Community Balancing Act

Man how come I was late to *this* party. I guess being sick for 2 days caused me to miss more than 4 Loot Fairy.

I agree with Flaxative's sentiment, but I completely disagree with your method. Admittedly, this might have been some bad decision from Flax, and that's fine. People make mistakes sometimes. I'm glad this is over without any harm done, and Jon perfectly defused the situation. Let's just hope this won't happen again.

Onto the topic of abusive gameplay, I suggest anyone interested in competitive gaming read Sirlin's Play to Win book (don't worry its a short book). Even if you won't agree with the book, I hope it will open your mind a little bit. The idea of the book is precisely what Jon is saying: It's by the rules of the game, its fair game for everyone playing to win.

Now everyone let's do what a protest actually do: Do nothing but talk and wait for the real change to happen.

 

Can't it be both? And I know the game very well, I reported the most OP strategies and what the meta would become back in late December / early January. I'm constantly in the top 5 players... I know my stuff. Lochaber Axe is OP. MF and WoW are OP.

Firestorm is OP as well and without WW/WWE the game would devolve into 3 builds: NS + MF, 3DC, and FS. You need to do more than a single card or item change -- the problems are systemic.

 

Three builds is enough to form a metagame. One build (NS + MF) isn't.

 

I don't really think the balance problem is that extreme. I.e. I don't think any single card, on it's own, is seriously OP. A few items (namely, VP/LA, but prob a few others), on the other hand, might be said to be a little too good for their token cost.

The obvious problem ofc pops up when packing lots of those cards in a deck becomes trivial and/or when certain specific cards interact together, creating a terribly effective combo.

To put things into perspective, I'd like to say that the fact only the most effective builds find consistent use among top players shouldn't really surprise anybody. You see this in every competitive game and, while that's not really part of the problem, it certainly contributes to making things look much uglier than they really are.

Take MF, for instance. I wouldn't say the card itself is OP, in the slightest. But, if MF is used in a 2 War setup where the dmg dealers are packed with NSs (on top of other, meatier attacks), then stuff can gets really nasty for the opposing player. Two very mobile warriors on steroids are very difficult to handle, and that's exactly why only a very limited set of strategies seem to be able of opposing such builds.

Also, I think balance can't only be considered in spite of the very top-level play only. For instance, I'm pretty sure a lot of people could confirm it is indeed possible to win against those builds even w/o using NS, WW/WWE or SPR of your own (I'm ofc talking rank < 1600 here, where you do see a far greater abundance of different builds). This might seem an unimportant point, but consider whatever change you make in order to make top-level play more balanced might very well end up create unfair gameplay for all of those who can't rely on a large collection. While top-level play balance certainly is of the utmost importance, designers need to make sure the game stays enjoyable for the community as a whole (including SP-only players, mind you), rather than for the 0.1% of it.

Lastly, I'd like to point out the current situation is very different from the Draw Engine thing. In that instance, the balance problem was confined to a small set of cards which didn't really interact in significant ways with too many aspects of gameplay. As an example, WW/WWE do serve an important function in the overall design (countering players who rely on turtling or very careful positioning in order to gain a strong advantage). I'm not trying to say WW/WWE are completely fine (they are not), but changing those would mean the devs need to keep overarching design goals in mind as opposed to simply nerfing/tweaking a card or a bunch of items. All pieces are interlocked I guess, and this obviously makes things much more complex.

This is only my opinion ofc, and I'm not pretending I exhausted the whole topic with these few conjectures. What I'm really trying to say is that CH is a very complex game, and properly fixing balance in this sort of games oftentimes isn't a simple matter, as any change you make can potentially break the game in unexpected but very serious ways.

This is probably why BM has taken so much time for taking action: they likely preferred being cool, pondering and assessing the situation while analyzing the data and meta this whole time. I'm indeed very curious about what Jon's thoughts about the subject are.

 

Very well put. Despite the at times frantic calls to nerf NS/VP I do appreciate and advocate for thoughtful incremental changes over quick changes that result in huge pendulum swings in the meta. And if this results in slower change, that's okay - I'll still be here.

