You have a brilliant game here. Tactical depth and in some ways a modern version of what MTG used to be in the days - I love it. Totally left other games behind to get into Faeria and Im ready to commit (kinda new player here). Thank you for all of this.
One thing though repeatedly gets my blood boilinjg - how in Pandora the RNG is rampantly out of hands.
The scenario seems to be very similar in almost all my Pandora games. Its off to a heated battle until midgame when the treasures appear in hand. At that point the whole game becomes just a coin toss, which is a shame and ruins the overall positive feeling I have about this game. Tactical gameplay after that… almost gone.
First of all the treasures are way too strong… last game my opponent got a Stone of Fair Fortune which gave him THREE new treasures in his hand (see how this is already out of balance?)… one of which was another Stone… and one of which was another Stone… and one oif which was AGAIN another Stone… so he basically kept playing treasures every turn to the end. No checks on repeated Stone drawing, apparently its ok to get 12 treasures in a row.
I understand that you want to get some action and randomness in otherwise stale and long lasting games… but stuff like “steal a card” and “copy the last treasure of your opponent TWICE” and “get THREE treasures in hand” and “destroy a creature and place a new one there” has nothing to do with any kind of tactics in my book. All it is is who gets the most whacky treasure cards to proceed and win the game.
Tone it down please. A lot. I won a game recently with one life left because I was really lucky with my treasures and my poor opponent simply couldnt keep up after that. He had played a brilliant game until then but had zero chance once the treasures came out of the box. I doubt anyone has fun losing that way.
It also pushes players to rush each other (and pick cards accordingly) because they fear they will get out-lucked when the big RNG god appears. Again - not fun.
Pandora should be about tactics and good card picks. Treasures can bring some fresh changes and are welcome, but not like that. Im sure many newbies are turned off by this, and it feels so far off the well-balanced constructed game.
I don’t agree on the scale of the problem - I loose or win most my Pandora games due to game choices and deck viability, and most of the time I get much more pissy about not drawing single Voice of Truth or Seifer’s Wrath. You learn to play with and against treasures in time, and plenty a time I played around the scythe or rose, deliberately giving my oponent a 6 attack body, just to follow up with an Automaton kill condition.
That being said, I do not enjoy treasures all that much. I like the idea of a gimmick, but I would enjoy a literal speed up to the game (2x mana AND 2x draw, natural an wheel) more - instead of treasures or with more support-like treasures.
Urn of Gabria is a great card and a nice treasure to get, and most importantly it doesn’t turn the game by itself. Hammer of Destruction late game on the other hand lets you 20-0 enemy god with no chance to counter and while playing super defensively.
With that in mind, I do agree as to treasure-drawing cards. While Stone on it’s own isn’t all that great (and it puts the treasures into deck, not hand), it can roll out of control. Same with Magpie. I hate the existence of a treasure draw engine, and I hate even more how strong it is. Magpie with haste can draw another magpie with haste, single stone ups your treasure count to 5 and has 18.7% chance to create another treasure draw engine in that. That needs to change. I would love to see treasure draw engines replaced to just power draw (draw 2, lower cost; maybe lower cost the more the Pie Attacks (great metal band name), so on) or at least treasure draw engines removed from treasure draw engines pool of draw.
The core of the problem seems to be excessive draws of more powerbombs and hard removals. The gimmicky concept of treasures isnt wrong in my eyes, but it needs to be more consistent with the flow of the game. More mana gain or buffs is what they should give, not nukes.
I agree too. The treasures are all over the place. They can be put into categories but I think the impact each treasures has on the game differs too much.
And there is the Void + Hammer combo which basically ends the game in 3 turns.
I’ll put my vote down for the current treasures being too RNG and not very fun. I normally enjoy draft pick modes but I currently can’t stand Pandora.
Seems I’m always on the cusp of victory until the treasures come out and I get screwed over by the game turning, but random nature of them.
It leaves a rather bitter taste every time it happens, and on the flip side when it works in my favor I don’t exactly feel fantastic about it.
I’d suggest a more structured way of what treasures we get and to completely remove the possibility of getting more via the example snakeblood gave. Maybe put the treasures into a 3 tier list based off how powerful they are and players choose one from each tier in their draft.
You don’t get three treasures in your hand it goes into your deck so you have to draw them, The card alone is very bad unless you have a draw heavy deck.
I read this post about a week ago and couldn’t make my mind up if I agreed or not. Sadly, I have come to the conclusion that I do.
