Making Planeswalker Abilities Cost More As You Level is Bad

Meto5000

Please consider making Planeswalker abilities have a static costing cast at each level. If anything, abilities should cost LESS as you level. I shouldn't have to feel like I'm downgrading an ability because the loyalty cost is going up; sometimes for an extremely marginal upgrade.

I don't think you developers appreciate how much of an impact raising the loyalty cost of an ability has. A 3 loyalty cost increase equates to a 1-3 turn difference in when you can first use it. If I have to wait up to 3 more turns to cast an ability, it'd better be worthwhile. And the thing is, a lot of the time I would have rather cast the "weaker" ability sooner rather than waiting for the more powerful version.

Another bogus thing is that the loyalty increase is not even consistent across all Planeswalkers. For example, none of Nissa's abilities have cost increases. This makes Nissa a great Planeswalker to have at max level; you don't have to play this meta game where you're leveling your Planeswalker _just enough_ to get your abilities in the right spot without incurring a loyalty increase penalty.

If you were able to select which version of a Planeswalker skill you wanted to cast this wouldn't be an issue, but I feel like that would be a lot of work to code in and I don't feel like it'd be a worthwhile use of developer time anyways. Right now there are a ton of reasons why leveling a Planeswalker feels like you're making things tougher on yourself and homogenizing the loyalty costs of Planeswalker abilities would go a long way to alleviate some of these feelings.

loroku

Agreed.

Right now we need a list of all the abilities and how they change so that we don't fall into the traps.

Unknown

I second this.

Morphis

I think that a rebalance can be done.
When you consider that loyalty gain does not increase as you lvl up(while mana gain do) there is actually no reason to have skills cost more. Also the effect increase in some cases would need a nerf

Liliana 1st skill woul be the only skill that gets worse(debatable) even with all ranks costing the same(mainly 2nd rank better than 3rd).
That skill anyways is really stupid in itself.... Locking Down Completely the opponent hand is not fair.
So I would change it somehow
One way could be:
- rank 1 discard your last card and opponent last card
- rank 2 discard your last card and opponent last card then draw a card(better)
- rank 3 discard opponent 1st card and your last card. Draw a card

This way each rank is better than previous and you cannot discard 2 cards of opponent in one turn meaning some chances for opponent to get to play again if you discarded all their hand(not counting discard spells here that are balanced since not spam able and cost mana)

shteev

I made the suggestion that maybe we could be allowed to play our planeswalkers at a lower level than they are, avoiding 'traps', increasing variety, and allowing players to increase their level of challenge:

viewtopic.php?f=36&t=39417

Unknown

shteev wrote:

I made the suggestion that maybe we could be allowed to play our planeswalkers at a lower level than they are, avoiding 'traps', increasing variety, and allowing players to increase their level of challenge:

viewtopic.php?f=36&t=39417

I agree that higher level PWs have an unfair disadvantage in quick battle compared to low level ones. So it sounds good to let higher levels choose to play at lower levels.

But this would only lead to everyone playing at low level so that new players would run early on in decks that are hard to beat.

So the better solution would be to change the system in a way that higher PWs have a slight advantage in quick battle, so that everyone is actually interested in leveling their PWs.

Lowering the costs of higher PWs abilities could be a start. The opponents also would have that advantage but ai couldn't use it as well as we do. So that would be fine.
But it would just be a start because the biggest disadvantage of higher levels is that fight at higher levels consume more time because of having more HP to tlreduce to 0.

Unknown

I think that having higher costs for higher level abilitles isn't unreasonable, but maybe a better question is: Why should we be fixed into using said abilities at their max cost at level? What I mean is if you have a maxed PW, why shouldn't you have the option to use a PW ability at the level of your choosing?

Perfect Example: Liliana's first ability, Corrupt

At level 2, Corrupt discards your last card for your opponents' last two. Great, I love it, does exactly what I want and provides a clear advantage in its use.

But at level 3 Corrupt discards your last TWO cards for the first & last of your opponents'. Now this ability has entered into the realm of diminishing returns.

