Cocofang

If "the integrity of the dev team depends on whether or not they are true to their word" alone isn't enough reason for you, I don't know. Building trust is of the utmost importance of fostering a positive long term relationship between players and devs. Besides, this game is already, factually dead. This is a pretty surprising revival that somehow got an "OK, whatever, just don't monetize it" from EA. You are talking about the studio that killed Dead Space out of sheer greed and incompetence because earning loads of money from a niche market wasn't enough. It had to be ALL the money from EVERYONE. So don't worry. This project here changes absolutely nothing about anything as far as big publishers are concerned. But hey, since the entire model is based entirely on what essentially is a lootbox, maybe we will see these type of games again. Depends on how greedy a publisher gets and how far they think they can push it. Then again, lootboxes are a naughty word these days after EAs Star Wars debacle. Slimy publishers even try to score good-boy points by proudly proclaiming that their game has none (even if it's monetized out the ass in other ways). Also, I can build up the argument from exactly the opposite angle as well: A fresh start encourages people to join and play because it gives an even playing field and nobody has literal years on anybody else. And as korsbaek said, it won't be unfair towards new players that missed potential "exploit early, exploit hard" scenarios in the unfinished, wonky version of the game. I am sure during the years of development there were some quite profitable exploits that are now fixed.

???????? What's wrong with the original artworks? They are OG, they are fine.

What do you mean by that? Strictly speaking there is no real price for cards unless you sell them directly in an official capacity and therefore set a limit to its market value. There is the relative rarity of a card compared to other cards and there is supply and demand. Also its usefulness. What are "prices of cards"? The average price over the last 30 days? Median? A graph? Something like this?

Well, most importantly because they decided on that a long time ago and people are expecting it to happen. It was public knowledge, I am actually surprised some people committed to this beta version unaware. You can't just flip flop on big things like that, you have to show integrity with your announcements. It's supposed to be a fresh, new start for everyone equally. Signifying the end of testing and an actual re-release of the game. Personally I think that the economy is doomed either way because the community will be small and a handful of market manipulators can easily corner certain sectors. It has been done in much more complex games with much larger playerbases. However the changes to charges will probably shake up the value of non-single charge cards. Also the new BFP system might be able to nudge the market a bit. We will see. Either way, that a final reset was going to happen was decided years ago and the decision stood firm. It's pretty normal that once a beta is over everything gets wiped for the big release so people can get into the release-version on equal footing progress wise.

Any update on the numbers or "boost stacking"? 90 minutes does seem a bit excessive. Especially with the added incentive to utilize the reserve pool.

Exaggeration to unreasonable heights isn't necessarily the same as making a point. 2/10 for effort too because you mostly only copied my post. The most used argument I see against the strength of certain cards is "I don't like it when other people don't play the game the way I want it to be played". You will always have this problem when you group up with randoms! That's not a balancing issue, it's a human one. Go out and search for like minded individuals if that is so important to you. The dumbest thing about Amii is that it's cheaper than a natural T4. Fix that and move on. I get that balancing is very important in PvP but why is everyone so overambitious for PvE? People go like "THIS SHALL NOT STAND! *slams fist on table* I DEMAND WE UN-BREAK THE GAME!"

Amii creates loads of options for possible decks and strategies that would straight up not exist without it. While doing so it can be argued that it overshadows alternatives but it does not remove a single one. Strictly speaking Amii is a purely enriching card as far as possibilities go. The current version of Amii literally enables a 5 color deck as well. If someone so chooses they can do that right now. Making Amii T4 means removing ALL possible approaches and decks that need it to be T3, while creating not a single new one. It is a powerful card and should cost more than a natural T4 orb but it doesn't remove any possibilities for deckbuilding.

