Well… my toughts about all this stuff:
Definitevely I prefer the second over de first one, and maybe even more the other with the outsider wells, i think concentrating all available resourses in only two wells on the whole board punishes too much fragile and cheap harvesters, ‘cause is harder to deal with two of them, each one in one side of the board, which means that what before were "kill a harvester = Less one faeria’" becomes “Kill a harvester = two less faeria” instead, what i think punishes the economy estrategies either.
I agree with the complaint about the inconvenience of building two useless lands required to double harvesting, and about the counterattack, we need to evaluate what is faster… being hushed down, or develop an economy to turn the game arround while you are geting harassed by some ultra-fast-efficient stuff? I’m putting this on the table because aggro are suposed to work with low cost moves, and just imagine now if the one harvester is killed by some random cheap soul drain or Saifer’s wrath? Then the faeria you invested on the harvester, and the two faeria you were counting for the nex turn is gone… And even worse, in that time the agressor can just take control of your faeria well (which is now closer to your face) and jus snowboling towards a game you can’t turn arround.
Maybe I’ve writed too much, and can be wrong in many aspects, but i’m the type of player who likes to slowly burn the opponent down, or starve the enemy’s resourser to come with a strong comeback, or even slowly develop a big late game threat, and maybe is unfair to punish these player because some other players are hurry guys that wants a fime minutes match. :v
This is basically equivalent to having a single harvester set up for double harvesting. In that situation, sniping the harvester becomes extremely valuable. In both cases you can counter this by deploying multiple farmers for redundancy and/or invest into more durable farmers.
It also works the other way around. A face rush has to rely on cheap farmers at their own well, if you snipe it that will really slow them down. If they go for your well instead, you have an interesting fight on your hands (which should still favour you due to proximity).
The balance of rush strategies vs. long-term strategies requires that the rush player has an edge in the early game, the challenge for the long-term strategist is to find ways of weathering the storm until they can turn the game around. Of course if the game becomes more fast paced, this also means that some of the long-term strategies need to become a little less long-term. This could require balance changes, but I also expect that a lot of this would happen organically through deck building.
E.g. if burning a player down is too slow, a better strategy might be to combine offensive units with burn and defensive units contributing to the burn (Grim Guards). That kind of deck would still be burn, but it would require a slightly more balanced approach than relying 100% on burn effects.
Actually, the “other way arround” don’t work like this… just because at the current board hush players don’t set up harvesters at all… and that’s the wikness of 'em, so shortening the time required to reach the other side just rise the reliability of the stategy.
And i think the equivalence between one new harvester and the current double harvester isn’t true, because de nature of double harvesting is risky, putting in practice, I much prefer two safe harvesters colecting two different wells over one that causes a huge faeria loss when killed, the second vesion just throws that possibility away. And the “backup harvester” isn’t even practical, will be an problematic dilemma between secure your economy, or eficiently defend yourself against agression, too much commitment considering the avarage scenario.
Well… all the conversation leads me to conclude that changes so bold like these must be implemented along with a HUGE change at the mechanics of how each archetype works… which i think is virtualy impossible for devs como up with.
But maybe they may take this to adjust the thin balance of theirs game
Exactly, a classical rush doesn’t set up harvesters… because they are using your well! You can’t really hurt the rush by killing their farmers, because their “farmers” are also their frontline. With the new board a straight-forward rush would have no easy well for forward support, so if anything it will be harder for them and they’ll be forced to either fight for control of your single well, or to dedicate at least some resources for farming.
You might be thinking of the yellow rush, which isn’t really a rush in the classical sense. It’s just a playstyle designed around benefiting from hitting face. Putting the orbs closer together will definitely help yellow’s playstyle, but on the other hand yellow is also designed to have a fairly low damage output on their haste units, which means that if you race them with a minimal amount of defence, you have good chances of beating them at their own game. Right now yellow also benefits from the fact that often it just takes too long to reach their orb before they can grind you down.
@Zenity You have interessting idea, the point is all your idea favor an heavy aggro meta (Which killed many TCG and CCG in the past) so it might not be the best idea after all. I understand you want to reduce game time but I just can’t see it happen as all it would do is make 2-3 aggro deck (or even only 1) ‘‘the best deck’’ and nothing will be able to win against it.
