Gods Unchained is getting its own Superpower team-up

8YBM...PPse

14 Jul 2023

This team-up is something that a large part of the community has been wanting for a long time. Well, maybe not this particular team-up. But something that is addressing the perceived problem in the game. And this team-up looks like it will do that. If you want to know more about what that is, I guess you will have to continue reading.

What is Superpower?

SUperpower is a collective of players and content creators for Gods Unchained. The majority of its players come from the group known as Infinite Mana, or 8M. As far as I can tell they are all players that are well-versed in the game and have accrued a ton of experience playing it and other games. And that will hopefully make them prime candidates for this Superpower team-up.

If a lot of the names in Superpower look familiar to you it might be because you either have been running into them during the weekend ranked in Mythic, in one of the tournaments. Or watched them streaming. Several, if not the majority of them, also stream regularly. I have linked 8M´s website where they publish their content. As well as the links to their twitch stream down below. The ones that I could find that is. If you know of a stream I missed please let me know and I will add them to the list.

And if you like to watch streams. I would highly recommend that you try and at least follow them, and other Gods Unchained streamers. As that will help them. I do know from personal experience that not all streamers are a good fit for all viewers. So you might have to look around at a few of the Gods Unchained streamers before you find one that is a good fit for you. But in general, all of them are very friendly and helpful. So please support them in their streaming ventures.

Why team with Superpower?

As I eluded to above, Superpower has a vast amount of gaming knowledge. And that would make them, at least in theory, prime candidates for this team-up. As they have been brought in to be the new balancing team for Gods Unchained. They will be tasked with three things, and they are:

Accessing GU’s testing realms and beta test oncoming content, including Sealed and our next expansion, codenamed ‘A1’ at this juncture
They will have to perform specific tests on this content (e.g. playing this domain against another domain’s top deck and recording the win percentage).
Provide general opinions and feedback for this content

And the balancing part of it all is looking like this:

They have an initial two-month period for onboarding and support, with a possible contract extension if they show results.
10 hours of balance playtesting per week, a weekly meeting, and a regular feedback cadence
4-6 protesters, 1-2 leads who will aggregate the bulk of the feedback
Adding quantitative, technical insights to feedback
2-week sprints with a weekly meeting

Let us take a look at this and see if we can get a deeper understanding of it all. Let us start at the top of the list. Having access to the Gods Unchained test realm and beta test. This is pretty straightforward. With an all-digital product, they should have some sort of place or way to test things. And no surprise it is a digital place as well. Even a lot of board game development and playtesting is taking place digitally now a day. So allowing them access to the thing they are going to test, well it is a no-brainer.

They will have to perform specific tests on the content they will be provided with. This is also something that is fairly common when play-testing a game. This is generally done in order to test specific strategies or combos within the game that the designer is suspecting to be too powerful, too weak, or simply not work as intended. Having a lot of experience with playtesting boards- and card games I do sincerely hope that this is not all the type of testing that will be done. Let me explain why. Due to the very complex nature of the game, having so many different cards and variables to it. It is virtually impossible for the Gods Unchained team to not miss some sort of combination of things that might cause issues or be abused. And this is why you would let playtesters play and create decks freely. As this will get more and fresh eyes on the new cards and mechanisms. More eyes equal a higher chance of catching these sorts of things. And this is not at all a knock on the Gods Unchained design team, it is simply me speaking from experience. When you are in the middle of designing something you can easily miss things or get blind to things. And that is one of the very reasons you playtest. It is the same reason why authors get their work proofread before they publish it. Mistakes can sneak in, that is just how it is.

An example of a playtest checklist, the full list can be found here or in the link section

Providing general opinions and feedback. It is at first glance one of those "of course they will" things. But speaking from my own experience, this is a very hard thing to do. And I am talking about both sides, both providing, but also receiving feedback. It is a whole separate skill you need to develop. How so? Well for one not all feedback is feedback you need to take into account. As there might be other factors that the testers are not aware of. As an example, take the new "take cards from the opponent's void" mechanism. As it is currently in the game, this is not really something that has seen a lot of play, and most likely because as it is it is lacking some things. And the developers have said as much as well. But if this were to be tested as is. The feedback would be that it is too weak, and the cards need to be buffed to be viable. But everything is not, and can not, be viable in top decks from the start. That is just a fact. So knowing what feedback to listen to and work with, as well as how, and what feedback you give is a very important skill to develop.

The last five points are almost a straight-up employment contract. Skipping, or not including, salary. But it looks like the initial test time for the test is set to two months. And the number of players that will actively be playtesting is 4-6 protesters, but I am not sure what they would need protesters. Or what they would be protesting. I thought they would be playtesting. ^^ Depending on if the leads also will be playing and testing these numbers would be 5-8 instead. So using that we then can see that this team-up will be adding a minimum of 40 hours of playtesting per week. But it could be as much as double that, 80 hours a week, depending on if the leads play or not and if there will be 6 players.

If we then assume the games will take 15 min on average that puts it at roughly 160-320 games a week. Sure they will not be playing all the time as they need to do the data aggregation and think about the different variables as well. So that will most likely lower the number of games a fair bit. But it still gives you a good indication of the amount of testing that will be done on top of any internal testing. As I assume they will not simply stop doing that.
All in all, I think this is a great step taken by the Gods Unchained team. And I hope that it will be a team-up that is very successful. And while this might not have been the post you expected, as it veered into game design and playtesting a bit. I hope that it at least provided you with a better insight as to what Superpower will be doing. And the going on behind the scene. But I would also like to hear from you, what do you think about this? Is this something that has gotten you excited, or is it too little too late? Please let me know in the comment section below.

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