Changes to PvE Unit Orb & Power Costs

[WindHunter]

Mind Control Proposal:
The PvE Taskforce met last Friday and decided on the various power and orb costs for different PvE units. The reason for such a change is the desire to fix the current issues where units which are spawned via script have no orb or power costs attached to them. This allows units such as Nightguard to swap with any non-XL units, not just those which are T2 and cost 150p or less. Additionally, Lost Souls and several other cards such as Windhunter and Deathglider have permanent "cannot be mind controlled" effects on them to avoid this issue. By fixing the script spawning issue, and fixing the power/orb costs, we can remove these anti-mind control effects and allow these units to be taken over.

Our goal with these changes was to allow current mind control units, such as Nightguard and Parasite Swarm, to have reasonable limits on their abilities while also allowing their continual usefulness on a number of maps. We also wanted to improve Mind Control by giving it access to a larger pool of potential units. To facilitate this, we have also decided to make two additional changes:

1. Fathom Lords on Titans will be swapped to Deep Ones. This will allow Nightguard to continue to be useful on this map, as well as slightly decreasing the map's difficulty in position 4 for non-Shadow decks, as this position is usually the cause of failure.

2. Mind Control's swap cap will be increased to 350p to allow the taking of player-card units in pure faction RPvE.

The proposed final numbers can be found here: Proposed NPC Units Orb & Power Costs

Explanation of Numbers:
With a few exceptions, the general pattern is:
T1 = 50p
T2 = 100p
T3 = 150p
T4 = 200p
T5 = 250p

S-units
All S-units are T2, or below allowing them to be swapped by all.

M-units
All M-units are T2, or below allowing them to be swapped except for 5 exceptions, these are:

1. Bandit Sniper: T3, 150p
2. Drones: T3, 120p
3. Lost Spellbreaker: T3, 150p
4. Twilight Hag: T2, 175p - This allows it to be transformed via Twilight Curse but not swapped
5. Twilight Whisperer: T3, 150p

L-units
L-units do not share a general pattern, but most are T3 or T4 depending on their stats and status as player cards. We decided that in cases where the NPC unit is identical to the player card (in terms of stats and abilities) that the NPC unit and player unit would share the same requirements (ie. Fathom Lord and Magma Hurler remain T3). Otherwise, units whose stats and abilities widely vary between their NPC and player versions will have their tiers and power costs determined solely on their strength, with no connection to their player versions (ie. Windhunter and Gunner are T4 units due to their high stats). 

Some notable exceptions are below:

1. Twilight Devastator: T2, 100p
2. Twilight Treefiend: T2, 175p
3. Stonekin Rageflame: T2, 100p
4. Lost Manabeast: T2, 100p
5. Lost Shade: T2, 100p
6. Twilight Vileblood: T2, 175p

XL-units
XL-units are similar to L-units in that they are harder to characterize. All are T3 or above. Units which are T5 have been deemed functionally mini-bosses due to their stats or status in the campaign and as such are unable to be mind controlled.

[WindHunter]

[Bini Inibitor]

One unit considering moving to T3 in the future may be Twilight Whisperer. I view it as a Timeshifter Spirit that trades healing for more offensive capabilities. Quite strong as a supportive unit, but relatively slow and having to sacrifice Parasite Swarm for it would be a suitable option.

Edited March 28, 2022 by Bini Inibitor

[Cocofang]

Looks like reasonable stuff overall.
It gives the impression that the guideline for orb and power assignment was player cards, which would make the most sense.

M Units

Excluded for NG: Twilight Hag, Twilight Negator, Twilight Whisperer, Lost Spellbreaker, Drones, Firechanter
Which interactions does Twilight Negator have with PvE entities? Unlike MotK it doesn't block attacks.
I suppose Drones are blocked because the player card is T3?

Excluded for Parasite Swarm: Twilight Hag, Twilight Whisperer
Not sure about Twilight Hag. It has M knockback, which is very strong on T1 and still good on T2. But why keep it from Parasite Swarm? Nightmare Shard uses Twilight Witches, which are currently (hidden) immune against takeover.

