Duelyst Forums

How do you feel about Trial and Destiny? (Poll)

#1

This thread/poll is not about the balance of Mythron cards, it is about the mechanic itself.

  • I like Trial and Destiny
  • I don’t like Trial and Destiny
  • Undecided/results

0 voters

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  • I think Trial and Destiny is good for the game
  • I don’t think Trial and Destiny is good for the game
  • Undecided/results

0 voters

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There’s been a lot of hubbub about this mechanic lately and (to me) a surprising number of people who think it’s bad for the game. Personally, I’m overjoyed to see CPG introducing new ways to play the game and new ways to encourage creative and unique deck building, and I think Trial and Destiny was a phenomenal way to do that. Permanent effects are pretty neat when applied well.

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#2

I personally think that Trial and Destiny is a good mechanic done horribly.

I wqs actually thinking about writing a post on “Trials and Destiny should be basic” as it teaches newer players what a wincondition is.

Sadly, they are not basic and some are strong af.

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#3

I really enjoy this mechanic, even more than i liked the quests from HS. Sadly, they suffered from the same problem as the HS problem: Some were really powerful and much easier to complete with much stronger rewards than others.
Currently, the top trial is Strategos, followed by Notion of Starless entity (or whatever it is called) . Why do I think so? Its because they got the most support. The existance of Brome makes it preferrable over any other general for strategos, and they also got Legion,Warblade and Sunrise Cleric, 3 pretty good staple cards that support the deck, legion exceptionally. Notion works really well with cards like Azure summoning and Neurolink, which are long forgotten cards, but it was an exceptionally good support, while Objugator helps maintaining your wincon.

Meanwhile, there is Ox, who is just luck reliant, and the reward is underwhelming, Xor, who usually comes down when you are about to die, HateFurnace, which, while exploitable with bugs (or features we may never know), still provides derpy deck building and is usually not needed to win, Oak in the Nemeton, who honestly needs to be reworked to summon 15/20 tokens instead of the current trial, since it is just too damn hard, and Wandered, who needs you to play highlander, but that would never work in ladder.

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#4

I agree with Flygon in that it was great mechanic concept wise, but was horribly executed. The two biggest griefs I have with it is the fact that once it goes off, you have no way to counter it. Second, because they are such powerful wincons but they come online so early some games and I mean early in the context of wincons. An example would be Spec Rev and how early such a game finishing card came out.

I personally think a good example of a late game finisher was Obliterate because it came out once you had spammed the board enough with Creep Tiles which was usually after 9 mana so you knew past a certain point “I’m fucked” and conceded, but with some of these new cards such as Stragetos, the wincon comes out way too early and is such a swing.

I understand CPG wants to hold true to their lightning fast games motto and I am certainly not asking for a control meta, but I do wish the game was more gradual and tense like Creep and Obliterate where you are trying to calculate to get finish off that one extra point of HP rather than winning a game through brute force and overwhelming power.

@whyb0t since both polls seem to be the same unintentionally, my opinion is that I like the mechanic, but I do not like the way it is right now in the game.

Concept vs Execution is the biggest problem for me.

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#5

I believe you can enjoy the idea of a mechanic and still believe it to be detrimental to the state of a game. Conversely, a new mechanic could be very healthy for the gamestate/playerbase etc, but very unenjoyable personally.

Hence I figured two separate polls were in order. And it appears some people do feel that way. You can see from the results that most of those who’ve voted like the mechanic, but are split on how positive it is for the game.

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#6

I enjoy the concept of ‘Trial and Destiny.’ I do not necessarily think it healthy for the game, but that’s a giant can of worms.

Let’s see… Trial and Destiny is a ‘high risk, high reward (HRHR)’ mechanic that requires implementation from the deck building phase. This alone, regardless of what the effects are, is game shaking. Provided they see any play at all, the meta would see a drastic shift in deck building, card teching, and tactical play.

