During my previous days of fiery complaints regarding inconsistencies and broken cards, I didn't really stop to consider a rather obvious fact:CRMN: How does ICE determine a
card's uses and abilities?
Mike: Usually, a card is conceived of
from a simulation point of view by our
design team, then we make a mechanic
that gets across this inspiration.
Sometimes we start with a perceived
mechanical necessity and try to find
something in Tolkien for its card
name and art concept—for example,
Promptings of Wisdom and Piercing
All Shadow from MEWH.
ICE was primarily known for tabletop RPGs. In a sense, they were learning to make CCGs as much as we were learning to play them.
Coming from a tabletop RPG background, especially at that time, meant the focus was on trying to simulate a world -- as this interview answer demonstrates -- and therefore using the underlying assumption used by most tabletop RPGs: a gamemaster to make adjudications on the fly to fit the flow of the adventure/story/module the group is running.
That obviously works well, or the tabletop RPG industry would not have continued for so long.
At its heart, though, it's fundamentally incompatible with the mechanical balance necessary to facilitate a competitive RPG, where all players involved are *not* trying to cooperate to overcome an obstacle.
That isn't necessarily a problem if you go into the game expecting it. It does mean, however, that since ICE's focus was simulation, cards could be designed according to theme that would break the game simply because it didn't occur to them that the card might be used in a non-thematic way.
An obvious example of this would be Paths of the Dead, where it didn't occur to them that somebody might use it to prevent the play of any non-undead hazard creatures, wouldn't use it to move from Dunharrow to the Vale of Erech *at all,* and would simply have Aragorn summon the Army of the Dead regardless of having actually walked the Paths.
This led to what he calls "perceived mechanical necessity." These are the cards from later sets designed to obviate the frustration of the (ab)use of cards from previous sets -- Promptings/Piercing are designed to help players overcome frustrating roadblock strategies, which ICE recognized were disastrous to player enjoyment however thematic and simulationist they were.
Which means that they ran out of time to do what they usually did -- fix problems created by one expansion with cards released in other expansions -- when they lost the license, unfortunately.
One cannot resist the impression, given the existence of viewtopic.php?p=15415#p15415 and viewtopic.php?p=15426#p15426 that ICE would have produced a new edition of the game, cleaning things up immensely. Unfortunately, they ran out of license.
This post is not meant as an argument for change or shake-ups; it's just a little design/historical perspective on why the game is the way it is.
