Why disable prestige progression when mutators are active?

[BaloneyOs]

One of this game's best features for replayability was being able to draft different decks for each playthrough, but now that's no longer a gameplay option for leveling up prestige. Is it really that important to only reward progression with purist runs? With drafting out of the picture the game feels a lot less fun to replay because you're always building off the same core decks which makes prestige progression feel like much more of a chore than before the change. It should go without saying that most players choose their mutators to maximize fun factor, but for some reason fun and progression are not longer allowed at the same time?

Prior to this change, did anyone actually feel as if they didn't deserve their prestige ranks just because they played with mutators? I just don't understand the value in forcing a vanilla playthrough for each level of prestige.

[AYellowShadeOfB]

Mutators are, to put in frankly, broken. If your alies never leave, battles get significantly easier once you get someone to join you. If your cards and grafts level twice as fast, earlygame will be a breeze. If you get to remove cards you don't want at the start or start with bonus cards or start with a bet, you get too big of a boost too early.

I assume it's disabled because if you use them, you can make the game much, much easier than without. So you could use them to "cheat" the progression. Think, what if in a game with tech trees, you could just unlock all the tech tiers immediatly? Would you deserve the achievements for beating the game on hard or impossible? Or would it just be cheating?

(And yes, Klei basicly never puts achievements in but unlocking a prestige tier is basicly one.)

[BaloneyOs]

But all the same we're not allowed to make the game harder, or even just different for subsequent playthroughs. This is more of a blow seeing how there's additional content such as new/harder enemies locked behind the higher difficulties, so in order to even experience the higher difficulties you're forced to run the game completely vanilla at every single step. In a single player game, is there really any sense in gatekeeping progression behind the most repetitive way of playing the game?

On a personal level, I'd be happy to just be able to draft both decks per playthrough. In terms of overall design though, the current system makes advancing prestige levels feel far more restrictive than it needs to be. Again, I'm not even allowed to use mutators that would also make the game more challenging. It gives much of a "play how we want you to play or lose out" vibe, and unfortunately that said way is starting out the same at every step.

If making the game "too easy" is a rationale for blocking progression, does this mean mods will also prevent you from accessing higher prestige levels? Why not have mutators that increase the difficulty reward you more? How about increased rewards for using fewer/no perks? As of now the decision to block progression while mutators are active is arbitrary on the rational level, and restrictive on the gameplay level.

Disabling steam achievements is one thing, but we're talking about straight up in-game content. Saying that players don't deserve to run higher difficulties if they just want to play the game differently each time is rather mind-boggling, considering the significant impact mutators have on replayability.

[ZeppMan217]

There are only 6 Prestige levels now instead of old 15. That's 6 runs to unlock everything. Each character's campaign features multiple mutually exclusive quest options and decisions that change the flow of the run - that's your narrative variety; the cards offered are random, the quest rewards offered are random, the random encounters are random, too - that's your gameplay variety.

If that's not enough, you can look to other popular card games and how they treats custom runs: Slay the Spire disables achievements, Monster Train disables in-game progression, etc.

Griftlands' approach is neither unique nor as prohibitive as you see it. Once you've unlocked all the Prestige levels you can use whatever mutators you want while progressing your Grifts and 100%-ing the Compendium.

[Smife]

I see perks/mutators/prestige as a way to simply give an illusion that there's more to the game without expanding on gameplay. It's still EA, so I really hope it's not the case.

[pacovf]

That's an odd take. Prestige are just standard difficulty levels, perks (resp. mutators) are ways to tailor your game experience that are meant to be (resp. not meant to be) balanced. What do you think it should be?

[Smife]

Well I see Griftlands as more than just a card game, bigger. When the first trailer was introduced it showed ambition and I hope it still persists. And after finishing Smith Klei won't call it a day, like "we promised Griftlands, here's something". I'm only thinking this way because I like the game.

[BaloneyOs]

On 9/5/2020 at 4:15 AM, ZeppMan217 said:

There are only 6 Prestige levels now instead of old 15. That's 6 runs to unlock everything. Each character's campaign features multiple mutually exclusive quest options and decisions that change the flow of the run - that's your narrative variety; the cards offered are random, the quest rewards offered are random, the random encounters are random, too - that's your gameplay variety.

This doesn't address why mutators and progression can't go hand in hand to provide an even more varied gameplay experience to go along with unlocking difficulty levels. The number of levels makes no difference.

