Community Balancing Act

I wasn't advocating for unablance. I do want this situation to balanced, but not by removing these cards. Having extremely good cards and bad cards makes the games more fun (though more prone to RNG and curse words). Yes, I do like card game a bit chaotic. The design of the game force you to take bad cards together with good cards. It isn't the case right now with VB. So it need to be fixed.

I do agree with your point that Toughness sometimes isn't as OP as NS. As everything in a card game, the more flexibility a card provides, the stronger it is. But it does not takes away from the fact that, stacking too much toughness will still create a problematic situation. And that isn't the case right now because the most you can have is 2. (If we're running a 15x Touhgness, Quickrun Immovable camping strategy would be one of the problematic build that counter NS).

Let's imagine a situation where a charter can have at max 4-6 NS (2 in each slot). And for each pair of NS, he has to take some Weak Chop with it. The game where he draw 5 NS back to back and decimate the opponent's team will just feels like an Obliterating Bludgeon/AoA gets through 3 parry to kill a character. In return, he has to play games where he got nothing but weak chop. When you get owned by NS in this game, you think luck. Not abusive. When you get owned even if you use NS, you think luck, hope next time i will draw more enough NS to execute my strategy. That's the essence of a card game.

Same deal with WW. If you can have only 3 WWE max in a char, there will be table flip once in a while, not every turn. And you might actually want to move in case he doesnt have one in hand, instead of expect him to have one always and never moves.

I don't want a card game where every card is homoginized. Every turn you draw 2 card can get approximately the same power. Card game need to have swing, have back and fourth turnaround, be a slaughter fest this game, a pubstorm the next , etc... all depends on the draw. That's why you play the next game, because your draw will never be the same.

Infused Greatclub is another great item to look in this example. Admittedly, it is very strong for its token requirement (if you want raw dmg that is). To get 2 emerald quality card (Obliterating Bludgeon), you have to take a bunch of bludgeon with. And there's no other item with more than 2 Obliterating Bludgeon in this game. If we all agree that NS is too strong, it will have to be at least of emerald quality (not silver). An example VB in this balanced scenario will have only 2 NS with a bunch of Lunging Thrust.

It isn't democracy in this case. It is democracy when you recruit your party, establish a new company and build a new game that fits your vision. Card Hunter is Blue Manchu's game. I will do my best to make sure they're free to work on what they will without having to face pressure like this campaign. If I no longer enjoy what they fix. I'll just leave instead of crying for things I'm not entitled for.

 

Two wolves and a sheep voting on what to have for dinner is a democracy.
Two wolves and three sheep voting on what to have for dinner is an ineffective democracy.

 

phrasemonging... where is the dislike button?

 

Who was it who was Mokked by Mokk's boots?

 

People need to study social science. Doxa only gets you so far. I'll leave it at that.

 

I've studied social science, and found it to be doxa. (Edit: In the Platonic sense.) Further discussion should go in it's own off-topic thread.

 

No, that isn't the "essence of a card game". A good CCG designer should constantly struggle for a healthy metagame allowing various winning strategies. Since NS is obviously dominating the metagame, it's overpowered and should be nerfed or banned. Banning VP wouldn't be enough IMHO, but that would be better than nothing.
I will try to explain why I consider NS overpowered. It provides a long move (twice longer than the regular dwarven movement!) and a decent amount of damage in one action. Your opponent generally has a chance to react between your movement and your attack, but NS removes this chance. Every decent CCG designer knows that a strong card that cannot be reacted destroys the game. Even if you block the damaging part of NS, the movement part will still remain! Thus, NS is even a greater problem than Almighty Hack: at least the Hack can be completely blocked by a single card.
The card itself is a problem, not the number of its copies. Surely, less copies represent lesser problem, but still a problem.

