Demo feedback

[RedShirtKing]

I'm a huge basketball fan and card game player, so this game was right up my alley. There's a lot to like here, and a few things I think could go a long way for when the game releases in April.

The good:
* You really nailed the feeling of a basketball game. There are momentum swings for each team, combo plays that feel satisfying, and seeing the stat box after the game really adds to the flavor and overall atmosphere, especially once a player has gone through the customization options to add names to each player.
* I love how you had multiple different leagues around the world that each played with their own ruleset and had different strategies they tended to prioritize. Playing in the South American tournament felt very different than playing in the North American one, and I was pleasantly surprised by how much small changes affected things.
*Having players get new resources after every quarter made it feel like I was a coach drawing up plays to counter what our opponent was doing. Felt great and plays well too from a balance perpsective.

Could be improved:
* The lack of player introduction meant I completely missed how many customization options were actually available. Players having "real" names instead of being a generic "point guard" as a standard would go a long way towards improving the baseline feeling of playing in a real basketball league (random name generators would work, though if you have the capacity to come up with funny references to active players or some jokey ideas similar to Super Mega Baseball 4, even better), but the ability to customize your starting deck for each player is a huge selling point that I completely missed until right before I decided to write this!
* The new player experience can definitely be improved in terms of the first run players will make. Every card game player will tell you that more mana/energy to play more cards is *everything* when it comes to a team's power level, so I was stunned to see the opposing team start with two more mana than me in the second game of the tournament in my very first run. I'm not sure what internal stats say about how far players get in their first attempt, but seeing the computer be able to do so much more stuff than you while you're still learning the game just feels bad, even if the stats say it's not as bad as players think.
* I also think the game is probably just significantly harder than it needs to be on difficulty 1 of I believe 6 options if I was reading that screen correctly. The mana difference is a huge part of that, but crowd noise is also brutal if you're on the away side. Home field advantage should matter, and I like that you include it as an additional challenge to overcome, but the inability to force an enemy team into the negatives really limits the amount of an impact you can have to reduce their power when they're already drawing more cards and have more energy on a base level. Even if bringing into the negative had no bonus, more inertia before the enemy team could get the crowd pumped again would make my big turns feel more meaningful.
*There are also some wicked strong defensive cards that are basically unstoppable unless you happened to get offered a specific counter card (I'm not sure if Pump Fake is the *only* one that removes an enemy defense, but it's the only one I could find). I'd built a team around three pointers that was very consistent, but once my opponent player Perimeter Defense - a card that cost more mana than I even have as a player on an average turn - there was nothing I could do to come back into that game. "Your cards cost 2 more mana" would be backbreaking for a single turn in Hearthstone. Having to play against it for a full game with no recourse (just never got offered a card that could fight back) was miserable. I don't mind there being strong cards as long as there are counters that are reasonably easy to access, and I won't tell you the best balance choice because you know the game best, but as a player, that felt awful.

I elaborated more on the negatives than the positives because they're easier to pinpoint, but I wouldn't have as much to say if I didn't think the game was worth my time and had made me invested enough that these choices could frustrated me in the first place. I'll be excited for the final release and have wishlisted it, and I'm sure I can come up with some very fun combos now that I know you can customize your opening cards.

I just hope you can keep the new player experience in mind. I had these issues as someone with hundreds of hours in numerous games in this same vein. I can't imagine how hard it would have been if I was just a basketball fan who didn't really play roguelikes but thought a card game around my favorite sport looked cool.

[Bigosaur]

Thanks for detailed feedback. :)

I like the idea of adding a "Generate random names" option for all teams that have standard PG,SG,etc. positions. I think I will add something like that, maybe even as an option when you first start the game.

The computer having more mana (stamina) and card draw is balanced by you always playing first and knowing their cards in hand. Of course, CPU is also somewhat dumb as I didn't want to make an ai that plays a perfect game, but rather just some heuristics, so it's predictable and makes mistakes sometimes. In any case, during playtesting, it ranged from people beating it on the first try, to some players taking a dozen runs. It all depends on how quickly you get a hang of game mechanics. In early tournament games card draw and energy are a priority, but often a single card (ex. Heat Check or Crossover) is enough to win it all.

