Design Workbench: Heroes

[Calmdown]

....ooooh, this is gonna be a big one

Shadow Era is a game about heroes. They are the legends that shape the world; the lords and ladies of battle. The head honchos. The big cheeses. They are the focal point of your deckbuilding, the point from which deck construction begins, the defining baseline of your strategy. It is very important, then, that we get heroes right.

As everyone knows, we have various tiers of heroes and decks in SE, much like any other card game. Some heroes are great because of their own abilities (Gwenneth); some are great because of their card pools (Jericho); some have both (Majiya). Some don't quite make the cut because their abilities aren't quite good enough (Victor). Some promote slow and 'boring' gameplay (Darkclaw, Elementalis). For now, I want to address the first part of this issue; the heroes themselves. Card pools is something that is being and will be addressed by new releases and as the game matures, but we have to get our baseline right first and that means making sure that all of the heroes are on a level. To that end, we need to make sure that they are all fair and all have equal opportunity to be useful.


Shadow Energy Costs

The first thing that we need to address is Shadow Energy. Shadow Energy is the hero resource and a fundamental of Shadow Era gameplay. Hero abilities are generally some of the strongest on the board, and so they should be; these guys are legends and this should represent that. However, SE costs of 2 and sometimes 3 make these abilities a little too 'spammable'; they also have a little too much 'early game' influence, in that an ability is exponentially better than its cost if you get to use it before your opponent can use his. The fact that heroes have wildly varying SE costs also makes it hard to balance items and allies that use SE as a resource; for example Jericho can quite happily activate his Wizent's Staff every turn by the time he has it in play, as well as nuke any attachments off the board, without breaking his stride. I'd like to eliminate 2SE abilities altogether, and seriously cut down on 3SE abilities. I'd like to introduce a couple of new 5SE abilities to heroes and give them a good test and see how we can make them work. To be clear, some heroes will not just have their SE costs changed, they will get completely new abilities.


Passive Hero Abilities

This is kind of the same as above, but I wanted to discuss it separately since it's such a big, game changing thing. Passive hero abilities have all of the problems above, multiplied; an SE cost of 0 makes certain things impossible to balance against the poor heroes who do have to spend energy. But the bigger issue is, that passive hero abilities that increase weapon damage essentially ruin weapons for all of the other heroes in SE. A large part of the game is meant to revolve around your heroes tooling up and getting stuck into the combat; but, some weapons (particularly for Warriors and Hunters) have to be kept very low in attack value to stop them being overused by the likes of Amber Rain and Gwenneth Truesight. Passive hero abilities have to go, and be replaced with SE-using abilities; the word 'double' also needs to be torn from Shadow Era like an old bandaid, because it completely ruins otherwise sensible items. Does this mean that we'll be rebalancing weapons, too? Maybe a little. This may cause quite a few changes, but I think in the long term (and the short term) it'll be worth it.


Hero Flavours

This is something that I, and other people, have mentioned in various threads in the past. Every hero type has a 'flavour' and that flavour should define the style of their cards and the style of their play. The most obvious example of this is Wulven, who's flavours we discussed a lot in a Darkclaw thread a while back; a couple that came up were pack mentality (group buffing/wolf bonuses) and hunting/wolf-style tactics (ally control cards). We'll be trying to make these flavours pervasive mostly via card sets, but also trying to maintain the flavours in hero abilities (eg: Darkclaw is the hard to kill, regenerating Wulven and Moonstalker is the stealthy Wulven).


Hero Health Pools

The fact that heroes have differing health pools really has no in-game effect other than to slightly buff warriors, slightly nerf mages, and so on. It makes sense from a fluff point of view but it is not reflected in the game balance in any way. I have no intention of changing this right now, but it is something I'm aware of and will continue to ponder on.



Now, all of that said, I do have lots of ideas in mind for what to do with the heroes (and weapons) - or what not to do - but none of them are final and I'm not going to do anything without your feedback. So let this thread fly, and let your opinions loose. Commentary, ideas, or anything related that you like is welcome. As ever, please keep it civil, and don't make AnAdolt angry. You wouldn't like him when he's angry.




Edit: Current Hero Design Iteration


Boris Skullcrusher: 4SE: Destroy target ally.

Amber Rain: 3SE: Target weapon permanently gains +2 attack. That weapon may not gain any damage bonus from any other source.

