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Eirias

Game Designer
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Everything posted by Eirias

  1. If this is an option, imo it should only be an option for the first month or two. After that real PvP players will have deck lvl 120 in any case and they'd have no reason to queue against people using the free decks. The players using free decks at that point would be new players, who are behind. But seems like a good addition for the first few months, to add a checkbox to sparring (like with rpve map of the month) that says "forbid free pvp decks"
  2. Yes, because "true PvP" requires a proper deck. So if a player wants to only experience true PvP--without grinding PvE or playing weird pvp games where you don't have half the cards--that player must use the premade decks until they get their own. Isn't that the whole debate? There are PvP cards I would like to have (substitutions I wanted today: green disenchant, sunderer, vileblood, mo, shadow insect) which I need to grind for, but the PvP decks are still playable right now. But other players feel that since upgrading PvP cards isn't necessary, they lose something. When the open beta stress test launched, it was probably at least a week before I played my first PvP game. First, I needed some basic cards (so someone can't just spam frost mages and win), and also because no one else wanted to play with weird cards. I uploaded my first real PvP game in the open stress test almost 2 months after the initial release (not sure when I played it), and its still obvious that we are both missing cards, making a weird game: The earliest replay I still have is from the OST is September 30, 2018--again, almost a month after OST's initial release. That game is a 2v2 with a still strange deck. My point is that true PvP is locked behind a "grindwall" without level 120 decks. I am trying to make an analogy of how players would feel if PvE was locked behind some sort of grindwall. Yes, speedrunners are affected, but they can always go to the test server if they really want to speedrun right now: all they need are their mates, who they communicate with anyway (besides this, there is no possible solution for speedrunners that doesn't affect PvE). And there is no way to play PvP on the testserver without sending a PM to a friend, because everyone else queues in the regular server. For my own PvP enjoyment, I'd rather if all the PvP players just moved to the test server and then PvP effectively died in the real server. But such a split would be very bad for our small community.
  3. Yes, because this thread is titled "Remove lending LVL120 PVP decks" I am fine with alternations such as requiring you to pay a fee to rent them (when I first suggested this, I wanted them to be random each week but you can also rent a chosen one by paying BFP), but I need to defend their existence. From a statistics standpoint, there were over 600 PvP games played today iirc, so this system definitely encouraged new players to try PvP. The advantage of this system will become especially apparent in the future, once new players come and they want to compete with people who can have level 120 decks naturally, while in a month this topic will be irrelevant to the people who want to build a deck from scratch. But why do you care if the higher deck score is PvP vs PvE? If you want to grind just to see upgrades go up, wouldn't a better metric be to find all cards U3? It just seems like grinding PvE for a PvP deck is so arbitrary--meanwhile, level 120 PvP decks are a prerequisite to play PvP. Yes, I can mentally understand wanting to grind for a certain reward, but why does it have to be PvP decks--since as you've already said, you are exclusively a PvE player? What if I liked grinding PvP matches, and I wanted the reward of being in the top 20 ranked ladder to be the ability to play rPvE? You would probably tell me to leave your PvE game mode alone, rather than prevent you from playing rPvE just because you have no interest in trying to rank in the top 20?
  4. I don't understand? If a player enjoys the grind, then they should grind. If they don't enjoy the grind, they should skip it? What does the reward of the grind have to do with whether you enjoy it or not? How would you feel if you weren't allowed to play campaign mode until you won a bunch of PvP games? It is a senseless restriction imo.
