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Legends of Runeterra | Posted by | 5 years, 7 months ago
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So who thought that a region being generally good at card advantage was a good idea?

I mean. I'm not the game designer. And I have nothing against control decks. I like playing them. 

But has anyone considered that giving control  blockers that replace themselves could be problematic? I would have expected a few of them either would have 0 power, or couldn't block. But getting chumps that can potentially kill on block, and also replace themselves with a good spell is a bit much.

When I looked at the Targon cards. All I saw was a boost to control. I did see the synergy with Noxus, but those decks will be easier to deal with than the control ones. The 4/5 is a pretty good roadblock for something that gives you a card.

And if I ever See a Taric next to a karma. I'll probably just concede.

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  • I mean. I'm not the game designer. And I have nothing against control decks. I like playing them. 

    But has anyone considered that giving control  blockers that replace themselves could be problematic? I would have expected a few of them either would have 0 power, or couldn't block. But getting chumps that can potentially kill on block, and also replace themselves with a good spell is a bit much.

    When I looked at the Targon cards. All I saw was a boost to control. I did see the synergy with Noxus, but those decks will be easier to deal with than the control ones. The 4/5 is a pretty good roadblock for something that gives you a card.

    And if I ever See a Taric next to a karma. I'll probably just concede.

    • Quote From Phaseshifter

      I mean. I'm not the game designer. And I have nothing against control decks. I like playing them. 

      But has anyone considered that giving control  blockers that replace themselves could be problematic? I would have expected a few of them either would have 0 power, or couldn't block. But getting chumps that can potentially kill on block, and also replace themselves with a good spell is a bit much.

      When I looked at the Targon cards. All I saw was a boost to control. I did see the synergy with Noxus, but those decks will be easier to deal with than the control ones. The 4/5 is a pretty good roadblock for something that gives you a card.

      And if I ever See a Taric next to a karma. I'll probably just concede.

      Well, it's as stupid as it looks. The whole expansion is a joke. Dilettante and amateurish design. A nonsense. ...Intended for numerous clueless casual mobile players.

       

      • Quote From Tuscarora87
        Quote From Phaseshifter

        I mean. I'm not the game designer. And I have nothing against control decks. I like playing them. 

        But has anyone considered that giving control  blockers that replace themselves could be problematic? I would have expected a few of them either would have 0 power, or couldn't block. But getting chumps that can potentially kill on block, and also replace themselves with a good spell is a bit much.

        When I looked at the Targon cards. All I saw was a boost to control. I did see the synergy with Noxus, but those decks will be easier to deal with than the control ones. The 4/5 is a pretty good roadblock for something that gives you a card.

        And if I ever See a Taric next to a karma. I'll probably just concede.

        Well, it's as stupid as it looks. The whole expansion is a joke. Dilettante and amateurish design. A nonsense. ...Intended for numerous clueless casual mobile players.

        I don't really disagree with the idea that the design of Call of the Mountain is amateurish (which, as it happens, means exactly the same thing as the adjective form of "dilettante"), but I do take issue with your characterizing it as "for clueless casual mobile players." Nothing about truly bad design supports any group of players - mobile, casual, or pro - and hating on casual players doesn't really help anyone. If you have one or more critiques of the design, please share them. But hating on a player group and calling the expansion "stupid" isn't a very productive way to engage in a discussion.

        • Quote From meisterz39
          Quote From Tuscarora87
          Quote From Phaseshifter

          I mean. I'm not the game designer. And I have nothing against control decks. I like playing them. 

          But has anyone considered that giving control  blockers that replace themselves could be problematic? I would have expected a few of them either would have 0 power, or couldn't block. But getting chumps that can potentially kill on block, and also replace themselves with a good spell is a bit much.

          When I looked at the Targon cards. All I saw was a boost to control. I did see the synergy with Noxus, but those decks will be easier to deal with than the control ones. The 4/5 is a pretty good roadblock for something that gives you a card.

          And if I ever See a Taric next to a karma. I'll probably just concede.

          Well, it's as stupid as it looks. The whole expansion is a joke. Dilettante and amateurish design. A nonsense. ...Intended for numerous clueless casual mobile players.

          I don't really disagree with the idea that the design of Call of the Mountain is amateurish (which, as it happens, means exactly the same thing as the adjective form of "dilettante"), but I do take issue with your characterizing it as "for clueless casual mobile players." Nothing about truly bad design supports any group of players - mobile, casual, or pro - and hating on casual players doesn't really help anyone. If you have one or more critiques of the design, please share them. But hating on a player group and calling the expansion "stupid" isn't a very productive way to engage in a discussion.

