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  1. #1
    Lead Developer / Designer Gondorian's Avatar
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    What's your take on these factors at play within a game?

    Hi, all!

    When designing and balancing the game, we're aiming primarily for an enjoyable experience within each game.

    There's a lot of factors that come into that, with varying weightings, depending on your personal preference:

    * the influence of player skill (i.e. calculating the best moves based on the situation you are in) on winning
    * the influence of deckcrafting skill (i.e. making your own stuff rather than copying others) on winning
    * the influence of meta-knowledge (i.e. knowing what the popular strong decks are) on winning
    * the influence of player experience (i.e. knowing the strength/weakness of more heroes and situations) on winning
    * the influence of luck within the game on winning (i.e. getting the right cards at the right times and opponent getting opposite!)
    * the influence of luck of the match-up on winning (e.g. meeting decks you expect to beat)
    * the variety of decks and cards you might face
    * flavor, themes, humor, lore and much more

    With this thread, I wanted to try to get YOUR OPINION on these things. Are any too high or too low, based on what you've seen of 3.13 so far? If you're happy with some, you can tell us too! It's nice to hear when people think we're doing something right. Feel free to tell us which you think are the most important to your enjoyment - in fact, please do let us know your preferences as that's useful feedback too.

    Thanks in advance for your replies! If you could give a rough clue of the rating you play at and how often you play, that would also be useful.

    Cheers!


    PLEASE NOTE: Obviously regular new cards is going to shake things up and make people happier in general (though not everyone), but I'm just talking here about what we need to aim for within the finite pool that we have after we have released each new set of cards. Getting side-tracked on the subject of regularity of new things won't really help here. I know you want new things faster (me too!) - there's not really anything to discuss on that - whereas this should be an interesting discussion.

  2. #2
    Senior Member The MiddleAgedNerd's Avatar
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    Seek is a great mechanic and opened upndifferent options in gameplay. Im a big fan. And all classes have option to it. It really opens up your deck.options. like gen of unaxio is amazing in certain builds.

    I tend to agree with caitlyn a bit on nerfing. I think we should "balance change" a little less. Obviously its needed at times. And when everyone is complaining about garina or twilights they should be balanced. But sometimes its too much.

    Locations are esentially unplayed right now. Ocassionally ill see one. Rarely. I think a random location should just pop up with 4 sides and it randomly spins. Delay of game mentioned this and for once he wasnt joking. You gotta admit. It would make the game fresh. Unless part 2 has more cards to take advantage of existing locations i dont see them getting much use.

    Make shadow cannon cost 2cc. People will use it the as a backup to shadow energy. 4se for 4 damage is borderline useless but if it cost 4cc to cast no one uses it. Make it cost 1 or 2cc and it will get play.
    Middle Aged Nerd
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  3. #3
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    Locations were a great idea, however they were made so strong it effectively ruined or changed the game to being no fun for alote of players. If they could be reworked with maybe different abilities or effects that weren't so drastic to the game would make a positive change. Also theres so few of them, so it really limits deck building.

    3SE for shadow cannon would be better balanced.

    A lote of older cards are no longer played because newer cards are better, and older ones will not be updated to current gameplay.

    Variety of decks I believe is the most important to the game, adds a unique deck for every player which is why so many people play and keep trying new ideas. this keeps the game popular. def the most important.

    I used to find this game more fun when the matches lasted longer. Nowadays there is to many ways for lots of draw which excellerates the games to fast. Most games are usually over in turn ten now. Used to have a lote more fun when the games lasted longer.

    And I use the word balanced because that's what it is, not nerf. Its about making the game more enjoyable to the players as a whole.
    Being able to rebalance older cards would go a long way to make unused cards used again.

