Trade and Discard Cards

And in response to blighted pea, I tend to have 0-2 card in my hand most of the time since the valor can be used to capture towns or in emergencies used for mana or gold, it’s rare to have 5 cards(now 7) in the hand without the autoredraw.

After some playing around in SP, I like this change quite a bit. Here are my main takeaways (no MP games yet; I’ve got a busy week).

  • Cards now feel like they’re more on the same level as your other resources. You get a good stockpile to start, which you use up as you establish your early position. Then you have to consciously go about about acquiring more of that resource.
  • Seven doesn’t feel like too many starting cards like I thought it would. But my main concern was in MP, so maybe that’s still on the table.
  • One Valour per card is definitely a player buff in Nightmare, but I don’t think it’s necessarily problematic.
  • The number of cards in my hand varies with difficulty level, time into the game, and race.
    • On harder difficulties, I often end up with more cards in hand earlier on, as I’m more likely to spend Valour digging for a certain critical hero card.
    • As I mentioned above, the overall average cards-in-hand line starts medium, drops low, and then rises dramatically once I get a good Valour stream in the midgame.
    • With Elves and Goblins, I both draw and play more cards, because these races are so hero-centric. Their towns are less important than their heroes in general, so Valour goes to getting more heroes on the field. I usually have fewer cards in hand with these races, but I also play the most total cards.
    • With Humans and Orcs, I draw and play the fewest Hero Cards. It’s usually more important to spend the Valour on settlements, since they do well with their basic armies. I make do with my starting hand for a long time with these races and only start drawing in the midgame.
    • Trolls and Dwarves fall somewhere in the middle, as they have important heroes but also sturdy base units. My hero card spending for these races is more map-dependent than anything else.

Overall I’m a big fan of this change. It introduces a lot of additional player choice. Big thumbs up.

1 Like

The current tournament map, (which isn’t even nightmare level) shows just how much more difficult that extra valor cost for drawing cards is in the early game!

(I added this elsewhere, but it may be more applicable here as it presents a different opinion from what I sense is an alternate point of view here on the forums)

Playing with a group of four players now (myself and two friends from my previous game, one new guy I’m trying to recruit). Got some feedback on the recent changes that I’d thought I’d pass along (collected from the new and old players):

(1) Paying valor for a card has turned the game from feeling like a deck-building game to a “pay for a card with real money and put it in your hand” game. General sense is that your card collection now barely matters at all for optimal strategies. Feels far more “pay to win” than before.

(2) Trading cards is a fantastic addition, both for strategy and for business we think. It let the new player see and “feel” the card’s use and drove him to consider buying cards for his collection as desirable… but he lost that desire due to the feeling he sensed and I’ve noted above. “Why bother buying cards now? It’s pretty much a random luck thing every game if I have to buy cards using valor (precious enough already) or real money.”

(3) Why bother with premium if your collection is less important than your wallet?

(4) Trying to play “free” with these added challenges is now ridiculously difficult and essentially requires a micro-managed style of play. This runs completely counter to the “play when you have time over the course of weeks” feel the game started with. Now it feels more like “pay a lot - if not, you’d better make best use of EVERY second you can so… good luck with doing anything else for a few days.”

(5) Having read feedback on the forums the general sense is that the strongest opinions being voiced (by regulars and high contributors) seems to be biased toward

  • making the game more difficult: this makes sense as many of those people have played a lot and have learned optimized strategies and know the turn-out of most situations and most maps
  • making the game lean closer to micromanagement than toward a more casual “check in when I can” style. This again makes sense as those high contributors are also those most likely to have more time and to want a more “play all day” approach to Blight

Just some thoughts as you move forward with testing out mechanics and models.

I really don’t think the difficulty of the current Tournament map is entirely due to the new card drawing mechanic; I would guess it’s mostly due toTeleporting to the central Mana Pool being broken. Trolls are just not fast enough to catch up to all those spiders before they destroy nearly everything. @JayKyburz do you know if the Teleporting thing is fixed yet?

I teleported fine into the middle, just don’t think on simply hard difficulty you have to have almost the perfect setup of undead spawn and card draws to even stand a chance. When back in the olden days you can play unlimited cards, we could theoretically draw a bunch of tangle mages and quickly expand. But between the card cool down and the added valor cost it is just too much… Every little bit helps, and that extra valor could be converted to more towns/gold/mana… You are right spiders are too fast for trolls, but I think that is part of the intended challenge for that particular map. I find myself spending 5 or 6 valor early on just to get to the units I need for that map since there is no autoredraw :confused:

1 Like

Oh it’s fixed? Nice, I’ve been holding off on the Tourney this week until then.