Just a thought, didn't we recently have a discussion about how some top players were being accused of selective queuing to only play other top players because their builds were less effective against lower tier builds (or stated alternatively built only for competition against high end builds). Wouldn't this seem to indicate that there's not as much of a balance issue (note, I didn't say "no balance issue") as many people think since clearly alternate builds can disrupt high end builds? Anyway, just musing on "paper."

 

Yeah well. No build is 100% unbeatable (as far as my knowledge goes btw), and obviously bad draws and human error are a thing. In spite of that, I don't really think selective queuing really has much to do with balance. Simply put, the way the rank system and the season work make it so that top players might be afraid of losing too much ground, hence avoiding facing much-lower ranked opponents in order to minimize risk.

But yeah, if anything else this proves using some specific builds doesn't rule out entirely the possibility of a loss. Although I think that's not a really a very important point when it comes to game balance as a whole.

What would really help is putting together a proper Match up Chart. Something which wouldn't really be that practical, given the sheer number of viable builds in the game.

 

Maybe to clarify/expand my thoughts - if by selective queuing one can shrink the meta that one plays in, you can reduce the variety of decks you see and therefore the number of/types of counters you need to build into a deck. This allows one to then more greatly emphasize/focus on an offensive strategy in one's build that subsequently becomes stronger than it would otherwise be able to be if playing a more full spectrum of the meta. For example, if I knew every game I played would be against some variation of a firestorm deck, I could build one deck to rule them all and rise to the top of my mini-meta, at which point there'd be a lot of complaints that my build was over powered and needed to be cast into the fires of Mount Doom. But its strength would be weakened a fair amount outside of the mini-meta. Thus, if there are top players trying to only play in their mini-meta, are their decks as overpowered as we think?

 

This. I think some players have it in their heads that nerfing just a few cards will magically "fix" the meta, but without wider changes we'll just be setting up other builds to become nearly as dominant. Minor changes are not enough; we must go deeper!

 

Well, that certainly is an interesting point of view, but I don't think that would be enough to imply anything really meaningful about the overall game balance. First of all, again, b/c the very top level of play constitute only a fraction (although a relevant one) of the play-space as a whole.

But I think there's one, more important, subtelty which cannot be ignored and makes the argument less strong/relevant. That would be assuming every player (or even most) above a certain rank was systematically using selective queuing. Now, I don't think anybody in here might have enough data to back such a strong assumption. If such an assumption comes to fall apart, then you're only left with an hypothetical conjecture. Which isn't to say what you're thinking is completely void, but rather that we simply cannot derive any meaningful insight by an argument which cannot be proven factual at least empirically.

If anything else, I can share my own experience: in the last few days, I've played multiple games against players with 1600+ rank. I didn't gather any concrete data about those high-rank match up, but I certainly did manage to snatch a few games every now and then. The builds I faced involved WW/WE, NS, SPR, MF and (to a lesser extent) FS, in various measure and flavor. Keep in mind I don't use any NS, WW/WWE or SPR in my current 1-1-1 build.

Ofc my own experience, alone, is worth absolutely nothing in the greater scheme of things, so this isn't meant to imply much either, I guess.

 

Baby steps. Whirlwind feels like the right starting point to better the experience. I think some players are clinging to the status quo for very obvious reasons. did someone mention the word revolution? I guess that doesn't ring well with the establishment.

 

I'm gonna have to go with this, by only putting a quick-fix on those cards you're going to see a shift in viable builds. Maybe those cards do require nerfing, but by changing those cards up you're going to have to shift a lot more to "balance" the game. I think before doing anything weight the merits and demerits of the card and first. People are reacting only when they're on the bad-side of the card effects. However, you'll most definitely see a complaint on how the next new build after the proposed "balancing" act is now OP and there are no viable ways to counter it.

 

Nice to see a dev response that they are looking into this issue.

