I feel the new expansion did more harm then good

Balance Discussion
#21

(Less than level 120, no Oversky cards)

I believe not to remove or destroy any Oversky Cards, rather instead Faeria should have two modes to play on: One that allows Oversky Cards and one that simply doesn’t have them (E.G. Casual Oversky, Casual Normal). Oversky Players should fight Oversky Players, Non-paying players should fight non-paying players. The matches in my memory that have been unfair involve me needing one more hit to the face for lethal, my strongest cards down, less than 10 health left, and BOOM - a whale takes my strong card, and then zooms over to kill me.

#22

I don’t thing the solution is to remove the cards or separate the players that have them from people that don’t have them.

Imo, the swallow mechanics are not fun to play against at the moment cause the counters basically forces you to play last nightmare for the whales.
As for the flower, it lasts too long (7 total turns of inactivity if you don’t play building removal).

Small changes could be made to make them more fair : whales could cost less faeria but have 3-4 life instad of 8 so red can remove them for example.

#23

I actually already commented on the Wild growth nerf in another thread. I never saw it used. All the special lands really are is a time cost. You must wait X turns to play this card. Which when the first 4 turns are normally nothing its not that hard to get them.

I actually think they are making a mistake along the lines that Wizards of the Coast made when they first introduced multicolored cards. They thought it was a power boost and not a weakness that it really is. So they over costed the cards by an insane amount. In this case the Faeria devs are over estimating how much of a barrier wild land costs are. Turn four players can pretty consistently have 6 different special lands. With the new ramp cards it may get even faster. Wild growth wasn’t used because of its randomness. They didn’t need the lands they needed the lands right were they wanted them. As a example a spike of lands shooting off to the uncontested wells that they can put Crustal Flowers and Whales on.

2 Likes
#24

That’s a good idea in theory but creating formats like that is a tricky thing. You are fragmenting the community. I don’t know how big Faeria’s community is as a whole but I don’t think it would do well. Its one of the reasons that you have Pandora Coins to play Pandora. If you don’t you will have people that only play Pandora and nothing else effectively fragmenting the community.

1 Like
#25

Yeah, it’s definitely not a good idea to separate paying and non-paying players. May as well just kick out the non-paying players at that point (why waste resources on bandwidth for them if they’re not even playing against your paying players).

I’ve seen games have beta-servers which may be a good idea to give these cards a bit of balancing before the big release - I’m not sure if this has been happening, but it’d be a good idea. The nice thing is the cards can begin testing even before the art is done, and players can be given all the new cards for free for testing purposes. Crazy nerf ideas can also be tested quickly and then quickly undone. There’s no hard feelings when you’re testing a card and it gets broken and subsequently nerfed. It’s not the same as if you just spent a bunch of money on the card and then it gets nerfed. Also serious players will split their time between testing and ranked play, so it doesn’t really split the community.

2 Likes
#26

There are 2 things about Oversky that make me sad:

Firstly, before the expansion released, it took me quite some time to balance my 3 or 4 main decks to make sure they perform well on ladder.Then the Oversky hit, and I feel like I am forced to include at least the Crystal Flower (all 3 copies of it) into All of my old decks, just to be able to compete in the “new meta”. Or should I call it “The Never-ending Swallow-fest”?..

Secondly, everybody is Terrified of The Whale. So, to combat it, they use the strategy I have called “Land Choke”. They spam as many neutral lands as they can, as close to their opponent’s orb as possible. The good thing, for them, is that this strategy makes it impossible to build the 8 lands required for the whale. The bad thing, for their opponent, is that the player who is unable to place those 8 lands is: a. Literally forced into a corner; b. Unable to play the whale; c. Unable to unlock the full potential of the cards such as Leaping Fugu, Sagami Grovecaller, Wavecrash Colossus and numerous others. This literally breaks the game, all to defend against a deck which may not even have whales in it!

#27

100% agree.
ARRUINARON EL JUEGO NOVATOS.

#28

With the exception of Flower being too cheap still and how the swallowing sickness still works after creature actively freed, I like the rest of the expansion.

I wish Flowers are not auto include in every deck though. Boycotted it since reaching god rank but basically you have to suffer almost every game at your creatures being swallowed. :frowning: All the gameplans with making big creatures are just out the window, have to prepare yourself for the punishment to be able to play those decks and have a bit of fun, which happens maybe 1 in 5 games… The rest of the expansion is really good though, glad the tree is nerfed.

