Feedback from a veteran player

[Maldazar]

I'm a rather long time SE player, started before the first set was complete (back before Death Mage Thaddeus was released and Plasma Behemoth was 'the' shadow fatty) and have played SE on and off since then, didn't play a lot last years (played some other games, like Hearthstone) but got back in the last months and have been playing like 3-4 matches a day for some months now, got back to >300 like I used to always be and would call myself an decent player (certainly not good, but avarage)... BUT I have been noticing some stuff that concerns me a lot... and wanted to give some feedback from a 'veteran', starting with:

A lot less players / player contribution
Back when I used to play this game a lot the community was very active, we had tournaments dailly, we had very active forums, with hundred of players online, it was impossible to find your game in the list after it was open because we had new games starting every 3-5 seconds, basicly, the player base was A LOT bigger. Right now I only see the same couple of hundred of players all the time, they play a lot, it's a loyal playerbase, but not really a big player base. This is just a general concern and I think it's sad because of all the (digital) CCG's/TCG's (or however you want to call it) that I played, SE is still probably the best one out there.

Now, that was just a general concern, now here go some of the reasons that I think are the reason behind this:

1. Bad UI
Seriously, I have played some other digital card games and SE is just miles behind in UI/gameplay experience, it feels sluggish, a lot of pointless clicks, unnecessary delays, etc.. It just feels anoying to play sometimes compared to what is out there...

Some examples: Why do I need to select my weapon and then press to target it with Gwen? 2 useless clicks since it ALWAYS targets the weapon you are currently using.. Why can't I access the leaderboard from multiplayer view? I always need to go back to campain to click there, same for the other buttons on the bottom of the screen of the campain mode. If you guys want more, I can make an entire list, but I'm quite sure everyone knows what I'm talking about. (why can't I drag to use ability on friendly allies with an Aeon, just because his drag is ONLY to attack?)

2. The 'no banned cards policy'
This is actualy a double problem, first:
Because SE has a 'not removing old cards' policy, it's kind of overwhelming for newcommers, the amount of cards you need to learn (with a bad UI, where you can't even read cards on enemy turn) make it hard to understand whats going on and hard to start to combine the right cards and actualy have some fun in multiplayer. If SE would have the method of making older sets 'depricated' in newer versions it would be less overwhelming imho.

Second:
New cards design is very slow because of the balance issue with older cards.. A LOT of new cards just can't be created because they would break the game because of some old cards which were created when the game was still simpler. Some cards over time are just becoming too strong because of how they work with new cards, making it exponentially harder to create new cards with each set.. Imho this is the reason that the releasing of new sets takes SO FREAKINGLY long (combined with an every time less engaged/active playerbase, making feedback on forums less common, making it harder to balance.. in the past we had pages and pages of comments about every single new card announced, now it's maybe a couple of comments on an entire list of cards anounced..). Imho this policy needs to be broken, some cards NEED to be banned from the game in order to make new cards viable..

3. Last but not least
Mill decks.... This is exactly what drove me away from SE in the past, NOT because they are overpowered or anything, but I (And i believe a lot of the casual players) play this game when for example on a train, waiting for a bus, or a quick match before dinner or whatever... It's a mainly mobile game, which on avarage people like to play at most 20-25 minutes a day (and this is higher then the casual players avarage because of the people that play an unusual long time), a game against a mill deck takes often >30 minutes... So that is more time that I want to be spending on the game... Honestly, I'm often just in the mood if insta leaving a game vs a mill deck, not because I can't win, but because I know it will take too long and I don't have or don't want to spend that time. I know that the diehard players will scream at me because they want more options/different playstyles in the game and I understand that, but is it really worth it if this scares away players? At least I would be scared away if I was a new player and had to sit for 30 minutes in a match where I feel like i'm not even playing (because that is how mill works, they make it feel like it's 2 people playing solo), 0 excitement, just at some point someone wins and that is it...

No idea if this will help in any way, but my hope is that it will at least start some usefull discussion on how to maybe save this amazing, but dying game. (lets be honest, it IS dying...)

[Kolodi]

I totally agree with you, this game has been developing very slowly and I can't see how it could change. Instead, the game has a ton of legacy staff that must be maintained and taken into consideration when releasing new updates, and it is relative not only to old cards.
The rest of loyal community, us, we are doing whatever possible to keep the game alive, but I doubt that we can help with main issue - lack of investments. I think in order to resolve issues that you have listed together with many others, the game has to be rewritten almost completely, and it can be done only if you have a team of developers and money to pay them.
Btw, are you in telegram?

[Harmony]

Small tournaments happen on telegram usually every day but ya forums are dead but stay tuned in a couple days I will have a guild interview post up

[Gondorian]

I'd understand this post if it was made four months ago but I can't see how anything that happened since September gives the impression of a dying game. Either you missed some stuff or we have not made enough progress yet since restarting development. Maybe January will be the proof you need.

[Dvsklown]

I don't know if dying is the right word but people are playing less. I have to wait for a few minutes sometimes in rated to find a match. And when I do find a match it is against someone I've recently played, not always but more often than not.

Id have to agree with the original post, this game is struggling. My issue is less the slow development, more of what is being developed. With seek being added, a couple bad nerfs, and poor balance in the new cards that have been added, the game has gone in a completely different direction than where it was when I started playing. IMO locations were added without testing, which lead to either them being too strong or absolutely useless and for no cost. Just all around poorly done. Seek is just lame, pick your cards, does this not seem dumb to have in a card game? Goes against all the basics of card games.

