What do you think about Radiation and all those handicaps? I actually really dislike that. Imho but it brings too much randomness into CH - it has minored tactical/positional aspect of the game. Festering Guts? Mad Dog.. its like playing Handicap quests. I know its too late and that this comment cannot change anything, but I would like to hear what others say?
My problem really isn't that Radiation is ruining the game with too much randomness, but that radiation is.....subpar Damagewise, radiation attacks aren't too good. Rad Bolt deals 2 on a Tier 3 Attack which is not too far from a Sorcerous Bolt dealing 4 at the same range, but then throwing a random handicap on top. Rad Goo is sort of strictly worse than the laser turret cards, and the mass Rad Goo card has another layer of randomness thrown into it which makes it less desireable than, say, a Wall of Fire. The purge is probably the best out of all of those cards and it is as situational as it gets, though it is a fancy punishment to those that use Traits to cycle (Looking at you, Electroporter Novice. The beneficial radiation cards feel much better, the Therapy being an OK heal with a slight bonus and the genetic splicing being good to just remove all the layers of debuffs the target has. Gauging the effectiveness of the cards is where it gets tricky When it comes to handicaps, I counted 13 possible handicaps (Not sure if Scared Little Monkey can be granted, as i've never personally seen it). Out of those, the most dangerous are easily Trip and Fright, with Large Weapon and Clumsy as close seconds. There are those that might not even be relevant depending on the class you aim it at, or the items you are using. You can see using these cards much like using Erratic Damage. You can get big hits or average whiffs, and either way, they can often get cycled away by traits. Who knows, it might even backfire and throw a Mad Dog at you Boost cards are even whimsier, I did not count them but just by the mere existence of Adaptation you have immunity to everything. The biggest powerhouses are Elven Maneuvers and I believe you can be granted Invisibility and Troll Regeneration. The jackpots are bigger, but there are so many of them than getting them is so dificult, not to mention there is a much larger percentage of irrelevant buffs such as Talented Healer or Kindler on the wrong class. There is also fewer ways to get these buffs unless you have a bunch of rare items with them or build a prepared team and all that setup for the uncertainity of getting garbage doesn't seems worth the investment And in all, it might sound like i'm against the random cards for being random and awful, but honestly, I believe that's a good thing. The fact that the random cards aren't pure value is great. That was the problem with the first Hearthstone expansion, Goblins and Gnomes. They introduced cards with random elements that were pure, unadulterated value, and such, introduced randomness to the game even in high-tier play. In this case, the randomness is much weaker, even if it does has its turn where you get ransacked by a Trip at the start of your turn, on average there are much easier ways of attaining what you would try to do by Rad-Bolting somebody and hoping that it's just what you need. While I believe the laser attacks, especially the melee ones, are fairly underwhelming and are often not worth the risk of backfire, iI believe the Radiation cards are just the right amount of randomness, not to mention a cool, different avenue for Priest decks
Here are all the handicaps that should be able to attach with rad cards: Blind Rage, Combustible, Defensiveness, Festering Guts, Fright, Large Weapon, Mind Leak, Squeamish, Squishy, Superstitious, Trip, Vulnerable, Wimpy, Clumsy, Vegetable Parts, Mad Dog. You can know which ones are on a list by using this(look for 'Implemented') : http://live.cardhunter.com/data/gameplay/Cards/Cards.csv
I sent Jon a balanced set of drawbacks a while ago that kept them all fairly equal power. It would be nice to revisit that idea so it is easier to balance cards that force handicaps. Same thing with Genetic Engineering -- getting Invisibility is like an auto win many times.
I feel it isn't overpowered radiation randomness, not at all. Just another element. The hard counter to unwanted radiation traits is the same as other traits- purge effects. (Altho for invisibility its of course just purging burst). Warriors even get weapons with purging strike. Also now there's the fantastic warp run. Arrogant armour is also a fantastic hard counter. And dont forget to look at the positive radiation traits. Mad dog and festering guts turn your guys into walking mega-bombs. Blind rage can be great for warriors, or laser spray /meltdown in right circumstances. Yes it is random, but not unbeatable, and so I feel it's unfair to poo-pooh radiation, it also brings flavor and fun to games, more than just "cast mass frenzy, chase down your dudes, attack with bejewelled short sword, gg". Actually i find it refrshing that priests could have another role beyond just "healing/buff/nimbus". Ooften in games with new opponents, it can be a guessing game to find out, what staves yr opponents wiz have, or even warrior. Now its the priests turn as well! Does the priest have crazed hermits gizmo or heing hand mace?? Radcannon or huetols firebrand?? Radiation terrain also only has 4 range, which I feel is healthy, and it's not blocking terrain. Overall, i admit radiation items has the potential for some blowout traits, but on the whole I feel it's more fun than harmful. And even if it gets too strong, we have hard counters available to balance things out. Yin-yang, etc. Ssometimes randomness leads to less randomness.