  5. And how much worse is it when you don't have a choice about being behind? If there were no free PvP decks, I bet NONE of the top PvP players would have played PvP today. They would have got started on PvE grinding or possibly just completely quit, like so many did in the beta testing phase. Why are you working for a PvP deck? Do you play exclusively play PvP, and if you do, what is your tag? I have never seen a Cocofang in any of my PvP games. If you are not exclusively a PvP player, then work for a PvE deck. PvP is meant to be played with a full level 120 deck. Playing without the proper cards is like playing chess without all the pieces. Yes a better player will still win against a worse player if the skill gap is wide enough, but it's just more interesting to play against an even opponent with the proper pieces. Opening strategies and endgame considerations are completely overturned without the right balance of chess pieces, and it is the same in battleforge. Work for a full 120 PvE deck, and accept that PvP is a different game mode Yes. I was one of the most vocal adversaries of upgraded PvP cards in the beginning, before the game was released. In the alpha and beta testing stages, I have been convinced that I looked at Battleforge through rose-tinted glass. Even U2 to U3 is a big difference, especially on all 20 cards. A good player can beat a newer player using just the tutorial deck . But a good player will NOT beat a similarly-skilled player if one has U1/U2 and the other has all U3. I might go so far as to say that at the top level, the player with U3 forsaken will beat the player with U2 forsaken at least 80% of the time? @RadicalX perhaps you can provide a better estimate on that? The dedicated PvP playerbase is quite small, so it's not like a good player will beat a ton of beginners with his weak deck, and have everything upgraded by the time he faces someone of a similar skill level. Maybe that worked in the old days, but not anymore.... Additionally, anyone who wants to climb the ranked ladder without premade decks is forced to play lost souls, because souls is cheap enough to build quickly, beats the other cheap deck (fire nature), and doesn't have any losing matchups because no one will have the super rare pure fire cards yet. If you don't want to grind PvE, then don't haha. That's the point. Why be forced to do something you don't want to do? If you like grinding, grind for a perfect speedrunner deck. But if you are only playing PvE to get to PvP...why not just skip directly to the mode you like
  6. I mean, you can still grind? But now you can also play (2) decks while you wait And so you are not at a disadvantage vs someone just because you didn't grind enough, and newcomers can get directly into PvP without having to grind their way around. There are still many cards missing that can't capture every possible deck combo; I probably play 3-5 pvp decks every day, and many times I change out another 4-5 cards each deck depending on how I'm feeling The free decks give dedicated pvp players access to pvp with no barrier except if they want certain tech cards. Anyone interested in grinding for pve must still use the regular, unupgraded cards.
  7. Yep Here the community discord if you want to make just one video, or even get full admin rights. https://discord.gg/SkRmCcBJFf
  8. Eh....still unlikely that you'll find a game in the US timezone. Even if there's 3 of us (which is 2 more than I usually find atm, lol), odds are that all 3 will be pretty different skill level and the bottom 2 wouldn't queue ranked even if they had a quest, because they know they wouldn't win vs their opponent.
  9. Actually EA already knows about Skylords Reborn. There are a few stipulations in place, like not using the BattleForge trademark, but otherwise we are reasonably safe. @AlexBlade One of the community ideas to spread the word was to focus a bunch of battleforge content creators into a single channel. It ended up that I basically made all the videos, but I still think the channel is a great way to grow the community if you want to share videos or even contribute yourself Also, it seems that a lot of players ended up finding their way to Skylords Reborn because of these videos. https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCZLtgBj59SBfIZzcYWbxJVg
  10. I agree with this one. If ranked, better just to play 2. Hard enough to find ranked matches in the first place.
  11. Anyone else notice that lag is way worse on test server than regular server?
  12. Among other issues, it may not be possible to get the most "bang for your buck" in PvP, especially given the small playerbase. How would a new player feel if they spend 100 bfp to play pvp and no one is on that day? Perhaps next month they are playing on a Saturday at the peak hours and think they might want to try pvp, but then they remembered that they couldn't find a game the rest of the week and they don't want to waste 100 bfp to play 2 PvP games. To create a commitment, I still think a random free deck would be good. You never know what deck you'll have next week so you might as well try what you have now. I think 1 free (random) PvP deck should be the minimum, and you can rent more for 100 bfp per week.
  13. On one hand, I think the symbolic payment would be good to incentivize PvP players to participiate in the market. But tbh I think we will do that anyway because it's less hassle than constantly remaking and rebinding the hotkeys every week. That's enough incentive for actual PvP players. On the other hand, having completely free pvp decks incentivizes newcomers to try them out. 100 bfp might seem like a lot to a new player who doesn't want to waste his income on a game mode he doesn't like. If the decks are free, then these players are encouraged to try pvp. In fact, the biggest reason the free decks are implemented is to encourage newcomers to play PvP--and even a small tax works against this. In my original proposal I was leaning toward 1 random deck each week and the possiblity to rent. Since then, the team has surpassed my wildest expectations and I fully support the ability to directly choose a deck. Personally, I would like to see one (1) free PvP deck each week, with the option to rent an unlimited number of additional decks each week (price should increase with each deck, so 100 bfp for the 2nd deck, 200 for 3rd deck, 300 for 4th deck, etc). But I have no real complaints with 2 free per week either The main goal of this feature is to help PvP players get into the game without suffering through aspects they don't enjoy.
