MArcomage

I have this general concern about how this game i developing. It might be because i liked what i was when i joined and i do need to point out that i love that this project is still actively trying to improve.

The concern is about how this "somewhat" strategic game is depending more and more on luck. The cards have become more and more dependent on their card placement, your token counter, other cards in your hand, who has the highest wall etc. and comboing certain cards yields really strong result.

by making sure more and more cards are co-dependant and situational we have end up with a lot of games (atleast i have please prove me wrong if it isn't so?) where both sides just toss around some random common cards and turns that really doesn't matter just to see who draws their magic combo first.

If anyone doesn't really understand what i mean i'll make a fairly recent timeline :)

1. Keyword token counter
not much to add here, cards are being changed to certain sets that by design work good together and decks becomes more streamlined

2. Hidden games are introduced (thankfully optional to those who dislike it and good for those who do like it)
Not being able to adapt to your opponent, part from what you can guess from discard pile and played cards makes luck a much greater factor.

3. The Far sight keyword is introduced.
Another keyword is introduced, this time with no keyword counter but with five totally different effect that all depends on what card the oponent have in their matching position, as it's not a trival task to toss around the order of your cards yet again more luck is introduced in that you don't just need to draw the right card, you might need to draw it in the right position.

4.??


I'm not saying all these changes are bad. I'm simply pointing out the turns this game is taking and my concern for the strategic element in this game that stretches beyond keeping up do date what cards are currently the strongest and what "keyword" combos is the best for now.

EDIT: when reading this one should take into consideration that this is the result of me not being able to sleep 5AM in the morning.

I can understand that it would be difficult to write clearly at 5AM in the morning. Much easier at 5AM in the afternoon. ;)

I saw the addition of token counters as a step away from luck and toward strategy. Do recall that before the visible and calculable token system, Keyword effects occurred almost completely at random. You might get the effect on every play or on none. Now it's something that can be planned for and deployed optimally rather than something that you had to hope for a coin toss to grant to you.

yeah i sorta missed that part i supose, i had a "break" for quite some time and before the break keywords where just words that could be used to determine some cards special effects and after there were token counters :P i never encountered random keywords. as a point of refferense just before this "break" the swift keyword were introduced, so now obvioulsy i have missed some things but my opinion stands :)

The only thing I worry about when I think of how the game is changing over time is the thought that there are just too many cards being added while not enough time is being spent balancing the existing cards (you made this same point in the thread about updates). Don't get me wrong, I get a little tingle of excitement every time I see an update with a bunch of new cards, but from the point of view of someone approaching deck-building for the first time, it's dizzying. Heck, I've been playing for years, and I get a little bit flustered at how many cards there are when I'm trying to build my deck. I'd be happier to see 10 previously useless cards balanced than to see 20 new cards added.

Overall though, I'm pretty happy with how the game has evolved. And the great thing about it, is that it's highly democratic. Mojko listens to his userbase, so if we don't like something about the game, we have the power to change it.

(That said: bring back quick commons. Please.)

Personally I find it a lot more intense that the game is relies both on luck and on strategy. A great strategy can be ruined with bad luck and that is very good, because otherwise we would all employ the optimum strategy and the game would be kind of monotonous. Also the keywords add a lot of flavour in the game, as they allow exactly the teaming of cards and the good combination of cards. I personally find that decks containing random cards not concentrating around 1 or 2 keywords, such as -tower decks or rush decks are kind of boring, and more dependent on luck than strategy. I have 2 such decks and although they are usually successful, they don't offer a satisfying game. I also find that hidden games, especially now with the implementation of Far Sight, are far more strategic than non-hidden games. In non-hidden games, you just act based on what you see on your opponent's hand. On hidden games however, every bit of information is valuable, and although luck is crucial in revealing and generally reacting to your opponent, there must be employed far more complex strategies rather than in non-hidden modes.

Anyway, that's just my opinion, and I might be completely wrong. I like however, how this game is developed, although I would agree on 2 points made:
a) it would be better to perform balancing updates than adding new cards to the game
b) bring back the common Quick cards

and one of my own:
c) Nature keyword has been way underpowered and some balancing of cards, or perhaps the keyword itself would be in order.

Lord wrote:
Personally I find it a lot more intense that the game is relies both on luck and on strategy. A great strategy can be ruined with bad luck and that is very good, because otherwise we would all employ the optimum strategy and the game would be kind of monotonous.

To be fair, there's no luck involved in chess, and no-one has yet found the optimum strategy for that :P

haha true :P chess doesn't have more than 400 different pieces from which you can choose 45 of them and from which only 8 of them are available to you through sheer luck. What I meant though, was that people would just choose averagely the same 45 cards that would ensure victory. A variation of this is seen in -tower decks. Also, yes chess involves strategy and no luck at all, but over the years, people have developed several strategies, out of which, around 10 of them are used constantly by everyone. (e.g. Queen sacrifice at E5)
Also you will observe that an average chess player will perform the same 3 moves at the start of each of his/hers game 80% of the time :P

Something similar would go for Arcomage if there were no keywords and other factors that would allow a massivbe number of card combinations. Like I said, just look at -tower and rush decks. Without keywords, those would be the dominating decks in the game.

I agree that balance changes should have a higher priority than new cards. Thanks to game replays and statistics features I'm able to get much more information about cards compared to the early days.

Also note that I'm aware that statistics themselves doesn't always reflect the truth (for example rare durable cards have higher play ratio compared to other, but that doesn't mean they're overpowered - they are just durable, so it's expected).

I think we currently don't have ridiculously overpowered cards, also thanks to players that contribute to balance changes. We do however have underpowered cards and I plan to improve the situation. Some of these cards were already successfully balanced (Moat, Magic maelstrom...) and put to use.

Regarding Nature keyword, my analysis confirms that it should probably be changed to its previous form. The balance changes on the Nature rares and most importantly, the addition of new Nature rares probably solved the issue.

In my opinion, keywords, card combinations and such things, they all try to reduce the luck factor from the game, so I don't see your point there.

On the other hand, I think luck is a factor that should play some role in this game. I don't have experience with other TCG, CCG or other types of card games but I believe luck plays some role there too. I mean, you draw cards right? The act of drawing cards involves luck too (in a shuffled card pack).

As it has been said previously, if this was an 100% strategic game it would be chess, and it would be boring :P

With regard to keywords, some of them do add strategy and all that jazz, but keywords like Nature often leave me in the situation of "Damn. Earthquake. Let's keep trying for Forest Dragon." which is clearly just luck based. amirite?

You can always use the Veteran Militia to switch the rare.

With "always" meaning "so long as you happen to have drawn it," right? ;)

the nature keyword actually limits the randomness as you get a much smaller pool of cards that could be your next one. I was more thinking of the keywords like beast, mage, soldier etc that requires you to fill big parts of your hand with keyword cards to be efficient. These keywords makes you "lock" most of your hand with cards similar to each other and you only use a few spots to draw new cards. Hence reducing the useful part of your hand from 8 to 3-5 (somewhere).