  4. #4
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    Hello Gondorian! I am a proud member of TJ and play around 250+ during the school year and more like 280+ over the summer (for obvious reasons).
    Believe me I understand that there is A LOT of stuff that goes into balancing. That being said... I have to agree with Caitlin0 and The middleagednerd so some extent. The nerfing is in several cases needed (twilights, Galina road, etc.) but I feel that the majority of the problems arise when a card is over nerfed.
    That isn't too say everything thing you as a design team do is based as far as nerfing. For example Sabrin. Personally I didn't think she needed a nerf but on the other hand I can see why others do so okay fine nerf the card. The card gets nerfed but still sees a lot of play and is really useful. That is an excellent nerf.
    Location, location, location. I love the concept and I appreciate the difficulty in balance with the zero resource cost and the two sides and on and on. In their current state they are all but unplayable. There are two costs that I believe the design team is underestimating. 1 is the deck space. 39 plus hero is ideal and that means every slot has a high price. Granted with seek (which I love by the way) I can push that up to (at a max for me) 50 cards with no real down side to consistently. But my point is that deck space is a HUGE cost. 2 cards in hand. It is free to play as far as resources go yes but with fewer cards in hand especially with the state locations are in 9 times out of ten I would rather have an ally or ability or tech than a location (save maybe if the deck revolves around the location).
    TL;DR great game and I love playing but there is in my opinion an over nerfing problem.

  5. #5
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    I think DT did great on the new expansion. New cards are suppose to be more powerful so that people want to use them in their decks. At the same time they should synergy with old and unused cards. I think balancing of new cards should be done after all three phase of lost lands expansions are released or done moderately.

    Lands are great addition to evolve the gameplay. However I think right now some non-controller ability really punish the controller side making it not worth to be put in decks. Its like giving an extra card slot to your opponent. To counter land cards, the opponent should either put their own land on top or use cards like groundshift or sinkhole. That way, players will feel that they need to play land cards in their decks or cards that counters them.

    I probably have an average of 5 games a day.I usually play at rating 250s when using my own crafted decks. In this range, there are variety of creative decks, less used cards and heroes being played. Winning chance is 50-50. This range is aimed for having fun with your own crafted decks/themes.

    This month, I netdecked someone and change some cards to make my own. Now I'm at 290s. In this range, there are typical heroes with consistent decks. I think when you have a good deck, its about a good matchup, piloting skills, experience and luck of draw. This range is aimed for rankings. Of course its also fun when you win.

  6. #6
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    Good points:
    - Splitting LL into three parts, so we didn't have to wait that long for new cards
    - New interesting mechanics

    Negative:
    - Killing locations. They are now useless and non-existent in decks above 300+ (with some exceptions)
    - Nerfing. First of all, banning a card 3 days after release looks like huge mistake on your side. Secondly, I (and I don't think I am alone with this) got the feeling that you listen to angry screaming of people who have no idea how to deal with new stuff and you just kill most of the new cards. My current deck uses 0 LL cards, if I am not playing something tribal (wulven, homies (see what I did there?), aldmor) I use a 1-2 LL cards.

    Meta changes and the decks that would be below average can now be top decks, but you're going in circles. First month with LL looked like this game has evolved into something new, now it looks same as one year ago, with bunch of new cards and couple of nerfed old things. I am curious what is the percentage of really used cards, because there is huge amount of stuff that no one uses, and there is good amount of stuff, that mostly inexperienced players use, because it looks cool on paper, but is really crappy.
    I milled fat Garth with rush Loest. Twice.
    I stalled Moonstaller with Rothem.
    I played Ter with monopoly cards and 4x toll bridge and managed to win a tournament.
    I cast Portal and Kris in one turn and lived to tell the tale.

  7. #7
    Lead Developer / Designer Gondorian's Avatar
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    Thanks for the replies so far. I'll be honest - I was expecting more. This is your chance to have your say about which factors within a game you care about most and how we're doing on them.

  8. #8
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    i think it is difficult to answer these questions because it is very unclear exactly what you want answers on in your opening post. and it is also difficult to know which factors most contributes to the outcome of the match. everything is very subjective so i dont know if any of this will help you much.

