Phantom Cards promote an unhealthy playstyle

[iCarus]

Didn't want to leave a (negative) review on the store page, but this mechanic seems like it is poorly thought-out and interacts with the rest of the game in an unhealthy way.

My 2-cents on the Phantom Card mechanic:
1. Your hand starts to bug out once you have around 12+ Phantom Cards, which I suspect is because playtesters never tried to stack them and nor are they intended to be stacked.
2. Phantom Card generators are fairly few and mostly Oracle-based, but Phantom Cards do not get discarded (not even by status effects), nor do they impact your normal hand. This promotes saving your Phantom Cards as extra backups.
3. The Mirror curio is the biggest offender. Having just stomped two bosses in a row just by having this curio and an otherwise garbage deck, I can safely say that this curio is very likely the strongest Curio in the entire game: It has an extremely easy trigger condition: kill two enemies, and on trigger gives you a Mimicry that you can use to copy any card you casted. This generates an insane amount of Phantom cards with practically any class, and while this is kinda gamebreaking, the existing Oracle class already offers plenty of ways to copy Phantom cards, though in a much slower way. I'm not saying this is poorly balanced, but it does kinda promote a fairly singular playstyle.

As an example, you can copy 10+ Raider cards and simply nuke the boss by casting 3 No Quarters on them. This will oneshot a 3-health bar boss with each card easily dealing 30 damage. In addition, if you run a Kill-centric deck, you can nuke an entire room by repeatedly casting the same card and then Mimicry'ing them, ie, there is no cost to running Mirror and stacking Phantom Cards.

Some ways I can think of to fix this:
1. introduce some sort of hand size to Phantom cards, or a max. lifecycle for them (for instance, cleared when you ascend, or when you take the Book shrine)
2. nerf Mirror by, for instance, making the trigger condition based on casting Phantom cards, so at least other classes can't easily abuse it.
3. change how Phantom cards work in a different but interesting way that disallows doomstacking a buttload of them. For instance, maybe they don't cost AP to cast (though that's just Haste), or some other methods.

[brickey.8]

I totally agree that there should be a hand size limit to phantom cards. Maybe force you to discard down to 10 phantom cards (plus any number of real ones) at the end of each turn? As is, the strategy is fun to think about right up until you actually do it and the game slows down to a crawl as you manage all those cards.

Exhume cards for the stranger can also drag things out if you take too many/draw them too early. The problem's kinda the reverse there--you can't get them out of your hand to draw new cards, because playing them just retrieves your other exhume cards I'm not sure there's an easy silver bullet for that from a game design perspective, and it might be intentional.

A few nitpicks: There is actually one status that wipes out phantom cards: Sleep makes you lose all of them. And there's another curio that's even more absurd for generating phantom cards--one that says that for every 4 oracle cards you play, you get a phantom copy of all cards (real or phantom) you played. So in a full-oracle deck you can basically just play 3/4 of your cards infinite times and build up 50+ cards.

[iCarus]

Originally posted by brickey.8:

I totally agree that there should be a hand size limit to phantom cards. Maybe force you to discard down to 10 phantom cards (plus any number of real ones) at the end of each turn? As is, the strategy is fun to think about right up until you actually do it and the game slows down to a crawl as you manage all those cards.

Exhume cards for the stranger can also drag things out if you take too many/draw them too early. The problem's kinda the reverse there--you can't get them out of your hand to draw new cards, because playing them just retrieves your other exhume cards I'm not sure there's an easy silver bullet for that from a game design perspective, and it might be intentional.

A few nitpicks: There is actually one status that wipes out phantom cards: Sleep makes you lose all of them. And there's another curio that's even more absurd for generating phantom cards--one that says that for every 4 oracle cards you play, you get a phantom copy of all cards (real or phantom) you played. So in a full-oracle deck you can basically just play 3/4 of your cards infinite times and build up 50+ cards.

Interesting -- I only played a little bit (5 hours or so) so clearly my perspective is a bit limited. And even then I was able to spot the problem, which kinda goes to show that the problem is fairly significant.
The hand size does seem like a major issue, the game simultaneously wants you to be able to have an unlimited amount of non-library cards and doesn't support you doing so (especially with KBM, maybe controllers can at least scroll through them).

I didn't realize Sleep removes those, but I haven't met a mob that actively inflict it the same way Stun and Burn does. So maybe if enough mobs do that, the phantom card problem can be somewhat counterbalanced. (though that'd be kind of a bad way to balance the game imo)

[brickey.8]

Nah, there's only 2-3 enemies that inflict sleep (some of the flying casters in the library, and the jester enemies who start appearing later in the game). If you have enough versatile phantom cards they should only hit you if you screw up. And anyways, a binary yes/no where certain attacks remove *all* your built up phantom cards at once (potentially 20-30 minutes of work) is kind of even worse than the initial problem.

