First impressions thread

So I cleared all my LEVEL 1 dungeoans and attempted my first LEVEL 2 dungeon. Time for first impressions.

What strikes you first when you play the game?
Seems great, but can they pull it of as yougioh did? Meaning - easy to learn, hard to master. Oh, nice art style. The field/board sometimes seems plain.... i get it they go for the board game style of things... and look at this funny Game Master. Oh how i'd love an EPIC voice-over - like the guy from Bastion.
Thats a lengthy tutorial. Was still good. Id did explain things that are not as abvious - like the difference in shields and armor and how they work. But still there should be a way to skip tutorial or re visit sections of it. Lets say i want to make sure i understand things right - check only par about shields. This game has great potential and it works on browsers.
Registering an account with beta key doesnt work. It says that i am in session already. BS. Well, beta is beta, lets try another browser in an hour or so.

What's your overall impression?
Seems like a good game. I am still not sure where they are going with this. Whats the end game? Raids? Beck when TotalBiscuit checked this game (i think in alpha) i thouth they dont plan in adding multiplsyer. Now does that mean they cant do Single player as good as wanted, or people not like it or did they want multiplayer from the start. Ok, good game. How do they keep me interested in playing through a single player? I give this game 50/50

What do you find confusing?
Um... where is timer shown on dungeon refresh? Its exhausted. ok I get it. But for how long? Is it on time? Or other stuff?
Ok, I lost a battle... didnt expect that... so OP, so I get 3 retry. Ok. I bet you can refil if you spend real money. Thats ok, good busness model, but it doesnt say that i can refill it or anyhing... so what happens if i have 0 retry left?
I want to leave a dungeon - do i get penalty for that?
If i just cleared all LVL 1 dungeons and lost my first battle on forst ecounter on LVL 2 dungeon then i guess i have to go and farm LVL 1 dungeon. Really that soon?
Tried it. LVL 1 is now waaaaayyyy tooo easy. Boring. So do i sux or the balance is a bit off?
What cards, how many are replaced when i change an item on character. I see what i gain but i dont see what i loose. I just dont understand it.

What needs more work?
Balance. And i still dont understand what is the main way of getting gear. Is it Diablo 3 but with cards?
More card types. Traps or insta spells maybe. I just afraid that if so little card types it might get old and boring way too soon.

What's do you find appealing about the game?
Tactical aspect of the game - not just use of cards but placement and facing direction of character - best thing ever. Reminds me of Finalt fantasy: TACTICS or a game like that. Runs on browser.

I hope this first impresion helps you out guys. I will come back and post once i progressed more in game. Will keep posting whenever i have advanced far enough for new things to take effect.
Thanks for the chance to test this and improve the game!

 

And I'll answer this one:

You can see "what you lose" by hovering the item over the slot in question. Got an axe in a slot and want to compare it to a sword? Pick up the sword, move it like you're going to drop it in the axe's slot, and just hover there. Bingo.

 

I don't mean to putt that suggestion down as it is a great one but I'm pretty sure they are working on making it easy to learn and it is definitely hard to master even early before you get 500 different cards to figure out. So please expand this point if you are trying to say its too easy you need to say that and if you think its too hard to learn say that instead.

Why does the game need raids to be a endgame this is such a sad modernized concept. The game is awesome in my opinion and if you don't find it fun after playing to level 18 how is adding more people to the pve going to make it worth your time? I'm not saying raid style co-op isn't viable or possibly fun. I'm just saying why does every pve experience have to have this can't it just be a good single player party adventure game?

Dungeons and shops all refresh at i think 4 am gmt but I'm sure someone can correct me on that in case i am wrong

You have 3 retries per adventure if you use them all up you can spend either pizza (real money) or gold ( in game currency) to refill it back up to 3 again. If you get 0 retries left and don't want to pay you have to start the current adventure over. Same goes for if you leave the adventure to do something else in game you also have to start over from map 1.

I'm not even sure what to make of this. I guess try another level 2 adventure and try it again if you fail. This game doesn't hold your hand and coddle you then give you a pass this fight button if you fail twice so keep trying and think about why you lost trying to not make the same mistake again. That said the game is luck based to some extent so some times you will just lose that's part of the game.

6 new cards with each weapon 3 with each other item. If you want to see what you gain and lose at the same time to compare hold the item over the slot you want to putt it in while the gear you want to compare it to is still in that slot.

You can't just drop that bomb as a single word without at least a sentence to describe why. Or if i want to be that way balance is a illusion in games where you play people since there is some advantage at some point from some source.

You gain lot after every completed map and you can also buy items from the shops for gold. Which you gain from selling items you don't want or need.

Good to see another FFT fan that game is amazing!

 

In a game like this your "end game" is PVP, getting better decks, rolling multiple teams and challenges until more content is added. Those four things can take up a lot of time and all synergize well in the current system.

