Koth of the hammer new red pwalker

EDUSAN

BassMuffinFIve wrote:

And there is a ZERO percent chance people will "sideboard" in devoid cards if ingest becomes a thing. People will just not play Koth.

to me there is zero percent chance people sideboard into anything. I used to have naturalists in my green deck or demolish in my red decks but i removed them.
my decks are thought so that i dont care what people play, i play my stuff to win no matter what. If an IA plays a support that i wont be able to beat, i just concede, heal and start over

Hibernum_JC

BassMuffinFIve wrote:

Hibernum_JC wrote:

I can say a few things here.

1- We haven't changed anything in the way we generate gems. In fact, it's completely random, and I can say with 100% certainty that the AI does not know what gems will drop, and does not play to generate cascades. As others have stated, the big difference here is due to the fact that Chandra has board destruction on some of her abilities and that essentially can generate extra cascades and matches every turn. This is something we might address in the future.

2- The Ingest mechanic, in itself, is made partly for mana denial. It goes without saying that against Koth, it's incredibly powerful as you can deny a lot of his red matches. You can counter that in a few ways, one of which is to include more Devoid cards, which will actually benefit him (Devoid matches will give 3 mana instead of his regular 2 on off-colors at max level) or include more Processors into your decks so you can turn the Ingest into an advantage. Regardless of all this, Ingest is already regarded by the community as a relatively useless ability, so we'll see how this pans out, but I'm not too worried as if massive Ingest decks start to pop out there's already built-in ways to deal with it.

Ingest is mostly a useless ability, yes. That's not the issue though. The issue is that you made anything that ingests cost 2-3-4x the cost that it should. You value this mechanic waaaaay too highly. It is about 1000x worse than drawing a card, and drawing a card is something that comes for free on a 8 mana 3/5 body or a 9 mana 3/5 body. You made 15 mana 1/1s with the ingest mechanic. I mean, c'mon...

And there is a ZERO percent chance people will "sideboard" in devoid cards if ingest becomes a thing. People will just not play Koth.

Arguably, the worst card out right now with Ingest is Dominator Drone at 2/1 for 13.

Everything else is either under that mana cost for similar power (Culling Drone is 2/2 for 10, which is on par for a colorless common). Ingest isn't overvalued at the moment, and there are incredibly swingy cards that use Ingest (Ulamog is one, Crumble to Dust) so that I personally do not feel it's overcosted. We'll look into it as it is valid feedback, but from our internal tests it feels right. Ingesting more than 1 on most of these cards would have increased their cost significantly - Ingest gets better and better and better the more you end up doing it, and denying mana to your opponent is incredibly powerful.

As for sideboarding, I don't think it's something we'll inherently see, but what I expect to see is deck changes based on the meta. If all of a sudden Ob Nixilis picks up massively in popularity due to some combos players find, and you find yourself having a lot of trouble beating him due to his third ability because it creates a Support, then Support removal might become much more attractive.

Rootbreaker

Hibernum_JC wrote:

Everything else is either under that mana cost for similar power (Culling Drone is 2/2 for 10, which is on par for a colorless common). Ingest isn't overvalued at the moment, and there are incredibly swingy cards that use Ingest (Ulamog is one, Crumble to Dust) so that I personally do not feel it's overcosted. We'll look into it as it is valid feedback, but from our internal tests it feels right. Ingesting more than 1 on most of these cards would have increased their cost significantly - Ingest gets better and better and better the more you end up doing it, and denying mana to your opponent is incredibly powerful.

You can get a 2/2 for 6 at common at colorless - runed servitor.

EDUSAN

Rootbreaker wrote:

You can get a 2/2 for 6 at common at colorless - runed servitor.

you can get a 2/2 zombie for 6 - Shambling Ghoul (and its black which has the highes mana cost for any kind of creature)

Meto5000

Hibernum_JC wrote:

Everything else is either under that mana cost for similar power (Culling Drone is 2/2 for 10, which is on par for a colorless common). Ingest isn't overvalued at the moment, and there are incredibly swingy cards that use Ingest (Ulamog is one, Crumble to Dust) so that I personally do not feel it's overcosted. We'll look into it as it is valid feedback, but from our internal tests it feels right. Ingesting more than 1 on most of these cards would have increased their cost significantly - Ingest gets better and better and better the more you end up doing it, and denying mana to your opponent is incredibly powerful.

I found two instances where there were identical cards without Ingest and in both cases the Ingest versions were significantly more expensive.

Touch of the Void vs Lightning Javelin

Culling Drone vs Runed Servitor

I can see what was intended with the Devoid/Ingest mechanics but there's definitely a few glaring issues.