In most games where HRHR effects are introduced, you find they are balanced below the normal power curve. The reliability of making HRHR cards work is typically so low that they never see competitive play even if the result is game winning. Duelyst has opted to incorporate HRHR cards that are much more feasible and still provide table-turning results.

It’s purely because of how much impact these have on the game that I selected the ‘not healthy’ option in the second poll. It’s ultimately a matter of opinion and stubbornness. Does seeing the game change bother you? Do you just not like the concept of the new effect? Are you upset that there’s only 7 basic deck concepts because of them? To each their own. I at least enjoy this.

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#7

I personally see a lot of potential in the mechanic. At a first glance, everything about it was extremely interesting. The idea of a deck master that can only be unlocked by playing a game within a game was a very creative concept, and the Mythron rarity brought about the appeal of exclusivity. It was natural that I was very excited for them.

But when they officially entered the meta by the time the expansion dropped, the problem was evident. Mythron decks were severely obstructing player interactions, where matches would just be a game of “who summons the Mythron first.” Strategy and gameplay skill became minimized while deckbuilding importance was maximized; a trend I personally don’t welcome.

To make matters worse, these Mythron minions are uncounterable. Cards like Notion, Hatefurnace, Underlord, and Strategos are overwhelmingly powerful. (As a Lyonar main, I used to be heavily biased towards Strategos, but I now know better. It may not be downright overpowered, but it’s definitely the strongest Lyonar archetype at the moment.) I’m not asking for their effects to be dispellable or removable, as that would take away from their appeal as a win-con, but I’m definitely asking for some adjustments to either their Trial or Destiny. No other minion in the entire history of Duelyst was able to entertain such a massive presence on the board by itself, and nothing should be this powerful even if the Trial needs preparation to complete.

Furthermore, the balance between Mythron minions is also very problematic. Cards like Ebon Ox or Oak are disastrously underpowered compared to others, as their Trials are difficult and their Destinies inconsistent. These cards make me feel like the difficulty of the Trial and the power of the Destiny are inversely proportional. Although I have no plan to ever play these cards, I would like a rework done so that they become playable.

To conclude, the Trial and Destiny mechanic is a great concept that was executed so poorly that it ultimately became unhealthy for the game. If I were to redesign them, I would make the Trials more interactive with opponents and synergetic with existing card archetypes. The Destinies should be nerfed overall, but obviously should be strong enough for the Trial to be worth it. There ought to be an equilibrium somewhere.

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#8

If the T&D cards could be countered or dispelled in some way though they wouldn’t be played. Many by their nature warp decks to be played or built in a certain way. For instance if Strategos Brome could be dispelled by EMP nobody would ever play it as after the counter you would be left with nothing but 1 Attack minions.

The same can be said of Abyssian and Magmar, who would be left with wonky decklists that are optimised for something that, when countered leaves them in the lurch.

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#9

As stated above, I wasn’t asking for the Destiny to be dispellable; I was calling for some nerfs that would allow the opponent to at very least play around them. Right now, Destinies are just ridiculous. The opponent most likely has no chance of winning without playing his/her own Mythron minion to match.

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#10

I mean, only one or two of the destinies are even competitive. Lyo and Vet are clearly playable, Abyss is garbage, Neutral is a meme, game is over by the time you play Songhai’s (or Abyssian’s), Vanar’s is okay but difficult to play against an intelligent opponent, Magmar’s is hard to build around, etc. I don’t think Destinies need a mass nerf if the vast majority of them are very difficult to play

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#11

I actually like the implementation of this mechanics as a win condition. Most problems arise when I see that this mechanic overshadowed some traditional wincons and other Mythron expansion specific mechanics. I don’t know if it is due to novelty or due to imbalance, but I’m inclined to consider the former option correct.

I think it could be the place to put my analysis and feelings about Trial Cards.

