Canverns of Chaos - seems like a huge waste of time; some ideas/changes to make it more enjoyable

Discussion in 'Feedback and Suggestions' started by Cedwyn, Aug 12, 2016.

  1. Cedwyn

    Cedwyn Kobold

    Edit: doh, spelling error in title :p

    I’ve played CoC about 65 times over the past few weeks. I've made it to level 8 about 5 times and always die to a very lopsided scenario: melee priests with leech cards vs. ranged attackers; any class combo versus ghosts with "doom" and no cleanse cards and ghosts can't be killed before turn 4 because they get "damage=healing" buffs; no healing cards vs. heavy melee + high hp enemies.

    I don’t mind having a challenge with gimped characters, that can be fun sometimes. I don’t mind losing these battles as that is part of the challenge/fun. What I do mind / dislike is losing because of impossible scenarios due to the randomness of these battles (bad map, weak vs. enemy types, random classes are useless, no healing, acid mage, etc).

    As it is now, I feel really underwhelmed and frustrated every time I get a very weak / useless class card group. Sometimes you can tell you are going to lose from round 1 based on your class/cards alone. This makes me not even want to play this map at all as it feels like a waste of time. CoC feels like a fools errand – something to keep people busy. There is too much randomness / "luck" involved in getting the right party to complete the challenge. However the higher chance of rare+ items is nice.

    If the devs even read these forums, one change I ask you to implement is the “3 retries” you normally get on other maps. Each retry randomizes the level/class selection again to give you a chance to overcome some of the ‘impossible’ scenarios (certain maps, certain enemies, certain class card groups). However don’t implement the “pay gold to continue”. This way you get 3 attempts to complete CoC. To make up for this change in balance of the challenge, move the more difficult nodes to earlier levels.

    Some suggestions on the game mode (or future modes based on CoC gameplay):
    • Allow the player to bring 1 character (from their deck) and randomize the other 2.
    • Allow the player to choose 1+ character class and then randomize those cards.
    • Allow the player to choose a card group theme (ie. “fire” for a mage, “defense” for a warrior, “support” for a priest) and only pick cards related to those themes. This could make it more balanced (in terms of gimped class selection), but it could make it too easy.
    • Allow the player to “choose their own adventure” – nothing too complex, but give the player a chance to choose their path through the caves. Ie. “Node 1: this cave feels cold” (frost enemies), “Node 2: this cave is small” (small map), “Node 3: this cave smells weird” (acid / festering enemies). The classes/cards are still random, but at least the player have an effect on the cavern theme and plan their strategy accordingly. Think of it like a genie, who asks the player “What do you face next?” with some cryptic responses.
    • Another idea, although more complex (perhaps a new map type) is a grid-like map with nodes connected together. Similar to the idea above, but the player is limited to selecting nodes attached to their current node. Since you have a GUI, you could represent the nodes with colours or sprites for difficulty/enemies/type. Think Smash TV (NES/SNES game) – you could choose the rooms you fought in. To further this idea, you could have “treasure rooms” on the map, so players can choose a route to a treasure room and have these nodes surrounded by nightmarish nodes. etc. etc. I think this type of mechanic would be lots of fun!!
    • Similar to the ideas above, using a DM guided approach could be neat. Ie. “A strange voice is heard. It asks you what you want: ‘power’, ‘fortune’, ‘freedom’, ‘renown’, etc.”. Then a bunch of buttons appear with those words. This process occurs several times and the choices “build” the maps/enemies/decks. Ie. “Power” = only high damage cards for both player and enemies; “Fortune” = more randomness in cards/rolls; “Freedom” = better/more movement cards for heroes; “Renown” = more difficult monsters but better equiped heroes; and so forth. Each choice selection could randomly choose from a list of word/effects, maybe 4-5 choices at a time, thus each CoC is different.
    I like the concept of CoC – random levels in a wave-like survival mode. It’d be a great concept to introduce a new dungeon with pre-made parties instead of random parties, but keep the random levels/enemies. This would make it a lot more enjoyable!

    Some of the cards the heroes and enemies get are weak/useless/too powerful/limited counters. I think these need to be replaced with other cards that are more balanced.

    Enemies:
    • Doom (4 turn death): requires cleansing. Since heroes are random, this makes this card very overpowered. It means you must LoS ghosts (if you are lucky to get a map that allows this) long enough for their "damage=healing buff, 2 turns" to disappear and hope when you break los to attack that you can kill them before they reapply the buff. This card makes the mode frustrating.
    • Regenerate (heal 5 on damage): many classes don't have 6+ damage cards (only ones I can think of are the 10+ damage warrior and freeze mage with 7 damage freeze). Similar to above, you deal with it with cleansing (if you get cleansing), or you run away until the buff goes away and hope it isn't reapplied. Combined with trolls high hp and high damage, this makes them really difficult to deal with if you don't have cleansing or high damage cards.

