[Feedback] Why I'm stopping playing Card Hunter

I like what you are saying, but I don't think it applies to this game (at least from my experience up to level 15).

Let's take the OP's example:
Please explain to me how you outplay mobs that have melee+1 attacks and can only be damage from behind, by removing their armor or via extreme luck?
The melee+1 on the majority of the maps prevents you from setting them up in a place where you can setup two characters to be able to constantly hit their rear to break through the armor. Even then, say you get setup, you still run into the issue where if your character decides not to draw an attack card for several rounds you are forced to retreat (especially since the mobs hit for ~1/3rd - 1/2 your health). In your example you don't setup to attack unless you have enough health, block/parry cards and attack cards... the problem being, with only 3 cards being drawn each turn and only two being allowed to be kept, having enough of the right cards can often be a celestial occurrence... once in a blue moon. To me waiting for the perfect combination of cards isn't strategy, it's patience. It isn't skill, it's having too much time on your hands.

But I could be missing something. You might have seen things I didn't while doing those missions. I would love to hear your example of how you outplay something when you lack cards/character level without relying on RNG.

 

He said that without properly gearing for the quest, RNG can permit bad tactics and bad gear to still win. So in your stated case, yes you need RNG in your favor, HEAVILY.

If the enemy uses spears and armor, you need some very heavy hitting attacks to pound through the armor (added bonus: If you get your attacks before they get their armor), or you need some discard or armor removal abilities. Gear up enough of those and you don't have to worry about random hope that you draw them, you will have them with regularity.

The armor + Spear early I can think of are the "This armor fails from behind, knockback 1 if armor works" guys. They get 1 attack each per turn, so even if you cannot back out of range on them, they won't kill you in one round. But their health is low enough you CAN kill them in one round if you remove the armor first. Don't waste your armor removal on them unless you have a solid set of attacks to follow them. Don't waste your good attacks on them until you have verified there is no armor in your way (by removing it or by hitting with something weak)

Always assume the enemy will have the cards that annoy you the most, and that RNG will work in their favor. Save your big strikes for when you know they will land, toss out your weak (aka - about to be discarded) stuff to check if you are lucky and they don't have the annoying things ready. Distance and passing a turn is almost always in your best interest. Pay attention to which mobs are grouped together (stay AWAY from guys who are solo with lots of cards available, if you have a choice between finishing the last of one group, or one of many living from another, kill the one of many).

With only rare or lower non-token items, I can consistently beat that mission, by playing to the mechanics. And I am NOT a very talented player if MP is any judge.

 

I'll just talk about some general strategy vs them, some of which you already knows. This is for the lvl 7 trogs, which many people complained.

Firstly, tactical during battle. Mobility is important vs trogs, however, efficiency is important as well. If you have to spend 2 move card to get into range, you have less card to attack. Instead, spend as few movement card as possible getting into range. A major revelation for player figuring out this level is to let the trogs move first, let them come to you. Avoid passing if possible just in case he pass as well. Pass the turn if you know for sure he has movement card. If you are not sure, spend our turn buffing your warrior (using priest) or throwing long spark check for armor card (wizard). Once they gets into range, step in and do damage. This is a key point, if you underestimated and he still has move card, he will move away from you, in order to maintain distance. This is the perfect time to step attack. Focus the trogs who does not have armor. Never waste your big attack blindly on an unknown target and hope (this is relying on RNG as I said on the previous post). Walk away from trogs that still has attack and walk toward the greyed out one. Only use discard card if you can surely remove his armor. Keep track of how many cards they have. If they have 3 armor cards, hold off your attack till next turn, when he has discarded down to 2. The more armor and move card he has, the less attack card he will have. Another general strategy against range 2 melee is to use narrow corridor, in a way that force him into melee 1 range if he want to attack. If you suspect he still have move card possible, moving your character around will sometimes force the AI to use it to reposition. Pay attention to the draw, any enemy down is 1 less card they draw next turn. Your draw is always gonna be 6 per turn. High priority anyone that does not belong to a group and can draw 3+ card per turn (doesnt mean focusing him, keep him out of reach if he is still heavily armored).

