[FB] Love the Game! Here's Why I'm Quitting After a Week Without Buying Anything.

*Save at -10 Vs Wall of Text* Apologies , but I respect the Devs and the game enough to give fully detailed and dispassionate feedback with no axe to grind, and have no wish to debate any of my own personal opinions about the game with other players who find their opinion or experience differs. It's still useful to know that someone can experience a game in a specific fashion, even if not everyone does. Unfortunately, I took Verbosity as a bonus feat during an early level up, and I'm beginning to think maybe that wasn't the best choice.


There's so much to like about this game, and the developers should be proud. It's a fairly fresh hybridization of the tactical turn based fantasy strategy games I love, with the addictive compulsions of a CCG. It's got an appealing, nostalgic design aesthetic, and a lot of self referential humor. I love it when Gary says , "Encounter!" The AI is relatively good for a game of this type. There's a lot of potential for customization and strategy, while still being pretty accessible out of the gate. I'd hug every member of the dev team on principle for making this game, if I weren't prohibited from any further random "hugging" incidents by court orders in several States.

In short, it's right up my alley, and the sort of game I'm usually willing to overlook a lack of production polish or technical problems to support. I'm old enough to have purchased and played the old box set books and modules this game references, although to be fair, the overly random game play of card hunter is pretty different from those games with their clearly defined per turn abilities and reliable statistics. I've been playing it nonstop for about a week, and I enjoy the early game with its tighter decks very much. I was convinced this was going to be the first game to really win me over to the "Pay to Win" business model (split all the hairs you want, the game is about getting cards, and players who get more/better loot drops have a better chance of getting better cards which gives them an advantage), which I generally find distasteful and view as an inherently corrupt format if your goal is to make the best game possible, rather than extracting the most money possible by nickel and diming players to death.

So what's wrong? I mean other than the fact that I'm clearly a casual gamer who doesn't like challenge or having to strategize. That seems to be a common response when people raise some issues about the difficulty curve, but all I can say is that I've got a library full of niche turn based tactical and grand strategy games, roguelikes and simulations, and think that Dwarf Fortress is the greatest PC game ever made, so I promise you I'm not adverse to strategic thinking and sometimes punishing levels of difficulty in principle. The hours I spend on these games in the course of a given year extends into the 4 digit range. I should be pretty squarely in the target audience.


Simply for the purpose of the information for any of the handful of poor souls who actually bother reading this, and not for the purpose of arguing with people who are enjoying the game, or for trying to punish the devs for not making it be exactly the game that I want, I'll list the several main stumbling blocks I have towards supporting this game, which I very much want to like and very much do--to an extent.

These points are from the perspective of having played the game for a week, with multiple characters and parties, up to about the level 10-12 range, at which point the game loses its savor. I even restarted the campaign on a new account once I realized that spending the free pizza the campaign gives you on the things it tells you to is about the most foolish way to spend it. It's possible the game experience changes drastically after that point, but I just can't will myself beyond it. Even knowing just that could be useful information for the devs when they're looking to do balance passes. I'm only interested in the game as a primarily single player experience, as I only play against/with my own friends in online games, and I have no illusions about having the commitment of time and money it would take to become good enough to be competitive in MP. I say that out of respect for the multiplayer audience who have the will to do so.

 

You've captured a good deal of "hybrid vigor" with the fusion of the tactical RPG and the CCG, but you've also inherited problems where the expectations of the two genres conflict a bit. I imagine it's a difficult balancing act. Many issues beg the question , "How random is too random"? A certain amount of randomness is necessary for variety and tension, and luck should always have a part to play. After 3 decades of rolling a critical fails on a 1, I've learned to take the bad with the good. But over reliance on luck to the point where it diminishes the effectiveness of player progress and strategic planning on a regular basis is the enemy of good strategy. Tactical strategy to an extent requires a player to be able to make informed decisions based on known quantities and abilities, and live or die with those decisions. The game increasingly hinges on luck just a little too often for my tastes, the ranges of probability a little too wide.


1) Characters feel *less* effective as they level up, instead of more so.

Even if they have access to more powerful abilities, too much comes down to luck as to whether they'll actually be able to use them, or stand around useless for much of the fight.

This is entirely separate from the issue of encounter challenge, and more to do how effectively the characters play their roles. When the game begins with its limited decks, you have a Warrior who reliably dishes out melee attacks, a cleric who reliably supports the group with healing and light melee, and a wizard who reliably casts spells. They may not be powerful abilities, but you can count on the character to perform their roles, and each one has a distinctive role to play.

