[Experimental] - 451704

[Kevin]

Hey Grifters,

Here are some new grafts, a bunch of tuning, and some big speed improvements in the compendium.

CARDS

• Added 2 new general boss battle grafts
• Added 4 new general boss negotiation grafts
• Added 2 boss grafts for each character (one negotiation, one battle)
• Moved Coactive Orbslug and Contractor from Boss grafts to Rare grafts
• Moved Distributed Processing from Boss graft to Uncommon graft
• Rook Balance Changes:
• - Increased cost of Induction to 2
• - Increased cost of Telegraph to 2
• - Increased cost of Casings to 3
• - Increased cost of Backfire to 3
• - Increased cost and damage on Wounding Shot 
• - Reduced max damage of Charged Barrage to 3
• - Reduced Overcharge from lever_plus2 to 3
• Smith Balance Changes:
• - Increased cost and damage on Conquer
• - Increased cost of Obliterate
• - Increased cost of Thickness
• - Increased cost and damage of Bio-Strike
• Add Vix negotiation quips
• Vix pours on increasing impatience once it starts
• vix's 'damage this argument' triggers account for defence

UI

• 5-10x speedup when opening for people and grafts compendium tab.
• Cut 33% (~2k) widgets from the Mettle tab in the Compendium.
• Remove unnecessary hitbox and post_images child widgets from IconButton.
• Fix crash if clicking on GraftDetails of a graft that was just upgraded.
• Add missing nil-check to fighter quipping.  Can occur if you for example you kill Jeol and his drones at the same time with an AOE.
• Fix hidden selected_filters still applying in a FilterOptionalRadioGroup.  This would happen when switching between battle/negotiation cards.
• Fix missing hit frame for Smith's throw anim.

View full update

[ArtixBot]

I like the Vix quips a lot! He probably shouldn't be playing the regular quips, though, as it prematurely cuts out the unique ones so you can't read them.

[RageLeague]

I hate how vix shields an argument every turn, and you can't do anything about it. Especially if said argument is Bottled Rage, Smith has a lot of incidental damage from his core, which cause it to trigger when the core decides it wants to damage vix's core. And there's literally nothing you can do about it, as you watch your argument take 1-28 damage. I guess you could just, not play cards and damage vix's core? The thing that you have to do to win? Also that doesn't change the fact that arguments that deal damage will also deal incidental damage to the core, so even if you don't play anything, you still can't escape.

The meta is basically leave a bunch of your opponent's arguments up so that hopefully the shield protects another, non-important argument so you can destroy Bottled Rage. Or be unlucky and get it protected every single turn. In which case you lose.

Also, now it would be a good time to fix the problem where player argument does not update as frequently as opponent argument for some bizarre reason. When an argument gets shielded at the start of player's turn, the target does not get updated, so it would still show that an argument is targetting the shielded argument.

[pacovf]

I agree that a shielded bottled rage is problematic.

EDIT: either lower the damage it deals to something more reasonable, or change its trigger to "whenever you target Vix's core argument with a card", or something like that.

Edited February 12, 2021 by pacovf

[ZeppMan217]

7 hours ago, Kevin said:

• 5-10x speedup when opening for people and grafts compendium tab.
• Cut 33% (~2k) widgets from the Mettle tab in the Compendium.

[Rook the Bogger]

You guys sure you added the new boss battle grafts for each character?

[RageLeague]

They are rare instead of boss for some reason. Probably an oversight.

[pacovf]

22 hours ago, Kevin said:

- Increased cost of Obliterate

I mean, sure, Stun really is that good. But why is it a Rare card then? Compare Crushing Blow / Kidney shot from Sal. Maybe give it Burnout instead of Expend, to justify its high cost and rarity.

 

22 hours ago, Kevin said:

• - Increased cost of Induction to 2
• - Increased cost of Telegraph to 2
• - Increased cost of Casings to 3
• - Increased cost of Backfire to 3

 

I don't get any of these changes. None of these cards are *that* good, and Rook *really* doesn't want to spend all his actions in a turn just setting up, he's too frail for that. Telegraph in particular is dead; if you were concerned about its ceiling being too high, just lower its scaling and give it some base defense. 

 

I am neutral about the other card changes, with the exception of Wounding shot, which did need a nerf.

Edited February 12, 2021 by pacovf

[ZeppMan217]

I must agree with @pacovf here.

Induction going to 2 is tolerable, Casings and Backfire going to 3 doesn't make sense. Even Sal has only one 3 cost Ability, Absolute Domination, the cost of which is well justified given the insane power level of the card. Casing should stay at 2, perhaps the Pale version could be replaced with Spined (gain 2 Defense and 1 Counter per Charge spent); Backfire should go to 2 and keep its versions as they are (it's comparable to Sal's Spines).

Telegraph doesn't belong at 2. It's essentially the same type of Defense gain as Sal's Shoulder Roll: if you have no Concentration, it's a brick. That's both an upside and a downside, as you can easily reach the coveted 99 Defense with enough Concentration, or you could spend 1 energy to do nothing with 0 Concentration. If you wanna cap these sort of nigh infinitely scaling Defense cards, that's fine. However, increasing the cost of these cards would not deter players from picking em when they already have the relevant synergy going, be it Combo or Concentration, but it would make the cards significantly worse as a provisional pick, something you'd take early before deciding on which archetype to roll with.

As for Obliterate, it's fine at 3. I reckon it'd be sweeter if it had Piercing by default.

Also, on Crushing Blow/Kidney shot. I mentioned this before, and I still believe that each character should have their own signature stun card. Crushing Blow for Sal, Kidney shot for Rook, and Obliterate for Smith.