L Units

Roster available for NG: Twilight Devastator, Stonekin Rageflame, Lost Manabeast, Lost Shade, Spikeroot
There are two obvious concessions here:
Stonekin Rageflame - T2 100p for 1750/1950
Much higher raw stats than any T2 ranged unit, even if it cannot attack air.
Twilight Devastator - T2 100p for 1800/1700 + Siege
Higher raw stats than any T2 unit except Harvester.

So that gives NG basically two "cheat" units that grant T3 equivalent power. I don't like it but if PvP makes it impossible for NG to comfortably go all in on T2 150p units (through cheaper ability, no resistance buff, etc.), I guess.

Roster available for Amazon: Twilight Devastator
Why not Lost Manabeast? It literally has "beast" in its name, wouldn't it make sense for it to get the Beast-class so Amazon can take it over.

Roster available for Parasite Swarm: Twilight Deathglider, Twilight Devastator, Twilight Frenzy, Twilight Horror, Twilight Vileblood, Stonekin Rageflame, Stonekin Warrior, Lost Manabeast, Lost Reaver, Lost Shade, Lost Vigil, Ashbone Pyro, Mutating Frenzy, Fathom Lord, Spikeroot, Swamp Drake, Thornbark, Magma Hurler, Virtuoso, Vulcan
All within reasonable bounds for T2/T3 units.

Excluded for Parasite Swarm: Bandit Gunners, Bandit Hornblower, Bandit Windhunter, Twilight Treefiend, Stonekin Aggressor, Stonekin Rockstorm, Void Maw, Emberstrike
All either have their player version on T4 or have power well above player T3 L units. So makes sense.

XL units

Excluded from Mind Control and Mindweaver: Bandit Lord, Bandit Ship, Raven Battleship, Raven Scoutship, Lost Archfiend, Viridya's Grimvine, Stonekin Arbiter, Stonekin Deepfang, Stonekin Gemeye
All make sense here.

Now the important question though: How is it going to be communicated to the player which units can be taken over by which takeover-instance? I feel like word of mouth is not enough. Will the tooltips be changed?

[Kapo]

As most of you guys know, I write this mainly from a Nature Players perspective.

Mind Control

I'm kind of surprised of upgrading the Ravenships to T5, when playing Oceans it was a pretty cool feature that you could take them over instead of fighting them, bolstering your unit pool before moving to the final phase.

(I was also hoping for some kind of "gimmick opportunity" for rPvE, like taking over a Bandit Lord or maybe an Archfiend - but I think considering this is asking for too much...)

Parasite Swarm

Taking units over with swarms is usually a slow strategy, even with Shrine of Memory recycling your void faster (which will be taken away, so it will be just slower in the future). All in all I hoped for the Swarm to be in a good place after that change, but it isn't at all - it is worse than before.

There are units now out of range that I usually took over with the Swarm, including the Whisperers (e.g. on Encounters with Twilight) or Twilight Hags (taking over the Insane God T3 camp was one really cool Pure Nature move) - I'm quite surprised since none of them are overpowered in any way. Several other interesting options I would hoped for are disabled as well, even something simple as Stonekin Aggressors, or a Treefiend.

My impression is , with all due respect, is that the range for Nightguard has been very well-defined, but the benefit of taking a Parasite Swarm on a map has been kind of neglected - the "window of opportunity" for it being a useful unit in cPvE has become slimmer then before.

Edited March 28, 2022 by Kapo

[Bini Inibitor]

Quote

 Why not Lost Manabeast? It literally has "beast" in its name, wouldn't it make sense for it to get the Beast-class so Amazon can take it over.

The meeting was mostly about defining proper tier and cost. About that, we haven't put too much thought into that one respectively. Amazon was a bit left out of the picture during the meeting, as we focused more about units without class restrictions. In Path of Exile speak, both Lost Undead and Beast are class prefixes, so in that regard it wouldn't make too much sense. But personally I am all for changing that one into "Lost Undead Beast" or something similar to allow Amazon to capture that one. Would be fitting, not sure how defining class behaviour works ingame, would be your cup of tea or someone with access to tools. Lost Manabeast would benefit from Amazon's buffs, so question left in the room if that may be a tad too strong.
Not opposed to the idea myself however.

