[Suggestion] Different victory square configurations

Forgive me being a little catty here but... "My team is fine, it's this darn river that's the problem." Get out of Egypt.

Most MP teams start out focusing on a given tactic to beat well balanced teams like the one you are suggesting. So even entry level MP teams will likely give you a run for your money. Saying you are 'balanced' generally means you aren't tuned for a given tactic. Competition is often a case of doing one thing extremely well and if that doesn't work you're likely to lose, but if it works you win. These tactics evolve as you get higher up in rank, as people get more experienced, see what other people are using and get better cards etc.

Sounds like you haven't found a tactic yet and expect your balanced approach to work. Highly versatile decks that can react to many different strategies are one of the most subtle and hard to build tactics. Knowledge of what other people are playing and adapting to their play style is key (which you don't seem to want to do at all) when taking this approach. Even then they struggle, having to looking to capitalize on some mistake or good timing of their own resources, against almost every tactic.

Long story short, if your build is fine, then you should be winning and your rank rising at a steady pace.

 

There you go, attacking me again. Why do you keep acting like it's my fault there's a camping issue? I DO beat camping teams. It's just that I can't ALWAYS beat them. And yes, I do expect to lose sometimes, that's not the issue. The issue is I lose sometimes JUST FROM CAMPING alone. That's not right. I should lose because my opponent outplayed me, not because he camped in the middle of the board and got lucky that I didn't draw the cards I needed at the time. OK? Please stop telling me it's my own fault.

Now, I'm really sick of discussing this issue. Jon has already posted in here stating that they will probably experiment with some stuff. A few players have stated that they agree that different victory square configurations would be nice. I got what I came for. Thank you all for posting.

Last thing to say for me is, I really do hope some change comes for this. What that change should be exactly? Not 100% sure. But if no changes come then I may lose interest in this game very quickly because I don't find it fun to face campers or to be one myself.

 

I strongly disagree here. Camping is a strategy. The fact that it works is a feature, not a bug. It's one thing to complain that the strategy is too strong, but it's another to complain and say that it shouldn't be a viable strategy in the first place. If it's the dominant strategy, you build for it and beat it. Your complaints are the equivalent of saying "Junk Reanimator is winning a significant plurality of all M:tG tournaments, therefore we should take some action to stop it."

Getting lucky and drawing the cards you need at the right time should be a fairly critical part of defeating any solid strategy. Defining how many cards you are willing to commit to defeating the dominant strategy is a crucial part of deckbuilding.

I'm sorry, I don't mean to come off as condescending or rude, but this entire thread SHOULD easily boil down to "is camping so strong of a strategy that it destroys the metagame?"

If the answer is yes, something needs to be done.
If not, experimenting with some minor tweaks may be useful, but it's not a problem worthy of dev time when they've got so much more they want to add to the game before it leaves beta.

 

Title updated

 

Hey, guys, I just wanna add one last thing... I've just sent quite a long message to someone via PM which is me explaining to the best of my ability why the current victory square setup is an issue. If this isn't enough to explain my views, then sorry, it's the best I've got.


Here it is:


I don't know how else to explain that this is an issue, dude...honest. But I'll try one last time to be as clear as I can and maybe you can see my point... Dwarfs, and other warrior races, can camp in the victory squares. This is because they only need 2 things to camp: movement cards and armor/block cards. You're guaranteed at least one movement card per round, and armor/block cards aren't hard to come by, either. This means, those characters are almost always guaranteed the cards they need to camp. So, all they have to do is make there way towards the middle of the board, and camp. And because victory squares are bunched together, this allows dwarfs and warriors to bunch together, making the camping even harder to deal with. It's not like you can just rush in and take a group of dwarfs or warriors out. And as for movement, people seem to think that just because dwarf basic movement cards are only 2, they can't move. This is totally wrong. Dwarfs can have sprint, dash & run just like other races. Not to mention there are those cards that add 2 movement to each movement card you play that dwarfs have access to. Not to mention human skills that push allies that can aid dwarfs. Not to mention wizard teleports can help them move. Not to mention the cards they have that allow them to draw more cards. Not to mention the charge card. I could go on. The point is, dwarfs do in fact move. It's not too hard to get a dwarf to the middle of the board. There are realistically only 2 ways to combat victory square camping. #1. Wizards. They work just fine, IF they get the cards they need WHEN they need them. That was one of my points in my thread...that campers are almost always guaranteed what they need to camp, but do wizards always get those terrain/whirlwind cards or whatever? No. They don't. And they don't always get them when they need them, either. So, a wizard can't do **** against a camper if they're getting bad draws. But the camper, all they have to do is sit there and camp. That's not fair. Also, what happens if your wizard dies? Then you're just completely ****ed sometimes. Game over by camping. #2. Step back cards. These work OK. The problem is, what if I don't use those cards? You're telling me that I should not do the build I wanna do, but instead use step back cards just because of campers? Screw that. I should be able to make whatever build I want and do fine with a warrior. Also, even if you have step back cards, you can't always just rush in, like I said earlier. I use an elf warrior....am I just to rush in on 2-3 dwarfs? Yeah right. I'd most likely die. Besides these 2 things, I can't think of a realistic way to deal with the camping. If you can, let me know.

