[Feedback] Upcoming Balance Change MEGATHREAD

The change to Encumbrance seems largely redundant, as most Encumber 2 effects pretty much negate all movement that isn't a Racial Move. The most common one is Frost Jolt - and it's pretty easy to get 8 of them on one wizard.

Draw limits just seem cruel, and partly tacked-on. There doesn't seem to be any way to get around having a poor hand. I understand that they are supposed to be a hedge against deck-thinning, but the change already made to the most egregious offender (Trembling Staff) should help curb 3DC's cycle-abuse. Adding card draw to weaker cards (Defender's Block. Cause Fumble) and then putting in a draw limit seems like taking two steps forward, then two steps backwards.

Wait... what?

Again, there's a difference between those horrendous 3-dwarf priest decks that just drew and drew and drew while you passed, and decks that cycle through traits to counteract things like Encumbrance. This change also makes Martyr's Blessing pretty unattractive.

 

Hmm, I think the Randimar's change might be a little extreme. While I think legends should be easier to access, daily resets -and- 10 guaranteed legends is going a bit far. Such a rate would soon trivialize the collections veteran players have built up. That's 70 potential legends per week. And grinding to get gold for an item in just one day?

If you want to make gathering legends even easier than 10 per week, I'd recommend 15 of each rarity or something.

I do like all player's getting the same shop in randimar's though, that's a neat idea.

 

Oh, the encumber nerf you were referring to was that now it doesn't stack? That's hardly important in a new meta where there is no more as step 2 attacks...
Then I stand on what I said before, this will be a 3DC orgy.

 

I don't think the changes to Firestorm are the end of SP farming, it'll shift a bit but I actually think we'll see more farming with all the changes to Randimar's.

Firestorm speed builds will likely fall away, I can't really see them working in many cases after the changes. But there are plenty of decks that can quickly beat the first level or two of the Diamond of the Kobold's. That will earn the gold needed to fuel purchases at Randimar's.

The changes at Randimar's will show a player 70 legendary item's a week. You now have the chance to see any specific legendary in about a month (assuming you check every day), as opposed to the roughly 2 years it could take before. Daily resets will mean smart purchasing decisions, or some quick farming for gold will be in order.

Assuming the changes to Randimar's go through, I expect an application that would text or email you when a specific item appeared in Randimar's would be pretty popular....

 

If the harness changes prove to be too extreme, there are ways to mitigate. I made this suggestion a long time ago, and at the time mentioned there could be a harness limit, or overall hand limit - so you can hold on to 2 or 3 perhaps. Also I still feel the other aura armors would be more playable if they were counted the same as harnesses for hand limit.

On a separate note, with the new flash flood, I feel that wings of faith could use some help. I would suggest some combination of the following:
1) make it target the entire team
2) add 1 to all moves played
3) allow step moves to benefit from it

Some of these changes would make it actually good and worth including in decks even if there was not crazy amounts of water on the map.

The firestorm change will really impact single player but I understand why the whirlwind change neccessitated the firestorm change for multiplayer. A 2 priest 1 wizard team with 18 firestorms, 16 nimbus, 4 unholy wellspring and a couple demonic power and leaderships can kill an entire team in one round - usually by round three, though I have had it work on round 1/2 before. whirlwind really disrupts such a team. With a bit of luck you can get 5-8 firestorms on your wizard, your whole team with nimbus and unholy wellspring on the wizard.

As a personal preference I would vote to have firestorm and whirlwind behave differently in multiplayer vs single player. Especially as I'm sure many people signed up for club to gain 2x firestorm legendary arcane items/firehide robes or the various firestorm staffs.

