Please share your thoughts on : Infinite decks

[dwmr]

Today's topic :

Since Gauntlet Mode is the next big thing, balance is the big issue we want to address. The health of the game does depend on builds and heroes being fun to play, and not just plainly overpowered and outclassing everyone else.

For everyone wondering what's gonna happen to infinite decks... our initial discussions have led to a new stat tentatively called Max Cards Per Turn (default 6) which as the name implies, determines how many cards you can play on your turn.

You can increase this value through items, statuses, talents, or having a high Dexterity. Essentially "infinite" will no longer be possible in the true sense, but you can still pull off a long chain of cards if you have a high value, and as a result of having a larger deck.

Strength and Intelligence will be getting their own unique bonuses as well. High Intelligence will increase your card draw, making it something all heroes might want some of. Strength's bonus is yet to be determined.

Feel free to share your thoughts on this!

[Lorska]

I think having a restriction on cards played isn't a good thing. It just makes it mandatory to throw everything out that isn't the exact 6 cards you want to play. Considering that you'll want a ton of this new stat you'll have to dump an extraordinary amount of points into it which doesn't feel very fair.
There is also the issue of making some cards worse that don't need that treatment (looking at golden bard cards for draw which heavily rely on long combos but don't go infinite). Interstingly lucian's zeal of all things would get even better because you don't want to waste cards on draw and extra AP on other characters.

As I understand, infinite decks come from endless deck cycling, by only reusing the same tiny draw/discard pile over and over. It might be more elegant to instead limit deck reshuffling. This would also add another layer on card usage, as you'll want to shuffle your deck when it's mostly full.

This keeps the "large deck = better" idea intact without imposing many arbitrary restrictions. This just means you'll at best use each card twice.

The weakness of this is obviously card generation in hand, but I'm not aware of infinite strategies that use that.

tl;dr
It would hurt other builds too and is imo a not very fun restriction

[Zeel Ara]

I think it's something that is really fun to strive for, and very little fun to play for extended amounts of time. An infinite deck is something that's really interesting as long as it's an "if", but becomes a game killer if it's ever a "when". The strength and weakness of Gordian Quest is that you have so much time and so many options to upgrade and fine tune your decks. Currently this means that you can *always* get an infinite if you want to. The only question is how long it will take you.

Infinites in and of themselves aren't problem. They're something a lot of people love trying to get. The consistency with which you can achieve them is what makes or breaks things. With the low amount of cards, the huge amount of customization allowed, and extended time given to work on decks, I don't think infinites can exist in Gordian Quest without become the only correct way to play the game. They become a matter of solving the game, and once you have solved it there's never a reason to play it again.

An important question you should ask people is how often they can build an infinite in the current state of the game if they set out to try. If the answer is anything other than "Always", then they are still learning, and can only speak to how the game plays for new players and/or those that take a while to solve systems.

Let me make it clear that there's nothing wrong with not having solved the game yet. That's when a game is fun! It's great that they're having this experience; that's what it should feel like to play a game. 3k hours in Slay the Spire, and I am still improving and learning. Watch streams of the best players in the world, and they will all tell you that they are still learning. Not all games can reach that level of depth, but it is something you should strive for.

And reliable infinites removes all depth from a game. There's no reason to ever improve if you have a silver bullet.

I am not convinced that a max card per turn limit is the optimal way to achieve the goal in a permanent way. It's a bit heavy handed. But I think it's a GREAT starting point. Maybe it'll turn out to be perfect. Or maybe it will "only" give an idea of what it fun and strong about the game in an ecosystem without infinites. And that knowledge is absolutely needed going forward.

[The Jason Order]

I personally think this is the wrong approach to the problem. A hard cap on something like this hinders design and limits the player to simply choosing the best 6 (or more) cards each turn as their desired deck rather than addressing the underlying issues of some cards having so much value they destroy the game.

Infinite decks aren't inherently broken. Slay the Spire even has achievements built around some of these. The issue is the ease of which these are obtained, and how, currently, the vast majority of cards are very underwhelming, and provide no synergy, and have no hope of redemption through class synergy or items.

