I would suggest some major changes which work together and have one main goal. To make the game less random during duel, but more fun and tactical. To use more cards, deck rotations and variety. To stay out of single strategy based on unprepared enemy against uncommon build. This is a total (multiplayer) game change, so it should be considered as a whole package with some other improvements. I suggest to: A) increase HP of characters in multiplayer. I don't know how much, and that only tests could tell. Double is an example and start point. B) increase card queue length in multiplayer probably to 6 or 7. Keep 3 instead of two at the end of turn. C) increase death of character to be worth 3 stars and total victory happens after getting 9 stars. Issues and small improvements: 1. Victory Points. If games are longer, you would need to set different rules for capturing these. Because tanking in them would be too easy. Wizards would get more attack skills, but tanks get more blocks or armor at the same time, so the death-VP ratio needs to be changed. It means that one turn on VP brings one star, death of character would be three and total victory - nine stars instead of six. This change should probably be done as first and other modifications like life of characters adjusted to it. You could also change it to some other proportions if needed. 2. Current cards are balanced on the fact that only two are passed from one turn to another. For example an armor item has three armor cards, but if you draw all of them in one turn, you would need to get rid of one before the next round. This leads to situations where some nice cards are discarded and you get much worse the next turn. This is another random element I do not like. Deciding between blocks and attack, armor or attack might sound cool but not to such degree that we see one as totally useless. 3. Encumbering. This would become more and more problematic, because wizards would have much more chances to use this specific tactic and warriors who don't want to use single armor card (Arrogant Armor), are more or less doomed. Plus wizards who freeze them, can remove armor with spells too. So it is not even a really strong counter. Warriors would not be able to kill anything in one strike, so control wizards would become way too powerful. My suggestion is simple - all frost spells share the same debuff: Encumber 1. They do not stack. This change does not really affect single player campaign balance as far as I know. This is important because this would need to be global. 4. Three effects on character limit should be increased to at least 4. Or even more. This does not affect single player either but I feel it is required for longer games. 5. Movement manipulation cards: Winds of War (WoW), Whirlwind Enemies (WWE) should be looked at. And probably adjusted a little. I would keep my suggestion from another thread - that WoW (and maybe WWE, but not sure about that) should put Immovable-like buff on affected target if it is an enemy. The effect would last only one turn though) two rounds would be too much I think). I would call it "Windproof". It could either work only against "Winds" or teleportations and pushes too. Up to balancing. 6. I think priests would be fine and gain some value with these changes. Their root ability, traits and heals would fair much better in longer fights and with bigger cards queue. But they might need some changes, which I do not see at the moment. 7. Warriors would have more options to adjust to the fight - keeping more blocks, attacks or armor cards. War Cry is a card to look at if it is not too powerful. If it would be, then the change to remove only two block cards might be reasonable. 8. Wizards damage spells. They already seem weak at times, especially against some armor types. Priest can buff them to some nice degree but still it is more often a risk to cast big single target spell. I feel like they need a buff, especially with more armor and blocks possible in this scenario. But this is very delicate matter and I am not sure how to resolve it yet. While not breaking Campaign at the same time. I feel like nuking and casting damage spells should be more popular than controlling enemies. The problem arises if you are nuking a warrior which is being healed. Armor, blocks and heals effectively stops damage spells from being useful. With doubled health a wizard would need very long time to kill an opponent, so they would retreat back to WoW strategy instead. I think that in multiplayer wizards could be buffed with some kind of global buff. Which would add 4-6 damage to all spells they cast (you might even decide that electric spells get more, fire less etc.) if there is no enemy in two squares range. Or always. 9. There might be some other minor changes needed in multiplayer. I suggest to use one global buff displayed during MP battle. As an Icon somewhere in the interface. And a tool-tip describing every change in comparison to single player: increased hp, queue, stars per character, spell damage etc. This buff effects should be visible and clickable in the log window.
You're pretty much rewriting the game. It might be better, it might be worse, but it's hard to tell without a test match. One thing is sure - these changes will drag out games a lot longer. It will be harder to take out individual targets, which makes it even more important to focus fire on one enemy. Whoever loses a PC first loses the game. It might be more tactically interesting, but I get impatient when a game takes too long. Some of the points (more hp, more spell damage) will be automatic effects of a raised level cap.