For this reason you're better off deliberately under-leveling because in my opinion, obtaining Corrupt lvl. 3 is dually detrimental to its usefulness, but now you're stuck with having that abililty locked in at level 3.

Liliana's Corrupt is just one of the better examples for this argument, I can totally see how it would be overpowered if it were applied to Jace's Confusion. Nonetheless the answer lies somewhere in between these two. Thoughts?

MTG_Mage

I also feel that when the planeswalker abilities increase in cost it changes your tempo in the game for using it and makes it not as good. Since you only generate so few planeswalker points, having the abilities go from say 3 to 6 is very significant.
I think a great solution would be that you can cast lower level versions of your abilities at all times. There is space on the interface so that you can have 9 buttons instead of 3 for the 3 tiers and 3 levels of each pw ability. Simply click which version you want to use and the appropriate cost is spent. For example, there are lots of times I would rather use Chandra's tier 2 ability at level 2 which does 3 damage to 1 target creature for 6 instead of having to spend 9 on the level 3 version which does 3 damage to each enemy creature.
Also, all planeswalkers abilities at each tier should cost relatively the same and be similar power level. I hope the developers rebalance this in the next patch because Jace's 3 pw points for -6/-0 is unbalanced. It should go up from 3 to 4 to 6 pw points or something similar. On the topic of Jace, Mizzium Medler also badly needs rebalancing. It should have its cost go up from 9 to like 12 and its power/toughness reduced to 3/4 from 4/7.

Irgy

Having the costs go up wouldn't be so bad if the increase was small. The biggest problem really is that it's generally 3/6/9. That's a huge increase. For that increase even if the abilities were twice and three times as powerful it would still be worse. If they still increased but were 5/6/7 though it would be fine.

On the topic of Planeswalker level-up disappointments, does anyone feel sad any time they see "your planeswalker regeneration has improved"? I see that and know I've now spent my resources to be matched a level higher for no benefit whatsoever. I'd really love to see this "upgrade" removed completely, though I admit it isn't that clear what to fill the hole with.

raidan

They could lower the hp increase from +4 to +1/+2 and then change all the planeswalker regeneration bonuses to HP +1/+2, finally your regeneration could be a flat 15-25% of max health so it gets better numerically with every 4-7 HP increase.

That would give the similiar stats (could be tweaked to be identical to lv 50 as it is now) only with a more gentle curve for HP/regen and the added bonus of not depressing people with "planeswalker regeneration increased" sadness text.

Alternatively: They could rename it to "Your Planeswalker has become more adept at recovering life-force over time by 1". This would make your wasted level seem a bit cooler.. maybe.

Unknown

I was going to write up something very similar at some point.

Devs need to realize that pw are supposed to get more powerful, not get more hindered.

The idea is NOT to have to balance every ability so that the mana balance fits some arbitrary point, and that all pw abilities are always balanced forever, but instead to have every pw get more powerful in their own unique ways. I want players to fight someone and go damn, that ability is OP, but wait I have my own counter super OP ability. Not "oh his ability costs X mana, I guess it is alright, mine is slightly more efficient though haha".

Devs have taken a harrison bergeron approach to balance and it is really making it very tedious to level. I'm willing to be there are pretty much ZERO times that a planeswalker has had an ability level up, and people go "oh boy, double the cost but slightly better, this is EXACTLY what I wanted to happen! I'm so excited to level my pw now".

Yea.

For that matter please look at the ultimate "emblem" abilities. If I take the time to grind out 20-25 pw mana I want that ability to win me the game. Indeed, in MtG the emblem abilities were designed to completely swing the game such that you should win in the next turn or two.

Instead they are almost all not worth using, and terrible. You don't need every pw ability to be balanced. They should be powerful, and feel powerful. Everyone being unbalanced is way better than everyone being the same.

Unknown

I agree with OP.

I think they should allow us to pick the ability level rather then make it go to the highest level.

hoihoi8

Agree that you should be able to pick the ability level you want