Analysis of infinite-draw decks

Thank you very much for your diligent efforts to educate the community. I give the same answer again and hopefully for the last time. Agree with the infinite draw problem, but I disagree on the approaches towards solving the issue via draw quota design. More than aware of the difference between infinite draw and high cyclers. Clearly there are too many available draw cards in pool creating the strong synergistic result which is the whole reason behind this thread. The simplest and direct solution would be to reduce the number of draw cards in pool. Unfortunately, such a solution is a bandaid. And I'm pretty sure the devs are more than aware of it.

I reiterate my stance: draw quota does not solve the problem. The crux of this entire issue isn't about reducing the number of draw cards in pool, it isn't about the cards themselves either. You can put in rules, systems and whatever and still have someone who can consistently draw 20+ cards in any 1 turn steamrolling his/her opponent. That is the problem. Doesn't matter whether the 20+ cards are all in 1 char or spread out the entire party.

 

Been playing for 18 days now, completed the campaign. Also a long time MTG player. I would suggest everyone who is unfamiliar with basic collectible card game theory read about Card Advantage. http://www.wizards.com/magic/magazine/article.aspx?x=mtg/daily/li/174

From the update wondering why Advanced Battelfiled Training isn't being used more, I feel that at least some of the dev team don't quite understand card advantage.

 

In defense, the consultants involved in this project are the founders and long-time designers of Mtg itself. So they understand the card engines very well. The translation from table-top to multi-platform f2p is the issue. Its a balance between making an online game fast, brisk and easy to access vs complexity. It can have more rules, interesting mechanics, high complexity but longer drawn out games. Would that help attract and sustain a critical mass of players and reach out to wider audiences ? Or perhaps a level playing field is simply not possible ? There are many considerations that the devs are tackling, some of which are fairly new to them and to designers in this century. I'm curious as to what direction they'll ultimately opt for...

 

Unfortunately, it is the limit on the number of cards like Talented Healer in a deck that is really causing problems in multiplayer.

Seeing as every competitor is playing as many copies of Talented Healer as possible, what I have noticed is that games are decided based on who is lucky enough to get their trait and chain of heals at the right time. Little else in deck variation or tactics seems to matter at equal skill and card levels due to the enormous amount of healing which can be produced at one critical point in the game.

I do not think these cards should be removed, but perhaps consider having an upper cap of three possible draws in one round?

 

I agree with karadoc's approach above: we shouldn't just avoid predominance of infinite draw engines; it should be impossible to go infinite. Even if a build only goes infinite a minority of the time (and stinks if it stays finite), it is distinctly not fun for the opponent to pass perpetually on those occasions when the build does go infinite.

 

There are many ways to skin this cat. If you want the engine killed, make TH never draw another heal. In fact, its possible to kill every draw mechanic this way. But stuff like capping/limits/quota just means 3 x priests will still possibly draw 3 x 3 = 9 extra cards in 1 turn (as an extreme example). Added to hand, that's still around 20 cards, give or take a few. No opponent wants that.

Well, a large number of draw cards were removed prior to beta build 2.x (Wizard's Hat, Armor Practice, Defense Skill, Attack Skill, Spell Skill). If we keep hoping to reign in effects, the ugly beast will rear its head again when expansions come. The confounding issue is that risk vs reward for draws are quite skewed compared to every other in-game mechanic. I was hoping stuff like Inspiration gave card draws based on some risk taken, be it attacking an opponent or being attacked or taking specific type of damage/attack or moving a certain number of tiles or onto some type of terrains etc... The idea of simply targeting an ally and boom!=free card just doesn't quite seem to sit right in a dnd sense...

 

Draw and discard until non-heal would certainly be interesting. Would make priests seek out items with solitary large value attacks trying to ensure they can draw that one card as often as possible.

 

Put a dice roll on the Draw cards, 2+ to draw a new card, with a modifier of -1 for each card in hand? This modifier stacks with Bad Luck etc.

 

One rather different way to combat this is to not allow re-shuffles. You run out of cards you forfeit the game. That way these card draws will be a two edged sword. Yes you will get those cards quicker, but it also means you have less time to win.

If forfeit is too strong then some sort of penalty should you re-shuffle, damage for every card drawn after, reduced number of cards drawn, half you deck becoming some sort of negatrait, that sort of thing.

 

I kind of like that idea. Damage wouldn't be good because the infinite draws also do heals, but reducing max health or something along those lines might be interesting.

The challenge is balancing the punitive aspect with the power of the increased draws. If the infinite drawing machine can kill your team before the penalty kills him then it's too weak, but if it starts negatively impacting normal matches with a reasonable amount of card-drawing cards then it's too strong.

Of course, what constitutes "reasonable" is always up for debate, but with 36 cards, starting with 3 and drawing 2 per turn, you should get 17 turns before you have to reshuffle. 2 traits that replace themselves would cut that number by 1. Having 6 traits in a deck would not be unreasonable imo, so 14 turns is my baseline. I just looked at some data from the results page and the average game length was 6 (5.6 actually) rounds. Add one to that and you're at half of my baseline, which means that character is drawing on average, 2 extra card per turn above the churn we would expect from traits. That seems like a good setting for reasonable.