Before I stopped playing we had alot of problem with YRush dominating every deck on the ladder (even its ‘‘counter’’) and to be honest, I’d rather have a long game than a bad/boring meta. But yeah I can be wrong since the meta probably shifted since then. I believe the problem is not the board/rule/game in itself but the player taking way to long to make a decision… I can see that happen alot in every CCG/TCG. For exemple the other day I was playing magic online, I had to wait 5 to 10mins every time my opponent was playing… For info I was playing control and he was playing (braindead) aggro deck… My point is, If every CCG player would understand that the card they draw should not change their game plan at all, Even what your ennemy did/played should not change much about the turn you are about to play. ( I am quoting one of the greatest MTG player, Find who it is :P)
However, this way the game just becomes a “If something is hiting you… hit back harder to kill before it kills you”, and i don’t quite like be pushed to play like this.
I prioritize a game with more options, and one that you can play the way you like, without being too pushed because a common archetype is in the other side.
Now you kind of triggered me. It’s always been my pet peeve that the culture around the game is to largely put everything into the framework of a CCG. This just doesn’t make sense to me, the world of video games is a lot larger than this and Faeria didn’t start out as “yet another CCG”.
I recently came across an interesting post on Duelyst describing much the same issue and how it has hurt the Duelyst community.
I feel the same way about Faeria. People get so passionate about discussing good CCG design, that I feel like some are missing the forest for the trees. You can’t just make a slightly better MTG or Hearthstone and expect this to be a success. MTG didn’t become the massive hit that it is from looking at some other game and making some minor changes to the concept. It was a completely new way of playing, providing an experience that players couldn’t get anywhere else and they loved it.
This is even more strange to me when you consider that MTG wasn’t even designed as a video game.
Anyway, I don’t want to rant about it too much, just to make it clear that this is not how I think about it. I evaluate Faeria in the context of all video games, not just in the context of CCGs. There is a lot of potential that we are almost guaranteed to miss if we remain stuck in the box of CCG concepts.
This is the kind of statement I’m talking about. This might apply to MTG, but that doesn’t mean it needs to apply to Faeria. The fact that you do actually have to react and adjust your strategy to your opponent’s plays is part of what makes Faeria so much more engaging as a strategy game. But it also means that timer considerations become more urgent, and that you can’t necessarily apply game design wisdom from MTG or other card games one to one.
My primary intention is to improve pacing and create tension from the first moments of the game. I also want the average game to be much shorter, but that doesn’t mean that occasionally a game wouldn’t last a bit longer. Control decks can exist in every scenario, because it’s a relative scale.
I was here when Ninja Yellow would take you down from 15 to 0 in one turn, no matter how many taunt creatures you had around your orb. I was here when DOOM Drake reigned supreme and I was here during The Yakkening. I was always one of the first to ring the alarm bells when a rush deck was being too effective, but in hindsight those were also the times I had the most fun with Faeria. Let me try to explain why:
Ninja Yellow (and to a lesser extend The Yakkening) used excessive out-of-hand plays which was undoubtedly a problem, but it also was incredibly fun to work out those turns. It was tactically challenging in a way that nothing since has ever been.
During the Doom Drake aggro meta, half the games would be yellow mirrors. While those could feel a bit dumb at first, after playing them for a while I actually started to really enjoy them. The games were short and intense but also had a huge amount of subtlety to it. Not to mention crazy movement tricks and clever tactics (this was before yellow design was changed to the more straight forward poking style of today). During those times I spent more time thinking about the details of every single choice than any other time. Compared to a “normal” game of Faeria it felt like walking a tight rope over the Niagara Falls rather than one meter above the ground. Another interesting effect was that these aggro decks started including defensive cards (e.g. Devouring Plant or the almighty Shimmering Statue) to go for a more balanced approach and increase their chances in the mirror.
I’m not saying the meta was in a good state back then, the lack of variety was obviously a problem (and the resulting Rock, Paper, Scissors design where yellow aggro was only beaten by specific counter decks, but everything else would beat those counter decks). You can look at this from a CCG perspective and decide that it’s simply cheese that needs to be nerfed, or you could look at it from a video game design perspective and say “hey this is actually fun. This wasn’t our intention, but perhaps we are on to something here”.