Its interesting to watch this thread go deeper and deeper down the rabbit hole in terms of calling for more more more changes.

Personally I agree with the point of the original post which concerns Vibrant Pain/Nimble Strike specifically and also whirlwind effects.

It will be a good day imo when we stop seeing heavily armed dwarf warriors hop around all over the map like quickened pixies on crack.

 

Yeah! Isn't that reserved for Elves?

 

The whirlwind effect is so unique and disruptive, nothing else can compare to it in consequence. Its foreign matter, getting it out of the way is almost indispensable to assess the actual state the games balance is in.

 

Exactly

 

Uh, yes, duh baby steps are the way to go, but here's the thing.
If Jon takes 9 months to implement the first baby step... because he doesn't want to implement small changes over time... dot dot dot?

Also, if anyone thinks that I called Whirlwind out due to the card being too strong, well, please reread my original post. Or any of @Robauke's in this thread.

As for Vibrant Pain, it's ludicrous to say that removing it would hurt build viability. As Stexe keeps saying, Lochaber + Mass Frenzy has always been totally viable. PaladinGP dominated the game with them. Sure, NS+MF is probably 'too strong,' sure, I'd like to see them nerfed to some extent, but that's not the topic of this thread—that's the topic of Stexe's thread, or Kalin's thread, or some hypothetical thread in which Jon discloses his balance plans.

The goal of this thread was to instantly dismiss two problems, not to suggest that the balance of the game would be 100% fixed by the removal of two cards and an item.

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@Stexe, you don't need to argue with @Ector in this thread about whether or not Lochaber Axe is too strong; he's had the same argument with other people in other threads and it's just stubborn derailment on both your parts. I'd prefer this thread stay on topic (even if it's people bashing me) or die a silent death than read another unending argument about whether or not obviously top tier items are top tier or not.

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@programmer - There're lots of kinds of protests. Few effective protests just involve talking. As for the rest of your post... I won't try to correct you on the ethics of [playing to win at all costs] because I think I've explained why that's horribly flawed earlier in this thread, so I'll assume that either A) you missed my 'Philosphy!' post and should go read it or B) you saw it and decided to be on the reactionary side. Either way I shouldn't keep repeating myself. Cheers!

 

3 completely different dominant builds would already be OK. FS and 3 wizard control might be 2 of them, why not? Although that should go without saying that more balancing than nerfing VP and WWs is needed. Inspiring Presence for example would be ultra strong without any WWs as we know them atm.
Actually I think it's cool that out of 4 maps there are some that favour melee teams and some that favour mage teams. I've pretty much never used WWs (only on the prev week while I was trying the build out, never before) and have beaten control decks and FS decks often enough without a VP.

 

Yes, because there are top players who do not selectively queue, and they win thanks to items and/or player skill, even in matchups where the higher-rated player has dead cards (Parry's kinda useless against Firestorm, for example).

Just think real quick, are 9 damage Nimble Strikes fair? =P

 

Has anyone (*cough* @Flaxative et al *cough*) addressed what the impact of changing NS/WW/WWE on single player would be?
I know for one that the Mauve Manticore #3 Supplement (dogs vs. devils) relies on step attacks, and NS is a significant part of their moveset on at least the 3rd map, if not also the first two. Also, WW/WWE can really help a player struggling on the final map of Lord Stafford's Treasure, the Astral Shrine adventures, and a host of other maps -- it was how I got through the victory point maps from about levels 6 through 15 when I was first playing through and leveling my second party, before I'd built up enough of an arsenal to experiment with other reliable strategies.

 

Some of those missions are certainly hard, but really dumb AI makes really dumb problem, I mean FS for staffords treasure (or if FS is hard to come by, develop Elven team) and missile blocks for astral shrines, giving wiz a host of nice push effective cards also. Sure if your first quest through campaign proves difficult, all players do is grind out another team hoping for better gear. And CH is all about hunting weird and wonderful items anyhow.

Having barely played any of the suppliments myself, some of these maps *seem* difficult to the point of unreasonable anyway. It's by design.