[iCarus]

Originally posted by brickey.8:

Nah, there's only 2-3 enemies that inflict sleep (some of the flying casters in the library, and the jester enemies who start appearing later in the game). If you have enough versatile phantom cards they should only hit you if you screw up. And anyways, a binary yes/no where certain attacks remove *all* your built up phantom cards at once (potentially 20-30 minutes of work) is kind of even worse than the initial problem.

welp, hope the devs can take a look at rebalancing this aspect of the game because I've successfully optimized the fun out of this game lol
my metaslave mind is now forbidding me from playing any deck that don't involve trivializing every encounter by having a horde of phantom cards and roleplaying a lv15 DnD (divination) wizard

[manalithstudios]

Greetings, everyone! This is Fressato, the Lead Designer of the game.

I had the chance to read your recent forum discussions, and I've also had a chat with the team regarding the concerns raised here. First and foremost, I'd like to emphasize that, as Dungeon Drafters is a singleplayer experience and designed as such, we don't have a problem with the game featuring powerful combos. However, we believe that these combos should be attainable only by players who possess exceptional deckbuilding skills and a deep understanding of the game mechanics. I'll delve into this topic shortly.

It's worth noting that we were aware that players could amass an infinite number of cards, but we needed some time to implement a more user-friendly interface, especially when the numbers started to spiral out of control. The good news is that this is one of the reasons we're improving the UI in the upcoming 1.1 update.

There have been some valid points raised in this discussion regarding game balance, and I want to assure you that the 1.1 update will tackle these concerns as well. As I mentioned earlier, we believe that overpowered combos should be challenging to achieve and should demand a great deal from the player. As a small indie team, we may not have had as much resources for playtesting as the game truly deserved. This has led to certain cards and mechanics being exceptionally potent, such as Exhume.

We understand that Phantoms can often give players a sense of being overpowered, and that's relatively intentional. We aim to provide players with a feeling of power when executing medium-level combos, even if they aren't technically broken. Some of the card changes we've made should mitigate the issue of easily creating Phantoms. While there will still be ways to break the game, you, as a skilled player, will need to go beyond the simple "have 2 copycats in hand and spam them all the time" approach.

I hope this clarifies some of the doubts and issues you've raised. While our solution might not align with everyone's expectations, we believe it will contribute to a healthier game overall. Importantly, it won't add significantly to our production timeline, as our game's intricacies make adjustments somewhat challenging. Thank you all for your valuable input and support!

[iCarus]

Originally posted by manalithstudios:

I had the chance to read your recent forum discussions, and I've also had a chat with the team regarding the concerns raised here. First and foremost, I'd like to emphasize that, as Dungeon Drafters is a singleplayer experience and designed as such, we don't have a problem with the game featuring powerful combos. However, we believe that these combos should be attainable only by players who possess exceptional deckbuilding skills and a deep understanding of the game mechanics. I'll delve into this topic shortly.

This is why I didn't call it "broken" or "overpowered." Every deckbuilder I've played, roguelike or not, features broken combos. While a Roguelite is easier to balance due to those runs being exceedingly rare, having a constructed deck is somewhat of a different beast. In every card game, "constructed" is the mode that takes the most thought to balance as players naturally gravitate towards the strongest deck and it is often difficult to have multiple archetypes be on the same level. The meta (for a pvp game) therefore becomes "unhealthy" when a singular archetype dominates the scene. Here, I think just having one curio that trivializes the entire early-game is definitely not the play -- Dungeon Drafters seem to flourish in the mid-point between when a player has every card available to them and when they have none, like when starting out in a (competitive) card game and you are scraping by with budget and scrappy decks. Something to watch out for here is that there shouldn't be an "obvious best choice" that the player can easily gravitate towards, as that kinda takes away the fun part of deckbuilding. But in any case, constructed card games are really difficult to balance and I hope you guys come out better for having tried it.

[Icedfate]

i don't have this game, just chiming in, i personally don't have a problem with being overpowered in a single player game.

but in general, i have seen this in lots of game
when one particular playstyle or one specific weapon or spell outshines all the others , then it pretty much makes me feel like there's no point in using anything else.
no point in using suboptimal strategy, if a singular dominant strategy exists.

this is where balance comes in and yeah, it can be a challenge to make a game balanced where multiple weapon builds, multiple character builds are all equally viable. l and usually devs "balance" it by nerfing everything but one could go the otherway and make everyone equally overpowered, but yeah, it should take work and a bit of luck for a player to get overpowered. a player should have to work for it. nit just have it right out the door.