 

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If that's not enough, you can look to other popular card games and how they treats custom runs: Slay the Spire disables achievements, Monster Train disables in-game progression, etc.

Why do they matter in regards to Griftlands?

 

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Griftlands' approach is neither unique nor as prohibitive as you see it. Once you've unlocked all the Prestige levels you can use whatever mutators you want while progressing your Grifts and 100%-ing the Compendium.

But again the question is why not allow mutators to be part of progression experience instead of only allowing them at the end of prestige progression. Let's not forget that players enable mutators in order to enhance gameplay, and mutators are arguably the most dynamic mechanics for variety and replayability. There's not much logical reasoning for a feature that's designed to enhance the experience to also prevent progression, and as is the current design is expressedly anti-player. It's not far from a big sign that says "no fun allowed".

[AYellowShadeOfB]

14 minutes ago, BaloneyOs said:

This doesn't address why mutators and progression can't go hand in hand to provide an even more varied gameplay experience to go along with unlocking difficulty levels. The number of levels makes no difference.

 

Why do they matter in regards to Griftlands?

 

But again the question is why not allow mutators to be part of progression experience instead of only allowing them at the end of prestige progression. Let's not forget that players enable mutators in order to enhance gameplay, and mutators are arguably the most dynamic mechanics for variety and replayability. There's not much logical reasoning for a feature that's designed to enhance the experience to also prevent progression, and as is the current design is expressedly anti-player. It's not far from a big sign that says "no fun allowed"."

Let's take this one statement: Griftlands is a roguelite. Roguelikes and roguelites generally fulfill a few conditions:

1) There is no progress conserved between attempts or no progressive rewards for playing more. This is the thing that divides roguelites and roguelikes: Roguelites don't fulfill this, roguelikes do. Griftlands doesn't fulfill this, so it's a roguelite.

2) Every run is randomly generated.

3) Permadeath. There can be "try again" things though, but they're usually limited.

4) Getting better at the game gets you access to more of the game, be it further levels/days, new characters, or new gear.

If you could just take some mutators to make the game easier, it would compromise one of the central tenents of being a roguelite. Griftlands is intentionally difficult because it's intentionally designed to reward player skill by further content and further chalenges. If you could instead just toggle a few buttons to make the game easier while still getting the rewards intended to be given out to skilled players, that would be a massive hole in Griftlands' design.

You can see from the other games that it's normal to do this in the genre, so Griftlands isn't being particularly unreasonable. It's not anti-player, it's pro-skill. If you don't like having to unlock the prestige tiers with skill, then the genre just might not be for you.

Mutators are there to enhance gameplay, but they are not there to let you cheat the intentional game design.

Sorry for the rant, I'm just bothered by all this.

[BaloneyOs]

2 hours ago, AYellowShadeOfB said:

If you could just take some mutators to make the game easier, it would compromise one of the central tenents of being a roguelite. Griftlands is intentionally difficult because it's intentionally designed to reward player skill by further content and further chalenges. If you could instead just toggle a few buttons to make the game easier while still getting the rewards intended to be given out to skilled players, that would be a massive hole in Griftlands' design.

You can see from the other games that it's normal to do this in the genre, so Griftlands isn't being particularly unreasonable. It's not anti-player, it's pro-skill. If you don't like having to unlock the prestige tiers with skill, then the genre just might not be for you.

Mutators are there to enhance gameplay, but they are not there to let you cheat the intentional game design.

This viewpoint is both incredibly elitist and contradictory.

 

Firstly, there's no single one way to design a specific genre, just as there doesn't have to only be one way to play a game. Breaking the mold and being a good game are not mutually exclusive.

 

Then there's your fixation on this game's skill requirement, but that's a self-defeating argument considering that not only do mutators come in more than just one variety, but also that this game will eventually be moddable. As for mutuators, the player is currently not actually allowed to test the full extent of their skill because they are prohibited from progressing even if they use mutators to increase the difficulty. By your logic, mutators that increase difficulty should actually reward even more progress, using perks should reduce progress, and mods will need to disable progress. Saying that players must wait until max prestige to further enhance gameplay is saying that it's okay for the game to not respect the player's time and choices. It actually manages to be both anti-player and anti-skill.