 

What's there left to say? You're unwilling to change your tactics and strategy to win. It's fine as winning isn't always the primary goal for everything. It seems to me you have an idealistic vision of how the game should be played and won. Rather than change yourself, you'd rather change the game.

You've been posting a lot, and you haven't been playing for more than a week. You're quick to claim cards are OP or consistently have bad draws ect ect. I've watched a couple of your matches and there are a lot of factors to why you are not winning as much as you think you should be.

If you're honestly out to look for advice, I'll just say one thing. Whatever you have trouble with, play it yourself. Maybe then you'll understand why it's strong or where its weakness is. Not asking you to play dwarfs or whatever cards/strategy you deem OP every time, but play it for a while and see for yourself.

 

:facepalm:

Just lock this thread please.

 

Am I wrong for saying you are unwilling to do what it takes to win?

 

Here's where you earn responses like that, DB:

This is flat-out untrue. If someone builds a heavily one-sided build, whether it's 2x Dwarf Warrior/1x Dwarf Priest or 3x Human Wizard, the entire purpose of the build is to force your opponent to have an answer for your build or fail. If the opponent has an answer, they win. It's the precise opposite of building a balanced build and hoping to win more than 50% of your games by drawing the right answer at the right time.

If your deck doesn't have the answer to their deck, their metagame strategy worked, and huzzah for them. Again, not a bug. It's a feature.

The only question here is whether or not the Dwarf Camper strategy is winning too often, not at all whether or not it's beating your strategy too often. Any extreme strategy, played well, will beat a moderate strategy a fair amount of the time and beat other extreme strategies either 5% or 95% of the time.

 

You know what's funny, though? If this game had victory squares spread out from the start, and someone came along and suggested they all be placed together in the middle of the board, you guys would be against that. You're only defending this because it's what you know. You're not thinking outside of the box.

 

Ever play on Cave?

But I have to agree with the majority of posters here. You seem convinced that anything that can beat what you believe to be a superior build is an inherent flaw in the game itself. Nobody is arguing against an added variety of win conditions, but the stance you appear to be taking is that the current ones are bad because you can't (or simply won't) adapt to them.

 

I think mixing a lot of different victory conditions in ranked is the way to go.

Let some require camping and some mobility etc. This will force you to create a more versatile deck/setup

 

I disagree, I'd say it would help stop the problem with stalemates and it would be a great idea to follow the known paradigms of game design concerning victory squares. Thanks for putting works in everyone's mouth though.

 

Yes. Yes. And more Yes.

 

Straw man. Also irrelevant. Also ad hominem. None of these points make your argument any stronger, nor do they actually address any points made between them and your previous post.

Oh, I definitely agree that this is a good idea. Heck, I'd like to see victory conditions that were completely bizarre, like "each party starts on opposite sides of the board, with a big monster in the middle. Whoever deals the finishing blow on the monster wins a VP. A new monster spawns in a random corner of the board every X turns. No VP is awarded for killing an enemy."

Variety in scenarios is always good provided they're balanced, as a whole, such that the chance of getting a scenario that makes one extreme strategy an easy win is about as good as the chance of getting a scenario that makes the same extreme strategy an obvious loss. And, of course, provided they're randomly chosen.

 

Would you not be worried that people might build for one type and if they don't get it just resign because they know they won't win?

 

Will they? Or will you just get wins because others don't want to, or can't compete in a certain type of match? I do think it could easily break into three different populations though; Style A, Style B, or trying to do both. This situation can turn into a R/P/S sort of match where board selection instead of play will determine (or highly influence) the winner.

As I think Jon eluded to, having to build toward more than one game type can be difficult. That's not entirely bad but it would be more item intensive which may widen the gap between the average person and the dedicated player, and it may make decks that try to do so less consistent.

Now mind you, if you can keep the two (or more) board types similar enough so that they don't cause a lot of dead draws for one style and give a great advantage for another you've got a winner -- but then I guess the argument is are they different enough?

I'll be interested in seeing the stats differential should they go ahead with an experiment.

 

I don't care to make my argument any stronger. I can't explain it any clearer than I already have. All that's left for me to do is sit back and see who understands it.

Oh sure, when he says it it's a good idea, but when I say it? Stupid, right?

 

Not at all. I never addressed the point when you made it because it was lost in a hail of self-pandering. I literally never noticed that you said it. When he made the same point succinctly and without the fuss, it stood out on it's own merits and was evident as a good one.

Perhaps, but then they don't get the rewards they're seeking and they lose rank. Neh?