Suggestion: Making this game more like other turn based strategy games, without losing the soul.

Alright, so let's talk shop here about other turn based strategy games.

While in most Turn based strategy games you are in fact surrounded by enemies, often more enemies then you should realistically be able to handle by comparsion, Fire Emblem: Awakening, and X COM Enemy Unknown come to mind, the differences between this game, Card Hunter, and Fire Emblem and X COM are quite apparent, while they use many similar systems, the upgrade system in Card Hunter is not as straight forward when compared to X COM and Fire Emblem.

They also have another key difference. In X COM and Fire Emblem, both games, at the start of each mission have given you access to every tool you will use in the match to defeat the enemy from the very start of the match. The exception being that in rare circumstances you can acquire eguipment during a given mission in either X COM or Fire Emblem that can be used for that mission in defeating enemies, but often times all the tools you need to beat the enemy are available to you from the very beginning.

In Card Hunter however your tools being used to beat the enemy come to you in groups of 2 from your deck.

Now while I have no direct problem with this, this does create some indirect issues that after having a long time card playing friend of mine quite the game because he feels the RNG on the deck shuffling is not nearly random enough I had to give it some thought.

I very often get my one resistant hide I have in my deck for my wizard often within the first three draws, and in some cases have drawn my one resistant hide the first turn, 4 matches in a row. Now as random as this does in fact seem, and it is, I have gone entire games without drawing that armor before as well, it does seem kind of off, that I tend to pull that armor so early, so often.

Don't get me wrong, I love that armor, it makes my wizard a wizard who uses the flames from the pits of hell to strike down all enemies in blazing flames and destruction almost every time. But the whole pulling it so early so often when I only have one copy does seem kind of off.

But I am rambling at this point. So let me get to my idea.

Currently the enemies have thinner decks then the player does, they seem to have an average of ten cards less if not more. Now I understand that this is to make it a challenge within the campaign, and I am not dismissing that, but the enemy thus gets through their decks, and their useful cards, 8 rounds faster then we do, and also has a higher probability of drawing that card that deals 14 damage, that we also happen to have in our deck, but very realistically may never see during the course of the entire game.

I suggest that the players get to draw three cards from their deck and a guaranteed movement card. This allows us to more realistically cycle through our entire deck in one game, and thus allows us to be closer to having access to all our tools available within the game throughout the entirety of the match. This also eliminates the chances of us drawing completely dead cards for a single round.

Now before you tell me that this is a card game and a loot hunt, I want you to think about this game from the perspective of a game like X COM Enemy Unknown.

This is a turn based strategy game, that uses cards as its medium for delivering attacks as opposed to straight forward rules, it uses a random element as opposed to being more Non Random elements such as those found in X COM.

Allowing the player three cards as opposed to two per turn softens the blow of the random element while still keeping it relatively random at the same time. It also lessens the chance of the players entire hand being completely useless for one turn.

Now then in turn, how does this effect the enemy. Well the enemy already has an advantage. They have smaller decks. Since they are allowed smaller decks, maybe we should be allowed more card draw to compensate for their advantage they already have over us.

Just some thoughts.

 

And as if the game knew I was posting this, the match I just started had my warrior draw all three fumbles he had in the deck, with his first draw and subsequent two other draws from the deck that were triggered from the fumble and subsequent fumble.

Yes I know random is random. It's just a little off when you draw all three of your worst card in one go and essentially making the turn for that character entirely without purpose.

 

I'd call that a good draw - at least it gets rid of them all!

Also, don't forget that you have three characters, so you draw six cards in all.

As for drawing three, it would require a lot of rebalancing, as in a sense you would be up to 50% more powerful/

 

It does get rid of them true enough, but it also makes my first turn for that character a complete and total non turn. Not that I am saying this is some common occurrence I just found it humorous is all with the topic I had just posted.

 

So, 4 cards total, right? And are you suggesting drawing this way in MP, too?

 

This is only the thought process for the campaign at the moment. As in the MP scene players have the same size deck, where as in the campaign monsters have much thinner decks. The idea is to lessen the blow of being randomly destroyed when the enemy has a much lesser chances to draw entirely useless cards.

 

Ah. I like the idea, but I'd take it a step further and suggest this for MP, too. I get what you're saying about our decks vs enemy decks and all, but I think drawing 4 cards(1 movement + 3 others) seems better in general. Maybe BM has went over this sorta thing a thousand times and have decided 3 is best for a reason, but I personally think I'd like 4 better. I was actually going to suggest something similar but I never got around to it.

 

If campaign enemies having thinner decks is a problem, surely the more elegant solution would be to give them more cards.