I think this could potentially be the difficulty expected for nightmare level, but definitely not “hard”

And my feedback above was for 'Normal". I shudder to think of Nightmare.

I think in general there are a few maps that may need tweaking due to gameplay changes that have made hero cards less accessible.

However, I do think that as far as gameplay goes, it shifts a bit of the balance back to towards being a tabletop strategy game with some ccg elements, vs. a game where strategies rely heavily on card deployment, combos and synergy.

I am in full agreement that the game is much more difficult on nightmare with the new changes… but I sorta WANT nightmare to be “nigh impossible unless you’re really lucky/good”

On the other hand, my favorite genre of games is rogue-likes so I prefer games that are punishingly difficult and the odds are heavily stacked against you, so I’m definitely a glutton for punishment.

I’m tending toward agreeing with your observations, Challak, particularly with regard to time commitment.

-Sparkster

1 Like

Welcome @Challak and thanks for the great feedback.

I think you might be on to something with the advanced player vs new player perspective.

A lot of advanced players we previously paying 2 valour to draw cards once combat began and valour was easier to come by. (The auto draw 5 cards were not always the ones you wanted / needed). Now that it only costs 1 you can much much better use of your deck.

To try and make things easier before combat began, we start you off with 7 cards instead of 5 now. This means getting that banner or important first hero is easier.

Also, in a release coming later today I think, we fixed a bug in the valour rewards for melee were calculated using only the base strength of a unit, not the total strength including buffs. The end result is that you should be rewarded more valour now. (For example 33% more when fighting humans in the plains. )

I can definitely imagine a scenario where we charge you valour to discard instead, and bring back the auto redraw.

We are still reviewing and testing the changes and your feedback is really helpful in evaluating if it’s a good one or not.

I still need to test it more, but I’m finding I’m using cards from my deck a lot more. Only costing 1 Valour means I can pull them into my hand much cheaper, rather than using Hero Coins to draw cards in a pinch. I think it’s an interesting strategic decision and I’m finding that it’s often a much better use of my Valour to draw more cards than to capture more towns. Especially in games where there is a Queen of Lies, it’s so expensive to capture towns I just use all of my Valour to draw cards for a strategic advantage.

I also like drawing several cards with Valour I’ve just won and then considering my best strategy with the combination of cards that I have.

I think it will play different in different maps and difficulty settings, based mostly on how long until you engage the zombies and start your Valour income. I think starting with 7 cards in your hand should help to bridge this gap and then you need to decide is it a better strategy to capture another town or draw a few more cards.

Something we could consider is to change the number of starting cards in your hand based on difficulty. Something like Nightmare: 3, Hard: 5, Normal: 7.

We could also consider reinstating the auto-redraw, but maybe just when you have 0 cards in your hand, so you will always have 1.

Anyway, I want to give this a good testing over the next week in MP and SP and see how it plays out. Please keep sending us all of your feedback!

I actually think 1 Valour to draw a card is too cheap right now, in the hard game I have have 100’s of valour and I’m converting to mana and gold like crazy. If I had any cards left in my deck I could draw them all into my hand.

edit: its what makes me think what we have now is not quite right.

1 Like

Something I’ve been thinking about is an auto-redraw, but with:
*1 Valour to discard
*2 Valour to give to another player
*2 Valour to draw a new card

So you have the option to redraw for 1 Valour, but at the cost of losing a card from your hand. Making it cheaper to discard than to pass to another player also means that players will be less tempted to dump their cards on another player rather than discard, unless it is strategically beneficial.

1 Like

I think I could get behind that…

I really like that idea. It makes discarding actually useful.

I think we’re playing different games. :stuck_out_tongue:
Up until the last 30% of the game we’re always valor starved, gold poor, and mana is something we have to be VERY careful with. Often hordes grow too large to stop from taking several mana pools and those we’re left with become sacred resources. And of course there’s the bosses that rise on mana pool loss, making a bad situation even worse!

A wrong move at the wrong time and it could be Game Over. And so as is we feel like we have to keep the game paused for most of the day, all agreeing on a few hours each day when we all can play, or else someone misses taking an action the moment it’s available and things take a turn for the VERY bad.

And that’s for games where you are able to pause… Late game valor is not an issue like you mentioned, but early game it hurts bad on hard and nightmare

1 Like

Hey guys,

I’m still thinking a lot about this issue. If you guys have any crazy out of the box ideas I’d be keen to hear them. Here is an idea I had this morning.

No Auto Redraw, Pay 2 Valour to draw a card, but earn 2 Valour to discard a card!

Those cards that are not useful right at the start can make valour for you in your opening hand. Cards that become unplayable mid game can be burnt for valour!

edit: Might not be super good that you can cycle your whole deck. Perhaps only earn 1 for discard!