Counter-Abilities

Sandmaker

I don't know how many people here play TCGs (I.e. Magic the Gathering, Hearthstone, etc.), but a design technique that's almost always used in those games is to introduce counter cards that really serve no purpose outside of directly shutting down a particular mechanic or strategy. They mainly serve to control the meta game such that no mechanic can become 100% dominant. Once somethings gets too popular, people will start using the counter cards regularly to shut them down.

There's a couple examples of this in the game already (Trickery, Redwing, Raging Tempest, Anger, etc.) but I'd be interested to see what ideas people have for addressing the current metagame.

Just some basic ideas of my own.

Anti- Countdown:
Passive:
Whenever a count-down timer finishes, the owner of the tile is stunned for 1/1/2/2/3 turns and takes 0/500/500/1K/1K damage.

Anti- AP Steal
Passive:
Whenever 6/5/4/3/2 or more Ap is stolen from you, steal 1 Ap from each of your opponent's 3 strongest colors.

Anti-Healing
Passive:
Whenever an opponent heals health, one of his/her teammates take damage equal to .25x/.5x/.75x/1x/2x the amount healed.

Anti-tile destruction/ cascading
Passive:
Gain AP for every tile more than 16/14/12/10/8 that an opponent destroys in a turn,

They're all passives because I'm lazy, and passives are the most reliable and the easiest for the AI to use, but I'm sure you guys can think of good activation ones.

OnesOwnGrief

There is a lot of strategy you could pull in this game with character match-ups. However, the issue is that boost nullifies facing a bad match-up. 3 turn kills just have no opposition in this game no matter what.

Skills you mentioned are good at countering some skills but something like Redwing could be a lot better. If he affected more than one tile per 5 AP, that'd be nice. Sure it may make him more powerful but you have characters who don't use special tiles in their attacks. There just isn't enough proper counter balances in the game.

Unknown

Sandmaker wrote:

Anti- Countdown:
Passive:
Whenever a count-down timer finishes, the owner of the tile is stunned for 1/1/2/2/3 turns and takes 0/500/500/1K/1K damage.

Anti- AP Steal
Passive:
Whenever 6/5/4/3/2 or more Ap is stolen from you, steal 1 Ap from each of your opponent's 3 strongest colors.

Anti-Healing
Passive:
Whenever an opponent heals health, one of his/her teammates take damage equal to .25x/.5x/.75x/1x/2x the amount healed.

Anti-tile destruction/ cascading
Passive:
Gain AP for every tile more than 16/14/12/10/8 that an opponent destroys in a turn,

They're all passives because I'm lazy, and passives are the most reliable and the easiest for the AI to use, but I'm sure you guys can think of good activation ones.

Anti-countdown - possible
Anti-AP steal - No. The enemy is generally using AP to steal from you. Why should you get some sort of benefit for nothing? Also it's far too conditional to be useful most of the time.
Anti-Healing - You'd get a lot of community outcry against this. First they nerfed with true healing, and now they're going after actual healing?
Anti-tile destruction/ cascading - This seems like you're penalizing players for playing well. No.

For these to work, the effect shouldn't be exactly a counter. For example, you could have the Anti-Heal work such that it gives you AP when the enemy heals, much like Captain Marvel's Absorption ability.

Unknown

Picturing a weird passive on someone now

If you lose AP from an enemy power heal your team a small amount. Additionally if the enemy team heals (aoe heals only, not true healing) steal some AP from them. That would be a direct counter to ap stealers and healers while not simply negating their abilities or doing damage because 'x' happened.

As for cascades? I want a character that absorbs hits (not damage) taken and then releases that stored energy. Doesn't trigger until they have taken 3 or more hits in one turn (2 at 5 covers) and does increased damage with each hit absorbed. So like a hulk or storm passive but dependent on number of hits per turn not amount of damage taken.

DecoyDuck

Cryptobrancus wrote:

As for cascades? I want a character that absorbs hits (not damage) taken and then releases that stored energy. Doesn't trigger until they have taken 3 or more hits in one turn (2 at 5 covers) and does increased damage with each hit absorbed. So like a hulk or storm passive but dependent on number of hits per turn not amount of damage taken.

Number of hits taken counter would be a very interesting counter to a Sentry bomb. Can you imagine something like... immediately stuns enemy team for 1 turn if 3 hits taken in a single turn. Like an interrupt.

nimvin

DecoyDuck wrote:

Number of hits taken counter would be a very interesting counter to a Sentry bomb. Can you imagine something like... immediately stuns enemy team for 1 turn if 3 hits taken in a single turn. Like an interrupt.

Thats a very interesting mechanic. It would have to be a low to mid health character. Imbalanced to have it on a tank with a ton of health.