 

Yeah you might technically have access to 70 legends a week, but to obtain all of them you'd need to pony up 175,000 gold a week. Like you said it won't really be feasible to farm the amount of gold necessary for a specific legendary in a day. So players will save and save and hope to pick the right one, much as happens now. What this change will do is give those whales/big spenders out there a chance to line the pockets of blue manchu in exchange for some very quick collection progress by converting pizza to gold. Don't see this as a huge amount of ppl, but there will definitely be some out there, there always are, for these types of games. Also might increase impulse pizza purchases by a modest amount.
I'm not too bothered by it because I think in the end it will increase the developer's income in a sustainable manner, potentially furthering developmental resources. However it is the biggest step towards becoming "p2w" this game will have taken. Again not really concerned about it, compared to most "free" online games its hardly anything extraordinary.

 

I agree Oberon and I wouldn't like to see the option of grinding SP removed completely. The fact that it requires more effort is what I was getting at.

The changes to Randimar's are great on the one hand because it rewards players for logging in daily instead weekly but I also agree that potentially seeing 70 a week is a bit too generous.

Speaking of generosity, the more access I have to great items in Randimar's the less likely I am to ever consider buying chests or subscribing. Great for me as a player but not so much for BM as a company (Unless you can exchange pizza for gold? Its been a while since I last played but that would work well while still being very fair to players who have no intention of spending money to play).

The ftp model is incredibly fair, perhaps too much.

 

I don't see this game as getting anywhere close to the p2w model, but as it is now, it's definitely "spend lots of time to win". I have but nary a couple hours a day to play CH, so I have to decide whether I want to spend it grinding for gold to spend on items, or spend it playing ranked matches. I usually choose the latter, because I can't think of anything more dull or tiring than grinding for gold.

In regards to Randimar's, I like the concept of having a set number of a certain rarity. I don't like the idea of daily resets. Rewarding daily log-ons is a good thing, in my book - I just don't want to feel like I am missing out if I have to spend more than a day or two away from CH because I might not get that Leg I've been dying to get my hands on.

Standardizing Randimar's for everyone is... I dunno. I'm torn. I kinda like how it is now where everyone gets a different assortment of items each time Randimar's resets.

 

Pretty spot on. I've been playing a lot of mp games lately, usually enough to get the epic daily, can think of offhand maybe 2 or 3 matches in the past 2 weeks where they using priest to draw out cards for a long time. I think they were firestorm decks don't remember exactly. Just don't really see draw decks as that popular or even a problem. As for cycling traits, in my experience its usually a few seconds at most, not minutes.

Do draw limits mean if I draw 3 traits a round I get nothing back as I already drew 2 cards + racial move, or even worse, does racial move count as a draw? It's pretty common for me to draw 1-3 traits a round does this mean that gold token stuff like focused crushing becomes actually worse then the blue token version, as you're punishing deck thinning ? Maybe I'm not understanding right, but overall this seems pretty punitive for cycling traits, hope you guys reconsider.

 

I have to agree that the randimar changes is too extreme. 10 leg per day means whale will complete their collection way too quickly. Some might even says that the game is P2W now that all items is available to buy at the shop. And everyone is getting the same shop ? Its starting to feels like those cash shop from the ****ty f2p p2w games around here.

This offer too much and will shorten the item hunt. Now that items change are coming to make sure common items are still competitive, there is no need to increase the availability of legendaries.

It need to stock the same items as it does now and reset daily, or stock 10 legs and reset weekly. It cant be both.
And also, everyone should have different shop.

 

I don't like the Randimar's daily restock at all. I liked that you could check once a week if there was any item you wanted and then if there was one, farm for that week. Now, you simply don't have time to farm if you bought a legendary one day and you find something great the very nexy day. I mean, I understand that BM is trying to increase the ways to persuade players to put money on the game, but this is way too much. Just having 10 legendaries and 10 epics per week would be enough to achieve that goal without being so overwhelming.

The other thing why I don't like this change is variance. Some items with cards that came out unharmed with this balance will be a no-brainer, and now we only have to hold 2500 gold for a month until we see what we want. It's more democratic maybe, but I wouldn't like a meta infested with some items with no drawbacks like Heartripper. The excess of availability can be a huge problem. Imagine if we had a similar system before. Everyone would have been playing with at least one VP per warrior.