Yes, WWE is the same deal. If your deck is ready for it (i.e. has a lot of NS to use the random distribution of chars), and the opponent's deck isn't ready, even a single WW/WWE is enough to win a game. As many people stated, even Immovable on a single character or a block from a single character doesn't improve the situation much. The quantity doesn't matter, though limiting the quantity lowers the chance of this happening. Would you play a game with the "I WIN" card allowed in a single copy? Really? You dominate the table, the enemy is almost lost, then voila! He draws the card and wins.
Actually, the mistakes like NS and WW/WWE are taught in the first class of game designer's school The seasoned game designers never make such mistakes.

You're exaggerating too much here. A game design is good if there are lot of winning strategies, and players always have a chance to react to the opponent's actions. This doesn't mean that all cards should be of the same power. BTW, how do you define "the power"? What is more powerful: Strong Hack or Lunging Bash?

I have to facepalm here. I am living under a dictator's rule but have to explain what is democracy to a person probably living in a democratic country
The actions you've explained ("establish a new company") aren't democracy, that's separatism! Democracy is when the minority obeys the vote of majority in this country, game or company, even if they don't like it.

 

Whether or not you consider such actions democratic, it should be recognized that something is not a good idea just because it involves democracy, there are plenty of situations in which if democracy ruled it would be a bad idea (shocking I know).

I think the point here is that a privately owned company is not a democracy in which customers have an equal vote (in relation to each other or in relation to the owners of the company). Nor should it be. Though if a company wants to do well they will have to at least take into account the desires of their customers.

 

A company doing whatever the majority of its customers wanted is not "a democracy", it's "a recipe for failure"

Furthermore, the relationship between a company and its customers is very different from that between a country (or other social group) and its inhabitants.

Assuming a country's population always checked what the majority's opinion was on important matters (which, I believe, isn't the case even in the most modern democracies): the way democracy (theoretically) works makes sense, because every part involved (the single individuals) are equally affected by whatever the decision being taken by the majority is. If the majority ****s up, everybody gets the short end of the stick.

But, with a company and its customers? If the customers were to decide whatever about a company's products, and the majority of the customers messed up, then the company would be screwed, not the customers. The company goes bankrupt (meaning layoffs, lent money is forever lost, etc. etc.), but the customers simply go and buy another company's products. Doh?

If you really wanted to have a say on a Company's agenda in a truly democratic way, then you would need to buy a quote of the Company's stock. That way, whatever your influence on the Company's decisions is, you would be really sharing the aftermaths of whatever the Company does, benefiting from its successes and suffering from the failures in the exact same way the other owners and workers do.

Consider this: in most companies, the company workers themselves have very little (if at all!) decisional power over whatever the company does. The worker are landing their work-force and get payment in return, while the owners are investing money (usually lots of) against the prospect of eventually making more money that whatever they invested.

Now consider BM. For what I know, the majority of the company workers are also owners (this is leaving aside consultants and commission-work). They basically invested their own money (plus any lent they got from private investors) and have been investing their own working-force into a product. I.e. they're risking E-V-E-R-Y-T-H-I-N-G on a free2play game (meaning, the "customer" can enjoy the "product" w/o having to spend a dime, if so she wished).

Even if the customer had "invested" some money (a few hundred bucks at best?) and time (playing/contributing to the community), would you call "having a say on what BM should/should-not do" a "democracy"?

Now, BM is obviously listening to its customers. The devs do read the forums, the devs do listen to feedback and criticism (and it didn't take this thread for us to realize this, as the devs actions always reflected this, to my knowledge). But, ofc, the fact a portion of the userbase, alone, is asking for something doesn't mean BM should close its eyes and blindly follow its customers. BM does have a say on this (actually, BM is the only entity having a say on whatever BM does).

I think it's incredibly nice (and smart) of BM that they listen to feedback and criticism. Believe me, this is far from being commonplace in this industry. I actually found it unbelievably nice that Jon took its time and stepped into this thread (when he was basically being accused of ignoring 9 months worth of feedback), assuring everybody that, indeed, they were working on balance (what a shocker, uh? A Game Designer doing game design stuff).

