[Feedback] Upcoming Balance Change MEGATHREAD

There are currently 268 legendaries, so you'll see the specific one you want about once a month, much more often than now.

 

Exempting Traits from the universal 5-card draw limit would disproportionately hose Priests (actually, the very idea of a draw limit hoses Priests). Priests are all about generating card advantage (Demonic Power, Accelerated Thought, Inspiration, Bless, countless others)

Also I don't think anyone has mentioned this makes Pathfinding and Elven Maneuvers practically useless.

The more I think about this rule change, the more I am staunchly against it. Using a sledgehammer to kill the "fly" that is 3DC/"Superhero"/etc. seems very short-sighted to me.

 

What do you mean with Pathfinding and Elven Maneuvers? The cards you draw but don't get to keep still count for the limit draw?? That would be crazy.
I wonder how much this limit draw has been tested. Sometimes it seems to me that the devs are so afraid of repeating last year scenario (where draw engines were a serious trouble) that they tend to go over the line sometimes regarding this issue. First it was the (unnecessary) change of Inspiring Presence, and now this draw limit, which affects in a serious way some cards like those 2 or some attachments like Martyr's Blessing.

 

In addition it adds an extra layer of complexity to the game. Imagine a new player when he finds his elven manuever fails to activate, oh yeah well it does what it says on the description unless of course you've exceeded your team draw limit, which is affected by the following cards ...so on and bleh. The great simplicity of designing from the ground up, these problems should already be taken care of at the item level, like how they made trembling have 2 traits instead of 3. Overall they've done a great job with this, but adding systems of increasing complexity... is the drastic change needed if the basics are already sound?

 

I don't doubt that excessive card draw is detrimental to the game (I'm aware of those old 3-priest builds that did nothing but draw and create seemingly infinite card advantage), but putting in a hard cap just seems like it's asking for trouble. And again - a card like Unholy Energy would start being used to force players to get to that hard cap faster.

It just seems like you're trying to fix something that isn't really broken. You're fixing something that could be a problem in theory sometime in the distant future, but as I said, it brings up a whole new set of issues that probably weren't intended (not to mention introducing a fundamental change to how the game is played in an attempt to neuter one specific build).

 

It's been said, but I'm adding my vote - Randimar resetting daily seems too much, though with only 10 rares, I think something should be provided to offer more rares for the newer player (whether that be a higher number of rares than 10, or a separate shop for rares that resets daily while Randimar's becomes exclusively epics and legendaries still resetting weekly, or some other system).

Also I'm strongly against the same items in Randimar's for everyone. There's a lot of fun to be had in having your own unique options each week, but more than that, it's good for the meta. One of the strongest factors in keeping variety in builds is that people have to build with what they have. That means even those who take "pre-made" decks off the forums to use have to adapt them to the items they have on hand. Each person's strongest build is by nature different than the next guy's because their item pool is different. This is greatly undercut by both making 300 legendaries available for purchase each month, and by putting the same items up for sale for everyone. I'm all for making access to epics and legendaries easier, I do think that was a good move, but I think making them so accessible will only speed up the stagnation of the meta. I think 10-15 legendaries available weekly is more than enough of an increase in availability and that keeping the stores individualized keeps variety in collections and therefore also in builds.

 

Yeah, Randimar is definitely a huge jump. I think most people would be happy if it had guaranteed 5 Legendary, 10 Epic, 20 Rare per week... let alone some crazy amount per DAY.

As for the rest of the balance changes, I think most of them are pretty good (considering most of them are basically the same ideas I had). Granted, I'll have to test them out to see if they work in practice. Theory crafting is one thing but actually play testing is a completely different story.

There are a few problems I have, namely that Dodge and Resistant Hide haven't been toned down. That and all Harnesses staying around will mean insane defense if you get a few lucky draws early. Yes, there are a lot of anti-armor abilities, but that also means you have to draw them to counter it.

I'm also hesitant on the change to Wall of Stone as it seems more like a buff to defensive casters than anything else.

