Chapter 9 mission 3 Hard is unbeatable

[LeDuffy]

As the title says that mission is too hard. I have beat all hard missions up to this one, including mission 49 Colossus. But after 100+ games i have given up on completing chapter 9 mission 3 on hard, and have stopped playing the game solely because of this mission.
Clearly no one playtested this mission. The opponent starts with enough attack that before you can even play any of the cards you've purchased, you will be below 30 hp, and the opponent has thinned his already thinner deck.

[76561198279008935]

Are you on the latest version? An earlier version mistakenly had the opponent start with The Oracle rather than a Warning Beacon in play.

[LeDuffy]

Yeah i played the version with Warning Beacon. It was still too strong, maybe because he gets to redraw his new cards faster because he starts with a thinner deck because the warning beacon is in play instead of in deck.

[nintendad]

Obviously you're not new to the game, but just to bring it up...if you look up the campaign chapters online you'll find the designers pretty much do this with every chapter they release. They still haven't been able to balance one well. Missions range from cakewalks to ludicrously hard, not because the AI is playing better but because they stack the deck so much against the player. It's the old "killer dungeon" model, brought to life for a new age, covered up in, "Keep trying! It's possible!" language. Beating a scenario once in a hundred times doesn't bring a feeling of accomplishment, but frustration. Even for good players, that amount of grinding is possible on some of these missions, including 9-3 as you mention. The best advice is to buy the original game so you can play against humans when desired, but don't spend a cent on the add-on campaigns. You're just going to find frustrating design choices ruining the experience.

[76561198279008935]

The though part is to have missions for a wide range of players. Hard missions are frequently very hard - they're intended to be (at least somewhat) challenging even for some of the best players. Sometimes that makes the missions too hard for a chunk of the player base.

I hate to repeat the sentiment pastordave seems to dislike, but it is indeed possible - our stats show winrates far above 1/100 in this particular mission.

[Monosaurus]

I beat all the missions on hard, so none of them are impossible, but I wouldn't say it takes any particular skill.

Some of the missions are unwinnable if you don't get certain types of cards before the first reshuffle, and the AI isn't able to buy certain types of cards before their first shuffle...unfortunately, it doesn't end there, because then you need the correct draw to happen for you, and a bad draw to happen to the AI (again, relative to the cards available for purchase...and this usually involve their bases coming out first, and you being able to take them out at your first opportunity), after which point you have a chance with proper play.

Really, it's just a brute force equation, which is a pretty lazy out for achieving "hard" difficulty. If the first sequence doesn't go right, restart until it does, otherwise you're just wasting your time...if the first sequence goes right, but the second sequence doesn't go right, restart until it does, otherwise you're just wasting your time...etc.

[nintendad]

I hear and respect your reply, JayWWG. Thank you for engaging in the discussion. Three points:

1. "It is possible" seems to be a standard answer, but it doesn't really address the issue. We could set up a target 1" wider than the diameter of a football, back people up 100 yards, and have them throw the football through it. It is possible. NFL quarterbacks would even have an advantage doing it. That doesn't make it an appropriate or interesting challenge. It's also possible to have you sit down and shuffle a deck of cards randomly until 13 spades end up on top. I assure you, it is possible. That doesn't make a good game.

2. MonoZeroth just above echoes my experience as well. Forget 1 in 100 if you like. Does beating something even 1 in 20 times matter if force-restart is the technique because the opponent deck is stacked? We're not just talking a situation where playing poorly dooms you. Even playing well doesn't matter most of the time. In many of these back-breaker scenarios the cards will ordain a negative outcome regardless of skill. Better players will win more often than poor players, surely, but the percetage of attempts in which skill will prove the critical difference seems small compared to the number of attempts that are doomed from the start. The NFL Quarterback and the neophyte will both miss that 100-yard target most of the time. Success in the challenge doesn't differentiate them, it just shows their willingness to stand back and hurl.

3. I accept that I am not among the elite at Star Realms. I have three-starred most every mission on Hard...eventually, but I doubt that says much other than I'm persistent. I'd bet most good online players can beat me. That probably doesn't matter much unless we can demonstrate conclusively that the ultra-elite players can beat these scenarios repeatedly. I've never heard of anyone bragging about beating Colossus even twice in a row, let alone regularly. But EITHER WAY your response supports the assertion I made above: the overwhelming majority of people should purchase enough of the base game to play online or against their desired level of AI. They should probably stay away from the campaigns, as the campaigns just aren't designed for them. Campaign scenarios live at the edges of the bell curve of difficulty,:too easy or ludicrously hard, with at least one teeth-grinding show-stopper per chapter. Maybe the non-passable levels are designed for, and good for, the super-elite. That's fair. But then it's also fair for us "normal" people to say, "Most people should not purchase this."

[Monosaurus]

I forget which mission it was, or if it was pre/post-patch, but one or two of them required a very unlikely sequence to unfold. If the success rate is above 2%, I'd be surprised. Maybe Jay can answer, but if I "leave" a campaign mission, rather than "concede", and go back into it, does that count as a loss? It should, but if it doesn't, I'd say whatever success rate you're seeing is hugely inflated.

In any event, I really struggled with it, and I imagine the average player would do considerably worse than I did (one month I finished top 50, and have a 61% online win percentage (462 wins in 757 games)).