I've got to mention vermin. With the second nerf, warriors have definitely stepped up. Could be because they have a now hard to kill 2cc card which nullifies any ally I put down. Cheap, too cheap now that it works so damn well and easily reused. I'm a shadow player so I don't have access to a legend rises. And with so few options to kill attachments pretty much at the mercy of these attachment decks. I can run some attachment kill but it still does little, I have 4 SoR but they really don't have the impact in games, spent most of my cc that turn and killed only one of the 7 attachments my opponent has. I kept trying to use vermin after the nerf which was called a buff, I think I used it successfully 3 times before abandoning it.

Anyways I'll finish with saying the gameplay isn't enjoyable anymore, while still a wide variety of decks being played, the games are boring and predictable. Same staple easy to use cards, or stall. Maybe it's just me? But I'm just not having fun with it anymore.

[Veles]

I definitely agree that UI needs more improvement, Ive given several suggestions to minor tweaks in feedbacks section.

Last balances patch tried to address some of stall decks, but as I said in that thread those are just bandages on a wound made by cards like Bazaar and Evil Ascendant, which are sadly in CotC and BoD is still following old politics of not changing/banning printed cards, although really at this point I dont know who even cares about that. Anyway as long as these are in the game coupled with hero abilities of Skervox and Moonstalker which are very stally and cards like Voice of the Winter and Armor of Ages, people will try to build decks just because those tools exist. Issue is no matter how many new counters are added, or post SF cards tweak people will play those decks no matter how good the archetype is and NPE will still be there no matter who wins. Not to mention they limit new card design.

As far as seek goes you can debate if impact on the game is overall positive or negative but you can not say it goes against principles of all card games since it is basically tutor effect from MTG and other card games have same or similar mechanics.

[Dvsklown]

As far as seek goes you can debate if impact on the game is overall positive or negative but you can not say it goes against principles of all card games since it is basically tutor effect from MTG and other card games have same or similar mechanics.

Tutor cost 4 mana, which means you can't use it until turn 4 basically and another turn later to use the card you tutored. With seek it can be done as early as turn 2. Or turn 3 and play the card you just seeked the same turn. That's the difference. The card tutor pales in comparison to seek. Mtg knew it couldn't be cheaper otherwise it would be too strong.

[Killtrend]

The best thing this do is give it a shot in the arm. Open up a foil store. Maybe a better way to earn them too. For the love of god give heroes away for free(ala Overwatch). Add incentive to play every day, like working towards your favorite hero foil/card back/playmat. Also whatever money you have left needs to go into advertising big time. Contract some of these streamers and content creators, pay someone to fix your merchant and buy a deck editor off someone and link it to your ingame account, etc.


As far as old cards ruining current balance “cards from 2+ sets ago cannot be used in rated matches”

Or better yet, stop printing physical cards and balance the whole pool digitally. This game cannot, ever, compete with the top TCGs and like I said years ago going physical will ruin it. If Magic the Gathering comes to iOS with a polished game and good progression wave goodbye to Shadow Era and whatever you have invested.

They have plans to drop a Beta very soon so I’ve heard get ahead of it now. Open up access to every hero and market the game like that “over 30 heroes to choose from! 3 free booster packs for downloading the game. Buy double gold bonus for 2 days!” Etc Etc. You really need a guy that’s just paid to think up promotions.

[Maldazar]

I'd understand this post if it was made four months ago but I can't see how anything that happened since September gives the impression of a dying game. Either you missed some stuff or we have not made enough progress yet since restarting development. Maybe January will be the proof you need.

Hey Gondorian! (a fellow guy who registered back in april 2011)

I understand your respons, and I know all the work you are (and have already for a long time been) putting into this game and into keeping it alive, and honestly, I believe that without you SE would not exist anymore, so hats off for you (and I actualy wear hatts very often )

But, looking at raw numbers, that is no way of denying that this game is very far from what it was in its glory times, the amount of players has dropped a lot, the involvement of the comunity is a lot lower, even big tournaments are smaller then they used to be (I remember the first world championships, how big those were).. So, it might be a slow death, but the game is dying.. And I hope you will prove me wrong in january, honestly, I would love nothing more then to be proven wrong. But I fear for the game and wanted to post this to show my concern and maybe get more people to do the same and maybe come up with solutions..

The UI is right now honestly becoming an issue for me, if I didn't have a history with SE and I saw it for the first time I would just not play it because of that simple reason, I believe SE's strength lays in his depts, its stronger then all other (digital) TCG's/CCG's, but people with never get to know that if they first impression is bad, and right now it is.. Compared to the alternatives SE just makes bad use of available space, has a lot of unnecessary clicks and doesn't look that inviting.. Even stuff like the icon of the game is imho bad... Just looks like some cheap chinese/japanese game focused purely on pretty pictures and with 0 depth. Honestly, just that icon would already be something I would skip if looking for a serious TCG with depth. IMHO the hearthstone icon is infinite time beter, it's not there to show off pretty woman imagine, but to show the logo of the game, this shows a more serious focus imho.

[AmberFade]

Tutor cost 4 mana, which means you can't use it until turn 4 basically and another turn later to use the card you tutored. With seek it can be done as early as turn 2. Or turn 3 and play the card you just seeked the same turn. That's the difference. The card tutor pales in comparison to seek. Mtg knew it couldn't be cheaper otherwise it would be too strong.

Thats not the only tutor in MTG tho, it has a wide range of seek cards (tutors). One of them is Tinker, a card so broken that tournaments restricted the use of it back when I played. You could search for an 11/11 creature turn 3 with it and play it at no cost.

So yeah compared to that SE seek is a joke.