Oversky exp has ruined all the fun and uniqueness for me

General
#1

Big wall of text. Sorry if it’s too much to stomach, but i hope atleast some people will read it till the end, and i won’t make a TL:DR because i can’t express myself in so few words about how i feel.

I feel like every thread i’m making on the forums is whining, so i’m sorry beforehand but:
The oversky expansion brought a lot of great mechanics and a lot more viable color combination, which is of course a good thing for a card game. But it also brought something i feel has ruined all my fun: Namely removals. When i started playing Faeria last year, it was fun and the meta shifted each month, and it still felt balanced because each color had their own identity. But after oversky i feel the meta has completely stagnated, let me explain:

I don’t play faeria in the high tiers and im not a progamer or anything even remotely similar, but what i liked about faeria pre oversky, was that every faction/color had strength’s and weakness.

But now every single color in the game can pretty much bandaid their weakness’ by splashing (imo) op oversky cards, as an example: Blue only had frogify, mirror phantasm and they could also use falcon dive for a bit of neutral for removals. oversky–> now they also have frogtosser, crystal flower, emperors, whale, deepwood stalker (i know it got released before oversky, but it’s still a removal). And all you need is to splash a bit of green, of course you would rarely (if ever) use all of those cards in the same deck. But it has still made it too easy to add removal to an otherwise removal-starved faction. You might argue that you could just splash yellow/red before, and thats true, but you still had to make an actual effort with your deckcrafting to find good synergies. All the neutral OS cards can be plastered on every color/faction in the game for immense value.

Before oversky got released, red and yellow was the strongest factions when it came to removals because their hard removals were more effective than the soft removals of blue, and green had basically nothing before deepwood stalker. And it felt balanced. But now everybody is playing the same color combinations and archetypes so they can either splash removals, or for land acceleration. I know a lot would white knight this thread, and others would probably feel im whining and i should just “git gud”. And you might be right, but i can’t help but feel i’m having a lot less fun now, than before.

Imo every faction is basically the same archetype now. green/blue frogtosser removal decks, red/blue reduction decks with removals, red/yellow with even more removal, Green decks with removals, blue decks with removals and so on… It’s imo frustrating to play against the exact same decks over and over, all with removals by the tonne. It has also removed a lot of the prediction mindgames which was a huge part of the game before: counting your red enemy players flameburst + seifers and/or firebomb + bombslinger. knowing he would have nothing left when those 6-12 cards had been spent. (and often you wouldn’t have room for all 12 cards in your deck) The same with blue frogify and phantasm, or yellow LN and Choking sands + wind soldiers and soul drain.

Even something like a mono green deck has deepwood stalkers, CF, whales, emperors command, and falcon dive as potential removals. Which i feel they should never have as an option when their ‘strength’ is their big statlined creatures, with a weakness (before OS) of high land req, high faeria cost, and very few removals. But now that weakness is pretty much nonexistent. And the same goes for any other faction. You can always find some way to band-aid your deck(s) weakness’ by splashing like 2 land req worth of oversky cards into your deck. Or use CF/Whales.

I’ve made the hard choice today to completely stop playing Faeria, and possibly look for other dccg’s to spend my time on. And it’s a bit saddening for me, because faeria has been the best one i’ve ever played, and the ONLY one i’ve had so much fun with and stuck with for more than half a year. Also it’s one of the only dccg’s i’ve spent a decent amount of money on without feeling forced to, to be competitive.

All the best from here on out, to the community and the Faeria team - and i hope when i come back in half a year or more, that it has changed for the better.

7 Likes
#2

I think the oversky expansion did a lot of great things, but i agree about the removal. I have felt removal is op since the begining. If you are trying to make good trades (e.g. i kill your monster with mine and mind dies too but yours was worth more faeria) there is a grace period where the opponant can respond. I may not be able to summon it next to the creature i want to clear, i have to wait a turn before i can attack with (ofc there are exceptions but even creatures with haste/deepwood arent so strong they can just remove anything). Things like frogify, last nightmare, crystal flower, and skywhale are op af too me. 6 faeria to remove a creature. Which means that if you summon a creature that cost 7 or more your opponant can just instantly make a trade in his/her favor. No restrictions. It goes through protect, and where my creature is makes no difference. Its a point and click one trade.

3 Likes
#3

If you leave I’d say check back every month or so - Oversky is still being balanced (they say they want to do it slowly, not sure whether that’s good or bad) - and these problems might get fixed.

