I am mostly interested in the single-player part of Card Hunter. Now the last patches were full of balance changes to cards which caused problems in multiplayer, but which were totally fine in single-player. That annoys me somewhat. I LIKE it if in a single-player game sometimes I get extremely lucky and pull off some crazy combo to win the battle. Today I feel a permanent threat of a nerf bat hanging over my head: Whenever I do something fun in my single-player game, I fear that it will be the next thing to get nerfed because somebody found it unbalanced in multi-player. In the future, can't we just disallow certain cards in multi-player but leave them in the game for the single-player part? I don't see why the two games need to have exactly the same card pool, and why the balance requirements of multiplayer have to be allowed to negatively affect my single-player game.
I agree to some extent mages got ripped apart by all the pvp nerfs and are now sad excuses for a dps in pve.
In my view, the balances changes are very good for single-player as well as multi-player. Pulling off a 'crazy combo' is fine, and that typically isn't a problem for multiplayer balance either. For example, you can still do crazy combos such as using Quick Run to charge in behind someone and clobber them with an All Out Attack + Obliterating Bludgeon 1-hit KO. That's an example of a combo which can be devastating, but will remain in MP and SP. And in SP there are lots of options for combos which aren't viable in MP, because of the way the AI works, and the layout of the maps, and the different numbers/type of enemies etc. So no one is trying to take away your crazy combos. It only become a balance problem when combos become too dominant; too reliable and uncounterable; too restrictive. Balance changes do have an effect on SP, and to me it is an unambiguously positive effect. Because when particular builds are too powerful it effectively limits what the player will choose to use. For example, before the recent nerf, whenever I wanted to pass a difficult challenge on the first try, I'd use my super-cheesy Talented Healer build which effectively made my team invincible. It didn't take any thinking or planning to use. It was extremely reliable, and it was super-effective on every map. The effectiveness of this build demotivated me from trying anything else - because this one setup made every other type of combo pale in comparison. Deck building is part of the challenge of this game, and when super-powerful combinations exist, the deck building part of the challenge is gimped. If certain super-combos exist then it's natural for players to just keep using those same combos over and over again. It removes a great deal of thinking and depth and variety from the game. So I really think these balance changes are good for both SP and MP. As for splitting SP and MP, I really dislike that idea. To me it's important that both SP and MP be the same game. (I don't think I'll try right now to describe why this is important to me.)
To a certain extent, multiplayer is going to be separated from single player automatically. Single Player games post release are going to go out to level 30 and items will pick up the third tier of power token. But multiplayer maps are played at level 18. So if the items with purple power tokens have crazy broken stuff on them, it won't affect MP balance at all, and SP players can run around having fun with them to their heart's content. -Frank
Citation needed. The devs have plans for power tokens up to level 50 (but the new ones will be orange and red, not purple), but I haven't seen a single hint that there will be any new SP content ready at the release date, nor any hint that MP will remain level 18 when the campaign expands.
