I have made it through all the adventures up to level 10 and have noticed a major issue. All the adventures up to level 8 took me about a week of game play. I have been trying to complete the adventures at 9 and 10 for about a week. -The problem here is the huge spike in difficultly that has led to the game drastically slowing in pace. I feel that this will lead to players giving up and going away from the game!!! I feel that this can be addressed in a few ways: 1-An overarching goal or story quest needs to be included. I love the adventures as they are but some overall goal would be nice to encourage players to continue to play to get to the ultimate prize. Perhaps show all the adventures on the map with some being grayed out and indicate adventures that unlock more adventure. This would encourage player to keep playing by dangling the virtual carrot in front of them. 2-Treat some adventures more like side quests. Certain adventures require very specific cards and builds to complete. Garnet Demon Portal is one of the biggest offenders of this. Basically to defeat this adventure you need more range and an ability to catch enemies that can easily avoid you with all the water in the way. This adventure is frustrating and I have lost to it more time than I can count. I would separate adventures like this that are especially difficult or require certain build by offering special rewards for defeating them and not making them a requirement to unlock more maps. This could resolve the pace issue I am having with the game by allowing the player to continue through the more traditional adventures without being bogged down in the, I will need 3 mages to defeat this map levels. 3-Provide some game guidance in one form or another to warn what is ahead in your adventure. If you expect players to grind up to 3 mages to beat a specific level, make itsomewhat clear that it may be required. If this map is full of guys that are immune to slashing have it bold-ed in the overall adventure view. Trial and error is one way to learn but it can be very frustrating and demoralizing when you party is useless to defeat certain enemies. 4-Make it clear which adventures will provide experience and which will not. I had to learn by trial and error that if you redid some adventures you could level but others you could not. This need to be much more clear and again could be resolved with a description in the adventure. This is very important to be able to beat some of the very difficult late game quests. I think it is included but it need to be much more clear. A window in the adventure with check box and notes could be very helpful. -Will it level you check -Will the enemies have certain kinds of resistance -Will the enemies fly away a lot -Will the enemies be focused on melee or magic These "player or DM" notes could make adventure much more enjoyable as the current system of trial and error can be frustrating at best and angering at worst.
FYI - Level 10 is just "midgame", current content goes to lvl 18. Also, I think they plan to add hints for every adventure in the game, but might not have made it to that level yet. While I don't agree on some of the specifics, your suggestions are pretty sound, BUT it should be pretty clear what adventures don't give xp as they're greyed out rather than white in their lvl range icon. A warning message could work on top of this I guess?
There was no in game guidance about levels being grayed out so it was unclear to me that this was the case.
When you try to re-do a level that you are over powered for it does tell you that your level will be reduced and I think at that point it tells you that you'll get XP or just loot, but I may be just assuming that.
I think the more important point is here is the huge change in difficulty from 1-8 to 9-10 levels. This can be very off putting to many players and should be addressed in some way as it could cause many people to give up with the game.
The campaign wasn't designed to be casual - it used to be hard as nails up to that point as well. The devs decided to make the earlier game easier to make it into a learning experience and have the difficulty curve go upwards as we progress - and I believe this is a good idea (although some adventures are probably wrongly tuned ofc). Having a campaign that you just breeze through would make the game less interesting to the other side of that coin - BM has to find a nice balance for that.
As I've said before, and I'll say again . . . "the huge change in difficulty" is your perception. Here's a list of places where people have declared the game "got too difficult": http://www.cardhunter.com/forum/threads/lets-talk-about-game-difficulty.1249/page-5#post-16973 It's almost every adventure in the game. Here's a more casual list, currently being updated: http://www.cardhunter.com/forum/thr...ture-its-unfair-its-impossible-et-cetera.2171 As you mention, but don't completely connect to this, the matter is your strategy and build. Some people can't figure out Armor, and thus can't get beyond levels with a lot of it (like the level 2 Wizard's Workshop . . . ). Some people can't figure out ranged attacks, or Blocks, or whatever, and get stuck. It's interesting that you got stuck at level 9, because a flood of people have been saying level 8 is too hard (Compass of Xorr), or level 7 (those darn troglodytes), or level 6 (those darn goblins). Different strategy and build! And you say that there need to be warnings to change your strategy or build: you are already warned. When the module cover tells you things like "this level might have magic-using enemies in it," you know to use your anti-magic strategy. And you get to this point by handling a reasonable sequence of levels where "you figure out Armor or you die," "you figure out Blocks or you die," "you figure out magic-using enemies or you die," and so on. Do people seriously need to be told every time that Skeletons might be strong against Piercing attacks? Can't they just learn? At all? Quitting because you found a game difficult (i.e., you had to learn something) is only relevant for casual games, and, as stated, no one ever said Card Hunter was a casual game. Edit: I note you haven't gotten too many replies to your other points. Well, I think such suggested variations in game content are perfectly valid. But you speak of difficulty as the "more important point," and thus the replies.