Victor Heartstriker: Undecided

Gwenneth Truesight: 3SE: Your weapons gain +2 attack until the start of your next turn and do not suffer durability loss when used.

Nishaven: No change.

Eladwen Frostmire: 4SE: Deal 4 damage to target ally or hero.

Jericho Spellbane: 4SE: Destroy target attached effect. Gain 2 life.

Zhanna Mist: 3SE: Target ally or hero heals 3 damage.

Lance Shadowstalker: 4SE: Target ally gains Ambush, Stealth, and Haste until the start of your next turn.

Serena Thoughtripper: 4SE: Your weapons gain +2 attack until the end of your turn. If Serena damages a hero, that player discards a card at random.

Ter Adun: Reverted to no change

Logan Stonebreaker: 3SE: Your weapons gain +1 attack until the start of your next turn. Any ally dealt damage by your weapons is destroyed.

Banebow: No change

Baduruu: 5SE: Choose a weapon in your hand. Put it into play at no cost. That weapon gains +1 attack.

Majiya: 4SE: Deal 3 damage to target. If this ability kills an ally, draw a card.

Gravebone: 4SE: Return any ally from your discard pile to play.

Darkclaw: 4SE: Until the start of your next turn, your weapons deal +2 damage and all damage dealt to Darkclaw is reduced to 0.

Moonstalker: 3SE: Moonstalker and allies you control cannot be attacked until the start of your next turn.

Elementalis: Undecided

Zaladar: No change

[iClipse]

I'm looking forward to this. It'll probably release a lot of whine, but I to, believe that these changes will be for the best. For example, when you lose the passive abilities, a lot more weapons will become viable to a multitude of heroes since their attack cost might be altered. I'm all up for that.

Since there aren't any specific suggestions yet I can't give feedback on those, but the general ideas are very good and solid imo.

Btw: before/if people start raging because their Gwenneth or Majiya or Jericho gets nerfed. There were a lot of nerfs in the past, and most people were against most of those changes, but now they've also come to the conclusion that this is (so far) the most balanced state of SE. So while these changes may have killed some cards, they made entire heroes viable. So think about that.

[GS]

I make anadolt angry all the time, no big deal.

But on topic:
I would strongly advise you keep jericho's and Gravebone's abilities at cost 2. It is the ONLY thing in the current meta that makes them viable.

The fact they are spammable can be countered. Especially in gravebone, he can't bring back every ally when you bury them and he runs out of energy.


Moving entirely to cost 4 abilities makes for a considerably longer game. Is this really a direction you want to go in? Most mobile phone users would prefer to keep matches at less than 20 minutes and auto-quit against longer heroes. Not tougher, longer.

RE: cost 0 abilities- There was an idea to make it cost SE to maintain. That makes sense to me, if you want to balance those abilities. I don't know if you've read all the suggestions, but eliminating cost 2 abilities entirely is a horrible idea imo, and goes in a completely new direction. The result would be a game that is NOT shadow era, and like I said, we will lose the ability to have 15-20 minute matches.

I would say to try to design hero cards and the like to last around 15-30 minutes, tops.

And for gods' sake, don't make a hero ability so powerful it ends the game and allies can't counter it!




Edit: And to iclipse: That's my issue. Calmdown wants to drastically change the game. Yet we are mostly balanced!

[iClipse]

I make anadolt angry all the time, no big deal.

But on topic:
I would strongly advise you keep jericho's and Gravebone's abilities at cost 2. It is the ONLY thing in the current meta that makes them viable.

The fact they are spammable can be countered. Especially in gravebone, he can't bring back every ally when you bury them and he runs out of energy.


Moving entirely to cost 4 abilities makes for a considerably longer game. Is this really a direction you want to go in? Most mobile phone users would prefer to keep matches at less than 20 minutes and auto-quit against longer heroes. Not tougher, longer.

RE: cost 0 abilities- There was an idea to make it cost SE to maintain. That makes sense to me, if you want to balance those abilities. I don't know if you've read all the suggestions, but eliminating cost 2 abilities entirely is a horrible idea imo, and goes in a completely new direction. The result would be a game that is NOT shadow era, and like I said, we will lose the ability to have 15-20 minute matches.

I would say to try to design hero cards and the like to last around 15-30 minutes, tops.

And for gods' sake, don't make a hero ability so powerful it ends the game and allies can't counter it!




Edit: And to iclipse: That's my issue. Calmdown wants to drastically change the game. Yet we are mostly balanced!