 

That's still only part of the problem. Another is that not respecting how the player wants to play will severely alienate the playerbase. Seeing as how this is a single player game, there's no harm in allowing the game to be easier, harder, more ambiguous, or more varied. It should be a given that allowing the use of mutators with progression will attract players who want all of those possibilities, while in no way hinder how the much smaller "elitist hardcore purist" group wishes to play their game. More choice will provide objectively more player enjoyment for the entire playerbase rather than just a subgroup.

 

The end result with barring mutators is:

1. Lowered skill cap due to having no more mutators that increase difficulty. In fact, the availability of perks lower it even further.

2. Dramatically reduced gameplay variety per playthrough (no more mutators that ambiguously affect difficulty).

3. As an extension of the above, restricted access to more unique and interesting mechanics, such as card drafts, Parasitology, and Unnatural Growth.

4. Forced repetitive starting point (fixed starting decks).

 

At the end of the day, skill testers can't test their max skill, variety-inclined players can't access any variety (perks are incredibly dull in comparison), more casual players aren't allowed to tune the game more to their enjoyment, and overall difficulty is actually reduced thanks to the repetitive start along with perks. Nothing is gained other than the satisfaction of whoever likes to force everyone to progress in a similar, very controlled way five times over in order to access all of the game's content... in a single player game that will eventually have workshop support.

 

For the record, I don't consider this game to be difficult. I'd much rather just be able to draft even a horrible deck than to start out with the exact same deck for every prestige level.

 

 

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Sorry for the rant, I'm just bothered by all this.

No need to be sorry about engaging in civil discussion, but perhaps you should elaborate specifically on why you find it bothersome to give players more options in playing the game at no cost to how you yourself can choose to play.

[AYellowShadeOfB]

Let's look at another reason I think mutators don't let you progress: The game's not designed for them.

The game's clearly not intended to let you play with allies that never leave you: They provide a major power boost in both negotiations and combat, so the game's balance is fundamentally altered.

The game's clearly intended to have the enemies target your allies too: It grants allies extra uses and makes things less difficult for you, and makes it so you have to make sure they don't die if you'd get further use of them otherwise. It changes the amount of use allies have, makes it so you have fewer things to keep track, and while it does make the game harder in some regards, it removes severial other problems, thus fundamentally altering the game.

You're not intended to start with a set of cards from a list: Every player starts on an even ground, and has to over time build up their decks. If your deck already has severial key cards, the earlygame is made trivial, since drafted cards tend to be stronger than basic cards - so you get a power boost, and parts of the earlygame are made nearly obsolete, thus fundamentally altering the game.

See a pattern? Every single mutator alters the game in a way not even a fifth level perk does. Because the core parts of the game are altered, you're not really playing what griftlands is meant to be - you're playing a variation of griftlands, so you shouldn't get progress in griftlands, because one doesn't translate to the other. You play griftlands, and you progress in it, but you play variant-griftlands with fundamentally altered mechanics, you don't progress in normal griftlands.

Side notes below:

IMHO because roguelites/roguelikes all gate progression behind player skill, they are all elitist in a way.

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By your logic, mutators that increase difficulty should actually reward even more progress, using perks should reduce progress, and mods will need to disable progress.

Ehh, as I mentioned above there isn't really a mutator that directly makes things harder (other than probably relatable), they just alter the game fundamentally. Null point.

Using perks shouldn't reduce progress because the game is balanced around letting you use them. That's like saying you should be punished for using all 3 actions in a turn. The game, meanwhile, is not balanced around mutators.

Mods will need to disable progress, this I absolutely agree with (unless there's progress inside the mod).

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The end result with barring mutators is:

1. Lowered skill cap due to having no more mutators that increase difficulty. In fact, the availability of perks lower it even further.

2. Dramatically reduced gameplay variety per playthrough (no more mutators that ambiguously affect difficulty).

3. As an extension of the above, restricted access to more unique and interesting mechanics, such as card drafts, Parasitology, and Unnatural Growth.

4. Forced repetitive starting point (fixed starting decks).

1. Mutators like Vendetta may make things harder for you, but they also make it so you don't have to make allies stay alive. Because you need to take care of fewer things and because stacking defence is quite easy, it's arguable that this actually lowers the skill gap.

Perks actually raise the skill gap, because you have to strategize about which ones to pick, like how you have to strategize about which cards to draft.

2. Of course. Fundamentally altering gameplay makes variety incerace, but not all variety is good. If you get to pick extra cards at the start, as mentioned, it dumbs down the earlygame and makes it so you can make it through it much easier. More is not neccessarily better.

