[Feedback] Upcoming Balance Change MEGATHREAD

Yeah, this is true. I guess it all depends on how much Flash Flood is going to be used now. Because if you want to have an answer to that in your melee build and don't want to waste divine items in cleansing or flying items (which means possibly sacrificing some MF or other priest's buffs) or tokens for having Flight Aura in your warriors, then VP would still be a great weapon. If we see that Flash Flood isn't being used much anymore, then VP would lose its value.

 

I'm not cherry picking. Sure there are attack cards at each tier that deal less damage than the ones I've listed, but what I'm concerned with is the highest damage that an attack card of a particular tier can deal (without drawbacks of course). There's nothing arbitrary about my selections, all I did was pick the highest damage attacks at each tier.

Also, while Mighty Hack and Mighty Bludgeon are available on items that don't require major power tokens, none of those items are used in high level competitive multiplayer. Is this really why they're being nerfed? From this standpoint, a more problematic card would be Obliterating Bludgeon, as you can get two of these on an Infused Greatclub without spending a single major power token. Furthermore, Infused Greatclub is extremely popular in high level play, far more so than any of the minor token mighty tier weapons.

No, there has to be some other reason for this nerf. I just can't figure it out.

 

Other Changes
Here’s a list of all the other changes we’re making. If you want to know why, post a comment or (better), post in the forums and ask!

• Mighty Hack: damage reduced from 14 to 13.
• Mighty Bludgeon: damage reduced from 14 to 13.

@Jon :Why were Mighty Bludgeon and Mighty Hack nerfed from 14 to 13 damage?
To make Healing Hand Mace not too OP since Shredding Strike will be upgraded to Sundering Strike?

 

From my point of view, the nerf of Mighty attacks is there to counterbalance items that got improved by the buff of some other cards.
3 cases:
-Shreding Strike is replaced by Sundering Strike on for example Healing Hand Mace. The mace was allready very strong, and the 1 damage they lose on each Mighty Attack is compensated by the two more points on the Sundering Strike. Heaing Hand Mace was allready a very good item that didn't need a bufff.
-The Mighty attack is paired with some Bash attacks. Example: Blocking Mace. You lose one damage on a side but you get it back on the bash.
-The item with the Mighty attacks wasn't allready good enough in the first place and noone will feel sorry if it loses a point or two. example: Sword Of The Lion


About VP:
-I don't think it has been buffed with the new change but nerfed once again, or rather changed in an intesresting tool. 24' potential damages for two major tokens when you can get 42 of them with a tokenless weapon? Strongarm isn't probably the best example to use when comparing items (is it the new VP in terms of L weapon you must have?) but why would anyone pay 2 major tokens that can be invested in stacking the good harnesses or anything else like parries, dodges, team runs, Crushing that buffs the Strongarm etc... for some 4 damages attacks? Plus it has still many counters from a simple Run to the popular Pushback Parries that send the enemy out of range for a second NS. I prefer Shieldripper or Sundersong over it. The first can let you make a card advantage instead of the enemy if he fails his parry, the second gives you a card advantage if any armor triggers (mostly if it is a Thoughness).
Usualy warriors use a combination of two double major tokens weapons and one tokenless one for flexibility. In term of damages, having a NS is like having only one weapon (so 6 cards) that can do some sustainable damages. That's not reliable. You can of course spend 6 tokens on the weapons but then you only have 2 tokens left for the other HALF (18 on weapons for a total of 36) of your deck.
VP will more be something that you will enjoy having and some potential new leagues over a card tha is a must play on any warrior on any map.
If you compare VP to Deadly, Deadly Staff, you can say that the attacks on the staff are 5 damages (one more then NS), Range 6 (4 more then NS) and have hard to block (like new NS can stab in the back). Plus the magic attacks have penetrating, how the mages can be disadvantaged by this change?
What i like about those updates is that it brings VARIETY. Everything can be countered by something and the glory shall shine upon the one who can adjust his party to the metagame instead of playing the same dumb deck on any map.


Finally I would like to thanks Ector for making me read this thread again. Go in peace bro, The Run will never reach your skills despite his name.

 

1) The answer to that question is not relevant to the issue at hand. Unlike you seem to imagine, what I personally prefer has no bearing on the success of the game and my answer is not proof of anything. Contrary to that, the ease of acquiring all items has a very great deal to do with the eventual success of a loot chase game. (The balance has to be right, not too slow and not too quick.)

