[Suggestion] Eliminate 'infinite draw' decks

Draw Deck / Firestorm or Draw Deck - Uber Warrior is a cheap, skill-unnecessary tactic, that currently works extremely well due to the lack of a cap on maximum amount of cards that can be drawn per turn.

If rating is supposed to reflect skill, then eliminating strategies that exist solely as a way to abuse uncapped game mechanics is the best way to ensure this.

My suggestion, pick a number devs, and don't allow players to draw more than that per turn, and cap the maximum amount of allowable cards in hand at one point at something reasonable like 6-7.

 

Drew decks are getting pretty crazy, but I don't think a maximum draw per turn is the way to go it seems pretty arbitrary. A better change might be that you can only hold X cards at once and if you draw more then that your oldest cards are automatically discarded.

 

Ricey I think that's a constructive fix as well. Another option would be to make the person that draws more than the limit begin discarding random cards rather than simply oldest card.

 

You can't do it randomly, that's way too punishing. My thought would be to do it Hearthstone style where all cards dawn after the limit are discarded.
Trouble is both approaches still allow an infinite draw desk to work potentially.

 

Personally I would like there to be a hard-cap per turn (of "Remaining Turn Limit of Draws) to prevent card-draws exceeding a certain number.

 

Certain cards that cause it are what need to be looked at as infinite draws in any ccg are generally fixed easier by adjusting the abusable cards then adding a new feature.

 

One way to perhaps limit this might be to have cards that deal damage as a side effect of drawing deal more damage the more cards drawn, and/or to have that damage be like the damage on Loner—psychic and unpreventable.

Here're two ideas:
• Unholy Power, instead of dealing 1 damage, could deal 0 plus the number of cards in the target's hand (either before or after the draw).
• Demonic Feedback, instead of causing the user to suffer 5 damage, could cause the user to suffer 1 damage plus twice the number of cards in the target's hand (either before or after the draw).

There are other cards that could be changed in this way, like Accelerated Thought.

If cards are changed, they should be changed in a way that doesn't obsolete them outside dedicated draw builds. Right now the cards mentioned above seem fine in most parties, so if we nerf them too much they might just be unplayable normally. The idea behind my suggestion is to keep the punishment in line with the current effect, but scaling up if the target has a lot of cards already.

Leadership is another offender in these decks and I'm not sure how best to change it.

I don't think a hard limit on cards drawn / cards in hand is a great way to go, though; I think other avenues should be examined.

 

Another idea: Do it the way games like Dominion do it, where when you play a card it doesn't get discarded right away. Instead, all cards you played this turn get discarded at the end of the turn.

This way, you can still draw a lot, but there will always be a finite limit on the number of cards you can play in one turn (your deck size).

Separately or together with this: Make some penalty (ever-increasing damage or something) happen whenever you reshuffle your deck. Like, the first time a character reshuffles, they take 2 damage. Next time, 4 damage (or whatever numbers work for your tuning).

 

I'm not sure this would be a big enough limiting factor, I've seen draw decks go off on turn one without a single reshuffle on many occasions.

 

I feel taken into cause
I use a drawing warrior deck (and actually i've never seen another one), in total the build run 6 demonic feedback, 4 unholy power and the 3 dwarven battle cry and 4 inspiration. It's a combo deck that rely on getting buff to the warrior and eventually give him some cards to get enough momentum to kill something in one go.
Most of the time the drawing is to get enough part of the combo, usually: impenetrable nimbus/martyring blessing and mass frenzy/unholy wellspring, without both of those the warrior will unlikely survive the clash or unlikely kill anything, most of the time the draw is to cicle the deck for the combo.
You could have seen the, really unlikely, occasion when the combo was on card normally drawn and with some drawingcard the warrior could get between 6 to 10 card draw bonus then ninja on the map killing your mage or if extremely lucky with nimbus strike everyone, this if they have not encumber whirlwind or entangling root or impenetramble nimbus of their own to stop the warrior, cause then you pass and have half dead priest and a useless warrior.
Most of the time this not happen and you rely on a weaker normal gameplay while trying to stay alive few turn to get the combo, (i've never resist more then 3 round usually).
So this is hardly some kind of drawing infinite card madness.
Is not the deck fault if people stopped playing encumber or whirlwind or entangling roots, not is if the map of this weeks are so big that i can pass few rounds just to maybe draw some actually usefull cards and you do nothing about.

I can't really talk about the firestorm deck cause i did not played one, but from the times that i saw most of the "problem" was about the inspiring presence, who let draw the dude who cast it and heal everybody and can proc altruism. That's the only card which "broke" the deck with first round team annihilation.

