Easing Cards Color Restrictions

[macabi]

I would like to suggest easing color restrictions across the board for tier 4 units where all 4 monuments require a certain color.

Example - Lost dragon require 2 frost and 2 shadow while lost Spirit Ship requires only 1 frost and 1 shadow.

This is a major restriction because healing (Nature monument) is crucial for rPVE and even for some campaign maps.

As a  result,  we see Lost Spirit Ship in many rPvE games but no Lost Dragon.

There is really no good reason for such restriction for some cards while other cards don't have much of a restriction.

So my suggestion is to reduce ALL tier 4 color restrictions to maximum of 3 colors with at least 1 neutral color.

 

[SunWu]

I don't like the idea of every deck being nature + X. You can totally play lost souls with bloodhealing. Yes, regrowth and equilibrium are easier to play and stronger but heals aren't a necessity, they are a convenience.

[macabi]

It doesn't necessarily mean that every deck will have Nature.

Players can choose Fire instead.

My point is that it doesn't make sense for some cards to require 1 or 2 monuments to have certain colors while other cards require all 4 monuments to have certain colors.

It is a restriction with no meaning.

My suggestion is that for tier 4 at least one monument should be Neutral so the player can fit such card with more decks.

[SunWu]

28 minutes ago, macabi said:

My point is that it doesn't make sense for some cards to require 1 or 2 monuments to have certain colors while other cards require all 4 monuments to have certain colors.

I totally agree with you there. I have always wondered why some really strong cards have less restrictions than weaker cards that play the same role; overlord vs lost warlord, frenetic assault vs amok etc... reason is probably that the priority was having a nice theme going, therefor not so many splashable twilight, stonekin and lost cards (still doesn't explain spirit ship being splashable though)

Where i don't agree is making more PVE cards splashable, i already don't like how some decks dominate battlegrounds. Now make batariel and we have 40 batariels running around in every lvl 9 bg. I'd rather like to see some underplayed pure/theme PVE decks buffed carefully.

[macabi]

I agree with you that there may be an exception for some overpowered cards such as Batariel (Fire Affinity).

However, most of these cards are not overpowered such as Lost Warlord and Lost Dragon.

For these cards easing the color requirements makes sense.

[SunWu]

2 hours ago, macabi said:

However, most of these cards are not overpowered such as Lost Warlord and Lost Dragon.

Lost dragon is underrated, completly disabling annoying stuff like windhunter, bandit walker, lost dragons, artillery etc is really great support. Purple affinity is also useful cause the debuff also applies to bosses, basically a big, winged snapjaw. Not overpowered, but strong units.

Lost warlord though, he's really just an average T4 XL wich sees no play cause of the orb restrictions. But if units like lost warlord get a buff maybe decks like become more interesting.

[RayG]

Bad idea

[Emmaerzeh]

We just made some alternatives to regrowth some are not on liveserver jet but on test server. F. E. Winter witch, bloodthirst, forrestelder. 

[Buddelmuddel]

14 hours ago, SunWu said:

Where i don't agree is making more PVE cards splashable, i already don't like how some decks dominate battlegrounds. Now make batariel and we have 40 batariels running around in every lvl 9 bg. I'd rather like to see some underplayed pure/theme PVE decks buffed carefully.

The problem isnt the green batariel the problem is the black batariel where you can watch a youtube video at the same time while playing, and clearing the map in now time. The green batariel is a little bit more difficult to play at least on lvl 10, but probably on lvl 9 too. So this wouldn`t be a problem.

7 hours ago, Emmaerzeh said:

We just made some alternatives to regrowth some are not on liveserver jet but on test server. F. E. Winter witch, bloodthirst, forrestelder. 

Sounds good. Maybe you guys can change my thread from rejected to all approved. It was a bit weird when it was changed to rejected and then the 3 colour cards where changed to 2 colours and 2 neutral colours, which is a good change but basically the same.

The healing sounds good too. And it would be nice to introduce the rpve difficulty 9.5 too. Then a huge step would be accomplished.

 

[Torban]

Healing? In a 2 orb frost splash? Winter witch is better than regrowth. Gotta open up what cards you use instead of just looking to nature for everything. Once she got changed to 2 frost orbs it really opened things up to rip regrowths position away. I actually think it's funny when people regrowth in rpve 9 runs and not a single unit takes a single hitpoint in damage the entire run.

Her change went through with battleship.

Edited February 5, 2021 by Torban

[macabi]

14 hours ago, SunWu said:

Lost warlord though, he's really just an average T4 XL wich sees no play cause of the orb restrictions. But if units like lost warlord get a buff maybe decks like become more interesting.

That is also a good idea.

Many cards have 2 affinities where one is better than the other and therefore being used much more.

