Grafts role in the game


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Hi,

I played the game for ~10 hours, so not necessarily a lot of time, but I thought I'd already bring up some things. In this thread, I'd like to specifically adress grafts.


While grafts are pleasant modifiers to the game, I think they have been tunnel-visionned a lot. Right now, for a great number of those, there's litterally nothing differentiating a grafts from a good permanent ability. Examples :
- When you play a card, gain 1 defense : ability

- At the end of turn, gain 1 counter for 3 defense : graft
- Your counter attacks apply 2 bleed/1 wound : abilities
- When you discard a card, apply 1 wound : graft
- Gain 2 counter when you gain defense : ability
- When you apply bleed, restore 1 health : graft

And so on... Right now, I don't think there's a single graft that couldn't be replaced by an ability with 0 cost, ambush, replenish. So really, drafting grafts is exacly the same as drafting top tier cards in a limited number. The whole "graft sloft" thing is really a card maximum for this tier.

I think this comes from a fundamental problem in graft design, which is tunnel visioning on combat/negotiation. There are combat grafts, and there are negotiation grafts. Why ? This is hard to make sense of lore wise, and this vastly restricts the scope of grafts in the game.

Grafts, as I understand, are mutations you apply to your body. Those should be affecting me permanently, modifying the way I interact with the universe. And when you start thinking this way, the possibilities are endless.

Grafts to interact with drinking : e.g heal when drinking, avoid drinking side effects, get new and possibily interesting side effects when drinking.
Grafts to interact with the map : e.g the player have improved chance of meeting friendly grafters, loot once more on battlefields
Grafts to interact with people : e.g at the end of day, all the haters only dislike you, all lovers only like you.
I could go on and on, but I think the point is clear : there is more to the game than fights and negotiations, and grafts are the perfect way to explore this. Right now, everything that is not combat/negotiation feels just like a minor side effect that you have to manage correctly to improve your combat/negotiation.

So, and I know this very impactful :
- In my opinion, the splitting of grafts between negociation and combat "needs"
to go away. A lof of current grafts can just become abilities, some may disappear and I dare say it's  also the occasion to gate certain kind of abilities behind grafts to feel special, instead of abusively overpowered. (I'm looking at you, counter mechanism. Grafts that give spikes : ok, and you're so hideous negotiating is hard ! Cards that gives counter : completely broken right now ^^).

I'll take the example of current combat grafts :


Some grafts that strongly reinforces a theme could stay, for example bloody mess, predictive brawling, serrated edge are very opinionated grafts that makes sense to always have a the start of the fight to make a deck work.
On the opposite, snap talon or body piercing are "scaling" grafts,that would be better as abilities in order to have a correct trade off in tempo.
"First attack" grafts could just disappear, I wouldn't mind ^^

Same thing for negociation grafts of course.

By the way, some of the mutators would make excellent grafts instead: animal lover and loyalty for example.

Overall, I think this is an excellent way to offer richer possibilities of gameplay on how to survive a run than what's currently offered, which feels a bit repetitive. In my opinion, for a deck building game to be good, it shouldn't be forcing you into playing archetypes, but rather let you compose interesting possibilities. If I know what cards and grafts I will play when launching the run, I might as well not play it.
Pressing "skip card" more than 90% of the time of the game is a bit annoying, pressing "skip graft" feels awful, and it happens A LOT.

Thanks for reading until the end, if this get some replies and you find some interest in this kind of feedback, I'd be happy to open a couple more subjects :-)
 

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Well, thank you :-)
I think this could really contribute to tie the story and the gameplay by having more occasions to have an emergent story happen due to your choices. It's also I think one of the key factors or the success of StS, where there are relics modifying litterally every aspect of a run, which makes it so replayable. And the opportunity here is even greater, since there's also the story to explore and modify !

I don't really know either if it's feasible, but since it's an alpha, one can hope !

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I'm down for the inclusion of grafts that when installed will automatically make men/women/jakes/kradeshi/etc. dislike/like me.  

In fact, it'd be cool if each graft you installed sways the public/fraction in some meaningful way.  That way, even if we keep most of the grafts (which I like, but who says they can't add more like what was optioned here) there's even more realistic sway of body modification with respect to public reaction.

Graft:  When installed, members of the Cult of Hesh will dislike you.

Graft:  When installed, a random laborer will hire an assassin to kill you.  

 

A graft *should* have some impact beyond just being a combat/negotiation buff.

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