Nah, just balancing. Nothing new - a few tweaks with numbers. There is a reason why in many games the rules are different in single and multi player mode. In single player you usually fight against many enemies which are tailored to be challenging but not too much. Their health level is not governed by any rule for example. They also use unique cards and decks built with different purpose. The same is true in multiplayer and computer controlled enemies in this game. We see abilities which are more powerful than ours - better suited against different strategies. But look at monster decks. Pack of monsters share same cards between two or three of them. This allows them to behave in a consistent manner. They also draw the same cards over and over. But increased queue size means that they block more often, they attack more often and they do have armor almost always when needed. So even if they are divided, they act as every single mob should. So again, this is already in the game that queue can be increased and rules changed. Another small difference is that some of monsters can attack only once. This rule is not present in multiplayer but it could be. So powerful attacks could trigger Stun condition for example. Some like longer but interesting and different games, not repeatable. Some prefer quick fights fought over and over in the same manner. I am a player who like variety not grinding. Doing same repeatable scenario is boring for me, either it is loot grinding or multiplayer fight. It does not matter for me how many battles I would play in 2 hours time. Two but unique or ten but all the same - I choose two. Loosing character in current format is also a huge challenge. So nothing new. The change I propose should make games longer in turns. More turns played, more cards drawn. But characters might still die at almost the same rate sometimes. It is hard for me to predict - it would need to be tested. Bigger queue means that wizards could nuke harder and just like a warrior when stacked with spells, destroy an opponent in one turn. So I do not feel like there would be no chance if you loose one char. I am a bit worried about priests though. They might need some damage buff too. PS. Look. This is what hits me in this game. You will ALMOST NEVER draw all cards from your deck. Games end too fast. So instead of making best working deck you make decks which have most chances to work. In other words, you try to reduce variety and number of cards (cycling Traits, bejeweled sword, runestone) instead of making play interesting. With different cards, effects, interactions. There were countless times I have waited and waited for my wizard to get his armor or smoke bomb or something else. And passed turn after turn because it stopped me from advancing. Current rules make such things too common while my feeling is that characters should work as they were intended to, not to wait for some lucky draw.
Deck building is all about optimizing your draw chances. Do you dislike deck building? You seem to take issue with the "luck of the draw" nature of the game...
I see deck building role differently. Not as optimizing draw chances at all. Because optimal deck would have only Nimble Strike and All Out Attack for example then. It is boring and does not require any skill - just right cards. I would prefer to see deck building as choosing possibilities to use on the battlefield. Great example of that was Peasant Tournament. Sideboarding added possibility to fight against different opponent. And games lasted longer. So we have seen armor in use, I even used discard armor cards for that reason. If games are longer, your choice of cards matter more than dice and order of getting them. It still is important, but game decided in turn two means that you just could not use your deck to full or even half extent. We have like 35 cards (?) on average per character or something around that? We draw two each round. So without trait cycling you would need to play 17 rounds to empty your deck! There is a huge gap between usual length of game - 3-7 round and 17! Alright, you lower this number by Trait cards. But it is still a lot. I will give you an example. I equipped my wizard with smoke bombs. I had 4 or 5 of these on him. How many turns would he need to wait before using a single bomb? Let's assume he has 5 bombs and 33 cards total. Let's say he has 5 Traits, so deck size lowers to 28. Now... he can draw 1 bomb every 3rd turn on average. What does it mean to the game? It means that against 3 wizards team, my team relying on smoke bombs use would need to wait 3 turns on average before going in. OK, two trembling staves I add and 6 Traits. So we have deck size 22 now. Smoke bomb 1 in 2 turns on average. Still not reliable! Average means that sometimes it is turn 1-2, but sometimes I need to wait for it 4-6 turns. Game would be over by that time (enemy scores 4 stars and need to kill only one character now). So no matter how I build the deck, when the game is decided too fast, there is no chance to use some cards at all. Or it is already too late. My proposal shifts this towards play when you have in hand more tools you prepared while deck building. And you can decide which tactic to use this time. So in the above Smoke Bomb example, and a queue only one card bigger (drawing 3, keeping 2), we see this... Drawing 5 bombs out of 28 cards would be now much easier and result in something like 1 bomb per two rounds. With increased life and capture time, it would mean that you decide whether to keep these bombs or fight against 3 warriors, so you don't need them. You would probably have time to get your armor, decide if parry is worth keeping etc. Plus you would be able to have armor, parry and keep one attack with three cards passed between turns (if you extend this part of queue too). Or three attacks, or three armors, etc. Even with passed two cards, and three new, you would have more chance to end with a hand you wish to have. But still the count and balance of these cards in deck would be very important. It would be different game, yes. In my eyes it could be better. But only tests could tell. But this is quite simple for developers to do - set the rules and run test server. Either it works (of course with little rebalancing) or it does not. No need to change any cards except frost spells and even they could stay for a trial run. Who knows? Maybe more blocks, life and armor would work as intended and they (frost spells) would not be as strong as I predict.