A lot of the difficulty is also due to the random nature of the loot. I also found after level 8 there was a "the huge change in difficulty" but that it got easier for at least a level! 7-8 was a struggle 9s were easy. The only real issue I had was that I did realized that I had to make a different party for the Garnet Demon Portal because I was running slow dwarves that couldn't do anything against the encumbering demons. I just didn't have the equipment to get through it. After creating a new party I was better equipped and had many more item options. I think people these days just aren't used to having to work at games and maybe even having to start over with something different. This is for those who don't need to be hand held through challenges and instead like to explore their options and see what works and what doesn't. This is something that is sorely missing in the gaming market IMO.
I think the game is challenging sometimes und somtimes very frustrating or luck dependend. So i got stuck at some points at the campain as well. But i realized that i really depends on your drops and party composition. So e.g. when playing an all dwarf party one map can be a big problem for you as the monsters basically counter your slow movement while another map can be very easy due to your high health. But i also realized if you go back and farm some lower level adventures this can help you in many ways. You get better loot, maybe rares or epics which will help you allot, you get some treasure which you can sell and therefore buy some common or uncommen items in the next shop which sometimes can be really helpfull. Or in the worst case you buy another hero e.g. an elf warrior, level him up, farm gear and then replace one of your heroes. and this is not wastet time as you can still use many of the better drops from low levels in multiplayer or use them later when you try to do the quests as some of them are just insane. so for me the pve is good to go, would't change to much maybe only some miner tweaks in some situations. some hints would be great anyway.
I love these types of games and I am not trying to steal your hard core out of the game. I just feel that this precieved difficulty cliff will cause people to lose interest without some guidance or other encouragement. Not every player is going to scourge the wiki or game the system to beat a level and a little encouragement might be nice. As I said above by making certain adventures not required for more to be opened, the hardcore players could have all there crazy levels without it becoming a difficulty cliff to those trying to play through the game. (side quest comment) In terms of an overall campaign I am just looking for a way to track progress. Maybe a % of completed adventure or hints of what is too come. You want to lead you players forward with whatever virtual carrot you choose. This will help prevent the game from feeling like an endless treadmill and can give a player a sense of accomplishment beyond defeating the difficult levels. It looks that I may need to level some new characters to add to my party to beat this particular challenge or grind a ton and hope to get the right equipment. I don't find this a bad thing but just a very different track then i expected. The game seems to have gone from an adventure game to more of a puzzle like where you need specific pieces to beat a level. A player may be attached to a certain party, item or whatnot and may be difficult for someone to give up on something they put many hours in to regrow their party from scratch to beat a specific challenge. I am not trying to say I want this game to be a cakewalk I have loved it up to this point. I am just trying to make it appeal to as wide as an audience as is reasonable. And yes after my sword failed and I died several times i realized it didn't work versus the skeletons but that can be a pretty tough way to learn. Hints would be great, even mentioning the option of building up new characters might be helpful. Saying well duh you should start from scratch is not very intuitive to many players. Its a difference in game style but it is hard to view this as a puzzle game when I want to see it as an adventure game where my level whatever dude can take over the world.
Ah yes, we all do want the game to succeed. Blue Manchu, hopefully, is scouring the statistics and is tuning the game to their target audience. But still, I'd make one point: I disagree that this is "a pretty tough way to learn." If you don't lose, how much are you going to learn? I'm serious. And I'm not just talking about insanely-difficult roguelike games, where "you learn to play by losing"; I'm talking about general learning, where you need to have consequences (both good AND BAD) to be able to judge one behavior versus another. Consider the various people who go "Ugh, The Wizard's Workshop is nothing but a random roll of the dice to see if you win. Whatever, I beat it. Now how am I supposed to beat these later adventures with Armored enemies? Ugh, this game is impossible!" I've forgotten how many posts I've seen that said this exact thing. These people failed to learn a single thing about Armor and are inevitably going to suffer more and more as, due to natural game progression, the Armor gets harder. If the alternative here is to make Armor EASIER so you don't have to learn "the tough way," then why bother having Armor in the game at all? Yes, if thinking of it as a "puzzle game" is helpful, then do so. But you wouldn't call StarCraft a puzzle game, would you? And it's the same thing there: learn how to deal with flying enemies or die; learn how to deal with stealthy enemies or die. I'm still serious: this is general videogame learning.
Well i would like to see it this way also, but this is just not what the game is about. Once you have beaten the campaign and unlocked the quest system you should understand.