An argument for Amii as a reward for completing expert maps that I have heard is that the game would benefit from a motivator to get people to play story maps. darkwarrior on discord just threw an idea into the room: Have promo cards as rewards. This idea is infinitely better since promo cards are nothing more than fully upgraded regular cards with a different skin. So absolutely no options would be gated behind this approach. Unlike with Amii, where LOADS of possibilities would get shut off from most people. I am pretty much always in favor of more options, not less. People love the promo cards so removing them from the booster drop pool and instead utilizing them as achievement of sorts would definitely be a motivator for players. Currently there are a total of 14 promo cards in the game, I am sure they could serve well as a guiding force for players to give them goals they can strive towards. And all without locking unique options.

I would assume it's because playing Advanced difficulty is worthless. It's better to get U3 from Expert and use extras to buy U2 and U1 with gold. It feels like in Advanced the time investment doesn't really justify the gains. Also, who bothers becoming good, efficient and fast on the medium difficulty? Not to mention, the community consists of either people just wanting to play a bit of BattleForge again or hardcore enthusiasts without much in between.

"Amii is so OP and broken! People are using it to finish maps too fast! That is so bad for the game." "We should give Amii to the good players only to widen the gap between what options they have and what the rest does. Sounds good." Anyone else sees the disconnect in logic here?

I'd say you play mono decks for flavor. Because you enjoy it and not because it's good. I don't think there is literally ANY mono deck that couldn't be improved by changing one or two orbs. The T4 mono cards are all pretty underwhelming for how restrictive they are. Green Forest Elder is nice. But Nature itself is such a good allrounder and can get away with playing it mono. Dreadnought is powerful but clunky to use. Shadow Worm is pretty useless without support to sustain it. Moloch is slow and therefore worthless. Batariel is strong but also works best with support. Meanwhile just slapping one nature orb into any deck gives you amazing T4 with Grimvine and Giant Wyrm. And insane support spells like Regrowth, Revenge and Equilibrium. Give me those any day over any mono T4 cards. You can probably beat any campaign PvE map with a mono deck. But I wouldn't expect to ever be as efficient, fast or successful as a mixed one. As an added drawback your concerns regarding the price are probably justified. You always have to consider that the market value is extremely volatile with how small the community will be. The prices for certain cards can be easily manipulated, the market can be cornered and the lack of supply can just generally have all kinds of wacky effects. With that being said, judging from the AH prices during this stress test the mono T3 and T4 cards were mostly pretty expensive. Avatar of Frost, Juggernaut, Spitfire and Abyssal Warden are the mono T3 cards that end up being on the more expensive side. Satanael is mid range. Northland Drake is cheap because it is so common. Mono T4 is expensive with Dreadnought, Shadow Worm and Forest Elder. Batariel is dependent on the affinity. Either low or mid range. Moloch is somewhat cheaper. That's all just from memory. Of course that assumes that you really want to fully commit to mono and not only actually need 3 orbs of the same color but leave your deck mono anyways.

So some of these are from crashes during character creation where you have to pick your profile picture and name. If you idle there too long you get booted from the server. Others are from trying to see decks and starting games. They are from the test server and they all asked me to share them with an error box. _launcher_trace_2019.07.30_1.log _launcher_trace_2019.07.30_0.log _launcher_trace_2019.07.30_2.log _launcher_trace_2019.07.30_3.log _launcher_trace_2019.07.30_4.log _launcher_trace_2019.07.30_5.log _launcher_trace_2019.07.30_6.log _launcher_trace_2019.07.30_7.log _launcher_trace_2019.07.30_8.log _launcher_trace_2019.07.30_9.log _launcher_trace_2019.07.30_10.log _launcher_trace_2019.07.30_11.log _launcher_trace_2019.07.30_12.log