A penalty that only hits normal decks after turn 7 or so seems like it's just a good mechanic for keeping games from dragging on too long.
Possible penalties:

• Max health cut in half (actual health remains where it was or reduced to new max) every time the deck cycles.
• Some sort of card-drawing encumbrance - Exhaustion? All draw numbers reduced by 1 each time the deck cycles. (After 1 cycle, Traits, Inspiration, Altruism and Talented Healer stop working and Unholy Power and Demonic Feed only give 1 card. You also only get to draw 1 card + 1 move card per turn. After 2 cycles, Unholy Power and Demonic Feed stop working and you only get to draw move cards at the start of turn. Etc.)
• Max health reduced by 5 for every card you draw after your deck has reshuffled once.

As punitive as these seem, they might not be strong enough - i suspect that most decks should be able to kill you using 1 complete cycle of their deck or a just a little over that. Anyone else have a better sense of that or other ideas?

 

I wouldn't want to punish healers for having heals in their deck. What if every time it draws a non-heal, its duration is reduced by 1, discarding itself immediately upon reaching 0? Boots, Shield, and Race Skill guarantee at least 9 non-heals in the deck, so Focused Healer can't go infinite by itself; I'm not sure if it stops three priests.

 

That model doesn't punish healers for having heals though. It means that (with the trait active) each turn you can heal twice (if you drew 2 heals at start) completely free. You will always replace the heal with something else you can also use, just for a different task.

Have a healer with absolutely no attack cards, and he can always move after healing. Or have a healer with a handful of powerful attack cards and he can always deal out a nice beating while healing at the same time. Of course, if you are sloppy about deck construction you might replace the heal (which you did use, it wasn't wasted) with a 2/1 weak chop. Not amazing, but still free damage or block baiting (if he is in melee range of someone)

 

One possibility for combating infinite draw is to focus on the drawbacks more. I like unholy feedback because 5 self damage is pretty significant. I'd propose taking out the card draw on altriusm and talented healer so the drawback damage is not easily healable (or at least you can't heal the drawback AND get an additional card to continue the infinite draw chain). Perhaps make unholy feedback and unholy power ignore armor and/or increase the life loss on unholy power (taking 1 damage is hardly a drawback). Then a team of two or three priests can still draw a lot of cards, but they'll basically kill themselves doing so.

 

Along the same lines of dmar's sentiment: Whenever a priest triggers a card draw through Talented healer, he personally becomes unhealable for the remainder of that turn. This stops him from being able to self heal for more draws, and in a 3 priest team, you run out of draw capability quite quickly.

 

Not sure how you think this works but I use Demonic Feedback and Demonic pain so I have damage to heal and I can continue drawing cards. I'll even attack my own characters if I need to. I don't think damage is the answer here... Shoot, I'm trying a 9 traveling curse build just so I can do more damage to myself to make sure I have stuff to heal!

 

The important part is the taking out the card draw from altruism and talented healer. Then you would have no reason to hurt your own guys just so you can cycle through more heals. You can still heal demonic feedback/pain drawback of course, but it would result in the straight loss of a card, which would balance out the extra card from feedback in the first pace.

 

As far as problem 2 is concerned, if infinite draw engines are viable they will be predominant because card advantage is king in any strategic card game such as Card Hunter. The only way to solve this problem is to make it so infinite draw engines don't exist, period.

The problem here is that now you have 2 traits that don't actually do anything. Perhaps Talented Healer should instead add +2 to all heals played per duration instead of drawing a card. This would fit flavor wise and be a much better "fix" than adding a bunch of text to the card to make it more restrictive, more complicated and more confusing. The question then becomes what do we do about Altruism? Is drawing half a card per holy card played still good enough if you don't have TH making it 1.5 cards? Is drawing half a card too strong?

Personally I feel that a decent number of "cantrips" (Parry Quick Step etc) would be perfectly safe if you moved all the card draw/hand manipulation cards to be racial and class skill item exclusive. This would place a hard cap on the number of card draw cards available per deck and kill infinite draw engines dead. Priests would still be able to fill useful roles in MP without breaking the game to the point where every party HAS to have at least 1 priest.

I would also like to see the return of "draw and discard cards until you get 2 of x or discard 6 cards" cards make a comeback on class/racial skill items. These cards are fairly well balanced and quite flavorful, and with no chance of infinite draw/cycle decks there is minimal opportunity for abuse. Cards like Martyr's Blessing are a fantastic way to draw cards (from a game mechanic stand point) since they are easily played around (you may trade hp for cards assuming your opponent obliges you by attacking your buffed character). Similarly Consecrate Ground has enough of a drawback/is conditional enough that I feel it is safe to place on divine items.

This is just my opinion/2 cents and what I personally feel is the most beneficial way kill the infinite draw engine and handle card draw in the game in general.

 

Talented Healer could do that for healing cards and Altruism could do it for Holy cards in general. (Note that this is incompatible with my previous endorsement of deck reshuffle penalties. I don't care so much how it gets fixed so long as it does get fixed.)