  14. Can I suggest that the t3 orb should always be the same as the t1 orb? This gives a bit more deck variety (for example, there are no fathom lords except for pure nature) and if all else is equal, it's better to have 2x of your t1 orb. For example: if I play shadow-frost-shadow and you play shadow-frost-frost, if I lose my frost orb I will still have half of my t2 units and all of my t1 units, but if you lose your shadow orb you only have a couple t2 units. If you used the pattern of t3 orb matches t1 orb, the following changes would be made: Shadow Frost: timeless one --> cultist master Nature Shadow: cultist master and evocator's woe --> fathom lord and brannoc (Nature frost can stay as-is because frost nature has no t3) Nature Fire: Giant slayer --> Fathom Lord Frost Fire: Giant slayer and virtuoso -->timeless one and silverwind lancer Fire Frost: timeless one and silverwind lancer --> giant slayer and virtuoso I understand why the fire frost and frost fire t3's might want to match their t2 orb rather than their t1 orb, but I think this kind of pattern would be good for newer players. The deck I most-suggest changing is Nature fire to have t3 of fathom lord and brannoc. Not only does this fit the pattern, fire nature can have a very hard time countering an enemy brannoc with giant slayers. Fathom lord is the best XL counter and is a great way to kill the enemy brannoc if he spawns first (even if it's changed so both teams can have a brannoc, if yours is attacking a base somewhere else, it's good to have another XL counter).
  15. Nightguard ftw Those bandit gunner can be swapped by nightguards. So just keep 2 ng around at all times, swap them when you are attacked. They bind no power so it's easy to get 20+ of them, and you can swamp the map at that point haha. I usually play shadow nature to heal/cc enemies with this strat. ....Oh wait, with only starter cards? Nvm then....I guess I'll leave this here in case anyone has trouble with the map in general. I might try the map with starter cards at some point at let you know if I succeed haha. If you want other challenges, I've been talking to @Weak1ings and I think he is going to build a "random deck builder" app. So you might enjoy trying to beat maps with some predetermined random decks (with certain conditions so you're not just getting garbage).
  16. Oh, well thanks for this. I didn't know they still made computers with screens <1080p
  17. By "I was surprised by how many players," how many does that mean? Because more than 5 people a day would be very surprising to me, but I guess the card size can just be shrunk--it's really hard to believe people *can't* play at 1080p. I'd also guess most of the people who play below 1080p just do it because they don't feel like changing the default resolution?
  18. Yes, that is my premise The question is if we want to go there eventually, because making that decision now can influence future balance changes, and the direction of our current prioritizes. Would you like to see a 25 card deck at some point? Assuming a game balanced around 25 cards, not 20. Or do you see some downside with this?