 

Quote

So that gives NG basically two "cheat" units that grant T3 equivalent power.

Stonekin Rageflame was chosen specifically as it doesn't have that much presence early on in cPvE maps, yet we still want to allow players to get an edge by taking over certain units. Similar story for Twilight Devastator; it mainly shines through it's stats.

 

Quote

Not sure about Twilight Hag.

Twilight Curse, same for Treefiend. "An inelegant solution as Parasite Swarm ought to be able to swap them" as WindHunter put it. Hags are quite common however and their stats for a T2 ranged units are not bad combined with M knockback.

 

Quote

How is it going to be communicated to the player which units can be taken over by which takeover-instance?

I suppose adding card info for each AI unit in the future may help alleviate that issue.

Edited March 28, 2022 by Bini Inibitor

[Cocofang]

@Kapo I'm with you on Twilight Hag and Treefiend as it has similar stats to Thornbark.
Whisperers though not only offer sustain but also damage and perma CC on any enemy ranged units. That's well above a T3 power level. Similarly Stonekin Aggressor has higher power than any T3 L ranged unit. The same is true for the other excluded L units, Devastator and Rageflame getting a grace pass.

Some of the excluded L units could probably skate in terms of theoretical power efficiency. If they were assigned T3 150p some could still be within bounds of what such a unit would look like as a player card. However takeover is binary. It doesn't differentiate if the taken over entity is better or worse, it simply either works or doesn't. It could be a consideration if takeover was dynamically adjusting its power cost depending on what it gets used on but that's not the case. So despite these exceptions being theoretically feasible T3 150p units, they are objectively better than actual T3 L units. And those are the benchmark.

We must never forget that we are still talking about a mechanic that:

• insta-kills.
• creates energy unbound entities.
• adds enemy battle power to your own, creating a drastic shift.
• can jump tiers in terms of accessible power.

So these points have to be kept in mind when considering units that are stronger than any player T3 L equivalents, while the player is still on T2.

15 minutes ago, Bini Inibitor said:

Would be fitting, not sure how defining class behaviour works ingame, would be your cup of tea or someone with access to tools.

In this case it's as easy as a few clicks. Amazons takeover ability has a simple restriction that it can only be used on enemies that have the class Beast. So by simply adding the Beast class to Manabeast, it could be taken over.

[Kapo]

1 hour ago, Cocofang said:

@Kapo  Devastator and Rageflame getting a grace pass.

 

Yeah, Devastator and Rageflame getting a grace pass for _Nightguard_ to catch a T3-aquivalent unit. Where are the T4-aquivalent grace passes for Parasite Swarm then? I mean, if somebody goes pure Nature, you are getting Energy Parasite (useless), Parasite Swarm, Spikeroot and Deep One. Thats it - literally.

Parasite Swarm is the Ultra Rare in that list, so it should be as shiny and cool as a Harvester or a Firedancer.

Thats where I get my impression this discussion revolved primarly about Nightguard. And this is _ONE_ of the rare chances where we need not care about PvP Balance. Pretty Lackluster.

Edited March 28, 2022 by Kapo

[Donaar]

Ok well,

Let's start from the beginning - that is - the underlying reason behind this proposal: "The reason for such a change is the desire to fix the current issues where units which are spawned via script have no orb or power costs attached to them. This allows units such as Nightguard to swap with any non-XL units, not just those which are T2 and cost 150p or less".

Is that really an issue?? Ok, the fact that some units have to tier/power cost attached to them doesn't really make any sense. But, there are thousands of things (should I make the list?) that don't make any sense in this game, not only Nightguard. That's a huge part of why I love Battleforge - finding and using any single possible interaction is what makes me play. If we fix every single thing that's abusable/broken/not intended we'll end up with a monodimensional game. Well, while this previous discussion was a more general one, let's go back to Nightguard.

The one and only consequence that I see after the change is that NG will be no longer usable on many maps. Is that a good thing? I would say no, as reducing the number of available strategies is a bad thing for a RTS. I also feel like reducing the number of strategies will, in turn, reduce the popularity of some maps as well: I expect a huge drop in Convoy's playrate if the changes goes on, since NG strategies are very popular and liked by lots of players.