To be frank, I rarely attack with melee from the back unless the opportunity present, it's usually step from behind, wizard zap from behind when they walk away.

Secondly and more important is not just the tactical battle, but the deck preparation before hand. The key to focus here is to improve the consistency of your deck. This involve 2 things:

- Maximize the chance that you will draw an useful card every turn. Minimize any cards that do not contribute towards your goal. For the trogs, cards that penetrate, big damage > 4, discard spell, step attack. Any slot that provides card that do not work toward this strategy must be replaced with items offer as few of these as possible. Traits are designed with this goal in mind. Worry about how many trait you can fit more than what the Trait actually does (Black trait that punish taking dmg is useful for your wizard who will never get hit). Focused again on the efficiency, if you can get into range with 1 move card, make sure your boots don't contains 3 movement cad which will be useless. Too much step attack is a problem if its dmg output is not good enough. Save the weapon slot for the big damage finish, get step attack on other equipment slot and maybe 1 weapon. Another thing, if you focus heavily on armor removal and can consistently draw them, dont focus on penetrating attack on your warrior, get as big dmg attack as possible. Otherwise, ran penetrating attack on everyone. Just in case you draw that luck Boiling armor, dump non-penetrating attack on him. (Again, play with RNG, not relying on RNG)

- Maximize the chance that the strategy is still executed under sub-optimal draw. For example, have some telekinesis just in case your warrior didnt get enough move/step card to get into range. If he has, use telekinesis to put them under your lava/acid. If your wizard failed to draw some long spark to check armor, use misguided heal instead (again so that you do not waste attack card).

Phew, that was long

 

I don't agree that AI cannot give a good challenge. Sure, it lacks skill and cunning, but this can be balanced by giving it better resources.

I think the SP campaign is at a very good challenge level, especially if you play through just once.

 

How do you know there are not better ways to beat the levels that you are not thinking of? Sure, if your gear/strategy is not quite strong enough you may need to cross your fingers and hope to augment it with a bit of luck. But if you chose better you might need less luck.

In the beta a lot of people complained about the difficulty of one of the troglodyte missions. But one player managed to win it without ANY gear.

Talent system sounds like a good idea - it would, of course, be another item slot!

 

I had troubles with the missions at first, but I made a secondary party a couple days ago as a timewaster, and as I was going through the missions, I really just breezed through 'em. I took a level 2 party with no gear into the Mevelous quest and smashed it in the face. Had to wait a couple turns with Mevelous trapped in a corner while I drew a couple extra cards, but eh. Like, it wasn't even an issue what level my guys were. Didn't wipe once. I'd like to see some level 1 and 2 parties in some of the mid- and higher-level dungeons, 'cause it seemed like equipment and level and rng had almost nothing to do with the mission whatsoever.

 

I wouldn't say I'm going to stop playing but I'm extremely frustrated. NO opponent should be able to attack more then once in a turn. The level 17 treasure hunter adventure the end guy does over 40 points of damage in the first turn, repeatably. Not to mention the horde of oozes that start with 7 cards, and repeatably walk a few times then unload with missle attacks that do 6 points of damage apiece, and the other ooze that gets to attack multiple times and draws 4 cards a turn. I've tried multiple tactics, smoke bombs, walls, tons of missle blocking, as much healing as I can manage. I can't do it, there is just no way with the cards I have for me to do it. The yellow power points shouldn't be replacing the blues they should be in addition to. The difference in power between a yellow power stone and no power stone is huge, which is what you give up when you try to change gear.

for example: The warrior has 3 weapon cards with 2 stone apiece. That's 6 stones right there out of 8 (at my level) which leaves 2 available. Now if I want to upgrade on of my other slots I have to take a weapon from having a yellow and blue down to 1 blue which is a huge drop in power and at high levels to even have a chance you need to have those 3 weapons or you aren't doing damage and are just waisting draws and useless cards. Maybe I've just had crappy luck with the cards I've gotten. I can't use fire because my fire is limited to ember spray, fire spray and hot spots. I haven't gotten anything else. I've gotten a grand total of 2 items with greater heal on them. When opponent are regulary hitting you for 14-18 damage a swipe a 4 point heal isn't worth much.