It was just taking your example to make the point clear. Apparently unsuccessfully so. Balancing isn't about making everything equally strong or thinking of every possible curve ball. That's a complete misunderstanding of what balancing is supposed to achieve in games. Attempt that sets you up for failure. That is true in every game. I would much more say that balancing in PvP is the attempt to make it so no strategy or no single mechanic (unit, spell, etc. in this case) is overbearing at some level of play first and foremost. While everything can probably be countered through some means, there shouldn't be a scenario where one approach is too notably dominant. Secondarily you can then look into making unused cards or strategies a bit more attractive. Generally agreed but you get too hung up on the example. The aim of PvP balancing should be that no particular card or strategy is too overbearing. Even OP combos or cards can have counters they get beaten by but that is not an argument against them being OP. It's about how dominant something is at certain skill levels overall. If people were to just throw around statements like "lol if you get beaten by X, just play Y" then you might as well not ever change anything at all because that's probably true for everything. And for what it's worth the game saw a steady decline and died. So ... might not be the best idea to take too many approaches from the original Battle Forge onboard. Maybe taking care of both PvE and PvP is an idea worth looking into after all. It's generally a good advice to be critical of the "Well, it's always been like that" mindset, which I would consider especially true in this case.

I'd say that is straight up untrue. Sure, the environment gets more volatile the less people know what they are doing but there will still be prevailing approaches and metas. Let's take that as a thought then. High level players consider Aggressor a bit too weak because it is 150 power bundled into a single unit that can be played around. Low level players consider Aggressor OP because it knocks their units around. Then lets say the high level players, which would be in charge of balancing in this example, say that Aggressor needs a bit of a buff, maybe reduce its cost a bit. Now it's more viable on the top end and sees occasional play. While suddenly it is completely out of control on the low end because all the new people are mesmerized by the constant CC for a lower cost. This sort of thing can happen with any card or strategy. You have to take that into consideration unless you want to risk turning certain levels of competition into a serious cesspools. Top level players think about top level competition first and foremost. But a healthy game shouldn't be out of control on any skill level.

What? While I agree the PvP mode is the most sensitive one in terms of balancing it absolutely doesn't have to continue to be the central point of balancing. That's nonsense. Depending on how the playerbase turns out the PvP community might even end up being smaller than the PvE community so that could also be a consideration. There can absolutely be arguments for both sides, claiming that it MUST BE that way because it was that way doesn't hold much weight. This suggestion only makes sense on the absolute surface level. A council like system could make the process faster but in no way is it certain that his would end up being the best for the games overall health. Cards and strategies can be of VASTLY different effective power when used at low, average or expert level of PvP play. If you decide to only balance top heavy then the balancing in lower level play could get massively skewed. PvP would most likely end up being incredibly beginner unfriendly. You have to consider all skill levels when attempting changes. You are for some reason assuming individual skill and intricate knowledge about cards and strategies in the top end of competition automatically come with the ability to think holistically, while in many cases the exact opposite is the case. You can think of some very skilled players as sitting on an island of expertise where they are indeed incredibly knowledgeable but because they are so invested into their particular field, they don't see or care for the big picture. Just as an example, say a card is easy to use and very straight forward in its effect. Such a card would obviously see more play at the lower end of PvP. But at the higher levels opportunity costs and combinations are a much bigger consideration, people start coming up with calculations to make their decks and moves more efficient. Suddenly a simple card might not be very attractive anymore because its simplicity is limiting it. So then the top players might decide that this card is kinda weak because other options are much better if you actually heavily look into it. They vote to change the card to be viable in the top end and suddenly it might end up being completely busted and overpowered for beginners or too hard to use effectively.

Does anyone has an idea WHY the healing is increased when casting the warp close together? The description of the card suggests that the healing is applied on actually getting teleported. But the actual mechanics behind this could be different. Is the healing applied by simply standing near the entrance and exit zones? Is the healing applied by both entrance and exit zones to all unites that have been teleported? Is the buff getting refreshed every second while near the entrance point, even if the unit has already been teleported? At the very least it is safe to say that the card does not behave the way the description suggests.

Well, apparently figuring out bugs from no reports at all didn't work out so well either. Lowering the hurdle for people to submit reports would be one way to get more. At the very least the "How To Report Bugs" pinned post could be condensed into half its length or less without losing anything important. This too would make it faster and more convenient to report a bug. Because even being greeted with an overly long instruction can and will make people just not bother. From what I have read this entire discussion about whether balance changes should be made at this point mainly spawned from the fact that there is nothing else to work on because of no reports so that is at least something to do and might get people invested. If that is such a massive problem then I think you have to work on multiple fronts to get reports going.