In any case, I wanted the game to be challenging. I made sure that every competition type is beatable on every difficulty and there are different strats, but it takes time to discover them. However, when you finally do and win it, it should feel much more significant accomplishment. I know I might get some negative feedback on that decision, but that's my vision for the game currently.

You can remove Perimeter Defense with "Pump Fake", "Full Court Pass", and "Up and Under". You can also out-stamina it with Tactics, Plan Ahead, Double Double, Coast to Coast and other cards that give you a lot of stamina like Deluxe Locker Room, Energy Drink, Shooting Drill, Recovery, Load Management. Also if you get Crossover with some of those, it can be a great combo.

The tournament mode does depend on luck a little bit, as you don't get many card drops. You are still guaranteed tier-1 drops, but sometimes you might just run into a team that has cards that create major problems for your build. Because of all this, the best counter for Perimeter Defense in Tournament is not to go too heavy on 3P build, especially if you have none of the other cards I listed above.

With Season or Playoff mode it's much easier. You get more opportunity to build the deck as you can lose some games and still win the competition in the end.

[RedShirtKing]

I can definitely see how the longer formats will go a long way towards ensuring players have enough time to find the cards they need to counter specific strategies if they don't already have them. I'll also add that a guided tutorial highlighting that those cards exist and highlighting how they work in this kind of circumstance would go a long way towards removing new player confusion and perception. I didn't see any of those cards until my second tournament, which definitely affected my perception of the balance as an initial experience.

I also really respect the choice to make a challenging game, and I hope you have thresholds in mind for what percentage of players should be able to clear certain difficulties in certain amounts of time. It's hard for me to imagine just how much tougher this game is going to get by level 6 given the current level of challenge I'm already seeing, but you've got access to a lot of data I don't, and I trust you've got a vision for what "challenging" means at each tier that will be even more clear when those larger scale modes are out.

Thanks again for a fun demo! Looking forward to the full game.

[rookiebatman]

Originally posted by Bigosaur:

I like the idea of adding a "Generate random names" option for all teams that have standard PG,SG,etc. positions. I think I will add something like that, maybe even as an option when you first start the game.

I definitely think having names in the game is better than not. I saw there's a function in the game that allows you to modify a team and change not only the names, but also the cards that the team uses. Will people be able to upload those modded teams to the workshop?

You could also have the card show a jersey (in the team color, which should also be customizable) with the player name and number, replacing the little position letters in the bottom left corner. Stuff like that doesn't really matter much in a four-game tournament, but people playing a full season will probably want to feel a bit more of a connection with their players.

If modders were able to make and share their takes on real historical teams (which other people could then play in seasons, or pit against each other in tournaments), that would probably increase the appeal of this game for a certain type of gamer.

[Bigosaur]

Originally posted by rookiebatman:

Will people be able to upload those modded teams to the workshop?

Yes. In fact, the whole game will be fully moddable with Steam Workshop support. I'm working on that currently.

[rookiebatman]

Originally posted by Bigosaur:

Originally posted by rookiebatman:

Will people be able to upload those modded teams to the workshop?

Yes. In fact, the whole game will be fully moddable with Steam Workshop support. I'm working on that currently.

That's exciting! As someone who's had a fascination with turn-based sports games for basically my entire life, this is my most anticipated game right now (since I discovered it in NextFest a week ago). I'm really looking forward to the full release.

[Bigosaur]

Just a note that I'm starting to integrate Steam Workshop and I needed some mods for testing, so I decided to add Random Name Generator as a mod:

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3460086636

This will be available on launch day.

[RedShirtKing]

Awesome! I'll definitely be downloading it.

Originally posted by Bigosaur:

Just a note that I'm starting to integrate Steam Workshop and I needed some mods for testing, so I decided to add Random Name Generator as a mod:

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3460086636

This will be available on launch day.