  • Lyonar Trial is probably the only one that makes me sad. It promotes swarm archetype which I do like, but it seems to make other Lyo swarm approaches obsolete. I do not know if it’s OP or not, if it should be nerfed ot not, but it is definitely the most viable type of Lyo swarm as of now, and that lowers the amount of variety. Even more it lowers the amount of variety since seemingly it’s better than ANY existing Lyo archetype. It’s bad, IMO.

  • Hai condition seems lackluster for me and most of community, but I didn’t play Midrange Hai enough to evaluate it.

  • Vet one is one of the cards that made ArtiVet a force to reckon with. On the other hand it may be a bit overtuned in a way that it’s a bit too easy to accomplish its condition. I don’t know if I could win playing against my own ArtiVet deck with any other deck, even specifically tailored to counter it. I believe the problem is actually not the NoSE itself, but the raised consistency of drawing and equipping artifacts. Should NoSE be nerfed? I dunno. If so - then maybe the trial should require equipping two artfacts while reaching the other side of the board.
    Still, many decks have adapted to counter its playstyle, and while it is the most viable option to play ArtiVet, the archetype never truly existed before, so it’s good.

  • Abyssian I believe to be the sleeper card. I’m quite sure it will be broken, and I’m eager to try breaking it myself. But due to Trial bugs it’s hard to test it properly, so I’ll just say that it seems decent and fair. Hard condition and a huge payoff. But not much better than existing Abyss wincons such as Gate, Variax, Swarm cash in, and so on.

  • Magmar one is actually the most balanced of all, IMO. If bugs will be fixed, it will be on par with classical midrange Vaath. So it’s good, it’s variety again.

  • Vanar I can say nothing about. I feel that it’s smwhere a bit better than Hai in terms of viability.

  • Neutral one is actually not so bad, but I doubt its competetive value due to obvious deck inconsistency. Still nice for fun.

To summarise, I think that Trial cards are only good for the game if they multiply possible viable options, not make previous approaches obsolete. Most of them actually satisfy this condition. But I’m not sure if my analysis is correct, that’s why I voted “undecided” in the second poll.

6 Likes
#12

what if they made new cards that had trials that once completed nullified a completed destiny, made the game a sort of rock paper scissors, where decks with trial destiny would struggle against anti destiny decks generally, decks not using either would generally be stronger in a matchup against anti destiny decks, while destiny decks would generally have an advantage over normal decks, but ofc this would be done best if these advantages were slight, there would be decks that were also more or less affected by anti destiny as well, like brome strategos, nose, hate rush starhorn, would be affected more so by anti destiny than maybe using ox, even then certain destiny decks could be teched to be able to still have wincons without destiny

#13

First, make all trials worth getting rid off, as currently there are 2 or 3 of them.

2 Likes
#14

I like the design, but I don’t like the implementation.

I like the design because it gives you a very specific goal in terms of deck building and a reliably end game.

I don’t like the implementation because most of the Destiny effects are strong to the point of being oppressive, which limits what else you can play in the meta. Seems to me as if it will eventually turn into a very one dimensional meta. You either play the late-game oriented Trial deck or the early-game oriented aggro deck. At least I don’t see how any deck can keep up with the insane value of a Trial deck without playing a Trial itself.

3 Likes
#15

I’m sure none of us wants Duelyst to have strategic depth comparable to that of rock paper scissors.

3 Likes
#16

Currently Mid Faie is very strong and its just the players.

And there is also this cancerous songhai deck which I don’t want to talk about. This has the potential to be better than even Brome.

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#17

Are you talking about the Meditate+Boulder+Hiogi OTK? Cause that thing is inconsistent as heck.

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#18

The most outrageous Songhai deck I faced lately was Boulder Hurl Hiogi Meditation. See the pun?

2 Likes
#19

Someone made that but that as an alternate wincondition, it has an incredibly powerful power play which doesn’t kill you but instead puts you in a situation where you can’t win.

#20

u must b a magmar main, cause u naturally selectively read :open_mouth:

1 Like