Amii and Enlighten are examples for rule-bending cards. It's what they are supposed to do. You can of course disagree with the design but they are still working as intended. Also, straining the games mechanics is what speedrunning is literally all about. Learning patterns, exploiting them, manipulating them. Finding and min-maxing the most optimal solution that trumps all others. That is an integral part of the process that you are arguing against for nothing but the pipe dream of a "balanced" game operating on absolute commandments. As a side-point; I'd argue that mono-decks are suboptimal because of the fact that pure T4 is so lacking that mixing it up will almost always be straight up better. Are there even any mono-T4s in the game worth having without the support of differently colored cards? Green Forest Elder maybe but that's because Nature itself is such a powerful all-rounder.

The first issue you describe is only applicable in custom maps, no? Every map that is inherent to the game is either strictly PvE or PvP, never both. And if these custom maps are different, you could let people decide whether PvP or PvE rules apply to them. Basically a tag system. And NPCs on maps are subjected to the overarching rules. If it's a PvE tagged map, they work under PvE rules (in that case, every scenario and rPvE map would be tagged as "PvE"). If it's PvP tagged, they use PvP rules. Again, whether it is even possible from a technical standpoint is a different topic, but purely conceptually speaking it seems simple. Reality might differ, because of coding shenanigans but nobody knows that yet. I'm gonna be a real cheeky brat and turn what you said before around on you, don't let it sound too mean in your head. It's teasing a bit but still true You don't really have anything else to do right now with the game because you don't get reports for issues you can fix, right? So why not look into the possibility of making separately balanced cards for PvE and PvP? Might as well. Just to check if it's possible to split them like that. Might be interesting. Might be a place to get a deeper understanding on how the game works. In my opinion that would definitely be a project worth spending time on instead of waiting for a report to pop up. Development seems to be in a very tough spot right now. Can't keep improving servers because of lack of reports. Can't release because of lack of polish. Players are less engaged because everything will be wiped. Players expect a reasonably well running game that is "fully released". Caught between a rock and a hard place. Gotta find some ways to get people reporting and make it as quick and easy as possible.

I disagree. It's not a bug it is a logical consequences of introducing a card that lets you build your own orb. It is a legit orb, it should count as a legit orb for all intents and purposes. It is the expected behavior. I am telling you that if you change it so the amii orb doesn't count on that map anymore you would get people reporting THAT as a bug. Because it would make no sense. So what, the amii orb works consistently exactly the way you expect it to work EXCEPT for that one map? That's arbitrary and non-transparent balancing. Speedrunning is always about min-maxing and it comes down to the most optimal cards used in the most optimal times. You could make the same argument for Enlighten, a card that was in the game since the beginning. It allowed you to skip LOADS of hurdles on multiple maps. It's just how these cards work. How they are supposed to work. How they are expected to work. I mean, just conceptually, it's not hard to come up with a solution. The real question would be on the technical side. So just as a concept, first you have to decide which modes is the base one, PvE or PvP. Let's take PvE. So. Every card exists first and foremost in it's PvE form. That's how you get it from the booster. That's how it shows up in your collection by default. That's how it looks by default. When creating a deck you can check a "PvP" box. There is also such a "Show PvP versions" box for your collection. If checked you now see all your cards as per usual but the ones that have PvP specific adjustments have a little * at the end of the name. Every change that was made to them is highlighted with a different text color so you can immediately tell which part is different. If possible you could maybe even switch back to the regular "PvE" version by mousing over a card and pressing Alt. So by spamming Alt you could directly compare the two version. This does introduce an additional burden of knowledge if you want to play both modes. However I would argue the benefits of such an approach would outweigh that. You could theoretically make every card interesting for both PvE and PvP, something that is definitely not the case right now. You would also be very flexible with balancing. PvE and PvP have vastly different needs. You could cater to both of them without affecting the other mode. You would never run into a scenario where you risk making a card OP or trash in one mode by adjusting them with the other one in mind. You would also never create conflict between the PvE and PvP parts of the community that goes like "WOW! My card is now trash because it got changed for that other mode that I don't care about!" or "Playing my mode is boring now because that card that got changed for that other mode that I don't care about made it so OP for mine that you almost have to use it!". So, if it is possible from a technical standpoint, balancing PvE and PvP separately would have the benefits of: flexibility in catering to the specific needs of both modes having every card be usable and interesting in both modes not affecting one mode when balancing a card for the other keeping the dedicated communities out of each others hair when cards get balanced for them "People are disagreeing! Shut it down! Why won't anyone shut it dooooooown?!?" What else is there to discuss here? If anything the answer if balance changes should be made before the full release was already set beforehand. According to Kubik they have literally nothing else to do right now because they are not getting enough issue reports from the community and development is almost at a stand still. So apparently there is no downsides to investing resources into balance changes right now. What kind of participation percentage were you hoping for?