As Characters level up, more slots open up, and more minor abilities of questionable usefulness are forced on the character. Refusing to equip the slots just makes it worse. Too often a warrior, even with as many attacks loaded as possible, spends round after round with nothing to really contribute, because he draws a bunch of unnecessary moves and other "chaff". As the campaign gets progressively more difficult, 2 or 3 bad rounds like this can easily cost you the battle.

I understand that card games often come down to the luck of the draw, but tactical combat games require units with distinctive capabilities that can reliably perform a role. I need my Warrior to be able to wade into combat and absorb blows and dish out point of contact attacks, I need a Cleric who can support the group, and I need a wizard who can cast spells. It's not very much fun running around a grid with characters who can't do anything.

The enemy AI doesn't seem to have that problem. Enemy heavy hitters with their more focused decks not only get better and more reliable armour turn after turn, but they still manage to move and take a swing as well, turn after turn. I tell you what, I will give you my level ten warrior with double slotted gear items in exchange for one of those mercenary guardsmen or even one of those damnable Trog spearmen. At least I know what they can do, and they can do it reliably. I frankly haven't even noticed much difference in my warrior's ability to tank hits as opposed to one of my wizards, aside from a minor disparity in hit points. They both seem about as likely to not have any armor at a given time, and both manage to stack a couple pieces of armor of equally meager effectiveness by the end of the fight. When does my fighter get armor like the AI gets? Why is Cloth armour better than Mail? *Shrugs*

 

2) The Level 10 Wall

Or level 10-12, thereabouts. I hate to bring this up, because I know that defensive fans like to counter attack people raising these issues with accusations of a person being a casual player or somehow lacking in intelligence. I don't think that's true with me, but if it was, how would I know with my feeble intellect? I suppose I could measure the moisture content from the drool on my shirt, but how would I know how much of that was due to dumb guy drool, and not just the normal amount of drool from thinking about things like delicious pizza? For that matter, shiny objects are highly underrated. Have you really looked at these things? They're so...shiny. I resent the casual thing though. I put over 300 hours into the last strategy game I bought, and am still going.

In any event, around that time the game turns into a contest of trial and error optimization on a fight by fight basis, and the game grinds to a halt. Before you attack me, let me just state that I like those things and definitely think they have their place. I am aware of the various counters in the game, and I know how to adapt my strategy, and have successfully done so. Had a hell of a time with that Cockroach mission until the cards and group mix I *knew* were the counters to that adventure's many conflicting challenges finally fell they way I needed them to fall, and I was happy when I beat it, only to then be disappointed that the loot was the same mediocre loot I'd been getting all along, and not something reflective of the challenge.

There's still too much luck involved for my tastes, particularly when it comes to group starting positions. I played one of those Arena missions that started my wizard sandwiched in between two adjacent heavy hitters, and he was dead 2-3 actions later. He couldn't have run because of the melee range 'stickiness", and I'm not aware of any card I had available to me that could have kept him alive, if I was lucky enough to draw it on the first turn. Even if I came with a party of three warriors just to survive that first round, there's no guarantee the character who gets trapped there will start with any armor, not that it would have helped anyway, as armor is generally much more effective for the AI than it is for the player. My only solution was to keep replaying the mission until I got a start position I could survive. I understand the need to keep things interesting, but I don't particularly enjoy overly random cheesy stuff like that in order to inflate the challenge. At times like this, it just feels like the game is being taken out of my hands.

I wish there was still a path through the game of missions suitable for a more generalized loadout so I could still succeed at a lot of missions with solid play with the characters and skills that interest me, rather than the characters and skills the game forces on me, and constantly have to retool mission by mission. Ideally I'd like to see a tiered system of missions where dungeons that will require a lot of trial end error and optimization are labelled as extreme missions, and pay out loot commensurate with the effort. I like missions that require a lot of thought and extreme optimization, I just don't want every mission to require it.

It's not a matter of wanting the game to be without challenge, but more a matter of wanting a smoother, more intuitive curve. That change in the game happens very abruptly, and it makes a drastic change in the pace of the game, the pace at which you get to see new cards and rewards, and more of a feeling of having to grind out the campaign, rather than enjoy it. It may have been just a matter of missing a mission somewhere. It didn't seem like there were as many level 9 missions as there were missions of earlier levels, and maybe I was under-leveled by the time I hit those ten, 11 , and 12 missions. I could have gone back and done some level grinding on earlier levels to catch back up, but again...grind.

