[Feedback] Upcoming Balance Change MEGATHREAD

Yeah, what's the logic behind removing the need to face the attacker at all? If I can't see that opponent is attacking, how am I supposed to shield someone then?

 

No point in giving people the heads up, but at the beginning there was a lot of exploits around (as usual for any game, especially flash-based). I can only hope that there was work done behind the lines to fight that sort of stuff, but let me finish this off with a reminder for people getting their hopes up:

http://forums.cardhunter.com/threads/exploits-cheats-bots-and-other-bannable-offenses.4087/

So stay clean kids!

 

Just want chip in with a small idea to improve mind worm a bit more, other than its range. Since now there will be a draw limit of 5, why not add to mind worm a "target char was his draw limit reduced by 1"

 

If you can't see the truth, I can enlighten you, if you wish. Do you wish?

It was never the only SP strategy. There are scenarios where Firestorm works quite badly. But yes, it was the most effective SP strategy and it was the best for the most scenarios. SO WHAT??? Are you trying to struggle for the "fair play" with AI? It's just a comp! And if the clever players can farm a lot of gold, that's good!

You seem to mix all things up and fail to understand what are you talking about. A card can be called "broken" only if it's so strong that everyone plays it or forced to build an "anti-deck" versus it. Was Firestorm "broken" in MP? Definitely not. Would it be "broken" in MP after nerfing NS and VT? Still not. Direct damage wizards would beat Firestorm without any special measures, since you damage all chars, and they damage just your chars. Armored elven warriors would beat Firestorm since one Reliable Mail makes it unprofitable. There was NO NEED to change Firestorm at all.
The whole talk about how Firestorm is OP in SP is just silly. There is no metagame in SP, there is no competition, there is just farm. And nobody is going to complain that somebody is farming "too quickly".

Thank you, I'm playing CCGs since 1995. I know all the dirty tricks of developers, including rotation, altering rules, altering cards, banning and many more. And, believe me, I know when the change wasn't necessary.

So you pretend that the "new Firestorm" will be playable in MP. With the "new Firestorm" you will have to move your wizard within 5 squares of ALL opponent's chars, which will often mean 3-4 squares from the nearest enemy. Elven warrior can reach you in just one move! And even after taking that risk all you will get is a right to deal equal damage to all chars. In other words, you will damage all chars, and they will damage just yours. If you cannot understand that new Firestorm will be dead in MP, you can ask the better players. My rating isn't high, but that's obvious even for me.

 

Magic... the answer to anything that doesn't make sense in a fantasy realm is magic. The shield is magic.

 

I can say I beat the entire game (not the Quests) w/o ever using FS. I can also say I will use it for farming. But I am not sure your understanding of FS's new version is correct. It seems to be it is a burning range spell now. Doesnt require LoS and doesn't need to hit your allies. A well armored wiz or 2 could still use it quite effectively (I will be testing this soon). The change as explained by Jon was to eliminate it as a non-tactical strategy. You didn't have to be concerned about positioning, or more to the point you could "hide in a corner" which is counter to how Jon wants this game to be played and evolve. It seems to me that his plan is to have this game stand out due to the need for both good positioning and good card play. A global FS defeats that.
Being able to attack without being somewhat vulnerable is pretty lame... especially when you consider that a D-wiz and Elf-warriors have the same number of hit points AND D-wiz have access to upto 2 Toughness. I mean be honest if there was a 1-on-1 format would anyone ever choose to match play a single elf-warrior against a single D-wiz? I would say there was not a need to change FS for balance purposes alone (although there are starting draws when a FS build can be untouchable which is just no fun) but to keep all the cards in line with how the game was designed to be played.
Also is mindlessly farming for gold really something that should be encouraged? Especially if you consider that Randimar's changes make gold much much more vaulable.

 

In part because it apparently isn't a 5card limit per character it is a 5 card limit to the player that includes any cards drawn by any of your characters. Which to me still seems far to punishing since you can very easily have trait cards burn through most of your draws at the start of a round. Which means if you put Martyrs Blessing on one of your characters or have Elven Maneuverability, which might normally dissuaded the enemy from attacking those characters. If your traits burned through your 4 out of your 5 cards. Then they can just happily ignore those cards potential negative effects and attack away unhindered.

So it would seem to me that it really needs to be at least a per character draw. I also really don't think the draw limit should be effected by card effects triggered by an enemy action.

 

Televangelists could learn a thing or two from you. But we're not taking religion, we're speculating about a game. So please, stop being all aggro or offend my intelligence over silly things. I know what I'm talking about even if our opinions don't converge. I really don't need e-cock fights and I will not respond to any more harassment. I would like to offer you a 'tension reset' with no hard feelings if you wish. I have high regards for this community and I will not add to its degradation.

If you like it or not I've shared my views which are in line with what the dev's decided, which until proven with hard facts and stats will not leave the realm of speculations - as will your opinions.

