Duelyst Forums

Any plan for formats?

#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

#28

I’m not saying rotation doesn’t have downsides. I’m saying not rotating would probably be worse. My first ccg was Yugioh. Every set was legal, but the vast majority weren’t viable. CCG companies want to sell cards. That’s not up for debate. Without set rotation forcing people to buy new cards to play at all, I don’t trust CPG to not break the game to get us to buy new cards to have a chance at winning. And I don’t mean that to insult them or say they’re bad people. I mean to say, straight up, not rotating sets will make the game pay to win. New players just won’t have a way to win consistently without a ton of different cards from different sets. And putting in a newb mode which is limited isn’t the way to fix it. How do you enforce it? Until they hit a certain level with each class? Until they collect a certain amount of cards? It just kicks the problem down the road, especially 5 years and 2000 cards from now.

#29

What’s primary reason for rotation? It is put old players and new players on a level playing field. It isn’t for balance in digtal game because they can simple adjust the cards.I just called it “New player ladder” but reality it is just limited format of something like last three expansion. It isn’t a matter of enforcing what a new player is just creating a format where new players are relatively on the same ground as older players.

Main Format should have all the cards in the game,You can create as much side formats as you want as long you dont limit the access cards away from players who paid for cards.

#30

Ok, so going with HS terms, you want wild to be the main format and standard to be the secondary format? If the internet is to be believed, HS players have mostly ignored wild. Why would it be different in duelyst? I doubt standard is only popular because pro HS is all standard. I give the players more credit than that. It’s mostly because having more sets makes it harder to keep up. But given the choice between just the more recent sets or every set ever, I’d bet most players are going to want fewer sets.

#31

I agree. I really don’t see the alternative to rotating. If you keep releasing expansions you will eventually hit a point where a) new players can’t catch up), and b) it’s too hard to design new cards, as there’s too many crazy interactions with pre-existing cards.

I’m also not sure why everyone is wailing on Hearthstone. Introducing Standard was very popular among pro-players, and I think it really helped the game.

#32

Especially if you enjoy deck building. Imagine a new player who wants to experiment with deck lists. They don’t want to look up lists online, they want to get right into trial and error. If every card ever made is available, that’s ridiculously overwhelming. I’d much rather be choosing from 400 cards than 2000. And it only gets worse as the game gets older.

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#33

Wild is ignored because it isn’t the supported format and highly unbalanced.Dr Boom wasn’t balanced to be a more reasonable card it was thrown into wild. Why are you going to play mode which doesn’t have the best players and isnt going to balanced?

So yeah if Wild was the main format being supported by Blizzard and competitive focus of game.It would be the most played mode.Why would you want to play with less cards? Why would you want to give up a style of play that you like play.I spent a year mastering Spellhai only to rotation throw out cards and mess with deck that I mastered.Rotation has only screw HS and the only reason purify crapstorm happened is because of rotation.It will happen again because Blizzard will makes cards to make priest good that will be rotated out again at some point.

Duelyst has that same problem Falicus is what makes Sajj works and Sunforge lancer will be one key minions when Ziran works.And they would rotated out leaving those generals in a bad shape again.This will never be a issue if all cards are in the main format .Cards are foundations and each set builds upon something.

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#34

Any time they introduce new cards, it changes the decks you play. And if the core mechanics of the game are solid, there will be a deck you enjoy playing, no matter the format. You want fewer cards to choose from because it keeps the game simple, which keeps the game accessible to newbs and casuals, who will always be most of the player base. For any game. I started playing the game in late August, right before shimzar came out. I was already behind compared to the people who had been playing for a year. Imagine starting a new account in 5 years. Your options are drop $1000 on a game you just started, or spend the next two years grinding out daily quests, mostly losing, until you have a decent collection. Most people would quit, regardless of how many other formats you have.

It’s most important for the standard, default format to be casual friendly. That’s what keeps the game healthy. And you can’t have more than a handful of formats, or else you don’t have enough players to support the game (see any thread asking CPG to bring back casual.)

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#35