2) I have already repeatedly stated my personal position on the matter of ease of item access, to wit, I'm fine with whatever. It's no skin off my nose what everyone else has. I have entered the long-term playing of Card Hunter with the understanding that its systems and items and their relative values can change at any time. I'm not invested in them personally. I use what is currently good in my play and seek to have those items at my disposal. If I don't, I make do with what I have while utilizing all known tricks to get the missing ones. That is the end of it. I would even be fine with it if the "give items" cheat was made operational on the live server.

3) If I was suddenly given all items it would certainly hurt my relationship with the game a very great deal. Most of my current play activities would cease to have meaning. Loot Fairy hunting and league chest and gold harvesting would have no value. I would be left only with MP play in ratings and league form, stripped of any reward chest value. While enjoyable in themselves, alone they offer considerably less value thant they do combined with the thrill of the chase.

4) If my account was hacked, I'd just ask Blue Manchu to restore it to its unhacked state.

Its value has very little to do with the play time of some players when compared to the total effect it has on the whole game and everyone who plays it. Its value has been established in the game post mortems and other published articles of game companies making Diablo and Diablolikes and of game academia. If you're interested in their accumulated wisdom about the subject it is easy to access on the Internet. In any case, its value is not up to the stated opinions of players, its clearly visible to game makers from the players' actual, well-documented behavior in-game.

You make up these imaginary positions yourself and then you apply them to others. This is called the strawman fallacy. It has no validity.

Well, that depends on whether you like the chasing or the owning part more. Getting them all ends the collecting phase and collapses the hobby to just the owning phase. It limits your options within that particular hobby. From what I understand, many collectors start to collect something else once they complete one category of collectible. They want to be actually collecting something, not just owning things.

In any case, that has only a superficial relevance to loot chase games. In a Diablo-like game the collectibles have utility beyond just being owned and admired. That gameplay utility changes the equation so much that talking about stamp collecting isn't really helpful. The psychological mechanisms are not similar enough to offer valid information when directly compared. Gameplay design is its own art and science with its own known-good theory.

 

Yep. Me too.
Very well expressed, Jarmo!

 

I'd like to see Punishing Bolt nerfed into Devastating Bolt . As in, it only gains +2 damage for revealed cards.
It hurts too much ATM.

 

Hmm not sure I'm too keen on the encumber moves going back to a stack but always leaving a minimum of one available step. Personally I thought that simply making them not stack was sufficient. This really sorta kills any sort of encumber & terrain effect combo. Since they will always be able to take at least one move even if they are encumbered to the max (I think it is like 7) as long as they have a single shuffle or step1.

What it really effected before were the base racial move cards, you could still have a wild run or a sprint or quick run etc.

Tho two things that always sorta got to me were the team runs being somewhat overpowered since they were always push not move. So team run cards could always ignore any sort of encumber or halt. Also that Teleport was effected by encumber and I think path of Knives, I really wouldn't think teleport would count as a move since you are just blinking from one spot to another without technically passing through any other spots. Just some thematic things I guess.

Dunno going to have to see how that ends up working out. I really didn't like that they nerfed it as hard as they did in the step department and it is nice to see it getting some love. However with fly it has become a guaranteed back stab card. While it does have really low base damage now that isn't hard to counter with Blind Rage and Mass Frenzy which make it a guaranteed 9pt backstab. Which wouldn't be so terrible if it came up on weapons less frequently but Vibrant Pain is 100% Nimble Strikes.

I really don't think any amount of balancing is going to be effective with cards that appear so consistently on certain items. It is always going to come down to either having to nerf it into oblivion or accept that because of the existence of a card like Vibrant Pain any beneficial change you make to the card will render it OP.

 

Soltis, the key to using terrain against an opponent is usually making them using up all of their moves anyways. Heck, that applies to the whole game basically.

Having Encumber 2 would shut down like 90% of any dwarf's deck. A Warrior or Priest especially, would be relying on a very small number of cards to counter it- and what odds will they draw them? When you can only get them from boots, or maybe helmet/racial skill?

I do like your point regarding Teleport/Path of Knives/Encumber. But it makes sense either perspective you take on it.

As for Nimble Strike, I went from running 9-12 down to running just 3-6. The damage output is so much lower now, I was surprised at the difference it makes.

