As the title suggests - I've had Beta access for a couple of days. I avoided the forums before I got access, to leave my first impression as mine alone. I've caught up a little on the threads since then, but not exhaustively - so forgive any redundantly duplicate suggestions (after the impressions) below. Overall Impression: Enjoying it immensely! The single player (SP) challenge level seems just about perfect for me thus far - enough of a struggle that it feels rewarding, without being frustrating. The style, atmosphere and artwork are brilliant. Nothing seems fundamentally broken - but there are a few 'nice to have' additions I can think of. Single Player Impression: I've only used one SP party combination so far - a Dwarf Figther, Elven Mage and Human Cleric. They're all at level 10, having completed up to the Gladitorial Final, only unlocking the extra content Gary guides you to. The level of deck changing hasn't been onerous despite the amount of equipment available. I've not felt like I need to grind to get to anywhere enjoyable - it was fun right off the bat and I've been challenged (quite often losing at least one character), but almost always succeeded (I've not exhausted the 3 retries on an adventure yet) which gives a great sense of reward. Where things haven't gone my way it's normally because I either made a mistake, my set-up wasn't as well suited to the enemies I was facing as it could have been or I wasn't making best use of all (cards/environment) I could. The variation of the levels has impressed me so far - from maze like corridor fights, to open room races for victory locations requiring different tactics and having only a few stages to each adventure feels about right - they don't take too long, you don't run major risks of having completed half a dozen only to fail on the last etc. Multi Player Impression: The original introduction to MP in the tutorial seemed a little early to me, after I noticed it gives you the equipment from the starter pack to use in SP. Tokens not withstanding a fair few pieces I was able to equip seemed obvious upgrades/compliments to the gear I'd slowly been gathering - with blood, sweat and tears. To be presented with a haul like that, far from the gradual accumulation I'd just been doing, seemed to cheapen the efforts (and rewards I'd felt) from victories thus far. I was definitely grateful for it a few levels later when it started to come in handy - so maybe it's not too far out - perhaps it would feel more natural when you reach the level you unlock your first Token? I have played several ranked matches since that initial encounter - 1 or 2 against GM characters (fighting Melvin was good fun) and maybe ~8 against players. The match-ups seemed nicely even, with my first few against similarly novice MPs and getting more challenging and more diverse as I won more. A couple of the players I went against were using different starter sets - needing different tactics, but they didn't feel over-powered, considering they're Pizza unlocked. I look forward to playing against others there in future! While I'm getting rather attached to my character trio, I could see myself paying to unlock the starter packs - for the variation and to give a solid base to work from, instead of customising a whole party from scratch (so well done, for dangling that temptation!). Suggestions: As I said, most of these I consider 'nice to have' only. I appreciate some mightn't be easy to implement, but here goes: #1 - Allow players to choose which character starts in the available locations. I can see why characters are limited to certain starting locations on various adventures - but since a party can be any mix of race and class it can be frustrating when, for example, it puts your mage on the front line and your squat little figther is behind. Allowing assignination of character 1,2,3 to squares a,b,c or a region (akin to the stairs in Hero Quest, if that's a useful reference ) would at least mitigate a little bit of the danger of a duff 1st hand. Either before or after you see their opening hand. #2 - A mulligan for starting hand. For those who hate their starting hand - allow a 'reroll'. To stop it being abused perhaps put some condition (e.g. if there are no/all of one type of card and not possible if there is a negative trait), or penalty associated with it (like in Magic The Gathering - you redraw, but you get 1 less card every time you do). #3 - Ability to not use item slots. As you level you unlock more slots. While this is good when you have something worthwhile to fill it - if you don't, you just increase your deck-size with some dubious abilities. Being able to not use that a newly unlocked third weapon or racial ability slot means you don't get penalised for levelling. Sure, have a lock on how many you have to have enabled (to stop players abusing a couple of awesome items and nothing else) - but have it as another tactical deck building choice available to a player e.g. Do I want that third weapon on my fighter to give more chances of damage cards... or do I want an increased % of the boot movement coming to hand etc. #4 - A second 'direction' set of arrows. When picking a direction for certain spells (e.g Ember/Fire Spray) or when choosing a facing direction when 'moving on the spot' the arrows can be obscured by enemies/other characters (as they appear underneath their figure) meaning correct selection isn't always easy. Having a set of the same yellow arrows to the corner of the window (perhaps bottom left, i.e. about the same level, but on the opposite side, to where the Pass button is) as another option would help. #5 - Ally portrait targeting. In a similar vein to #4, picking out your own players for targeting e.g. heal/buff