 

People still play encumber and whirlwind effects, but I've seen good draw deck builds where you either need a (lucky) whirlwind on turn one or you lose. That's not a great play experience (though it's a sweet deckbuilding experience and I have nothing against that). Anyway, I'm just commenting with thoughts on how to ameliorate the perceived problem. If players at high rankings think that card draw isn't a problem, I defer to them.

 

I'm not sure that's a good policy. If a player achieves a high ranking by pushing a deck style that isn't fun for their opponent then I'm not sure that I care what they have to say on the matter.

 

Sorry if I wasn't clear—I meant ALL players, not just the high-ranked players who play this style of deck! As in, if both people playing draw-based strategies and people playing AGAINST draw-based strategies agree that they're not too good/unfun, then there's probably no issue.

 

I think the cards in hand limit is probably the best idea and the one that makes most sense to me, as displayed in alot of ccg, notably magic.

I feel that the demand for a powerful nerf is a bit exaggarated as some of us like to combine several elements and not base a deck on one notion, and so perhaps starting with a minor adjustment and keeping tabs on the issue, collecting feedback (not demonic one ) to see how it affects the meta game as opposed to just making certain cards obsolete if you haven't really based your entire deck on them.

While it is true that having a card in hand limit still doesn't negate card draw throughout the same round it does limit it considerably since mages will now look to dispose of their "garbage" cards and will likely close the distance (the need for more firestorm will make him wanna use that flame jet, glob of flame etc), while warriors will most probably be already out of inspiration - altruism chain as they will look to attack with what they drew so far and if they keep their priests back for further "fuel" then the distance between them might be a great opportunity to gang on the perhaps already damaged priest (due to the Demonic Feedback) so such a match may be fast and furious but not one sided.

In any case, the greates offender in range\draw power is the 2nd demon charm, or charms in general which some may consider unfun (I personally don't run any but I don't feel strongly about them either way and may run in the future), but the strongest one, the 2nd circle charm - 4 cards, no token - can be obtained very easily in the low level shops, I believe I saw it yesterday both in the armory and in kyburz market so at the very least it's not part of the "Vibrant Pain syndrome"...

I believe this is the most I wrote on any subject, I just feel this is one of the bigger issues in the meta game right now as any change might have a huge impact on the game. treading lightly is my advice.

 

Hmm, when I see an uber-warrior/2xpriest draw-support I just freeze or winds of war him and keep at a distance for a turn. They rarely manage to draw a significant amount of cards each turn. If I wanted to counter these specific builds I would probably go for a lot of perplexing ray and touch of death.

Card draw and firestorm however is definitely tricker. A super-buffer warrior wants to go into proximity, a firestorm wizard will benny hill around the map while you chase him

 

Redde you do the warrior card-spamming better than anyone I've played. I've been as high as rank 6 and recently I've been trying to test new builds so that's allowed me to see more ranges of players utilizing these kinds of tactics. I think these tactics will get out of hand once other players obtain the requisite cards or experience watching others do the strategy to replicate the warrior-draw decks. The other players doing it that I've noticed aren't as adept at is as Redde is; yet.

As to the firestorm, it's more easily accomplished so far because it requires even less thought, in fact, an almost complete lack of movement of your players at all other than for positioning for inspiring presence.

That said, if the objective of the rating system is to test skill and allow build diversity, draw decks don't contribute to that concept in my eyes, and most card games have intelligent limits that change over time (becoming more restrictive as flaws are pointed out in the system).

This game needs a more strict limit in my eyes to balance out the decks.

 

I'd never come across one of these decks until today (oddly, as I play quite a lot of MP at a mid rank) and as such was not able to appreciate the mind-numbing awfulness/hilariousness of the deck. I'm intrigued by the psychology behind the type of person who actually wants to play this way, it's fascinating and horrifying all at once. It's like winning a trophy on a technicality or a disqualification, somehow less authentic, less real. Amazing. Hats off to the ever so slightly less human that put the time into that. I will never understand you, but I'll strangely admire you.

 

I am temped to join those people. It's about quickly getting your 20th win epic chest

 

A lot of good ideas here. Another way to slightly reduce the effectiveness of the draw builds is to reduce the range of draw cards. Whirlwind and Winds of War would be counters to these kinds of builds. Problem is that it makes these cards even stronger.

 

Indeed, and these cards are already strong enough...

Not sure if the range nerf would make much of a difference. Card-draw deck user tend to cluster in a corner anyway to make use of their inspiring presence etc. Even in the 'uber-warrior' scenario they start together at the very beginning.