Yes, we're still fixing reconnection bugs, as well as a few other things. Reconnection Card instance visibility is serialized properly (fixes card visibility not being restored properly after reconnecting). Don't go into deck builder when rejoining battle zero of an adventure (fixes showing deckbuilder en-route to reconnected adventure battle). Ensure waiting overlay is shown while rejoining adventure battle. Fixed a whole bunch of command serialisation functions (general reconnection improvement). Fixed some command instruction handlers to pass unhandled instructions through to base class (try to avoid disconnect failures not being processed after a possible battle crash). Place dead actors in correct place on reconnect. Fix portraits for dead actors on reconnect. Destroy SP standalone rooms and battles on player departure. Fixes stalling when trying to reconnect to greenfang battles. Multiplayer Fixed asymmetry on Koi board. Brought lobby panel titles closer in line with concept art (font & layout) General Client Made card selection instantaneous in most cases (removed redundant server callback). Should speed up card play. Minor tweaks to card draw and play animations. Made character movement tween lift height increase with distance Minor memory use tweak for static data manager loading. Fixed some weirdness in local character movement tweens. Adventure Fix client crash clearing treasure chest on party respec. Cheats Fixed viewall command - it was clearing card views on the server! Custom Games Added draw limit to custom game creation. Internal Stuff Don't warn about being in a ranked battle when request comes in to cancel pending casual battle. Bugfix in deadlock recovery code Misc What? No, don't be silly. There's no such thing as a loot fairy.
The option to "Enforce Draw Limit" for custom games is very nice. If it were implemented into ranked multiplayer it would spell doom for Control Wizards and those who love to cycle traits. Well, 10 minute time limits would also spell doom for control wizards but that is just splitting hairs ☺.
Kinda unfair for human skills like Inspirational Thinking or Leadership. But heh, since only dwarves are allowed to have good racials guess it's ok.
The draw limit is 5 cards per round. Leadership is still usable under the limit as long as you don't use them all up for trait cycling.
Leadership + any 2 of (parry, toughness, elvish insight, dwarven battle cry, forward/inspirational/lateral thinking, any trait) = further card disadvantage I say "further" because Leadership is already card disadvantage, and only comes on a single truly terrible item (-3 cards!). Here're my thoughts on draw limits. • Building lean decks is smart and good. • Card Hunter should encourage smart deckbuilding. • Draw limit decks punish lean decks. Draw limits punish good deckbuilding. I don't see draw limits as any kind of "solution" to the issue of "too much trait cycling." The ONLY viable solution barring a rewrite of the mechanic is to rebalance the cards/items that provide "too much" trait cycling. Right now, trait cycling is too good, yes. But draw limits just randomly screw you over for building your deck well. Why should people build their decks poorly in order to limit the chance that they randomly get boned by draw limits? Imagine if Vibrant Pain were changed such that if you have one equipped, you roll a die at the beginning of the game. On a 1, you lose the game instantly. People would still probably run VP (it would be dumb not to use the best item in the game), and the random auto-losses would just be terrible gameplay experience. Draw limits are a (slightly) less graphic version of the absolute dice chess represented by my VP example.
I held back from posting for fear of jinxing it, but I haven't had a crash when returning to the map from a treasure screen since 1.61d was released. Looks like a good fix on that!
I disagree. I'm not sure why you think "building a lean deck is smart and good" -- it is good because it is strong and this is designed to reduce that power. Considering draw limits you still have to be smart in deckbuilding. It isn't like you don't need to still be able to build a good deck. It isn't a solution for trait cycling, but for any massive draw composition. Your comparison to VP doesn't really make sense... having 1 or 2 less cards in a turn isn't going to instantly cost you a game -- it is just going to limit your options that turn. One thing I do agree on is that it overly hurts humans... but I'd assume if this went through that humans would get buffed abilities to compensate (I mean they should get some now, but we'll wait until the new cards come out).
