Four Tribes 4.1

madwren

UweTellkampf said:

madwren said:

cascades 

That's very poor design. 

I'd say that's unfortunate and bad luck.

Objective losses from an uncontrollable game condition aren't bad luck.  Luck is always a factor, but it shouldn’t be used to handwave away the underlying issue, which is that reducing player agency in completing objectives is a negative.

If you have two identical people of identical skill, identical decklists, and identical draw, playing an opponent that has the same skill, decklist, and draw, but one person fails the objective because in his game, the AI cascaded on turn 5, dropped three of his own creatures, and immediately cast Slaughter the Strong before the player had a chance to interject, that’s bad design. It’s a no-win scenario.

No-win scenarios are bad, and when people are playing for prizes, luck and RNG should be minimized. This is the same reason why “take 10 or less damage” is such a bad objective. I’ve seen people argue that these are RNG-enforced tiebreakers, which indeed they are, but that doesn’t make them good design decisions. It makes them arbitrarily meted out punishment. 

All objectives should be achievable through player effort, not because the AI autofails them for you.

Skiglass6

Mburn7 said:

Fun Fact:  Tragic Arrogance does not kill cards with Prevent Damage.  If you have Dowsing Dagger, the plants survive as well.  That way it only kills one of theirs, instead of 2 (and they don't attack).

Yes this a bug I posted a long time ago, but the same as many bugs, hasn’t been fixed. So I have taken advantage of this knowledge as you have. Not in this situation but in others. 

UweTellkampf

madwren said:

UweTellkampf said:

madwren said:

cascades 

That's very poor design. 

I'd say that's unfortunate and bad luck.

Objective losses from an uncontrollable game condition aren't bad luck.  Luck is always a factor, but it shouldn’t be used to handwave away the underlying issue, which is that reducing player agency in completing objectives is a negative.

If you have two identical people of identical skill, identical decklists, and identical draw, playing an opponent that has the same skill, decklist, and draw, but one person fails the objective because in his game, the AI cascaded on turn 5, dropped three of his own creatures, and immediately cast Slaughter the Strong before the player had a chance to interject, that’s bad design. It’s a no-win scenario.

No-win scenarios are bad, and when people are playing for prizes, luck and RNG should be minimized. This is the same reason why “take 10 or less damage” is such a bad objective. I’ve seen people argue that these are RNG-enforced tiebreakers, which indeed they are, but that doesn’t make them good design decisions. It makes them arbitrarily meted out punishment. 

All objectives should be achievable through player effort, not because the AI autofails them for you.

I must disagree. I get what you are upset about. But any gem-matching game design is a design that has a strong luck component. And in magic, where it also comes down to luck of your card draw, the luck is even more imminent part of the gameplay. Cycling for example minimizes luck in MTGPQ since it pretty much gives you almost endless card draw so that you can play whatever you want - if having the luck to posses NP. 

I quote you here, and come back again to a different conclusion with the same argument: "If you have two identical people of identical skill, identical decklists, and identical draw, playing an opponent that has the same skill, decklist, and draw, but one person fails the objective because in his game, the AI cascaded on turn 5, dropped three of his own creatures, and immediately cast Slaughter the Strong before the player had a chance to interject, that’s bad luck."

Bad design would be, if the possibility to win all ribbons in this encounter was not given. After the first run, where we realized what cards the AI pilots and what the danger was (Slaughter the Strong), we were able to adapt accordingly. Exile spells helped, steal helped, and the only time I lost ribbons there, was the first game, where I had no idea what I was against. 

I also don't agree that luck should be minimized in this game. The AI is stupid as a brick again, and winning games in all levels has become pretty easy. I have had lucky wins, I have had unlucky losses. That has never felt as a punishment, but as the essential part of suspense that this game has - next to other nice assets - for me.

hawkyh1

luck is inherent in a match 3 game like this. the extent to
which luck determines the outcome is variable. if by sheer
luck a 'stupid as a brick' ai can cascade into a win? don't
you think the extent that luck plays should be reigned in?
make the ai smarter and remove some of the luck factor?
there's me thinking are 15 mana cards too expensive to
include in some of my decks and there's the ai cascading
into cards like huf.

HH

Sirchombli

How do you, realistically, reign in the luck component in an rng based game? The deck designs for pve bosses have always been pretty terrible . This one has a sweeper. Play dovin . Don't let him play said sweeper. Something having a chance to beat you out of an objective is hardly bad design. All of the nodes should have a way to cold you out of objectives. With prizes on the line ,things shouldn't be easy . It's a competition, not a hug in .

hawkyh1

luck can be reigned in, at least per turn. rolling a 25d3
is much less luck dependent than rolling a 1d100.

HH

Kinesia

With reigning in luck.. Even if you limit the mana gains from 1 cascade to "20 in each color and loyalty plus bonuses" (so for example koth could get 29 red in one turn but still a bunch more from other colours) then you still have peaks and troughs but you limit the height of the peak.

We currently see cascades sometimes with over 100 mana of some colors, occasionally _multiple_.

It's expected that you can get lucky and play your biggest card first turn. It's playing a whole hand of 6 cards _without_ any sneaky tricks even, just by shear mana explosion that is dumb and unfun. When a HUF/Deploy deck does the same thing _without_ even using HUF or deploy just by hard casting, that's insane.