          Actually, there's no hate towards the mentioned numerous player group. No ethical implications in saying 'clueless' ...just a factual description of that group's legitimate approach to the game. They don't play the game as seriously and knowledgeably as some other groups... yet, and not from their requesting, recent design favors that kind of chaotic, wacky fun, "whatever" approach where the game breaks many fundamental rules and starts to correct / interfere in decision making of players to help those whose decisions are not refined compared to those of dedicated players. Making outcomes more equal. Flattering to that group is always a finger in the eye to the smaller dedicated group of players (who will find the game becoming ugly). And the reason for all of this is that LoR unfortunately hasn't become popular enough and HS is still much more prominent game. They want to sell new content, too. Why my rant is sharp is because LoR was advertised as the card game which will get rid of all those bad, annoying and populist aspects found in HS. Now they are not satisfied with the status of their game and want to attract numbers at the expense of, again, dedicated players. Which is legitimate, but I dislike it from MY point of view, which is more important to me then some other's. Why is this obvious? Because they are cynically and carelessly implementing back all the criticized HS concepts x 3 recently! Times 3, hey! Not coincidental. These levels of yoink, uncontrollable rng discover, pushed dumb toxic cards, cheap strategies, non-interactivity, untested pile of keywords, non-games... can't be found even in HS! LoR now suddenly wants to be more like HS (but in fact getting worse than it). Maybe this approach will end up being good for them, but maybe it'll achieve no gain, while alienating their initial loyal groups. There could be another reason for all of this - maybe they just don't know what they are doing! In that case, woe to us even more.

          • I just gave up Hearthstone for LoR - since childhood HS is the most broken TCG I've ever played.
            It's dumb, numb and implemented more and more casino flavour. LoR is just right - a good blend of everything I love about a TCG.
            Where do you get your conclusion from that LoR is not succesfull?

            • Quote From KSTRxLKSHOT

              I just gave up Hearthstone for LoR - since childhood HS is the most broken TCG I've ever played.
              It's dumb, numb and implemented more and more casino flavour. LoR is just right - a good blend of everything I love about a TCG.
              Where do you get your conclusion from that LoR is not succesfull?

              Based on message proximity, I assume that I'm the "you" here (though there is no explicit indication and this was not listed as a response in my alerts). I am not saying that LoR is not successful in any strict sense (although a quick comparison on https://twitchtracker.com/statistics suggests that LoR has about 20% the viewership of Hearthstone - not exactly a roaring success). Rather, my point is that despite LoR being a good game at its core, Riot's approach to balance and region design is a major negative that harms the game. I don't think this means LoR is not enjoying some success today, but rather that the overall health and longevity are at risk due to poor design choices Riot is making today to support short-term freshness.

        • Quote From meisterz39
          Quote From Tuscarora87
          Quote From Phaseshifter

          I mean. I'm not the game designer. And I have nothing against control decks. I like playing them. 

          But has anyone considered that giving control  blockers that replace themselves could be problematic? I would have expected a few of them either would have 0 power, or couldn't block. But getting chumps that can potentially kill on block, and also replace themselves with a good spell is a bit much.

          When I looked at the Targon cards. All I saw was a boost to control. I did see the synergy with Noxus, but those decks will be easier to deal with than the control ones. The 4/5 is a pretty good roadblock for something that gives you a card.

          And if I ever See a Taric next to a karma. I'll probably just concede.

          Well, it's as stupid as it looks. The whole expansion is a joke. Dilettante and amateurish design. A nonsense. ...Intended for numerous clueless casual mobile players.

          I don't really disagree with the idea that the design of Call of the Mountain is amateurish (which, as it happens, means exactly the same thing as the adjective form of "dilettante"), but I do take issue with your characterizing it as "for clueless casual mobile players." Nothing about truly bad design supports any group of players - mobile, casual, or pro - and hating on casual players doesn't really help anyone. If you have one or more critiques of the design, please share them. But hating on a player group and calling the expansion "stupid" isn't a very productive way to engage in a discussion.

          Do we really think we are in a position to decide in less than a week whether the design of Call of the Mountain was amateurish? Sure, the first 2-3 days were basically a blitz of almost all the same couple of decks. But now (like most other times in the game's history) I'm seeing a remarkable array of different viable decks and strategies. Cards that were laughed off as being unplayable are being played with brutal efficiency (Nocture and Diana, to name two).

          I think the set is shaping up to be quite fun, diverse, and well-designed.

          • Quote From sto650
            Quote From meisterz39
            Quote From Tuscarora87
            Quote From Phaseshifter

            ...

            ...

            I don't really disagree with the idea that the design of Call of the Mountain is amateurish (which, as it happens, means exactly the same thing as the adjective form of "dilettante"), but I do take issue with your characterizing it as "for clueless casual mobile players." Nothing about truly bad design supports any group of players - mobile, casual, or pro - and hating on casual players doesn't really help anyone. If you have one or more critiques of the design, please share them. But hating on a player group and calling the expansion "stupid" isn't a very productive way to engage in a discussion.

