The ability to counterplay is important. Mana Shield getting mana drain immunity finally allows some basic counterplay. As something that basically prevents you from acting, mana drain should have had counterplay options ever since it became relatively easy to keep a team drained while killing them if you are ahead in mana at any point.
I personally find the decision for mana shield being the trait that was singled out to be the thing that does this kind of odd, as really I don’t think this belongs on most of the troops that have it as mana drain immunity, since most of them are generators or board mod themselves (eg., Lady A., Valk, Nyx who is also a mana drainer, Asha, Elspeth, not to mention The Dragon Soul since that has already been confirmed to be losing Mana Shield). Unless they change this on many of the troops that have mana shield, which means they also lose their Mab damage immunity… er I mean “mana burn protection”. Personally, I use mana drain pretty much never and it wont affect my style much, but I hope we can find a medium for mana drain protection between “it can prevent every cast on one side until everyone is dead if you get a lead” and “it can’t drain things that can fill entire teams”.
Unless you’re keeping data, “I saw a rare thing happen” isn’t an indicator of any kind of pattern. “I never see a rare thing” is also not an indicator. Several rounds of Nobend and Fizzbang feeding each other qualifies as “something that should be rare”.
That said, I think when Nobend and Fizzbang are on the same team the high end of their potential is way too high. Separate they are “just frustrating”. Together they are “very likely to do something stupid”. I can’t think of a way to nerf one or the other that doesn’t make them useless on their own.
I feel like this is really common in GoW. We have troops that on most teams are tolerable if not hard. But there’s one team where we agree the win rate, or at least the win condition, is out of bounds. Nerfing any one troop on that team kills many teams we like.
I wish we had some kind of structure for limiting teams, then it might be possible to control situations like this more easily. There’s only so many ways to make “fun, powerful troops”, so it’s inevitable we’re going to have more of these “too strong combos”.
Fizzbang was a really bad idea. I can’t understand how she got approved in her original form. But I do remember how everyone swore the nerf would make her useless.
This is why I root for “mythics that have no use”.
It’s not the loss that hinders my fun.
I lose a lot because I love making wierd teams with bad troops knowing I will have a hard time.
What irritates me is losing to pure luck. Like losing 2 troops on the same turn after a Death’s death mark (1% chance), having the Nobends evade 3 times in a row, getting devoured by a Lampron twice on blue day, my Orion just not piercing armor, etc…
This game has enough luck -based abilities and mechanics to drive us all mad.
So, my point is, people asking for nerfs or change don’t always want 100% win rate. Maybe we just want to reduce frustration.
I always felt it was a mistake for them to add mana drain without a counter. The whole point of strategy is to bring the right team for any particular opponent problem.
Also, I have no problem with them adding it to mana shield because it works thematically to me. (Granted, they will need to re-evaluate having mana shield on some mana generators.)
Mana Drain immunity will be on a small % of troops so I don’t see how it could be that much cumbersome. Of course, it depends of which troops will be immuned to MD…
And if Mana Immunity is too strong on some troops, you can still Stun them.
I think having Mana Drain immunity will increase difficulty better than decrease it (i.e. no more easy win with Famine for example).
I could care less about win rate. I am fine losing. In fact back in my early Game and mid Game days I had some losses that were AWESOME!! Really tight battles that came down to who got the next cast or skull. And those felt right. They were GOOD losses. But when Goblins just cycle like in my example above, doing things that they don’t do when I use them then that feels wrong. Those are BAD losses.
I want less BAD losses and more GOOD losses… if I have to have more losses at all that is…
I think that very few people have win rate at 95%+. In our guild, which is just nice casual people who are not really paying attention, win rate varies from 50% to 97% based on what I can see in the profile. We have very active players with about 65-70% win rate who actually get more trophies than those who have 95% win rate. If your guild is too advanced and have very high percentage, it is possible to go to global chat and see profiles of people there to gather some statistics. Only developers might know overall distribution and how it correlates with activity.
So, IMO, from general perspective, your assumptions are not entirely accurate.