At the end, I simply want a game where I can play my pure frost deck on maps like Behind Enemy Lines & Convoy and where, if I want, I can tryhard them both with fast strategies made possible by NG (oh and on a sidenote - such a similar change should be paired with a ranking reset). This change goes instead in the opposite direction.

[Cocofang]

2 hours ago, Bini Inibitor said:

Twilight Curse, same for Treefiend. "An inelegant solution as Parasite Swarm ought to be able to swap them" as WindHunter put it.

So the idea is to have these units as targets for Twilight Curse but not for NG, right? So it's T2 150p VS T2 200p. But the problem is that these two units are also supposed to be Parasite Swarm targets which goes T3 150p.

What if instead Parasite Swarm got "buffed" to being able to take over T3 175p units and Twilight Hag + Twilight Treefiend got changed to T2 175p?

This would put them in range of Parasite Swarm, keep them out of NG and within Twilight Curse's range.

[ArthurKnight]

You forgot to add:

Behind enemy lines:

Reduced the number of games played per month by 50%

Nightmare shard:

Reduced the number of games played per month by 75%

[Cocofang]

If you think those maps would become absolutely unbearably horrible to play, meaning any possible enjoyment would entirely rely on roflstomping with NG, than this would instead point towards issues with the maps themselves. Interestingly, they even precede NGs introduction to the game.

There are already topics where you can discuss problems you see with them and propose solutions:
Nightmare Shard
Behind Enemy Lines

[JarodDempsey]

what is the deal with some of those units listed at T5, will that be used to prevent mindcontrol (the spell) from working on them?

[Cocofang]

There is a post with text above the post with pictures.

[JarodDempsey]

thats dumb af mc still wont be worth slotting in most cases 

[Hirooo]

On 3/29/2022 at 3:11 AM, Cocofang said:

If you think those maps would become absolutely unbearably horrible to play, meaning any possible enjoyment would entirely rely on roflstomping with NG, than this would instead point towards issues with the maps themselves..

While I agree in general, NG changes are getting announced now and map changes aren't. 🤷‍♂️ 

6 hours ago, JarodDempsey said:

thats dumb af mc still wont be worth slotting in most cases 

No need to be so rude.

[WindHunter]

On 3/28/2022 at 3:53 PM, Donaar said:

The one and only consequence that I see after the change is that NG will be no longer usable on many maps. Is that a good thing? I would say no, as reducing the number of available strategies is a bad thing for a RTS. I also feel like reducing the number of strategies will, in turn, reduce the popularity of some maps as well: I expect a huge drop in Convoy's playrate if the changes goes on, since NG strategies are very popular and liked by lots of players.

At the end, I simply want a game where I can play my pure frost deck on maps like Behind Enemy Lines & Convoy and where, if I want, I can tryhard them both with fast strategies made possible by NG (oh and on a sidenote - such a similar change should be paired with a ranking reset). This change goes instead in the opposite direction.

I think the worry about a lessening of available strategies in an RTS, particularly in a PvE setting, is legitimate. The question though is this really a removal of a strategy among a set of strategies, or is this the removal of a single dominant strategy which covers over otherwise major issues? I would argue it is the second. Expert maps are difficult for many players and some maps are substantially more difficult than others. In the current situation, this issue is compensated for by Nightguard. Many players run against the wall of maps like Convoy, Behind Enemy Lines, Raven's End, and both Nightmare maps so they go to chat (or just see it in chat) and are told "just use Nightguard, then its easy." So they use Nightguard, first on one, then two, then a majority of possible maps, swiftly finishing the campaign. The issue is that this means they get the sense the game is poorly balanced, they are not using the faction they feel an affinity towards, they are not engaging in the deeper mechanics which help drive retention, and they can lose the sense of accomplishment beating a hard map brings because they feel like they are cheesing it. These factors all combine to worsen the player experience and lower player retention.

