[Feedback] Upcoming Balance Change MEGATHREAD

No. FS is more about whether this game is for people who have limited time to grind in SP.

 

Well, no. The argument still stands: why would somebody who can't grind in SP should use FS? Because it's the best option available for many of the quests without having to prepare or even think as you play, that's why.

 

I have said it before, the people who have the gear and knowledge to finish quests with a fs build have also the knowledge and gear to replay them without a problem. Neither is fun but without FS it becomes a timesink.
The useful thing to complete adventures on a regular basis was to get the last chest with 2 uncommons to get a higher but still slim chance for something useful.

The change will lead to straight up boring farming for gold because you don´t need so much luck anymore with a daily restock of 10 legendaries.
And i assure you that farming brings a lot more gold than finishing as many quests as possible per day.
The best adventure to grind is The White Star and it will still be it after the changes because you are surrounded by enemies and the playfields are not so big. I have a very good firestorm setup and my statistics say that i earn on average 403 gold per hour.

As you see, the changes won´t effect the grinding of items since you now only have to earn gold and wait.
It will effect the quests.
If you also belong to the few who finished the high level quests and especially The Return to the Astral Shrine, you know what i mean.

 

I would definitely want to see more variety of builds. The old meta was what got me bored in the first place. If distance requirements of FS is enough to make some quests unplayable then change the quests or carry on with the balancing - at least that's the step in the right direction.

 

An easy compromise for firestorm would be to make it work like Obvious Maneuver; only limit the range in multiplayer.

On a different subject, going to summarize why 10 legends per day is ridiculous:

Not Card Hunter, Card Shopper: Players interested in getting better cards will no longer "hunt" for cards. They will grind for hours (or break out the plastic) to buy from randimars. Randomly finding a legend will lose the satisfaction that goes along with it.

What do I do now?: If players can build a top-tier collection in two or three months, how long will they stay interested in the game?

Time better spent grinding: Grinding will be the only thing worth players time, because other rewards will become trivial. Leagues? Eh, reward chests can't have treasure. Loot Fairy? Eh, maybe if it's an easy level for some potential rare treasure. MP? Eh, that'll take too long. Better just grind, so I can get my nth copy of x legend...

MP stagnation: I am honestly okay with how quickly this change will settle the meta, since it means the dev's will need a whole new set of balance changes in two months or so. Good for me as a player, but not good for BM.

I am highly in favor of a middle path. Try 10 or 15 legends per week. Considering the old amount was roughly 1.7 or something, that is a massive increase.

 

It isn't all about firestorm. Above level 13 FS isn't a sure win. I often play it at higher levels because it's more challenging. The nerf to range 5 is a bit much when your foes hit you from further. Low levels can easily be farmed with just about anything, but FS is usually faster. It still works pretty well on the kobold mines too, so it still works for grinding gold.
I dislike the change to WoS, which BM says they are going to bring back anyway. It will eventually be back for the 1 hp challenges, I suppose.
Having all step attacks nerfed to the Frost Jolt/Cone of Cold encumbrance level seems a bit much.
Whirls to Maze kinda works I guess. I was hoping for a bit longer range, and everything changed to WW. (No more WWE.)
The buffing of bashes probably won't mean much, but it's an okay gesture.
The harness thing is just wierd. I often like wierd stuff, but I doubt this will pan out.

 

I actually like steps being up to 2 squares. VT and NS could get a +1 damage bonus maybe to compensate since they lost more than DC Just all else has to be balanced around step1 and step2 attacks now.
Scuttle is still insanely better than before. Look at Run and Quick Run. Only cantrip differenze and bronze -> gold. Scuttle went silver -> silver ?! I repeat that Scuttle could get "ignores encumber" instead of cantrip. It shouldn't be better than Scamper (which is gold too!).
Randi... I like how Vakaz put it. That would be Card Shopper not Card Hunter any more. I'm OK with slight increase to the nr of legendaries and if you want it to restock daily then it could have 1L, 2E and 5R every day.

 

Let's not forget that every new player's nightmare, the Trogs, use scuttle. Can't wait to hear a whole new wave of whining about how the already "unforgiving" missions are going to become even more so.

 

Well the Trogs might keep the old version of scuttle, but it doesn't really matter - Trogs are easy with just one armor removal wizard and 2 stacked with firestor... oh, wait. Never mind.

 

For farming it's usually the quickest, but often not the surest. Speed farming is all about the rate of chests per hour, so in that sense it's often the best.

Glad to see you so happy!
I hope you also gain some measure of happiness from your own accomplishments!

 

I always use 2 war and a frenzy priest on the gougers. Force of habit, probably.

 

As someone who only plays an hour a day if I'm lucky Randimar is my go to source to buy anything good. While 10 legendaries is very high, I do like the idea of it being more useful to me than it currently is.

So to add to the opinion, as someone who doesn't grind and toil away endless I like the idea of a better Randimar.

 

You're a whiz with numbers! Have you calculated the odds of getting a VP (or any specific Legendary) with a 10 per day rate?
I'm leery of how the 10/10/10 would pan out over time. The old method might work okay for a daily restock. At least we shouldn't have to face 4-6 weeks of nothing worth buying. Also, having some money saved up is a good habit to develop in both gaming and real life.