But winning because of pure luck is okay? We are crushing the CPU most of the time, so why can’t CPU have some luck in a few matches?
65-70% win rate when it comes to invasion…? And some of these players is possibly over level 1000? Are you sure that their tactic is not based around Elspeth or other fast troops, mostly based on lucky starting board, or if not they quit the matches fairly early?
I think there should be counters to everything but i think in response to the nerf of mana drain troops that use mana drain should be buffed or reworked. I also agree with op that 90%+ win rate is too high.
Well, again it comes down to “how” the luck presents itself. I have fought many battles against Psion/Rag/Famine/Spirit Fox where the deck just out performs me. They get some drops to go there way, or a favorable board that I can’t capitalise on, and I lose a good match. I never utter a peep about those losses.
It’s incidents of what feels like “unfair” luck, not because of a few drops or starting board, but because of things that simply don’t occur when I use the same troops. Like the aforementioned Goblin fiasco.
Now, I am an intelligent enough person to comprehend that all of this is RNG, so there is always a 50% chance that Fizzy can explode, and therefore as imPROBABLE as the situation is, it is far from imPOSSIBLE.
But even with that acknowledgment and understanding, it doesn’t change the feeling that that was a BAD loss. And at the end of the day, this is a game whose purposes is to give me pleasure. And I do not ENJOY those kinds of losses. So, therefore, I and others like me would prefer less streaky “luck” mechanics and more counterable “strategy” mechanics.
For clarity, I get your point, and have no real issue with, I’m just trying to explain where I am coming from. The fact that those losses don’t bother you is awesome, you are a better person than I. Where you feel good for the AI getting a victory, I see a dumb computer lucking into a random sequence of code that didn’t give me an opportunity to respond and wipe the board with him.
But I feel that you forget that you have the exact same luck from time to time like the CPU has, and that is more often. A great example is starting out with a lovely starting board when you play Mercy, a big advantage that the CPU nearly never get the chance of have. Maw/IK/Sheggra/Mercy can sometimes extinct CPU without they even get a single chance, now that looks quite ugly luck and unfortunate for the CPU. This is just one example, there is many more. I agree with you when it comes to Goblins that CPU at least against me have more luck with this team than when I am them, but I am fine with that, since most of the time I am crushing the Goblins, and I am sure you do the same. And yes, I am fully aware how an ugly lose taste like, I am also not taking losses easily. But I also recognize pretty often that Ive crushed the CPU 20 times a row, before they get the ugly win over me.
I must admit that I think that much of the frustration some players have from losses comes from the Guild Wars.
I dont believe that losing a few PvP matches during a week makes people run on the wall…
No, this has nothing to do with being a better person, this is about our perceptions of how we are experiencing a game, its totally fine if its differently.
I had to go back and reread your OP, just to remember what your stance was. lol
Because we are agreeing on alot of major details, but disagree on the minutia. Let me explain:
YES! You are correct this is advantageous to the player, but the player is the target audience for the entertainment that is the game, Gems of War. The devs WANT the audience to be happy, that way we spend on their product to continue getting enjoyment from the game. So, players sculpt decks to take advantage of the advantage that is going first. This brings satisfaction to the player, happiness to the world, and hopefully to the devs.
When the AI gets an insane lucky win, regardless of the fact that perhaps they are DUE a victory based on RNG and probability, if it is a BAD loss to the player, then all that does is create DISSATISFACTION in the player, UNHAPPINESS in the world, and makes me turn off the game and NOT play for a while until I am ready to go back. When players are not playing they are certainly not PAYING!
And that’s why I see those insane luck wins as negative in the grand scheme for GoW.
To address the original OP, I agree, sometimes people call for nerfs far too quickly, unless something is garishly over powered then let it lie and figure out how to deal with it, however as for counter mechanics, those are necessary as a means by which to achieve the above. You can’t deal with a card unless there is a counter to apply. So on that point, we do disagree.
Again, that was meant with sincerity and not a jab, brother!
