Looking back from ascension 5

[SpireClimber]

I really love games like this, and I'm hope to see a lot more of them. So, please allow me now proceed to hit you with rapid fire arguments about what I thought worked, what didn't, and how the game can be improved, until I'm exhausted, you're irritated, and after which we'll of course be good friends. 

1. Coin flips are not fun. Coin flips are exciting at first, but a good strategy will find a way to mitigate that randomness. Then it just becomes irritating, and slow. Seeing cards that "rig" heads or tails, I was excited to see what kind of powerful cards would reward being able to consistently set the coin. There were none, and then you learn that you can set the coin for free. Creating cards that reward getting many flips in a row would help this. They could also create tense situations where you haven't quite rigged enough flips to guarantee an outcome, but you still have the option to try and get lucky anyway. A card which could theoretically win you the battle 1/64 times, would feel a lot more like gambling than "maybe get enough defense this turn, or maybe not!".

2. Burn appears to just... not work? Why would I design a deck around achieving the same bleed effect that Sal gets for free? I see "crackle" and I see "char", but it just isn't worth it. Maybe if you use brain burn exclusively? I don't know. 

3. Tomb Relic is not balanced, and trivializes brawl mode. Just fill your deck with draw cards, and win. 

4.  The turtle coin is too good. It's better than trying to pick something that goes with your deck. Any strategy that involves any kind of scaling will work if you can buy yourself enough turns. 

5. Inside Fighting + Switch Blade is too easy to get for what it does. I can reasonably expect the late game to be trivially easy because of it. 

6.  Bargaining is a fun, and overpowered ability. Searching for it appears to be the best thing you can do, up until just before the boss. This is because bargaining increases your ability to search for more bargaining! 

7. Holding on to item cards that deal area damage, or stun, even though they hurt your performance in 1 v 1 battles, so you can use them save them for a boss, is not fun. Just give every item card replenish. An item card without replenish doesn't feel like a reward, it feels like a tax. 

8. This game obviously took a lot from slay the spire, and that's fantastic, but some of its differences make it harder for certain things to work. After a certain point, negotiation in the main game becomes ridiculously easy, which might be ok, but there's no way to take on more risk to get more reward. Sure, there are ways to get more negotiations in, and that is pretty fun, but there's no way to get more difficult negotiations. 

9. The game is very long, and I suspect this is why I never died. I think I died once, as Rook... this is not enough. If you want to have a long story, and perma death, and also no save scumming, I suggest taking a look at how Banner Saga handled exactly that problem. The negotiation system is a great start: difficulty can vary more here, because you won't die from losing the battle, all that needs is some tougher, optional negotiations, (which maybe influence the ending? Please?) In short, I'd like to see challenging battles designed for players who already have a working deck, which wont end the game if you fail them. Getting a sense of how powerful you really are compared to the rest of the world, and knowing when to gamble on being powerful enough, would make me feel less like a infinite combo knife wielding god, and more like a grifter.  

10. I love some of characters in this game, and I like having the choice to spare enemies after battle. That said, the games in a weird place when it comes to be story driven, but also wanting to achieve high replay-ability. Brawl mode appears to be the answer to this, but if that really is the philosophy, I'd like to see meaningful choices within the story. And by "meaningful" I mean choices, and by choices, I mean that the dialogue option I choose will triggers another one later. Even if it's just, "give a beggar some shills, and he'll help you with a boss battle 2 bosses later", it's something the game needs. Does the entire story have to shift branches? No. Does it still potentially increase development time exponentially? Yes! Is it worth it? Ask Stoic!

11. Give us three card upgrade options by default. What's fun about getting a boring upgrade half the time?

12. Resting heals too much. 

13. Many cards seem to be not just "niche" but actually "bad". But I expect that the devs have some way of analyzing what gets picked/played and are working on this. "Good impression"? "Setup"? "Wild Lunge"? Eh, maybe its just me. 

 

[pacovf]

Kinda sounds like you want a discussion?

1. There are cards that gamble, then only do something if you got the right side. I'm not sure they're worth it, but they exist. In general I like the coin mechanic, because it gives you extra flexibility in your deck building depending on the coin you pick. I also tend to go for decks that gamble a lot, so it evens out the randomness.