1) Unless you're creating a cascade with your void gems, it's rarely worth it to match them (on purpose) over one of your 3 primary colors since they only give 3 mana at MOST. So, as you said, you really need to create a deck based on creating and taking advantage of Ingest before the mechanic makes sense to use.
2) You need both good Ingest cards AND good Devoid cards to make a deck work - otherwise you're just crippling yourself. There aren't a lot of these cards and the really good ones are at rare or better. I don't think it's a secret that you guys have made it more difficult to acquire rare and mythic cards since patch 1.3.0, so it's going to be a while before people can even begin to brew Ingest/Devoid decks.

I think one of the biggest things you could do to make the Ingest/Devoid mechanic make more sense is if Void Gems powered ALL colorless cards and Devoid was a keyword that forces colored cards to be treated as if they were colorless. This makes the Ingest mechanic a lot more appealing in a much wider array of decks. PS, since there are no Devoid cards that are colorless, this seems like you maybe were intending it from the beginning but pulled the plug at some point. There are plenty of BFZ colorless cards that seem like they SHOULD be Devoid but aren't. For proof check out this link. It's a list of every card with the Eldrazi subtype. In all cases, if these cards have a color identity then they ALSO have Devoid. That is, except for the case of Colorless Eldrazi where not a single one of them are Devoid. Which makes sense, since Devoid in Vanilla MtG just means the card is treated as if it were colorless.

BassMuffinFIve

Hibernum_JC wrote:

BassMuffinFIve wrote:

Hibernum_JC wrote:

I can say a few things here.

1- We haven't changed anything in the way we generate gems. In fact, it's completely random, and I can say with 100% certainty that the AI does not know what gems will drop, and does not play to generate cascades. As others have stated, the big difference here is due to the fact that Chandra has board destruction on some of her abilities and that essentially can generate extra cascades and matches every turn. This is something we might address in the future.

2- The Ingest mechanic, in itself, is made partly for mana denial. It goes without saying that against Koth, it's incredibly powerful as you can deny a lot of his red matches. You can counter that in a few ways, one of which is to include more Devoid cards, which will actually benefit him (Devoid matches will give 3 mana instead of his regular 2 on off-colors at max level) or include more Processors into your decks so you can turn the Ingest into an advantage. Regardless of all this, Ingest is already regarded by the community as a relatively useless ability, so we'll see how this pans out, but I'm not too worried as if massive Ingest decks start to pop out there's already built-in ways to deal with it.

Ingest is mostly a useless ability, yes. That's not the issue though. The issue is that you made anything that ingests cost 2-3-4x the cost that it should. You value this mechanic waaaaay too highly. It is about 1000x worse than drawing a card, and drawing a card is something that comes for free on a 8 mana 3/5 body or a 9 mana 3/5 body. You made 15 mana 1/1s with the ingest mechanic. I mean, c'mon...

And there is a ZERO percent chance people will "sideboard" in devoid cards if ingest becomes a thing. People will just not play Koth.

Arguably, the worst card out right now with Ingest is Dominator Drone at 2/1 for 13.

Everything else is either under that mana cost for similar power (Culling Drone is 2/2 for 10, which is on par for a colorless common). Ingest isn't overvalued at the moment, and there are incredibly swingy cards that use Ingest (Ulamog is one, Crumble to Dust) so that I personally do not feel it's overcosted. We'll look into it as it is valid feedback, but from our internal tests it feels right. Ingesting more than 1 on most of these cards would have increased their cost significantly - Ingest gets better and better and better the more you end up doing it, and denying mana to your opponent is incredibly powerful.

As for sideboarding, I don't think it's something we'll inherently see, but what I expect to see is deck changes based on the meta. If all of a sudden Ob Nixilis picks up massively in popularity due to some combos players find, and you find yourself having a lot of trouble beating him due to his third ability because it creates a Support, then Support removal might become much more attractive.

Thanks for the reply!

A large part of the reason ingest may not be defining the meta is that all the cards that have ingest that are actually playable are mythic, and there is no reliable way to get mythics

Food for thought

Dreadalus

You want significant?

Reave Soul vs. Complete Disregard.

I mean dang, not even somebody opening their first pack is going to use CD.

Hibernum_JC

Part of the reason why the Ingest cards are a bit more expensive is that they have Devoid - it's not just that they have Ingest. (although I do agree with Complete Disregard is overpriced and I marked it down as needing a mana cost revamp).

Part of the problem is that Devoid might be slightly overpriced, so it's something I will investigate.

I'm also going to look into making Void gems also give mana to colorless cards. I can't guarantee it'll happen (we have a lot of imperatives at play here) but I'll definitely look into it.

Rootbreaker

I understand that ingest costs something, but if you're adding anything to costs for devoid, that's fairly ridiculous. The only benefit of devoid is that the cards are slightly easier to cast if you're ingesting a lot. There should be no added cost to make a card devoid.

Meto5000

Hibernum_JC wrote:

Part of the reason why the Ingest cards are a bit more expensive is that they have Devoid - it's not just that they have Ingest. (although I do agree with Complete Disregard is overpriced and I marked it down as needing a mana cost revamp).