  9. #9
    Senior Member Lightning Fury's Avatar
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    Recently I've been feeling the game has been taking a step back from the quality of lore presented in the earlier works. I know the story isn't that important in a balancing a TCG but I like seeing a connection between cards and their factions and why they are able to do what their abilities say they do. That's where the designing work comes in, so new cards are introduced seamlessly between playsets.

    Stuff like explaining that Aldmors were an advanced race who could utilize Shadow Energy better than anyone else. Or some back lore on unique LL allies, maybe a couple more pages from the Wizent's Journal etc. It's some good stuff and could use some more polish. A grounded story makes the game interesting to play. Just my two cents

  10. #10
    Junior Member SL Osiris's Avatar
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    OK I gave this topic some thought and this is what I came to. When it comes to what factors into winning in SE this is the order (my opinion)

    #1 Player experience

    #2 Meta reading

    #3 Deck Crafting

    #4 Player Skill

    The first thing that factors into winning is experience. Speaking on myself personally I came to this game somewhere a little bit before DP was released I believe in 2012. I thought mages was the best ITF Gwen, mill stalker, and zal unbeatable. And to top it off Serena was my starting hero......Yea poor me. I played the game two years without passing 220 rating. Now it being 2016 four years deep into the game a few name changes (AP u cant win, AP Osiris,SL Osiris) 3 guilds (which helped me the most) I know for a fact experience has helped me the most with the game. I know every heros ability, strengths,weakness,card pool,auto includes etc. Like the back of my hand. Without experience or how I look at it knowledge of the game you're just gonna walk around wide eyed and helpless. Your decks will be random and unfocused. And you'll never be able to win on a consistent basis.

    Reading the meta is the second step to winning in qm or tournament. Yes qm meta and tourney meta are two different things. A good qm deck does not necessarily translate into a good tournament deck. It's basically knowing what hero or deck you're most likely to encounter on a regular basis. Example if I'm running into mages 3 out of 5 matches chances are if I run a hero like zal, bb, or Amber I'm more likely to win by the odds since those heros counter mages well. Which would in turn give me greater success in qm and a more likely chance of raising my score or rating. And since SE official page keeps track of highest rated players and scoring players it's easy to see what's having success. You can simply run whatevers popular or build something to counter it.

    Now here's where #1 & #2 are connected. This is where they pay off taking all the info you gathered and building a deck that destroys the meta. Deck crafting is delicate balance, not enough copies of a key card to your strategy can kill a deck and too many non essential cards become dead draws. Understanding resource curve,FTA , what's auto include, what's considered tech, what's really useless, is this deck aggro ,control,mid-range,late game,etc. We could go for days about the nuances of deck crafting, but with experience and meta reading it should be easy to throw together a half decent qm deck that wins most the time.

    Last is player skill the first three is basically winning the war before the first battle. The tools are useless if you lack the skill to use them. For instance a non skilled player would flood the board against a priest or mage where a skill player would know that that T5 tidal wave or Nova is coming. Whether to keep building tempo or to play that T4 IGG. This is just to simple examples it's numerous other choices in a span of a game that can be the difference between winning and losing. The thing I like most about SE is that skill wins period. There is no greater satisfaction than winning against a deck that you shouldn't have because you're more skilled then the person against you. I wish this was also used in determining whether a card should be nerfed or not since more often than not the less skilled players scream for nerfs. That more skilled players are against. Skilled players should not suffer because unskilled players lack the player experience, meta reading, and deck crafting ability of skilled players. Not to say some cards don't deserve nerfs just let's be a little lighter with the Nerf hammer.

    As far as luck I guess it plays a factor when you top deck that last Fireball you need to win. In a standard 40 card deck you've increased the possibility of drawing the cards you need so I don't know if luck is much of a factor in winning. I guess there's always some form of "luck of the draw" in a card game tho.

    I hoped this helped Gondo and excuse my grammar everyone I'm no English major LOL.
    SL Osiris

    HEADHUNTER OF THE LEGION
    I AM LEGION, FOR WE ARE MANY....MARK 5:9

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