3. By that logic, Sal should have Moxie and/or Charge active, because that means Sal gets access to more intresting gameplay. This is a flawed argument - parasites make Rook more unique, so giving them to Sal makes Rook less unique. Unnatural growth isn't actually intresting, it's actually praying that your diplomacy card doesn't evolve into a hostility card when you're building a diplomacy-deck. It's reliant on randomness, which can feel unfair or result in you getting six copies of Kidney Shot.

4. Flows into arguments above: The earlygame is designed for the starter deck, so altering the starter deck makes the earlygame less intresting.

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At the end of the day, skill testers can't test their max skill, variety-inclined players can't access any variety (perks are incredibly dull in comparison), more casual players aren't allowed to tune the game more to their enjoyment, and overall difficulty is actually reduced thanks to the repetitive start along with perks. Nothing is gained other than the satisfaction of whoever likes to force everyone to progress in a similar, very controlled way five times over in order to access all of the game's content... in a single player game that will eventually have workshop support.

Skill testers can max their skill. They'd be more inclined to unlock high prestiges first, and could alternate runs of mutators and non-mutators. And as mentioned above, a lot of the "harder" mutators can actually make the game less skillful.

Variety isn't always good as mentioned above, and perks are dull because they're actually balanced.

Casual players can tune the game more to their enjoyement, nothing's preventing them. Is a casual player going to care about unlocking max prestige ASAP? If they do, are they really a casual?

Repetive start along with perks can make the skill celling higher. Skill celling does not equal difficulty. You can be exceptionally good at an easy thing, because even an easy or simple game can have a high skill celling.

Your point here, that mutators disabling progress means nothing is gained, is pretty null. What would be gained if you could alter the game's rules to be rigged in your favour or against you without being slightly delayed in progression like you currently are? Nothing, really.

Breaking the mold and being a good game aren't mutually exclusive, and breaking the mold and being a bad game aren't mutually exclusive either. It's a vacuous point.

 

-What with the increacing length of the arguments and the fairly clear hostility building between us, I think we shouldn't escalate this any further. PM me if you still want to argue about the topic, but I'd like to leave the rest of the forums clear of this.

[pacovf]

Disabling prestige progression is the devs way to say that mutators are not the intended or balanced way to play, and that if you choose to use them, you’re on your own. It’s hard to maintain and balance a game, and the more “appealing” or “acceptable” you make playing with mutators, the more players will expect the devs to balance the game around them too. Mutators are mainly intended to be used in the dailies, with the player having the option to use them in the regular runs as a bonus.

Another common way to achieve the purpose of clearly telling the player what’s the intended way to play (read: the one the devs are balancing the game around) is to disable achievements when playing otherwise. Griftlands doesn’t have achievements yet, but maybe they can change it to that once it does.

Finally, I find saying that locking prestige progression when using mutators to be “no fun allowed” or “removing all variety” in the game to be gross exaggerations. The game has plenty of both without mutators.

[BaloneyOs]

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-What with the increacing length of the arguments and the fairly clear hostility building between us, I think we shouldn't escalate this any further. PM me if you still want to argue about the topic, but I'd like to leave the rest of the forums clear of this.

Where's the hostility? In any case, there's no reason why this debate can't stay in the open for the forum to judge. You're not forced to continue if you don't want to.

Again, you're fixating on how you believe mutators break the game too much, but how does that take away from the game on an individual player basis?

Disallowing mutators with progression = Less of the playerbase can choose their desired game experience.

Allowing mutators = More players can enjoy the game in more ways, without affecting how the purist 1337skillz crowd can choose to play.

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Your point here, that mutators disabling progress means nothing is gained, is pretty null. What would be gained if you could alter the game's rules to be rigged in your favour or against you without being slightly delayed in progression like you currently are? Nothing, really.

You're putting words in my mouth. I'm arguing that mutators disabling progress results in an overall loss. What could be gained if mutators were allowed is quality of playtime. Going through the prestige journey with a choice to have varied gameplay is guaranteed to be more enjoyable for some players. This matters more than you think since people don't have unlimited time. Again, this doesn't hurt the playerbase who do want to prove themselves by playing through the same start 5 times.