 

Nerfing the Mighty attacks because some other card is making certain items OP (Healing Hand Mace is the prime example) is curing the symptom instead of the disease. Symptom: an item with a particular assortment of cards on it is over/underperforming. Disease: One or more of those cards is in some objective sense OP or UP. And nobody in the history of Cardhunter has ever complained about Mighty Bludgeon being OP - why should they? It's part of the most solid, unambiguous, linear power progression to be found in any card series in the game (or maybe tied for it with Shuffle, Walk, Run, Dash). Sundering Strike and Team Heal have so many more question marks surrounding them (the former is maybe too awesome now in the harness meta, the latter has always had 1.5x+ the raw utility of Heal, with global range and autotarget thrown in for freesies), I find it amazing they wouldn't be inspected first to see if the disease really lies therein (this is all hypothetical to the supposition that the cards were nerfed on HHM's account)

Admittedly, there are other ways for items to be OP than simply having OP cards. For instance, items split between high power and low power cards tend inherently to be more desirable, since there are opportunities every game to discard paper and hold onto emeralds so to have a winning hand when teams finally engage - obvious example, Infused Greatclub, widely considered Hella Strong or possibly overpowered despite being entirely made up of some of the least controversial cards in the game. And the way levels progression and power pips work, there is just unfortunately bound to be situations where some cards feel unduly strong. But when the real OPness comes from the inclusion of an OP card, that cards needs to be dealt with - directly, not indirectly by nerfing something else. If we keep doing that, CH will very soon be a very sick game - immobile and unrecognizable under a mummy wrap of bandaids.

 

I thought the same as you about VP at first, but then it was pointed out to me that Defender's Block and Cause Fumble would still be able to block it, and Toughness of course too. But the most important thing is that, if the armor change stay, VP will make little damage even when buffed and when the owner attacks from behind, due to all the harness that will be in the meta. Besides, it's very dangerous to spend 2 major tokens in one weapon with so little total damage.

 

I can easily understand all this, though I cannot share the feelings. Personally I hate the random-based loot chasing, since it takes too much time to get what I need. But as long as you like it, you're going to get most of the items you need sooner or later without any hacks. You may enjoy hunting for the last item you wouldn't have, but you'll have to admit that it wouldn't be as important and thrilling as it was at the beginning of your hunting career. The game would be much more interesting hunting-wise and deckbuilding-wise if your chances of getting new legendaries would depend on the number of legendaries you already possess. Then every player would play his own decks at least!

I am playing computer games for more than 25 years, and I've written a book and many articles about them. I've played Diablo I when it was published, so I know about its items model without the "accumulated wisdom". The thing about Diablo and roguelike games is the unlimited number of items. In Diablo, every item can have several "modifiers", and the number of their combinations is very big. In Cardhunter we have just the fixed items. It would be great to have "the VP of blocking", "the VP of flying" and so on, but, alas, we have only one VP, and it's always the same.

It was just a sarcasm. No need to accuse me of something else.

You seem to miss the main point: the fact that somebody sells all I need doesn't mean I have the money to buy. If Randimar would sell 10 legendaries per day, almost nobody could afford to buy all playable items. Did you ever collect stamps? The stamp market is huge, and you can buy almost everything for a price. Having unlimited money, you can finish any collection in a day - but nobody has the unlimited money, so the hobby remains valid.
Yes, I fully understand that the game items have greater utility compared to stamps, but we're talking about the collecting, aren't we?

 

Wow the thread is moving very fast at the moment. I'll quote myself to save some back-tracking.

I get your point and it is a good one. I am willing to give it a try and find out but to be honest this drastic change (from 10 a day to 1 a day) really concerns me. As someone who wanted to gain items slowly by playing MP alone, 10 a day was a bit excessive but it was high enough that it wouldn't compel me to farm SP. At this point I cant guarantee that players like myself (happy to buy skins but not to buy items) will stick around to reach that meaningful point where you have access to a good amount of builds.

At 1 a day its too low to even compel me to log in everyday. Not meant to be a threat in any way just a critical analysis of myself as a player. Dont get me wrong, it is 100 times better than it was previously, just not sure its enough.

 

It hasn't changed from 10 a day to 1 a day. It's changed from 1 every 3 days (with a good Randimar) to 1 a day plus a weekly 10. Going from the current Randimar to a daily 10 legendary items was the drastic change. One a day might not be compelling for you but if sure is compelling to a lot of people. I know the loot fairy will probably give me rares on any given day but that doesn't stop me from checking just like the current Randimar and most definitely an improved one.

 

I respect what your saying and I don't want to get into a petty argument, there is enough of that going on in this thread already.

To further my point I will quote you from a recent post.