 

Well see that's a part of the problem there as well. The designers do not have to give the enemies useless cards even when adding cards to their deck.

Actually I can't think of many times during any particular game where the enemy has not done something useful for themselves outside of figuring out where I have to stand for the ai to start acting stupid.

And if thinner decks were in fact not an issue why don't they give us as thin decks as our opposition. The answer it gives us a bit too much strength here and there. The problem ends up being the enemy ai has decks that can completely outpower you because of it if you get destroyed by your draws.

I believe 3 cards and a move card would end up creating less players being completely destroyed by the ai strictly through bad luck but still allow luck as a factor.

 

Random is random, sometimes you get unlucky, sometimes lucky. Strategy still plays an important part in managing the chances and acting on the result.

Regarding the enemy deck size: A small deck can be assessed a lot easier, you can guess what cards the enemies have and act accordingly.

 

I agree with the general point regarding small enemy decks. As the cards are constantly recycled, you see that the "power" cards that the enemy deck is built around - powerful attacks / lots of armour / Bones / Ducks / Steals etc., etc will come into their hands very quickly and most likely stay there if you're not careful. This is magnified by groups of baddies sharing a deck and drawing lots of cards until you reduce the number of enemies.

 

While random is random, this is a turn based strategy game as well as a card game, but it is a turn based strategy game first and foremost. I am not trying to remove random is random, I am trying to make it so random is not as frustratingly random when comparing yourself to an enemy deck.

A primary complaint my friend who has entirely given up on this game, who is quite frankly better at ccgs and tcgs and card games in general then I am, had the complaint that it is a bit off to get the amount of movement cards in one of his characters decks, and then draw both on his second draw.

I believe 3 cards and a racial move card would remove some of this randomness, allow it to be more likely you will get through your entire deck during any given level, and allow for a more fluid and less frustrating gaming experience.

To make a point, in other turn based strategy games, when you lose it isn't often due to luck just not swinging your way, more through a bad move, or attacking a unit that you shouldn't have attacked as opposed to one of the other units you could have hit, outside of critical hits of course.

This game doesn't have critical hits, but if the enemy draws all their good cards first (Which happens more often because you know thinner decks) And you draw all your bad cards first, which even with an entire set of legendary equipment can still happen, there is little you can do to prevent the inevitable loss.

This doesn't eliminate the luck factor, it just makes the luck factor slightly less painful.

 

More to the point Pengw1n I'm not shooting to increase monster deck size either, and raging strike while a good example, is really only a weakness if the enemy is able to attack you.

I have yet to for example figure out the weakness of the secret of the gnome lords level 1 area yet. I may simply be lacking strong enough firepower, because I am pretty sure I don't need a different strategy from the look of the mission, but from the look of it, they don't really have a weakness, it's just an all out death match.

 

But it is, first and foremost a turn based strategy game. How can you have played both and not realize that this is a turn based strategy game with a deck building element that is used as the medium of delivering attacks?

 

Plus drawing more cards will lead to the inevitable cry of "WTF? I drew 3 move cards when I needed an attack!" etc.

 

While not entirely inaccurate intro, you also have to draw lines at some point or another.

Perhaps it's time to look at the shuffling program however if such events are happening frequently enough.

 

I thought the same thing while playing through the campaign. The few levels where you start getting duplicate item slots feel very unfair, since they forcibly increase your deck size. The game effectively punishes you for leveling... hooray? Of course enemies don't have to deal with a ballooning hand size, they stay at a cool 20.

Another problem is that not only is your hand size bigger, but you have no granular control over your deck. What I mean by that is usually on a 3 cards item for example, you'll get 2 good cards and 1 useless one. Same with weapons, most have 1 or 2 worthless cards. The end result is that a good 1/4 to 1/3 of your deck is just crap and you can't avoid it. This creates a situation where you have a very good chance of drawing nothing but crap for several turns, sometimes even on your first turn. Enemies don't have to deal with that either, their decks are mostly reliable with no fluff cards.

On many maps where you start in a bad position, if the opposition draws enough move cards and good attack cards on first turn (happens quite often, 20 cards deck with no bad cards and all) they just proceed to roll over you. There is no recovering from that. The game decided to make you loose on turn 0, when first hands are drawn.

Now I like Card Hunter enough to play through the single campaign and even do some quests. But I have to say enemy decks seem to be built by someone ignorant of what card advantage is. A good use of randomness in a game is to limit the player's options. But in Card Hunter there is no sanity check on what those options are. Too often the randomness will remove all options and directly decide the player's fate.

For what it's worth I think CH in its current incarnation is too random to be a good strategy game. And I say this as someone who used to play and enjoy Magic: The Gathering, a game very much beholden to the randomness gods.