I’m just chatting it up with you.
What I meant was you were better than me because you didn’t let those losses upset you the way they upset me. Which results in me having to stop playing for a time to calm down.
I see your points too, Goodwill. And agree with some.
Human wins often, some fair wins and a few luck based wins.
CPU wins rarely, but most of the time when they do win it looks only like luck based wins.
I rather take these ugly losses for CPU, than not, because at least CPU is able to win maybe 2 out of 20 matches against me instead of only 1 out of 20 matches, then. Also I feel like I have come in peace how the CPU works, and it has to work this way to at least maintain a 10% win rate in this game.
I guess I come from a school of thought that an end game player with all cards traited and maxed should with intelligent play be able to win every battle. To me that is mastery, and I want to be a master of GoW, so I hate having that “questioned” by a lucky AI. It may be petty and even pedantic, but its where my head and heart lie when it comes to videogames.
I think what Eika is trying to say about the nerfs boils down to how repetitive things are:
Winning, with little or no interaction with the board, or simply the same interaction over and over is tedious. @Kurokazna already stated this and while not everyone feels the same with equal intensity, as she simply got bored and stopped playing, we can use some imagination and assume that battles against 4 peasants would kill our fun. While the example of 4 Peasants is extreme and tendencious i’m confident that at least 65% of the troops are nearly as weak as Peasants when compared with the other 35%… It’s ok that some troops should be weaker, in accord with their own rarities, but we know that it’s not about rarity only.
Losing, in a similar fashion, with little or no interaction with the board, or simply the same interaction over and over is not only tedious, but also infuriating to say the least. Even if you don’t lose constantly to the same team you will pretty much roll your eyes everytime you see the same composition doing the same thing. This is most than likely the experience of @Rickygervais, a seasoned player that have been around from the beginning(?) or pretty much close. Players from various levels will struggle sometimes, mostly because they miss some key cards and just as well they didn’t had the same time to comtemplate almost every single troop in the game and the same can be said from many of us veterans. Which brings us to the next point below.
Being a veteran, or someone taking the first step towards the “End Game Club” surely requires some optmization of our gameplay. We are, sort of, pressured to do better and faster in order to not fall behind. That’s why many of us will prefer to use optimized teams. This is similar to the first point i made, winning too much in the same way is tedious, but still necessary until we are far ahead in resources before we can enjoy taking things easy again. Maybe this is a thing that weighs more for the completionist kind of players… But i believe almost everyone feels like this to some extent when they are repeating the same strategies to have better results, which are need to make a better progress be it on PVP or Explore…
So, the process of nerfing troops and/or effects to break the monotony/repetition helps to address some of our issues, but only as a short-term solution…
I could probably have said “right off the bat”, but maybe a longer explanation would make people consider their experiences and have a better understanding.
Nope, mostly these people play some silly setups they like. I tried to convince them to go for something better and faster but they either don’t have the cards or can’t be arsed. Not everyone is so adamant in optimizing. And not everyone is paying attention. And people are just having fun and not thinking about trophies or how much gold they make per hour. You’ve been in some hardcore environment for too long.
The only exception is Guild wars when people start takings things more or less seriously and indeed try to put up some decent fights. Sometimes it actually works. We have a couple of players at mid-end game around level 700 who have horrendous PvP win rate but are doing in the upper 40Ks in guild wars. That mean that they actually can do very well if they make an effort.
I’m also sure that the further down the ladder you go, the worse it gets.
Are people really upset at losing a lot? Some are getting quite mad at times, and those that actually are either quit or try to improve, depending on personality, I guess.
There is indeed a few players that don’t mind losing at all and want the challenge to create budget teams to see if they can beat the meta etc, for a challenge and/or for the fun. Or people that basically is sticking with the same team no matter what, or people that is sticking with their favourite troops not based on spell only but also the look of the card etc etc…
on their product to continue getting enjoyment from the game. So, players sculpt decks to take advantage of the advantage that is going first. This brings satisfaction to the player, happiness to the world, and hopefully 