#29

I disagree with your opinion regarding the expansion.

The flower is still too cheap. In fearia you only get 3 of your ressource per turn unless you have some kind of boost or board control, which is a significant difference to for example hearthstone, where you get an refill every turn. This means that losing a big creature is really a huge blow. And this basically means that the uper limit for cost of creatures is determined by the removal. If a creature costs more than the method to remove it, then you have to gain stuff immediatly that is worth the difference. And now you added a removal that has 2 fearia less cost than the former hard removal while being available to every colour. This means every time you play a bigger creature like for example verudian force, you take a big gamble.

Now to the rest of the expansion and why i do not like it. Because you gain only a low amount of fearia per turn and the rest of the fearia gain requires board control, cost efficent cards, that give you the board control are really a problem, becuase it then simply becomes a “if you win, win more”-type of game. And the expansion in this regard did more harm than good. It is now easier than before to establish board control and it is harder to contest it once it is established. The swallow mechnic did a huge chunk there, but we also got a lot of other stuff, like huge boost cards, land movement in combination with fly, heavy cost reduction, and creatures with too many stats. Nearly no card of the new expansion is good when behind. We need some defensive stuff, like cards with conditional removal or silence.

Also the identities of the colours are vanishing. Red for example has now acess to hard removal, continued boosts, movement tricks and huge value trades thanks to the grappling hook. Before the expansion hard removal was only available for the yellow player, with blue having a similar mechanic by using transformation. The strenghth of red was that it could deal decently with a lot of early agression thanks to combat boosts, damge removal and cost efficient small and medium creatures, while red was stuggling with bigger creatures because most creatures above 6 cost were not great. Becuase of the hard removal and the potantial to boost infinitely with generating gift of steels this no longer seems to be the case. That is similar to giving green the growthcaller or adding the colossai with huge cost reuction for yellow and blue. They get strengths that were not the strenghts of their colour before. Another example is emperor’s command for the blue player giving him heal, which before was not a trait of blue.

2 Likes
#30

Not sure if you replied to me by mistake or not, I agree with flowers being too cheap and all the rest. I stated that in my post but probably didn’t word it clearly enough.

Good point about colours losing their identity. You are probably right. I am just glad to be able to make more multicolour decks. The multicolour cards, their colour association and balance, definitely can be improved.

#31

Totally agree with the lost of colour identity, that is sad for gameplay and roleplay.

And the swallow mecanic is REALLY REALLY BAD, in term of balance and gamedesign.

Vast majority complain about it so why no mecanic change ?

#32

I think swallow can be balanced while preserving swallowing sickness…basically almost anything can be balanced just be changing the cost.

But I agree that swallowing sickness is just bad game design. It takes a great opportunity for interactivity and multiple exciting swingy turns and does away with it. A cluster of crystals should be vulnerable to one emperor’s command (and a chain of jailbreaks). A cluster of whales should have a similar weakness. A fatty swallowed and left next to the orb should be able to break free with the right card and make the player regret that without giving them a chance to react. Those sorts of plays would make the game feel more of a back and forth and make swallow cards more of a risk. They should start there, then balance the cost around that playstyle. If swallow winds up being weak, then make the cards better values, but preserve the opportunity for interesting counterplay.

#33

Swallow Swallow Everywhere

I’ve had so many games completely turned round with this mechanic - and my last 3 games were swallow defeats…totally demoralised - I agree with most comments and amazed a balance change has been so slow to arrive…

I’m quitting Faeria until some changes are made to this.

#34

I paused the game a few months, to see the oversky changes…nothin happends…
#The new cards are powerful and the only reason for the arkabboys is to make money. You cant play ladder anymore without them. Thats it. Game delete. bye

#35

“As I understood it Three Wishes was always a top tier deck” LOL. Long story short - meta changes were not favorable to “your” deck so you don’t like it.

“Swallow” mechanic was the best thing that happened to Faeria IMO. Yes, it is unfavorable to big creatures, but so is Frogyfy and Last Nightmere! Why dont people rant about those cards?! “Swallow” is better then “old” hard removals, because it makes board matter and you can still get your (big) creature back. You could argue about nerfing all hard (soft) removals a little and I would not mind that, but that would be a separate balance discussion and not a discussion about game mechanics.

