Is duelyst lacking diversity?

[mmf]

Hello there, just going to speak my mind for a bit. Now I love duelyst and I think that there are many fun and interesting ways of playing, but recently I’ve found something that I found rather worrying. To be short, I can’t play anything different.

Now don’t get me wrong you can play whatever you want and have fun that way, but that just means that you’ll have problems when playing competitively. Ever since I hit diamond I just find that if I don’t play according to the rules of the so-called “meta” then I find myself going down the ladder. I don’t know if anyone else is having this problem, but so far I’ve found it worrying not only to my chances of getting to S-rank with calculator, but towards the popularity of duelyst in the long-run. Whether or not you disagree with me on this feel free to post your opinions down below and what should be done to address this.

[raqyee]

I don’t see what exactly you’re complaining about and I also fail to see how it has anything to do with diversity. You’re not supposed to be very successful with the meme-y decks, hence the game. Ladder is also very competitive so it’s only natural people play meta decks that shit on the meme-y decks. It’s all working as intended.

You will need to elaborate on that a little bit more because what it sounds like is “I want to win with fun uncompetitive decks but I can’t and that’s bad for the game”. Also you made literally 2 paragraphs, hardly a wall of text.

[shatteredskys]

Diamond is where people are grinding for S-rank, it’s where people are going to be playing the most optimal and "meta’ decks because they want to win as consistently as they can. For an example, earlier this month I tried to make to S-rank with a Sajj midrange artifact deck but got stuck at rank 4 because the deck has a 15% win rate versus spellhai. Obviously that wan’t going to work so I swapped to the meta mid range Zirix and achieved S-rank yesterday.

So yeah diamond tends to be pretty “meta” focused becasue everyone is trying their hardest to win. But I don’t think it’s a big as a problem in other ranks. In gold players are still learning and pretty much anything goes, I had a near 100% winrate on a gromar deck while going through gold that has yet to win me a single diamond ranked match. And in S-rank people tend to focus on experimenting and trying new decks becasue the S-rank system is broken and it’s S rank, you’re already at the top there’s no need to grind. Like when I hit rank 1 last night and went versus S-rankers I faced stuff like Crescent Spear control Songhai and Beastmaster Combo Songhai, not exactly your typical Spellais.

Overall I’m not really worried, yes diamond is pretty stale but that’s due to it being the stepping stone to S-rank. I think Duelyst has enough diversity to last.

[baharoth]

In every game you will ever play there will be certain things that are better than others, and when its about competition, people will use these things because, you know, competition is about winning and when you go to a shootout with a Knife you will most likely get killed on the spot without having a fighting chance.

That’s just how it is and how its always going to be, the only thing to keep track of is the number of guns you can choose from, and in duelyst the numbers are pretty huge since shimzar, every faction has at least 2 viable deck types with myriads of variations that are viable. So no, even in the competitive levels the diversity in duelyst is refreshingly high right now and I really don’t see a reason to complain about a lack of diversity. Sure you can’t just play any kind of crap/meme decks and expect to win with it on highest level of play but thats true for every game/sport/competition that has ever been made.

[Aeruniel]

On the card design side however I do see a very powerful accessible tools for removal and denial/dispelling of minions.
This does create a phase of both sides nuking the other’s minions and really big gamechanging cards will probably get a very short time on the board, or maybe after all removal is already expended.

I do feel it’s a pity sometimes of the more fun, quirky cards, but luckily there’s gauntlet where every player draws random cards (I assume, right?) from all existing cards and the chance of people having stockpiles of removal should be lower even though it’s obviously again the strongest pick while drafting.

[thestrongestfairy]

I love your icon xD

[enlightenedowl]

Having a metagame, some cards/decks/archetypes being more powerful/more viable than others and gimmicky/out of meta strategies no longer working upon reaching a certain level on the ladder is part of ANY AND EVERY card game. Yes, Duelyst has these things. Again, so does EVERY SINGLE COMPETITIVE CARD GAME EVER. It’s just part of it. No matter what changes are made, the game will never be truly balanced. Sometimes it’s in a state of imbalance more so than other times, sure. But it can never and will never be truly balanced.