You can do other things to break the mold, but that will take a lot of effort implementing additional mechanics that don't already fit into the progression and are only going to be used at level cap. Perhaps you can find an easy way to mesh WoW raiding with card hunters. If so, send it to the devs via their suggestions thread.

 

Hi,

well, so far i've been playing the game for a while. My chars are level 5, and i am not quite sure its supposed to go this slow. I kind of wanted to give a first impression after i got some missions under my belt and went around a bit. Like, you know.. the firs 10 levels. But i feel like its taking so long.

I've approached this beta in the same way i would be playing this game usually. Meaning i play it when i am either not in the mood for something complex (which isn't to say that this game doesn't have complexity) like a real Videogame (again, not to say this isn't a real game) like Chivalry or Xcom or Warlock the Master of Arcane. I very much approached this game as means to sink in a bit of time, which in retrospect is probably wrong. The idea of a browser game, with no installation times and all that, kinda lulled me into the idea that this game should be able to be played in my lunch break. Munching down on some sandwich and throwing in a mission or two as i take a break from my work. Well, it doesn't work.

This isn't my maingripe or even really gripe, as i suppose you don't have to be a game you can sink 30 minutes in or go and get up at the tip of the hat, just because its a browser game, but i would like to say that i dislike the inability to leave off adventurers "in the middle". I cannot close down my browser and walk away, because someone called me and i had to do something else. Like my boss coming in and being like "You there, Henchman No. 99, go gets the doomsday laser ready, we have unexpected company", not saying thats exactly occuring (we sold the dooms day laser last month already, the prices for the island vulcano base is killing us, but i digress). I really dislike the fact that i cannot get up and it saves my state. If i do that, it counts as a loss. Even more bother some is that the game slows down as time progresses. Playing 3 adventuers after each other? Well at least for me the game becomes progressively slower to the point where i feel like i should reload it. Unfortunately, doing so during a match is apperently a stupid idea. It removes a single continue from my playtally. This is annoying me a bit. I would want to get up and walk away whenever i need to. Games having not means of saving the progress over the course of a full "adventuer" are quite dated. Even when sitting at home, there are situations where my wife and kids demand my attention. You know those situations where you are like "No, Joey, don't put the fork in there!" and then have to jump up and run off searching the web for specialits to remove forks from soft places. Either way, thats bothering me.

But lets get on to stuff thats annoying me even more or rather what i feel like i should be sharing. I love the art style. I do love the whole game concept very much. I don't think you did a bad job, and very much believe its mostly a balance and tweaking of the numbers thing right now. But the game is so frustrating at times. Maybe i am just unlucky and never find the right stuff and equipment. Maybe there is some amazing gear out there which makes it all seem like totally plausible, but fighting in an adventure of the same level as my Party is ... unfair. You get thrown in, as adventurers and if you are not lucky with the cards you draw, you get overwhelmed so easily. Its not even funny. Most of the monsters attack with heavy hitting attacks from afar and i really have no idea what to do. You cannot really plan it on a strategic level, because you don't know which cards you will be drawing. I've gone whole adventurers with my Warrior not drawing more than a single attack, even though he has 3 weapons equipted already. And then some of the enemies are just to damn powerful. I can deal with a single though guy i need to watch out for. But 5 dogs, which hit for 10 damage every turn, all of them moving at once with a single card? I am sorry, but thats just unfair. The way nega traits are distributed amongst the enemy is just outright unfair. "Oh look there is a guy at the start of my round with just 1 HP, lets pile all nega traits on him, as he is dead anyway". Yeah, thats what a player would do too, no question about that. I've played enough Magic the Gathering in my youth (boy that was long, long ago) to know people will always do that if they have the chance, but if the nega traits don't apply to all of them, then their move cards shouldn't apply to all of them either. Getting swarmed by a bunch of npcs with a single card, should be reserved to special monsters. Swarm monsters, not to every single NPC in the game. Especially not if their weakest attacks seem to be 10+ damage attacks. It bothers me the most on Troll spearmen and dogs. Dogs have situational powerful attacks. Avoiding them is necessary, but how can you avoid them if they have 2+ Movecards and move all 3 of them at once? And the Troll scuttlers? Don't get me even started. You move up to them and they scuttle away. Move up and once more, they scuttle. And then of course they also have a run card and all of the time they move with their +2 attackrange. Yeah, i can get items that offer me that, but there is no store in town where i can go and be like "know what, i am fighting a bunch of people with spears, better get some spears myself". I got to be lucky to find spears to use to i can answer those attacks.