            Do we really think we are in a position to decide in less than a week whether the design of Call of the Mountain was amateurish? Sure, the first 2-3 days were basically a blitz of almost all the same couple of decks. But now (like most other times in the game's history) I'm seeing a remarkable array of different viable decks and strategies. Cards that were laughed off as being unplayable are being played with brutal efficiency (Nocture and Diana, to name two).

            I think the set is shaping up to be quite fun, diverse, and well-designed.

            I think perhaps you're inflating the extent to which people were laughing off particular cards. Diana, for instance, is featured in at least one deck on the "meta list" on Mobalytics, and while I certainly have my criticisms of that list, her being there means at least some pro players think she's a good champion, and that list does impact the metagame.

            But to your main question, I think the answer is still yes, we can determine that this game is being designed in an amateurish way. And I think that claim is reasonable because the core design flaws of the game have been on display for a while, and this expansion only continues that trend. In particular, I'm talking about a few different design goals in the context of what seems like Riot ignoring Goodhart's Law. (Goodhart's law states that when a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure.) The design goals I'm thinking about are:

            • Every champion should have enough support to have a deck they fit best in (i.e. to play out the "fantasy" of that Champion)
            • Champions should reflect their League characters as authentically as possible
            • No card should be filler - every card should have a chance to be useful in the meta

            The first creates a muddled region identity, where very few cards exist to establish what the region is good at because almost all cards exist to be in service of some champion's archetype. Take Noxus for example. In the launch set, they were mostly focused on combat with big, overwhelming units - they had cards that buffed attack, cards with quick attack and overwhelm, cards that benefit from surviving damage, and finally an array of cards that benefited from having high power stuff (5+ power). Even some of the cards that produced non-combat damage (e.g. Legion Saboteur and Legion Grenadier) still emphasize entering combat. In Rising Tides, all of the sudden there's tons of non-combat damage tools in service of leveling up Swain, and the card most in line with the original themes of the region (Armored Tuskrider) never sees any play. Without clear region identities, the reason to pair regions ends up being "because the synergy is baked in." Want to run Self Harm? Better run Noxus/Freljord. Want to run Deep? Better run Bilgewater/Shadow Isles. Etc., etc., etc.

            The second creates an over-emphasis on adding new mechanics rather than exploring and mastering the design of existing mechanics. This expansion features six new mechanics, and when the set is done it may feature many more. These mechanics are clearly added in service of a champion rather than good game design. Take Daybreak, for example. It exists to support the fantasy of Leona, but it plays out very strangely: Turn 1 Solari Soldier, turn 2 Solari Shieldbearer, turn 3 Solari Priestess, turn 4 leveled up Leona, turn 5 Rahvun, Daylight's Spear. The package is strange because Leona is clearly a midrange style champion, and the mechanic they added to support her (i.e. play this card as your first card) just rewards the player for playing exactly as they would in any midrange style deck - curve out with units. The result is a mechanic which does two things: makes deck-building a boring exercise (because if I'm playing Leona, I obviously want to include a bunch of Daybreak stuff), and makes playing the deck one-note (because the mechanic doesn't get you to ever push against the linear gameplay pattern the archetype already naturally has). Ultimately, if their patches result in a good opportunity for midrange again (as it did with Sej/Ashe recently), I fully expect Daybreak to become a problem that needs some kind of change because of how it was designed to overemphasize linear midrange play rather than challenge the player to think.

            The previous two goals contribute to an environment where balance is very hard to produce, directly impacting that final design goal. And it's the final design goal where we really get into Goodhart's law, because it emphasizes constant tinkering with the metagame in pursuit of "balance metrics" that the overall design approach has made incredibly difficult. This approach has been stated plainly by designer Andrew Yip in a Q&A session: "we’ll lean on more common tools like balance updates and different formats for cards to have a chance to shine." They have a goal of seeing all cards be good at some point, and they plan to achieve that by constantly tweaking cards so that some become relevant and some become irrelevant over time. And I'm sure when they look to see which champions have been good or bad and which cards have been good or bad, their data will tell them they've achieved their goal, because they've got their thumb on the scale. Some might look at this as a good thing, but I think it deeply hampers the fun of strategic deck-building in service of the fun of active decision-making during play. Both are important parts of a CCG, but Riot seems to care a lot less about the former. Again, in that interview, Yip says "my goals are to make sure players feel their skill matters but also that players have a hugely varied experience with lots of novel situations and memorable moments." They approach skill in a CCG as being able to pilot a deck against a wide array of scenarios, but that's not the whole picture.