I think that Card Hunter works the way it is right now, and that the HP, Victory Points, and card draw rules enable the games to stay fast and fun instead of dragging out for so long that you get frustrated (or disconnected). I think that having an option to have higher level, longer games is great, and while it hasn't been promised the framework for character HP, Power tokens, etc all the way to Level 50, is already in place. We should be seeing level ~27 gameplay soon enough. As for your concerns involving luck, deckbuilding, etc, most people here have probably played card games where the deck size is 40-50+ cards, and in general you can't use more than 3 or 4 of most cards, and you only draw 5-8 cards and then only draw 1* per turn thereafter. That's what I am used to, and that's why I never expect armor cards to show up every game, or for any specific combos to go off. I know that I am never going to see the bottom of my deck unless it's a long, close game. I just play with what I get. Would card hunter be a better/worse/longer/shorter game if we kept 3 cards per turn? Or drew more cards? Sure. I would imagine that playtesting would reveal why the devs chose the formula that we are currently working with. I think for practical/time reasons it is what it is. If I was designing a similar game, I would give each character a Move Deck, an Attack Deck, a Defence Deck and a Skill Deck and they would draw 1 from each deck each turn. The drawing rules are a bit more complicated than that... but just for example. You can put a lot of Runs into your move deck or you could put in some Sprints, but also Trip and Shuffle. Your defence deck would mostly give you armor or blocks, and your Attack Deck would give you mostly Attacks. Your Skill Deck would give you a "Wild Card" of sorts; this is where racial skills, Un/Holy and special Magic, Blocks, Team Moves, and other variety skills come into play. Now the fun part is that you can get some attack or even movement cards or skills from your Defence deck, or some block cards from your Attack deck. So even though your opponent expects you to have a move card, and probably an attack card, and maybe a block card, they can never know for sure. Well anywho, despite how sometimes we wonder what the devs are thinking, I think they have been thinking about it for years longer than us. There is new content coming, and if you can't wait that's too bad. Go and play some Hearthstone or Etherlords 2 for now. ;\ I will say, that Etherlords MP has some pretty great features that could be adapted for Card Hunter. Hint Hint.
Genuine question for those who were in the beta: why doesn't party card-draw follow the monster card-draw rules? IOW, each party member draws 3 cards when 3 party members are alive, 2 cards when 2 members are alive and 1 cards when only 1 party member is alive. This would have the effect dramatically increasing the variety of possible/available plays in early/mid-game (3-member parties would drawing 9 cards per turn and have lots of options to strategize/synergize) AND "forcing" a quick conclusion near late/end-game (a 1-member party bent on "running" wouldn't last very long drawing just 1 card). Most of the other "non-dynamic/static" suggestions posted about increasing card-draw or cards-in-hand create the danger dragging out the ENTIRE game (early, mid AND late)-- when the most strategic/interesting part of any chess game is arguably the MID-game. Granted that such a rule makes it more unlikely for a 1 member-party to defeat a 3 member-party-- but that would be a small price to pay for PARTY-BASED deck builder like Card Hunter... if the benefit of keeping as many party members alive as long as possible would incentivise the building of more synergistic (vs 3-of-a-kind) parties. P.S. not a fan of increasing card retention at the end of a turn because, again, this creates the danger of players "stalling" for card-combos and dragging out the entire game... minimizing the random-ness of card-draw should not be an excuse to make the end-of-turn discard decisions any easier
They did something interesting in Etherlords. When the game is too long, each character takes damage every (other) turn. But I don't feel like there is real beginning, mid and end game in CH. Yes you move towards VP, but some builds are already prepared to sprint to enemy, firestorm or WWE. End game is rather fast usually unless someone decides to prolong it for some reason. I go back to armor for warriors discussion because in regular RPG your character is described with many different values and it has some items like armor, weapons, food, pencils, etc... I have not played CCG like CH, so this concept of every dwarf being almost the same is strange to me. When you have no cards left to play (and it happens a lot) - there is no difference between priest, wizard or warrior. One can have more hit points and this is it. That is why I feel like I miss something. I think in all games I have played so far, armor and weapons - which means defense and attack - were connected to a character. Here a warrior in some unlucky scenario can draw no attack cards for a few turns. I think it happened to all of us already. Armor, armor, block, parry, team move... but