"Obviously both sides are right depending on how they want to play the game. People that value the hunt for new items don't want accelerated item acquisition. People that want to have all the items available to play multiplayer love the proposed change. At the end of the day, it's up to the developers to decide what kind of game they want this to be and not much more can be said for either side."

I'm just adding my 2cents for whatever its worth.

 

Yes, people aren't going to play two VPs anymore, and some of them may refuse to play even one. But things aren't that simple as you've described. If encumbrance would remain more or less viable, then warriors would use only step attacks (except probably for the few OBs and similar uber-damage attacks), since damage isn't significant while you cannot deal it If encumbrance would be dead (which is very likely with the last changes), some people would prefer Shieldrippers and Thundersongs, but VP would still become popular since additional movement is valuable, especially for the dwarves. The only situation where VP could be completely overshadowed by the stronger damage weapons is the "warrior only" metagame, which would be a true disaster for the game.

The mages are losing their control strategy with the last change, which forces them to play only damaging spells. They already lost a Firestorm strategy in the first change. Each such change makes the game more and more dull. Looks like the BM team is "riding a wild horse" and cannot guide it.

I seriously doubt about variety. When people will realize that wizard's control isn't working anymore, warriors would dominate the metagame again. The most powerful party is going to be 2 warriors + a supporting human priest (MF, Martyr, healing, Nimbuses, team moving, probably Purging and Cleansing). The warriors' races and equipment are going to be the only "variety" now.

I don't know who is The Run, but you're welcome!

 

All I'm going to say here is that in the last day, the test server has exploded with activity, and I've seen a lot of different things played and played well. We're not resting on our laurels, but things aren't so dire as you make them out to be.

 

The metagame isn't established yet, of course. But from the game designer's perspective, nullifying the whole game strategies as you did with Firestorm and encumbrance is obviously bad. Even if we'll see some other Tier1 parties besides the warriors, the game still lost much of its flavor.
The changes are good only when everything is playable, but nothing is overpowered. This is very hard to achieve, of course, but I still believe that the last change was very harmful. The first change was great except for the Water Wall and Firestorm. You should tweak things a bit after that change (instead of issuing the new major changes) until you would get a healthy metagame. If you wouldn't destroy Firestorm, then Firestorm wizards would easily kill the control wizards, the control/DD wizards would probably destroy armored warriors, and the armored warriors would destroy Firestorm wizards - at least there would be no single winning strategy. But you've destroyed it, and the control wizards dominated the metagame. Now you've destroyed them, and I predict that the warriors will dominate (I really hope to be wrong on that prediction, though).
I strongly believe that the best results in rebalancing are always achieved with minimal changes. The more changes you do, the more difficult is to evaluate the future metagame, and the more chances you will need to fix something in the future.

 

What I've been trying to say all along has nothing to do with what I enjoy or what you like or what any single player wants. I'm talking about what is good for the game in general. That will ultimately benefit all players more than getting what anyone wants in the short term. The long-term viability of the game is the most important goal, all player enjoyment stems from that.

For the record, I don't personally like grinding for items or gold farming or waiting a long time for the good stuff. I still do it in Card Hunter. That is the power of a compelling game design. It's a delicate balance, though. Swing it too far in either direction and the ultimate meaninglessness of it all rears its ugly head and makes the player seek less existentially troubling pastures.

That's a good point! It also makes it even more important to achieve the right balance in the Card Hunter item acquisition speed as the well is so very finite. It definitely cannot in its current form support 14 years of continuous play like Diablo II but it has supported almost a year pretty well so far. Some structural changes are definitely due, though.

Ok, sorry about my mistake.

You can't print your own money in the real world. In Card Hunter, you can (e.g. via gold farming). If the items are available, the players will find a way to get what they want as soon as they want it. It's what players do all day and all night. They will game any system. The presumed lack of money is not a sufficient hard cap on the item acquisition rate. Only controlled availability ultimately achieves that.

Due to the above and the factors explained in my previous post it's not the same. The phenomena are different enough to render direct comparisons less than illuminating. It's misleading like it's misleading to compare storytelling in films and comic books to game storytelling. Game design, also loot chase game design, is its own animal. The valuable data and theory comes from the field itself and not from outside hobbies.

 

I wasn't trying to invalidate your argument. I just wanted to point out that you were talking about a change that hadn't happened on the live server and one that only looked drastic when you compare it to the drastic proposed first change. If 10 daily legendary items in Randimar were never put on the table would anyone be as upset over the scale back? I'm pretty sure the new Randimar will make a majority of people happier which is what they are shooting for.