I agree that FS will not be playable in its current form, but I fully second what doog37 have said. FS will have to drop some fire power in exchange for more utility (and thus become slower, yes, but not weaker), but it will be more in line with other builds. I'm sure new iterations of that build will do well in both SP and MP - who knows, it might get more love in the next round of balance tweaks, which might be needed sooner than later due to harness changes

 

I don't know if it was already noticed, but now nimble scouting and frightened scouting have the same cards.

 

The idea to remove ww was nice and to tone down the random luck factor.
But with a draw limit of 5 this becomes a lottery game again.
I don´t need to go to test to understand that a draw limit kills a lot of strategy.
If you got unlucky in one round and you already drew your 5 traits at the start of the round you can say goodbye to the parry, inspiring presence or a lot more actions you might saved up because it is not working anymore.
So the whole game is back to a random factor even you can not control and that is not acceptable for a game like this, and yes i am talking about normal decks, not specific drawdeck ones.

 

Questor, you are equating a limitation with randomness. You can no longer design builds that allow you to cycle through cards and have additional draws consistently. If you want to have more drawing use less traits in your build it is that simple. Nothing random about controling the cards you decide to include in your build.
With that said, I am a big fan of the draw limit. I dislike "trait cycling" and this this is an interesting way to deal with the unintentded consequence of making many drawback cards traits... but 5 might be too few. However there is no need to have trait after trait in a deck it is a workaround to shorten decks which is good strategy but a work around of the game design which is trying to be remedied by a draw limit.
So simply put it is NOT a random factor out of your control.

 

Can't say how it will end up without trying it out, but I do find the card draw limit rather harsh.
Either way, it will add a few interesting things to have at the back of your mind:

- another limiting factor for equipping items besides orbs, i.e. trying to limit your items with traits and such, before I used to generally favour cards with traits and such, the more the merrier, I guess we will have to find a sweet spot for card draw cards somewhere, especially traits
- trying to stop the round when you're left with card draw cards (like parry) after reaching the limit, OR
- pushing on after seeing your opponent running out of card draws and being left with card-draw cards

 

A) IMO: efficient != mindless. Agriculture has advantages over hunting & gathering. I still hunt and fish IRL, but it's not my mainstay.
B) Should farming for gold be encouraged? Yes. Definitely. It's called "Playing Cardhunter".
C) I doubt Randimar's will go live with a daily 10/10/10, but I do hope it improves as a gold sink.

I really don't expect the gamut of unlimited harnesses to make the cut either. The possible armor values have become pretty ridiculous.
I think the range of firestorm should be increased to at least 6. That's the standard for most spells, and many opponents in SP (where I spend most of my time) have pretty nasty attacks from range 8 or 10.

 

Sorry, but I've played Firestorm very much and was planning to create a MP Firestorm party. I was thinking about it for 5-6 months, and I've even tested it. How can the new FS not hit your allies? Are you going to place your FS wizard farther than 5 squares from his teammates? This would be just a suicide.

A "well-armored wizard" is a good joke. A Firestorm wizard will play Firehide Robes. You can get some armor from skills and boots, but that's all. That's the primary Firestorm problem: your wizards have weaker armor and less HPs than the enemy warriors. Only Resistant Hide really moves the balance to your side, but you cannot have more than one. If you consider the raising popularity of armor-melting and armor-shredding, that alone would be enough to kill Firestorm in MP.

The game becomes better if it has the "weird" winning strategies, and if it doesn't, the game becomes dull. Do you realize that the opponent of the "hiding" Firestorm team just needs to keep his chars alive at the victory area?

Yes, they have the same number of HPs, but the Elf will have much better armor and move much faster. I am not sure that a single Elf warrior would defeat any Dwarf wizard, but I'm pretty sure he will defeat a Firestorming Dwarf wizard.

Yes, I really think that should be encouraged. The players who want to farm a lot should be rewarded for that.

 

Consider things like parry or half of the priesttools and then think again.
This limit will not only hinder special drawdecks but normal decks.

If Jon thinks it is a bad game design he should solve the problem and not put cement on a game mechanic with the outcome that it becomes a random thing again.

 

Really, the samey builds problem has nothing to do with the availability of items. And it's a selfish notion anyway - you want everybody else to not gravitate to what they think works.

On top of that, players gravitate towards similar builds regardless of whatever. The solution to this is to provide a bunch of viable builds, not to put large barriers on people from accessing them.

 

Yeah, something should be done there I think.

And I agree with Questor here that this is too much luck added to the game if we can only draw 5 more cards than we discard every turn.

 

So the problem here is that "too much luck added to the game" is because it happens to be a turn where you drew all of your Traits and Parry? Am I getting this right?

 

One of the problems.
It also makes all drawing cards a lot more weaker and cards like Inspirational Thinking or Martyr Blessing half as good as they used to be.