Slay the Spire has a relic (and difficulty options) that limit your cards per turn but also provides an additional reward. This actually increases the skill and decision making. Tangible tradeoffs are great design, and letting the player tailor builds around it.

The main hindrance to cards per turn should be AP.

I don't want to keep pointing to examples from other games, as this game is very much its own game and should have its own identity. But Slay the Spire is the most popular game in this type of genre, and has had years to refine a lot of the problems you are experiencing here.

I think one of the core issues with the game right now is lack of identity in deck building. You simply aim for the best cards, and ignore everything else, all the time. At the moment, some of these cards are so good that you literally aim for only these, and once you have them, it's over.

The proper approach, in my opinion, is to have multiple strong builds, made significantly stronger than others by something else in game. For example, if you get a certain relic in Slay the Spire, you start aiming for specific cards.

For this game, the clear solution to this, for me, is that items should function the same way. A legendary shield should let me completely tailor my build to be defensive. A legendary 2 hand sword that functions around card X should encourage me to build around it. Right now, the vast majority of legendary items are simply not even worth equipping over literally using nothing in the slot, which is really a shame.

Here's how things are now:

- I have these heroes in my party. I want these cards on them. I always want the same gear.
- All builds are useless until I get this card, then broken (Kill Streak and Zeal being the most egregious of these).
- I better take zero extra cards and reroll everything to keep my deck small so I can infinite with X card.

here's my ideal of how things could be:

- I got this great legendary item. I'm going to build my entire deck around it, for this run.
- I made a party with a bard. I should use my warrior this way.
- I got this great card. I'm going to build the rest of my deck around it.

This increase replayability, reduces monotony, and is overall, in my opinion, just more fun.

Here's some ideas of legendary items that would be fantastic, and change HOW you play when you get them.

- Extra AP/damage/damage reduction for every X card in your deck.
- Shield: At the end of each turn, hit each (X?) enemy with your guard.
- Shift to a cell before each attack (lets you use all the close range/long range distance cards really well)
- Rage/Berzerk: All cards are expended when used, but you are stronger in some crazy way.

And here's the main problem with infinites:

-There should NEVER be a 0 cost draw and damage card, unless it is conditional, with a somewhat rare condition that requires synergy. An example would be, draw a card if the target you hit has vulnerable. This gives it a functional limit while also rewarding the player for other syngergy! What do we have currently? Swift strike -ap rune, a 0 Ap card that draws itself and does damage. Yikes.
-Cards that grant resources on X or Y need conditions. I hesitate to say Kill Streak here, because it technically does require you to kill an enemy. The problem is is grants free resources without a limit, and you can stack multiple of them. Are 2 extra 0 dmg cards broken? Not really, but 4 is problematic, and 6 definitely are.

This post being very unfocused fast, but it made me want to do and item/card pass when I have more time. Would you rather cards be given feedback by class or by power level first?

[WrongGamer]

Maybe should just add limits for card stock around 20-30 per hero for example. With this limit, when player complete level of endless mode and come to safe area he can transferring few cards into special vault. Later when player find new gear items or learn specific perk he can improve his build by using cards from vault that before have less power without proper items.

So with this function Player potentionally can collect all cards and their improved versions by saving them into vault. At the same time player have some limits at deck size and can't be too powerful. It's will be much better than limits per turn.

If at some point of endless mode player feels that his characters don't have enough protection it will be possible change some cards from deck to cards in vault. This function will be available only at safe areas, but can be possible to add some random events that allow get access to vault during the adventures.

Of course player can save in vault only few amount of own cards for one time, at first level of endless mode he can drop three card, on second level four...
Or even better since this function can cost some amount of gold. This add more sense to loop of collecting items for further ability to save more cards and will be pushing players complete more activities that available on map.
However, than more cards players saved, than more become price for this. 100 gold at start... second for 150 gold... up to limit in 1000 gold. It's just raw numbers, but base principals should be understandable.

Save card or not, decide only player, but if he take three card from vault then he need to put three card in there. In this case exchange will be free and without limits. So when player wants full changing build for specific hero and he have enough cards for it there no will be problems to do it.