no attack! So it is both unrealistic behavior and not funny to experience. Different queues for armor, weapon, move, blocks, skills? Hmm, it could actually work and could be interesting, but is not needed in my opinion. It would complicate and change the game too much. And you basically get almost exactly the same what I address here - some consistency and reliability. I have only seen some card games where decks were large but they were monsters or adventures cards. Not armor, weapons and abilities cards redefining your character during the fight! If you can direct me to any similar mechanic, please do - I like to check such stuff. In Etherlords hero would draw his skills mixed with monster cards, but it could be seen as real time actions and waiting times placed in turn based reality. So it seemed quite natural for me. And any card you draw, it belongs to one... realm I would say. So there is consistency. I have not played Heartstone, but from some screenshots I see, it looks to me quite reasonable.
I betting your party already does follow the monster card-draw rules, it's just that those rules count surviving members of each group, and MP parties can't have groups larger than 1. And I think your suggestion would just make losing a char early more of an automatic loss than it currently is.
That's a LOT more than just a few number tweaks... lol. That would be fundamentally changing the nature of the game. I don't think it is that problematic right now -- matches last like 10 to 15 minutes on average, with no match going more than 40. That seems like a fine pace. Changing the game with your suggestions would most likely double that. That's not something I'd like to see. Yes, there is a lot of luck in the game, but when you're dealing with many, many matches -- that luck should average out due to the "law of large numbers." Granted, it isn't the best for individual matches, but then again games like Heartstone and MtG and so on rely on a lot of luck as well. Doesn't seem to be too much of a problem there for it to be competitive and popular.
I don't think Heartstone relies on luck. I don't know about MtG. Randomized decks do not point to luck all the time. But see Heartstone - you get a few cards at start and the first thing you do is deciding whether to keep them all or to replace some. And cards you get can be planned to use later as your power builds up with time. I don't think you must get rid of some useful cards either. Unlike here, where you must discard armor to keep one parry and one attack or keep resistant armor and get rid of nice WoW or strong attack etc. And you do not get suddenly weaker - your hero does not change during game much as far as I know. Games would be much longer? Hmm, I am not so sure about that. There would be more rounds, but if it would take much more time - no idea. Maybe it would be easier if you knew that you don't have to make every step very carefully. Now the longest games for me are against wizards teams. Two reasons. I need to check my moves if they do not end in their line of sight. They plan when to move them or me, who has WoW, when to play volcanos, or lava etc. If you had more health and more chance to use your tricks, then you would not need to hide behind obstacles as a warrior before you draw enough step moves to attack them from behind a rock. This is silly. Warriors should wear armor and take spells in their face. Or on their shields etc. But not in CH - they take cover, because if not they will end up in lava frozen for eternity, thrown around the map like a rag doll, not a heavy armored tank. OK, throw elves around, but dwarves? You know why I think you like to stick to short games? Because they are not interesting, so you want to be over with them asap. If they were catchy, you would be willing to play for longer I think. I am used to hours long runs in WoW and other MMORPGs. This you could call long. Even a random run in a simple game like Diablo 3 is much longer than a few games in CH. But a few more minutes spent with another person in an interesting fight? And since when card games are to be fast?! You meet with people around the table, you have some cards, decks, etc. And you want it to be over in 10 minutes? Check almost any multiplayer game - any mission or a match lasts much longer on average. Whether it is a soldier simulation shooter, sport game, rpg mission, hack and slash or a scrabble (well at least in my country with complex grammar). But I don't care about averaging anything. I don't care about ranking much. I like to have fun while playing. If you play repeatable fast games, all almost the same - they are boring. And if they rely on luck, yes you get lucky sometimes and everything works like it should and then you feel ok but very often everything goes wrong. Then you get frustrated. So it is a mix of emotions, ups and downs. I feel like it should be more like a constant pleasure instead. And lucky events could really be..... lucky. Which means... rare. But no worries, it is just my opinion and I know many people won't share it. But I present it here so other freaks like me could be understood as well. Oh, and BTW I do love the game, otherwise I would not bother posting here at all.