To the dev's credit, I don't believe it has to do as much with unintentional balance issues, but more with deliberate efforts to stretch out the campaign and coax out more monthly subscription money in a game that doesn't really warrant a monthly subscription in my opinion, except perhaps for MP maintenance, which doesn't interest me much. Which brings me to point 3.

 

3) The Business Model

I don't believe I'm entitled to the efforts of the developers for free, and I absolutely believe the game should be supported by the players who want to see games like this made. I know we are living in changing times, and game developers have a lot of difficult issues to balance as they adapt to the changing environment. I'm sympathetic, I really am. But I don't feel it serves my interests to encourage more games to be created in this mold.

F2P, Pay to Win, Freemium, whatever. I guess I'll just never be on board with this, but as we've already established, I am old and of meager intellect. There's a good game here that's intentionally gimped in order to serve the business model, and it's just not something I want to encourage, *especially* in niche games like this that would otherwise really appeal to me. The amount of free content is generous as far as these things go and none of the pay features are strictly necessary, but I just don't believe this is the same game we'd get if the goal was simply to make the best game experience possible, rather than to see how many nickels and dimes the game could extract before players lose interest.

I wanted to pay for the "full game" and whatever I would need to pay to really feel like I owned the game, and get the optimal experience from. The $ 25 option seemed a reasonable price point to me, as that's around what I might expect to pay on Steam for an indie strategy game like this. Frankly, even though it's Flash based, I think that an optimal, self contained stand alone version of the game is easily worthy of the 40$ price point of many mid-budget strategy titles like Paradox games at launch, especially with the multiplayer.

But then I looked at it, and saw that you still don't really own the game at that point. You still need to keep subbing if you want the full loot drops, and as far as I know, there's no option to get rid of the timer on dungeon resets. If I hit that level 10 wall, and decide my Elf Warrior was not the best choice, and I want to go back and level up a Dwarf Warrior for times when more durability is called for? Tough. You have to wait a day of real time to continue playing the game the way you want to play it.

I want Blue Manchu to profit from their efforts and continued support of the game. I want to have access to the game's full content, I want to be able to customize my characters in ways that increase my attachment to them, I want to play the game on my own time schedule, and I want to be able to play it offline. I would also like a pony. A pretty pony. Pick a reasonable price to make those things happen, and let me know how much I have to pay for it. I'm not a pauper. But I am old and cranky, and I smell slightly of pencil shavings.

***

So, I'm not axe grinding or anything here, but I wanted to provide the feedback for anyone who actually cares. A lot of thought and love was put into the game, and I think it is worthy of thought in my response to it, even if it's not working for me in the ways I wish it was. If you ever get around to a standalone version and revisit the some of the game mechanics, balance issues, and progression curve, I will definitely check it out again.

Thanks for the worthy efforts, Blue Manchu !

 

I don't think you're dumb, and I'm not going to call you such for finding the game hard.

In fact, if you've seen my posts, you'll note how often I thank people for explaining themselves well. You just did so, and I thank you. The problem comes when people assume that their personal preference for a game MUST be the only criterion for good game design. The sheer number of times that "various forum suggestions for changing strategy" completely resolved the person's problems, well, just encourages forum people to keep bringing up strategy when newcomers complain. See how it can go weird if and when tempers rise?

To give a real response:

[No number]. I'm glad you like the game's premise, and I'm also glad to see a Dwarf Fortress fan. Massive difficulty AND massive reward for the player is a fun combination.

1). I do wonder if there's anything the devs can do about this, given how often newcomers bring it up. Unfortunately, I don't think they can change the slot progression. I CAN say that the full-slot character sheet is more manageable than you describe. For instance, suppose I want to minimize Move cards, yet still be able to move reasonably well: I will now select an Elf or Human (decent default Move card) and remove ALL MOVE CARDS BUT ONE from that character's deck. I'm not joking and I do this regularly. The same applies to whatever other deckbuilding goal I have. And if I don't happen to have the right items just yet, well, I know it's possible to achieve and I personally enjoy playing more matches to earn more items.

