[Feedback] Not enough power tokens

Doctor Blue, have you ever played any sort of collectible card game before? The tokens serve the same purpose as Magic the Gathering players not being allowed to put together a deck that consists of 30 mountains and 30 lightning bolts.

 

Tradeoffs, without tradeoffs deck building choices are not interesting.

Without power tokens you never need to make any tradeoffs between slots, instead only you only compare items with a slot. You simply choose the best item for each slot for the build you want. With power tokens instead you now need decide which combination of slots has best gear for you build. You have to make trades offs saying hmm do you take the power token shield or the power token armor since I can't have both. So you are now you are not only choosing which items is the best in a slot but rather you are comparing items between different slots and choosing when best invest your power tokens.

 

Good to see how many wise players are here, a lot of games were destroyed due to people getting what they want. Solving the equipment puzzle AND getting the right cards for the job is the challenge, and succeeding against a challenge is where the fun comes from.
Loading a game to get a screen "you have won"? Not so much.

 

I see some of your points, but I personally still feel like the tokens are a bit of a restriction. I don't know, maybe after I play more I'll change my opinion on that.

 

One reason you may be feeling like there aren't enough power tokens is that the game was originally, and hopefully still is, designed to ultimately go up to level 50. The full progression of power tokens can still be seen on the wiki: http://wiki.cardhuntria.com/wiki/Power_Tokens.

I also am on the side of feeling like they make deck-building more interesting. Instead of simply having to consider whether I want, say one shield or another shield it means I also have consider whether I want one shield or another weaker shield in order to be able to use that super-shiny helmet that's in my collection.

 

Yeah, I was wondering about that. I think someone said to me yesterday that you can currently go to level 20 and get more tokens from 18-20. If that's the case, then I pretty much take back everything I said in this thread because I'd be happy even with 1 more gold token and 1 more blue token. I don't think I've seen anyone level 20 yet, though.

 

It's really interesting, because you're both right, you just come at it from a different perspective. I really love the power tokens for multiplayer. It was kinda annoying at first when I had very few item choices, but the more loot you find the better you can distribute your power.

For multiplayer I really had to get over the fact that sometimes a deck is better even if you don't spend all tokens or use some gold as blue tokens.

 

It applies to campaign mode too. I'm only a level 10, but sometimes characters have too few tokens, and sometimes they have tokens left over (I could buy stuff to use them, but I prefer to make do with random drops for the most part).

Maybe in the long term the makers could experiment with an optional 'no-token' league for players who are interested in playing that way.

Personally I think the tokens are a very interesting way of restricting builds.

 

Awesome idea. I've said it before and I'll say it again: the more options for players, the better. And I would totally play this way all the time if it were implemented.

 

Doctor Blue, I hear you. I think the solution for me is a few more power tokens, not to get rid of all of them. Would be excited to hear if this planned once the level cap is raised.

Part of the issue is that at the higher levels (e.g., Lv. 18), you generally need power tokens for most of the items you get. In particular, most of the weapons require two power tokens to use. For a warrior, equipping three level-appropriate weapons--which I think is necessary in order to keep pace with enemy attacks and armor upgrades at this level--uses up the vast majority of your tokens. Add in armor, and you have a single token to spend on shield, helmet, boots, class skill, and race skill.

Maybe the solution is to make skills token-free? Or just provide 1-2 additional blue tokens at level 18 or 20?

For the most part, a pair of boots or a race skill with a token slot is nowhere near as powerful (generally) as spending a token on a weapon or a shield.

 

I understand the balancing aspect of power tokens, my issue is with non-token items. We are forced to choose non-token to provide nearly half the cards in our deck at level 18, yet the highest item we can put into those slots is level 8. Like applesaurus said, it just makes sense to put your tokens into certain more powerful slots. It seems ridiculous to me to put a power token into my race slot for example, when it could be in a weapon or item slot. We end up with only a couple of spare tokens to spread amongst the remaining item slots, yet nearly all the drops we get take tokens, all the cool high level items in the shop, basically unusable.

Oh that's the best race slot item I have ever seen, but it takes a gold power token. Should I take one out of my weapons, my powerful class item, my armor? Not a chance. With the token system theoretically intended to increase the number of choices we need to make, it sure feels like I am bottlenecked into picking certain items. On my warrior for example, I was lucky enough to get a decent tokenless rare armor and helm he likes, so I use them, and use them, and use them. I found a decent tokenless shield that my warrior and priest both use. I have a great shield that takes a gold token, but I am not going to spend it for the relatively small increase it would give when compared to the difference between a weapon that does or does not take tokens.

