Broader Issues Discussion

[Lord_Xenon]

As I hate creature removal some thoughts about combos:

Instant combos result to some extend because of this. Like you bring out a big creature and next turn(or even in your own) it gets killed/dealed. = No use except to drop card/mana from your opponent...
Combos bring strategies with it. If you just braindead bring creatures+removal, what is that for a game? Either you kill the enemy or he kill you. 0 thinking in this or?
The more/better removal exist, the more the tendency goes to instant effects/removal aspect because if the creature/card can't stay onboard, it need immediately value.

To DO: It's not the problem. It's your deck. Playcard vs. Mana. Blame your deck or your shitty deckbuilding decision for this in first place!

[ivko]

I split this into a separate topic.

So... I'm like super busy today, but let me at least address Zephiria's initial post.

1. Snowbally board states.

This is indeed stemming from the combination of combat mechanics we have, and it is quite late to make changes to those. The intent has always been to partially resolve this in card design. That's why we have removal spells and all kinds of tricks that are able to turn the tides.

I have no specific things in mind on how to resolve this, rather than just make more cards that are able to "break through" an overwhelming board state. Unfortunately these can't be too swingy, because then we are into "whoever first draws a specific card wins" territory. Landslide was one of those cards.

Other dangerous territory is mass removal such as Cataclysm, which is almost universally hated by the more casual crowd - which we need for the game to thrive.

2. Multicolor support.

The approach here from the developers' point of view is similar to that of Magic the Gathering. You have decreased consistently especially if you try to build decks with 3+ colors, which also basically need to include Wisdom.

MTG has allowed 2 and 3-color decks that work without their green mana-fixing color, and it is an interesting design challenge on how to make this work here. One approach is dual-aspects in the level requirements, which can be fulfilled by a level from any of the two aspects.

I would say that with an expansion focusing on multicolor, we can enable 4-5 color decks, and this doesn't mean that mono-color decks would lose their value. There are ways to achieve that, for example by making certain cards only worth playing if you have 3+ different aspects, similar to Shifting Aurite (please ignore how OP is that).

There are some cards, for example the cycle of Word spells, that benefit from going mono-colored. This is most prominent in the Corruption aspect. Tribal mechanics, e.g. Soldiers, are more or less the same. So there can be other synergies that make it possible for mono-color decks to thrive in a multicolor environment.

For obvious reasons, we can't make any more cards with the dual levels Trigon introduced. Then it will be color mash all the way, mixing colors any way you want. I don't think Trigon on its own has made the game degenerate into multicolor madness - I often see Wisdom-Order decks without Nature, and also other combinations between the Good aspects.

3. Resources.

I believe there are different approaches here, and I don't really like the strict "don't ever allow resource generating cards" Zephiria it suggesting as a rule. This forbids us to make a very important in my opinion type of cards, that are interesting in the sense of "can I break this".

On the other hand, history has taught us that combo decks pop up in Spellweaver far more often that we would want. So maybe a more careful approach could work better.

P.S: I will try to chime in later when I have time to read the entire discussion. Sorry if I was out of context with this post, but I think it still shows our intentions as developers.

[Ravignir]

Intant combos are not bad if:
You need to play huge amount of cards
You need to survive a lot of turns.
You can't gain much life.
There is a combo breaker card (for example discard specific card from a deck)

I think Spellweaver has to develop banish mechanic, sooner or later and has to decrease healing potential of cards a lot (cuz that leads to imbalance and frustration). Also I believe we need more graveyard interactions (currently You can't bring back anything except creature cards- GJ favorizing midrange decks).

I agree that game should not have sharp balance like rock-paper-scissors

[Carjan]

@Carjan
*Deutsche Gründlichkeit (you got an extra h in there )

Hahaha, how did I manage to praise Deutsche Gründlichkeit and then go on and make a spelling error in the very word?! -- going to hide somewhere now

I think the main focus right now should be to fix any very strong or very weak outliers among the new
cards.

I get it that this was also Ivko's intention and it is understandable. The Dream Reactor team has been extremely busy with the upcoming mobile release and kudos to them for hanging in there in view of their very small team. That said, wanted changes often postponed as there are always more pressing matters to tackle and "if it ain't broken, don't fix it" is often also a thing. Hope that these issues are effectively looked at in the very near future!

We could make huge changes like Trigon, Horizons, the line system, health buffs etc., but would these increase deck diversity and lead to a more enjoyable meta right now?

Well, on Trigon, I think it is not proven it has effectively increased deck diversity. You could make a case for the opposite: dual levels leads to stacking all powerful cards in one deck, more easily covering weaknesses. Without dual levels, you could see two or three versions of the same sort of deck. Same perhaps for Horizons, I can't judge that. You might want to run two meta's at the same time to figure it out, no? One with dual levels and one without dual levels. One with and one without the current version of New Horizons.

One idea I had for Trigon was: no dual levels but, in keeping with the theme of the good aspects working together, the blessing side could consist of small blessings, one for each good aspect. They would stack though (as in the "chicken") so the blessing would be weakest if you only have an Order aspect and most powerful if you have all 3 good aspects (ONW). It would allow you to run Trigon in several 3 aspect decks, including one with an Evil splash but the blessing would only be strongest in all-Good decks.

[Ravignir]

When I was thinking about making mame that is enjoyable on paper anf does not copy mtg creature attack/tougness i thought about making life segments, so it was rather easy to count and it openned a lot of ways to balance a creature card.
For example instead of tanky 6/8 creature, I have : 6/2+2+2+2 creature, so if it is damaged by even amount of damage, it loses life pemamently. And of it's damaged by odd number like 3, it only loses 2 life permamently, that 1 extra point is healed at the end of turn.