Also I find Faeria to be very generous in terms of card prices. 22 expansion cards for the cost of 9 chests is very cheap IMO. “I don’t have a lot of good cards and I’m level 115” - How come you dont have “good” cards if you pre-ordered Adventure Pouch?

#36

“#The new cards are powerful and the only reason for the arkabboys is to make money. You cant play ladder anymore without them. Thats it. Game delete. bye”

I think this line of reasoning is very stupid. I’m a new F2P players (1 month), I can see many of the oversky cards are really strong, but oversky cards also are ridiculously cheeper to get compared to the regular collection. I’ve spent about the same amount of gold on regular solo content (basically packs + bonus xp for the same amount of gold and a bit of time) than of oversky, and I already bought two islands, while the only decent deck I can make without oversky cards is a mediocre RN rush deck and a slightly less mediocre R burn deck.

Looking at videos of older versions of the game, Oversky clearly look like a powercreep, and one might not like the new meta (very unstable, games are often decided by a single good -and lucky- turn, or by matchup), but the new cards are so accessible it’s actually the opposite of a money graber.

1 Like
#37

So you hate rush and you hate control.
Mate do you even like card games?

#38

I’m surprised this thread is even still active so long after I posted it.

But your assertion is flawed. Faeria is more than just a card game because of the tactical unit control. That is why I am here. If I wanted standard rush and standard control I live right next to a LGS and can play MTG at any time.

The reason I was attracted to this game is board control. I want to win because I made better moves not because I have better cards. I want to control the board and overwhelm my opponents or break through their defense for a clutch win.

I used to be able to do this because land placement used to mater. Land means nothing now because its so easy to get it out and every control deck will fill up half the board with land. I used to be able to tactically use creatures but swallow removed that. They can get rid of any real threat by simply placing the flower or whale on the other side of the board where I cant get to it.

Now the game could of changed since I abandoned it but from looking at these comments my guess is that it has not. Which means I wont be coming back.

#39

I don’t think it’s rush and control that Sendokami dislike, I find it pretty clear it is swallow control specifically, and being forced to play it himself if he want to be competitive. As of rush, I am not sure about it. I’ve tried it, and it did not work especially against swallow control. My collection and skills are very lacking to make and use a top tier rush, but I think the main factor is that land acceleration is good at producing colored lands without giving up on the ability to deny your opponent good lands.

As for rush itself being annoying, I have decent chances to counter it reguardless of the army I used, and have been countered a lot while rushing myself, without necessarilly facing anti rush tech. I’ve had some ludicrous games won or lost on turn 3 though, based on matchup, card draw and bluff.

I’m a new (1 month) player and it seems the only ways to beat swallow control is to

  1. Race them and win before they can play one flower/whale per turn. By race I don’t necessarilly mean rush, midrange with enough lethal threats can be fast enough, and R burn has occasionally worked for me.
  2. Establish dominance over the whole board (four wells) in order to have a chance to explore the only drawback of swallow compared to a hard removal.
  3. Use a combo deck which does not require board control, like haste OTK, and preferably whoch does not requires good land placement, like Mana burn.

A fourth possible way is to face bad opponent who would use whales to make “good trades”, allowing you to free your creature the turn after.

In any case, the winning window can be rather small.

I find it very informative that out of the top 4 players of the last monthly cup, 3 used BG ramp with 3 Frog Tosser and 3 Whales. In the few matches I’ve seen a good whale drop indeed meant the whale user owned the board. Even more popular, GY sac, containing the mandatories flying yaks, was used by all 4 of them. GY sac seems flexible, able to feed on rushers death, sometimes able to produce more targets than swallowable and with a decent win condition. Other than that. Other decks seems to be teched to be rushy enough to finish an opponent before, or to have damages from hand to race an opponent after losing board control.

I can’t say how good GY sac is, but I’ve played BG ramp swallow control, and by far it feels and looks like the easiest deck to play among top tier ones, and the lamest (even easier than rush, which also is much more matchup dependent).

#40

This is correct but its a step further. I never had the urge to be competitive in the first place. I made decks I liked to play. If they did not work in the ladder I still had casual mode to play. Before the expansion most highly competitive decks took some effort to build because it took time to gather the cards. So I could have all the fun I wanted in casual. But with the expansion giving complete sets of competitive cards it is much easier to make those competitive decks. To the point that I cant play casual at all now. If I want to play the decks I like to play I am literally limited to playing against the AI. That is why I left the game.