I do strongly agree that color identity is less than it used to be. I’m not sure if they’ll change stuff enough to get it back to what it used to be, though. I do hope so, but I’m doubtful, as it’ll require a lot of changing and maybe some regressing.

#4

Yeah, I love Faeria (have more than 200h on it) but all of my frustration comes from those cheap removal cards and how now they’re present in every deck. I too am thinking about quitting, devs are taking too long to balance things out.

#5

Xaxazak you might be right, maybe i should check in every month or two, just to see what has happened. And imo why did we even need the oversky exp? Don’t get me wrong, new cards are always nice for theory crafting and trying out new stuff. But there was/is already so many cards that never gets any use in any decks, simply because they’re bad, or flavourless. Imo it would’ve been better to just balance/rework some of the core cards instead and maybe add a few new ones. And in that way they could’ve ‘added’ the color combinations which were lacking possibilities (like red/blue).

Spacer i’ll agree with you half-way. i never thought cards like Last Nightmare or frogify was a problem, because: LN had a high faeria cost, and you didn’t always have the faeria needed to make a proper play with it, more often than not, you’d have to sacrifice playing a creature or another card, to be able to use it. And Frogify is only a soft removal which still gave the enemy a buff target/ good card for double collection. Where i see the problem, is the oversky cards that i already mentioned.

Gonomodevil i have to agree with you, and imo they never even made a proper playtest with most of the cards, when the whales first got released (shown), they were completely unbalanced to the point of (sorry to say this) stupidity, and even after atleast 2-3 rebalancing, they’re still poorly balanced.

Imo the faeria team should’ve perhaps made a free ‘beta’ test with the cards, and then collect the feedback they got, before releasing a poorly thought-out expansion, which they’ll have to spent months balancing out. And probably see a drop in playerbase because of (pure speculation on my part).

Also i don’t see how a new player is going to have a chance against any decks with oversky cards in them. They’ll have to spend more than 3-4 weeks just to unlock the islands, and thats without using the gold they earn for packs, or pandora runs.

#6

Money, I think. But I’m fine with that way of earning - I prefer it to buying cards. Then again, I’m not a fan of the CCG/TCG collection concept at all.

I’d’ve probably preferred less cards and more features - and I think the community would too. 2v2s, more customization of custom matches, etc.

#7

disclaimer: I’m still in my first month of faeria and this is just my current thoughts.

I dont see the problem really. removals are standard in most card games and most usually are inexpensive. the way you would deal with these cards is to simply bait them out, sounds hard with a 30 card deck but its doable in hearthstone and faeria has way more depth.

and before I had started tapping into the oversky expansion I had felt that the game was lacking in removal cards…

not to say that I think more is better, the main reason I cant stand yu-gi-oh is because the game is half removals…though tbh they dug that grave years ago by making it easy to super buff their mons…

#8

About removal, i think a TCG really need them to keep control on hardcore big/buffed crea.

OFC swallow card are still too strong and frustrating for me.

But nothing to complain about frogify or LN, who have their weakness like paroxysm said.

#9

Due to Faeria having a factor of distance, removal is a larger deal. Most of the time the things you summon are not an immediate threat to the opponent, so baiting is considerably harder than card games like Yugioh where battle factors are instant. People are only going to save their most powerful removals for incredibly big threats. Basically they’re going to save it for anything either a threatening effect (I.E Emperor Kios) or creatures with stats in the double digits.

The goal of the game is to get something to the orb and whack it unless you’re red where you’re given the option of slow burning it from anywhere, most of your monsters are basically there just to exchange blows and try to use some sort of grand effect to get to the orb. Everything in between is just a game of who can ruin the decks chances of doing this meaning most of your creatures aren’t going to fulfill any orb smacking and are just a dance of removing threat options. That being said, a lot of decks depend on something big to come out after this “Dance” to finish the game and here is where removal is so important as it can take out these big threats. If removal was easier, basically all snowball decks would be useless and we can’t have that since that just makes rush even more broken.

If I’m a GY player and pull out 2 15/15 soul eaters then you’ve basically lost , I earned that snowball. Now if you have a last nightmare and kill one and set up a taunt to stop the other, then somehow get a deathtouch and kill it? That’s an outstanding recovery, but holding on to two crystal flower the entire game and locking me down so that your huge threat gets to me? Well the entire concept of my deck is thrown out the window because the removal is too great. You’re never going to use those flowers for anything but something huge and with other mechanics like taunt and just distancing in general even the biggest creatures can be useless for a turn.

I’m all for more mechanics that protect your orb, stun threats and other factors that include land placement strategy, but removal MUST be limited and costly.