Might of been suggested before but i wasnt sure what term to look it up under.. Anyways, i thought it was kind of funny that an Elven warrior and a Dwarven warrior, both given an axe or a hammer, would use the same attacks. So maybe if some higher tier gear started having one or two 'racial' cards, that change depend on the race of the wearer. Would only really apply to weapons and spells and just a few in total since many weapons share attacks. It has some ups and downs, i like the flavor personally.
What can i say big flavor bonus but slight balance issue which tends to be not worth it. So unless we are purely talking name of said card I'm mildly against it but if we are talking pure flavor like art and name I'm all for it. The idea is still solid i just hate this feeling when balance is impacted by race. "Oh dwarfs attack stuns... guess I'm playing dwarf warrior now." If you see what i mean.
I am not sure if it fits with the overall flavor of Card Hunter. The idea is that all of these items have been imbued with magic. Would a magic item that augments attacks in a certain way work differently for a dwarf as opposed to an elf? I mean an axe or hammer doesn't work differently based on who is swinging it. I can say and elf would choose a different type of hammer or axe than a dwarf, but the same hammer or axe wouldn't work differently would it? You already have a different default move card, HP differences, and racial abilities. You want more for racial differences? Those three things right there I feel will have a big impact on how the different races play. That will then change how you choose what to equip your character. It just snowballs.
Really it depends. I haven't looked into the lore of Card Hunter much yet but certainly in other IPs weapons may act differently depending on who or what is wielding them; especially magical weapons. Whether this is something that fits into the flavour of the game may or may not be true but I'm not against it as a general mechanic. It may be overcomplicating it though. I know the devs said a while back that they wanted everything to be card-driven where possible, and the proposed method would be in keeping with that. I do agree as well that there could be issues where a certain race/class build ends up more powerful, or funnels you into going for certain weapons with certain races. Whether the latter is a good or a bad thing is subjective - for some it will add flavour, for others it will merely feel like a restriction.
To clarify, im not suggesting racially specific weapons, just certain weapons beyond a mid-tier have one card in them is racially altered. Of course a human, elf, and a dwarf, when given an axe will hack and chop (in the case of the elf, probably lettuce heads for a low fat salad the beardless sissy) So all those would remain, but then an elf might swiftly chop several times rapidly, while a human might parry and counter attack, and a dwarf might explode a non-dwarf with a dungeon shattering cleave. I dont think a balance would be hard to maintain since these are only a couple cards in a deck and how effective they are depends on when you draw it, where your character is, and what the situation is, each of those are better/worse/useless in different situations just like cards are :3 Without knowing the extent of the current cards, cant really make too many suggestions, but in general the elves are quicker, the humans are tactical, and dwarves are awesome.
Don't races/characters have basic attributes/parameters? i.e. Strength and Agility? Wouldn't that limit the types of items one can carry/use? (and then you can only have so many cards in one hand, and they are drawn from the available cards for the items carried, so it's about strategy and some luck...)
HP is the only attribute, so yeah they have different HP, and different movement cards and some racial skills. Cant really find an answer on armor separations, maybe wizards just have a slot for a 'robe' and 'circlet' instead of armor and helmet, etc.
Racial cards are interesting, they seem to act like a modifier to a deck specific to the tactical elements of the game. It's still a card based game at heart, and the design seems to focus on equipment providing most of your cards. Classes, and the equipment they use, define what that deck can do. You create a solid fighter deck, and then decide how you like to play it using the various races. HP and movement are important trade offs to apply in a tactical game (speed vs staying power), but this seems to be a concern for after the deck is created. It seems in theme with the old school RPGs as well. Races normally provided small changes to your attributes, and defined some minor racial abilities. Having equipment cards vary based on race, would actually limit their ability to add new races. Say a year after release they want to add halflings. They'd have to go modify and add halfling specific cards onto much of the existing equipment. That's a lot of cards and art to create, on top of the halfling character art they'd already have to be creating. As the game progressed, and had more equipment added it would become a larger and larger task to manage. Creating equipment would also be much more labor intensive, requiring more cards and abilities to be created based on how many races there were. The more time they have to spend creating any specific piece of equipment, the less they can create. They need to be very careful that adding new content isn't restrictively labor intensive (and have already posted saying as much). This is already something that will stretch their abilities as a small team. Right now there are 3X3 or 9 base character portraits needed (not counting stuff they create for premium content). Let's say they add a rogue class and a halfling race in a future expansion, they would need 4X4 or 16 base character portraits. Even though they are only adding roughly a third of the current games content (1 new race/class to the 3 of each that already exist), it nearly doubles the art they need. This isn't an issue you would want to repeat with the equipment cards.
Might not need to be too many, right now theirs different attacks with maces, axes, and swords, so each one of those weapon types would have a single racial ability per race. That'd be 3 cards per race since they really only need one per weapon. Then maybe one magic offensive and magic defensive racial card. So thats 5 cards per race for a very basic outline, they could be similar enough to make quickly. I really do hope they add half-lings ! I think this would also be a good alternative to racial specific weapons which would require a lot more work and be harder to balance (not that that was planned or anything, just a common theme). As oberon put it, its just another step to choosing the right race for the class you wanna be!
We talked about a bunch of ideas like this but ultimately we really wanted to stick with the idea that an item IS a suite of cards. Varying what those cards are by the race of the user or anything else would add quite a bit of complexity to our UI and to the concept of what an item is. So it's not in the game, at least for now. Racial variation will come through the racial skills as well as the default move cards and health values. Check out the skill in the latest blog post for an example.
The example is a good one. 3 cards is roughly 8% of your deck, so not a bad amount. Dwarven Battle Cry would clearly fit well into a party of 3 dwarves. Having just 1 in a deck isn't that great, having 1 in each of your 3 decks would make it quite a bit more reliable. That's another interesting aspect, managing 3 separate decks as part of a single group. Creating synergies between them will have obvious advantages, but it still doesn't quite feel like playing with a single deck of 100+ cards.