 

(note: I play SP; I played MP briefly when the game launched, but not for the last ~6 months).
Did some SP farm-type testing with a chop warrior/vampire priest/firestorm wizard (all human) & ran Mauve Manticore 2 and MM 3 supplement. Observations:

• Overall, the firestorm nerf felt reasonable--most turns I had one, I could hit enough targets to make it worthwhile. I did wish it were range 6 a few times, but it felt like I could work with 5.
• Vampire priests are considerably stronger. Still not sure if that is good or bad.
• Bash-based builds feel more rewarding. Those +1 damages add up over a battle.
  
• Overall, the step attack nerfs feel workable. I'm sad I can't fling a dwarf warrior from one end of a map to another in a turn anymore, but I guess it's for the best.
• MM 3 supplement: died 8 times on map 1, once on map 2, zero on map 3. Map 3 was incredibly close (1 hp left on my last dog); I think I beat maps 1 & 2 on AI choosing very-non-optimal moves (fleeing from the victory square on map 1 and simply ignoring it on map 2) multiple turns in a row. Overall, it's much worse than it had been, due to the increased limits on mobility. In order to make it less depressing/frustrating to run, (at the very least) the AI side needs to score an additional victory point (so 4 instead of 3) in order to win.
• Dog decks may need to be revisited, since it is much easier to lock them down with encumber (even with the nerfs to that) and/or to simply outrun them. (Improvements here might fix the MM 3 supp issue).

Arm-chair comment: I think the Whirlwind/Whirlwind Enemies change is overall good. The one change I would make is to make Whirlwind "Place all characters in an occupied square within 3 ...", and leave Whirlwind Enemies at "within 2". I like the idea of limiting the chaos they inflict, but I think limiting it to 2 is a bit too much without some other benefit (ie, only affecting the enemy side).

Also, I agree that Randimar carrying a guaranteed 5 Legendary - 10 Epic - 15 or 20 Rare items each week is enough.

 

That Randimar change just cannot be healthy. It'll suck all the fun out of finally obtaining an item as you can now almost guaranteed buy it within the month anyway. I've never seen anything adjusted by a factor of +/- 140 in a game either.

 

How many posts have there been complaining about the inability to find a Vibrant Pain over the last 6 months? How many players were pointing to VP as a path to success in multiplayer? Now VP may not be the most sought after legendary for MP after the balance changes, but you're fooling yourselves if you think there won't by another legendary or two that suddenly become important. The proposed changes give players a halfway decent chance to actually find an item before they quit playing.

And most everyone is ignoring the other changes that will soon impact collection size. The price of epic chests dropped to 50 pizza on the test servers. For people spending money that means they'll get five times as many legendaries and epics out of those chests as they currently do. A set of AotA should now cost a couple hundred dollars (not all that out of line with real world games). Personally, I'm all for people being able to spend money on items as a way to support BM. But I also want to make sure that the non-paying players can stay competitive.

You want to keep Randimar's the way it is? Than non-paying players will have to continue to rely on the random number generator, while paying players will have a far easier path. These changes will help keep the game competitive for all MP players, not just those who get lucky or are willing to buy chests.

 

I agree with @boro , for me randimars change is a bad one. Grinding and looting is a part of the game. Trying to complete your colletion also. with this will eb way to easy and penalizes the ones that spent hours and hours grinding

 

So that everyone can play the exact same 3 decks? Might as well give everyone every item then ,before they quit playing.

There must be some middle ground (heck, a whole LOT of middle ground) between randimar now and the proposed change.
I'd go for something like 2% of Legendaries, 5% of Epics, 10% of rares per week. Which right now would be 5L, 14E, 30R. This keeps items rare but still obtainable in the medium/long run.

