Kirk's Beta Feedback

[kirkwb]

Here are my observations so far. I will not report bugs already posted in your Current Beta Status and Known issues thread.

Bugs:

1) At the end of one game, when the enemy hero's health was reduced to nothing, the game play continued giving us turns. On the opponent's turn they would not play any cards. but I was free to keep sacrificing and playing cards, even though it was futile to attack, play, etc. I refreshed page, and played a third game as normal to a normal victory without repeat of the bug.

3) Lightening Strike can target the same Target twice dealing 3 and 3 for a total of 6 damage. I don't think this is intended. (or I hope not)

NEW: 4) When Dirk Saber attacked a Chimera, the Chimera Defended, dealing Damage back to Dirk.

Interface suggestions:

1) Option to turn Music on or off.

2) Option to turn game effects sound on or off, including stage change prompts.

3) The stage Tree should stay onscreen during the sacrifice stage. Sometimes there are real world distractions and you may come back to the screen thinking you are choosing a card to cast. There is the failsafe, "Sacrifice," Button before hand, but after many plays, players will mis-click through out of habit. Leaving the stage tree up is a quick reference/reminder.

4) A log of plays might be nice. Just a text log to see what's been played would be helpful. For your own information, it could track what cards you sacrificed as a reminder since you can't look at face down cards. This helps you calculate odds of drawing another card you need. Private information like that should only be visible in your log, though. For your opponent's sacrifice just a log of "Card Sacrificed" or "Sacrifice skipped" would be good.

5) The amount of cards left in deck should be visible on the deck icon.

10) The discard piles should be clickable icons that pop up to show you what cards are in them. Yours and your opponent's. I'm assuming future cards may deal with targeting cards in discard piles and this will be a needed function.

11) Ability to sort hand by casting cost or type. An Ascending or descending button for cost, and a button to sort by type. Or even better this could be options in your general settings, so your preference will be default and you aren't cluttering the interface with more buttons

Game Critique:

1) Can we get a posted copy of the rules and definitions of game terms? I have many questions/comments about common game terms like "Defend" and "Opponent" but I feel that knowing how you define all the terms in the game will not only answer them, but keep me sane

2) Not being able to use a resource to pay a cost the turn it comes into play is a seemingly unnecessary rule that slows game play and throws off the cost balance you've assigned to to cards. The first two turns, yours and you opponent's, are spent doing nothing, they are pointless turns as the only option you have is to sacrifice a card, and I don't think you're ever going to skip that first turn (yes, you have to choose which card to sacrifice, but this has more to do with overall game play). You've used similar cost to card power levels as other TCGs, but haven't accounted for this new twist on delaying the resource availability system. Low cost allies are much more powerful than the available abilities that act as ally removal.

3) Lightning Strike, even if it is meant to target two different targets, is really overpowered.

[Diamondius]

I agree with your observations. To be honest a game manual should be issued as soon as possible for testers to understand what the rules are intended to be. This will help with reporting bugs and inconsistencies. Of course this will be subject to change if it is required.
For example the DEFEND option as described above is totally unclear. Is it intended for creatures to be able to block damage targeted to the hero? I certainly hope so because else it would seem more like a damage race and probably all abilities will be targeted to the hero as a priority.
So I am certain a manual would at least give a general direction on what the creator has in mind.

[kirkwb]

I think "Defend" is the ability to deal damage back to the attacker.

I was thinking the same thing you are, Diamondius.

If shutting off "Defend" is really just making it so a defending ally doesn't deal damage back it makes cards like Clinging Webs work a lot differently than I thought.

[Diamondius]

Yes I also got it a bit back while reading the other posts. Its only a first impression but the game seems too much like a damage race at this point. There is no way to control (like some certain hated blue magic decks). But as i said its only beta 1 and unfortunately the thing with betas its that it can dissapoint u before u have a chance to see the finished game.
So wait and see what is in store for us. I certainly believe it will be a great game cause even the first beta seems enjoyable. Also cross platform just rocks i seriously want a game like this on my iphone (wonder when the beta for that will be) :P

[kirkwb]

edit: Added to OP list.

Lightening Strike, I targeted the opposing hero twice with the spell dealing 3 and 3 for a total of 6.

I don't think that's how the card is intended. I'd think you'd need to choose two different targets.

Even then the card is really overpowered like Syphos pointed out compared to other cards.

[kirkwb]

When Dirk Saber attacked a Chimera, the Chimera Defended, dealing Damage back to Dirk.

[kirothak]

When Dirk Saber attacked a Chimera, the Chimera Defended, dealing Damage back to Dirk.

This is due to abilities not being turned on yet, though oddly a few are like destroy resource when it enters play, or draw a card when enters play so it seems abilities that trigger by "when enters play" work but the rest are off, such as Dirk's, anr the gargoyles dmg reduction, and deathbones "deal 3 dmg to what kills deathbone" as well as all other abilities.

so yah in short only "when enters play" abilities work, the rest are not in yet

[kirkwb]

Thanks, I just reported that one because in the known issues thread there is only this:

"most Shadow allies' abilities are not active"

Only your opponent's Allies are Shadow, and as you said come into play effects like Sandra's are active. So my assumption was that maybe only your own Allies' abilities with an activation cost weren't active and static abilities were.

[kirkwb]

Thoughts on Beta 1.02:

Much better resource system, now. I have many thoughts on individual cards (surprise!) but I'll reserve those for my Blog and the individual card thread.