This should be the last Beta build we deploy if all goes well! The big change is probably the Altruism balance. This build also should hand out the Basic Edition figures with every Beta pizza purchase (previously purchased pizza will get them credited when we reset). Cards New Altruism implementation (requires modifying trigger discards to handle discarding attachments). Inspiration range reduced to 3. Further attempt to clarify Halt rules. Fix Quick Reactions not triggering. Made Bungled Bolt card illustration have a purple visual effect Login Use standard https port for authentication and pizza callback in deployed builds Use the correct username when checking the permissions at login time to bypass queues No longer giving Name field focus on client startup, since you have to click flash to receive keyboard events anyway. Fixed deploy issue with prettier server status check page. Config loads ch_config.json using time as URL variable to force reload. Login queue gets max user count from config. Figures Reverted Basic Edition figure prices. Story Minor edits to GM speech in Diamonds of the Kobolds, Shieldhaven Prison and Ruby Demon Portal. Rewrote several lines in Wizard's Workshop to emphasize the basement location and introduce the Karen story-line in a more direct fashion. Also added a -3 modifier to Melvin's Charisma in Wizard's Workshop. Items Reduced intro level of travelling curse from 9 to 5. Reduced the intro levels of backbiting strike and entangling roots. Pizza All Beta pizza purchases now credit the Basic Edition figures. Disable pizza SKU if marked purchase_once and already purchased (Basic Edition). Add a custom description to each pizza SKU for use in checkout. Ensure beta details link is hidden in pizza menu when not in beta. Battles Occlusion calculation for actors considers them to occlude their own squares. Add confirm box to resign. News Release news. Audio Play click when clicking on world/lobby locations. Fix diamond toggle button clicks. Keep contexts play castle ambients. Added a mouse over item click. Added a show item comparison box sound. Modules Grammar and spelling pass through all Scenario descriptions. Fix wording in Trog Cavern win text. Fix to white skull canyon intro. Boards Added doodads to MP boards Added Melvin and Karen doodads to their boards Added more doodads: pen, keys, can Internal Stuff Add a configuration option to have the server start up in maintenance mode. Add the maintenance mode config setting in the sample server configuration Track additional header fields in login requests
I still think it's a mistake to go through and nerf each card drawing system one at a time. The problem with card drawing decks is that they paralyze play and aren't fun. Some of them are also overpowered. But it's a common set of problems for all card drawing systems. It's not really going to matter whether your card drawing engine is based on Dwarven Battlecries or unholy/holy inspirations. Most likely, the card drawing engines of the future are actually going to be based on a whole bunch of cycling cards in any case. The problem is that spending a bunch of turns shuffling through your deck to get a killer combo is very boring to watch (even when it isn't also killing you in one round because it successfully reaches for its killer combo of doom). Just set a turn limit within each round. Don't go spot fixing all the card drawing cards because it's a losing battle. If the round ends after 20 turns by each side, you won't be able to play fishing decks, and you won't have to nerf any interesting cards. It's seriously that simple. -Frank
There is an entire thread here on turn timers, feel free to drop yr tots there. And btw, cyclers needed attention because it was making the game easy, the problem isn't only MP related. Imagine the next expansion with 'more powerful monsters and challenging adventures' that 3 x priests can take out in 1 turn. Duh ?
That's a thread about time limits within turns. I'm deeply ambivalent about that, and don't have much to add. But that's also completely not what I'm talking about. I'm talking about limiting the number of turns in a round, not the amount of time in a turn. The issue is that cycling actions like Inspiration (and Dwarven Battle Cry and Pathfinding and so on) have a "cost" of "using one turn". You spend a turn cycling, you get a new replacement card (shrinking your effective deck size and making your super combo more likely), but then it's your opponent's turn. Unfortunately, if your opponent is just going to "pass" on that turn, you've literally ceded nothing at all by taking an extra turn. So long as cycling decks can cycle on rounds when they are out of range of their enemies, or even on rounds when the enemy doesn't have enough attack cards to take out any of their characters, the cycling deck is "spending" turns to do their thing when turns are not a limited resource! That's bad. The reason cycling decks can be so effective and so boring to play against is not that any particular cycling card is too strong, and it's not because any particular turn is too long. It's because the cycling deck is paying a resource for their shenanigans that is not always limited in any way. We need to have a turn limit. That way, taking extra turns to do things is always some kind of cost. I personally would suggest 20 turns. If you can't finish the round in twenty turns, you're doing something stupid involving card shuffling and the round should end and force you to discard down to 2 cards. Having people "spend" from unlimited resource pools is never good design. -Frank
Just got back into the game for the first time in awhile. How long has Portentous Proclamations been advising us to "dual" on the new multiplayer boards? More importantly, the link in the news does not open in a new window: it opens in the current window, kicking you out of the game. No other in-game link does this.
Ever since the crypt boards were put in (first proclamation). This is the second proclamation, and it just showed up in the current build, so it's a little late re: release date and current MP boards. EDIT: oh wait, you're pointing out a typo here.