It also proves false the fear that aggro mirrors will turn into simple races. When you have a race, you know that one of the players made a mistake. Aggro mirrors are about judging when you are in a position to win the race and when you need to dedicate resources to defence instead. Aggro decks go face by default but will defend when they have to. Control decks will defend by default but also need to have the capability to push their advantage when they have it.
A smaller board also makes it easier to switch between offence and defence, which I believe will make the game overall more engaging while reducing the Rock, Paper, Scissors aspect of the design. Right now you can end up in a race simply because you had to commit to one or the other and the distances are too large to change anything about it after the fact. A smaller board means more choices, more flexibility, and more rainbow unicorns.
A smaller board also makes it easier to switch between offence and defence, which I believe will make the game overall more engaging while reducing the Rock, Paper, Scissors aspect of the design. Right now you can end up in a race simply because you had to commit to one or the other and the distances are too large to change anything about it after the fact. A smaller board means more choices, more flexibility, and more rainbow unicorns.
I sadly have to disagree, I smaller board would encourage every deck to go straight to face and just try to spam as much creature as he can before his opponent got any time to react. Also back in YRush era, I played it a lot and against it. 9 out of 10 games the YRush player had only 1 choice, go straight to face and play every card you can as fast as you can, There we’re no strategy to win with that deck (Unless you started with the worst possible hand in a mirror matchup), It was the most braindead and boring experiences I had in any Video game/CCG in my life. Apart from that tough, every other deck are fun and add alot of strategy and depth to the game.
This is even more strange to me when you consider that MTG wasn’t even designed as a video game. MTG didn’t become the massive hit that it is from looking at some other game and making some minor changes to the concept
MTG was the first TCG of its genre back in 92-93 I believe, It could not check what other game did before them to improve faster, thus having printed the most broken card in the history of TCG’s. Also it could not try to be a video game as… It was kind of impossible with the technology back then.
Anyway, I don’t want to rant about it too much, just to make it clear that this is not how I think about it. I evaluate Faeria in the context of all video games, not just in the context of CCGs. There is a lot of potential that we are almost guaranteed to miss if we remain stuck in the box of CCG concepts.
Thing is apart from other CCG such has Heartstone/Deulyst/HexTCG you cannot compare Faeria to any other game I know about. MMO’s, Shooter’s, RPG, RTS, all those game take way more time for 1 game (lets say 1 dungeon for MMO’s) than a typical Faeria game where both player know what they are and should be doing while piloting their deck.
But if you want to compare with HS lets say, Yes HS games are much faster, but the RNG is what makes you win or lose, not your brain. Also HS is really boring because when you do win you don’t feel like you did, I feel the same way I would feel If I would win 20 buck in a slot machine, Pure luck win. I can’t tell about Deulyst havn’t played it much, but for HEXTcg, The games lenght is about the same but again RNG wins over brains (and some combo are broken as hell). The only things that makes Faeria what it is, is the difference in-between all those braindead style of play and Faeria actually asking the player to think by himself.
Actually trying to compare Faeria to a typical video game makes only sense to those who try to sell this product, We as customer are missing so many information that we can’t make a clear decision in wether or not Faeria should evolve into a miny HS+Chess with braindead RNG so billions of people can play on mobile.
I feel the same way about Faeria. People get so passionate about discussing good CCG design, that I feel like some are missing the forest for the trees. You can’t just make a slightly better MTG or Hearthstone and expect this to be a success. MTG didn’t become the massive hit that it is from looking at some other game and making some minor changes to the concept. It was a completely new way of playing, providing an experience that players couldn’t get anywhere else and they loved it.
I get your point tough even tough its a video game it remains a CCG no matter what you’d like. The player base will be CCG and TCG player along side with new player who are interested in those kind of game, You can’t think of this game in a ‘‘Battlefield/CallOfDuty’’ view as this game won’t ever attract as many player, its just sadly impossible. The point is, Either the dev will make this game way to casual and easy (so the player base grows a lot, stealing the young kids from HS and some dying CCG) or they will keep to their promise of being competitive and the player base will somewhat stay small as its the bane for any card game.
@Zenity, I think an elegant way to test all the great arguments posted here is a custom game mode, this proved to be realy good in Dota 2, and then we can precisaly evaluate what really would happen if the game turns to some direction like this.