            • @meisterz39

              Read  your post.  Good stuff.  Regarding Leona playing out like a midrange deck.  Do you feel that Daybreak/Moonlight will have any life outside of this expansion?  

              I'm not a fan of gimmick mechanics that are designed to only hang around for one expansion.  We've seen this in Hearthstone to a very disappointing effect.  And now we are seeing it in LoR.

              For example,  Is plunder now a keyword exclusive to Bilgewater?  We saw a few Frejlord units with it, so the assumption was that with the last expansion that it's a mechanic that could *in theory* go beyond the region's it was released with.  Invoke (essentially LoR's version of Discover) is a region specific mechanic of discover that only discovers celestial cards.  Discover, as the devs found out in Hearthstone, was a fantastic feature, that ended up being included in every expansion since it was released in League of Explorers.

              However, mechanics like Daybreak/Moonlight don't lend themselves to further expansions, unless as you stated...they are "baked in".  And you are absolutely correct.  Baked in mechanics make deck building and playing the deck, a trivial effort, because the synergies are so obvious that you choose those cards.  You don't try to make non-meta or non-standard decks because the cards that support the champion require baked in synergy instead of regional identity synergy.

              To top it all off, I'm concerned that the Dev design philosphy of "paying close attention and making changes" will become less and less viable over time.  What happens when people get bored, or LoR is no longer the "new shiny" and people just stop coming back?  Will the devs still pay close attention when the revenue income isn't as high?  

              LoR seems like it's trying to re-invent the wheel, instead of learning from it's competition in the marketplace.

              • @Sykomyke, thanks! I think you're exactly right about Riot trying to reinvent the wheel. It's hard to say whether they are doing so because they believe they can actually build a better card game model, or if their design approach just happens to work that way because of how deeply influenced it is by their work in the MOBA space. My guess is the latter, but only because I think several of their "innovations" have made the core LoR game worse, not better.

                The short answer I have to your question about the mechanics like Daybreak and Nightfall is no, I don't expect to see them in other expansions (at least no more than a card or two). But, as I'll get into below, I think the problem has less to do with whether the mechanic comes up in future sets and more to do with how narrowly they used the mechanic in this set. Riot seems intent on adding lots of mechanics rather than using a few mechanics in a lot of places, and I think that's a critical issue in the context of their expansions.

                With respect to your argument about "gimmick" mechanics that exist for a single expansion, I don't fully agree. I think it's good to see CCGs take some risks with their mechanics, and when those risks don't pay off, it's good to see them drop them. Of course, when they do pay off, it's good to see them revisited. Discover and Rush are two examples in Hearthstone which I think have been pretty positive additions overall (though they're not without their issues), but and there are some other mechanics that I've enjoyed that haven't made comebacks. So I'm with you on that, it's disappointing to see Blizzard take a mechanic that feels like it could become evergreen and just drop it immediately. 

                But there's value in having mechanics that don't become part of every expansion moving forward, as it helps to focus the over-arching theme of the expansion. Spellburst and Echo are two examples from Hearthstone, but MTG also does a great job with this. One of my favorite recent examples from MTG was the use of 1/1 counters in War of the Spark - the "bad guy" colors got "amass," which let them build up counters on one creature, while the "good guy" colors got "proliferate," which let them do smaller, but widespread counter buffs across creatures and planeswalkers. It was a fun thematic element to the mechanics that I don't expect will be revisited any time soon in any upcoming set, but I also don't mind because of how core it was to the theme of the set - it would just feel out of place elsewhere.

                That doesn't mean that they should never revisit these set-specific mechanics. MTG does a great job of bringing old mechanics back in new sets when they make sense (usually when the set "revisits" an old plane - e.g. the upcoming Zendikar set is revisiting the "landfall" mechanic). Hearthstone should probably consider doing the same. Maybe they think the game is still young enough that they should just explore more new content, but I think they're probably old enough to revisit old content. For example, it's easy to imagine a "Return to Un'goro" set in the future that revisits the "adapt" mechanic, and as someone who loved the Un'goro expansion, I'd be 100% in favor of that.

                The biggest thing to me is the question of whether or not mechanics are well-distributed. Your examples of Plunder, Daybreak, and Nightfall are all excellent examples of very narrowly applied mechanics. Each exists in two or fewer regions today, typically in service of a single champion, and while Riot will probably add a new card for these mechanics here and there (e.g. Monkey Business), the volume of cards added as support for these mechanics will probably be very low. This is unfortunately a reality of how they're adding sets - each existing region gets about 13 cards, but a "new champion package" typically takes 10, so there's very little room to reinvest in old archetypes, and in every set they have more old archetypes in need of investment.

