[Feedback] Comments on Balance Changes AFTER Playtesting

Electroporter Novice is still there.
But how could I get over 10 draws a turn? 5 traits, Parry, Toughness, 3 draws with Martyr Blessing... Ah and Altruism, check.

 

I think 15 is a good number for a draw limit, if BM is adamant about keeping it in the game. That allows a player to hit a "trait pocket" without being punished severely for a string of unfortunate draws.

I fully agree with Neoncat in that non-standard decks need some card draw to make their weird, wonky synergies work.

 

It would also kill combo decks, because it would be almost impossible to draw all the parts you need to pull it off without many traits

 

If there was a little counter for "extra cards drawn" somewhere on the screen, I would be okay with the limit. I think maybe 10 cards not counting traits might be reasonable, and then fixing problem traits/items in addition to that. This would allow weird decks to still build up some card advantage, but provide a reasonable limit for future problem cards.

And although it's not necessary to the draw limit implementation, I'd love to see some of the unplayable traits made more playable...

 

There is, its the little red circle that you can see here:


Just fyi, the circle is grey until it reaches 0 (counting down from 5).

 

Moving away from the draw limit to a discard topic, i tried to make Memory Loss work as a SPR substitute in my test build, since for me, the new Short Perplexing Ray just hasn't an desirable effect. I used to turn to SPR as my main mean of armor removal, now its too weak, given the draw effect and often harness-bloated hands of warriors. Memory Loss itself is a great stand-in, its range means safety, the arcane magic status means vigor and it got the non-random discard, but the item pool is very limited. You've been switching and moving cards on quite a few items, just consider getting memory loss a little more out there as well.

 

Oh neat! Just checked this out, didn't notice it before. Melvin might want to point this out to players once the balance changes go live...

 

He does it on the test server

 

Ya, a message from Gary Pops up when you reach the maximum of cards for the round.

 

On the SP side, SPR now works more reliably as card draw for my team than a weapon against enemies.

 

Stop teasing your Trained Tactics or you'll get more

 

It really is perplexing!

 

Draw Limit 15 might as well not have a Draw Limit. It adds complexity for little gain outside of very outlier strategies.

Draw Limit 10 might be interesting in testing, but I think Draw Limit is decent in the sense that it adds another "resource" to which cards can be balanced. However, I do have worries that it will swing the game more towards lucky / unlucky draws than towards actual meaningful decision making.

It would be interesting to see how it goes with a Draw Limit 5 with Traits not being included (even negative ones due to them being "buffed" to be more negative).

 

Isn't that the whole point of adding a draw cap? To stop extreme amounts of card draw from bogging down the game?

 

No, I don't think so. The way I see it is that the system is designed to reduce card advantage through cycling and draw combos -- not just to stop infinite draw decks. It adds another "resource system" that makes you evaluate cards more; simply drawing cards isn't always a good idea any more as before it was basically a no-brainer.

 

Oh, oh dear... you're right. I totally didn't see that. Actually, I don't think there's anything to see here. Move along now... <_< >_> *whistles*

 

Constraints limit creativity. As it is, unconventional decks need card draw to be able to function. Creating more barriers for unconventional builds will reduce the amount of folks who play them... which seems to be the opposite of what the devs are aiming to do with many of the card changes.

 

Constraints both limit and create creativity. Many times the ways to work around constraints can make the most creative use of things (Dwarven Battle Cry being saved after the enemy has reached their draw limit to give your own team a huge buff was done to me in the draw limit speed tournament I ran).

 

But that wasn't build specific, unless the build involved you playing Dwarves, and their build involved forcing you to the draw cap by other means like
Accelerated Thought or Unholy Energy.

Removing the penalty for Traits wouldn't remove luck from the equation, it would simply mean your hand would be full of dead cards if you got a hand full of cards that draw.

And again, what are these new constraints fixing? I keep asking the question and nobody has given me a definitive answer except for a) 3DC, which seems to be far and away the strongest deck in this adjusted test format even with the draw cap in place, and b) Draw.dec, which doesn't really exist in the current metagame aside from a prototype that Squidy posted.

Adding a draw cap fundamentally changes how the game is played. For the better? I don't know how restricting players' ability to play builds that weren't problematic pre-patch makes the game better.

 

It is attempting fixing the idea that card drawing is always a good idea no matter what. Also, it is probably trying to reduce trait cycling from pushing buffs / debuffs off of characters so easily.

By the way, what's your name on the test server?