Same thing with armors. I lost interest in this game for some time, after my fighter got maimed over and over again because he had no armor. I had to replay a bunch of lower level adventurers, not because i wanted to, but because i had to farm them for items so i could hopefully afford new items or find something useful. Farming lower level adventurers to have the gold to buy a single item in the shop isn't fun. Yeah, i said that twice.

As much fun as this game is, the randomness of the card draws (i stopped counting how often i could end up with 4 attack cards but no armor or movement, or having just block and armor cards but not a single attack) makes a real tactical approach difficult. Having 3 enemies move with a single use of a movement card, makes it almost impossible. You do not only fight against them having superior numbers (and as result health), you also fight them without ability to be sure you can actually close up to them or hit them. Thats kinda like playing D&D and needing to roll a dice to see if you are even allowed to attack or move this turn. Yeah, in D&D you can miss too and as result have a turn in which you do no damage, but at least you got to try. With Armor and Block you already have situations where you do not get through someones defense, but at least you get to try.

The whole situation reminds me of Magic the gatherings "Mana screwed" problem. You know you have the bad-a deck in your hands, but for some reason you don't get lands. This game not only does that, but also extends it to the items and the shops. You not only have to get lucky during the game, you also have to be lucky with loot and the shop. I want a shop in which i can craft armor, have it have the properties i want it to have or at least give me a level appropriate selection of common items.

You could easily include crafting and not phase out negatraits on players. The thing about replaying adventurers would be even better. Right now i have no idea how i should approach a adventure with "equipt only items with negatraits". Yeah great, so basically i go nude? If you made next to the shop a smithy to allow us to craft our own items, it would be much better. You attach a price to each card you put into an item. The better the card the more pricy the item will get. Negatraits reduce the final item cost by the same amount. And you can only use property cards of items you already encountered. You already have that mechanic in the game. You flag them for my char so it won't pop up in a fight.

And have the shop sell all common items of my adventurer level and below. Seriously. My shops offer me 90% priest items and while i am kinda happy with my mage, my fighter is suffering.

Oh and a parting note, because i think i covered everything, please, please, include a place to store party members. If you have a game which says "only use priests for this adventure", then i would very much like the ability to store my highlevel Fighter and Mage so i can level up a bunch of priests. I do not assume you scale back the whole encounter so it can be played with a single charakter.

Well, and to hammer home the main gripes i am having with this game (and i really like its concept and gameplay otherwise):

 

Addendum of the last post (stupid char limit):


1) Have "Henchmen" move 1 with 1 Move card and rather include a new move called "swarm" which has all of them move. Because its very, very frustrating if you have to play "catch me if you can" with Npcs, especially if you happen to get "card screwed" (yeah i loaned it from Magic)
2) Have an ability to buy common items in the store which aren't randommized. Only randomize Dailydeals of uncommon and better items. Give us the choice to buy common items for situational purposes and don't force us to play tag with the daily deal. (I did that for a week, until there finally was some useful items for my Fighter so i could beat the next adventur) Have a heart with those of us who are bad at gambling.
3) Either remove the Randomness of the carddraws for heroes a little (like has to have 1 attack), so we won't draw 3 Armors in one round and none in another. Or scale back the Difficulty a little either by reducing the amount of movement cards Henchmen can have (i am thinking of 1 at most if you keep moving them all together) or by reducing the damage they can do. A single Dog is killing my Mage in one attack (not to mention the Watchmen), which is just compounded by the fact that they are Henchmen and move all at once and there is just no getting away or properly positioning yourself.
4) Stop selling me Gambling tickets. Its fine with ingame Gold but Pizza slices? Sorry, but i don't want to buy lottery tickets. Its why i stopped playing Magic and every other TCG or game that sells boosterpacks. If i am to spend my hard earned money on your goods, then i want a return and not just a gambling ticket that may, but mostly may not give me what i need or want. And from a Pen&Paper perspective. If i bribe my Gamemaster i do so for a specific item or deed, not for a weak promise that i might find something useful the random chest at the wayside.

 

A slight comment on the speed complaint remember that the game will keep the general pace through the whole game so not getting to 10 fast on a fresh account is good because that would mean getting to 20 fast and so on and this is a enjoyment adventure game not a get to max level and start raiding game as far as i can tell.

 

You can store party members with the Remove from Party button -- it sets them to one side, it's not a deletion.

(This has been a problem before, it probably needs better explanation.)

 

Thanks, i will try the F1 thing. And yeah i know it saves between loot and "onward!" (By the way, i can't help but keeping hearing the Knight from JourneyQuest whenever i read that button)

The problem is, in order to be played in a lunch break, it would be nice if you could close down the game in the mission itself. I also have had it happen to briefly lose connection (which wasn't the games fault, but my ISP resetting), which resulted in losing the whole fight. Its a minor complaint, but it would be nice if it would save the state of the game and not just in between the fights. Of course, i have no idea how that would look on the coding side of things and if there is a reason why it couldn't be done (like minimizing the packages being transfered).