For example, at beginning my Bard plays healer role, but at some point of endless adventure other heroes find items for health recovering. Now for me is not so important to have healer in a team anymore and can change deck of Bard to something that allows boost team damage or resistance against negative effects, depends from situation, available cards, and potential dangers of the next adventure. The main appointment that player can save collection of all card that he unlock and create something like as infinite deck.

Sorry for bad English, but base idea should be understandable.

UPD: I almost forgot. In situation when player unlock cards with full deck limits they will be placed in inventory until player don't add them into vault. Player can't add this card to active deck until it comes to vault at least one time.
Or at full deck can just change nodes that grants new card in skill tree on nodes that require to replace an active cards. This can increase value of the vault even more.

[Lorska]

I completely forgot that you mentioned unique effects from attributes.

Maybe instead of having an additional combat bonus like extra draw, what if you had deck building bonuses instead. This could make attribute allocation a lot more important to create a coherent deck.

These are just examples, so take them with a grain of salt.
Dex: decreases minimum possible deck size (without investing into it you can't just remove everything)
Str: increases maximum amount of upgraded cards (so you can't just spam upgrade everything)
Int: increases card choice amount/card choice quality (making deck creation more consistent)

In this example you'd have these stats tied to removing, upgrading and adding cards

[Powerful Pygmy]

Unintended aspect that was fun.

It's on the player to limit or maximise how much fun they are having with the game.

That being said if you want to limit/remove it, limiting card play is going to cause unintended nerf's to other builds that has no where near the damage potential as infinity, AP generating MM comes to mind, i do like the idea of stats giving additional boosts to the characters outside of card numbers going up though but sometimes no fix is better than a bad fix.

[KooriJoufu]

One way I've seen infinites handled is by turning draw into a buff that applies next round instead of being immediate draw. Some of the cards in the game would have to change because of this but it would probably be gentler on the game.

You could also have it so cards that are played aren't discarded until end of turn.

[cymrpg999]

This "Max Cards Per Turn" thing should be a negative trait for some powerful items or cards.
Made it mandatory for each deck / hero is a bad idea, I think...
But I wonder, what's the reason to tumble over infinite decks?
Is it too many zero cost cards?
Please enlighten~

[Precache]

I say just limit it so that you can only draw each card in your deck once per turn. That way if people want long combos they need to add a bunch of filler cards to their deck, and it becomes a lot harder to control what you draw.

Max cards played per turn sounds an awful lot like actions, and if you do this you'll have two almost identical stats, which will confuse players.

Though I prefer my "draw each card a max of once per turn" idea, another way to go would be not have any 0 ap cost cards anymore as they are what is really breaking the game. Make every card cost at least 1 ap, and then add in a bunch of max ap boosters.

[cymrpg999]

I think 0AP cards are fine, just don't let them generated in items, but in normal skill tree, because skill tree will have harder time to get. And reduce more 0AP cards as well.

[Left-Hand Path]

Instead of restricting decks with long loops /infinite decks I ´d rather see a system where it is one effective deck type among others.

One idea would be to give players an incentive to play larger decks:

a.) Cards which scale with deck size or cards which profit from multible copies. Like a really powerful Tier 3 card with high base cost which gets cheaper depending on your deck size.

b.) Equipment which has attributes that scale with deck size.

For instance, a wepon might have the fallowing: +1 Attack Damage and +1 AD for every x cards in your deck (max. y)

c.) Equipment with modifiers that need a certain decks size to be active / get stronger:

Example: if your deck consists of at least x cards, draw a card at the start of your turn.

[Alice Bubblegum]

Don't do that, pls.

Dexterity already looks the main stat, if you change things, DEX will be even stronger and mandatory.
There's no reason to draw more cards with INT if I won't use them (and we know INT cards usually have high cost, so it's kinda bad to limit how many cards I can use, just picking the best and discarding tons of other cards)

Cards interacting with deck size is a great idea, not only for larger decks, but small decks too.
Adding a real finisher card is good, with the text "you can't draw or play more cards this turn" after you using it (I think there are some similar cards).