                But if they had, from the start, built out mechanics that were widespread (e.g. adding Daybreak and Nightfall cards to each region), then there would already been a lot of room for experimenting with the mechanic, and lots of room to try different synergies. It wouldn't matter as much whether or not they added new Daybreak/Nightfall cards because there would be enough at the start to push players to think about lots of region pairs as new content was added. Quick hypothetical: we can imagine a world where Freljord got some card named "Season of the Sun" that riffs off the long, sunny summers near the North Pole, and has some cool Daybreak ability. Maybe the Daybreak Targon/Freljord deck is bad today, but later one of those regions gets a couple of new cards that happen to work in that archetype - they don't even have to be Daybreak cards. That can make players revisit the idea of running Leona and a Daybreak package in that pairing, and that's fantastic. But, because of how narrowly defined the synergies are, any "off-synergy pairing" (e.g. running Noxus Self Harm with Demacia) has to be successful on the merits of a single region's synergy cards. This does happen, but mostly just when one region is too powerful in the metagame.

                That hypothetical gets at the kind of thing I expect from a healthy card game. We see that in MTG all the time - they plan out how every pair or even triples of colors will interact in each set, and over time the player has the option of revisiting those set/combination mechanics as the overall card pool changes. Hearthstone, by contrast, tends to emphasize archetypes within a class, but then provide neutral cards to bolster lots of different archetypes. The net result of both approaches is the same - each color/class/region has access to a huge number of new cards and archetypes (MTG typically adds about 50 cards per color, Hearthstone typically adds about 10 cards per class plus 30 neutrals). But in LoR, mechanics are narrowly defined in only a couple of sets, and there are no "neutrals" to fill in gaps, so the result is a major reduction in the the level of agency a player has to make deck-building choices.

  • First: cards that replace themselves are already in the game from day one. You need to be more specific and name said cards for any productive discussion.

    Second    : Targon has 0 CARD DRAW SPELLS. I have no idea what your card advantage notion even is. The best Targon can do is cycle and stay even outside of generating Gem cards. So i think giving Targon a different mechanic like generate/replace/multiple casts instead of the standard "Draw 2" spell is a nice idea for region identity.

    Third    : Taric would take Ezreal over Karma any day.

    • Quote From Hellcopter

      Third: Taric would take Ezreal over Karma any day.

      SO true :D

      Staff
    • Quote From Hellcopter

      Second: Targon has 0 CARD DRAW SPELLS. I have no idea what your card advantage notion even is. The best Targon can do is cycle and stay even outside of generating Gem cards. So i think giving Targon a different mechanic like generate/replace/multiple casts instead of the standard "Draw 2" spell is a nice idea for region identity.

       

      I play a a 1/3 blocker, that gives me a card that grants me a 4/3 life leech and a 4/3 elusive. How is that not card advantage? 

      • Quote From Phaseshifter
        Quote From Hellcopter

        Second: Targon has 0 CARD DRAW SPELLS. I have no idea what your card advantage notion even is. The best Targon can do is cycle and stay even outside of generating Gem cards. So i think giving Targon a different mechanic like generate/replace/multiple casts instead of the standard "Draw 2" spell is a nice idea for region identity.

         I play a a 1/3 blocker, that gives me a card that grants me a 4/3 life leech and a 4/3 elusive. How is that not card advantage? 

        There are 3 core concepts in a card game:
        1- Card Advantage: Convert mana (resource) into extra cards in hand (resource)
        2- Tempo: Convert mana (resource) into board advantage (champions, units, direct damage, heal, etc)
        3- Efficiency: How nuch BANG you get for the ammount of resource spent

        The 3 concepts are VERY tied together.
        Card Advantage is meaningless without Tempo, and Tempo is meaningless without Efficiency.
        A player may hold 8+ cards in hand then his oponnent, but if he can't transition this advantage into board preassure (tempo) in a reasonable time (efficiency), then its all useless.

        Now answering your question: Your example is not card advantage. One unit cost 3, and the other unit costs 6. So the result is a 9 mana unit that DO NOT generate any kind of card advantage, worth 9/9 stats plus some Elusive + Lifesteal.
        1- Zero card advantage (its a cycle card at best. Cycle: a card that goes even by drawing just 1 card to replace itself)
        2- Extremely bad tempo card on T3 but extremely good tempo on T6
        3- Good efficiency (9 mana worth 9/9 stats that has Elusive + Lifesteal that can be played on T6 looks good to me) 

        My point is that you need to see all the context together. 

        • Well I disagree.

           

          I have 5 cards in hand, play one,  I get a body and still have 5 cards. 

          Then one of my cards generates two bodies. You need two cards to deal with it, or two blockers to stop them and I can block two bodies with it.

          How much they cost is irrelevant to having CA or not. That's exclusively tempo. But if you don't think The Golden Sister generates card advantage. I guess don't use it?