 

Of course there will be another dominant legendaries now, but that doesn't mean that we have to make them super-accessible, because everyone would be using the same items. See, I always complaint (along with most of the players) about the existence of VP, but I kept thinking that it was for the best that it was very hard to obtain, so that we could see some more variance in MP. The thing is that, while VP was the easy way to success, it was not the only one. For me for example, most of the fun I had building a succesful deck was because I was handicapped, as I didn't have a VP, so I had to figure out how to adapt it according to the items I had. That's also part of the fun: creating a build with the items you have, or trying to adapt other's builds to the items you have in stock. If we make all items very accessible, the first dominant build that comes out that doesn't find a good counter could be instantly (I mean within a month period) copied EXACTLY by the rest of the players. And the same thing would happen with constructed leagues. Do you really want that? I prefer some randomness. Maybe more unfair at some point, but way more interesting.

 

Umm, the draw limit used to be 5 per character, is it now really 5 per team on test server?

I don't like a single thing in having a draw limit. The broken item was Trembling Staff. That's fixed now but there are 2 more I can think of. Electroporter Novice and Robe Of Lightness.
Electroporter novice might be the best arcane skill and it's tokenless. Solution: remove 1 trait from it.
Heavy armors and divine armors won't have 2-3 traits on them either, right? So why does this Robe of Lightness exist as it is? 1 of its traits could be changed to something a lot worse.
And then we maybe don't need the draw limit any more?

Draw limit makes cards like Inspirational Thinking very dangerous to have in one's deck. Also draw limits add more unneeded randomness to the game. Anyone can get unlucky and draw too many traits, even if he's not running a great number of them. No to trait limits!

Don't even want to mention much else but yeah, different and less generous Randimar would be my choice too. From 1.77 legendaries a week to 70 legendaries a week... that's 40 times more!

 

We have known since April 30th, 2014 that a chest price reduction is coming.

The way I think about buyer's regret issues is that I had use of the goods I bought during the time between when I bought them and when the price was reduced. The longer the interval between these, the more I have gained.

Let's say for argument's sake that I bought a bunch of chests in April and that I got two MP-usable items from them. The chest price is coming down in August(?) So, for four months I've been able to use those items to get an edge over the other players. That's plenty enough time to rise as far up the Ratings list as I possibly could. And I knew how much I was paying in April and how many RNG raffle tickets I was getting for it. If I went ahead and bought them, I must have thought it worth the price at the time. I wasn't shafted. I made the purchasing decision based on the situation current at that time. I haven't lost anything. I've just been an early adopter. That's not a bad thing to be.

In today's entertainment marketplace, you want something early, you pay more for it. You know for a certainty prices are coming down later. It's the same for movies, games, books, electronics, music, you name it. You trade money for time, bragging rights, spoiler avoidance and for surfing the crest of topicality.

I get it's annoying to have this happen to you when you were unaware of the possibility. Consider the alternative, though. It's been determined through experience that the chest prices have been too high. Should they still be kept at the same wrong level through all time to not cause buyer's regret for anyone? Would that really be the best choice even for the early adopters?

 

Just stating, I strongly oppose a team-wide draw limit and randimar going into overdrive.
(Even in an idealized world without overly powerful items)
Someone mentioned trivializing the Item/Card hunt, that's exactly my worry. Maybe overlapping restock? Each item stays a week, so you got the time to get the money or to ponder, but new offers (roughly 2L, 5 Epics) releave old ones twice a week.

Back to the simple changes that make me raise eyebrows, why reduce the range of triple heals from 6 to 5?

 

I really like the new Randimar. That way new players have a decent chance to get some of the important items for future fotm builds.
There are people still in this game who played a lot since fall and don´t have a Vibrant Pain. Which was a key item in high ranking MP for quite a while.
And that is no way to keep players interested. People accept that you need a while to get decent items in any game to play at the top but if you tried for months you get frustrated and quit.

 

That's good, but not enough. Most of the bashing items are still overpriced. Maybe change the prices as well?

Great news. This rare card should be powerful.

Great news, especially considering the price we have to pay for it.

Will it move attacker 1 after blocking the magic attack? This would be huge.

This will become a really playable card. Nice.