Designing UniVersus: Character Rarities

Ready for a thrilling dive into the world of UniVersus characters and their rarities? Let's explore how these elements come together to shape your gaming experience!

Characters in the Past

In years past characters in UniVersus featured rarities, shifting how frequently they appear in booster packs. This did some powerful things, like making some characters very difficult to find which appealed to collectors. At the same time that posed challenges to deckbuilding: some characters became too difficult for players to find in order to build their decks, and Limited play was all but impossible because of how infrequently characters appeared in booster packs. That left us with this outcome:

• Collectors and fans liked character rarities because it made famous characters feel thrilling to open

• Players didn’t like character rarities because it made deckbuilding challenging from card access, not game mechanics

• Limited play was basically impossible, or very challenging, because of the infrequency at which characters appeared

Characters in the UVS Games Era

When UVS Games took over UniVersus, we shifted how characters worked: we added one character into each booster pack in a dedicated slot. This flattened character rarity and made Limited play feasible. Deckbuilding was easier as characters were relatively easy to find. The downside was that characters became less collectible, and fans of a given world UniVersus visited didn’t have their expectations met when opening “cool” characters as they were not any more collectible than less cool characters. Opening Deku was just as likely as opening Dabi, which was an excitement miss for fans of My Hero Academia who expect a main character to be more special than a given villain. (With my sincere apologies to “Dabi guy” for that potentially sacrilegious comparison). In summary, flat character rarities had the following outcomes:

• Deckbuilding was much easier as characters are easy to find

• Limited play is much simpler as every player is guaranteed to have a character in their card pool

• Character collectability and “thrill” from opening goes down as a result of the flat rarity

Characters in the Future

Based on our experiences from the past and present, Game Design set out to try to find a middle ground that allows us to serve the needs of all of our player types. We wanted a solution that empowered Limited play, made collecting characters thrilling, but wasn’t an impediment to deckbuilding in Constructed. What we settled on was a new tool that reintroduces character rarities with learnings from the past as an option we can use in new booster sets, though won’t use in every booster set. Here’s what that looks like:

• Characters will still receive a dedicated slot in each booster, meaning character rarity won’t impact your normal rare/ultra rare/secret rare slot; in fact, now you can open booster packs with multiple rares/ultra rares/secret rares

• Characters will be split into our traditional rarity groups: common, uncommon, rare, ultra rare, and secret rare, appearing in the dedicated character slot in the booster pack

• Drop rates for character cards are designed to minimize obstacles to deckbuilding for Constructed players

What this tool allows us to do is try to meet the needs of each player demographic in a better way. Having common and uncommon rarities allows us to build Characters that are particularly strong in Limited which allows us to structure Booster Draft and Sealed Deck knowing players are likelier to see those characters more frequently. Character rarity helps us make Limited play better.

Collectors and fans of the world benefit because some characters are more thrilling to open than others. Opening the biggest hero from the world feeling special is a powerful introduction to the game and matches the expectations of fans. It also provides extra excitement for collecting by expanding the desirability of characters in a way flat rarities don’t succeed at.

Finally deckbuilders don’t face the old world of being unable to procure the cards they want to build decks as they did when rarities were originally introduced for characters. While character rarity means you may have to work a bit harder, collecting characters in our upcoming sets will typically break down as follows:

• On average, when you buy a booster box you’ll receive a copy of each common, uncommon, and rare character plus approximately half the ultra rare characters

• On average, when you buy two booster boxes you’ll receive a single copy of each common, uncommon, rare, and ultra rare character

• On average, when you buy three booster boxes you’ll receive a copy of each character card at common, uncommon, rare, ultra rare, and secret rare

While distribution rates vary and include randomness, in general you’ll receive one of each character when you purchase three booster boxes of a set that features character rarities on average. That may change depending on set size and the number of characters in a set as well.

Closing Thoughts

Our modern interpretation of character rarity aims to better serve all our players. It’s a tool we’ll use selectively, starting with releases later this year. We'll closely monitor the results to ensure we achieve our goals: making booster openings more thrilling, enhancing Limited play, and maintaining accessible deckbuilding.