Upcoming Balance Change (7 Jan 2014)

Discussion in 'Announcements' started by Jon, Jan 7, 2014.

  1. Flaxative

    Flaxative Party Leader

    @SLG: I mean I agree it's likely. But we definitely need more info.
     
  2. Stexe

    Stexe #2 in Spring PvP Season

    I'd guess the build would be a Firestorm deck that has 2 Priests with 7 Inspiring Presence + Inspiration + Demonic Power to cycle through the deck and the other Priest's deck to have unlimited draws. I've been able to come close to doing it before with my Firestorm build, but I don't have the right items to pull it off 100%.
     
  3. Mosalla

    Mosalla Orc Soldier

    No SLG, I do not use this build. I loose a lot because I do not worry about my rating and I like it low. And I am bored with some builds and fighting same people over and over so I experiment a lot, loose a lot but have more fun. :D
     
    Flaxative likes this.
  4. Megadestructo

    Megadestructo Shark Card

    Changes come slowly because Jon and company go through all the metadata of what's happening before making them. Some of the abused strategies might not have enough info on his end to see a clearer path towards balancing yet.
     
  5. Bearson Onyx

    Bearson Onyx Goblin Champion

    Exactly what I fear, this change will actually further limit the usage of this card and the viable builds.
    A build like my current one with two priests can no longer run effectively since my second priest (who is not a drawer) has few attack cards and will most likely discard a card off of it, making me switch to 2 warr or worse yet.... a wizard :eek:
     
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  6. TheShadowTitan

    TheShadowTitan #3 in Spring PvP Season

    I see no reason for this nerf... People just want to nerf everything -.-
     
  7. Aiven

    Aiven Orc Soldier

    I don't mind this nerf, but I wish you would do more about traits. As it is, most of them are hugely undervalued and function solely as cheap and desirable cycle cards. I don't really see what this adds to the game, other than a very narrow frame of viable end-game decks.
     
  8. bluesage

    bluesage Mushroom Warrior

    I am a bit disappointed that this is the only nerf/change that is being considered. I don't see Inspiring Presence as that big of a problem. The complete dominance of control wizards is a bigger problem, and almost as frustrating to play against as card drawing.
     
  9. Farbs

    Farbs Blue Manchu Staff Member

    It's worth keeping in mind that Inspiring Presence is Rare, so most of us don't have a lot of it yet. As our collections fill out players will reach a point where they could have very easily built infinite draw decks, were it not for this balance change. This change isn't intended to address an existing problem, but to address a very likely problem in the future.
     
  10. Kalin

    Kalin Begat G'zok

    Sounds like this change encourages Firestorm decks more than it hurts draw decks. Why not "Discard any drawn cards that have the 'Draw' keyword?"
     
    Flaxative likes this.
  11. TheShadowTitan

    TheShadowTitan #3 in Spring PvP Season

    Farbs, to do a infine draw deck with inspiring presence you would need alot of the same legendary itens and i'm not sure if that would be infine anyway (but yeah u would draw alot). I think to get that many legendary itens is impossible. Or maybe i'm missing something
     
  12. Jon

    Jon Blue Manchu Staff Member

    To continue on from Farbs' point: the deck we know of that abuses this card might be practically out of reach right now. However, we never feel that rarity is a good way to control these things. In the long run, we have to expect that people are going to find the items they need and we don't want a situation to occur where there's a deck that only a few people can play that ruins the game for others.

    To address the flavour issues: it's true that this card is now becoming a bit like Attack Skill in that it draws into Attack cards. However, I think because it draws for other characters, it's still in flavour for Priests.

    My hope is that this card remains useful for SOME decks. Clearly if you are running a low number of Attack cards, it's not going to be a great option.

    Finally, I'd like to step back a bit and talk about why we're making this change but not (yet, at least) other changes that might be beneficial for the meta-game, like nerfing Nimble Strike or whatever. In general, we're very loath to nerf or buff any cards that are already in circulation. Although the ability to do this is open to us, every time we do so we send a subtle signal to you, the players, that you can't rely on a card or item remaining valuable after you've collected it. Many of you might be OK with this if the change improves the game overall, but some of you won't be and it actively works against the excitement of collecting.

    So nerfing and buffing is like a forbidden candy for us. We'd love to be able to do it constantly to get the meta-game into the state we would ideally like it to be, but we try to restrain ourselves to only do it when we really feel that we HAVE to.

    We do have one other tool that we intend to use to try to shape the meta-game though and that is the introduction of new cards. By introducing new cards, we can gradually shift the meta-game without changing existing cards or items or destroying strategies overnight. You'll be seeing our first attempt to do this shortly. Will we be 100% successful? Likely not, but hopefully we'll be able to move things in the right direction.

    We also have some stuff coming up that will form part of our push for more structure multiplayer formats that should shake the meta-game up.
     
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  13. Jon

    Jon Blue Manchu Staff Member

    Unfortunately, card drawing isn't a keyword. There are lots of different types of card drawing in game (Traits, etc).
     
  14. Jon

    Jon Blue Manchu Staff Member

    That's a very good point and something we're thinking about as well.
     
    Aiven likes this.
  15. Jon

    Jon Blue Manchu Staff Member

    I've read that thread in some detail. If you see my post above you'll see the philosophy behind not addressing any of these right now. I'm not saying we won't address them, just that we're trying to restrain ourselves to things we think we absolutely HAVE to change. Some of these might rise to that level. I'll be interested to see how the introduction of new cards affects the situation.
     
  16. Flaxative

    Flaxative Party Leader

    Good intentions, and well said. I would just worry that without sideboarding as an integral part of competitive play, you're going to need to rely on banning/nerfing/buffing more than just a tiny bit to shape the meta. Some collectors might complain about it, but in the end your active players will thank you for making the best game you can. Countless games have gone down in flames because their developers had limited themselves from taking necessary balancing action (most recent horror story I've learned of is Warlord, the devs of which promised their customers they'd never ban cards or introduce sideboarding). So good luck, but also consider that simply expanding the meta won't be enough. *thumbs up*
     
  17. As someone whose deck relies heavily on inspiring presence, and most often to preferably get armor or move cards, I don't like this change. Couldn't you just put a draw keyword on any card that allows you to draw, and have cards with that keyword be discarded. This means that if I drew an inspiring presence with an inspiring presence (which I do admit, feels overpowered when it happens), the second would be discarded. This would eliminate the chance of draw-stacking, but only be a mild nerf to my current strategy without making the whole thing unusable.
     
    Flaxative likes this.
  18. ArcadianRook

    ArcadianRook Goblin Champion

    The only way this would compensate is if it triggered your opponent's blocks, or if it made sure that the card drawn was an attack, discarding all others like pathfinder does.
    I also find it strange that this is the card getting nerfed, as opposed to WWE or WoW. Not because *I* think there's a problem with them, but because those are the cards I constantly hear complaints about in the Lobby chat.
     
  19. ArcadianRook

    ArcadianRook Goblin Champion

    Why the heck would you NOT want to introduce sideboarding?!
     
  20. Flaxative

    Flaxative Party Leader

    They wanted to differentiate themselves from MtG, I think. Their customerbase was largely disgruntled ex-MtG players.
     

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