That’s the goal, yes. But that doesn’t mean that defence isn’t effective or that you don’t have to focus resources on defence when you know you won’t win the race. The point is that the board should naturally encourage aggression when the opponent fails to defend to ensure good pacing and tension from the first move onward.
Control decks will just do what they always do and focus on removal and defence structures to survive until they can play (or develop) their big end-game threats. Keep in mind that control decks will also be able to go from zero to Garudan-in-your-face much faster.
Sounds like you are thinking of the classical neutral/yellow rush which is by far the least interesting kind. But even then, winning rush mirrors requires a lot of subtlety and precision. The real problem was the lack of balance and the awful rock paper scissor setups which are created when the difference between rush and control decks becomes too large. By making the game faster in general rather than trying to solve the problem by balancing individual cards or entire colours to be forced to go face, the pacing issues could be solved in a much more wholesome way.
Exactly, they set out to create a new experience and succeeded. Since then we’ve seen hundreds of card games trying to copy their success, the vast majority of them fail spectacularly. Trying to make a “better Magic” is legit, but uninspired. Faeria did start out as its own thing, attempting to create an absolutely unique blend of board and card game mechanics. Limiting ourselves to CCG terms and concepts when discussing the game makes no sense to me.
And you don’t have to. Just like MTG didn’t have to compare itself to anything else, all you need to do is apply general concepts of game design and you’ll probably end up with something good.
Pox Nora is the perfect example for this. Long before Hearthstone and other digital card games it created something completely unique by actually combining tactical turn based strategy with some card game mechanics. Quite a few Pox Nora players have moved on to Faeria or Duelyst and all of them are probably wondering what happened to developers’ willingness to innovate.
Hearthstone has had a really strange effect on this. It’s pretty similar to what happened with World of Warcraft when everybody tried to copy their model and failed miserably. The successful projects are the ones who manage to differentiate themselves. That’s particularly strange since Hearthstone itself is a far more unique creation. It didn’t source most of its players from card game players, it created card game players who weren’t interested in the genre before. A truly well designed game does this.
Making the assumption again that there isn’t much to think about in a typical Faeria game, which I don’t agree with at all. MMOs and RPGs cannot be compared to begin with since they are not (typical) competitive games.
As for RTS and shooters, I don’t think you are right. I tried to find some statistics and apparently the average game length of a Starcraft 2 match is just slightly above 10 minutes. The average for a match of Overwatch is actually much less than 10 minutes. The most popular online variation of chess is 5 minutes blitz which obviously lasts way less than 10 minutes by average.
A single average game of Faeria right now takes longer than all of these (or at least a comparable amount, depending on your playstyle and speed), provides less engagement, and far more randomness in its outcome. Also about half of a match of Faeria can be quite boring, if not all of it if the matchup is really unfortunate. All of this is why I am saying that the game has severe pacing issues which need to be fixed one way or another. Either make it more engaging, or make it faster. Ideally both.
Of course there are games which are designed to last quite a bit longer per match, e.g. Counter-Strike. But those games tend to not just be considerably more engaging and deterministic, but also generally allow you to hop in and out at will when you don’t have time to schedule a complete competitive match. Also note how with CS in particular, the pacing is split up into many small and intense rounds. If a single round of CS could last 10 minutes, you’d probably be bored out of your mind (even if you managed not to die after a minute or so).
Yeah I’d disagree with you here but you are already disagreeing with yourself. Obviously some or many players will come from a card game background (especially those created by Hearthstone) but you could make the same argument for the board game aspect of the game. Anyway none of this really matters, and of course CCG fans will use CCG terrminoligy. I just don’t find this helpful in discussions about game design.
Switching gears completely, what would you say the audience for Clash Royale is? It’s technically an RTS, but I bet with you that most of its players are not hardcore RTS players. It just managed to be massively successful by taking some core RTS elements and building the best possible casual game around it. It appeals to almost anybody who generally has very little time to play and it’s surprisingly engaging. I’m neither particularly keen on RTS nor on casual games, but I have played a lot of Clash Royale simply because it’s a well designed game that is easy to fit into ones life. I don’t feel like I’m wasting time which would be better spent on something else (either a more engaging game or doing something productive).