I like DJ Geräteschuppen(Ricochet) idea, but not only for large decks. Cards and equipments losing stats with more cards you own it's a cool feature too.
Cards need balance, the low cost cards have low damage, spells to low AP cost of other cards need something too. It's not a good idea limiting the single player game because of a leaderboard (???).

Maybe the "Max Cards Per Turn" can be a passive/tag, you have better cards, but you can play less cards per turn, we can have events to add that tag to cards (and you are rewarded in exchange). First of all you'd need to decide if the "Tag" is only for the turn or for the game, I mean, if you have a "tagged" card in hand your max cards played is reduced for only the current turn or "tagged" cards in your deck decide how many cards you can play for all turns.
- Only for the current turn (Tag can be "Chains"): only cards have the tag, more chained cards you have, less cards you can play in the turn.
- For all turns (Tag can be "Snowball" or "Warming" or "Building up","Training" etc): you can add the tag to equipments, this way we stack the passive. Tag: you can play x cards per turn. Tag +1: you can play x+1 cards per turn. Tag +6: you can play x+6 cards per turn. This is better than DEX, this way anybody can have Tagged cards/equipments, they can be weak but with good effects (like drawing or reducing costs), they can be stronger than usual cards, tagged stuff can be rare, so you will take time to build an infinite deck, but after you stack enough of this passive, you will be a god.

All these ideas could be a choice for the player, you can get cards/equipments with the Tag or not, if you limit yourself you'll be rewarded with better stuff

[jdavh]

i cant say that im big on the idea of max cards played per turn for single player since that could gut stab-o-matic rouge and beatdown cleric (two builds ive rather enjoyed)

though im not so opposed to it for gauntlet mode if you guys add a new stat (maybe a new perk as well) to be able to increase (or maybe some items decrease if the right offset bonuses are on the item) that value.

the only reason im for it for gauntlet mode is because since you guys have been puting the idea out there its seemed th\at leader boards and that sort of thing have been the aim for this mode and by addding the cap it would help with cutting down some potentialy op builds which could prevent some saturation of what meta may come about.

such restrictions arent really needed for the single player campaign, but for competition a meta will emerge and you will see people try to emulate others success with builds and with seven different characters already (hope there will be more) the idea of stagnating the top of those boards with the same builds over and over again isnt very appealing.

having the max cards per turn stat be only in gauntlet mode would also open room for gauntlet mode only items and gear (hey a consumable that lets you excede the max would also be a good add) though it may also be a hinderance since people will likely see the campaign mode as how you get ready for taking on gauntlet mode

another thing may be only allowing your discard to shuffle in at the begining or end of turn rather than whenever you get the draw off. this may be a better way of solving infinite builds since players who want to draw tons need to build a bigger deck to be able to burn through those cards or they can go for a smaller deck to increase their chances of key cards

[eharper256]

I'm all for letting people play the way they want to play; and if that involves infinidecks, then so be it.

Its a hard thing to root out entirely, so potentially nerfing builds to prevent it is only shooting yourself in the foot.

As many already note, DEX is pretty much the best stat in most instances right now, and if it were to be implemented as you've worded; it would only widen that disparity... and INT's bonus wouldn't be as good as this to even vaguely make up for that unless you also flat out killed draw on cards themselves.

[CheekiBreeker]

That is the most amateurish approach I have ever seen. No successful card game ever put a hard limit on number of cards played and force people to comply.

I'd say put a "soft" limit instead, by adding cards and relics that grant bonus if people play less than X cards per turn, or some sort of finisher cards that have excellent effect but end the turn after playing them. That way, the card limit feels rewarding, not forced.

Btw, this looks like a bad sign to me. Recently, from games still in beta stage like Urtuk the Desolation, to games that have been released for more than 5 years like Underrail, developers have joined a "nerf culture" of some sort. They set out on limiting how people enjoy the game by pushing ridiculous nerf, despite half of their playerbase being against it.

I sincerely hope this game does not follow that trend. It is a singleplayer game, not Company of Heroes or Hearthstone where people must compete with others to win. Expand on how people can enjoy the game, not limit it.