But, for the sake of my sanity, don't go pretending the "majority" of players should have the final say on whatever the developers agenda should be. First of all, we're not in presence of a democratic process (like, in the slightest). The active forum users only account for an incredibly small percentage of the community as a whole (so, at best, the majority of the forum would count for the majority of a minority). Secondarily, I'd be damned if professional developers would let an assorted bunch of people dictate the agenda and have the final say on matters concerning their very own field of expertise.

But wait, this gets even more funny! I bet, whenever your car isn't working properly, you go up to the mechanic and explain to him, exactly, how the car should be fixed. After all, you're the one driving the car and you're an amateur mechanic in your spare time too, while the mechanic only rarely drives, if at all! Obviously you know much, much better

But I'm sorry, I realized this last example was out of this world. In reality: the car wasn't yours really. The car was the mechanics. He built it himself, with his own hands. You only were somebody having a ride on his car from time to time, and the mechanic accepted whatever little money you generously handed him for his service. They say somebody gets to drive the car for absolutely free!

 

I'd just like to point out that at this point none of you are actually talking about anything I put forward. That's fine—this thread doesn't need to stay on topic, and I'm sure you enjoy arguing with each other! But it should be understood that none of the things you guys (Bandreus, Ector, programmer, etc) are talking about are stances of mine.

 

I don't think the discussion is completely offtopic (yet), given how one of the premises of the thread was "changing the way the game is played" regardless of the devs taking action against the offending cards.

after all, the impact of democracy on the game's development is something which was originally brought into the discussion by none other than you.

I realize that specific post was (probably?) meant as a funny joke, but it eventually sprung more arguments (I say: foreseeable arguments), so there's no surprise into seeing more discussion going on. I guess? Topics evolve, more arguments are brought on the table and things might occasionally go off the road which was originally planned. Which I think is fine, unless you jump to completely unrelated topics.

And I don't think anybody put words in your mouth, so I don't get your small disclaimer. But whatever

 

Well it wasn't a joke, and like I said I am not worried about where the thread is going.

It's just in case anyone thinks that anyone else's incorrect philosophy about what a democracy is or isn't has anything to do with me. That's all

 

Design by committee never works.

"...designers need to be considered gods, not governments..." -Richard Bartle

 

Oh guys, you're going too far with the debate Nobody tries to force the designers to change the game as he wishes. I guess it would be enough to TRY playing without NS and WW/WWE and clearly demonstrate BM a healthy metagame I guess that was Flaxative's initial idea, wasn't it?
The "democracy" step could come after that. Every player should have a chance to play that alternative format and decide whether he likes it or not. This game is constantly growing, and soon enough it will grow up to the serious sports competition. The first attempt was already made (I mean the leagues for pizza), but failed. The game needs a serious competition as an ultimate goal for the players, but cards like NS make the competition dull, as everybody plays it, and WW/WWE make it too chaotic. Moreover, there is absolutely nothing new in banning or nerfing some cards; almost every game had to do that. The seasoned Magic playes know how many Alpha cards were banned, and even the new cards are getting banned in various formats.
Personally I'm completely sure in players' support, since only the multiple Vibrant Pain owners could vote against nerfing it

 

I'm always willing to play custom games on the test server that enforce the nerfs I've suggested to see if they would work well.

 

Yes, I can. In an RPG you can Charge and still attack. Granted, that's a straight line, not the "dancing" you can do with Nimble Strike. But you suffer penalties to your armor class (easier to hit you), which NS doesn't have. NS should have a penalty and water is wet.

 

We have gone a bit far afield on this one.

Hmm. I try never to be too certain about what other people may think, yet I'm still constantly amazed by what they come up with.

 

You get just one attack when charging, compared to several attacks performed as "full attack" when staying (+20/+15/+10/+5 for instance). NS deals 6 damage, while an average damage for a non-step attack is something like 8. The difference is too small.