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Thread: Hero classes

  1. #1
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    Hero classes

    First of all, great job on developing this card game.
    I have spent quite some time playing it lately and I am enjoying the experience. One thing that is starting to annoy me though is that there are only 200 cards and out of those only few are available per hero.
    I think that the way classes work limit the depth of the game. Right now a player as his cards limited to either Human/shadow and then to the hero's class.
    That makes that out of the 200 cards in the set, depending on my hero I can only use a small part of the set. That limits the available options for decks, and narrows down the available strategies to almost only one by hero (at least, highly competitive strategies).
    While I was making my deck, I was thinking how cool it would be to mix the ability of this hero with that item, just to find that the item could only be used by a different class. Even though I understand that hero specific cards can make a lot of sense, they should be the exception and not the norm. Most cards should be available to all heroes and not just to a particular class.
    Out of the 200 cards 20 are heroes, so after picking a hero you get only 180 cards to build your deck around.
    From those 180, 20 are human allies and 20 shadow allies, so you can either use one of those. That leaves 160.
    Of those 160, 70 are hero abilities limited by class, so you can only use 10. That leaves 100.
    Of those 100, 20 are human/shadow abilities, of which you can use only 10. That leaves 90.
    Out of those 90 some are armors/weapons that your hero can't use, so your left with less than 90 cards to build a deck around.
    How could you solve this?
    Make cards available to more (or even all) classes. You already have weapons and armors that can be used by more than one class, so why not make them usable by all classes? Why not make more abilities neutral? Mixing different abilities will lead more space for new strategies.
    Another solution could be to have heroes with more than one class. Why can't Boris be both a Warrior and a Mage? Or Victor a Hunter and a Rogue? Who knows, at some expansion later on you could make a hero that was both human and shadow.

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    They are coming. Remember this is the first set, just to set a basics/foundation of the game. Only thing is that Wulven's pace of introducing new card at this point seems a bit slower side but once they are on the track, it will be every 4 months.

    Class card indeed restrict the selection/combination while the card pool is small; however, as they grow it enforces minimal differences among the decks due to selection of different hero. So overall, you will at least see as many deck variation as # of classes or # of heroes; whereas, in some TCG, people may end up using so many similar cards and the difference become miniscule and won't feel like playing against too much difference. Obviously, the ideal would be to have variation even within the same hero, which according to the design team is indeed the goal of the first expansion. (Expected to be released in September)

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    The cards are like that to help balance the game. Cards available to all heroes are a balancing nightmare. By keeping it restrictive there's fewer variables that you have to worry about plus it allows for more cards to be used. For example who would use Ley Line Nexus if you could just use Smashing Blow?

    The best way to continue on from here is to get release more cards, and from what I here 150 new cards are on there way which should be adding a lot more variety to SE.

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    Quote Originally Posted by houshasen View Post
    They are coming. Remember this is the first set, just to set a basics/foundation of the game. Only thing is that Wulven's pace of introducing new card at this point seems a bit slower side but once they are on the track, it will be every 4 months.

    Class card indeed restrict the selection/combination while the card pool is small; however, as they grow it enforces minimal differences among the decks due to selection of different hero. So overall, you will at least see as many deck variation as # of classes or # of heroes; whereas, in some TCG, people may end up using so many similar cards and the difference become miniscule and won't feel like playing against too much difference. Obviously, the ideal would be to have variation even within the same hero, which according to the design team is indeed the goal of the first expansion. (Expected to be released in September)
    I understand your point of view, but I really don't think that it is how the game is developing right now.
    First, the fact that you start with a human makes most people play human instead of shadow just because that's what they started with and what they invested their time/money in. If you go to the merchant right now human allies cost much more than shadow allies. One way to solve this problem would be to allow players to start with shadow allies.
    Right now, the way you pick your hero is to confuse, so you could go through a UI that had a shadow/human filter on top and depending your selection it would show all classes and a brief explanation of the class. Once you selected a class, it would show you the heroes of that class.
    The fact that you have different cards for hero makes most players either a) invest in the hero they started with or b) invest in the latest trend. This means that for competitive play, every time there is an advantage on using a specific hero (due to cards only available to him) people will play him. Imagine you released a card for warriors that was the equivalent in this game to what skull clamp was in MTG. While in MTG that made Ravenger the dominant deck, other decks could spawn around the same card, whereas here only decks based on the warrior class could be competitive.

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    Quote Originally Posted by reptile7383 View Post
    The best way to continue on from here is to get release more cards, and from what I here 150 new cards are on there way which should be adding a lot more variety to SE.
    The problem is that out of those 150, you will only be able to use maybe 50 or 60 cards with a specific hero. Suppose that 40 are allies of which you can only use 20 due to shadow/human restrictions, then you have 10 abilities per hero (you can use 10 out of 70), 10 abilities for shadow/human abilities (10 out of 20), plus 10 neutral and 10 armors/weapons. And out of those 60 cards, some of them are probably rubbish, some of them will make older cards unplayable, etc.
    What I am trying to point out is that you will only get a small set of cards to play with in each expansion. And when you think about the physical cards it is even worst! Imagine buying a booster just to see that you got not even one card for your hero. One thing is online, where you play almost for free, another thing is paying for a booster just to find out you didn't even got one playable card. One solution would be to have boosters specific to humans and boosters specific to shadow, that would reduce the odd of getting non playable cards. Another would be to have boosters per class. Another would be to reduce the restrictions that classes impose on the cards.