2). Two issues. First, the Arena thing: that specific example has been brought up in the past, and the devs have already made changes to correct unfair positioning. If there's something legitimately unfair, post about it! The devs are AWESOME and will listen if enough people speak up. Second:

The game was designed on the idea that deckbuilding is fun. (Among other ideas, duh.) See here. Most players are here because they want to change their deck to match each new challenge, and in fact I'm delighted every time I have to expand my thinking as if this were a puzzle game. The change in difficulty you describe used to come right at the start of the game: massive Armor challenges, massive ranged enemy challenges, massive Parry challenges, and so on. Sound familiar from near level 10? Exactly. Then the devs lowered difficulty, and now more players have a chance to beat those early challenges and learn the lessons they need. (Melvin, for one, emphasizes strongly the "Armor" lesson the player should learn.)

3). I, too, would like to "own" the game. I, too, would like a pony. I'm glad we see eye-to-eye. But as to leveling-up a new character, well, that point there speaks to how you play the game: I'll easily have a slew of maps renewed and ready for whatever I want to do each day. And even if you have to wait literally a single day, then what? You've solved your problem and leveled-up your character, so when will you ever face the problem again? Since you now know how the game works, you will never mis-plan again.

Anyway, thanks for writing in such detail. I hope that other folks take the time to read it.

 

I want a pony too

Other than the point Sir-ulean Dragon has already addressed, I agree with the criticism of the reset timer. Having reset timer on things make it feels like a P2W casual game, while at the same time giving you no option to reset it (real money or not). Hardcore players are the one that has no problem grinding things over and over again until their eyes bleed. But I'm not in favor of removing it either. The end game is all about grinding loot, having some thing you can do until your eyes bleed, (or even, wrote our own bot AI to farm it). Hell, bot would be so much easier since this is a turn based game. Nothing needs to be modified, just read the pixel and click the mouse. Some build you don't even need to process the board state (hello firestorm build).

Ok I digressed, the timer must stay. Maybe, for the purpose of leveling alternate party, the timer should only be locked to the characters beating it. Then make a hard cap of 27 (3*3*3) characters you can have in the tavern. That way, with some grinding, eventually any player can farm a single map 9 times a day. Or if hardcore enough, 27 times if you bring only 1 character to that fight.

The smart people would already grind the module by not completing it, beating all maps except the last and than start over. The better loot at the end kind of discourage that behavior, but it will happen. (Maybe you could try to do that with some module for some common items that you are lacking, dont bank rares on these small chests).

It kinda goes hand in hand with the "too much random" problem. The rewards doesnt match the difficulty of the map you perceive because it is random. Because of the reset timer, they can make some map much more difficult than another map and still let them drop the same kind of loot. And when your random loot does not help beating the game, there's nothing you can do except grind.

Another problem at hands here are the token system. Don't get me wrong, the system is genius, but there is a minor flaw in it: an item's power is not judged by its level, but by its token costs. A level 1 and level 8 item both does not requires any tokens, but the lvl 8 item can be much better than the level 1 item. However, the biggest gap is of items with minor token costs. They goes from lvl 9 up to 17 (1 below highest). You are at the brick wall of lvl 10, in which item start costing 1 minor token. Using level 9 items to beat these adventure is a challenge, but if you have lvl 15-17 items to equip, it is a cake walk (of course high level module do get harder at lvl 15-17). Nothing prevent you from doing that unless you don't have the gear. Same problem with level and experience grinding. A level up does not do much (only +1HP), at lower level (1->10) and it actually weaken your character, neither does it do much 13-18 (the jump from minor token to major token is small like item lvl 17 to 18). The biggest jump in character power comes from around your brick wall level. Having a minor token is the difference between a lvl 1 item and a lvl 17 item (lowest level and highest level item). 1 more level get you 1 more minor tokens. Overlevelling is kinda required at this stage since most battle are designed around you having access to strong minor token item. The only way to reliably got their card is to get more tokens. So yes, nothing wrong with beating that lvl 10 module once your party reach lvl 12. It seems to be designed that way.

So how do you get the few lvl 10-17 minor token if you can't beat these module? adventure pack and SP is the only option, and the later a random one at that.

I originally wished the game was SP only too, but after 3 months with it (beta and all) I have found MP much more fun and where my replayability comes from (after I have bleed my eyes with the campaign). I was very surprised to see it was originally created to be a SP. So now I have to be ok with the business model, as it is the only way MP can survive for this game.

Good luck with your adventure, there is so much more niche for everyone. I'm glad I have found mine.

 

I disagree with a lot of what you say, but differing opinions are fine.

But I have a huge issue with this part:

You'd have a month to beat the campaign at that point. You yourself admit that it's only a single-player game to you. If you don't beat it at that point, another $10 would get you another month of club membership, and at that point in the campaign (1 month in), you shouldn't have much left, meaning club membership wouldn't be at all necessary.