  19. Here I am with another behomoth of a post The idea of a 25 card deck has come up now and again, and with recent interest in heavily reworking nature/frost t1 I think it's time to put together a full case of pros and cons, as well as gameplay analysis. I am personally in favor of increasing card slots, although I could certainly be convinced otherwise. Also, I'm not suggesting that we add 5 extra cards immediately; in the balancing discord there is some talk of a complete rework of multiple core cards in nature/frost t1--such a rework would take at least a year to get right, and if we are ready to tackle such a long-term problem, I'd like us to know if 25 cards is a possibility. For example there is talk of buffing the card tunnel. If you spend a deck slot for it, you need to get value from the card in every game. So the card is a bit underwhelming atm. But if you had room for it to be useful in the right situation, perhaps a buff isn't needed. Another example in regards to the swift problem that frost has, we might add a "shrine of swift" and "spell of swift," the spell only works if the shrine is built up so you would be sacrificing 2 deck slots in t1 to get 10-15 seconds of swift. Spending 2 deck slots in a 25 card deck is much different than spending them in a 20 card deck, so I think we should decide if a 25 card deck is something to consider when looking at super-long term balancing discussions. Pros of a 25 Card Deck It allows more balancing tools. In some cases, certain factions don't have good allround counters (stormsinger, wildfire, shadow mage, etc). To address this situation, we are usually either 1) buffing a card to be more multi-purpose, or 2). buffing a new card to fill the gap. Option 2 is often unsatisfactory because it requires a new deck slot which may not be affordable. With more deck slots, we can fine tune balancing without resorting to giving all buffs to the same essential cards. It allows more deckbuilding freedom. Most decks have, say, 2 cards that aren't required to avoid autolosses. Without the slots to try some crazy combo, you usually just spend those spots on extra t3 options, or a tech card which helps against a specific faction (like global warming). It allows more anti-meta plays, and counters to anti-meta plays. Suppose you play a church camp shadow. That's not a common playstyle (although in our small community we know which players are likely to play it) and it can be extremely effective if your opponent is not aware that you have a giant t3 and tiny t2. With more deck slots, you could play this anti-meta deck more safely because you'd have slots that aren't being sacrificed in the hope that your opponent thinks you have it. (I often skip firesworn because people assume it's in my deck and don't rush with sundy). Additionally, your opponent would have more tools to counter anti-meta plays. Earthshaker, inferno, and backlash are not used in fire decks, but with 5 extra slots, it may be worth taking one to stop church camping. It allows more consistent plays. If you are pure shadow going against pure fire, you would probably like to play undead army. However, that card is mostly useless against the rest of the decks, so most shadow players wouldn't waste the slot on a card that is strong in 1/10 games. However, with 5 more slots, this card might suddenly be very appealing: you have all the cards you need to avoid autolosses, and you could play a card that is extremely strong against one of the most powerful factions. On the other hand, fire players would know that undead army is a likely option, so they will play more proactively to avoid it, rather than being surprised when they see it. The same is true for scorched earth--scorched earth is not super common, so players will often gamble whether their opponent has it. If they guess wrong, the game is instantly over. With more cards, scorched earth will be normal to have, so taking an orb in range of scorched earth would be considered a stupid play, rather than a calculated risk. It allows more interesting t3 fights. Most factions can have about 3 units in t3: an offensive nuke, a swift unit, and probably another nuke that's used as defense. Some factions have more slots available for t3 which gives them an advantage, but the gameplay is still largely straightforward. A richer t3 experience, where both sides have 5+ cards (and defense is not so strong) would be exciting imo. And players could have the possibility for richer t3 fights without sacrificing their t2 or t1. Cons of a 25 Card Deck Possibly more intimidating to new players. Imo, 20 cards or 25 cards doesn't really make a difference here UI issues? I don't think there are any UI issues, although hotkeys would be a concern. Again, not an issue imo, but I'm curious if anyone else cares that much about hotkeys PvE will change. Zyna has mostly confirmed that 25 card decks would be a global change, not something he can change just for one game mode. I am not that qualified to speak about PvE, although I understand that speedrun strats rarely require even 20 cards (and imo it wouldn't be bad if this allowed better speedrun strats). For casual pve, I think more cards is strictly more fun, except for the new player. But I think there are much bigger issues facing new players. PvP balancing. Obviously I hope this is not a con, since the idea is that we'd start balancing plans for the long-term future were 25 cards is normal. However, adding 5 extra cards in the current pvp environment would affect things quite a bit. It would probably require at least some reworks to every deck. For