    Quote Originally Posted by reptile7383 View Post
    The cards are like that to help balance the game. Cards available to all heroes are a balancing nightmare. By keeping it restrictive there's fewer variables that you have to worry about plus it allows for more cards to be used. For example who would use Ley Line Nexus if you could just use Smashing Blow?
    I understand that balancing issues can occur, but then again it is the developers job to make sure that doesn't happen. One easy way to do that is making online pre-release tournaments every now and then on a test server with the new possible cards. Most people that like to play the game wouldn't mind trying out new hypothetical cards. If they think that is not a motivation enough, they can always through in some prizes like shadow crystals.
    You said it allows for more cards to be used. Like I said before, right now you can have access to less than half a set per hero. How is that more cards? Also the Ley Line Nexus is a great example. If I'd run a control deck, I would probably pick the Ley Line over the Smashing Blow, because it gives you card advantage and I don't really mind over the 2 extra resources. On the other hand, if I am playing an agro deck, I would probably pick the Smashing blow as I would rather use less resources so I could cast more allies.

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    Notice that I intend this critics to be constructive. The fact that I disagree with some design choices doesn't mean I don't like the game, it is actually because I like this game that I am dedicating my time to criticize it.
    I don't think that all cards should be available to all heroes, but having heroes with 2 classes would let for more interesting combinations of cards. Some cards could be neutral instead of hero specific, but a lot of cards could still be hero specific.
    For example, why is Reserve Weapon warrior specific? By letting that card be neutral new interesting combination could show up. Then again, War banner being warrior specific makes a lot of sense, since warriors are the ones meant to play with more allies.

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    Thanks for the feedback.

    I can see your point of view, if you are loyal to one or two heroes, but it is the restricted card pool for each which leads to more variety when you play others. If more of the cards were shared, you'd see more repetition, regardless of the hero you face. And then it might get boring.

    It's also very difficult to balance the game and give each class a different feel if you share their cards out. Magic The Gathering employ their five-colour system for this very reason.

    I don't really know what a typical Shadow Era player is like, but I hope many will move from one hero to the next as they master each one or get enticed by others they've seen in action. I think as you move to new heroes, you will get more pleasure from getting to try their cards for the first time.

    All that said, there is a new format called Meltdown, which allows you to use any cards with any hero. It's only available physically for now (since you can make up your own rules there), but will be available online in tournaments, where you get 4 booster packs and you can make up whatever deck you want, without faction or class restrictions.

    And, as others mentioned, there is another expansion coming. Each hero will gain about 50 cards to use in their decks.

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    Quote Originally Posted by Gold_Warlord View Post
    The problem is that out of those 150, you will only be able to use maybe 50 or 60 cards with a specific hero. Suppose that 40 are allies of which you can only use 20 due to shadow/human restrictions, then you have 10 abilities per hero (you can use 10 out of 70), 10 abilities for shadow/human abilities (10 out of 20), plus 10 neutral and 10 armors/weapons. And out of those 60 cards, some of them are probably rubbish, some of them will make older cards unplayable, etc.
    What I am trying to point out is that you will only get a small set of cards to play with in each expansion. And when you think about the physical cards it is even worst! Imagine buying a booster just to see that you got not even one card for your hero. One thing is online, where you play almost for free, another thing is paying for a booster just to find out you didn't even got one playable card. One solution would be to have boosters specific to humans and boosters specific to shadow, that would reduce the odd of getting non playable cards. Another would be to have boosters per class. Another would be to reduce the restrictions that classes impose on the cards.


    I understand that balancing issues can occur, but then again it is the developers job to make sure that doesn't happen. One easy way to do that is making online pre-release tournaments every now and then on a test server with the new possible cards. Most people that like to play the game wouldn't mind trying out new hypothetical cards. If they think that is not a motivation enough, they can always through in some prizes like shadow crystals.
    You said it allows for more cards to be used. Like I said before, right now you can have access to less than half a set per hero. How is that more cards? Also the Ley Line Nexus is a great example. If I'd run a control deck, I would probably pick the Ley Line over the Smashing Blow, because it gives you card advantage and I don't really mind over the 2 extra resources. On the other hand, if I am playing an agro deck, I would probably pick the Smashing blow as I would rather use less resources so I could cast more allies.
    There's a few points I'd like to address. First, that they are having players help test their new cards (there's a thread about it some somewhere) and even with limited decks balancing is probably very difficult. IMO implementing changes like adding multiclass heroes might fix some of that problem now, but it'll ultimately hurt the game more make it nearly impossible to keep everything balanced.

    Secondly, as for you picking Ley Line Nexus over smashing blow, I'm guessing you'd be one of a few then. There are far better cards for draw power (warriors have already have access to Blood frenzy) plus LLN is restricted to weapons and armor that costs 5 or more, while smashing blow will destroy any and costs 2 less. If all classes had access to smashing blow then I doubt anybody playing competitively would run LLN when it can't even destroy popular cards like Wizent's Staff. But since cards are restricted and most heroes can't play use smashing blow LLN does see play in competitive games. Overall more cards see play and the decks are more diverse. As for your example of reserve weapon being a neutral card. If it was neutral then what use would there be for Master Smith?

    Finally, I understand that even with the expansion there's still going to be a somewhat limited amount of cards, but SE is still pretty new. It takes time to build up a large collection of cards. IMO implementing changes now to try to

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    Senior Member Jao's Avatar
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    i like it the way it is. you will not believe how fast this game would break if they opened cards for other classes/heroes. balancing is a nightmare, and creating decks that are way too OP would become easier. i like card games that are balanced. card games that produce one or two OP decks are a bore and i quickly stop playing those. i want at least all heroes to be competitive.

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