We mentioned before that Altruism was likely to see some sort of change and now we've decided that we need to do something about it. Why? Draw "engines" where you can draw an infinite or very large number of cards are always a problem for these kind of games, mainly because they are dull to play against. Both Talented Healer and Altruism were very dangerous cards for us to create because they allowed players to draw unbounded numbers of cards (both had mechanisms where the more cards you played, the more you could draw). We've adjusted Talented Healer to stop that and now we need to address Altruism. Things We Considered We considered very strongly changing Altruism entirely, as we did with Talented Healer. In the end, we decided to go with a more conservative approach and keep the basic idea of Altruism (draw a card when you play a card that benefits an ally) while bounding the number of cards you can draw. We considered a lot of ideas like having a fixed number of draws for the card, only allowing it to trigger once per round and so on. We kept running into two basic problems: One of the main purposes of the class based traits is to reward you for playing more of the same sort of card. If there's a fixed limit to the number of draws you can get for playing Holy cards, then Altruism doesn't do this. Many ideas involved using hidden information or state. For example, we considered only allowing Altruism to trigger once per round. The problem is that we don't store or show this state anywhere so you'd have to remember if the card had already triggered when trying to figure out what is going to happen, or what has happened. Solution Our solution avoids these issues. It doesn't involve any new state and it limits the expected number of draws from Altruism whilst simultaneous allowing you to get more expected benefit from the card the more Holy cards you play. Without further ado, here it is: "When you play a Holy card targeting an ally other than yourself, draw a card. Re-attach this card after it triggers unless you roll a 4." The trick is that Altruism still only triggers on a roll of 4+. So, to break it down, you must play a Holy card targeting another ally. If you roll: 1-3: Altruism doesn't trigger 4: Altruism triggers and you draw a card. Then Altruism is discarded. 5-6: Altruism triggers and you draw a card. What's the result of this? The more Holy cards you can play, the more cards you can expect to draw from Altruism. However, because there's always a chance that you'll roll a 4 and Altruism will get discarded, your expected number of draws from the card will converge (i.e. won't go infinite). How many cards you expect to draw from Altruism? I'll let you figure that out exactly, but it's more than one (you always get one to replace the card, since it's a Trait), more than two (even if you roll a four you get at least one more) and something less than infinity. Of course, you can always get lucky and draw a LOT of cards from Altruism. Is that a problem? We think not because it's not going to happen that often. We could be wrong, of course, but this is certainly a step towards reining in the power of Altruism. Let us know what you think!
I like the approach in trying to limit the card drawing, but I'm not sure this is the way I would do it. With three priests stacking inspirations you could still churn in attempt to draw into additional Altruisms. I think it will limit the number of draws, but I'm not sure it will be enough to change the builds that abuse it. We'll have to see how it plays out. This still can leave the opponent pressing pass for minutes at a time while the other team just cycles their deck looking for another Altruism. The true issue with this problem is purely a function of the number of inspirations you can fit on one character though. As for not having a visible state, I disagree. At some point, in one of the many threads, I suggested that when a card is drawn to reduce the duration of Altruism. That would effectively limit the number of draws per Altruism trait. (It also opens up a mechanic for later cards to start playing with the duration resource as I believe has already been toyed with for terrain.)
Yes, it's possible that churning Altruisms might still work. I don't think that is going to be a useful strategy but if it is too powerful or annoying, we'll have to adjust further.
We considered that approach. The only thing I have against it is that it sets a hard limit on how many cards you can draw with Altruism. Although that fixes the large card drawing issue it means that there's not a benefit to playing more Holy cards beyond a certain number. It's a subtle point but we'd like to keep that be the case even if the benefit converges with greater numbers of Holy cards.
Yeah, I'll do some heavy testing on it. Dice tend to hate me, so if I can get it rolling it at all, it's likely still a problem.