All you can do in that case is to make bug reports easier and faster to do. Remove all unnecessary barriers with the priority of maximizing the amount of reports you get. Maybe building an in-game bug report system is worth it. It could even go as far as to reduce the amount someone has to type. Just present them with a bunch of drop-down menus where they can choose from a couple of options and just a "Additional details" box below. If the number of reports are the main issue, lower the standards for reports and make them as accessible as possible. And even if it is spammy, a notification box popping up on screen to remind people of the importance of bug reports might be necessary. I don't think that is important. At all. In fact I would argue that the biggest DOWNSIDE to these maps was the fact that you had to play them as a team of 12. The only time I ever felt like the interactions were noticeable was when some other map messed up. When everyone did their jobs you didn't even feel the cooperation. So actually having to deal with the consequences of whatever was going on on another map was a purely negative experience. It was just a shitton of trouble with all the DCs and waiting around. I remember just spamming the entire map full with buildings because we were waiting for another map to finish. It was a waste of time. It never really worked. It never really felt like 12 players working together. And even finding 12 players to play was a pain sometimes. A lot of the time people would play one map solo to cut waiting times. DCs were a big problem. I think the maps would be MUCH better if they were simply 4p maps. I would really suggest simply replacing the "interactive" events with hard-scripted ones and splitting the two 12p maps into four separate 4p maps. Is it not possible to balance cards for PvE and PvP separately? The needs of both modes are vastly different. Adjusting one card for one of them specifically could completely messy it up in the other. Can't a card hold two versions of itself, one with PvP adjustments and one with PvE ones? Maybe you could tick a box when creating a deck. When you check "PvP", you would get versions of the cards with the respective PvP adjustments. Otherwise the cards have the PvE adjustments.

