State of Shadow Era: Analysis and suggestions

**Cruxx** · 10-10-2011, 12:20 PM

I'd like to see all heroes at 28, personally.

+1

It's hard (read: impossible) to balance small amounts of hp with single hero abilities.

Understandably so, balancing a one-time HP buff vs abilities that can be used a various amount of times pending on how long a game takes, seems indeed very tough. Another reason for me though to equal HPs out over all heroes.

Thanks for your direct feedback Calmdown!
The designers' point of view on creature removal/AoE burn spell would interest me though. Do you guys share some of the concerns presented in this thread or what's your take on this mechanic?

**Caitlyn0** · 10-10-2011, 04:49 PM

i like flavor, it makes things more interesting for me. makes certain heroes more fun.

hero health... well, 2 things. i dont see it as flavor (for me), from my understanding, this "flavor" comes from RPGs right? mages are weak, physically, warriors are stronger, physically, everyone else is in-between. this game doesnt have morale, or damage points or player health or whatever you want to call it, it uses the heroes health to determine when a game is won or lost. going by that, everyone should be even at the start. so all heroes should have the same health. that should be the way it is.

here comes the second thing. that same difference in "starting health" is one of the things that sets this game apart from all other TCGs and CCGs. part of its uniqueness.

so what to do? for fairness and game-balance, they should all have the same health. for flavor and game uniqueness, it should stay different.

i dont really know what to do about that. it should be even on game balance but too many people like the flavor...

**soothslyr** · 10-10-2011, 04:58 PM

i get how people could like the "flavor" of having different heroes starting with different quantities of health, but from a fairness standpoint, i am taking the side that they should all be even.

i agree that it is a tough call to make, @Caitlyn0, but i think that as it is, the devs has bigger fish to fry when it comes to balancing the game. for now, it should stay the same, but before the second set is released, they should take a solid look at what would it do to the game to level the playing field. look at mtg, and other card games, both players start at the same health, i see no reason why that can't be at the very least considered here.

**Harakhte** · 10-10-2011, 05:01 PM

Calm makes a great point re: balancing HP. For the most part In my experience it isn't really the exact total that has the most influence, but the number of ways to directly affect that total + or -. Jericho

can add 16 from four spells, Zhanna

16 + 1 per SE (over the course of a game), etc. Mages can burn off 20 with four Nova (but lose 20 themselves,) then 16 with four FB, etc. This isn't always directly useful to winning as only FB has a greater damage efficiency than 1:1 damage:resource amongst direct action ability cards, while all allies have the potential to be far more resource efficient (two attacks from Jasmine or Medusil get you a 2:1 damage per resource ratio, as does Kris with Aldon/War Banner out.) Hero abilities for Banebow

and Zaladar

can also directly effect Hero HP totals. (Almost forgot Smite for ability cards, but is usually not included due to preference for Retreat and/or Ice Storm in current Priest decks, and Shield Bash

isn't currently useable on Heroes.)

I won't focus on allies, as every deck can stack up allies, but I will touch on ally buffs/de-buffs. Shadow has a one-time use all allies +2 damage buff with BL, anyone with access to KP (Warriors/Priests, which means 2:4 Heroes Shadow:Human) gets a long-term but removable +2/+1, Aldon

gives +1 on attack for Human side, and War Banner

+1 for Warriors. The only -1 to all enemy allies is Curse for Priests, as far as I can recall. Jasmine

, Marshland Sentinel, CB, and CP can prevent damage from allies for 1 turn or longer, as can Rain Delay, Lay Low, Into the Forest and Holy Shield, though only ItF and Holy Shield

, like Moonstalker

's ability, can directly protect only the Hero from damage.

The point to all this is as Calmdown pointed out, finding some point where small HP variations can be managed between different Heroes through the use of abilities is approaching impossible, as if anyone can find some value system (and I applaud Kamman's thread attempting to prove/disprove ROSHAMBO re: SE for going as far as it did in trying a version of this concept) that is able to describe the worth of 1, 2, 3, and so on HP variations in terms of card advantage, tempo, board control, resource management, etc onto the existing card pool (and future card pool) that works universally for each combination of Hero/Class/Faction vs every other combination of Hero/Class/Faction, and each variation of deck size and card totals, then such a language would be probably worth an Honarary PHd from a major University in Math/Symbolic Linguistics.

Cheers,
-Harakhte

**soothslyr** · 10-10-2011, 05:10 PM

haha, it would be worth a phd. i guess that the slight change is only supposed to have a tiny effect on matches, and the card pool accessible is more of a factor, but i would simply rather not start behind because someone thought that my hero should not have as much as my opponents when in the creative process. so far, that's the only real reason that there are differences.

btw, when did this become such an issue? did i miss where this was such a problem that the whole forum had to have a pow wow about it? lol

**Caitlyn0** · 10-10-2011, 05:18 PM

for the record, i am for equal hero health, if i didnt make it sound like that. but i see most of the reasoning either way.

**Harakhte** · 10-10-2011, 06:02 PM

@sooth: I tend to agree with the 'needing everyone to have a pow-wow' sentiment, as there isn't any game that someone can't find flaws in.

If, on the one hand, we liken SE to Chess (a finite system of pre-defined possibilities that can produce a great deal of depth, but in which that depth reaches a limit as all possible board positions and the routes for reaching them can be calculated given enough time and computing power, i.e. Kasparov vs. Deep Blue) we see that the enjoyment should come from either the playing of the game itself, or the competition vs the opponent, accepting the flaws inherent in the system as we do so.

On the other hand, comparing SE to Go (a game of infinite variation, but little inherent structure, that takes years to begin to comprehend and probably can never be mastered completely) we would see that the enjoyment would come from the breadth of possibility and the amount of time one can play without meeting the same board conditions twice, the majority of people would most likely find it too 'heavy' (read: boring) to play casually in a short amount of time.

Comparisons to other CCGs aren't as useful as many of the key points of SE as it is make it inherently contrary to the systems of other CCGs except that it uses cards, and is played between opponents, I for one hope it stays that way, and grows in it's current vogue to stay something new and interesting and unique.

Cheers,
-Harakhte

**sweetgab** · 10-10-2011, 06:51 PM

I think it's quite simple: at the end of each month, each hero that has a >55% win rate gets -1 HP, where each hero that has a <45% win rate gets +1 HP. I don't believe that putting everyone at 28 HP says anything about fairness - there's no way to make it so that every hero ability is on the same tier even, let alone balancing them down to the precision of a single hit point.