cards, can also be a tad fiddly sometimes. Being able to click on the portrait of the applicable character, when they're a valid target, would be similarly helpful. (I only suggest ally, as I know enemies can be in a group, so portrait clicking loses its unique identifier). #6 - Emphasis on MP chat in log box. When in a MP game the text from a player is very easy to miss amongst the various card logs in the box in the top left. If chat from a player was highlighted or made more obvious (larger even) it would be nice. An extra "Chat" tab in the box would maybe be the ideal. #7 - A MP "last played" item in the lobby. As the MP matches can end somewhat abruptly when one wins - just being able to say "good game" or "well done" to a particular player can be hard if you didn't take specific note of their name before it ends. When you're back in the lobby - being able to see who it was you just had an MP match against could be nice. #8 - Emphasis on the Store/Retrieve functionality. While not everyone might find it useful - it was only after a Hint about the gave auto-saving, did I realise the "Store/Retrieve" was only a load-out saving, not progress. I don't think I missed anything in Gary's messages about it being there but making a Hint about it, if not a specific part of the tutorial about it might let newcomers feel more free to change decks more easily if they know they can always go back to the one they were using just before that. #9 - Ability to store notes. A small thing - almost coupled to #8 above. Some ability to make little notes about adventures e.g. completed this with stored party #1, need the Blocks... etc #10 - Pizza 'un-exhausting'. At the moment once you complete an adventure chain it is exhausted until the next day - you already let people pay Pizza to unlock extra adventure content (which is what I'm most tempted by) or get more loot, is having a (relatively small) charge to un-exhaust the quest you just did too great another step? I can't immediately see it as being a PTW sink (especially with having to pay 'real money' to get extra random loot) with people grinding out the same quests again and again on the same day - any more than would happen doing so sequential days - but there has been more than once where I've completed an adventure and would like to go back through. For myself it would be to either try out new tactics, to see if minor changes to deck would help, or just because I particularly enjoyed it. Some of the glow of wanting to do that one again right then, or the deck I was using may have changed by the next day so the tweaks I had in mind to test might be gone - but if someone is willing to pay for the priviledge of being impatient to retry... more money to Blue Manchu! 'Bugs': The only one time the game did something bug-like so far - was when I first encountered the Oozes and hit them with the wrong weapon (i.e. I triggered their immune to x-type of damage armour card, apologies I can't remember it's exact name). I managed to click and drag on the card accidentally during the short process when it pops up during blocking. After that the card didn't disappear - it remained on screen - I couldn't move it, clicking on it only generated a message from Gary saying something like 'armour/block cards are triggered automatically'. Thankfully, when I Passed my way onto the next turn it disappeared and I was able to see the whole screen again. I'm afraid I didn't manage to screenshot - and I can't repeat it. Anyway, many thanks for the Beta key and well done on the game so far! Kind Regards Septimar
The ability to not use item slots wouldn't work, as it would be too easily abused. Imagine builds where each character only uses one single item, thus being absolutely sure to draw the card you want every single turn. Basically the number of cards in your deck determines how random your draws will be. Slim decks are a lot more reliable. Having a slim deck at level 1 is to make the game easier for you. The added slots feel like a reward but are in fact there to make the game less predictable and thus somewhat harder. If the actual problem is "I have no items to fill those slots with", there is a variety of solutions for that. You can wait a day and reply lower level adventures. You can get chests full of items as rewards from winning multiplayer battles. Or you can buy items or chests for gold and/or pizza.
I'm not really a fan of #1-3. #7 used to work: when you came back to the lobby it would give a message of who beat whom, but that doesn't happen anymore with the new build. I definitely agree with #8 (just a better explanation from Gary/Melvin early on about how it works). #10 sounds like a good way for BM to make a little extra $ without unbalancing anything.
I agree with #4-9. I'm not fully convinced #10 would be a good idea though. I've played a few mobile games where you have to wait X hours for a new building to finish and can skip the wait with real money. And it's just highly annoying...
Welcome to the Game! On your list of items 1,2,3,10 - Get a No from me; 4,5,6 - I'm ambivalent about; 7,9 - I agree.
1,2,3,10 - Absolutely not! 4,5,6,9 - Is fine by me but not really needed in my opinion 7 - I agree on but see the potential for people flaming before the comunity settles on being nice. Personally i just keep text files for stuff like 9 but im a note horder so if its not a big extra strain on servers i don't see a problem.
#6: Latest build gives you to a separate chat tab in the battle log. #7: You should be able to check your game history in the mp lobby to see who you beat/lost to. Although a seperate private '/tell <playername> gg' command would be nice too ! These are the new features, try it out and see if it works ?