           

          1- Zero card advantage (its a cycle card at best. Cycle: a card that goes even by drawing just 1 card to replace itself)

           

          Cycling is using a card to get a card. Getting a body and a card is not cycling. Otherwise, by your logic, there is no difference between "Play a 1/3",  "Play a 1/3 and draw a card" and "Discard a card, draw a card".

          If you put a body in play while keeping the same number of cards in hand. You didn't just cycle.

           

          But If you feel it's so inefficient. Why do you suppose everyone finds evoke to be so strong? Is everyone crazy?

           

          Taking MTG as an example, Blue is unique in its capacity to generate card advantage, but that doesn't break the game because it has weaknesses too.

           

          Blue is / was the most problematic color in MTG. The designers said so pretty clearly. They admitted it was a bad idea to make one color good at drawing cards. Because it's too good to be concentrated in one place. So they started spreading it. 

           

          but having one region be the best at card advantage is not inherently bad.

           

          But how do you deal with this in expeditions? I tried. If I play Targon I'm ok. If I don't, I play mostly against it, and every time I run out of threats. They never run out of cards. And I've found no region that can generate enough 2 for 1's to keep up.

           

          Most of the time, once Rahvun, Daylight's Spear is on the table it's over.

    • Quote From Hellcopter

      First: cards that replace themselves are already in the game from day one. You need to be more specific and name said cards for any productive discussion.

      Second      : Targon has 0 CARD DRAW SPELLS. I have no idea what your card advantage notion even is. The best Targon can do is cycle and stay even outside of generating Gem cards. So i think giving Targon a different mechanic like generate/replace/multiple casts instead of the standard "Draw 2" spell is a nice idea for region identity.

      Third      : Taric would take Ezreal over Karma any day.

      FIRST: Pretty sure conversations can be productive without him naming specific cards.  It may help, certainly, but it's not a *requirement* for a conversation to be had.   

      Second: The advantage of card size is something most juvenile card games go through.  Original Hearthstone had the same feel as Legends of Runeterra, that is people actually had many situations where they got into topdeck mode.  Now a days the ONLY classes that ever reach top deck mode are pure aggro classes that are smOrc decks.  Any mid-range/control/combo deck will *never* run out of cards in Hearthstone.  This is because powercreep took over and "control" cards like Boulderfist Ogre (a vanilla 6/7 for 6 mana) aren't used because cards like Smug Senior exist (a 6 mana 5/7 with taunt that has a deathrattle that effectively gives you another copy of the card (without deathrattle)).  I understand you're attempting to gatekeep but it's not becoming.  When you have conversations, it's better to assume the best of the person's intentions, instead of the worst.

      Third: Taric might take Ez over Karma, but if you were on a budget or in an expedition, you'd still pick Karma if given the choice.  There's still very obvious synergy there.  Ignoring it and making a "I'd still take X over Y" without acknowledging the power of Y still given the context is....well again falls down to making assumptions like I said in the 2nd point.

       

  • Responding briefly to the original post - it's actually fine for a small number of regions to be uniquely effective at card advantage. Taking MTG as an example, Blue is unique in its capacity to generate card advantage, but that doesn't break the game because it has weaknesses too. This kind of gets at what Hellcopter is saying - there's a broader context in which card advantage exists, and that context is important. No region should be great at everything, and maybe there's a case to be made that certain mechanics (Daybreak and Celestials being the most likely in my mind) push Targon to be too good at too much, but having one region be the best at card advantage is not inherently bad.

  • Its very obvious to me you have no clue how balance works.

    Well, i presented one way to analyze it, which i can attest it also works for many other card games.
    In a basic level, that is the main concept i use when selecting what cards are strong enough to be on my competitive deck over other similar options.

    Now it seems to me you ignored most of my post and are now trying to push your own concepts and view of how this game should work until proven wrong, which is a game i won't play.
    I was genuinely trying to help you get a better grip on how to measure cards right, but whatever works for you my dude.

  • One more thought that just occurred to me - Hearthstone started as a card game that hewed very closely to WoW lore, but they started creating their own characters, lore, etc., over time to make room to add mechanics that made sense without having to add a WoW character in a way that didn't do justice to the original lore. For example, Raza the Chained was new to WoW lore as a result of Hearthstone. There are lots of alternatives from the base WoW lore Blizzard might have added, that might not have fit the actual mechanics of Raza - it's good they focused on set cohesion, and it's good they added something new rather than half-ass some existing character in the name of cohesion. This is something LoR is going to have to be willing to do. Why is Lulu in this set rather than any other set? I guess because Riot felt like it, because she doesn't have any mechanics that make her feel like a cohesive part of the Targon/Call of the Mountain expansion, because there's vanishingly little that makes the whole set cohesive to begin with, so these secondary regions feel messy/out of sync. Sure, she does support stuff, but that's a mechanic every region has access to.