So I can enjoy a hardcore game like Starcraft and I can enjoy a quick break of Clash Royale, but a game that would be as trivial and unbalanced as Clash Royale but takes as much time and dedication as Starcraft would have no chance of having a place in my life. Right now unfortunately Faeria feels too much like that kind of game which is neither quite fish nor fowl. Since at this point it’s quite clear that it won’t become a hardcore tactical game any more, I do believe it needs to go in the other direction. Not too much, just enough so the average gamer can justify playing it in addition to hardcore games for example.
One more reason not to think of it as purely a card game. Being a game developer myself, I really don’t agree with this defeatist attitude which is bound to turn into a self-fulfilling prophecy. The game has huge potential for a large playerbase if you play your cards right (no pun intended) and you don’t have to dumb down the game for this.
Most games which remain in obscurity don’t do so because they are too difficult, but because they have quite obvious design flaws. The worst you can do in that case is to just blame it on the average intelligence level of the player or any other outside factor. Some genuinely good games remain in obscurity because they just fail to get enough people to notice them, but Faeria isn’t one of those games. Faeria’s got a lot of eyes on it, the important part now is to utterly mesmerise everybody who gives it a try (or even just watches it). Don’t underestimate the average player’s intelligence level, but also don’t underestimate that most people are busy and want to fill their time with whatever provides the most engaging experience.
Absolutely! Like I wrote in the OP, a Tavern Brawl style mode would be excellent for this. Of course you need to be cautious with the relatively low player base (a chicken and egg problem), so perhaps it could also be done as a temporary event that replaces the Unranked mode like what they did with the Highlander event. Call it the Faeria Blitz event, make Unranked games use the timer and smaller board, then see what happens. It could even be sold to new players as an opportunity to more quickly farm gold for a while.
You’re right to mention that some games, like HS, Clash Royale … have chosen the path of short games … even short to the point of frustration sometimes ! But you did not mention that there are also some games that are much longer (Dota2, LoL …) and as successful as other shorter games. Success doesn’t depend on the length of a game.
You feel more rewarded by playing a hard fought battle that lasted a while than by playing a few blitz games in the meantime that you hardly had time to really appreciate. You will not likely remember a 5 minute game among the dozen you’ve played in an hour, even if it was an intense one, because it will be immediately erased. I personnally don’t remember any HS game I’ve made among the hundreds or thousands, even if there were plenty worth remembering. However, you’ll remember the 30 min back-and-forth game where none of you were able to establish domination. However, those games are quite rare, I have to admit it. Most of them are indeed the one-sided unwinnable game that may last forever because one doesn’t want to concede (and, funny paradox, I’m one of these annoying guys myself :P).
I did not forget this at all, I specifically mentioned that some games are designed to be longer.
MOBAs are also an absolute outlier. Their success probably has a lot to do with them being the embodiment of “easy to learn, hard to master”. Everybody can understand how to point and click your character in a MOBA, yet learning all the details required to be a top player literally requires years of dedicated study.
In any case, MOBAs are also relatively engaging experiences from start to finish. People generally have little to no patience for outcomes decided by RNG in a MOBA and they are also multiplayer experiences which gain a lot from the social aspect. Can you imagine a one hour 1v1 version of a MOBA? There is a good reason why such a thing doesn’t exist (that would be called an RTS and successful RTS are both faster and more complex).
I’m absolutely not saying that games need to be fast to be successful, that’s very much missing the core point of my entire post. This is understandable though since I wrote way too much and it must be hard to keep track of it al. If my post was shorter and had better pacing, then I’m sure that more people would be willing to read it carefully and more frequently.
I believe that shorter game length would be better for Faeria in its current state for many reasons which I have outlined in my original post. That doesn’t mean it would be right for every game, and as a matter of fact, for the longest time I did advocate for Faeria to go the opposite route of becoming a more engaging and skill based tactical board game with reduced card game mechanics. By now it’s clear that this isn’t ever going to happen, and that’s fine with me. Any kind of game can have a place in my life, as long as its design is consistent with what it is trying to achieve.
Exactly, and that’s the “no easy way out” aspect I mentioned as one of the reasons why in my opinion long games are bad for Faeria. It’s not just that we don’t want to concede, it’s that the nature of card games is that in theory you could make a comeback from almost any situation with the right draws, even if the chances are extremely slim. It is hard to justify surrendering when the outcome is so unpredictable (of course eventually you reach a point where all doubts are erased, but games can drag on for quite a long time before reaching this point).
