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[Sgst] Game Balance
Submitted by Raithwall on July 31, 2009 - 13:23.
remove mana cost reduction connected to skill level
lower base costs of all cards by 1
increase the effect of skills to maintain veterans advantage
restore so far skill points so that they've got to be reallocated again
Hey guys,
First of all, sorry for this extremly long topic ^^ there'll be a summary further below if you don't wanna read evrything written here.
I'm sure you've noticed that once people reach a certain value at their skills their cards start to become cheaper when being used.
In my opinion, that's causing a huge imbalance since they already get more damage from increasing their skill in handheld for example or higher damage mitigation from block/evade.
I'm not sure how you guys think about it, but i'd suggest that we remove that lowering of mana costs from increasing the skills and leave it at increased effects only.
This way we could guarantee that new players who joined the game recently are not a such a huge disadvantage when facing people who've played for weeks already yet our veterans who've leveled up their skills will still have an advantage over them.
I myself also reached that point already that cards started to become cheaper and i have to admit, i don't like it at all.
When playing against someone my level the fights usually end with someone having like 5% - 10% hp left which can be really exciting.
When fighting some new player on the other hand, i usually have like 30% - 50% HP left, depending on how much i cared about my mana management.
Furthermore i'd suggest that the base mana costs would be reduced by 1 point for everyone to maintain a faster paced gameplay and prevent people from skipping turns all the time, but the individually decreased mana costs for certain players isn't the best solution in my opinion.
Instead i'd suggest to increase the impact of the skills on the cards. For example we could change the skills so that the effect of cards equals twice your skill points in percent.
( Someone with 50 skill in handheld would deal 100% of the damage shown by the card, someone with 31.5 would deal 63%
- maybe add a +/- 5% random damage modifier so it won't get boring).
While being at it ... and i know burdenday already opposed it ..., i'd like to bring that up here anyways ^^
With the change in how much the skill points cost when leveling them up people who've already had high skill level gained an even larger advantage over others who've not had the chance yet to get there.
I do not want them to totally reset every so far gained skill point, but maybe it's somehow possible to restore the base values and give the people the so far spend skill points back so they'd have to re-allocate them.
To sum my suggestions up:
Thanks for the feedback
Hi Raithwall,
Thanks for the post. I appreciate the feedback. It's still pretty early and we don't have all of the features implemented, yet. So I'm hesitant to make big changes until we have a few months of data at our disposal. I thought I'd address each of your points with how it works in the larger design of the game.
SKILL POINT RESET
We expect there to be the need to make other changes to how the skills / math / damage equation works. We can only tell so much by setting up equations in Excel and running simulations. You guys will always find ways to play the game we didn't expect. It won't be possible to reset the game each time we make a change.
The new skill point math will actually mean that the senior players have just /lost/ their advantage. The lower level players will gain on them very quickly.
MANA AS A FUNCTION OF SKILL
The mana cost of cards decreasing comes from the RPG elements of R&R and is an important part of the game. As you get more skilled, the lower level cards become cheaper to play. This is why trading cards so important. Lower level players will benefit /way/ more by trading their 4 and 5 mana cards to the senior players for more 0, 1, and 2 point mana cards. This part of the game isn't that appparent, yet, as we're just starting to grow and there isn't a large amount of trading going on.
There will always be cards that cost 0 to 5 mana points in the game, regardless of your level. The goal as a player is to keep evolving your deck so that you're replacing and cycling the cards in your deck by trading for them, winning them, and buying them.
BTW - There is a very good chance lower level players will beat higher level players if they build their decks correctly. I've posted this a few times, but it's important to discard at every turn to make sure you always have a 0, 1, and 2 point mana card in your hand. Then discard to refine the damage / mana across all of those cards in your hand. Keep one or two 4 point cards around to use at the end of a battle.
MAKING SKILLS MORE IMPORTANT
The last patch actually decreased the impact of skills on the potential damage of a card to make the game more balanced for players at different skill levels. The more important skills are, the less chance a lower level player has of defeating the higher level player. This would be the case regardless of the mana cost. Before the last patch a battle rating difference of as little 0.1 was practically unbeatable. Arcaholic was only 3% higher than a few of his competitors but was beating them every time. Now, Cerdric comes close to beating him fairly often and that gap will continue to close even if one plays more than the other.
