Duelyst Forums

Any plan for formats?

#8

Let’s not forget:

  • it gives an excuse to powercreep and focus less on the balancing as cards will just rotate out
  • it makes players upset as they won’t be able to utilize all of the cards they spend money on in the most relevant format (for reference, no one gives a shit about Wild in HS)
  • it forces players to keep spending money on the new expansions in order to keep up with the meta when they should have a choice whether they want to purchase the expansion or not based on it’s content
  • it actually confuses new players as they will never be sure what expansion to purchase and is it a good time to do so in the first place (just look at HS subreddit, it’s full with those questions).

Fuck no, I want to be use all of my cards I’ve purchased fair and square in the most relevant format and I don’t want them to have an excuse to not balance cards properly. I’ve seen what formats have done to HS and what were the causes and consequences of it and I don’t want to see it anywhere near this game.

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#9

Hey, I’m totally with you :slight_smile: I just mentioned the reasons typically used to sell formats! It would be awesome if Duelyst could live forever with no format.

The question, however, is whether it is realistically feasible to avoid formats on the long run. It would be great to know if CPG already has clear ideas on this, at least to choose what is most convenient to do in terms of orbs.

#10

Yu-gi-oh has been doing it for a while. Albeit the approach is power creeping instead. Really Duelyst won’t have to worry about this issue until much later there’s still a lot of space for future cards.

#11

I think most of that’s just because Hearthstone’s design team is unequivocally terrible, they honestly should all be replaced. I’ll agree with you that it is partially to sell more cards, but it can also be to make a set have a particular, unique feel to it, like the Conspiracy draft sets in MTG for example.

If you look at the way Magic does it, it’s a lot more interesting. The different formats are almost like wholly different games, although the team at Wizards doesn’t really support the eternal formats in the slightest which is where they err.

#12

Considering how quickly they plan to release expansions (one every three months if I’m correct), I’d say the time to start worrying is not that far away.

#13

Isn’t that about as fast as most other CCG’s? Also as Duelyst is a card game stuff like battle pets can exist with much less difficulty creating more space for things than a traditional paper card game.

#14

Not sure about other CCGs, but getting a full blown expansion every three months definitely sounds way too much. It should be quality over quantity.

#15

That’s the thing. This is not a complaint, but a legitimate point. We all love the game and it would be cool to have more hints about the future of the project.

For instance, let’s assume we are getting 3 expansions per year, which looks plausible based on empirical evidence collected in the forums. Will all the expansions be as big as Shimzar? If so, the full collection is going to blow up really quick and it will be hard to ensure everything is balanced and interacts correctly with all the remaining cards.

The need for formats may actually be not so far, knowing the developers’ plan for this would be important to plan the best strategy in terms of investing gold.

#16

As for card games in general, I’ve always liked what yu-gi-oh does. They have banned cards (not allowed), restricted cards (only 1 copy in a deck) and semi-restricted cards (2 copies). All the remaining cards are allowed to be used.

That allows players to use all the cards they want, except for a few overpowered cards.

With nerfs being a possibility in duelyst because it’s a virtual card game, I would go as far as saying we don’t even have to ban cards.

Also, restricting the number of a certain card in a deck gives CP another way to nerf a card other than number changing or a complete rework of it

#17

No! God no, please no. Rotating formats are the worst, and a huge money grubbing scam.

Power creep is also not a good method, and it does not necessarily have to happen, especially with a digital game where they can adjust both old and new things at their leisure. Releasing new cards, balancing over turned things, buffing older cards, and supporting various archetypes prevents things from getting stale.

Not to mention it divides the player base between formats. Gauntlet is enough of an alternate game mode, although it really ought to be free, but harder to get rewards out of.

A rotated format is not any friendlier to a new player, the costs are usually the same to make a deck, they have to do just as much learning, and the meta Is super stale for a couple months due to the tiny card pool. And then guess what, time to throw away all your old stuff and buy everything new! To prepare for yet another boring stale couple months, and then it repeats again.

Has anyone ever actually been scared away by a large card pool? I see big pool and think lots of customization, I can do what I want and not be all cookie cutter, and am thrilled with the constant discovery. Most of the learning is mechanics and basic tactics which have little to do with the card pool.

There is a reason why Modern and EDH in MTG are quickly becoming more popular than standard despite that Wizards goes out of their way promote Standard. And unlike Legacy/vintage because edh/modern gets the balancing attention they need, they have been very successful, and that balancing is much easier for a digital game to.

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New Player Query
#18

The format is very hatefull, as seen in heartstone where some expansion are unusefull, after grinding for gold, blizzard got my total hate (and after the shitty diablo 3)…
Yay i like to play modern or legacy, but duelyst is like new, with only one expansion, those op cards is being nerfed and the balance for the moment is cool, think is too early to make a speech like this!