2. In general, Rook doesn't go for deck archetypes the way Sal does. Instead, you decide whether you want to go for low-charge, over-charge, or high-charge spending, and then pick cards accordingly. The consequence is that, for better or worse, a "Burn deck", or a "Ricochet" deck, or whatever, aren't really a thing.

3. Haven't encountered this yet. I do find the Brawl grafts I've seen to be very uneven in power.

4. I would rather have a coin that helps me end a negotiation by turn 2 or 3, that one that lets me survive to turn 6. I can't say I've ever taken it.

5. I've never managed to get this infinite combo going, and it's honestly not that great if you don't get the infinite. Switch Blade could use a rework either way (e.g., Replenish, and change the duplication to be the part that requires you spend combo)

6. Haggle Badge is very powerful, agreed.

7. I don't think all item cards need Replenish. I do think those that don't have Replenish should definitely be strong enough to justify their presence in your deck (not always the case right now).

8. Sal gets the extra hard jobs that give a graft reward, but Rook doesn't have an equivalent (not sure how it could be worked in either). It is true that Negotiation gets very easy at least one day before the end of a campaign, in a way that combat doesn't.

9. Sure. I think the solution goes more in the direction of making the game shorter, but harder challenges to replace later negotiations/combats that affect the ending might also do the trick.

10. Sure, that would be cool.

11. I don't think this is happening. Too many cards already have a choice between two uninspired upgrades, to try to force a third one in; would just make for more boring upgrades.

12. It does heal less at higher prestiges. I think it's fine there. I could see a prestige level that makes Bloated/Tipsy/Slurred speech not disappear on sleeping (a similar mutator exists already), but that's about it.

13. Many cards are pretty bad before upgrade, but good afterwards, which makes talking about balance a bit tricky. Good Impression is great, Setup used to be really good but is just fine after it got reworked and Reconsider got nerfed. Wild lunge is meh. That's not to say there aren't other cards that need a boost.

[ArtixBot]

1. I don't like coin flips if only because the animation speed takes too long. My bigger issue is with Rook's discard negotiation deck, which is very difficult to get working -- only 3 cards have an effect when discarded, and 1 is conditional -- leaving very few targets for Rook to use cards like Foul Mouth or Rant for. Also, Tantrum, despite being a Rare Dominance card, has an identical effect to a Strained Rant (which is Common)! The Rare graft Stinger does make the deck much more viable, but it is a rare graft, so getting it is not guaranteed every run.

2. Burn shines exceedingly well in group fights due to its AoE effect, and Scorched lets it decay like Bleed (Amplifier is extremely good for Burn decks). Firestorm is probably one of the best cards in the game, IMO. Wide Firestorm is ludicrously good against 4-person fights (with 4 charges, that's 8 Burn on each enemy, so each enemy takes 8 + 4 + 4 + 4 = 20 damage. Combine Wide Firestorm with Wildfire to annihilate an enemy team in one turn.)

3. Agree with pacovf.

4. Turtle Coin is very good for Matter of Fact decks and good for not taking damage any other time, but if you don't use Matter of Fact or Gamble enough, you're not going to outscale Impatience.

5. Switch Blade costs 2 Combo and Inside Fighting only grants 1 Combo per attack, so you'll eventually run out of steam.

6. Haggle Badge is absurdly good and honestly seems a bit out of place given the other boons (I think boons/banes should function like Haggle Badge more often in terms of impact).

7. Agree with pacovf.

8. I've found in super-high prestige that I prefer focusing combat way more than negotiation, given that running out of HP will get you killed. Honestly, I wish the negotiations before boss fights were much more difficult but had more rewarding effects (Rook's final boss will still destroy you if you don't have a built-up combat deck).

9. Agreed.

10. I would love to see more consequences for having people love/hate you via special events that only trigger if someone loves/hates you (other than the "You killed my friend, pay me" special event).

11. Agree with pacovf.

12. Agree with pacovf.

13. I dislike how many cards have basically no effect if you're not hyperfocusing/investing in the effect. This mainly involves Sal's combo cards, Rook's discard negotiation cards, and Rook's prepared cards (There are honestly three cards I find worth using in a Prepare deck: Grunt, Jargon, Gab -- other Prepared cards just do so little damage or have such little effect).

