[Bleeding Edge] A Few Thoughts

[was_fired]

1. I think environmental damage is a bit too high at the moment. I had two characters who ended up being rooted in environmental conditions two turns turns resulting in over 60 damage instant killing both... in separate encounters. I do appreciate the change from making anything except poison into something you could just ignore, but this feels a bit too punishing at the moment.

2. Some boss abilities seem really broken at the moment based on how they can show up in combinations. I had a play end because a summoner had to be the last enemy killed and due to deaths my group couldn't target his summons thanks to how turrets aim. Combined with the stacking vulnerability ability and that was an unfortunate wipe.

I just had a different play through end when I ran across a sand spirit boss with a special that granted 3 avert per turn... against a group with one two remaining characters both of which focused on defensive skills so would rarely get that many attacks per turn. Coupled with a limit of 10 cards per turn.

I appreciate being forced to think of new solutions and combinations including limiting how many cards I play each turn, but some of these combine to just be less than fun to go against.

3. I miss the old card leveling system. The old system seemed to focus on making super cards and specializing them to unlock new and powerful possibilities. The new one has less unique specializations so you just end up with either minor power boosts or a one time other type of minor power boost.

You don't run into as many transformative options such as switching what stat a defensive card uses (I loved that one), raising card costs, lowering them or having them give additional secondary benefits like channel, agility or rage.


Anyways thank you again for making the game, and I do really enjoy it. I also love the addition of SP as an additional resource although it does seem that the balance across characters isn't there yet. So I look forward to seeing it all of this gets further refined.

[dwmr]

Heya, thanks for the feedback!

1. Could you share a bit more information on which difficulty level/environmental effect it was? In general we've added more ways to purge debuffs via consumables and skills, so we do want to achieve a right balance of challenge and fairness (pending more changes).

2. We'll be adjusting the values of these traits for fairness.

3. That is still quite possible - the balance of power has shifted somewhat to items and talents as we were looking at progression as a whole. Items before was constantly described as lackluster, so we wanted to make them much more viable ways of improving your hero. You can think of having a skill socket as your flexible third mastery slot.

You can easily get up to Rank 3 as early as Level 3 if you find a Power rune and have a matching item talent. Skill sockets on items will allow you to modify your own skills in a flexible manner - along with the ability to edit your deck, you do have more flexibility than before. If you've equipped the relevant artifacts, you can make this happen 100% of the time on any run.

Regarding the Versatile option, it will be added as a rune alongside Grace, Conviction, and Judgement. This means that any skill can have that mastery and you won't be limited to picking that on select cards before. On a whole, generic masteries are more available to more cards, while individual cards can start having more unique ones (we are adding these in over time, for example some Passive cards now have a Doctrine modifier which lets you passively generate SP, and Trap cards have an Increased Payload modifier which increases status stack application).

The new rank up system also allows you to boost cards past Rank 4 as you reach the level breakpoints - so a combination of the above can boost select cards to Rank 7 or higher.

Furthermore, Mastery no longer requires max ranks, so you can pick a mastery as soon as it is available on the skill grid.

Hope that addresses some of the concerns, and we'll definitely continue to improve on the shortcomings you mentioned, and to remove some of the friction you experience.

[sandman25dcsss]

I think 9 cards limit per turn is too low, especially late game (my characters had 6-7 AP and there are only a few expensive defence cards) and especially when you have Golemancer. Maybe replace it with "SP cards cannot be used".

[was_fired]

I've been playing on hard difficulty. For #1 I think I have run into two instant deaths from flaming ground and one from poison ground.

The poison ground one was generated by the spider boss so that might be a bit more fair, but on the flip side that's also an encounter where the boss and a lot of the minions have unavoidable root abilities. So it can guarantee you will get at least 3 stacks of poison on one card when it first casts it. Then if you aren't careful you can end up with a mix of rooted and pulled characters who can end up with over 100 damage from it the next round.

The flaming ground ones were against groups that had a mix of root abilities, a boss that would randomly root one character per turn and knockback. In retrospect I could have prevented one of these deaths by moving another character to force them off the square, but at the time I thought avert would reduce the damage which ended up exceeding 60 points once two rounds of fire were applied, and which avert 1 didn't stop.

[jdavh]

ive been reasonably "safe" from the debuffs on characters hurting bad (after some play). ive had naran or cathrine in most of groups ive had (green naran and currently enforcer and previous runs had cathrine as a mender). both have solid abilities to remove multiple debuffs, cathrine has two straight off in her mender kit. ive been using a bunch of lucian and he has a personal debuff remover (maybe more) available. seems like many cards that used to be of lower value (things that dont just crush kill and destroy) are now of greater importance than they were before.

the supressor and avert buff combo.....ugh yeah that really hurts. those additional buffs in some combinations hurt bad.... they hurt real real bad (thank the lord they changed the one that limited damage each shot to 8). though the number and distribution of those buff is also a solid ground for difficulty alteration (there have been complaints for a while about the game being too easy). if anything i would like to see more of those boss/enemy buffs so that there is more variety of what combinations you hit and with what frequency. having a tiering to those enemy buffs could be great as well since you could have buffs that would appear on bosses but not on ones that would just get one or more "champion" buffs. something as simple as adding a buff for each dot effect (one for burning, poison, chill etc) have those apply one stack of their appropriate dot type on all enemies (so the party) would be a start though similar could be done with buff granting such as avert, armour, immune etc for the buff holders team simple but effective low tier buffs. in the mean time stuff such as suppressor and such would be a higher level of monster buff since they have a stronger effect on players options in battle.

leveling and the skill grid. not having a third option in the masteries has sucked (i rather like those extra options), this is offset by skills being able to be socketed to items for additional bonuses and alterations (if you get the right socket for the skill). the loss of runes in rings belts etc on the other hand ergh. the fact that clone nodes no longer copy the level and mastery of the cloned skill hurt. the loss of single stat nodes giving a respec point has made it far more difficult to alter the deck early (found that far more noticable in campaign rather than realms).

