Reducing Max Deck Size to 80 Cards + Hero in QM

[Veles]

Ill copy my question from 60 thread here as well:

What deck type is only possible to make with more than 80 cards that is not possible to make with 80 or less?

What diversity are you talking about?

An ally heavy 120 Boris is a midrange deck just as 40 cards Boris.
A 120 cards Stallvox is a stall deck just as 80 cards stallvox.
And so on...

I think for the game it is better that deckbuilding involves some tough decisions in choosing which allies are truly worthy to put in, how much tech cards can you allow yourself to put in the deck, how much removal is optimal to control the board but not make your draws be dead when you need to pressure the board state...For me that thoughprocess is much more fun than "oh look how big number by my deck is..."

The philosophy fuck it Ill just put all of them is silly to me and it lessens deckbulding strategy and skill not enhance it.

[Gondorian]

Instead we need to motivate people to play bigger decks more often

No, that's precisely what we don't want.

It does not take more creativity to build a bigger deck. I assume we are talking about trying to make your own instead of just copying someone else's tuned deck? Because obviously there is no creativity in copying.

Here's how I see creative deckbuilding:

1) Pick a hero and add some cards you think will work well together in a creative way
2) Optionally add some key cards to fill in gaps left by focusing entirely on your creative idea rather than what else might come up from other people.
3a) Realise you are at 40-60 cards, so take it for a spin.
3b) Realise you now have a 60-100 card deck, so you use your deckbuilding skill to remove some cards since there is no way in the world you will ever see all of them within a reasonable timeframe.

Whilst I understand that some people love the luck element of games, I find it hard to believe this represents a significant part of our playerbase. We certainly do not wish to encourage it, which is why we have so few RNG cards here compared to Hearthstone.

I appreciate there could also be players who like that luck might give them less optimal cards than a tuned deck might have, so they get more of a challenge and need to think their way out of harder situations based on the cards they can use. But I think there are better ways to get this challenge. e.g. Just deliberately use all non-optimal cards in your deck.

I can see above that Ka cutenew3dy is running a 71-card deck successfully (whilst advocating 80+ cards as a mark of creativity). I'm guessing that it has been tuned down with skill to reduce the luck element?

[Gondorian]

Someone please correct me if I got any of these wrong, but here are deck size limits for other games:

Pokemon: Exactly 60 cards, with max 4 copies except for Energy cards.
Yugioh: Between 40 and 60 cards, with max 3 copies.
Hearthstone: Exactly 30 cards, with max 2 copies (Legendaries are max 1 copy).
Shadowverse: Exactly 40 cards, with max 3 copies.
Elder Scrolls: Between 50 and 70 cards, with max 3 copies.

Are they just against creativity or is there some other reason they chose those limits?

For those wondering why MTG has been missed off, there is no shortage of content you can find which supports the idea that playing near the minimum implies more playing skill and deckbuilding skill.

Here's a nice page to act as an example, which does cover some reasons to go above their 60 but much stronger reasons not to: https://boardgames.stackexchange.com...0-cards-in-mtg

[BP Holy Punisher]

If I am not mistaken, the difference between all those games and Shadow Era is the resources. While in most other games you get a resource/mana every turn regardless, in SE you have to sacrifice your playing cards to make resources. This means that if a 80 card deck wants 15 resources, then it has 65 playable cards.

Regarding creativity and playstyle, I disagree that a "fat" deck lacks creativity any more than a 40-card deck. Of course you can throw some random cards in there to keep the probability of the ideal resource curve, but that's exactly what you can do in a small deck too. It's always up to the player to find the optimal number of cards, curve distribution and so on.
Maybe 80 cards max is ok but changing the cap can change the balance of some cards, which is best to be tested on a test server (if the unity issue has been resolved)

[Gondorian]

1. If I am not mistaken, the difference between all those games and Shadow Era is the resources. While in most other games you get a resource/mana every turn regardless, in SE you have to sacrifice your playing cards to make resources. This means that if a 80 card deck wants 15 resources, then it has 65 playable cards.

2. Regarding creativity and playstyle, I disagree that a "fat" deck lacks creativity any more than a 40-card deck. Of course you can throw some random cards in there to keep the probability of the ideal resource curve, but that's exactly what you can do in a small deck too. It's always up to the player to find the optimal number of cards, curve distribution and so on.

3. Maybe 80 cards max is ok but changing the cap can change the balance of some cards, which is best to be tested on a test server (if the unity issue has been resolved)

Hi there. I've numbered your points to make it easier to respond.

