[Suggestion] Remove the card draw from all traits!

Discussion in 'Feedback and Suggestions' started by Martin K, Dec 18, 2013.

  1. YoYoTheAssyrian

    YoYoTheAssyrian Mushroom Warrior

    This is a really interesting tweak that would do a lot to make squeamish hurt. But as I was thinking, unless you deal with the cycling nature of traits this would still be an incomplete fix. While vulnerable and squeamish may be the two most common traits in a control deck, they aren't the only ones. Part of the issue, and maybe even a significant part is that these "bad" traits, just don't stick around that long. Until we can make sure that drawbacks both hurt and stick around for their intended duration and keep in place obvious exceptions for counterplay, pushing off traits should require effort and actions not just pressing the new card button over and over
     
  2. Mosalla

    Mosalla Orc Soldier


    No, I think you are missing the point. Terrain attachment are not a big issue if enemy can step out of them. So while it may sound like the change would do almost nothing, it would hurt freezes and WoW. Additionally one of main strategies connected to Squeamish builds is card discarding when you get too close with your warriors. So again, this strategy would be a bit hindered as you could not target enemy with little health.
     
  3. Mosalla

    Mosalla Orc Soldier

    Traits that do little harm also push out your own buffs. For example Electroporter Novice uses three different traits. If you want to keep a specific buff like D.Traveller or Hover from your robe, than the more different bad Traits you cycle, the less chance to keep good ones. But yes - some effects could be carefully increased probably.
     
  4. Krizmn1

    Krizmn1 Mushroom Warrior

    I actually kinda agree with Martin K. I think that trait drawing makes control decks too strong. They also make diversity smaller too. A control deck is not very strong without traits.

    What if bad traits were put back into your deck if that trait is already in effect with the same duration?

    So if Squeamish is drawn twice in one turn it is placed back into the deck. If squeamish is on round 2 and it is pulled again, the duration would be back to 3. This way the bad traits would have more of a chance of being in affect. One of the issues is that by stacking so many bad traits, you almost negate most of them by cycling them out quickly.

    Maybe the action of the trait going back into your deck wouldn't be so obvious to the other player so it's not annoying. Like it will appear in your hand and then quickly reshuffle. This way instead of appearing, popping up, going down to the character, it would appear in the players hand but then go right back to deck and is replaced by another card.
     
  5. YoYoTheAssyrian

    YoYoTheAssyrian Mushroom Warrior

    I just had another interesting thought. What if instead of replacing the old trait with the new one and new duration (this is assuming you draw squeamish then squeamish for example) the duration of the old trait is simply increased? Instead duration two squeamish, suddenly it's duration four. This has the problem of not addressing trait cycling in it's entirety, if you get three different traits they'll still just push each other out, but maybe someone will find it interesting.
     
    Krizmn1 likes this.
  6. Krizmn1

    Krizmn1 Mushroom Warrior

    That's a good idea. Still allows players to do a trait cycle deck.
     
  7. Sir Veza

    Sir Veza Farming Deity

    How about if (all or most) positive traits cycled and drawback traits did not?
    It might be worth a test build that removes all card draw advantage from drawbacks to see what else, if anything, needs to be nerfed. I suspect having 1-4 cycling traits wouldn't give an inordinate advantage, but I might be dead wrong.
     
  8. Martin K

    Martin K Goblin Champion

    The "average" lvl 18 deck has
    4 gold token items = 12 silver cards
    4 blue token items = 8 silver 4 bronze cards
    4 no-token items = 8 bronze 4 paper cards

    So your average card quality is between bronze and silver (slightly towards silver)

    If you put a cycling silver card in your deck, it reduces deck size but doesn't increase the quality of the non-cycling part of your deck.

    That means cycling silvers are fine, cycling bronzes are a minor issue.
    It's the cycling papers and blacks that contract decks.

    (Sorry if that sounded like giberish...)
     
  9. Sir Veza

    Sir Veza Farming Deity

    And anything built should also work well at level 6.

    It makes perfect sense to me, and sounds like a good basis for an adjustment.

    I also like YoYoTheAssyrian's idea about extending the duration of self-attached traits if another of the same shows up. When I use Focused <Whatever> I often draw all 3 within 2 rounds, usually before I need them, so I no longer use Focused anything. This could actually justify the increased token cost. I know it's not strictly on topic, but it's close enough that it might be addressed in the same test build.
     
  10. neoncat

    neoncat Feline Outline

    This formulation of the trait-cycling problem is quite helpful: in order for a cycling drawback to have the same impact as a non-cycling drawback, it needs to be ~ 1.5 grades worse than a non-cycling drawback to offset the new draw.
     
  11. Unintended consequence: if you draw no distinction in status effects, imagine how fun it would be to be frozen for 6 rounds in a row (after 3 wiz shoot you with a duration 2 freeze in one turn). So the obvious solution would require devs to draw a line of distinction between black traits, and statuses that can be applied by or to other players, and as sensible as the idea is, I think it may be overly complex in the eyes of the devs to implement.
     
  12. Martin K

    Martin K Goblin Champion

    @Pilgrim: Duration has to work the same way on all items. Otherwise you're creating a confusing mess.

    I think the solution is to make short but really annoying drawbacks rather than longlasting but weak ones. If a control wizard can walk around with a constant Squeamish and only be mildly inconvenienced (can't use his Mighty Sparks to finish off enemies) then the handicap card isn't really a handicap. In that sense, one-time Oh F*** cards like Trip are better. Sure, that one turn can cost you the game, but if the opponent doesn't use the opportunity then you're back in the game. You also don't need to worry about duration stacking too much.

    ----

    Based on the discussion until here, I would do the following:

    - Short term fix -

    Start with problematic items rather than cards.

    Runestone: The synergy between Winds Of War and Firewall alone makes this a good item, the non-drawback Squeamish on it is just gravy. Considering that Wizards can stack 4 of these to fill 1/3 of their deck makes it crazy. Looking at the card data, Squeamish is a D quality (paper) card for Wizards, with no plus or minus. Why not replace the Squeamish with any Wizard spell with the same value? Zap, Spark and Penetrating Zap are available.

    Trembling Staff: This is one of the few (the only?) staff with 3 drawbacks on it. Weapons, divine weapons and staffs really should be limited to two. Vulnerable and Combustible are both E quality (black) cards. The only way to remove a drawback and keep the item at level 3 would be to replace one of them with a paper card like Spark and downgrade the Mighty Spark to Deadly Spark. (I'd keep the Flame Jets)

    - Long term fix -

    #1 Remove the card draw from the trait mechanic. Manually add a card draw to all current trait cards. This step is necessary to be able to nerf individual cards.

    #2 Review all trait cards of D and E quality individually. The goal is to revise them in packs of 2-3 cards each. I'd say the main suspects as "deck fillers" are Squeamish, Wimpy, Vulnerable and Combustible.

    For some cards, it may be enough to just remove them from arcane items and divine items. These are the most sensitive to balance issues as you can easily stock four / three on one character.

    However, it would be good if at least some handicaps are "decycled". The fewer such cards there are the harder it is to stack too many of them in one deck. Card draw decks were kicked down from their top position with a few surgical cuts to key cards and items. Something similar can be done to cycle decks.
     

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