    • Quote From meisterz39

      One more thought that just occurred to me - Hearthstone started as a card game that hewed very closely to WoW lore, but they started creating their own characters, lore, etc., over time to make room to add mechanics that made sense without having to add a WoW character in a way that didn't do justice to the original lore. For example, Raza the Chained was new to WoW lore as a result of Hearthstone. There are lots of alternatives from the base WoW lore Blizzard might have added, that might not have fit the actual mechanics of Raza - it's good they focused on set cohesion, and it's good they added something new rather than half-ass some existing character in the name of cohesion. This is something LoR is going to have to be willing to do. Why is Lulu in this set rather than any other set? I guess because Riot felt like it, because she doesn't have any mechanics that make her feel like a cohesive part of the Targon/Call of the Mountain expansion, because there's vanishingly little that makes the whole set cohesive to begin with, so these secondary regions feel messy/out of sync. Sure, she does support stuff, but that's a mechanic every region has access to.

      Well Lulu is here i imagine because she has the Support mechanic, which is a huge part of Targon's flavor. 

  • I like how so many of you "predict" that there will be no more plunder / daybreak / nightfall etc. in future expansions.

    Can I have some winning lottery numbers too?

     

    In all seriousness, you have no idea what devs have in mind for future expansions and cards.

     

    We literally just got a SECOND expansion, the game is 0.5 year old and you are already criticise the game design. And we don't even have all the regions out. There will be a new region after Call of the Mountain (and then more) that will probably do something better than Targon and other regions do. Don't forget that we have balance patches often, that not only nerf but also buff cards. To me Riot has prooved to be the best card game balance team that existed so far. I have zero worries about the future of the game.

    • Quote From Vino

      I like how so many of you "predict" that there will be no more plunder / daybreak / nightfall etc. in future expansions.

      Can I have some winning lottery numbers too?

       

      In all seriousness, you have no idea what devs have in mind for future expansions and cards.

      I am not predicting that there will be no more cards featuring Plunder, Daybreak, Nightfall, or any other mechanic. I even point to a Plunder card added in Call of the Mountain as an example of one being included in the latest set.

      My point is not that the devs will never add one again, but rather that a) new champion packages take up so many cards that there won't be a lot of room in any given expansion to include much else for a given region, and b) if they had included these mechanics in a wider set of regions from the beginning, they wouldn't have to worry about adding lots of future support for an archetype that wants to use those mechanics. The latter point is because having options in a wide array of regions would in turn produce a much richer set of deck-building options for those archetypes that use those mechanics, so any new cards to any of those regions could spur a resurgence of those mechanics.

  • If we are talking invoke cards they are all low impact plays.

    LoR Card: Spacey Sketcher

    This on turn 1 doesn't do anything

    LoR Card: Behold the Infinite

    This on turn 2 doesn't do anything

    The 10 best Call of the Mountain cards that can change the Legends of Runeterra meta | Dot Esports

    dito here

    LoR Card: Mountain Scryer

    etc. etc.

    So how do you beat this, you just play 1, 2, 3 cards that aren't bad and you win

    The situations are harder to deal with depending on what they are running with this.

    Splashing shadow for pings, splashing bilge for pings could make it harder for this list to get out aggro'd

    • Quote From Nifty129

      If we are talking invoke cards they are all low impact plays.

      LoR Card: Spacey Sketcher

      This on turn 1 doesn't do anything

      LoR Card: Behold the Infinite

      This on turn 2 doesn't do anything

      The 10 best Call of the Mountain cards that can change the Legends of Runeterra meta | Dot Esports

      dito here

      LoR Card: Mountain Scryer

      etc. etc.

      So how do you beat this, you just play 1, 2, 3 cards that aren't bad and you win

      The situations are harder to deal with depending on what they are running with this.

      Splashing shadow for pings, splashing bilge for pings could make it harder for this list to get out aggro'd

      Well, those guys can still attack block and trade. I think the entire point of evoke is to stall for the money cards. But when you say

      you just play 1, 2, 3 cards that aren't bad and you win
      Which cards for example do you mean?

       

      I guess fearsome would help. But most decent early fearsome cards can be pinged. Thankfully, Targon doesn't have ping and cheap removal outside of celestial cards (If it did it would be stupid.) But it seems to pair well with every region. So my best bet is to play Spiders I guess?

       

      Quote From Hellcopter

      and are now trying to push your own concepts and view 

      How ironic. 

       

      I'm sorry that my disagreeing with you bothers you so much. I believe invoke provides card advantage. If you don't, you don't. But I've been playing it in expedition, and when my opponent isn't using Targon. I always have more cards than they do.