[pizzahutofficial]

deck diversity gets minimalized with cards like skorn and night watcher, looks like the devs continue their quest to kill off multiple decks

[thefirstgokun]

Skorn is a tech card which does the same thing as Tempest or Ghost Lightning. They aren’t “killing them off”, they’re giving reasonable tech options.

[godoftheforce]

Given any fixed set of game conditions and rational humans, a game meta will always arise. That’s a fact.

[rebound]

Even if the diversity at higher ranks will be limited to mostly “tier 1 decks”, the nature of the game makes games pretty diverse. Adding a board really adds to the experience. Therefore, I do no think the diversity issue is that big a deal. Plus, even if there is a metagame players have accepted, that does not mean this is the only way to play the game. Even better: a metagame changes over time, mainly because rogue builders come up with some crazy new deck. Just try to be one of the builders and do your own thing. Players perform worse against unknown decks, especially if these are geared to punish the cards commonly played in the environment.

[pizzahutofficial]

not that i miss swarm abyssian, but when was the last time you saw it?

[oshigawa]

You should checkout Standard in Hearthstone to see what is the meaning of “lacking diversity”.

[thefirstgokun]

Yesterday. I played a couple games of it for fun and went half and half for wins. Skorn never made an appearance. I mean, I’m only Rank 2, but its not that bad for a grind.

[thorrk]

Well I think the diversity in high level would increase if only we had a ****CASUAL MODE!

The thing is, people can’t do proper testing unless they have a consistent way to test with friends, which is far from being the case for the majority of the player base, even in s-rank/diamond. So if people can’t test they just play what has proven to be the strongest deck in the meta, no testing>no innovation>no diversity. If only people had a way to do serious testing they would try to explore other possibilities.

The other factor is that people are so busy grinding the ladder every single season that they don’t have time to do proper testing. I personally think that a ladder reset every month is WAY too much , people who don’t have much time to play the game but have the level to reach S-rank can basically only afford to ladder all the time. They don’t have the time to do testing: so no testing>no innovation>no diversity.

Also monthly reset cause other problems like the ladder being completely messed up and almost unplayable for beginners at the start of every season. Beside people would be more inclined to climb the ladder if they knew that they are going to keep their ranking longer.

What I suggest is to increase the duration of the season by one month, people would still be able to reach S-rank without having to ladder as often so they can enjoy and test on the Casual mode that should have been implemented a LONG TIME AGO. So people will have more possibilities and time for testing: more testing>more innovations>more diversity.

[oshigawa]

No need for extending season really, casual mode would be fine, i don’t know what’s the big deal with implementing it. Everyone’s afraid of experimentation so they don’t lose the rank. It’s great that you don’t fall behind on rank 10/5 etc., but still, that ladder anxiety remains.

[raqyee]

But experimenting won’t even work in casual because it will most likely consist of people either:

• playing fun decks
• experimenting with their own weird decks
• playing factions they usually wouldn’t play in ranked so they can finish quests
• people with ladder anxiety

Playing against 3 out of 4 of these people won’t provide proper results when one is testing out their decks. And I doubt there will be enough people with ladder anxiety who play proper high tier decks in casual one can play against to get meaningful results.

[sticks]

Casual Mode would be alright, but when it was available most matches would end in a concede cause there was no consequence.
If you want to play or test out meme-y decks, your best bet would be strim’s with friends.

[oshigawa]

Yes, but fun is experimenting, out of experimenting comes new archetypes

[cassador]

Your point was that casual mode would be cool for people to test experiemental decks, because they are afraid of losing ranks if they test them on ladder. Raqyees point was that they would still lose on the ladder after experimenting in casual mode, since the testing in casual mode would tell nothing about the quality of the deck.