Greetings to all, it took me a long time, but finally I will write down my thoughts on the game. To start off, the game is extremely addicting. The singleplayer content is very well done, in my opinion, and probably so addictive because it is so challenging. I played a Warrior/Warrior/Priest party pretty much from the start - and that shifted the difficulty on a lot of levels, but it was always doable. DISCLAIMER: I will not go into balance at all, just my generic thoughts on the game, and the suggestions i would think most important. So, here i go. 1 Ingame Shops This is already being discussed, but i had severe difficulties equipping my party at low levels. I would have liked better access to cards especially at lower rarities. 2 "Boring Cards" This might be kind of a moot point, but some cards (and a lot of traits) are just plain boring. As an example, the basic trait cards Slicer and Bruiser. +1 damage to a certain attack type is, well, negligible, and i think most just use them to reduce their deck sizes. These cards could certainly do with special attacks. Another point: is it really good to have a lot of variants of the same cards with only minor differences? For example Lunging HackLunging Strike Lunging Thrust etc.? Or Bludgeon, Able Bludgeon, Trained Bludgeon, Strong Bludgeon, Obliterating Bludgeon. Imo it would be well served to streamline this even more - create 3-4 basic attack cards of this type and all further cards would have a special effect (which could also be more streamlined). Also, Violent Overswing is a neat card, and its discard effect could be used as a drawback for a lot of powerful attacks - why is it just on this one? 3 Race and Class skills Those i found often lacking. I figured i wanted to play a dwarven party before got a key, and when looking through all the race and class cards i rarely found anything i wanted except for a few dwarven skills which are very strong. Warrior skills, especially the lower ones are lacking and not particulary fun. Human skills too. Well i sadly have to quite now. If something will come to me later i will edit it into this thread. Cheers everyone, and thanks for letting me take part in the beta!
2. If every card makes a nuclear crater and throws glitter around they are all plaine. You need filler cards to have bad and good cards. I find slicer and bruiser to be terrible examples as they are build around me traits and most definitely not just filter cards. The true filter card is that teleport 1 at the start of each turn for wizards. The reason they don't use that mechanic later is that the better your cards get the higher a cost that is. 10 damage at that point in the game where its really good is crazy the highest you see is like 4. That would mean that the discard attack for level 15 would be something like 30 damage discard your oldest and that would be too much.
But... but... I like nuclear craters and glitter. Wozarg is right, got to have filler cards to make other cards exceptional.
I agree that there are some class/race skill issues, particularly for Humans. But I might respond more on the Bruiser/Slicer topic: it's not an issue of "you need boring cards," it's that "oh my goodness, those aren't boring." First, clarification: Bruiser adds +2. Now, you speak as though "it's just a few points, it's negligible." Would you then tell me that you don't bring Armor on an adventure? Literally any Armor? Because Reliable Hide takes 1 point of damage from the next hit and the next and the next. -1, -1, -1, -1 . . . Of course, it has a weakness in that the enemy can bypass your Armor or force you to discard it. And that just goes to show that Bruiser and Slicer, being used for Attacks, are even better (not to mention Impaler for Penetrating attacks). Slicer adds +1 to your next Chop (hitting two enemies, mind you), and your next one, and your next one. And your next one after that. And Unholy Frenzy adds +2 to your next hit and the next and the next. You do use Frenzy, right? The message being that this is a strategy game and literally every point matters. Also, I can speak to this: Yes, absolutely, I cannot encourage this behavior ENOUGH. Consider: do you want there to be just "the weak Step card" and "the strong Step card"? Quantitative fiddling like this is very valuable, both because it allows them freedom when making item card suites ("Argh, we need to raise the power on this item a little, do we have a Step card that does 1 more damage?") and because it allows expansion in the future. This is a lesson I learned when I first picked up "Revised" Magic in my youth. So there was the First Strike ability. Hey, that's a cool ability: pretty fundamental to be able to attack before your opponent. How do you get it on a monster that doesn't have it already? There's the Lance card. Okay, cool, that's how you get First Strike. Now imagine you wanted to release more cards, maybe an "expansion" of some sort. You can add new stuff, but you should also expand on the themes in the main set. Hey, you have First Strike already; anything new you can do with it? Uh, no. Nothing. What, are you going to add another version that costs more mana? No one will use it. Add another that costs less? No one will use Lance, then. First Strike, and Lance, were treated qualitatively: you have it or you don't, AND the best possible "having it" state was already released in the game. So here we have Step cards: ones that let you move into range on an enemy . . . and Strike First. And the designers have flooded them with quantitative differences: a combinatoric mix of damage, range, and Move distances. Then there are extra treats like the occasional one that has the Penetrating keyword. You can expand and expand this so easily, e.g., by just looking for any holes left in the combinatorics or doing an expansion that adds another keyword. And, because "this is a strategy game and literally every point matters," players WILL use ALL of these variations. When you're talking about cards, tiny quantitative fiddling (between extremes) leads to more complex and enriching results than extreme (in the above case, qualitative) differences.
You might want to check out the shops every times they've got New Items banner up, sometimes you get a really ridiculously good item from there. I once saw a Dwarf skill with 2 Charge and War Cry for only 1 clear talent and measly 10 gold , sadly my dwarf is the wizard and at the time I was also a bit sleepy so I left it in the shop and now it's gone. In hindsight I should've grabbed it, currently I'm not using anything in the slot so it's just sitting there looking pretty while giving me a few meh cards. p.s. Currently my Elf Warrior, Human Priest, and Dwarf Wizard have exactly the same HP (17) lol.