On the other hand, some of these maps are so difficult to beat without Nightguard and/or other exploits that they seem unfair to the player. And some truly are unfair. Nightmare's End has an average completion time of 72 minutes with wells that burn out after 20 minutes and a very low starting power. Additionally, following what the map tells you to do actively hurts the player. The attack waves which attempt to retake the Elemental Nodes spawn nearly instantly while the nodes themselves reward you with nothing, making blocking the spawns with Mark of the Keeper or only taking the 4 spawns at the end simultaneously the best course of action. So the player, faced with an unfair map, fights back, typically with Shadow or Nature cards capable of exploiting holes in the map's design. Now, I am not interested in removing interactions like MotK trapping waves or Nether Warp gate skipping (I think these are appropriate and should be preserved), but I am interested in making these maps reasonable, fair, and enjoyable to play for factions and decks which do not actively try to break the map's normal functioning.

There is also a additional issue where some maps are not more difficult to the point of being an issue, but they are substantially slower and more tedious to the point where the player does not want to play the map again even if it is inside of his skill range. I think Behind Enemy Lines falls firmly inside of this category. Even with Nightguard the player has to twiddle his thumbs for several minutes waiting for power and enemy spawns. I recently went back and played Behind Enemy Lines with Pure Nature, both with and without Mana Wing. Beating the map without Mana Wing felt like a great accomplishment to me, but I must confess it also ruined my desire to play the map again, in part because it was tediously slow and in part because I was forced to cheese the spawn patterns to not lose in the transition to T2/T3 given how hard the attack waves spike in difficulty after the spawn buildings are destroyed. While some people might argue knowing how to exploit a map's design in this fashion should be prerequisite for playing it on expert, I strongly disagree. I think there is a place for exploits of this type and it is within speedrunning and in extra optional end game content we are currently in the process of adding (achievements + a new campaign map mode which should add substantial replayability to campaign maps for veteran players). The base content of the game should be doable by every faction without needing to break the map's normal functioning. Some of this is of course a question of faction design, but a lot of it is a question of map design.

In sum, the issue in my estimation is the maps themselves. Nightguard is a band-aid covering a festering and still bleeding wound. Still, I do not want to remove Nightguard, so we tried to very carefully keep the card useful in a majority of situations. It will still be useful even on Convoy, just not a source of an infinite unbound army. At the same time, I am not so prideful as to think we got everything correct, and I imagine tweaks to our proposal are necessary. That is one reason the proposal has been shared for public discussion far before it is intended to be implemented. Which is itself important, this change is not planned for this upcoming patch. I think any majorly disruptive change of this kind should have a large period of community discussion. In this particular case, changes to mind control also need to be combined with the necessary map fixes, else we do truly just remove a strategy arbitrarily from the game, and worst of all, it is often the only strategy new players have. Now that we all know what is coming, we can all start to make the necessary suggestions to produce such fixes.

On 3/28/2022 at 3:51 PM, Kapo said:

Yeah, Devastator and Rageflame getting a grace pass for _Nightguard_ to catch a T3-aquivalent unit. Where are the T4-aquivalent grace passes for Parasite Swarm then? I mean, if somebody goes pure Nature, you are getting Energy Parasite (useless), Parasite Swarm, Spikeroot and Deep One. Thats it - literally.

The only units typically worth swapping are L-units, with a few exceptions, so a small subset of such units was required to keep the card relevant. Parasite Swarm has a substantially larger pool available in comparison, and with the changes will have access to Lost Souls and Deathgliders for the first time. I think some expansion of the list might be warranted, Treefiend, Hag, and Whisperer all seem appropriate. For additional inclusions I'd like to see some testing done to compare the strength of Pure Nature's T2 with the strength of other factions after the upcoming changes. Buffs to Parasite, Creeping Paralysis, Treespirit, and Spikeroot should go a long way in helping out Pure Nature's T2 even as it is losing Shrine of Memory. 

On 3/28/2022 at 4:06 PM, Cocofang said:

What if instead Parasite Swarm got "buffed" to being able to take over T3 175p units and Twilight Hag + Twilight Treefiend got changed to T2 175p?

This would put them in range of Parasite Swarm, keep them out of NG and within Twilight Curse's range.