The more you write Zenity, the more I think you are right!
I have been telling everyone since february that I want longer games! But what you are suggesting makes so much sense, I want to TRY it! Now!
Some thoughts after playing enough to get my account back to god rank (it was down to rank 20 after skipping a few seasons) and (temporarily) into the Pandora top 64.
Game pace in general is not terrible, but there are a few caveats:
In constructed it only really seems to be better now because green is out of the picture and most meta decks are designed to be aggressive. I wonder how green will be reintegrated into this without making it worse again, and that’s really the core of my criticism (by not fixing it on a fundamental level, it’s bound to come up as a problem again and you severely limit your design space).
Pandora has such great potential in Faeria, but I’m already getting bored of it because of the heavy-handedness of its mechanics. While they do a good job of generally encouraging aggressive play, it doesn’t always work out that way. When a game has a usual slow build-up it feels pretty silly. Pandora is already too unpredictable to have any sort of long-term plan and with the treasures it’s even worse, so slow games never give me the impression that they really add anything to the game in Pandora other than boredom and more chances for treasures to **** things up.
This again is a symptom of trying to cover up the issues with additional mechanics rather than fixing it in the core of the game design.
The timer is still the most urgent issue in my view though. I’ve had plenty of games where opponents roped for BM (this is a game design problem, not a player problem) and even more games in which players legitimately used up most of their time on each turn. I’ve found myself tabbing out and doing other things during my opponent’s turn quite a few times, and that really isn’t a good sign in terms of the game’s quality of engagement. When I schedule time to play then I want to play, not browse the web.
One thing occurred to me which makes this issue far worse than in other strategy games: Many times, there is just nothing to think about during the opponent’s turn. It is very possible to have absolutely nothing playable on hand and the only “move” you got is to wait for the next card you draw. This just isn’t working.
This reminded me of how Duelyst draws you a new card at the end of the turn rather than the beginning of the turn. I think that’s a much better approach, because why the hell not? This won’t always do much of a difference, but by average it is bound to give you more to think about during the opponent’s turn (reducing boredom), while also speeding up the game a little since you can more often plan your complete turn during the opponent’s turn.
For now my verdict is that while I had a lot of fun at times and Faeria really can be brilliant at its best, right now it just doesn’t fit. With its pacing it directly competes with games like Overwatch for my time, and that’s just not a comparison Faeria can ever hope to win. It would have to be a whole lot deeper and a whole lot less random for that to even be a consideration. Of course Overwatch isn’t everyone’s cup of tea, but I am pretty sure that there is an equivalent to it in most people’s life.
On the other hand I’m still playing Clash Royale and I’m planning to keep playing it, even though compared to Faeria it’s boring af. But unlike Faeria it manages to fit into my life because it knows what it is and how to be the best at what it does. The most depressing thing is that as far as this issue is concerned, Duelyst seems to do almost everything better than Faeria. Which means that when both Duelyst and Faeria have their mobile versions ready, in their current state only Duelyst would be a real alternative for me. And that pretty much sucks since I backed Faeria and far prefer its overall style (not to mention the community and developers).
To recap, I believe that these three changes will dramatically improve the game’s pacing and help secure its place in the gaming market:
1. Improve the timer
Give a small buffer time for each action (not turn) and a time bank that is only being used up after using up the buffer time and until the next action. A better timing system is a must for any “real” strategy game where the average turn requires a lot more choices than just which card to play. The current system relies way too much on player goodwill and ability, which in my view is a severe design fail.
2. Change the board
I still believe version 2 as described in the original post would provide good results, but of course that’s just one option. Make it so that the game by default has good pacing (i.e. when played with vanilla cards) and does not require specific card design nor fancy Pandora mechanics to keep things progressing fast enough.
Making the board smaller would not just speed up the game, but also reduce some of the disconnect between the different areas of the board right now. Faeria is not the kind of strategy game where you can expect your units to survive multiple turns, so placing units where they don’t have an immediate effect is mostly pointless. With a smaller board, preemptive placing would become more sensible as units would have an easier time effecting all the regions of the board.
3. Draw on turn end rather than turn start
This fruit is so low hanging, it’s practically on your plate already.
All of this can easily be tried out as a special event that replaces current unranked mode for a while. If it’s a complete failure then at least we know and can look for better solutions.
