[Suggestion] Stopping Draw and Trait Chains

You're preaching to the choir, friend.
No one would argue against more communication. heck, I would love to see more blog posts on the main website.
My entire point was, regardless of the reason there is little communication right now, looking at things realistically, they probably aren't going to increase the posting frequency as much as you and I would have perhaps want them to and I would hate to see smaller, more careful posts which tends to happen when you know your every word is being examined and incessantly dissected which is what's happening right now.

 

Agreed, I have finally found a use for the "ignore" button in this forum-- anyone (other than the devs, of course) who are sprouting "faux-stats" about the 50k players in MP ("EVERYONE is playing 3dcw", "90% of wiz/warriors/priests use XYZ", etc...

Not bothering with posts which doesn't even have the sense of perspective/proportion to say IMO or "in my elo", "in the last week", etc... except maybe when they have something like SP vs MP forums or Peasant/Newbie vs Pros/Uber forums.

 

I think the confusion some people have is between "mechanics/features" vs "content" because, as far as most users are concerned, both involves "code"-- i.e. there are some suggestions that go as far as altering the "mechanic/feature" of Traits/Card-draws vs balancing the effects of specific Traits/Card-draws.... the former would result in a pretty different game, like changing the size of the deck or having a different no. of cards per item/characters.

TL; DR: posts about Traits/Card-draws in GENERAL are not very helpful unless they are able to get SPECIFIC, whether or not it pertains to game "mechanics/features" or "content"

 

I'm not familiar enough with individual cards to begin making specific suggestions for changes (and it sounds like people have generally covered what is most important to them already), but on the grand, sweeping, game-change-y level of things, I might have a suggestion that seems (at least to me, without much practical coding knowledge) workable and relatively simple. It's a little similar to what a couple of people have suggested, but slightly different in an important way.

We already know that cards can check keywords upon draw. So, it should be pretty simple to change the Traits so that if drawn at any other time than the draws one makes at the beginning of the turn, it is discarded immediately without being played.

This would make stacking a deck full of traits disadvantageous, but preserve the thinning power of traits used in moderation. It would also discourage draw-based mechanics slightly - drawing in a deck full of traits would risk losing the draw, resulting in net card loss. However, a few traits scattered around a deck would still be a good idea. It would making playing with certain combinations of items more difficult (don't want to stack traits too heavily!), and reward players who picked and choose which traits, both good and bad, were worth putting into their deck. As the math on an earlier page suggests, players with 4-6 traits in their deck would likely not feel much change. It would move players away from focused trait play and back to the cards that actually stick around in your hand.

I haven't thought too much about how this might change SP disadvantage quests, though I suggest any nerf on traits is going to hit them pretty hard, as you're practically forced to hold about 1/3 of your deck as disadvantages, and many of those are traits. In fact, in retrospect, that's likely one of the largest reasons that no sweeping, game-mechanic-changing idea for traits (including my own) is likely to be implemented - it would wreck SP play.

TL;DR: A possible fix could be forcing you to discard traits not drawn at the beginning of the round. Sadly, change is unlikely because it breaks SP. Also, happiness.*

*may not contain actual happiness

 

I don't really know if someone mentioned this or not, but the biggest problem with traits is that you can stack a deck full of same negative trait cards (like squeamish on wizards or vunerable on priests) and profit from it because negative traits don't stack and you still get free cards for no drawback. The solution here would be simple. Make traits only grant you a card draw if you don't allready have that trait attached to you. That would stop all the squeamish abuse with wizards and imho make traits much more balanced.

Note that this solution would really make drawback quest quite hard.

My 2 cents

 

This is my exact idea, except I want to apply it to every card that causes draws, not just traits.

 

I actually based it off of yours, but limited it to Traits because Traits already have a keyword, and drawing does not.

 

I slightly gave up reading on page 2, so apologies if I missed it, but has anyone suggested that attachments stack instead of being limited to 3?

Currently, if you draw two Slowed (or Demonic Miasma) they both take effect. So it's strange that something like Vulnerable only takes effect once.

Vulnerable is the simplest trait to implement this way, one attached take 1 additional damage, 2 attached 2 additional damage etc. Maybe that's not enough so it should be like, add 1 damage, add 5 damage, add 5 and multiply all damage by 2.

Obvious Maneuver would reveal the next few cards of your deck to your opponent but not to you.
It might also be possible to upgrade attached traits, if you draw a Squeamish while one is already attached, then it turns into Fright. Maybe 3 adds the Cowardly effect, etc. Vulnerable could be done the same way, by adding additional traits that don't exist on items but are only available as "attachment upgrades", like the 2nd one is called "hemophilliac" and 3rd one is "bones of glass."

It could also add to the duration instead of merely resetting duration. So, multiple Frights would be quite bad.

The idea is that including traits would still be viable, but including multiple instances of the same negative trait would be a potential game loser.

I'd like to see most attachments work this way, especially for fire based spells. I'm on fire, now I'm on fire for more turns and it'll hurt more when it burns. Granted, it would take some balancing or Furnace staff would suddenly be excellent. Maybe just +1 damage and +1 duration for each additional fire attachment.

Poison could work as I've suggested for Fire but Cold is already quite good, so leave it as is for now.

It might also be interesting to try adding Officer Harness' effect (this card doesn't count against your hand limit) to some negative cards instead of having them as attachments, but that might make them extremely difficult to get rid of.

 

I like it; can positive traits stack too? That'll make my frenzy bot a lot better since he draws 1.5 Mass Frenzy per turn.