I feel like just further pushes players towards having a 1/1/1 or other combination that requires a priest, or a purging warrior, at the very least. And I don't understand why priests needed to be stronger than they already were. Blowing up your own players with Festering Guts is amusing. Not very practical, but amusing. Still no viable method for wizards, however. Warp Run is super limited, and I'm not going to burn handicaps off my own wizards. Perhaps more copies of Lateral Thinking would be a good thing, and I suppose I should be happy I have 3 Trained Tactics. But that cuts out a lot of my mobility without having Retreat anymore.
Card Hunter was already random, this just exposes it a less-ignorable way. Also, genetic engineering is the real one to watch - I once wiped out an entire opposing team after attaching invisibility to a warrior.
I voted no even though I could probably vote yes. From a purely SP perspective while it can get frustrating at times, I actually enjoy the randomness. It makes it feel less dry to me. But I've only been playing that game again for two days, so my memory of the game is an old and faded remembrance of farming gold.
Anyway I wasnt saying radiation is unbeatable/OP. I just found it quite random. You prepare your tactics and then what you now have Large Weapon and your warrior is off for 2 turns. Or your wizards gets Defensiveness. Sure its beatable .. but I found it annoying and unnecessary. And btw warriors purging strike doesnt help in your handicaps and (potential) necessity to bring purging bursts shows that something is not right. On the other side I enjoy playing vs Nimbus. Imho it requires tactics. You see that someone is using nimbus in his deck and you adapt your tactics few turns in advance. But randomness is just not the way I like to play tactical games. I hope radiation wont see competitive MP ..
I think the problem here is, it's a delightfully fun PvE component, but it adds a wild card to PvP, which is negatively affected where PvE is positively affected by such elements. Moreover, for those that just disfavor randomness on the whole, in PvE, they can choose to not run in scenarios that favor randomness, in PvP, even if the player doesn't use any random cards, their opponent might. Stexe's suggestion of using equalized spawn cards is an utterly disagreeable suggestion for PvE that completely misses the point of the cards- However, for PvP, it should be worth considering, as it'd make PvP feel more focused and crisply designed and tactical than it currently does. In other words, the solution here may be to have a narrower window of effects for PvP than for PvE.
I hear you Drakkan, and you're right, random traits which basically screw yout plans over can be frustrating. Also Gulo, yes it can bevery difficult for wiz to counter radiation effects. (altho at least hover/d traveller gets around radiation terrain). It justs feel fine to me radiation terrain is limited to range 4 (which is also good for wiz fighting against it), or a measly 2 dmg burst 2 attack. In other words, I'm sure the many who tested it gave it the go-ahead for a reason which takes into account those occasional times of radiation frustration. But it'd be nice to hear from some of them. ... Mr.Stexe,your experiences with testing?
I don't think it makes sense to compare priest cards with wizard cards in this way. Rad bolt while clearly less damage than a S. Bolt, gives the priests additional ranged attacks. Prior to this expansion priests had no terrain attachments and only 1 ranged attack with damage Entangling Roots and 2 effect only attacks, Mind Worm and Bad Luck, so Rad Bolt is a real expansion of the priests versatility in addition to the Radioactive Goo and Spray. Now with radioactivity Purge has become even more important... perhaps too important, but the random nature of radiation can become the new WW. You can keep spamming radiation until you find an advantageous situation and lower the boom. I like the randomness, as I am a Backgammon player not a Chess player, but we are very far away from seeing what the new expansion will mean for MP.
When playing with Radiation it is a good idea to have the Genetic cards to engineer those handicaps you cannot purge. Random worthless good things are better than handicaps any day of the week.
Well, if you put 10 genetic cards in your deck,you would solve radiation/handicap problems for sure. But you would get other problems then
There's already a thread on it. Purge has some rather erratic conditions atm, currently looks like they'll change it back to its old usage of 'strip all attached attachments from target creature', which should fix that.
Well, of course. I was thinking more along the lines of having one or two in the deck. That comes with all the caveats of when you should save the Genetics card or discard it for a better card. Or even when to use it if you can get by with the handicaps your character does have. I like to use them to push off a bunch of poison cards from the grubs, spiders, etc...