He already changed it, with as CONSEQUENCE it's balanced.

Either way, I'm sure he'll make abilities viable even though they won't be at 2SE.

For example:4SE: bring back your last killed ally and summon it with haste (with better wording.. ) would still be a very good ability. Yet, it's not at 2SE. Which is the state he wants us to go to.

[Calmdown]

He already changed it, with as CONSEQUENCE it's balanced.

Either way, I'm sure he'll make abilities viable even though they won't be at 2SE.

For example:4SE: bring back your last killed ally and summon it with haste (with better wording.. ) would still be a very good ability. Yet, it's not at 2SE. Which is the state he wants us to go to.

You understand me perfectly.

[GS]

Think about it though, that eliminates strategy from gravebone and gives control to the opponent.

What if I want to revive my brut for sac fodder for my hand? (Since we are using gravebone as an example)

The new ability would simply bring back the last killed ally with haste. So to counter it, I could easily kill your bella, then kill your fire snake.

Problem solved, gravebone's now pathetic.

That is my issue here. You are not creating more strategy with the increase of SE costs. You are decreasing it, with the ability to only use it once or twice per battle.


Example: Nishaven almost NEVER gets to use his ability twice. Is this seriously a direction we want to go in?

But we are getting ahead of ourselves. I would like to hear your proposals first, calmdown.

[Kalland]

With the thought of eliminating shadow costs below four.... This will be a lot of changes. Change is good! Here's a couple of suggestions.

Gravebone: SE 4. Recurse any ally of your choosing from either graveyard to your hand.
Majiya: SE 4. Draw two cards, discard one immediately.

With the thought of eliminating passives... I love it. I think passive damage enhancement is overdue to be eliminated. Although, coupled with the idea that hero abilities will be four or more, it will be interesting to see how gameplay changes for weapon focused builds.

Edit: with response to the idea that the game plays will be longer... This shouldn't be a problem overall with the addition of the rest of the set of cards, newly balanced heroes that will hopefully even more balance the current meta, and honestly, I'm fine with the games not ending at turn eight. Everyone complains about Mayija drawing too fast, using burn and killing them too quickly. With going to 40 cards as a minimum card pool, and a redistribution of abilities I think it will change current game play, which is desperately needed.

[MattOG]

There is a thread somewhere here.....

Ahh, here we go....

http://www.shadowera.com/showthread....ow-Energy-cost

http://www.shadowera.com/showthread....9-Hero-Reworks

http://www.shadowera.com/showthread....es-Suggestions


These all have plenty of suggestions in, just linking them here for reference.

[kentuequi]

....ooooh, this is gonna be a big one

[...]

As ever, please keep it civil, and don't make AnAdolt angry. You wouldn't like him when he's angry.

That means amber, gwen, victor, lance, serena, majiya, gravebone, banebow, baduruu, darkclaw, moonstalker and elementalis' abilities would be changed, and boris, eladwen, nishaven, logan, ter adun and zaladar's abilities would remain the same ? Right ?

[Sisyphos]

My 2 cents:

Shadow energy:
If an ability is worth 2 se, i don't mind that it is spammable and can affect the game very early. I like Lance's ability f.e. the way it is, but if its cost increases i'd wager that the ability will change to make an ally completely untargetable and that would be fine as well. In general, if SE is to move towards costlier and stronger hero effects, then that's nothing to object as long as high cost means high pay-off, too.
One thing to be taken into consideration is that the strength of effects shouldn't increase linearly with cost, because having to wait a little longer for it is a downside by itself. An ability like f.e. 2: Deal 2 damage is significantly better than 4: Deal 4 damage.

Passives: Yes to this. Not only for the mentioned balancing reasons, but also because i find them boring.

Flavours: Absolutely.

Health points: Well they add some flavor and are atm in tune with the game mechanics, meaning that warriors need a few more hitpoints and mages/priests certainly don't need to have as many as other heroes.


EDIT:

A suggestion from the hero reworks thread that i particularly liked (and that happens to be my own):

I suggest changing Ter Adun to: 4 - Destroy an opponent's item or make one of your items untargetable.

This relatively simple change would render Ter's ability no longer useless half of the time (when facing players who don't depend very much on items) and allow for more interesting shadow warrior decks that incorparate a couple of weapons or armors. And because they could still be worn down it wouldn't be too strong of an ability either imo.