There just are too many games where the treasure totally shifts the balance and I do find myself groaning whenever my opponent draws the fifth shard, knowing that any advantage I may have could well go out the window in a single turn. A Bloodfire Shaker can end the current threat of a yellow rush while simultaneously landing a 6/6 or 8/8 for the opponent. Chalice from the Palace or Aurora’s Teapot can just completely change the board while Secret of Strength can turn a non-threat into an instant lethal!
I have come to the conclusion that I too think it should be de-powered or just scrapped altogether!
That’s why I stopped playing Pandora all together. Not only is the draft of your treasures RNG, after that who gets which treasure when is RNG. And to top all of that it’s RNG when the wells are getting empty. Oh, so you outplayed your opponent and got access to all 4 wells? Too bad, draw 2-3 shards in a row and reset the whole game. Pure bullshit! I could really live with the treasure RNG, but please don’t punish me for playing good and reset the game by RNG. Why do the wells get empty anyways?
Not just the Pandora cards - things like Crackthorn Beast or Icerock Behemoth are stupidly decisive on their own if you manage to draw these at the right time and with only one copy in the deck it’s decidedly RNG if you do so or not…
[quote=“AchDeToni, post:8, topic:5249”]
Why do the wells get empty anyways?
[/quote]Emptying the wells does feel a bit wonky I’ll agree. It’s definitely less strategic, and it distorts the value on a lot of cards. I’m not sure what’s a good way to improve it, though.
I wonder whether Pandora could have different effects for different days or something. Eg:
Empty the wells.
Allow each player to destroy a vacant land each turn, and spend 1f for special lands.
Wells deal 1 random damage to an enemy instead of gaining faeria.
Draw 2 cards each turn.
Healthiest god loses 1 life and gains 1 faeria during production.
Each of these would distort the value of cards in different ways.
And during pandora the turn timer should be halved IMHO. Makes it more pandemonium.
This is awkward in its own right, because if you have a deck which is particularly strong during one of the distortion possibilities, you probably want to wait six days before getting around again, or it forces you to play all on one day.
That is pretty awkward if you just play casually.
One can certainly make arguments that this is a good thing as well, so it comes down to preference.
[quote=“Aasgier, post:11, topic:5249”]
you probably want to wait six days before getting around again
[/quote]Ah yeah that’s a good point. And if people were waiting they wouldn’t be burning as much currency - so it’s probably bad from the dev’s point of view.
You could do it random per game. Of course that’s just going to add RNG.
It may be better to remove Pandora altogether and replace it with 6 or 8 (just any number that isn’t 7, really, so they cycle) different daily setups that each have their own unique rules and/or board, though some of these could definately be Pandora-esque.
Well I was thinking that treasures would still be kept - I kinda like them (except for void hammer), although I do agree they are huge RNG. But that’s what Pandora is.
Also, if you did that then, as you say, you’d need to play it all on the same day (or wait a week-ish).
I don’t have a great solution for less Pandora RNG that doesn’t involve significant rework.
One possible small fix could be giving Pandora’s bonus 3+ faeria to your opponent every turn (or having the player that awakens Pandora not receive 3+ on their 1st turn). That kinda shares the awaken benefit more evenly.
Another idea is that some cards could have a delay - maybe you have certain keyword delayed cards that you must put into a publicly viewable slot (capacity 1?) before you can play on subsequent turns - maybe you pay 1st too? Pandora cards could have their cost reduced and replaced by delayed. Of course, they may end up being just as potent after, so it might not have a huge RNG reduction.
That’s a big new mechanic just for Pandora, but it might be fun to have some delayed regular cards too.
Yeah, so for my proposal you probably need to change the reward and Coin system.
It intertwines with the suggestion for other tournaments as well - but without splitting the queue’s up even more than Pandora and Ranked already do.
Delayed sounds interesting as a negative keyword. I like it.
Pandora opening (6 faeria per turn) does not fit into the game design (3 faeria per turn). So pandora simply destroys the balance between cards and makes many cards ineffective. Because of this defect and a protracted pandora, I just stopped playing pandora.
The easiest option for Abrakam is to remove pandora opening and nerf all treasures.
Maybe after this pandora becomes playable.
I agree that it does harm the balance between cards, and many cards are much less effective (more due to the lack of well synergies though IMHO - luduan etc). But Faeria is very specifically balanced for the standard board, so any changes are going to break balance to a (proportionally) large degree.
It’s definitely not as polished as regular Faeria, but it’s still definitely fun IMHO. I just see Pandora as less serious Faeria. Treasures are a fun idea, and you do still get to make clever moves even if it is a little less strategic.
It’s also totally fair, no P4AA (Pay 4 Any Advantage, hopefully I can get the term to catch on ).
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