Basically, my opponents have gotten significantly more deadly but my characters haven't come close to keeping pace. I've got a card pool of 33 cards I'm drawing from and need to go through with cards that are useless because they are part of the item where my opponents draw like 5 cards at a time and have decks of 14 cards so they get all these high damage cards and multiple movements cards so you can not get away reguardless of what you draw. It's supremely frustrating, and I don't know how much longer I'm going to play like this. I'm sure a hell not going to spend any more money on it.

 

@prophet, perhaps you should start a thread asking for strategy advice for a particular map you're having trouble with. I'm sure lots of people would be keen to help you with some tips and tricks, and result would be that the game would be made easier for you (because your technique will have improved) without making the game easier for everyone else.

Although the game is consider too difficult for many players, there are also a lot of players who already think it is too easy, and a lot of players who think the difficulty is about right. So I think it would be much better to boost the skill of the players who are having trouble rather than nerfing the difficulty of the whole game.

 

I think this is exactly right. I have basically given up playing, but have started to lurk the boards more instead. I find the game design to be punishing, and in the end I just don't feel like being punished at the end of my work day. I suggested this elsewhere, but I think boosting the players skill should come from addressing a couple things:

1. Prepare players for each module ahead of time, with better descriptions on the adventure beginning and an ability to adjust gear before loading into the initial fight.
2. Reduce the Loot RNG in the initial levels of the campaign to ensure loot breadth sufficient (for a new player) to beat the early levels.
3. More in-depth "hints" on the death screens, especially at low levels. Explain more explicitly what to do differently, or maybe link to the boards for where to ask for advice.

I don't think the game is too hard, I think the game design punishes the player unnecessarily. I think that increases frustration needlessly and is a turn off. Maybe not for everyone, but I would guess for a significant percentage given how often it comes up on the boards. None of the above changes would drastically change the game or the challenge, it would just give the *new* player a better shot at understanding and responding to the initial challenges.

 

I believe early level loot is calculated to give you a boost. One poster pointed out that Trogsbane and Golem Slayer were both early guaranteed drops and I used Trogsbane almost until level 10.

Managing your power tokens is another challenge of the game, just like the card/equipment choices sometimes you have to ask what exactly your characters are going to focus on. As a throwback to the days of DnD when a character couldn't do anything, I don't mind limited management of resources like that.
My PvP teams have a solid amount of non-stone required goods strictly so that I can have the important core items to my builds. Even then I don't see the exact same builds amongst players anywhere really.

 

I don't think the game is too difficult, I think the computer should play under the same rules as the player. Movement cards should allow that one creature to move, traits only affect one creature why does movement effect all? Make the default movement card be like mass run, dash, shuffle ect...but the additional movement should be one only. Their attack cards should be tied to normal equipment cards not just arbitrarily assigned, 4 massive hacks in a 14 card deck, what items is he using? Nothing like weak strike, or other attacks that do minimal damage, all attack are 9 damage or more, why don't I get anything resembling that?

Certain things just annoy me. I didn't even know there was frost attack till I saw it on these forums. I check the store every day to get new stuff to help me out, still haven't seen this firestorm attack, or a fire blast, fire ball, lava pit, anything fire other then ember, burning fingers, fire blast, or hot spot. Nothing for healing, I'm at the mercy of the card gods and they seem to really really hate me. I'm level 17 and I have 1 heavy armor, 2 greater heal. I have a ton of tk cards which seem useless considering how many movement cards my opponent gets.