Finally, same items for everyone at Randi's?? Where is the excitement of seeing what is new for you that week? Some level of randomness is good, it adds more variance to the game. 10 legendaries and 10 epics for everyone is fair, I like that, but same items for everyone? Not so much.

 

Leadership draws 4 cards, and I haven't heard anyone complain about its current version being overpowered. Inspiring Presence draws up to 3, even if you don't keep them. Certain Elf traits also draw a lot of cards. I think this fixes a problem that isn't there and reduces the amount of interesting and viable builds.

 

The "Items" post on the blog, at the section of duplicate items says: "Juniper’s Boots and Evasion: Flanking Move on Juniper’s Boots will be replaced by Brutal Charge". Is it only one of the Flank Moves or all of them? Because we already have a boot with 3 Brutal Charge: Boots Of Etzicatl, so that would be removing a duplicate item to create another one.

 

CHEST PRICE DROP

Absolutely a good thing. I don't have as much time as other for grinding and so I let myself buy a couple epic chests a month. It was fun opening them and seeing what I got and while I think I got 1 maybe two legendaries it was not pay to win. I still lose way more than I win.

However I have to say I feel VERY burned by the price change, especially since it is not a sale and going back. With the current prices in the test server, instead of say 2 a month I could have been getting 6! I just feel sorta punished for being an early adapter and for my support of the FTP game.

I am not sure this can be fixed really. Enjoy your boost in sales with the chests.

With all these changes I feel like in a month or two, that would be the perfect time to start playing CardHunter. I happily helped with the Beta and had a blast. The wipe was a fresh start. But this is not a Beta. I am not getting a wiped. A lot of my items I paid gold for (legendaries) I would not have paid gold for, using the new rule changes. I would not have bought any chests, knowing the prices were going to be reduced.

 

Now about the draw limit. First of all 5 seems low if its a team wide limit. Card advantages is the essence of card game. Now each member cant really draw 1 or maybe 2 more card per turn, rng of the initial draw seems to determine everything.

I do agree deck thinning with trait is too strong, but this is punishing it too much, now that you have decided that there can be only 1 trait per 3 cards.

Limit it to 3 or 4 per char seems much better as it does prevent the extreme case of infinite draw and at the same time prevent pooling all card on 1 char.

Now that draw limit is in, maybe some unholy draw cards can get buff back ?

 

5 cards is really not that many. Think of all the cards that now add card draw - Short Perplexing Ray's "nerf" could actually be a buff in disguise by forcing the opponent to draw a card when he/she is already over the card draw limit. Unholy Energy would be a ridiculously strong card, since it does damage as well as forces players to draw.

I can only think of two builds in the current meta that are even remotely close to "draw decks" - both use Altruism, which is inconsistent at best, and neither are really part of the upper echelon of "competitive" builds. Limiting draws seems to be solving a problem that does not exist.

 

I've been thinking about the Randimar change, and I've decided I hate it. Let's say I see a legendary I like, well too bad, I can't afford it and there's no way to grind enough gold to get it before it goes away. And now I'm all angry and depressed at what I missed out on and completely unwilling to mindlessly grind in case something else good shows up later. This change may even kill my interest in playing the game at all, even though I'm actually being offered more good items than ever before.

I like the current system, it shows me what's available and gives me a full week to grind the cash if I want something. In fact, I'm grinding this week to get something from Randimar (it'll be the second legendary I've ever purchased).

Suggestion: Reset the rares daily and legendaries weekly (epics could be weekly or every 2-3 days).

 

Thanks for the clarification Jon. Didn't realize it was a team global limit and not per character. Of course that just makes the problem worse in trait-heavy decks. Also as has been mentioned leadership, martyr's bless, heck even the revised SPR will still completely hose you if you happen to have drawn a few cycling beforehand. I'd suggest taking a harder look at revising the limits which at this junction seem a bit arbitrary. Or something like removing traits from counting towards the limit. If kept as is it will make certain higher token cycling cards essentially worse then their lower value counterparts. Either way I will adapt, improvise, and overcome but I just can't see the logic here.