Let's talk about: Game Difficulty!

Not to mention the Shambling Bashes (and the Lunging Bashes) the Kobold Avengers use. Even if you have enough Chops, those don't help much when you get bashed out of range with the first blow. And the Shambling Bash's 8 damage is half the hp of a 6th level character.
I truly grew to hate that particular card during that adventure...

Although this is already more about the second map than the first.

 

I'm not looking for conspiracies as there are a number of games that use this, or similar, mechanics to generate revenue. Although most of those are mobile games.

Understandable. People have mentioned adventures that were difficult which I passed on the first try. I'm sure a number of the adventure in my difficult map list were easy for others. It is difficult to know if it was gear, deck build, someone becoming familiar with the game, or someone rushing combat. I believe the challenge and strategy are strong points of card hunter. What magnitude at which to set those two elements is tricky and tied to the target audience of the game.

 

I definitely hit a hard difficulty bump around level 6, now again around 11. Hopefully you're collecting pass/fail metrics on mission attempts vs. completion, right? You should be able to quickly tell which dungeons need to be tweaked with a small set of data.

Overall, I think the game is fun, but definitely too difficult - but fortunately I'm both a fan and a sucker for punishment. If you're going for the 'dark souls' crowd, you're probably right on track, but I think you'll be more successful overall by toning it down a bit.

My #1 difficulty gripe is the fact that you don't get XP until you complete all the missions in a dungeon, and the treasure up until you complete everything is generally lame. There's nothing more disheartening than getting mostly through a campaign to find an unbeatable battle! Consider giving players something (XP!) for every chunk of progress, so at least we can grind against the hard levels if we want/need to.

 

Hey great, I'm glad you came back to stay in the discussion.

Like I linked before, they certainly are collecting statistics. I'd like to know more of them.

The XP discussion is one we've had plenty. Don't forget that XP is a one-way street, and cannot be bought for money (unlike in-game gold), so the mechanism is tightly-controlled. Here's the most recent discussion.

Problems with fractional XP include how to split, say, 2 XP across a six-map adventure or 20 XP across a two-map-with-an-easy-first-battle adventure.

 

Note that while the random handouts you get between maps is generally common or uncommon there are no limits on the quality as far as i know. I even got one of the best wizard staffs in the game(at that time) from the second map on a level 4 adventure and that staff is epic.

 

Hey guys, we definitely collect data about the difficulty of our battles! Based on that data, we've decided to make our early levels more accessible to every kind of player -- particularly some of the levels you've been discussing, like those in the 'Diamonds of the Kobolds' adventure. Rest assured that we are taking a data-driven approach to game balance and that one of our goals in the early game is to allow everyone the ability to delve deeper into Card Hunter while avoiding frustrating bottlenecks. We're constantly striving to improve the balance and flow of the game so thank you for your continued patience as we work towards making Card Hunter the best it can be!

 

And the curious might be interested by these recent Rudolpho tweets:

.@DorianHart - major re-balance pass on early game adventures
.@DorianHart - Tweaks to Winding Shaft map to improve gameplay.
.@DorianHart - difficulty adjustments on Frozen Earth and Throne of Strench adventures.

There's lots of other good stuff, too.

 

On the opposite side, just like Pengw1n noted in his tactical journey thread, the premium adventure Cliff of the Wyverns currently feels too easy for a level 16 adventure.

The baby wyverns only draw 0.5 cards per figure per round which makes them more than a bit useless after the first turn. In addition their AI prefers to keep at a distance, which works against all the Bites, Swarm Attacks and Infected Bites in their deck. Once I happened to draw Resistant Hide, the fight just got silly. Every now and then some wyvern would move to melee range but it was always just one and only once per round and thus easy to evade.

The same applies mostly to the young wyverns as well, although they at least draw 1 card per figure per round.

The adult wyvern was the only one who immediately moved to melee range to attack but that may have also been just a random occurrence.

I did like the progression from baby wyverns in the first fight to the adult wyvern in the last fight though but the last fight was the only one of the four that felt like any kind of a challenge.

 

I think all the premiums are a bit out of whack, a good few of them are much harder than equal level adventures and some like the dragon and the wyvern are a tiny bit easy compared to same level adventures.

 

I have to disagree on that with examples like the whole ogre premium as well as both core adventures specifically.

 

Still all those adventures are much harder than the ones of the same level. When you do them at the appropriate time with the appropriate gear they are a massive pain.

 

Yeah, the last ogre map is a bit brutal. With the other maps you can usually use the Mindless Battlerage against the goblins but on the last map the shredders come from a different direction and will often reach you on the first turn.

You pretty much have to get good cards during the first couple of rounds or otherwise you're toast.

The big mitigating factor with the two core adventures was the AI who had clear problems using the terrain spells:
- AI never uses some of the cards at all (the ones that extend or spread out the previous terrain spells)
- AI never plays new terrain spells if the target in a square with a previous terrain attachment, which means difficult terrain from a previous Cave In works as a sanctuary

If those AI problems get fixed then yes, the difficulty level of the core adventures will jump considerably.

 

We will have to agree to disagree on that. Would be very interested to hear what setups you guys used on the core adventures since you don't seam to have had the same experience as me at all.

 

I was actually running humans and i still couldn't move because on any given turn 1/4 the entire map was cave in for me. The adventure might have changed since i played it so I'll give it a chance but my experience was that anything except free move was meaningless to even bother with.

 

I'm just rambling here, but I was thinking about difficulty across all possible games. I've brought up how videogames are often biased against the player to create a challenge. If I were to categorize based on that alone, I'd say difficulties can be ranked like so:

"Casual," aka "biased in the player's favor," aka, "why am I playing this, it's too easy." Example: Facebook games.
"Normal," aka "no programmed bias." Example: chess. (I'm not talking about facing a master: I'm talking about bias.)
"Hard," aka "biased against the player." Example: the last stages of most action games.
"Brutal," aka "learn how to win by losing." Example: Roguelike games.
"Ridiculous," aka "why am I playing this, it's too hard." Example: I can't think of one right now.

It's not completely true to label the "this is so easy, you cannot possible lose it" level as "casual," but I needed a name, so there you go. Anyway, I'll gladly play anything in the middle three levels. I believe Card Hunter is currently "brutal" on first play, and then "hard" once you have above-level characters and items.