I feel that the discrepancy between gear that does and does not use tokens is too great on some pieces, and too small on others, or the slot is just not as impressive in general and doesn't seem to warrant tokens in most situations. My ideal solution would be to increase the quality of non-token pieces by introducing some higher level ones, and increase the value of the less impressive slots to encourage the possibility of perhaps spending tokens there.

 

Yes, DragnHntr! Perhaps if Legendary/Epic drops in some categories (helms, boots, skills) at higher levels had the side benefit of not needing a token, that could also be a solution. Or create Level 18 common drops that don't require a token, and are less powerful, but still superior in some way to the level 8 gear?

 

Doctor Blue: " the more options for players, the better".

To a point. It's possible to fragment the player-base too much.

 

I often too feel a little stiffled with only having 8 tokens across all the awesome stuff i could use. This is mostly an issue for warriors, who have 3 weapons they have to catter for, this is why Rageblood Dagger is so popular; it´s extremelly efficient and takes only clear slots.

However, i do not think the system should be removed; it´s what makes the game´s MP (And SP, to a different degree) very interesting. Without tokens everyone, would be Sprinting, Obliterating, Fireballing, chaining Nimbuses and WoWing without repercusion of any semblace, which would make the base of the game completelly irrelevant as all the best cards are thrown around in the air on a turn´s basis. Think Power Tokens as the game´s "Mana Curve". In Magic: The Gathering, you can´t have a deck full of awesomesauce spells because of the mana system, similarily, here you can´t have every card you play be a game ender because of the gear system, and that´s a good thing.

And this also makes every single loot in the campaign exciting, even if I´m killing, lets say, Slub Guts again. He might be annoying, but while I´m going out rasing more parties, I might as well try to get something that i would use for PvP because of the Token system is making it important

 

I agree, and would say that non-token items are almost more important than powered ones. I, personally, spend most of my gold trying to get good low level items, as I have much less of them.

 

Right now, power tokens are determined solely by the item's level. (I actually approve of this because it means low level items remain valuable.)

Tokens needed per level:
none: lv 1-6 weapons, lv 1-8 non-weapons
minor/blank: lv 7-8 weapons
minor: lv 9-17 non-weapons
minor/minor: lv 9-12 weapons
major: lv 18 non-weapons
major/minor: lv 13-17 weapons (some level 13 are minor/minor)
major/major: lv 18 weapons

 

I think you guys got it perfect. The problem is not the limit on power tokens, but the power of items at each power token level.

Here how I interpret the current situation:
We have regular items and then items that belong to 5 "Special" boxes: the YY box, Y box, BB box, B box and finally the YB box. We are limited on how many items we can get from the special boxes. A deck-builder then tries to build the most powerful deck that they can.

Let's assume that each item has a static play value. Deck-building then is a optimization problem with two general strategies: 1) Greedily pick the most powerful cards possible from the special boxes, then fill your deck with the most powerful regular cards or 2) Spread value evenly over your entire deck and minimize the number of regular items.

Even if you consider the play value of cards being relative to other cards, deck building is only a slight variation of those two strategies. The change however is first pick the most powerful combination then do one of the two strategies above for the remaining items.

The problem comes if the items in one box are substantially better then the items in another box or if the regular items are significantly worse then the special items. If either one is the case it means that 1 of the two strategies will becomes dominant.

For example: I find that regular priest items are terrible and that priest weapons aren't super strong. So for me, having at least 1 power token in all the divine items is far and away a better option then putting more power token in the weapon slot. In a sense I'm doing everything I can to avoid using regular items. If it is the case that regular items are so awful that they negate any advantage from any of the other items, then every priest will be pigeon-holed into strategy # 2.

I also find that the weapons on my warrior are way more important than any of the other slots. So I'm always doing strategy #1.

I think the solution is increasing the play value of regular items as the player gains levels and to lessen the power gap between items.

 

I don't see this as an issue with power tokens, but rather as an issue with the fact that weapons (in particular) often demand power tokens that a player of the same level doesn't have any access to yet.

 

I disagree, there are so many powerful race skills and boots that use one token to just write them off is really a shame. One of the best things a warrior can do imo is find a really nice non-token weapon to fill one of the weapon slots so they can equip better armor and skills. I'd drop a third 2xpower token weapon in a heart beat to equip Superb Command on my human warrior.

Good example but to be properly maximized the deck would consist of only 15 mountains and 45 lightning bolts; with a 50/50 split it takes 7 turns(assuming you go second) on average to draw enough damage to kill someone. That's a lot of turns and is equivalent to casting a single lighting bolt each turn. with a 25/75 split it only takes roughly on average 3 turns to draw enough damage to kill someone and 4-5 turns to actually cast that damage.

I personally like the limit on power tokens for MP because it encourages greater critical thinking and problem solving in deck building to weigh risk vs reward in how each player uses them and the items they choose to equip.