HOWEVER!
I am interested in strategies to help lower level players and higher level players enjoy fighting each other until the game is large enough that there will always be someone of your level to play. I'm going to think about ways to have certain times where the importance of skills is reduced and focus more on the decks people are able to build.
TO CONCLUDE...
- We are not able to reset the game each time we make a change. It’s a lot of work and we expect to be making frequent changes over the early parts of beta to deal with balancing issues. With the new diminishing return per skill point and the rebalancing to correct the impact of skills, the lower level players will catch the higher level ones very quickly.
- The concern re: mana cost will go away as trading becomes more prevalent, but we'll keep an eye on it.
- We will look into different ways to make new players able to rival experienced players, but we want there to be a definite advantage to being experienced. This will make new and experienced players able to play each other, while maintaining the thrill of levelling your character.
And BTW... It is /never/ a good idea to skip a turn. Skipping a turn is a good way to lose. If you want to save mana for a future turn, play a zero point mana card. If you don't have a zero point mana card then you need to ensure you're discarding / refining your hand at every turn.
The best way to maintain a high damage / mana is to play 1 and 2 point mana cards. If you're losing the battle, start playing 3 and 4 point mana cards to make use of Frenzy and Mana Risk, as that is your best chance of coming from behind.
Happy to chat about this more!
Tal.
A suggestion
I'd like to make a couple brief observations:
- The imbalance pointed out by you, Raithwall, is not a symptom so much of imbalanced gameplay (or "the math" as we call it), but it's a symptom of there not being enough players to offer enough variety of people in your level to challenge.
It's no different than playing an RPG or even an action console game, and having a hard time beating "rats" when you start the game, but then later on after your character improves, they can be defeated in one hit.
- Anyone who wishes to "reset" can actually do so by creating a new character. You'll start off with skills at 25%, and you still have access to all your cards and decks.
~Spore
Well guys the above pointed
Well guys the above pointed out suggestions are just from my point of view and what i've observed during the last couple of days i've played the game.
It might go against what you've planned for the game and how the maths should be handled but i don't think it'd be too hard to try it out either.
I mean all you'd have to do is make a copy of the current settings, change it a bit for a test, try it out and see if it'd be too far off of what you'd expect it to be.
That might be true for people who haven't got skills > 37.
Evryone else who's already got skills higher than that aquired them by paying only 1 point per 0.1, every new player who's not as far yet, will have to pay 2 points per 0.2 from then onwards - making it alot harder to get into the 40's or even 50's of a skill ( which other ppl have already unlocked ).
I'm not sure how trading will help out with that but if you say so. My point was not that veteran players have MORE cheap cards to play BUT that they have for example 4000 dmg point cards for 0 mana costs while new players pay 1 mana for everything above 3000 damage. Furthermore the veterans can play 7000 dmg cards for 3 mana while new players only get like 5500 dmg cards leaving them at a 1 round disadvantage with every played card.
Can't really oppose this since it is true ... but the fact that new players have to pay one more mana at those cheap cards already compared to veteran players makes it kinda impossible to let it slip as a valid reason.
If a new player decides to throw out all of his 3/4/5 mana cards from his decks cuz they will only put him in a disadvantage compared to the veteran, what if the vet does the same ?
He'll have cards with double the damage for the same costs tho.
ps. Spore do you really compare a collecting card game with a RPG or console arcade game ?
I think that's not really possible.
Your Suggestions
Hey Raith,
Thanks for the updated suggestions. You've put a lot of thought into your ideas and we do appreciate it. As an Indie development team, we always have to balance our time and resources between bug fixing, new features and game balancing. You can imagine that things can get a bit hectic trying to do that. ;)
We are always looking for suggestions from players. While we do listen - we cannot always act on all the suggestions. The implementation of ideas depends, ultimately, if we have the time, resources and if they fit with our long-term design goals.
Thanks again Raith.
Desolate