[sandman25dcsss]

Debuffs are too cruel for new players I think. I forgot how many stacks you need to trigger cold damage and lost 2 heroes from full HP after killing 1 unit. The unit had "gives 3 cold debuffs after death to units in lane" and I thought like "it is not a big deal, I don't have any cold debuffs currently". But it turns out 3 is the max for cold debuffs so it instantly triggered delayed damage.
The game is no longer too easy. It is a bit frustrating though: when I play without reloads, I die to random factors like first boss going first in second round and killing my hero from full HP despite I had +10 initiative talent on all heroes". If I play with reloads, the power of traits is so different that the combat can go from losing no HP to game over depending on the traits.

[was_fired]

I really miss the respec points from getting +1 attribute. I may also be a bit weird since I tend to no keep shrinking my deck so the -1 min deck size cards are mostly dead grid spaces for me. That said I know that they are expected to be the key to having some absolutely broken combinations.

[jdavh]

Originally posted by was_fired:

I really miss the respec points from getting +1 attribute. I may also be a bit weird since I tend to no keep shrinking my deck so the -1 min deck size cards are mostly dead grid spaces for me. That said I know that they are expected to be the key to having some absolutely broken combinations.

ive found the same yet with how things have been going ive kinda been forced to keep the deck small (though not below the starting 12). keeping the deck small means that you have better chance of getting the same cards turn after turn, this is becoming more important ive been finding.

it would be nice if they attached the deck size reduction to the remove a card node (just mash them together) instead of the respec point on the card removal node while puting the respec point back on the single stat point. that or add a recpec to the initiative or hp nodes to help the options in the early game.

[sandman25dcsss]

Small decks are not broken here, I don't see a way to create infinites, limited modifier prevents it. I had deck size 6 on some character and still used 9 cards because this was my draw size.

[was_fired]

I think instead of a minimum deck size it might be nice to just combine the remove / reduce deck size card into one. So each would force you to both remove one card, and give you the ability to toggle one card on or off.

Also after my last fight I'm shaking my fist at a boss fight against the scorpion king that also included a titan with abilities. So I ended up facing 1 random teleport + 2 characters rooted per turn. Combining those with his poison ground and guard breaker attacks made it a less than enjoyable fight in a group that specialized in armor and mobility.

Since you can't really get out of the lane when only one of the three characters can move and random teleports mean that you need to also spend some of that move trying to shuffle characters out of poison ground.

[4Horsemen]

please dont turn this game from a strategy game into a grind fest.. its starting to feel very grindy and not fun. Id rather die quickly than be slowly beaten to death over 25 rounds.

[4Horsemen]

not sure if it was mentioned but Conversations around the campfire do not decrease exhaustion at all.. they just waste an hour off the clock

[4Horsemen]

yeah some of the characters are immediately locked behind a level criteria ( cannot upgrade card until level 13 )...??? not even once on a 4 tier card??? well right out of the gate your scratching your head... level 13??? can we at least get some sort of feeling for progression say unlock another tier every 4 levels or something.

[jdavh]

Originally posted by WeldingUnit:

yeah some of the characters are immediately locked behind a level criteria ( cannot upgrade card until level 13 )...??? not even once on a 4 tier card??? well right out of the gate your scratching your head... level 13??? can we at least get some sort of feeling for progression say unlock another tier every 4 levels or something.

it seems like the higher the cards rarity the later you have to wait to level or master the card (kinda a decent change though a little annoying at the start)

Originally posted by was_fired:

I think instead of a minimum deck size it might be nice to just combine the remove / reduce deck size card into one. So each would force you to both remove one card, and give you the ability to toggle one card on or off.

Also after my last fight I'm shaking my fist at a boss fight against the scorpion king that also included a titan with abilities. So I ended up facing 1 random teleport + 2 characters rooted per turn. Combining those with his poison ground and guard breaker attacks made it a less than enjoyable fight in a group that specialized in armor and mobility.

Since you can't really get out of the lane when only one of the three characters can move and random teleports mean that you need to also spend some of that move trying to shuffle characters out of poison ground.

those secondary "leiutenants" in boss fights can really bugger you. still think that they should add more affixes that can be added so that there is more variety (since i think there are only tenish that can be rolled right now) as well as some tiering to those that can roll.

[was_fired]

Originally posted by jdavh:

those secondary "leiutenants" in boss fights can really bugger you. still think that they should add more affixes that can be added so that there is more variety (since i think there are only tenish that can be rolled right now) as well as some tiering to those that can roll.

I agree, that would definitely help. I like the variety that these add to combat and I also love how some of them can be countered. The invincibility every other turn for example is vulnerable to dispel.

Originally posted by WeldingUnit:

please dont turn this game from a strategy game into a grind fest.. its starting to feel very grindy and not fun. Id rather die quickly than be slowly beaten to death over 25 rounds.

While some fight definitely do drag out more than they used to thanks to lower damage I think that is more of a tuning problem. Ultimately being able to wipe out every enemy in one turn wasn't well balanced, so shifting it to taking 3 turns isn't a terrible move.

I do agree that the weakening of direct damage cards in favor of condition stack cards doesn't feel like it's properly balanced yet. So hopefully we can see some further boosts to direct damage and weakening of condition based attacks.

That said, I do love tossing out swarms of potent lightning storms with the artifact that doubles how many shock charges you apply... it's a pretty broken combination.