On a side note, Jargon is absurdly powerful compared to Helmet despite both being Uncommon. I think giving Helmet Replenish would be a good way for Helmet to compete with Jargon (that or make Jargon rare, I guess).

[SpireClimber]

1 hour ago, ArtixBot said:

1

On a side note, Jargon is absurdly powerful compared to Helmet despite both being Uncommon. I think giving Helmet Replenish would be a good way for Helmet to compete with Jargon (that or make Jargon rare, I guess).

I forgot about Jargon. Yes. Completely ridiculous. 

[pacovf]

Discard decks are still viable, as long as you focus on Dominance. Rant and uh the one that gives Dominance on discard are both good and common.  Kicker should drop the Snails requirement on discard, Tantrum should be reworked so Momentum isn't the only Rare card that rewards the discard archetype, and Sifting Coin wants a minor buff on Snails. But you can still build a very strong discard deck even without Stinger. A hidden advantage of discard decks is that they're great at triggering the "prepared" condition of cards (hello Jargon!)

Speaking of which, I'm pretty sure Helmet would be bad even if Jargon didn't exist.

13 hours ago, ArtixBot said:

8. I've found in super-high prestige that I prefer focusing combat way more than negotiation, given that running out of HP will get you killed. Honestly, I wish the negotiations before boss fights were much more difficult but had more rewarding effects (Rook's final boss will still destroy you if you don't have a built-up combat deck).

Some negotiations, like the one before the assassin fight in Sal's campaign, have the right idea in terms of difficulty: relatively easy to win, but very hard to win with more than one or two stacks. But since the effect on the fight difficulty is not that big, you still need to invest heavily in combat even if you focused on Negotiation. The closest in terms of Negotiation wildly affecting the fight difficulty is the one before Rook's D2 boss fight, since going in with 0-1 ally is very different from going in with all 3. But then the negotiation itself is on the easy side, now that it's back to a 2-star rating and Baron's negotiation mechanic got reworked, so you can easily get all 3 allies even without focusing on Negotiation. It was great for the brief period of time in which even getting only 2 allies was a challenge.

[Snortlepig]

On 7/3/2020 at 10:29 AM, ArtixBot said:

13. I dislike how many cards have basically no effect if you're not hyperfocusing/investing in the effect. This mainly involves Sal's combo cards, Rook's discard negotiation cards, and Rook's prepared cards (There are honestly three cards I find worth using in a Prepare deck: Grunt, Jargon, Gab -- other Prepared cards just do so little damage or have such little effect).

 

For me Dogged is the cornerstone of Rook's prepared deck, especially when used with Obligation. It allows you to get influence to boost Dogged (8 base damage when upgraded). Upright is also powerful when using this kind of build. 7 damage and prepare a Dogged if you've got some influence. Once you have Obligation Weight also becomes a powerful card. 

Combos that you "hyperfocusing/investing" are always going to end up crazy powerful vs generalised hands. It's pretty easy to end up with a 50+ damage per turn Rook hand when investing in a single strategy. I tend to not use composure at all with Rook if I can avoid it (Thus I don't like Jargon or Helmet) and aim for a hand that wins before they do the second round damage.

On 7/3/2020 at 8:46 AM, SpireClimber said:

13. Many cards seem to be not just "niche" but actually "bad". But I expect that the devs have some way of analyzing what gets picked/played and are working on this. "Good impression"? "Setup"? "Wild Lunge"? Eh, maybe its just me. 

Good Impression and Setup are cards I always use. I generally use them in really small decks. Boosted setup, + Tall Favours + Boosted playing field + Pale Evil Eye + Boosted Fire is a crazy turn if you can draw it. Which isn't really that hard if you slim down your hand and are able to grab a few draw/discard grafts and other cards and get rid of negotiation cards at any chance. 

If I haven't got a Rapid Fire by the time I start upgrading my cards I'll often go a couple of Boosted Evil Eyes and Upgrade Good Impressions (I usually grab multiple) to Pale impression. If you can get a level playing field in there too it makes for really nice damage.