In basically any competitive card game, a smaller deck is better. Thinner means denser quality, more consistency, etc.. Traits just happen to be the main way to accomplish this in Card Hunter. Building your party to cycle traits—and thus have smaller effective deck sizes—is just smart. Yes, I said it was a less graphic version of dice chess than my VP example. The thing is, Stexe, it's not just about curtailing card advantage. Draw limits smother net 0 card advantage effects, or even net negative card advantage effects (e.g. Fumble, Lateral Thinking). Say I have a party with the following cards (among others): 3 traits on all three class skills. 1 trait on each racial skill on average. 2 traits on average per character on other gear. That's 18 traits in your party. If I randomly happen to hit 6 of them in one turn across my characters, I lose cards. And the chance of that isn't abysmally low, and the numbers I'm suggesting aren't even remotely hard to reach. If you're really going for trait cycling you'd have 30+ traits in your party, but I'm not even talking about extremes like those. So, average party can randomly lose cards to draw limit maps without even playing a single card that gains card advantage. That's silly. My main point about Vibrant Pain, by the way, in case it wasn't clear: It is bad game design to offer strong deckbuilding tools and then randomly punish people for using those tools. If there are issues with any of the tools in the game, those tools should be moderated with precision (either with buffs, nerfs, or environmental changes—e.g. new cards), not with die rolls. Humans aren't getting buffed.
Yes, almost always a smaller deck is better in competitive card games -- but that doesn't really apply to this game as it is more than just a pure card game. Having 30 traits in your party is an extreme. Most 3DC characters only have 10 to 12 per character at the highest. The game offers strong deckbuilding tools by what items you can include, not anything else. You're forced into essentially having X cards with Y item slots that only offer Z cards -- you can't really customize yourself completely like in a normal deck building game. I wouldn't say the goal of the game is to be able to thin your deck out -- that's why some cards are so vastly more powerful than others. If you could easily thin your deck out you'd be guaranteed better cards by leaps and bounds. See 3DC being so strong. Having draw limits just puts a restriction on your deck building, it doesn't mean you can't go for cycling, it just limits it and makes it riskier. Right now there is really no reason to NOT cycle as much as possible... And hitting 6 traits on all your characters is low -- but you'd only lose out on 1 draw but gain the advantage of having cycled through 5 cards. That is all part of the risk / reward structure that draw limits adds. What if positive (or even negative) traits DIDN'T let you draw cards? Compare draw limits to the alternative that traits didn't let you cycle, only specific cards (like Lateral Thinking) let you cycle freely. As for things like "Fumble" and "Lateral Thinking" -- I'd like to do a test with draw limits gaining back "draws" if you discard cards due to other things (Perplexing, Memory Loss, Fumble, etc). That would definitely help fix that issue.
Uh, it does apply to this game. See note at 3DC. And how is that a bad thing? The only problem with "cycling as much as possible," as I see it, is that it's too easy to cycle a lot because a lot of traits are undervalued/too accessible. Why not fix that? Aiming for a smaller deck makes sense, and all the mechanics in the game reward it, so why not just balance for it? Why layer on more and more mechanics? How is that "the alternative" ????????? Bandaids on bandaids.
I mean it doesn't apply in the sense that you can purposely build a smaller deck. You have to use cycling to do it (cards that give small positive or negative attributes). Maybe if there were cards called "Cycle" and did nothing but let you draw another card it would be an interesting take on it. It is an alternative to fixing the system without a significant retooling of many, many things. And yes, these fixes are bandaids on bandaids -- but that is kind of what needs to be done short of an entire system overhaul which would be extremely time consuming and costly in development. The 5 draws per turn limit is hard to hit for most players, it is only those that focus solely on trait cycling (3DC) does it really matter. This is just a way to reduce the power in cycling while not changing the game by a significant amount. You're really making this to be a bigger deal than it is... even with my 3DC team do I rarely find the limit to be too overwhelming (costing me like 2 or 3 cards a game, while I usually make it up using SPR and WoW and Encumber).