1. Honestly, I don't know the details of all of those games. I basically put here what I retrieved from a few minutes of research to help the discussion become more constructive. Consider this an opportunity to make a stronger case for not reducing the maximum deck size, since no strong case has been made yet.

Sure, there are people backing their own individual preferences here which seem therefore to be strong arguments from their perspective, but we have to consider that the vast majority of the playerbase do not read the forum, are not as skilled at building or playing as people posting here and would benefit a lot from a smaller max deck size. This change is not aimed at the elite 5% who either use tuned decks anyway or have very specific great reasons for going higher. The tournament scene is for those people, where there would be no such limit, although time-based limits may be reluctantly brought in for practical reasons. (I say reluctantly because a defined limit changes the way the game is played by some people and incomplete games need to have some result decided somehow which is not clear cut.)

2. The creativity argument seemed to come from people suggesting not to reduce the limit. You are right that it doesn't stack up. I'm more about deckbuilding skill, player skill, reducing the luck factor and avoiding long games where the bigger deck prevails because the other person ran out.

3. Sadly, the level of activity in the PFG or the public test server (when operational) provided limited reliable info to extrapolate to live. We can already determine exactly how many people are running 80+ cards and how many people are facing 80+ cards from pulling the stats. At the top levels, where balance is most important, it's even easier to look into and also likely not where this will even make much impact. For this reason, I think deploying direct to the live server is the right move.

Yes, the deckbuilding choices of people might be affected when they know there is a max of 80 cards they might face, but now we're talking about theory and hypotheticals. There's no way to accurately estimate the impact in a reasonable time-frame compared to simply deploying this to live and giving people enough time to make an effective practical implementation of their masterplan.

[Gondorian]

This is taken from when we announced the change to 120 card maximum:

Any decision on a limit is going to end up being arbitrary, so we have arbitrarily chosen 120 cards for this maximum, as three times our minimum. This gives all players clear indication of how long a game might go on and where they need to aim for if they have a late-game or mill win-condition.

Please note that Unrated games have no maximum deck size, which we feel is a fair compromise for those who really want to go really really big, since you can rage-quit without penalty in unrated if you really don't fancy that match-up.

So the 120 was arbitrary and we've since determined that actually 80 would be more appropriate for Quick Match (maybe even 60). Again, this means that players will have a clear indication of how long a game could go on (not as long as now) and where they need to aim for if they have a late-game or mill win-condition (not as far in).

As before, since there is no max on Unrated games, you can do whatever you want but the opponent can also quit without penalty if facing a huge deck is not for them.

[Jari]

If a 40 card "finely tuned and streamlined deck" cannot beat the "large and non-creative decks" are they really as fine tuned as they thought? There are cards that can be tech'd in to help against the heavy support ability stall.

[Veles]

If a 40 card "finely tuned and streamlined deck" cannot beat the "large and non-creative decks" are they really as fine tuned as they thought? There are cards that can be tech'd in to help against the heavy support ability stall.

This is not discussion about just stall decks but in general. Should decks that are by definition midrange run so many cards? In games that go into attrition battle, bigger deck will have advantage not by its artchetype but because it has more cards. That is about those fine tuned fat decks.

I also think that for game overall is healthier to discipline its players to build optimal decks so newer players learn not to put all their collection in a deck thinking that is a good thing or it is the way game works.

[Jari]

I see a lot of people saying the only reason the big decks win is because they have more cards and the smaller decks run out of cards. Isn't that kinda similar to the idea of a discard Praxis deck? If you lose by way of being discarded out or you lose because you run out of cards against a deck with more cards it's not much different. Your deck still didn't do enough with the 40-60 cards it had to win. No deck wins every game, if there was a deck like that there would be no balance at all and no one would play.

[Gondorian]

I see a lot of people saying the only reason the big decks win is because they have more cards and the smaller decks run out of cards. Isn't that kinda similar to the idea of a discard Praxis deck? If you lose by way of being discarded out or you lose because you run out of cards against a deck with more cards it's not much different. Your deck still didn't do enough with the 40-60 cards it had to win. No deck wins every game, if there was a deck like that there would be no balance at all and no one would play.

Praxix is specifically a mill strategy and he was created to make it viable. Everyone loves losing their best cards off the top of their deck, right?

Big decks often don't win. But they can drag a game out for a long time by having so many more copies of decent things to deal with.