So how about this idea:

Make one affinity more powerful and leave the color requirements as it is now, while easing color restriction for the other affinity where that card is less powerful and therefore less popular.

Such change will make both affinities popular.

Just a reminder - we are talking only about 4 tier cards where all 4 monuments require a certain color.

 

Edited February 5, 2021 by macabi

[chickennoodler]

I hate this suggestion macabi.

 

If anything, we should be INCREASING orb restriction

The entire purpose of the game is to think around this.

 

The game is not supposed to be "use enlightenment" or "splash Green" 24/7

[Titan]

 

9 hours ago, chickennoodler said:

I hate this suggestion macabi.

 

If anything, we should be INCREASING orb restriction

The entire purpose of the game is to think around this.

 

The game is not supposed to be "use enlightenment" or "splash Green" 24/7

Increasing orb restrictions would only make the game worse by decreasing the amount of combinations making "use enlightenment" more necessary.

[macabi]

There are several cards such as Lost Dragon and Lost Warlord that are hardly being used.

That is the case not because they are not good cards but because of the orbs restriction.

The entire idea is to make unused cards to be more accessible.

 

 

[macabi]

Any decision regarding this proposal?

Implementing it should be very easy.

[Cocofang]

What happens when something is the best (in power and/or ease of use)? Everyone flocks towards it and uses it, ignoring everything that is weaker. This is a big part of what makes a meta. They develop in most games and they do so for a reason. Being that people generally want to play the best. Anecdotes to the contrary don't matter here, even the existence of this topic is proof of that.

If you ease orb restrictions on these cards, people will have more freedom to pick for their decks, that is very true. What happens when people have more freedom of choice there? They pick the best. So what you will end up with are decks that will be more homogeneous. Splashing will become even more powerful, even though it is are already very strong thanks to so many flexible cards. Pure decks will fall even further behind. Even duo-mixed decks will show noticeable wear.

Take the most stacked splash color of them all, nature. It offers Breeding Grounds, Curse of Oink, Revenge, Equilibrium, Thunderstorm, Grimvine, Giant Wyrm, Regrowth. Immediate, rock solid T4, sustain for all decks that can splash and powerful support. This is way too much bundled into a single orb. This shouldn't be accessible to pretty much any deck.

Reducing orb restrictions also severely hampers the concept of "faction identity". You immediately remove the notion that a card is supposed to be the apex of a faction.

No, what makes more sense to happen is:

1. Make weak cards that have harsh orb restrictions deliver more value
2. Make strong cards that are flexible deliver less value
3. Make strong cards that are flexible but should retain their power more restrictive

There have to be fitting opportunity costs for picking flexible or restrictive cards. Right now that is not the case and that is why especially nature splash or LSS are too powerful while the restrictive cards are not very popular.

[macabi]

@Cocofang, The problem you are describing is already present.

Some cards are used by most players and some other cards are not used at all.

My suggested approach is simple, don't nurf popular cards because that will anger some players who like their powerful cards.

Instead, improve unused cards such as Lost Warlord (which you never see) by making one of his orbs Neutral.

This will encourage platers to switched to cards that were not used before.

 

[Cocofang]

2 minutes ago, macabi said:

My suggested approach is simple, don't nurf popular cards because that will anger some players who like their powerful cards.

Frankly, who the fuck cares. They'll manage.

I think the point you are missing is that your approach, in an attempt to dodge around the issue, would make it worse.

[macabi]

1 hour ago, Cocofang said:

Frankly, who the fuck cares. They'll manage.

I think the point you are missing is that your approach, in an attempt to dodge around the issue, would make it worse.

We should all care about how players feel about game changes.

Angry players move on to other games and we want our fan game base to grow not shrink.

By making unused cards better we make them more popular.

That will increase the number of often used cards which is the objective.

Is that too hard to understand?

[Cocofang]

The old guard that made the current meta ain't keeping a community striving by themselves. If it's growth you are worried about then a healthy game is more important to attract new people.

You are equating HAVING more options with people also USING more options. Which is not how it plays out, hence why a meta emerges.

In its deck building mechanic Skylords has a unique system in place for an RTS. Instead of watering that down the interesting nature of it should be more pronounced. The topic of opportunity costs is a big one in that respect because right now it's out of whack. Which is because instead of a restrictive Lost Warlord you see flexible Lost Spirit Ships. A cards power level is not only its performance on the field but also its flexibility while deck building.

The actual problem is that restrictive cards don't make up for that by other means. Meanwhile many flexible cards are not only already very powerful by themselves in many cases, they even amplify each other. They double dip in a sense. This leads to a noticeable power gap.

The goal should be to give a good reason to go for restrictive cards. Make them worth it. Make them the true pinnacle of their faction. While at the same time reevaluating just how powerful flexibility actually is and how much of a cards power budget a neutral orb requirement is really worth.