I am sorry, But this just mean to me that you had ‘‘dead’’ card in hands, meaning your deck has to many cards that only benefit you on specific terms, for exemple Firestorm is not good unless your opponent has 3+ creature on the board that you can kill with this card, Having 4 Firestorm in your deck in a meta of 4hp+ creature is just plain wrong.
Rest of what you said makes sense, but also might be completly wrong for reason discussed earlier in this post. For exemple the smaller version of the current board MIGHT be a good idea tough it may destroy the game into a full aggro meta (With no control or combo deck being viable). The Draw at your end turn is a good idea tough it copy’s another game which is not really great (Since this is pretty much Unique to Duelyst). For me the only things that really need improvement in the core of Faeria are the Timers, They are the reason some people ‘‘Troll’’. The reason why you wait 15 mins for a player that has a crap internet and dc every 5 seconds to come back but never actually get to play. Its the reason you find this game way to long to be honest.
Sadly when you write all I see is a Rush/Aggro fanboy who would like to see 1 or 2 aggro deck be the best and play braindead 2 mins games with those deck. This is not what fun is for 99% of the CCG and Video game community.
You said before you are a game designer, while I respect Game Designer a whole lot. Most of the time, you game designer are wrong about what makes a game fun to play or should I say your vision of fun is not what most of the player find fun. Lets take for exemple, The Division by Ubisoft. We can say this game had great potential, but now its pretty much dead, apart from the bug/hacker, The Game Designer killed the game. They didn’t listen to what the community would like and they did what they thought would be best.
I am also sorry, but that is nonsense. Every deck has the capability of having dead hands, heck you could even run out of cards and have none at all in your hand. Even with good cards you can easily be in a situation where none of them are a good play in a given situation (especially when falling behind) so you have no option left but to wait for the draw. That is simply a fact of card games.
Try making a game, try doing everything “the community” wants. It’s so easy, isn’t it? Nobody ever tried that one before… No of course they have, and the result is inevitably complete rubbish. Many cooks, design by committee, insert your favourite phrase, they are all true. A game with a bad designer will be bad, a game with no designer at all will be trash.
If Faeria was doing exceptionally well, there would be no reason to question its design. But I don’t believe it is. Perhaps things will change after the release of 1.0, but I’m not too optimistic at this point given that Abrakam is already putting quite a bit of effort into marketing (e.g. I’ve been seeing full size ads on GosuGamers) and player numbers aren’t exceptionally higher yet than they were in closed beta. That really isn’t a good sign IMO. I also doubt that Abrakam would have chosen drastic measures like axing the full collection purchase if they were totally happy with how things are going at the moment.
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If Faeria was doing exceptionally well, there would be no reason to question its design. But I don’t believe it is. Perhaps things will change after the release of 1.0, but I’m not too optimistic at this point given that Abrakam is already putting quite a bit of effort into marketing (e.g. I’ve been seeing full size ads on GosuGamers) and player numbers aren’t exceptionally higher yet than they were in closed beta. That really isn’t a good sign IMO. I also doubt that Abrakam would have chosen drastic measures like axing the full collection purchase if they were totally happy with how things are going at the moment.[/quote]
I completely agree that Faeria still needs some work, but away from that, the success of a game doesn’t have too much to do with the game itself. There are great games that “no one” knows about and there are those with flaws that get played by the masses. It’s more about luck and advertising than the quality of a game itself.
It also depends heavily on the target group. While Hearthstone caught all those casual gamers and got the Blizzard brand, Abrakam went the other direction (even thought it’s still way too luck dependent to me) and doesn’t have a name like Blizzard. Now, there are MUCH more casual gamers out there than those who want thinky matches…
Having that said, it’s quite impossible for Faeria to come close to the success of Hearhstone, alone by the fact that the target group is MUCH smaller. The question is, what does Faeria want to reach and at which point will it be coinsidered a success?
It’s always been my pet peeve that the culture around the game is to largely put everything into the framework of a CCG. This just doesn’t make sense to me, the world of video games is a lot larger than this and Faeria didn’t start out as “yet another CCG”.
I evaluate Faeria in the context of all video games, not just in the context of CCGs. There is a lot of potential that we are almost guaranteed to miss if we remain stuck in the box of CCG concepts.