I think you're begging the question. Why is the default option not what has been proven to work for every competitive game ever: incremental iterative balance changes? We know the devs don't want to edit cards. (Except when they do, but that's another topic.) But why should this hypothetical scenario of them introducing draw limits into ranked PvP have any greater reality? It would be far more disruptive than a couple quiet card changes. It would probably require more changes down the road to fix the issues it causes, and those changes would require more coding. The devs haven't even suggested that they're interested in implementing draw limits in "actual" Card Hunter, so I'm not sure why you're defending the idea as though it were not only at all a solution to the problems (it's not), but a good one, perhaps the only one. As for why I am at all invested in this debate, it is because I worry that the devs might listen to you and LSL in the absence of opposition. I'm not sure why I'm worried—they've successfully ignored all of your balance complaints to date, unfortunately including very good suggestions on your part—but I just am. *shrug*
That is true that they should be doing more balance changes, but I think they are hesitant to balance things that might disrupt the game too much without a full time design balancer on their team. Jon said they would look at changing and balancing cards after the next group of cards are implemented and have some time to be tested. I'm going to hold that to him (especially regarding WW/WWE). But would definitely love to see them make balance changes on a regular basis with iterations on the test server (I mean, it is there to test more than just new features!). Heck, I'd *love* to be a full time game balancer -- it is one of my dream jobs, but whatever. As for them implementing draw limits? It might happen, but who knows. I do know that Jon is curious to see how they play out more, as am I. I'm interested in seeing how they would work in a large scale format (I've only tried draw limits in 4 or 5 games) and getting feedback from many people helps find problems -- which is why I suggested it for my upcoming tournament and why Jon implemented it in custom games at my request (hence this discussion). I definitely do not think it is the only solution to the cycling / card drawing problem, but I do think it is a decent one. Maybe not the best, but definitely one to consider without so quickly dismissing it without additional testing. If we get parties of 4+ people something like this might be needed to limit insane draw deck compositions (like what we used to have with 2 Inspiring Presence Priests with Unholy Power). If you have another solution to the problem that doesn't require re-tooling of a ton of cards I'd be interested in hearing it. =D
Good point, I'll test it to see what happens. EDIT: It works fine, counts as 2 draws due to drawing 2 movement cards, but everything that it "draws and discards" isn't counted.
No but there is a loot Gary I thought for a while that this was first degree talking but now I can confirm the bonuses with the loot (happened to me twice so far). It was described in another thread as a mimic chest that would randomly spawn on maps and reward you with an epic+ item if you clear the map and kill the mimic in the process. For those who are looking for more clarifications about that, here is what I know: -There is no special mob to look for. -After you clear the last mission of an adventure (aka before the 4 or 5 items chest), there is a chance that a message from Gary will pop saying something like "What was that?" You then get better rarities in your chest. So you won't enjoy this feature if you only grind the first missions of the same adventure over and over. -I had the first time an epic in my chest. The second time 2 rares but there was an epic item in the club reward. edit: just saw your edit and ok Stexe, thanks for the testing. Maybe BM should reword the card? (and in the meantime the same ones for attacks or magic cards that the monsters use)
Yes, I'm pretty sure that's the "loot fairy" thing. It has happened to me twice before and I talked to a few people about it in the multiplayer lobby. I think it is designed to reward people who finish missions instead of just grinding the first few levels, which is great. Anything to increase the number of drops is good in my books (so many Legendaries with such low drop rates and no real way to get them easily).
This means I'm going to do both. Edit: I just got one, but it was Rare instead of Epic. Still a nice addition!
I've seen the loot Gary once, today. Here's a screen shot: I don't know if there's any sound associated with this, I didn't have the sounds on. After he appeared, there was one Epic and one Rare in the guaranteed 2x Uncommon not-first-time-end-of-adventure chest. Maybe there's actually no increase in drop rarity and the dialog is just displayed (always? sometimes?) when there's a high-rarity item in the chest through natural occurrence? Hard to tell.