Its no complaint of mine. I just thought i'd be a little bit quicker, thats all. But the combination of the game turning out to be a bit more elaborate as i thought it would be as well as getting bad luck with loot draws has turned the game to a bit of a halt for me. I mean, i am almost a bit ashamed to admit that i've gotten my Betakey amongst the first batch. So its not like i am just having access since last week. Its been a bit more than that. So yeah, i am crawling along. Not (entirely) the games fault though

Not saying "remove from party" would be a good thing to start with. Calling it send to Tavern or something that indicates you keep them would help. I very much thought it deleted them going by the choice of words.

But i also tried to stay away from the Forums, based on the request of the Opening Post that we should give our first impressions as unspoiled as possible. So to be honest, i haven't had read anything on the forums before i posted my initial feedback.

 

Perhaps you can suggest in the suggestion section that a save game feature be implemented? I wouldn't disagree with the feature being a one time cash shop purchase if it is too much for their servers to be storing these games mid session.

 

I totally understand not reading the forums before posting first impressions. Welcome, and I hope our advice can help to improve your future experience.

Saving in mid-battle has been suggested numerous times before. A dev tried to explain the difficulty once; I'm not sure if I can find the exact quote but the gist was that because playing one card can trigger a massive chain, it's hard for the game to constantly "remember" all the details of an arbitrary moment in time. Not impossible perhaps, but for now it remains a wish list item.

 

OT:

The game wouldn't need to constantly save. They could just hit "save game" and it would at that point save where the cards are and the field of play+ongoing effects.

 

I just spent my whole Lunchbreak playing CH, and here are my first impressions: I love it.

I finished the whole tutorialsection (or what I take as a Tutorial)as well as the first battle against the Trogdites. I love the aesthetic, the whole feeling of a gaming night that is absolutely there. I'm not good with balancing and stuff, so I will mostly talk about atmosphere and such. I had a lot of fun fighting the goblins, i like Garys range of emotions. You feel that he is a god DM, wanting the Adventure to go on, playing with you, not against you.

The gear / dekcbuilding is fun and something new that makes me want to go grind adventures for new stuff. Great job so far, will chip into the rest of the betaforums when I get deeper. No bugs or something similar so far. Lots of fun

 

More feedback incoming:

After some grinding and initial failing I finally got a real first impression.

I think I played around 4-5 hours (2 boring day at work, hehe) and noticed a few things that I very liked / didnt like that much / were missing imo:

Things I liked:
The texts are really fun to read. Be it the Quest descriptions, the stuff Gary says, even the attack descritpions are all cool to read and keep the atmosphere of the gaming-session up.

The dice /action log is very cool and reminds me of games like Bloodbowl. It makes the stuff that happens more accessible (at least for me) and when I miss a roll I can just look up there. Small thing that brings me happiness

The art and sounds are also good so far. Nothing spectacular, but the charme is there and I like it.

Things I didnt like that much:

In some missions, there are figures that "get away" according to story. I dont mind when they reappear for the next mission, but I do mind that they are fully healed up. I would like to know your thought process behind that decision. My suggestion would be to place them in the back of the fight and let them get healed up or something like that.

Things that were imho missing:

A Stash to store your Items that you didnt need. I am a hoarder and keep at least one isntance of every Item I find for memorys sake. Due to that trait and my purchase of a multiplayer-army, my inventory got very full very early on. I'd like at least a stash in the Castle, if you want to go further multiple chests to sort the things to my liking. That would also be something I would pay for, more chests to store more stuff.

CD-Timers or something similar next to the missions. I wanted to redo the tutorial-adventures to get all of my partymember up to the same level. I saw the adventures were locked, but it wasnt visible for how long / what had to happen that they went off cooldown. Is that written down somewhere and I just didnt see it or is it absent from the game? I'd like to know.

That is so far everything. When I stumble over more stuff, I will open up a thread. Thanks for reading and keep on rocking. I very much like this game and am honored to be a part in this.

 

Adventures and shops reset early in the morning gmt not sure if gary tells you as i did tutorials a long time ago

 

A counter would be nice I dont think he tells me, and if he does, I didnt quite catch it.

 

I'm a little late with first impressions.... I am really enjoying the look and feel of the game in general. The tutorial was very helpful in explaining the game. The multiplayer was a little confusing at first, but I know that's coming. I really like the system of having the cards attached to different pieces of equipment, and including negatives effects with some. The initial difficulty curve (I have lvl 6 players) isn't too daunting, and I've found almost every new level challenging when I start it. The only problem I've had is with the game bogging down at times, but I am playing on an older laptop (macbook pro 15" late 2008). Just started the quests, and I like being able to go back and play earlier levels with new challenges.