For card games like Magic The Gathering, etc., how do the creators make new cards that are balanced (in terms of cost, strength, abilities)? Is there a set formula, or is it a long testing/tweaking process before the card gets released?
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One important way that card designers pump out lots of new cards without constantly breaking the balance of their game is by making a lot of those cards obviously bad. They could be useful in constrained settings like draft and pauper formats, but it’s usually understood by the players that at least 70% of cards released in a given year will have no place in competitive formats, and that’s fine.
For the rest, they move cautiously, do a lot of playtesting, and ban cards that turned out to be too powerful.
I feel like given they are selling cards for a profit, there is going to be an incentive to have some cards blatantly better than others. The most subtle way of doing this is to make the “good” cards proportionally rare-either you’re buying dozens of booster packs looking for it (like we did as kids) or you pay a fortune for getting the rare card directly.
Take the most expensive card in the game-Black Lotus. Not only is it rare but it is incredibly powerful. It costs nothing to summon but can be sacrificed for 3 mana of any color. In that game, getting three mana of *any* color for *free* has massive potential. It’s like if a track and field runner was allowed to start 500m ahead of everyone else.
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