As a new player, I'd like to offer my first impression of the game. I've mostly been grinding through single-player mode, and find myself a bit irritated with how it feels. At level 7, it seems that luck decides most of my single-player games. As characters level up and get new equipment slots, your deck size quickly spirals out of control. The gear at these levels is "samey," with most of it adding a bunch of weak or situational stuff to your deck. My adventurers feel like clumsy fools rather than admirable heroes, easily foiled by drawing a hand full of armor when what they really need is attack skills, or a hand full of attack skills when what they really need are healing skills. The lack of control over what your deck really looks like at this point in the game is frustrating, and I yearn for those level 3 adventures when changing an item really changed my character. Maybe it's a brief enough point in the campaign, but IMO a strategy game should never reverse your momentum like this, never make you feel like you are gaining control, only to make you suddenly start losing it as you progress. I would suggest a few balance tweaks for the campaign. Maybe a bit more diversity is needed in low-level gear, or maybe we can start getting power tokens much earlier and the enemies can be buffed a bit to compensate. Either way, it's important to offer a little more control over what ratio of skills go in your deck at early levels. Warrior armor with more offensive cards would be welcome, as would cleric weapons with a stronger focus on healing, etc. Without something like this being easily accessible, my new equipment slots feel like they were made to hinder my party instead of help them.
Hi, Ghelas. I'm glad you cam by to explain yourself in such detail. There are a few interlocking points in your post: There's the randomness of the draws. Yes, you'll find many other threads where people said things like "I'll get a whole hand of Move cards on one round and be unable to do anything." Randomness is partly a blessing and partly a bane: Magic card players know this, and struggle to get the right cards into the deck in the right PROPORTIONS to encourage their draw. The same logic applies here: one can try to deckbuild to, say, have a single spare Move card total. Changing your items DOES change your deck, especially when you change multiple items for the same goal. Then there's what else you said, which obviously is the counter here: that you don't have the items to deckbuild for a goal. My response has to be "it must be luck." Myself, after playing the lowest level adventures between one and two times total, I have enough items to do very different builds: Heal vs. Frenzy on the Priest; anti-Armor vs. Spark vs. Burning on the Wizard; Penetrating vs. Stab vs. straight-out-damage on the Warrior. But also, the game is somewhat pre-programmed to bypass luck right at the start, giving you a small number of guaranteed items for those builds. You should, say, have the Kobold Killer AND the Golem Cleaver. Because the game has shown you that these cards exist, you now understand what you're looking to find as you replay adventure and peruse the store. Just go for it: you can get a lot of good gear by replaying those low-level adventures. And, no, you don't need power tokens: my Vigun's Blessed Blade (oh, my precious baby) is so lovely I'm even using it in multiplayer now (where I have power tokens to spare). So I'd encourage you to replay lower adventures, looking for goodies. I hope you have better luck.
The problem is, even if I want to spam heals with my cleric, my deck is now too flooded with mediocre cards to allow this. Whether I build my wizard as lightning or fire, 5 out of 6 of my lightning cards force me to pick between damage and range, and 5 out of 6 of my fire cards rely on weak DoTs that simply get eaten up by armor. I could be patient and grind and hope for great loot, but the bottom line is that many players won't do that. This abrupt spike in how easy it is to control the contents of your deck is not attractive to new players, and I firmly believe that's reason enough to tweak low-end game balance.
Wait, wait. I think I misinterpreted your post: are you actually complaining about the idea of card suites? That is, do you feel your main concern would be solved if "items" didn't exist so you could select 100% of your cards individually? Because, if so, then that's another matter and I cannot help you. The fact that your decks are built in this manner is a selling point. If you don't want to play this game, don't! Of course plenty of other gamers won't want to play this game either: and such a game is not made for them. It is made for people who, like me, are floored by the INCREASED possibilities that come out of such a system. From a year ago: Many people, in fact, have lamented how total freedom keeps them from experiencing a total game: why would anyone ever choose to take weaker cards if you didn't have to? The fact that you must pick some weaker cards with your stronger cards allows the devs to do things almost unheard-of, like including drawback cards. The very fact that other players are getting past level 7 means that these decks, with ENFORCED WEAK CARDS, are enough to succeed. Because I've had plenty of practice, I beat these levels post-launch without a single failure, using the small-ish inventory mentioned above and plenty of "weak cards." The balance is good. Thus, all that's left to do is change what you can: your strategy or your items. Again, it may turn off some players. That is only because it's not the game they were expecting. Literally every game in existence faces the same issue, and is not cause for changing the game itself.
