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