I agree with the solution and what it is trying to solve, but I dislike the fact that a single dice roll is divided into 3 discreet outcome: - Not trigger and keep attached (1-3) - Trigger and discard (4) - Trigger and keep attached (5-6) If we follow the logic of Bad Luck and the recent change to Saving Roll, this imply that "Trigger and discard" is somehow better than "Not trigger" at all. This is not a clear cut "better" like any other effects in the game. We can all easily argue either way is better. If I value the current card advantage, trigger and draw is better. If I value the potential to draw more cards, not trigger and keep is better. Practically, having a Bad Luck increase the chance it will not trigger, lower the chance it will trigger and keep (both normal behavior of having bad luck) but the chance that it will trigger and discard remains the same (1/6) and did not increase. Suggestion: If we have to go with this approach, divide it into separate dice rolls. Dice rolls should always be binary
Also, aren't you already statistically setting a limit to the number of cards being drawn? Perhaps it's the perception of the open endedness that you are looking to keep in order to allow/encourage stacking of holy spells. If you have to encourage/reward the the use of playing a large number of the same cards, perhaps the cards themselves should be more advantageous? I guess I'm unclear why a talent is needed to encourage the use of more/multiple holy cards.
Traits are generally intended to reward and boost use of specific card subsets. Hence, Slicing rewards playing Chop cards, etc. The thing about a hard cap on the benefit of Altruism as opposed to a statistical cap is that you occasionally will get HUGE benefits out of it. With this system there's no hard upper bound to your benefit - the bound is a soft statistical bound. You can still "go infinite" with Altruism - it's just extremely unlikely. I think that's nicer but obviously it's just a personal opinion.
Yeah, I can see the logic here and we did carefully consider having the discard be on a roll of one, not four. The main difference there is that it created the possibility of getting NO draws from the card before it is discarded. We felt that that would make the card feel worse, even if the expected number of draws remained the same. Interestingly, the game originally had separate trigger and discard rolls for ALL cards. It was only a way into development that we decided to simplify that system into binary keep/discard options. Right now, we really didn't want to bring back the second dice roll as it just slows the game down too much (and is kind of hard to understand). I could be swayed to move the discard roll to one instead of four. The only other downside of that is that, if we ever introduce a Good Luck card, which I actually don't think we will, it would make Altruism MUCH better by eliminating the possibility of a discard altogether.
It would just turn the card (mostly) back to its original version. And the priest will need more commitment for the Good Luck card as well. I can go with roll of 1, as to me personally, it is the worst that could have happened. It still doesn't solve the problems that for some people, or some circumstances, discard is still better than not triggering at all, since that allow you to draw a card right that moment, which might be critical to whatever the opponent is going to do next. To explain it better, we know that: Not trigger, discard < Not trigger, keep (A) < Trigger, keep (C) Not trigger, discard < Trigger, discard (B)< Trigger, keep (C) That means it is impossible to compare between (A) and (B), so is it ABC, or is it BAC? Is it roll of 1 or 4 ? Either choice wouldn't make more logical sense than the other.
This will not do nearly enough. It just means that on average after I play six holy cards altruism will fall off. If I can play six holy cards, it is highly likely that that has drawn an altruism for one of my other priests. I am pretty sure this would not have much of an impact on the altruism deck I posted, much less one that uses Demon Charm Of The Second Circle.
I think the idea was to make the deck less consistent overall, not get rid of the possibility of drawing your entire deck.
Right. I think he's suggesting that doesn't agree with that choice. Allowing the possibility for such huge draws, however rare, people even attempting it makes the game boring and generally lopsided.
Unless I'm mistaken having three different outcomes from a die roll is unlike any other card that exists. Not that that should be a reason not to do it, it just seems distinctly out-of-place amongst all the other existing cards. To me it looked like the issue was when Altruism interacted with other card drawing cards. I would have introduced the Draw keyword, e.g. Inspiration becomes "Draw 1. May Self Target.", and changed Altruism to "When you play a Holy card without the Draw keyword targeting an ally other than yourself, Draw 1. Keep. Chance: 4+".
I had two suggestions for fixing Altruism: 1. Instead of drawing a card immediately, have Altruism increase your draw next round. You'd still be able to draw your whole deck eventually, but it will start slowly, giving your opponent a couple rounds to stop you. 2. Change Inspiration and Inspiring Presence from Holy to Psychic. The problem here is the feedback between Altruism and Inspiration, and I believe Altruism is the only card that checks for Holy. And some cards already use Psychic as a damage type.
Its important to remember that different people like different things. You might hate infinite draw decks that sometimes get there but guess what that infinite draw guy might hate warrior smash face decks. The option for a pull your whole deck thing should be possible just hard to do and unlikely.
But how does warrior smash face guy (or anyone else) feel about not getting to play past turn 1 because infinite draw guy just keeps drawing until he kills all of the characters? It's not really about the flavor of the builds, but the integrity of the play experience.