Some adventures I can just roll through, but for the most part it's 20-30 turn events for me. It's tedious, and not fun. I'm happy that you've had the fortune of the card gods on your side but i have not. And no tactics can help me I can just keep playing those few maps and hope I get something usefull.

And I have the gold to buy goo d stuff ( almost 3k now) but their is nothing to buy.

 

I think you may have just been monstrously unlucky or less than 100% diligent in your search.
Ice items do seem fairly rare in my game, but I have gotten a ton of heavy armors and firestorms.

 

I've got heaps and heaps of items now - but only two with cold cards, and I bought one of those from the rares shop. I still don't have any staff with a Firestorm card.

I think it's cool that there are some rare cards.

(Yesterday, Staff Of The Inferno was the club reward twice, but I'm not a member of the club...)

 

Funnily I just got one of those the other day as I was leveling a new crew of adventurers. Most of my Firestorm items are arcane items though, not staffs.

 

The devs have explained that early on in the development it used to work like that. There were however several problems with this approach:

• Large groups of foes would always approach and attack one by one and were easily cut down
• The enemies needed a lot of movement cards in their deck to move everyone reliably and this resulted too often in the foes drawing too little attacks to be a danger. If they reduced the movement cards, then some foes would often just stand there looking dumb.

Thus they changed it to the current system. It isn't perfect but it's probably still better than how it worked before.

Well, if the enemies used all the same items you do, the monsters would be a lot more boring as you couldn't really make the enemies that special.
Dragons? Hydras? Ogres? Statues? Slimes? Animated trees? Should they really only have similar attacks that the heroes use?

Besides, the current game content only goes to level 18. The token system already shows that the game will in the future go up to level 50 so there might well be a weapon with 4 great attacks eventually.

 

Please forgive me if I'm not reading you correctly, but I think the game actually does this?
Before actually committing by clicking "battle!" you're able to sort your gear around as much as you please. Frequently I use this in adventures where, say, encounters 1 and 3 require bashing damage, and 2 requires lots of movement and counterspells instead. Without this option to swap it up, certain adventures would be a nightmare! I use it constantly on a per-battle basis.

The only issues this system seems to have is that sometimes the game lags out when you begin an adventure and doesn't pan the screen down to your character sheets/inventory in a timely fashion, which makes the game sometimes feel like you don't have the option, or that you have to click-and-drag your way down from the mission briefing to get to your character sheets and manipulate them manually. Also, there are steps during each phase of the intermission between battles where your equipped gear doesn't highlight when you mouse over it, making it look like the option to swap isn't available to you. However, clicking and dragging alternate gear to your character's slots still works even in these situations and allows a gear swap during any time during a mission briefing.
I'm positive that these hangups are a result of minor bugs that need the kinks worked out, and not actual game design decisions, and they usually don't happen to me.

 

The devs have said that being able to scroll down from the initial module description screen is actually a bug. This is also why the gear screen doesn't quite work correctly there (no card popups on hover, no clicking on a slot to show only those items).

You can freely make changes to your gear between the individual battles when the game actually takes you to the inventory screen. But if you want to make changes before the first fight, you're supposed to do it in the keep / shops before entering the adventure.

I agree though, being able to modify your gear should be allowed before the first battle as well.

 

I didn't even realize you could scroll down to the inventory. I guess a player could read the description, make some guesses, leave the module, go to the keep, change gear and come back - but that's a lot of clicking. I think a better initial description and then a chance to make informed gear choices would be less punishing.

 

From a realism perspective there's some logic in it as how would the party know what monsters awaited them?

 

Doesn't seem like realism should really be our guide here, but internal consistency would be good. What I'm suggesting is that the primer text, the module description, be more robust or cater more to helping the player gear appropriately. I think this would reduce frustration, especially at low levels.