    Below is from Crusader32 on the kong forums:

    The Characters themselves in CoC aren’t random, they have a defined set of cards, but you do get the characters given randomly. I do agree with OP though that some characters are really underwhelming and need to be given drastically better cards, especially the dwarven fire wizard, having him in the team is often instant lose. Or the other dwarf wizard, which draws almost nothing but walks and dissolve armors, it’s almost like having one less members in your party. At least some of the dissolve armors should be really boiling, because of card draws, getting rid of one layer of armor makes no difference. I don’t think that CoC needs a huge drastical change or overhaul, just the decks should be changed a bit, because some cards are clearly intended for MP play and not for mowing down large mobs of weaker enemies as in CoC.

    Here is a quick list of cards (across various characters), that I think just don’t work in CoC as they do in MP/normal gameplay and should be replaced with something else:

    (Note to webdevs from OP, your forum css sucks for indented lists)
    • Hot Spot – because of the ridiculous amount of card draws enemies get, sometimes they draw 7 cards a turn, they are virtually always able to outmaneuver this card, and the AI generally holds onto some movement card by the time the player has no playable cards left other than this one.
      • Replace with: Flame Jet – this card is on the same range of strength as hot spot according to card value, but it would be much more playable than hot spot, at least in CoC anyway.
    • Magma Spray – because so many enemies have armor and stacked armor because of card draws, this card often does 0 damage.
      • Replace with: Penetrating Zap. Again, same range of strength, but a lot more useful because of the way CoC works.
    • Winds of War – absolutely useless card, there are so many enemies around you at any one time (unless you’re at the end of a map, by which time this card is again, not needed) that moving around a single enemy achieves nothing. They will also jump back to their original position right away, because they draw so many cards. (unless you got lucky and had the ice wizard to encumber with first)
    • Replace with: Barge. Similar effect, but at least it does some decent damage. (Pressing Bash would be great, although I realize that perhaps that would be a far too good replacement)
    • Pillar of Stone
      • Replace with: Smoke Bomb, apparently similar card value, but smoke bomb would at least give a temporary relief from ranged attacks.
    • Wall of Fire – suffers from the same problem as Hot Spot, there’s rarely any case where this card is useful, even if in theory it can do 24 damage, it practically mostly does 0.
      • Replace with: The obvious good choice for replacement would be Ember Burst. A Fiery Breath would be nice too, since the CoC Ice Wizard has the cold version of the same card. (Blizzard Breath)
    • Volcano – also suffers from the same problem as Hot Spot and Wall of Fire. These kind of cards simply don’t work in CoC. The only useful terrain effects are radiation and laser beacon, because even after the inevitable movements after placing them, some enemies will still stay in range.
      • Replace with: Fireball.
    • Demonic Feedback – Due to the abundance of dank cards, this is never worth using.
      • Replace with: Subtle Parry.
    • Lunging Hack – There’s already an abundance of movement cards, so I don’t see any value in drawing this.
      • Replace with: Wounded Block. Characters are often simply not durable enough.
    There’s probably a few more cards that don’t make much sense in CoC, but these ones are the most memorably frustrating ones to draw.

    Although, I do not agree with OP that CoC is a fools errand, because I’ve had many epic and legendary drops from there, which is very nice. And there are many very good rares that you can get, so it’s worth grinding.

    I would personally also suggest removing Trolls as possible enemies, because they are unkillable with the random CoC parties.
     
    Last edited: Aug 12, 2016
  2. Duffy

    Duffy Mushroom Warrior

    Terrain cards are are actually pretty strong in CoC. A good tip is to pass as often as possible (when not in imminent danger) in the beginning of rounds to get your opponents to spend their moves early.
     
    Flaxative likes this.
  3. boro

    boro Goblin Champion

    You don't always need purge to get rid of annoying cards like doom or troll regen, you can often burn your own chars or buff enemies to knock em off. I think terrain attachments are actually the stronger spells the wizards have (and volcano the best card you can hope to draw), they have too much spells that don't have enough damage output to do the hundreds of damage required to clear a level. I agree that lunging hack, demonic feedback and pillar of stone (though it has some uses) should be replaced. Trolls should only appear on map 1. Some wizards and warriors could use a power buff, so you can win with them easier if you have no priests for heals and card advantage.
     
    35353 61444 likes this.

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