Oh those horrible moments in magic when you start with 5 or more lands in a single color deck.... Obviously my first reaction is to mulligan. It might be nice to have that option here as well with the same repercussion. It would obviously have a large impact on the game balance though. I have definitely had some dancing matches with my warrior and someone elses warrior where they keep drawing move cards and I keep drawing attack cards and couldn't chase their warrior down. In my opinion I thought that that was a pretty awesome battle which I ended up losing (his wizard and mine were built similarly but his drew better)
@Knight: Assuming I understand what you mean by "suites" in this instance, I actually like them very much. Let me try to sum up my point in brief... What I'm saying is, it's easier to build a competent deck at, say, level 3 than level 7. That's because every single item at this level gives you a bunch of bad or situational cards. At very low level, you only have a few items, so it's easier to maintain control over what you draw, and drawing mostly bad or situational cards only feels fair -- because you can still tip the odds in your favor by controlling what kind of situational cards you draw. What's happening in this game is that past a certain point leveling up starts to feel negative. Oh crap, I have another item slot, what can I fill it with so it doesn't trash up my deck and won't dilute the hands I want to draw?
Augh, posted a bit earlier than I meant to. By playing multiplayer, I can see there's definitely a point where that trend is reversed again, and levels gain you power tokens, and therefore much more diverse gear, and the whole grind is rewarding again. But ideally, there shouldn't be any time in the game where levels feel like a "bad" thing.
By the sounds things, what you're saying is that you don't like that the additional items slots unlock so quickly when you don't have any good items to fill the new slots. I can sympathize with that a bit. I know I've definitely had cases where unlocking a new item slot made my character weaker. But the way I see it is that the purpose of gradually unlocking of items slots is not to make the character get stronger, but rather its increase the complexity and variety in the game. Interestingly, once all the item slots are unlocked, they stay unlocked even when you revisit a low level module. Replaying a low level module temporarily reduces the levels of your characters, which reduces their power token and health, but it doesn't remove the equipment slots. Based on this I think it's fair to say that the gradual unlocking of equipment slots is not so much about making your character stronger, but rather about unlocking more complicity in the game. (It's also worth pointing out that it would be bad if all the item slots were unlocked right from the start - because then players definitely wouldn't have the items to fill the slots.)
Okay, now I think I know what you mean. Yes, there've also been a lot of threads about new slots "getting in your way." No, this thread over here isn't the first to suggest leaving out slots completely. The issue is that the devs have to get you up to that total number of slots somehow. Then, though you may not realize it, they become "damned if they do, damned if they don't." When gamers DON'T get tons of items to put in these new slots, they express frustration to the devs. When gamers DO get tons of items, they express frustration to the devs! I'm serious! There are threads where people said "what's wrong with this game such that it's giving me all these 'Racial Skills' and things I can't use yet?" The items have to show up sometime, ideally at a relevant level for your slots to unlock. Or . . . a little before? Oops, again they are damned if they do. But either way, then you have to get more and more of the items. And all of these steps are at the mercy of the random number generator. There is just no way around it. And though it doesn't necessarily help you, here's the "old standby" quote for slot design: Again, they have to do SOMETHING to get you up to those slots. It frustrates some people because, of course, all new players must start from the "small deck" end, and "smaller decks are generally better." Well, in the end the introduction is just a sort of "easy mode," and the "real game" begins now. I hope it works out for you.
Its balanced by the fact that the scenarios at lv 3 is much easier than the scenarios at lv 7. Allowing you bigger leeway in how bad your deck can be. while it might be easier to make a "better" deck. The definition of "better" at lv 7 or 17 is vastly different from that of lv 3. Most of the time, benefits of more control/options is more than overshadowed by more challenging fights. Either way, both situations ends up becoming "you can always get past the challenge by play with what you have to the best of your ability" because the designers took into account what "the best of your ability" is.
So, from reading the replies to this thread so far, it seems that many of the players see the addition of slots as initially making your deck much weaker, and it seems the developers understood this concept from the start. Alright. Why not do the first 2-3 tutorial fights with a smaller deck for simplicity's sake, then instantly unlock all deck slots and give players tolerable equipment to use with each of them? As it is right now, you suffer a setback for accomplishing something. You win a few fights, loot some treasure, level up, and then unlock a slot that makes your character weaker. It's easy to see how this is a counter-intuitive sort of thing that can greatly diminish the enjoyment of a new player, right?
The fights don't really get any harder though, until after you've unlocked all item slots. So while you keep getting new, better gear (Kobold Killer, for example, is amazing), the enemies stay at low health, and don't start teleporting around or sniping you from range until much later. It's not like they're weakening you while significantly improving enemy power. It's paced pretty dang well.
It's just how the game works, really, extreme spamming options are limited, and you cannot make a deck of one card type. Also, with sparks, range vs. damage is a thing with most of them. With fire, you want Kindler and Firestarter on you, and three different fire debuffs on the mobs (and an armour remover wouldn't hurt either).
