Brawl improvements: Part 2

[ZeppMan217]

Another list of potential brawl improvements based on Prestige 7 experiences.

• Allow Beastmaster to sell his usual item cards;
  • Pets are useless in the brawl, costing too much and dying too quickly. As such, the Beastmaster is rendered useless. Allowing him to sell the usual beast item cards would justify his existence in the mode, along with providing an alternative to bar cards.
• Restrict boss grafts to day 1 and 2, mirroring the way they're distributed in the campaign mode (negotiation graft at the end of day 1, combat graft at the end of day 2);
  • As cool as it is to have access to guaranteed 6 energy on day 5, the whole boss graft every day (and two starting day 3) trivializes energy management to the point of rendering any need for strategy or planning nigh obsolete. It also robs the player of experiencing the variety of non-boss grafts because really, why would you waste a slot on a regular graft when you're guaranteed an energy one?
• Prohibit Bossbit/Flead Queen from appearing at the end of day 2;
  • Those day 2 bosses from Rook's campaign were never meant to be fought 1v1 or even 2v1. P7 makes these fights even worse, since you simply do not have the time to upgrade the starting cards (which happens even with the Basic Training perk), let alone the non-starter ones (with or without Fast Lerner).
• Make Pengemunt an essential character for Rook's brawl;
  • Pengemunt basically acts as another trader NPC in Rook's brawl, yet for some reason he can be befriended/upset as a normal NPC. While earning his boon is nice, the -1 Defense from his bane could be devastating if acquired early on, and there's no way to get rid of it because he cannot be provoked or bribed with booze, period.
• Rotate bar NPCs more frequently;
  • Seriously, I see the same NPCs in the bar on day 5 as I did on day 1/2/3/4, and they hardly change from mission to mission. There are hundreds of unique characters in the game (and a nigh limitless amount of generated ones), yet you see maybe a dozen in the bar over the course of a brawl run. You made those characters, Klei, now show em off!

[AuntHerbert]

1 hour ago, ZeppMan217 said:

 

• Rotate bar NPCs more frequently;
  • Seriously, I see the same NPCs in the bar on day 5 as I did on day 1/2/3/4, and they hardly change from mission to mission. There are hundreds of unique characters in the game (and a nigh limitless amount of generated ones), yet you see maybe a dozen in the bar over the course of a brawl run. You made those characters, Klei, now show em off!

To add to this: the fact, that the NPCs barely ever change also lowers any potential benefits from the "Win the Crowd" quest. Yeah, you can gather a ton of "likes" if you collect all the bounties, but you will very likely never interact with these people again. The rational conclusion is to ignore the bounties and to just go straight for the core argument, thus demeaning the entire quest.

Somewhat unrelated, but concerning quest benefits: I feel like winning the "Rescue X" quest should award a positive attitude change in disposition from the rescued person. This may not be so much a balance issue, it just feels wrong on an emotional level, that the rescue is completely ignored and shrugged off. In Campaign rescue missions often raise the attitude 2 steps, from indifferent to loved, so at least a recognition by raising the attitude by one point seems deserved even in Brawl.

 

1 hour ago, ZeppMan217 said:

you simply do not have the time to upgrade the starting cards (which happens even with the Basic Training perk), let alone the non-starter ones (with or without Fast Lerner).

This to me seems to be the most impactful difference between brawl and campaign balancing, and I somehow find it even more impactful on the negotiation deck. All campaigns provide a multitude of fairly simple day-1 interactions and free, or at least easy, extra drafts. Brawl starts out tough as a brick, as you are thrown into heavy conflicts with barely developed basic decks, and then tends to get trivial towards the end, when the decks are "finished" and boosted through the roof by superfluous extra boss grafts.

As a consequence any planning or deck building strategy, beyond mandatory maxxing out on perks that boost learning speed on cards like Basic training, fast learner, lowered fatigue, becomes almost non-existent, and the sheer randomness of the first few card drafts and the way the basic cards develop becomes overwhelming. Most essential "skill" for finishing brawl seems to hone the decision finding whether to just abort the run around day 2 or soldier on, depending on the random draws you recieved so far.