of 5 Prong Seal decks. After we deck built and game tested we felt that there were many answers to the 5PS where the deck is not effective enough in tournament play. Yuya made several decks and sideboards that made it kind of easy to counter it. So, I did not vote for errata based on 5PS and everyone else pretty much agreed with me. The NY Anime Jonin players appeared to agree and just decided to sideboard against it.

However, I felt that if Reunion was nerfed that most people would just switch to Release of Chakra and everyone would still run Lightning/X decks (and who knows, maybe everyone will still run Lightning/X decks after the erratas). Therefore, I voted for errata.
I think there were 2 different proposals that we considered:
Charge 3 lightning, draw 3 or 4
Charge 3, draw 3
Because of the speed of this card I did not like the charge 3 lightning idea because I still felt that lead you to Lightning/X. If it was Charge 3 of anything I felt that let any deck type run it if they wanted to so obviously I had to be against the draw 4. Draw 2 made it not a good card so draw 3 was my choice. This one was debated a little bit more but in the end we went with charge 3 draw 3 which we think makes it an OK card but not necessarily a best option.

Deep Forest Creation
I agree that this card has a very powerful effect and I hope that this is a cap to the strength of potential Jutsus. However, I don't really mind a game ending on Turn 6, 7 or 8 when this Jutsu makes an appearance. (I don't like how a lot of our tournament matches have to be decided on our sudden death tie-breaker rules so I prefer the games to speed up.) I also think you have opportunities with other cards or deck types to counter it. Another issue is due to power creep I am seeing a lot of future Ninja cards that have a can't be effected or targeted effect where DFC won't work against them. I felt that with the counters and the power creep there is not enough for me to vote for an errata. I have to see where the meta takes us.

Everything Else
I don't see erratas being necessary for anything else at this time although I hate cards like First Hokage and Aoi that remove Battle Rewards. I like the Sexy Gaara deck but Yuya and the game testers showed me a Naruto vs. Sasuke Growth deck and a Kunoichi deck that were really effective against it. Whether they can make a strong showing at a Jonin, I'll have to wait and see if anyone runs it and if it works against other deck types. Hopefully, Set 8 will not have any issues. Daily previews will start 1/2/08 and maybe I'll give a Christmas Preview.

Anyways, I hope this was interesting and we'll continue to keep watch and I look forward to see everyone's posts.