So I looked up the names for the 12p maps. I can't even remember if there were any noteworthy cross-map events for Passage to Darkness. The only thing I distinctly remember is that everyone had to sit around and do nothing if the players of another map were slower. There was some weird thing that made it so you called extra enemies to your map to help the others? I can't remember too well. Possibly because it was such a non-factor. Maybe the map is even perfectly playable without these events. And if they were just additional enemy spawns, could just set these to a timer. Ascension was a bit more complex, I only remember some bits. Would it be possible to reconstruct those events from scratch? Maybe through old videos. But were they even that important? It's quite possible that they can be replaced with some somewhat similar scripted enemy spawns. I recon a big turnoff for many people (I include myself here) is that their progress will be wiped so they hold off on getting too invested. I guess the project is in a difficult spot right now. There aren't enough people to report issues but it's also not very attractive to start playing now. While at the same time a "full release" while crashes and bugs are still notable would be a bad look as well. I'd assume people aren't all that used to being needed for bug reports because communities are usually big enough for someone else to pick up the slack. Sucks that the whole thing is pretty much at a stand still because of that. Well, if really nothing else is on the table and a release is hard to justify with the current state of the game might as well try something else to get people involved, like balance changes. However, I would make sure people are really aware that every bit of help is direly needed. Right now when I log into the game I see the "Here be bugs!" notice that I would assume is mostly skipped over and that's it. So, if there are barely any reports to begin with I would loosen up the requirement to check if a bug already got reported or not. I think many people encounter some bug or crash and would like to report it but think to themselves "Eh ... I don't want to dig through all kinds of reports first ... and it probably got reported already anyway." I would create a big, to-the-point pop-up that everyone sees when they log into the game. Something like "Please take a moment and report ANY kind of bug and crash you encounter on the official forums. Without your help, further development is impossible!" And a direct link to the forums. After each game there could also be a massage popping up reading "Encountered any issues (crashes, bugs, etc.) during or after this game? Please take a moment and report them on the official forums. Without your help, further development is impossible!" Reminding people and keeping them constantly aware can help. Also, let people skip the part where they have to check if a bug was reported already. If no reports come in otherwise, just let them post everything. Remove as many possible hurdles for communication as possible. Maybe it's even worth it to develop a rough in-game solution for reports. A quick form they can fill out. Make it as simple and fast as possible. I would argue getting people to report at all, even if many reports are not usable or repeats, is better than getting no reports. Try to get quantity going and lower the standards for quality. I think even the "How To Report Bugs - TEMPLATE INSIDE" post is too intimidating for someone just trying to give some quick info. I would make this post much shorter and strip it down to the bare necessities. Severity for example is a comparatively huge paragraph that I would say is pretty unnecessary. The first paragraph too. A post that can be skimmed and understood at a glace would be much, much better.

I am against committing to balance changes before a full release and all wipes/resets being done. You would be allocating your time and resources to this instead of actually getting the whole thing done. Even one hour of dev time spent on balance instead of release is a setback in my book. I don't really care where dev time is spent after the game is launched and everyone gets to keep their progress. But release should be the absolute top priority right now. And diversion should be avoided. As for balance changes overall: I am for separating PvP and PvE balance wise. These two modes are played so fundamentally different, they shouldn't be affecting each other. Basically, if balance changes are necessary in either PvP or PvE, ideally there should be a respective PvP and/or PvE version of a card that is appropriately adjusted. I assume the majority of balance changes would be PvP centered anyway. So I would hate to see PvE decks getting messed with because a card needs PvP changes. And vice versa ofc. 12p maps were fucking awful in the original Battle Forge. Too many disconnects or player failures. Would it be possible to "split" the 12p maps though? I don't know the name right now but one of them is just the same map three times. Would it be possible to just make it a 4p map by removing the 12p intersections? As for the other one that is three intertwined maps, would it be possible to split that one into three 4p maps and just automate the events that depend on the (now gone) other maps? Basically hard-scripting them so people can just play one map.

As you stated, players with a lot of time naturally have the ability to progress faster already. The balance is definitely delicate but also considering that the size of the community will be quite small and imbalances could be felt even more severely, I would err on the side of caution. Keeping things as accessible and even as possible. Also, leaving things on the table always feels bad and frustrating. So I think the diminishing returns of investing more time should definitely be noticeable.

Missions should be as broad and general as possible so that every thinkable playstyle (PvE, PvP, solo, duo, etc.) can complete them. People shouldn't be required to play specific maps, modes, cards or whatever. Also be careful with a time requirement. The current video game market is getting oversaturated with "games as a service" that all tout for players time and everyone wants people to sink their freetime into their game so they can have more opportunities to shove microtransactions in everyone's face. I don't think you want to enter into this competition, so the required amount of playtime should be generously low. For purely cosmetic achievements on the other hand, that are just there for bragging rights, I think you can go as specialized as you like. There could be a small incentive to play harder content. Just a tiny bonus so that pushing to difficult maps is a tad more rewarding. Overdo that and it would create a big imbalance between players.