[macabi]

I agree there are powerful as well as flexible cards such as Lost Spirit Ship and that some restrictions is appropriate for such cards.

That is the other side of the argument.

I agree with both approaches.

Make very strict cards such as Lost Warlord more flexible while making other powerful cards such as Lost Spirit Ship more restrictive.

The objective is to close the gap as much as possible and give player more good options.

Also, there is nothing wrong with having both of these units in the same deck.

Air units are very useful but we also need normal units in order to spawn more units.

Besides, lost Warlord is more powerful than Lost Spirit Ship from the aspect of live points and damage.

[Asraiel]

On 2/4/2021 at 9:16 PM, macabi said:

I would like to suggest easing color restrictions across the board for tier 4 units where all 4 monuments require a certain color.

Example - Lost dragon require 2 frost and 2 shadow while lost Spirit Ship requires only 1 frost and 1 shadow.

This is a major restriction because healing (Nature monument) is crucial for rPVE and even for some campaign maps.

As a  result,  we see Lost Spirit Ship in many rPvE games but no Lost Dragon.

There is really no good reason for such restriction for some cards while other cards don't have much of a restriction.

So my suggestion is to reduce ALL tier 4 color restrictions to maximum of 3 colors with at least 1 neutral color.

 

wy not add a new card to get it done like a legendary t4 enlightment. with that every player would be able to use other colored cards once they reached t4 and since its a legendary it doesnt need any specific color.

+ since its a spell the card itself is only block while the buff is active so the intire team can use it if they hhave the card in their deck and also the animation end else can be easly be copied from the normal enlightment. 

the handycap is only the powerloss i personaly wouldn recomend to make the powercost lower than 200 for it so a 20 powerloss is in but ur free to play as u like if full fire and still use an regroth or spawning a forest elder, dreadnoutgh or else.

but if u play nature u still have the advantance cause u only need t3 wuth 2 nature orbs to une the normal enlightment.

 

Here i started a topic for it 

 

 

Edited April 6, 2021 by Asraiel

[Majora]

I am a big fan of color restrictions, since it rewards you for playing a certain deck. The problem isnt with Lost Dragon, its the fact that some cards dont have this restriction and are thus superior. If anything we should be looking at this, instead of removing it. There is a reason deepone was 1G but changed to GG. Same with War Eagle. I know you are making a case for Tier 4, but I dont think the logic is much different. You want to be rewarded for going all in on a certain combination. Enligtenment goes arround this (which is why I dislike it in general), but that at least forces you into GG, making your Tier 1 and Tier 2 be effected by your choices.

So if you want to play harvester and lost dragon, you now have to go SSFF or SSGG (with enligtenment on tier 4 to cheat it out). This is a good thing. You are now rewarded for playing Lost Souls and get the Lost Dragon on tier 4, while also playing something that Enligtenment decks could not (Harvester on tier 2).

The problem arises with less restrictions like Lost Spirit ship, cause its arguably just better to go nature. Then again, people need to stop thinking of this game as people-will-only-play-the-very-best-deck, and also consider the casual players who just want to play cool stuff and feel rewarded for their color combinations. 

[Asraiel]

1 hour ago, Majora - MidnaMistfire said:

Then again, people need to stop thinking of this game as people-will-only-play-the-very-best-deck, and also consider the casual players who just want to play cool stuff and feel rewarded for their color combinations. 

this reward remains cause u know it and u can say to urself u made it without. mean i also played games where i restricted myself to only use common cards and it was a selfmade restriction iand felt also rewarded but i woulndt force other to do the same. i think freedom is what everyone wants in one way or another i would hate it if my country would change from democraty to dictatorship only because someone else like that more.

or removing all canals and byciles from netherland and replace them with only SUV's cause someone like that restriction.

U have the freedom to restric urself and feel the reward of it but forcing other to do it aint the same

same sa the game is free2play it is also free2notplay xD

Edited April 6, 2021 by Asraiel

[Majora]

While I generally agree with you that players can set their own restrictions and challenges (I restricted myself to only Twilight Edition cards, no enlightenment, for an expert run without cheesing maps), I dont think we should just make everything available to everyone and call it a day. In this logic, why have color differences at all? Why cant I play both frost mage and sunderers on tier 1? I think I saw someone (maybe it was you?) suggest that monuments would be changed to allow all orbs at the same time, to switch things up. I think that would be a huge mistake and undermines the whole idea of the game. 

Anyway, In general I think pure cards (as in, SSFF) should be more powerfull than XXSF, since you get the benefit of support spells and strategies. I dont think the solution lies in making everything XX??, but rather reward players more by either buffing the pure cards, or nerfing the splash ones.