       

      • I think that you’re both right in your own ways. I think that Invoke cards basically work as a single card that is split into two smaller cards that can be played at different times. Once you play both “halves” of the invoke card (the invoke card itself and the Celestial it produces), you are down in card advantage in the same way that you would be by playing a single, expensive card. However, when you play the first “half” of the Invoke card you haven’t yet lost out on card advantage. Invoke cards are different from normal on-curve plays in that they take far longer to lose card advantage, but they are also far different than a pure late-game card like Tryndamere in that the two halves of them can be split up at different early parts of the curve, removing the downside of “bricking out” that late game cards have.

        • Quote From CursedParrot

          I think that you’re both right in your own ways. I think that Invoke cards basically work as a single card that is split into two smaller cards that can be played at different times. Once you play both “halves” of the invoke card (the invoke card itself and the Celestial it produces), you are down in card advantage in the same way that you would be by playing a single, expensive card. However, when you play the first “half” of the Invoke card you haven’t yet lost out on card advantage. Invoke cards are different from normal on-curve plays in that they take far longer to lose card advantage, but they are also far different than a pure late-game card like Tryndamere in that the two halves of them can be split up at different early parts of the curve, removing the downside of “bricking out” that late game cards have.

          It depends. Because several celestial cards will get you a two for one by themselves. And the invoke card you played must be dealt with independently than the celestial card you get.

           

          There's also the fact that it's not always the same card. I can't consider them half cards, because I can attack an opponent at 3 life with Moondreamer, (or block) and it doesn't matter that I don't play the celestial card it gave me. The card still does something. I would agree if all invoke guys were 0/1.  They basically could do nothing but chump. But you can still use them to keep low defense guys at bay. 

           

          Also, your opponent can use a card to remove it, which is basically a -1 for them.

  • On the point about new champions preventing Riot from expanding on old keywords, I would actually say that this isn’t a problem, because new champions can use old keywords. For example, Aphelios would make a lot of sense as a Nightfall Champion, which could allow them to add more Nightfall cards. Also, Plunder in Bilgewater has been used for the support cards for lots of different champions. For example, TF’s Nab cards require Plunder despite TF not being a “Plunder” champion. Both of the Bilgewater cards in this expansion either have plunder or are meant to trigger Plunder, which provides encouraging evidence that Tahm Kench or some of his support cards might use plunder. 

    On Daybreak, I honestly hope that they rework it to “the first time I see you gain an Attack Token, gain X Bonus effect.” It’d be far more interesting, even if it doesn’t fit as well with Nightfall.

  • @Meisterz39 I think you're making a lot of good points, but I also feel like you're being a bit too harsh towards Riot. The game is still relatively new and there is a lot of room for Riot to try different balancing and card design approaches if their current ones don't end up having the effect they wanted. I agree that changing cards too often is bad if you want a stable meta to develop, but I still think it's much more desirable than what we used to have in Hearthstone where blatantly overpowered cards have remained completely untouched for waaay too long (e.g. Patches the Pirate) or sometimes forever (e.g. Prince Keleseth). On the other hand, now Hearthstone balance patches sometimes happen within a week of the expansion launch, while LoR patches happen a good few weeks later at which point it is much more clear which cards are in need of balancing.

    Of course each individual will have a different preference for how they want a game to be balanced and designed. Riot's approach obviously isn't perfect, but since they have shown that they are willing to make changes if its necessary I do believe that the game is in good hands if they continue to have this mindset. With that said I do hope a Rioter will find and read your posts because I think it's good for them to have different perspectives on their game design and balance, and to know what the negative sides are that (could) come with it.

    • I don't mean to be harsh against Riot, but I think there's a difference between making some cards overpowered, which is inevitable for any CCG team, and creating a system which reinforces short-term thinking. And I think that's what they've done here - they've created a design process that focuses narrowly on the question "who is this new champion, and what cards and mechanics support him or her?" and doesn't seem to pay enough attention to the overall ecosystem of the game. Rather, they kick the can down the road on thinking about the ecosystem of the game because the balance team can always come back in and fix it later.

      Honestly, I would probably be more willing to give them the benefit of the doubt if it weren't for the massive amount of anger toward Riot's balance teams from LoL. Prior to playing LoR, I wouldn't have believed those levels of anger were justified, and would have probably told you that League players are just whining because their favorite champions got nerfed or some such thing. But after some time with LoR I really do think Riot has a bad approach to balance. It sort of feels like they're operating with the view every young tech company has - "we're just like Facebook, so let's disrupt the [X] industry by moving fast and breaking things." And the result is not all bad - they have a lot of interesting content in LoR. But this "move fast and break things" mentality means they also consistently treat balance as secondary.