Err, THAT's the point you're missing-- to make supporting/healing classes like the Priest almost essential (vs nearly optional in the current meta)-- no sense in having party-based game (where different race/classes are suppose to COMPLEMENT each other) if you are going just going to stack damage x 3 as if it's a 1-v-1 speed clicking race, but that may just the role-player in me looking for thematic coherence(I mean, losing one in three characters in a party should be a pretty big deal)... Of course, that is just ONE of playing/pushing the Card Hunter meta and no more "valid" than any other way (say, a pro-3DCW meta)-- which is why I asked if it has actually been tried/tested in beta... no amount of theorizing is going to "prove" how the players/meta would adapt gameplay-wise (or what the stats would show Blue Manchu business-wise), so there's no sense in us getting all "keyboard warriors" about it.
I disagree with almost every single suggestion in the original post. Like said before, most of them just make the match last longer without any obvious upsides. Many of them are also major changes to gameplay which mean it is very unlikely that BM would even consider implementing them. These should have been posted during alpha/beta. Only suggestion I fully agree with is increasing the effect limit on each character. Currently it's way too easy to push out effects, especially if you have many traits. I would increase the number to 5 (not 4) because uneven number feel more natural in a situation like this.
Frost Jolt+Cone of Cold+Chilling Rime + Freeze = Encumber 8, Duration 2. :O The thought of being constantly encumbered and mostly unable to move because I can't draw 3 or more unique traits to push off enough of the cold, and I don't have a lot of Purge or even a priest.... That is scary. The solution is not team moves and don't talk to me about Winds/Telekinesis. You can't run enough team moves to counter 6-12 or more cold spells per enemy wizard. I do not want to see more than 3 traits ATM. I would agree that "it's way too easy to push out effects" but that is a problem with a series of Wizard Items, not Traits in general.
Well, that is 4 powerful encumber cards. If you cast 4 powerful encumber cards on one character, wouldn't it make sense for that character not being able to move? And you can currently stack Freeze + Frost Jolt which is encumber 5, duration 2. Doesn't matter much if it's 5 or 8, that amount of ice will stop almost everyone. And even though you said that team moves are not a solution, I think they are I mean that's how people bypass encumber now. I don't think that increasing the number of traits from 3 to 5 would break the game, if maybe a couple of wizard cards were nerfed in the process. It would actually be a great way of nerfing trait cycling because you couldn't push out those bad traits and enemy effects.
Don't make me laugh, bad traits? 1 Copy of Combustible, 2 copies of Vulnerable, and 3-4 copies of Squeamish? I would hardly call any of these bad traits, since the former 2 will only hurt you if the enemy can hit you (and not by much/only by fire), and the Squeamish only stops a wizard from playing Mighty Spark or the cold spells when your opponent has very low hp. Even then, you still have your other wizards, Winds of War, Flame Jet (which ignores Squeamish since it does not target!), and Wall of Fire/Volcano/Short P. Ray. Sure your opponent could use cold spells, Roots, etc, on your wizard. However, I think that with a few Winds saved up it isn't much of a problem, depending on the map. I am actually interested in which wizard cards you would see nerfed. That being said, this is veering off-topic. I would also be interested in the victory points increasing to 8 without changing anything else. Currently capping the victory points is the #1 priority, as are any cards that can be used to push enemies off of/keep them away from it. I have a LOT more fun trying to kill my opponents than worrying about sitting on some random square on certain maps (Deep Forge and Winter Rooms come to mind). Don't get me wrong, there is strategy involved with the victory points, but I have more fun trying to outsmart and defeat my opponents than anything else.
I like the idea of buffed to teeth wizards with a lot of buffs like Immovable, Dimensional Traveller, Hoover, Spark Inductor, Spark Generator. Add a priest to the mix with Imp. Nimbus and damage buffs. Yay! Unlimited buffs for everyone! Forget other classes, world belongs to wizards! ... or not...