At level 12 of the campaign, you unlock the ability to recruit level 10 characters. So if your elf warrior was not the best choice, you're barely behind.

There are a few difficult modules around level 10, but you also have 3 blue orbs of power at that point. Utilizing them properly is key.

 

Mmm. More tedious than hard. A permadeath rouguelike is hard, and unforgiving. I'm ok with hard, as long as you have a reasonable and intuitive chance for success. This game isn't hard. As you point out, you have unlimited tries at all the missions, there are obvious counters to specific situations, and there are no consequences for failing other than having to endure more tedium. It's just a matter of trial and error and failing before you can win. Which means re-treading a lot of the same territory, and fighting the same battles over and over. I just reached a certain point where it became obvious that's all the game was going to be about from that point on--invade a mission to see what kind of enemy mix there will be, retool your weapons and hope the cards you need come up, and then lose again when the final missions springs up and does something cheap like separate your party, and put the character you brought along specifically to counter with one threat (strategy!), on the other side of a door from them while the rest of your party is slaughtered.

If that's going to be the game it should be more honest about itself from the start, and not suddenly spring it on players who were enjoying the way the game started only to run into a wall at the start of mid game where everything grinds to a halt. When coupled with the business model, it's difficult not to be a bit cynical about the motivations for making the game so grindy.

No sir. Thank you!

I agree. Luckily I didn't do that, and went out of my way to say that wasn't what I was doing:

You must have failed your save vs Wall of Text. To be fair, you did have a -10 penalty on your roll due to my ranks in Verbosity. The point is I'm making no statements as to what is or isn't good game design. I'm simply informing the devs as dispassionately as possible where their design lost *me* as a player. That's the only thing I'm qualified to speak on.

Like I said in my original screed, it may be that the experience changes significantly later in the game. But I'll never see it as I lost confidence in the game long before that point. If it's a matter of players not being able to see the forest for the trees, and losing them before they see the large, unfocused decks really start to pay off, then that's still a problem the game has to address. Players are heavily conditioned to expect a clear sense of progression from finding new gear and leveling up in games that utilize traditional RPG reward mechanics, and the game can seem a bit counter intuitive on this point.

Everyone's experience with the game can differ, but in my game experience it was common for characters to go several turns in a row without being able to make a significant contribution, and sometimes entire rounds go by while everyone just runs around being useless at the same time. I'm not a designer of the game, and any suggestion I make as to how to change it is likely to be pretty myopic, stepping on some other aspect of the game design. Only the devs see the big picture. I can only inform them what I personally don't find to be much fun.

I think the Devs are awesome too. But this happened over the past week, so they didn't change this. It's not so much a matter of them addressing a specific situation, but rather being distressed at the frequency with which I'm seeing this little maneuver in their bag of tricks. No player likes GM Fiat, and GMs know to use it very carefully, or risk losing player confidence forever. At least in the source material this game is ostensibly referencing, players have a chance to avoid traps and ambushes through diligent planning and--wait for it--strategy. With increasing frequency the maps seem a bit arbitrary and capricious with the stunts they pull on the player, and it happened one too many times for my confidence level in the rest of the game.

Deckbuilding is fun. I wish the game let me play around more with the decks and characters I wanted to build, and find a way to win with them, rather than consistently requiring me to bring a more specific deck not of my choosing to deal with so many hard counters and scenarios all but requiring specific character mixes and builds. I can't get attached to any character, because the game requires that character to be different for every mission. I'd really like to play around with that evil, hexing life draining evil cleric build, but with the 3 character limit there's seldom a spot for it considering how important real healing and support abilities are, and how important magic is most of the time for enemies that can't be safely handled in melee even by warriors ( a distressingly common occurrence...makes me wonder what the point of warrior armor is at all). If I have to double up on a character class, it's rarely the best decision to add a second cleric instead of a warrior or a second wizard. Presumably as I got better at the game, I might have discovered more ways to be successful with different mixes, but the game lost me before that point. Pity. For both myself, and the developers. I enjoy the puzzle aspect of any tactical game, and I'm glad this game has missions of that nature. I'm not so happy when the game has nothing but missions of that nature and slows to a crawl.

Anyway, from the link you provided it seems like you spend a lot of time arguing against similar complaints. Hmm. I'm sure it's everyone else's problem, though.