example, stormsinger would be a good target for a nerf, since her role can be covered by 2 cards if deck slots allowed. PvP Changes If the devs suddenly changed the deck size tomorrow, how would PvP differ? Pure fire: this is pretty much a nerf. There are not enough pure fire cards worth using, so this deck gets less value than all others. Possible additions: global warming, red nomad, girl power, rageclaws, wrecker, spitfire, vulcan, virtuoso, magma hurler, earthshaker, inferno. None of these are especially interesting. I'd probably take global warming, magma hurler, wrecker, virtuoso, and rageclaws. These would help with pure frost, the worst matchup for pure fire. Wrecker would also be good against frost (and nature). Otherwise I'm not sure that the extra cards adds much, unless the meta shifted and I needed counter for a new meta card in a different deck (like mine, if undead warriors became meta?) Bandits: more cards would mean that bandits can use some of their overpowered combos (embalmers + phoenix +rallybanner, or super buffs) without sacrificing core defense. The deck would still need help, but it would be better able to use some of its extremely powerful combos. Fire Nature: this deck would get a full t1, mauler to counter stonekin, and maybe an extra t3 card or two, although it would still have the weakest t3. These changes would largely be QoL. Fire Frost: this deck would finally get to use some of the interesting combos like wintertide+ rageclaws, warden's sigil +termite, or tower of flames+architect's call. None of these cards are played in a regular fire frost deck because of slot issues. Additionally, there might be some fire frost players who start frost t1 to take advantage of a super large t1 where 1/3 of the cards translate into t2 (ice barrier, homesoil, wintertide, frost sorceress, lightblade, possibly even frost mage). Pure Shadow: this deck would get to use shadow phoenix, maybe embalmers for nice combos. It could have a 5-card t3 while also having room for knight of chaos and possibly undead army. Although church decks would be empowered, if they became more common then other factions would be able to afford 1 slot for t4 earthshaker or something, to close games. Shadow Nature: this deck is in a pretty nice place with 20 cards, but lifeweaving, burrower/ghostspear, and some t3 cards would make play a bit more consistent. Enlighten earthshaker might become a possibility! Shadow Frost: this deck has tons of good cards to choose from, but these cards would mostly be tech choices. Lyrish would be an obvious addition, maybe an extra t1 card and homesoil+rallybanner. I'd expect to see stormsinger nerfs coming, (stormsinger is not only a great card, but it saves deck slots) which would force this faction to spend slots on maybe templar or gravity surge. I'm not sure if 6 or 7 t3 slots would be much better than the standard 5 card t3. Pure Frost: glyph of frost would be standard, and possibly wintertide. that would be good for making frost a bit better in t1, and it would also feel like less cheese when you are surprised by one of these cards. In general pure frost doesn't currently benefit from extra slots as much as other decks though, in my opinion. Stonekin: more t1 for consistency, but this faction would become the strongest in the game, hands down. Currently there is a style of playing stonekin where you don't use t3 at all, just rely on superior t2 units to overwhelm your opponent when he goes t3. Stonekin has superior t2, so it's not like another faction can simply add a tech card to even the t2 matchup (mauler would help though). This incredible t2 combined with a solid t3 (stonekin also has a very strong t3, but usually not enough slots for it), would be oppressive in the current balance patch. Pure Nature: I'm not sure if deck slots helps this faction that much atm. It would allow root decks though, which would be a nice change option. It would also allow tunnel plays, and maybe timeshifter spirit. I made this post here so it can have a lot of thoughts in one place, since this will probably be a conversation that takes a long time. I'm curious what other people think, and if there are any pros/cons that I missed. TL;DR Let's talk about changing the number of deck slots from 20->25
  20. i think castle wars is what i was thinking of, as I said not a fun map 1v1 but some neat concepts and maybe a good starting place
  21. I believe there is already beautiful map like this. I tried playing it 1v1 and it wasn't that fun, but maybe it would be good startling place.
  22. As an update to this apparently it's possible to make it so looter doesn't activate unless the thugs have been attacking (like batariel flames) PvE players want this so looter is preserved as a pve mechanic. If looter doesn't activate unless the thugs have been attacking for several seconds, any pvp player can micro units away from thugs so they don't activate looter. in Pve enemies don't run away. Biggest downside to this is that it's not very clear when looter is active. Imo that's not really a problem since only a couple people know what it does now, so this change could even be done "invisibly" and most players would not realize anything has been done.
  23. If you want people to submit results early (and esp so people have an idea of the time to beat) maybe you can set a specific time to tally results, like midnight in GMT+0, and send some small reward for whoever has the current best time by each daily deadline?
  24. We could play on custom maps with all walls remove
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