 

@Jon: I don't need to spend some time trying to tell you that some 1HP quests would be impossible.
Actually, a few cards can allow your guys to not take a single point of damage:
a-Push cards / Frost if the enemies are melee type so that they can never get in range
b-Smoke Bombs/illusions so that Magic Types can't attack
c-Resistant Hides / Ground Plates if the enemies only use special types of attacks
d-Impenetrable Nimbus
e-Wall Of Stones
Let's take the example of the final battle of Black Plume Mountain.
a-The guy has Immovable and his armor protects him from attachments
b-The dragon has melee attacks
c-Those are useless
d-One of the Ice Breath removes your own attachments
e-Leaves Wall of Stones, that's why I went there with 3 wizzs when I first tried to complete the 1HP quest.
Now your current "balance" wants to remove the wall of stones (well replaced by some water that the dragon can Fly over) and offers as only alternartive stacking the armors. Sadly you can't have enough time to stack on a single dude enough armor points to negate the biggest attack of the dragon that is on melee range in 2-3 rounds.
At least one other adventure can't be done without Wall of Stones (the level 12 with the dragon and 2 lizard spearmen during a battle) and some can't be done without Firestorm. Example: the last battle of Return to Astral Shrine where you fight ranged mobs scattered all around the map occupying 4/5 victory squares.

About encumber.
Maybe the fact that encumber spells in hand of a Winter Wizard was slowing him to the maximum of his highest encumber spell was a hoax, but I really liked the idea. It made me happy about the balance instead of depressed (till I learned it wasn't true).
Actually, you killed the Dwarf Warriors (give them at least "Draw a card" instead of cantrip on Shrug It Off) but left the dwarf wizzs unchanged. And now dwarf wizz can compete on a HP level with the warriors that will try to slain him. 4 less HP then the human warriors and same HP as the elf ones.
With the rule saying that the wizz get encumbered by his own spells, it can kinda make frost mage a specialty of the less ever played unit, elf wizzs. Dwarf warriors have two times the HP of the elf wizz, it's a choice that can be paid by the cost of a potential eternal freezing.
Also it can give a teeny tiny bit of love to the poor Trained Tactics.

About Randimar:
What about making more shops? One with Rare only that resets everyday, one with Epics only that resets every three days and one with Legendaries only reseting every week?
My favorite would be if the Legendaries shop resets if you complete a serie of X quests of if you pay X pizza (but this last feature would be limited to once a day)
Quests can be things like:
-Win X PvP games
-Clear all MM challenges
-Find the loot fairy X times
-Kill XX nameofthemob
etc...
And you get like 5 random quests among all existing ones (so it can be easy or hard depending on what you get).
People can get a token everyweek for a "pizza reset" of the thing. This way someone can take as many time as he needs to buy a particulary Legendary and another one can reset several times a week till he can find a L he likes (plus making the quests would also bring money to buy more items).
You can even, which sounds better, make people choose between MP Path of SP Path before getting his serie of quests.

 

Well, 10/264 every day, so 50% chance to get a VP in 18 days.

 

Pardon, but you sound just silly. No offense, just the hard truth.
1). FS is not the only SP strategy, though it's probably the most effective. Who told you that killing FS will be "RIP single player"?
2). FS is not "broken", neither in SP nor in MP. It just saves a lot of farming time.
3). FS-builds will NOT "have to worry about board placement" - they will simply disappear. Nobody would play a card that forces you to come so close to the enemies to hit them all, and always hits your own chars. Firestorm will be DEAD both in SP in MP.

As long as FS will become a crap now, all items with it are going to become crappy. There are 28 items with FS in the game, and all of them will become crap. Now tell me, how can such a "change" be good for the game? Don't we have enough unplayable crap? Some of these items are the long-sought legendaries that were bought for 2500 gold from Randimar. Everybody agrees that VP was the primary OP item, but it will still remain playable after the change, while the FS items will turn to dust. This is just unfair and not necessary, since FS doesn't threat the MP metagame in any way.

 

Not instant gratification for nabbing the goodies, but probably quicker than is healthy for the game.

 

I did some testing with new FS and I would hardly say its "crap" now

http://forums.cardhunter.com/thread...-specifically-kobold-farming.6207/#post-68453

Test server is available if you wish to refute but just throwing out stuff isn't really productive.

 

I don't wish to refute, but I've never had much time to farm the kobolds, so a card that's good only for that is still a crap for me.

 

I don't know if the word for FS is"broken" or not, but the balance changes, and this has been clearly expressed by Jon, didn't only affect broken or OP stuff. It also affected cards that didn't care about positioning, like FS. WW, for instance, wasn't so OP, at least not even close to WWe, but it got heavily nerfed anyway for the same reason. They want a game in where positioning and board interaction becomes important again. But even with the changes, FS would be the best way to farm in SP in most maps. It may be riskier now, or take more time, but it's definitely not crap, at least for SP. It would become riskier in MP, that's true. But look at the positive side: all the leagues in where WW and FS where the easy solution (like Roll Out the Barrels, Wicked Waterways, etc) will now become far more interesting, with different kind of builds, including FS.

With that said, it's controversial the fact that BM wanted to give priority to positioning, and the buffs that Cause Fumble and Defender's Block received (they don't require to be facing the opponent now), added to Toughness remaining untouched. Maybe "positioning" doesn't involve facing for them.