Yes, the game is a deckbuilding game. It is *also* a tactical RPG, much like the D&D games Card Hunter references so heavily. It has a grid, tactical movement, and facing rules. It has character classes and level up progressions. It's a novel hybrid of two distinct game genres which each have a different set of expectations that don't always play well together. I'm sure it's a difficult balancing act. The game channels tabletop D&D, but in that game the party mix is frozen, and characters come to a battle knowing exactly what they can and can't do in a specific situation, and succeed by employing those abilities as effectively as possible, at will. In a card game, you can't rely on knowing what a character will be able to do during a battle at all. I don't think it's odd for fans of those games to bristle a bit when the experience differs from their expectations of games like that with its excessively random nature.

Personally, I prefer Chess to Poker. I'm open to the hybrid nature of this game, but it's in my nature to pull more to the Chess side of the spectrum. Other players may be happy with Poker. But since the game actively courts DnD players and tactical strategy fans, I thought it might be useful for the Devs to know where they're losing me as a fan of those games. Whether they care or make any changes based on the feedback isn't the point. I just respect what they've done enough to offer them the best feedback I can on my experience, and let them decide what, if anything, to do with it.



Thanks for the discussion, and my apologies for the obnoxious line by line quoting. I just wanted to extend to you the respect of addressing your points in full, since you spent the time to write such a friendly and thorough reply to a long winded post that no sane person has any business reading. I only truncated your statements to avoid the character limit. There's really no point in any further discussion. You're not going to win me back (I've already deleted all my characters and gear so I won't be tempted to waste any more time), and I certainly don't want to be any sort of negative influence on people who may be enjoying the game more than me. But like I said, if the devs ever decide to repackage the game in a slightly more consumer friendly and less...financially manipulative format, I'll be happy to check the game out to see if any further tweaking or balance passes have made a difference.

 

Oh, one last thing! It would be super if there were some option to delete my accounts that didn't involve bothering the busy developers with an email. In the age of inevitable hacking and database raids, I prefer not to leave any data trails lying around on sites which I'm not actively using.

Thanks again!

 

Some people have asked about this sort of thing, but you're completely correct in noting that we have to pester the (busy) devs. The game is still young and doesn't have quite all the expected features implemented.

And, okay, if you're set on the discussion, then I'll wish you well. Just one thing:

I referenced "people assuming that their personal preference for a game MUST be the only criterion for good game design." You responded by saying that I "must have failed my save vs Wall of Text." A very clever response, but I tried to make it clear that I wasn't talking about YOU: I was talking about other people. The fact that you had MORE criteria than personal preference/feelings of entitlement puts you above the frothing masses. I meant unwashed masses. I meant masses.

(DANGIT I am showing my own biases. Those other people must be right: I am clearly an elitist gamer who feels that my personal rules of conduct must be the only criteria for everything.)

 

I thought your wall of text was very eloquently written, with enough humour to keep me entertained but not too much that you obscured the point you were trying to make. If you don't mind I'll post my comments to the issues raised in case the devs take a look at this thread (and I really hope that they do). I'm not trying to convince you of anything, you laid out your opinion with great clarity and no (so far as I spotted) factual mistakes so why would I want to argue with you?

Point 0 - randomness. There is quite a bit of randomness in the game but I always felt that there was just enough that you could do to mitigate the randomness through deckbuilding and, when that fails, tactical play. However, I prefer poker to chess so maybe I'm just more forgiving of randomness.

Point 1 - I agree with you here, at least initially. As you get more and more slots your characters feel weaker as their decks get diluted. I felt it was worst around level 6 or 7. Then I felt that they got more powerful, as you got better items to put into the slots and acquired more power tokens. The enemy decks are usually smaller, and therefore more reliable, than player decks. Some people have expressed unhappiness with this in the past although honestly I don't mind it, it means that I can more accurately predict what I'll be facing.

Point 2 - I don't have much to add to Sir Knight's point. I believe the intention was to create a game where to be successful you have to change your equipment, sometimes significantly, between each adventure. I appreciate that not everyone may want to do this, and that even people who do may not want to do this for each new battle. As an aside, if the arena quest was the one vs. the dwarf and his zombies... I think that's the only encounter that I'd say is outright bad and that the devs didn't do a good job of designing (sorry devs!).

Point 3 - I agree with you. I'd actually far rather the game was a one off purchase. I don't know which business model is better from a making-the-devs-the-most-money perspective. I do think it's incredible that so much of the game is available for free though, and I decided that the game was sufficiently enjoyable for me to spend money on it to show my support. However, the majority of that money is still sat in my account as pizza and I don't particularly feel any inclination to spend it.