Something like this would likely be fine.

[Cocofang]

7 hours ago, Hirooo said:

While I agree in general, NG changes are getting announced now and map changes aren't. 

Partially true, the threads for maps have been up for a long time. Titans already has one proposal, namely replacing Pos4 Fathom Lord with Deep One. Now people can think about (additional) changes to these maps unshackled by NG shenanigans. It helps if first the frame is drawn within the changes occur.

Basically, what would maps that previously were very much dominated by NG (to the point of people relying on it) need in order to improve the T1 experience?

[Reverend830]

Puh 

While I really like that it will be more constant which card are switchable I think some maps need fast updates afterwards. 

Especially nightmare shard will probably mana wings only if you cannot switch the vilebloods anymore. 

I generally love to play Shadow start and try to play most maps full Shadow and really hope it stays playable after the Night guard nerf

[Cocofang]

@Reverend830 If you are thinking of any specific maps and got ideas on how to change these to help encourage more strategies after rolling them with taken over entities is no longer as easily doable, stop by in the Campaign Maps sub forum and share.

[Metagross31]

Maybe the buff/changes to Executor will help in that regard as well. Currently, the only L counter in Shadow T1 is nightguard, which leaves Shadow starts with almost no other option than swapping.

[Donaar]

Hey @WindHunter, i'll answer you since you quoted my previous comment.

So, just to summarize the most important points of your post:
-Some expert maps are difficult to beat without NG and/or any other exploits
-Players feel that maps are unfair
-Players are therefore  "forced" to use NG and other exploits to beat expert maps
-Using NG/Exploits make a player win any map with ease, loosening the sense of accomplishment beating a hard map brings, and this leads to lower player retention

So, as a consequence, it is better to nerf exploits (well, NG in this discussion) and change the maps to be more approachable by newcomers.
Well, the first thing I note is that the discussion has shifted to also include map design, which is a much bigger topic than just NG itself - don't get me wrong, this is perfectly fine but requires a broader discussion imo.

I'll just leave there some points of discussion:
1) expert maps are meant to be hard and in my opinion it's perfectly fine to have some of them that are really challenging and require a specific deck to be overcomed. Note that this doesn't mean that "knowing how to exploit a map's design is a prerequisite for playing it on expert".

2) It's not true that players are forced towards a single strategy. It is true that NG or other cards (like Mana Wings & Mine) make maps easier, but, at the same time, every single expert map can be cleared with every single faction. Saying that Nightmare Shard can only be played with Nightguard or Mana Wing is a misleading argument. 

3) Using specific cards/exploits doesn't necessarily imply a freewin on a map. I've played Blight a lot and you have no idea on how many Mana Wings players i've seen failing. Same thing with NG on Titans P4. Bad micromanagement and missplays weight much more than the deck/strategies used. Actually, I feel like that newcomers that try to use "meta strategies" and exploits have an incredibly high fail rate, since they lack the background knowledge that led to the construction of said strategy.

4) If you really feel that using NG or another exploit make a map incredibly easy, there's an easy solution to that. Simply don't use it. I would like to emphasize again that after the change we'll simply lose the possibility of playing specific strategies, while any other run you currently like is simply untouched. 

One last thing that I would like to mention, even if I know that many players will not agree with me. In the past we have already seen a situation in which a strategy has been destroyed: Guns of Lyr with block. Even if the rationale of the change is clear and understandable (blocking was lame and trivialized the map cause enemies won't even spawn), at the end, what did it achieve? only the fact that players cannot play that strategy anymore. And there were many players that liked the strategy and that tried the map many times just to improve at it - now many of those are not even playing GoL anymore. Was that worthed? any other strategy was possible back then - if you didn't like the block you could simply play the map as intended (as I did many times even before the change).

[Majora]

On 3/31/2022 at 11:16 PM, Reverend830 said:

Puh 

While I really like that it will be more constant which card are switchable I think some maps need fast updates afterwards. 

Especially nightmare shard will probably mana wings only if you cannot switch the vilebloods anymore. 