But this is really early, almost a tutorial situation. For the vast bulk of the game, you have all your items and 36 cards. It was cool when you could suck your toes,, but now you get to walk and stuff.
I don't think I'm getting my complaint across properly. It's not about the game getting a bit harder, I appreciate that. It's not about having limitations in how I want to build my deck, etc. It is literally about the fact that it's possible to level up and get weaker, which is not something you experience in any kind of game where progression of power is one of the goals. I ran into this single-player situation a few days ago: My party and some trogs mostly took each other out. The fight was down to my fighter, at about half health, and their shaman, who primarily healed (and was cornered!) It should have just been a matter of time until my fighter won, but instead, he got slowly bashed to death by someone with almost no capacity to attack. How? Why? I was doomed by hilariously bad draws. I managed to draw too many move cards, armor cards, and a couple of detrimental traits, and was literally unable to attack for several turns. Before anyone argues that anyone can have a spot of bad luck in a card game, I would like to point out that my fighter's helm, shield, boots and armor offer no attack options. It's lovely to have armors and blocks on your fighter, but at the end of the day, it's really important to be able to hit things! So as a result, my clumsy fighter cost me that match. I shudder to think at what possible in-game explanation could exist for this sequence of events. "My fighter stood there, defenseless, for a few rounds." "Was he under some sort of curse?" "No." "Was there some kind of spell..." "Nope." "Then terrain must have..." "Nope." "So what happened?" "My heroic level 7 dwarf fighter, slayer of countless petty villains, savior of Omelette or whatever the starting town is called, simply forgot how to swing any of his weapons for a while." "Oh!" Any successful game of this nature is meant to create some kind of success-reward loop that gradually increases over time. It is really, really discouraging to experience just such a success-reward loop, and then to have it comically reversed for a while. It doesn't matter to me that enough grinding may eventually remedy the problem, as cards become higher quality on the whole. Every such incident causes my urge to play this game to significantly dwindle, and I'm sure I'm not alone in that. By the way, you don't lose the ability to suck your toes when you learn to walk. You stop sucking your toes because you learn that there are better things you can spend your time on. If only the same principles applied here!
Couldn't you just have moved out of range from the enemy, play catch for a few turns and then stage a comeback when you get a good hand ? Shrugs...That's what I'd have done. The mobs pretty much always have smaller decks as you level up so you are going to run into bad hands more often than they do until you get much better cards/deck. If you want the same success/reward while the game has already changed, then be prepared to change your tactics as you level up. The momentum did not 'reverse' as you say, it merely changed while you didn't...
It isn't hard to use your imagination to think of realistic reasons why your warrior might not get an opportunity to attack for a couple of turns. And I thought that Sir Knight actually did a pretty good job of explaining why it is difficult for the game to build up to the standard full sized deck without upsetting people for one reason or another. (This post.) I personally really dislike that you've said this: What a rubbish over-generalisation that is; as if there are some set of arcane rules that 'successful games' are meant to follow. Bah! I think that would be worse, for a couple of reasons. Firstly, it would be a sudden jump in set of things that the player is meant to understand and worry about. They'll suddenly have triple the number of item slots, and a large amount of new cards, including new types of cards and so on. This may make it harder for the player to come to grips with some of the more basic mechanics, such as the fact that two random cards from their deck get drawn into their hand at the start of each round, + 1 racial move card. (Stuff like that is far less obvious if there's a seemingly endless pool of cards.) Secondly, giving the player a heap of good items bunch of good items all at once would be out of flavour of the game. The player wouldn't have earned these items; they'd just have been dumped with 18 good items suddenly in their inventory - that all players would have the same items and so on. I think that would be out of flavour and someone boring compared to the current system, which is to introduce the new slots gradually, and to provide the player with a bunch of gold which they are encouraged to use to buy items to fill the empty slots. Surely the currently system is less jarring; more in tune with the rest of the game; and provides a greater sense of buildup compared to what you were suggesting. Don't you think?
It's also worth noting, I think, that if you are going to be left with one character to finish off, the warrior does tend to be the least flexible. Mages can kite and plink at most mobs, while priests can hide and heal up before coming out fighting.
Everyone of my friends hit a wall somewhere around level 7. I told them. "Go look in the shop even 10-15 gold will set you up well." They replied with the always useful. "I already did there is nothing." Followed by me remote desktoping their computer while skyping with them only to have them go "oooh i see..." 5 minutes later. While i don't have the time to do this for every new player as much as i wish i could. Take my advice and take a long hard look at the store. If your cards are mediocre because you compare them to the ai's cards get used to it you beat ai with brains not with cards. Every single fight is stacked against you from the start and will continue to be until you unstack it be it with strategic movement or tactical card decisions.
