Monday, January 4, 2010

Pros of Undo

The following is an interesting idea, and it's not one of mine. I can't find the source at the moment, but it was somewhere in the slightlymagic.net forums.

The idea is that Undo implies the recording of each action during a game, and that this information can be used for many different things: Storm counts the number of spells played during the current turn, War Elemental is sacrificed if no opponent was damaged during the turn.

But the most interesting thing is last known information. This is the concept that if a card changes zones, its state directly before it left the zone is used for effects that referenced it earlier. For example Fling: This card requires you to sacrifice a creature, and then takes its power. However, the power is not taken from the graveyard, but from the last time the creature was on the battlefield: If it was equipped, the modified power is taken, even though its power is back to normal in the graveyard.
Last known information is used more often than that: Every ability that triggers from an object leaving the battlefield may require it.

However, there's a difference to Storm and such: Storm only looks into the past, on what happened, but last known information requires you to actually go back, to see the whole game state at that time, so that you can check the card's characteristics. I'm not entirely sure if Undo is suitable for that, but I will definitely think about it.

1 comment:

Bruno Cardoso said...

Not sure if one thing is related to the other.

I think one feature that MTGO could have is statistic in the end of each game, and even some kind of archievements you would get for using 5000 black mana or attacking 1000 times with a creature or casting 500 blue spells, things like that, those are statistics and information about the game, not sure if it is related to the undo... however.. i already said what i think about undo feature.