#19

I feel the exact opposite about Yu-Gi-Oh! and Hearhtstone. Yu-Gi-Oh! not having formats made power creep the go to. It’s a completely different game compared to what it began as, and it keeps getting crazier with each new series. I quit years ago and every time I think of picking up a starter deck or going online, the new cards turn me off. Hearthstone introducing standard is the first time I was tempted to go back in months.

format pros:

  • It simplifies card design (no worrying about crazy combos, minor tweaks aren’t immediately redundant)

  • It makes it easier (i.e. possible) for new players to catch up

  • It makes it easier (i.e. possible) for free to play players to keep up

Honestly, a few years down the line, balancing for all 10k cards in the game becomes impossible. Yu-Gi-Oh went with most cards having super restricted effects, like only affecting certain types or cards with a common phrase in their name. And power creep. Buttloads of power creep.

I would much rather drop $40-50 twice a year and have cards the rules can handle than spend $40-50 twice a year and have a new mechanic or gimmick introduced every few months.

(Also, imo ~200 new cards/year is perfect. Please keep it around there, CPG)

#20

Imho format just makes things worse for newer/f2p/casuals. You always will need the same amount of cards to play, so for a new players having to craft 40 cards from scratch is the same regardless of the pool size of the cards you can choose from. But for f2p and casuals it just kills the game. Imagine you spend say 1 month to craft a legendary, then after a week the formats rotate and you can’t use that card anymore… How would you feel?

#21

I abhor set rotations. I always want to use the full set when playing.

#22

That’s on you to keep track of when the new set comes out. Given the fact that shimzar was up for preorder for a month before release, it shouldn’t be too hard to put up a notice saying “these sets are going to rotate out soon, probably don’t buy them.” Also, keeping the cards in fewer sets makes it more likely you actually pull some of them, even if the crafting is the same.

#23

It doesn’t change the fact that knowing that every card you craft will be useless sooner or later can drive away casuals and f2pers. Well not only those tbh. I am not hardcore but i play quite often and i’m planning to burn something like 8k spirit to create a deck. The moment most of my cards will be unplayable i will probably quit. If they don’t add a way to compensate the format rotation you screw pretty much a lot of people that have a decent but not as big as the streamers collection.

Also it would kill the possibility of experimenting deck. Using spirit on unconventional decks is a gamble as it is now, imagine if you couldn’t even at least keep those cards. Formats imho can work when you have a huge base of fanboys that will buy right away packs for new expansion, and that’s ofc every company wet dream since it’s their goal to make munney, but if you are not 100% sure that people will spend bucks to buy new cards and accept that some hard earned cards will be only usable in an underdog format you pretty much risk that the game dies

#24

Either way they’re going to get us to spend money. In my experience, that means set rotation or massive power creep. I prefer set rotation.

Also, the problem isn’t “set rotation or no set rotation?”, it’s “how often should sets rotate?” No matter what, most of your cards will be unplayable at some point. There’s only 39 cards to a deck, at some point each card will probably be replaced. Would you be ok with cards being playable for 2 years? 3 Years? What’s the minimum amount of time for a card to be good that makes the card worth it to you. Again, in my experience, set rotation makes cards last longer than power creep. With set rotation, your cards can be good for a year or two. With power creep, they’re only good until the next set comes out.

#25

Not in the same way. If you can always count on your solid collection, at least for your main faction you would need just a few cards from the expansion. If you need to start from scratch you either have a massive stack of gold/spirit (which 99% of players wont have) or you have to spend money unless you want to grind your way to get every single card (which again is exactly the goal of a company, but as i said it can work only with the fanboy base imho. Not that i’m an economist or anything, that’s just my thought)

#26

You wouldn’t necessarily be starting from scratch. Blizzard decided the classic and basic cards would always be good, and that’s something CPG could do. And even if they didn’t, there’s nothing forcing them to ban every card before the newest set. As long as the newest legal set isn’t the actual newest set, you will likely have some cards you can use. It hurts people coming back after a long break, but that can be solved by making the basic and core sets always good.

#27

I play to collect cards and put together combos.In HS I can’t play dragon priest anymore which was a working priest list why? Rotation.Priest is universal worse faction why the core of faction is weak which fine because they add cards but every time you take away cards the faction becomes weak again Duelyst has Starhorn,Ziran and Sajj who are like that.

Rotation is fine as long as the Main mode has all the cards and rotation limited format is secondary.If they want to create a “New player” ladder to ease new players in that is fine and has secondary purpose of being a interesting new format that is fine .Rotation destroy working interesting decks to replace them with decks that might work