Point, erm, this one:

I'm not sure if your final sentence is serious or tongue-in-cheek. I suspect it's a bit of both. I do think that some of the encounters in the game would be improved if you could choose which of your characters started in which spot.

Anyway, thank you for the detailed, thoughtful and honest feedback. I'm sure the devs will find it useful. I'm glad that you enjoyed the game to some degree; hopefully you'll come back and try it again in the future!

P.S. Out of curiosity, and if you don't mind sharing, what was the last strategy game that you bought and put 300 hours into?

 

Ah, ok. I'm sorry I misunderstood. I didn't see the point of bringing that up if you weren't directing that towards me. Mostly I just wanted to use my Save vs Wall of Text joke again. Comedy gold, that.

 

Recently I got a lot of mileage out of Eador: Masters of the Broken World, a tactical turn based fantasy with kingdom building elements. That game is superficially similar to a number of other games, but it starts to reveal a lot of depth that isn't immediately apparent, and I grew to appreciate the design. Ironically a lot of players resisted the level of challenge in that game, but I never thought it was cheap, and I always felt like I had control over my own destiny and could solve problems by proper strategic thinking, even on the highest levels of difficulty. So to each their own I guess. I have a soft spot for turn based fantasy, but I like all kinds of strategy games and sims. Crusader Kings 2, Dwarf Fortress, the X3 Space Sim games are all stuff I've played recently, and I get quite a lot of play time out of them. But I get dizzy around anything that involves moving pieces around on a hex grid. Or failing that, a square grid-- the hex grid's less sexy sibling.

 

Good to hear Eador is playable. Last time i logged in diplomacy was broken, and nobody would ever attack me, so it was no challenge whatsoever. I will give it a try again.

Regarding the original post i am somewhat puzzled by it. On one hand, it seems clear that you (Cyjack) are not a casual player, on the other hand i am perplexed that you have a difficult time with campaign. I beat campaign once in beta, and now that i came back i find game easier than before, and i am basically rolling through it (rarely i loose a map, and i did not have to restart a adventure yet). Also i had modified my equipment only once, i usually play the same stuff, with few modification to weapons (if after first battle i see that my enemy is resistance to certain type of damage). I love also this game because it never forced me to grind (i hate it), and i never repeated a mission i already did.
Thus, either i am lucky and i hit a good composition of equipment, or the boost you get from membership is really so important (i have it), or this game has a method to it, and the skill comes with experience (i learn a lot through the first play during beta - i had to restart many missions). Or perhaps, all three factors are important to have good experience in game.
I do not have an intention of being condescending, i can do it so you can do it, but rather, as i said, authentically puzzled.

 

Which precisely are you confused by?

That you played through the entire game in Beta, a stage of the development where the player is supposed to be more tolerant of frustrating or unrefined gameplay, got a lot of experience with the game, and found it was easier to play through a second time with all that campaign knowledge and a significant increase in the chance of finding useful gear? Or that for a single week I played a "finished" game that the Devs declared ready for commercial status, and was less tolerant of abrupt changes in the nature of the campaign, over-reliance on the luck of the draw, and the degree of randomness that ultimately fails to meet my preferences for clearly defined roles and reliable unit performance in tactical strategy games?

Are you puzzled by how I'm able to pummel my keyboard effectively enough with my big sweaty dumb guy fists to type coherent sentences, and still not have the same game experience as you? Perhaps you are bewildered by my ability to sustain autonomic functions and not fall unconscious at any given moment from forgetting to draw breath.

Or maybe we just have different thresholds for tedium, or more likely define the concept differently.


Sorry. I read your post as, "I'm confused by why I'm smarter than you for having an easier time with a game I've spent a lot more time playing". A rather tiresome and all too common response to posts like mine. If that wasn't your intention I apologize, but as I've tried to clarify repeatedly, I fell out of love with the game from a lack of will to keep playing, not a lack of ability.

This is why further discussion is pointless and I shouldn't have even replied here, but I was just curious if maybe someone had said something useful about account deletion. Have fun with the game!



Re: MotBW. The Devs have been diligently issuing regular patches. I only mentioned it because someone asked me what I had been playing recently, not with the intention to draw any comparisons to this game. I don't know if diplomacy is still broken or not by your reckoning, as it's such an insignificant part of the game. The game still has some technical issues, but I find the core gameplay satisfyingly polished if not suffering from a bug, and slightly more complex than something like HOMM.