I generally love to play Shadow start and try to play most maps full Shadow and really hope it stays playable after the Night guard nerf

Just personal experience but I never (not in EA days or in Skylords days) played Nightguard (same for teammates) and that map is definitly possible without it. 
I know not everyone enjoys playing maps for a long period of time, but I think people have grown so used to being able to clear a map the easy way, that they quickly see the normal way as non-playable. I really hope that a nerf to nightguard will reward players for trying different things again. 

[Cocofang]

@Donaar You didn't list the point that it makes the game look like a mess if such blatantly unbalanced and upon further scrutiny unfinished/broken mechanics are just left unaddressed while they proliferate throughout general play.

Handwaving issues away with "Just don't use it!" isn't design. It isn't a vision to go forward with and it isn't a guideline to base meaningful decisions on. And it also disregards the underlying psychology that is at work when humans engage with content like video games. There are plenty of resources out there that examine these processes and how the state of a games content influences and guides people. It's a fundamental pillar.

A common narrative is that taking away options is bad. And more options is always better.

Let us test this assertion with a hypothetical.
Imagine all cards in the game are neutral T1. You can play all cards in the game right out of the gate. You can also combine all cards in the game however you please. The only limiting factors are now energy and deck slots. Ultimate freedom. No restrictions. Everyone can play what they want. Maximum options, apparently the best thing for an RTS.

What would really happen though?
Would cards which are T1-3 currently still remain attractive? A few would because they scale throughout tiers. But would the deck building remain an interesting and meaningful aspect of the games design? After all, you can just put anything in your deck, no limitations anymore. So many more options that wouldn't be possible with restrictive tiers and colors. Yet almost all cards would vanish into obscurity.

What would you have to do to get all the cards up to speed in order for them to compete with the best? Even within the (current) T4 roster, what would manifest is a very narrow pool of cards that are "the best" and everything else is just a handicap. You could still play them, of course. Nobody is forcing you to play a 5000/5000 unit instead of a 500/500. It's all just options. Yet how meaningful are any choices one could make in this environment?

The bottom line is more options does not equal better. It's deliberate restrictions and limitations that make for intrigue and creativity. Because those actually incentivize exploring what is out there instead of just having "Gun!" to throw against Rock-Paper-Scissors. The amount of options is of course important but equally so is the relative quality of the options. Because options that are too good will naturally suffocate others. Worse still if that is the case because they are simply broken.

It offers the illusion of more choices but in reality it just warps the game and its power levels. Untouched options may remain at their current strength but their relative power changes with the top. If you have option A being worth 100, B 50 and C 40 there is a huge difference. But if you take the A down to 60 then suddenly you are looking at A being at 100% power but B jumping from 50% to 83% and even C going from 40% to 66%. Without touching them their relative power increased drastically.

Ripping the band aid off always stings but what's below festered for too long.

[Lans]

I've done a bit of stealing with Nightguard myself but I am also totally convinced that the whole mind control thing is broken. I mean I can get something that is clearly stronger than your average T3 unit for about 10 or so lost power and rest in void power/unbound power... wow, seriously?! And all this is with text clearly saying T2 and 150 max power... Then I look at Mind Control and say, umm... are these even stuff I would want to trade if not just for the fun of it / it might be slightly interesting / "just because I can" (you would think from text of T4 and 300 max power you could steal them but turns out you can't).

 

I am also concerned that the nerfing goes too far and makes Nightguard totally uninteresting/unusable but so far, overall it is in the right direction and I am cautiously optimistic that devs are committed to monitoring the situation and revisiting maps.

 

I gone back to do Behind Enemy Lines without Nightguard (took me a little over 60min 😱) and I do hate having to juggle stopping north and south Twilight disciple at about same time for like 15 to 20mins or get flattened for being too late by a few seconds. While I don't like having the much quicker way "taken away", I also recognize this is something broken, not only for one map, but pretty much all of PvE and it is just especially bad for this particular map.

 

I don't know what or if anything is in the works but I do think that without the broken mechanic being addressed, I don't think anything new will throw us, the players, anything else interesting to steal. I think everything sounds reasonable enough and without any change, we'll have no progress on this so let's try?!