Part of the problem is that Devoid might be slightly overpriced, so it's something I will investigate.

I'm also going to look into making Void gems also give mana to colorless cards. I can't guarantee it'll happen (we have a lot of imperatives at play here) but I'll definitely look into it.

Although I would love if it if that's the direction you took since it would completely shake up the meta and make a lot of "so so" colorless cards playable, what about just adding Devoid to some already colorless cards? Since you're not bound by Vanilla rules where Devoid would be redundant on Colorless cards, there's no reason you can't just add Devoid to cards that make sense to have it (i.e. Colorless Eldrazi creatures and other Eldrazi themed Spells and Supports). I imagine this would have a lot less impact on the overall balance of the game while giving more synergy to the Eldrazi Void/Process/Ingest theme.

Allowing the Devoid keyword on Colorless cards would also open up the ability for some cards to target Devoid cards instead of Colorless, a la Skitterskin.

Skitterskin:
Current Text: When this creature is Destroyed, if you control a colorless creature, you lose 6 mana and this creature is Returned to the battlefield.
New Text: When this creature is Destroyed, if you control a Devoid creature, you lose 6 mana and this creature is Returned to the battlefield.

This makes a ton of sense flavor wise, but from a balance perspective I don't know if what I am proposing makes sense for this or any other BFZ card. Perhaps this a design space that could be explored in OGW (Oath of the Gatewatch), the next expansion?

Anyways, thanks for participating JC; it's really nice getting feedback from you, even when the feedback is that you disagree with us. The dialogue is what makes me feel that you're at least hearing what we have to say and that you're committed to making sure this game lives up to its potential.

Hibernum_JC

Meto5000 wrote:

Hibernum_JC wrote:

Part of the reason why the Ingest cards are a bit more expensive is that they have Devoid - it's not just that they have Ingest. (although I do agree with Complete Disregard is overpriced and I marked it down as needing a mana cost revamp).

Part of the problem is that Devoid might be slightly overpriced, so it's something I will investigate.

I'm also going to look into making Void gems also give mana to colorless cards. I can't guarantee it'll happen (we have a lot of imperatives at play here) but I'll definitely look into it.

Although I would love if it if that's the direction you took since it would completely shake up the meta and make a lot of "so so" colorless cards playable, what about just adding Devoid to some already colorless cards? Since you're not bound by Vanilla rules where Devoid would be redundant on Colorless cards, there's no reason you can't just add Devoid to cards that make sense to have it (i.e. Colorless Eldrazi creatures and other Eldrazi themed Spells and Supports). I imagine this would have a lot less impact on the overall balance of the game while giving more synergy to the Eldrazi Void/Process/Ingest theme.

Allowing the Devoid keyword on Colorless cards would also open up the ability for some cards to target Devoid cards instead of Colorless, a la Skitterskin.

Skitterskin:
Current Text: When this creature is Destroyed, if you control a colorless creature, you lose 6 mana and this creature is Returned to the battlefield.
New Text: When this creature is Destroyed, if you control a Devoid creature, you lose 6 mana and this creature is Returned to the battlefield.

This makes a ton of sense flavor wise, but from a balance perspective I don't know if what I am proposing makes sense for this or any other BFZ card. Perhaps this a design space that could be explored in OGW (Oath of the Gatewatch), the next expansion?

Anyways, thanks for participating JC; it's really nice getting feedback from you, even when the feedback is that you disagree with us. The dialogue is what makes me feel that you're at least hearing what we have to say and that you're committed to making sure this game lives up to its potential.

As I said, it's something I will seriously look into.

And I know I'm not as active as I probably should be on the forums, but I'm very happy I can get to communicate with you guys. It's super important for me as a designer to be able to talk to our players and see what they like/dislike and such. Designing in a vacuum doesn't always produce optimal results, and every mistake we made helps us forge ahead and make a much better game. I think pretty much everyone agrees that the direction we took with the Mythics in BFZ is much better than what the one we took in Origins, and it'll be even better in the future.

EDUSAN

Hibernum_JC wrote:

I think pretty much everyone agrees that the direction we took with the Mythics in BFZ is much better than what the one we took in Origins, and it'll be even better in the future.

the problem with makin mythics better and more usable is the fact that it seems that getting mythics now is way harder than it was in Origins (which was pretty hard anyway already)

fox1342

Don't forget it takes quite a while for the meta to change. You need a LOT of cards before you have enough to build a decentish deck around a new theme. I've only had a few boosters here and there of BFZ. Casual players probably have even less.

While ingest remains relatively pointless on it's own, things like Blight Herder (11 for 5/6 +process) are good. I've only ever triggered the process once or twice and then had too many other creatures anyway, but it makes a worthwhile cheap creature in most decks.