 

There is no need to be upset, nor sarcastic, nor personal. And your reading of my post is wrong (at least it was not my intention).
My intention was to start a discussion to look for a factor that makes a game tedious for one hardcore player, whereas it does not make it for another.
It can be luck, first factor, i have in cards. Second, as you pointed out, experience with game (which you do not desire to gain, since process is too tedious for you). Third, which i am incline to think is a major factor, is the starting pack - membership, which allows you to have bigger selection of items, and gain some better ones in treasure hunting. This can be a tipping point between very-challenging-but-fun and possible-but-too-tedious. in this case it a valid point for discussion, that perhaps game design is faulty at.
Fourth of course, is fun factor; for instance, a randomness of game and level designs i perceive as a joyful surprise to overcome, whereas for someone else it can look as cheesy tactic of designers ruining a pleasure. Some do not like randomness at all.

PS Never claimed that you compared MotBW to this game. I used to follow patches and disputes, then i lost interest. But the diplomacy bug was game breaking for me, on custom map you could go 1000 turns and no neighbor would ever attack you, so you could cherry pick whom you want to fight, and thus, was too easy to win. Otherwise great strategy, and i already had a very good time with first Eador.

 

Very eloquent post. I've expressed some of the same concerns as you, the biggest one being that the game feels like it punishes progress at times. There are a lot of great things to say about this game, but if I ever want the consequences of my hard work to feel random rather than proportionally rewarding, I'll go do something productive in Real Life (whatever that is.)

 

I was never personal. But sarcasm is a god given right in the face of condescension, and you were being a little condescending, intentional or not.

From what I can see the issues that I raise here are far from uncommon on these boards, so there's some percentage of the game's potential audience that feels the same way. So your bewilderment isn't necessary. We simply disagree, as you must be aware that others do as well, and are best served by slightly different priorities in tactical strategy games.

I never claimed to be "hardcore". I don't even know what that means. If I were really hardcore, I'd probably jump right into PvP and never look at the campaign. I just didn't want to be dismissed as some casual player who was unwilling to invest a lot of time in a strategy game if it consistently hit the right notes with me, and who was resistant to any sort of challenge. I just prefer a slightly more open ended and experimental window for success, rather than a smaller window consisting of a few optimized builds per encounter. I prefer soft counters to hard. I prefer creative solutions to obvious linear ones. If I want to run a party of Elven step-attack warriors through the game, I'd appreciate the game more if it gave me opportunity to succeed with that more often. I'd love to be able to use some neat new Hammer of Demonic Eyeball Implosion that I just found and build a strategy around it, rather than constantly finding it's simply superfluous or not optimal for the most of the missions. How else can I fall in love with a piece of gear? How can I be attached to a character when that character changes every mission?

I'd prefer more maps to be open battlegrounds with many different paths to success for clever players, rather than locked doors with a comparatively finite number of combinations. The latter definitely has a place, but so does the former. For me the game started looking like it would have a lot of the former, but my heart sank when it became clear it was going to start skewing closer to the other end. I wish I could experiment with building more of the decks I want to build, rather than the deck the devs obviously want me to build for a particular mission. Swarms of low HP enemies? Yeah , yeah, Chops and Fire cones, I get it. Lots of armor? Chip away with penetrating attacks, or hope you can stack enough armor removal cards so one might actually come up before the end of the battle. Yawn. Sorry Evil Cleric, maybe I'll get to play with you next mission. 4 Missions later: sorry evil cleric, you're still not optimal...I sure would like to see you boil someone's eyeball.


But mostly, if I commit one of my scant three precious part slots to a heavy armor warrior in order that he might tank hits and dish out front line melee damage, I would like him to be able to reliably tank hits and dish out front line melee damage. In the game my wizard seems as likely to draw the two pieces of armor keepers as effective as anything my warrior has, and be the one to go to the front and tank hits. What's next? Dogs and Cats living together? No sir. I will not stand for this. I can't bear to see my warrior cowering in the backfield because he doesn't get any armor for half the battle, and runs around useless for long stretches and then gets all excited when he can finally manage a simple bash. I will not suffer my fantasy game archetypes to be so maligned!



Re:MotBW. I've only ever played the lengthy campaign, and can't speak to the custom games.

 

The way you're using it, it's practically a drawback, you can hit your GM up for some extra points later.