You talk quite a bit about how not all variety is good, making the game too easy or dumbed down, etc, but that seems to be a narrow field of view from your own perspective. Every player has a different preference when it comes to difficulty and balance, which mutators affect all the while offering great variety. That's the whole point of mutators, to change and enhance the game experience to the individual's whims so it feels senseless to punish by stunting progress. In fact, I'd argue that they are a far more interesting means of implementing dynamic difficulty compared to the old "easy medium hard" steps. Yet again, this doesn't impose upon the purist playerbase.

You seem to have a strong conviction for the game's "fundamental design", but that only serves to make the vision of the game less flexible. Referencing the above point, having the option to break game design will have varied milage for different players. The point here is choice: players having more choice in their gaming experience is objectively better for the playerbase as a whole while doing no harm to those who don't wish to utilize those choices.

Seeing a pattern here? Fewer choices costs the playerbase choices, while more choices costs the playerbase nothing. It would be pretentious to decide for someone else what's fun and what's not. I agree that enabling all the powerful mutators would make the game too easy, but it's still no reason to punish players who would like to play that way by gatekeeping content. I'm sure casual players would prefer to be able to make full progress while keeping the game easy/casual, hence the existence of easy modes. Prestige has content locked behind them, so they should be fair game in regards to altered difficulty. Mutators both provide variety and a bump down in difficulty for the casual crowd.

There's a ton of focus in your argument in regards to the sin of empowering mutators making the game too easy, but the problem right now is that all mutators must bear the brunt of that sin regardless of whether they fit that bill which leads to this next part:

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Mods will need to disable progress, this I absolutely agree with (unless there's progress inside the mod).

It's really hard to imagine Klei shipping the game with that. It'd be like if ONI mods disabled some asteroids or if DS mods prevented characters from unlocking and that's being generous.

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you're playing a variation of griftlands, so you shouldn't get progress in griftlands, because one doesn't translate to the other. You play griftlands, and you progress in it, but you play variant-griftlands with fundamentally altered mechanics, you don't progress in normal griftlands.

Why not, unless the game is designed not to respect the player's choices in how they want to spend their time on it? Again it seems like a rigid philosophy that doesn't take into consideration the variance in player preferences. Disabling achievements is theoretically fine since those are basically ingrained into the universal platform (and on a personal level I couldn't care less), but on a player to player basis that restriction takes away from people who wouldn't want those restrictions.

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IMHO because roguelites/roguelikes all gate progression behind player skill, they are all elitist in a way.

To each their own. It's unlikely that this game has anything to lose by not rigidly following traditional genre design.

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since drafted cards tend to be stronger than basic cards - so you get a power boost, and parts of the earlygame are made nearly obsolete

I'm gonna have to nitpick this because this is not always true. The power level is varied based on your draft RNG and as a result so is variance. I keep saying this but I'll say it again: allowing the game to be easier and more varied doesn't infringe on the players who want the game to stay difficult or samey. This applies to other mutators as well in that YMMV.

 

1 hour ago, pacovf said:

Finally, I find saying that locking prestige progression when using mutators to be “no fun allowed” or “removing all variety” in the game to be gross exaggerations. The game has plenty of both without mutators.

To each their own here as well. The issue is that some players will feel like they're forced to pick between "maximum fun and variation" and "same ol' campaign for the sake of leveling up prestige". The difference will be playing through something rather similar 6 times and playing potentially 6 different games, once every prestige level. There are for sure players that fall under both categories, so why take away the maximum fun factor for one of those groups doing the same number of playthroughs?

 

 

TL;DR;

Allowing mutators for progression contributes to gameplay while taking away nothing because they exist to customize the game's experience on an individual basis. It's "everyone can progress the way they want" compared to "only some people will enjoy the one way to progress".

[ZeppMan217]

At the end of the day, there's the dev intended way vs the unintended way. As it stands, perks are allowed but mutators aren't. Personally, I'm not bothered by this at all given the game breaking nature of mutators and how quickly you can plow through the Prestige levels.

Also, have you been starting with deck draft this whole time? That entirely negates the issue of managing your starter cards, making the early game super easy.

[BaloneyOs]

On 9/10/2020 at 6:06 AM, ZeppMan217 said:

Also, have you been starting with deck draft this whole time? That entirely negates the issue of managing your starter cards, making the early game super easy.

Yup, I could've cared less how it affected the difficulty as long as I got to draft each time. The difficulty was naturally increasing with the prestige levels anyway.