I think this gameplay of using certain troops to endlessly chain turns and never giving opponent chance to counterplay is broken. Example:
Todd Greenwood (green/brown mana)
Ability: Deal Magic+4 damage to an Enemy. Then create 3 Green Gems, boosted by Wargare allies (x3).
What happens with team full of Wargare allies is that Todd creates 15 green gems. This usually results in multiple hits of green gems and 4+ gems in row hits, which gives another turn. Because Todd uses green mana, he has mana bar filled from these green gem matches. Then he uses his ability to create another 15 green gems that, coupled with existing green gems of board, usually gives another 4+ match for another round with Todd’s mana filled. Todd’s ability deals damage so he can single-handedly eliminate all enemies by consecutive ability casts.
I don’t think this is the intended gameplay for these sort of troops. Generator-type troops are meant to help their team fill their mana bars. Limiting number of consecutive turns would break the game, so instead how about limiting the number of ability uses single troop can cast before opposing side is given chance to act? This would better preserve relative strength of abilities.
I’m not sure I understand this. Wouldn’t it be equally game breaking? If you gain extra turns by casting spells, and then we’re limited in how often the spells can be cast, isn’t that equivalent to having a limit on extra turns?
And depending on what the limit is, maybe you could just get around it by having two Todds or two Queen Beetrixs on your team? So you cast the limit on one, and then switch to the other.
Its 100% the way they were designed to work. There are mechanics that break those teams and make them easy to beat. Limiting turns would be something that would apply to even the troops(Goblins) that aren’t Generators that are designed to loop.
Way I envisioned it would be that Todd would be able to cast his ability once or twice and if there’s still a turn left, other members would be able to cast their abilities, but not Todd. Currently it’s so that Todd can chain 10 turns and kill every enemy by himself, never giving the opposition chance to act. That makes Todd’s ability possibly the most powerful ability in the game even though Todd is only 4 star troop. Constrast this to something like Zuul’Goth boss rarity with 32 mana ability that unconditionally kills enemy troop. It sounds powerful, but has nothing on Todd, who can kill whole enemy team by getting turn with full (12) mana.
These type of troops are clearly outliers in power scale.
I agree the endlessly generating troops are super powerful, but freeze teams do well against them. The exception is Queen Beatrix, (who I hate) because she cleanses all allies when matching 4. But I still have a fair amount of success against her with a freezing team, especially one with direct damage. Freezing teams are also good against goblin teams that I have also long hated for the endless extra turn. But to me the most overpowerful card is Queen Beatrix.
Yes, I think gaining extra turns is a very powerful strategy, if not the most powerful strategy. But I think it is baked into the game design, not unintentional.
I personally haven’t found the distinction between rare to mythic cards that useful. I don’t expect a mythic troop to necessarily beat a lower rarity troop. Some troops are niche and only powerful in very limited circumstances, whereas mana generators are useful for most teams.
As DAeron mentioned, there are some countermeasures available such as freezing, silence, mana drain, web (where the number of extra gems is boosted by magic) etc. You can also use troops that entangle, reduce attack, reduce magic etc. so that even if the opponent is spamming attacks, they’re not actually doing much damage.
But definitely it can feel like a race to get your mana generation loop going, and whichever team gets there first is more likely to win. It can be frustrating when you watch as your whole team is killed and you get no turn in between… but then also thrilling to inflict the same treatment to an opponent.
As a feature request, I think it could be hard to find a balance, especially as looping mana generation teams are so popular. If the number of spell casts or extra turns was restricted, some troops will become less valuable. There could be backlash from players who feel they have spent resources on troops that are now worth less.
There are many troops that can 1 turn loop kill an entire team, its not exclusive to Todd.
You can also use many strategies to win against looping teams. They are not all powerful and they will not be doing away as they are adding more troops like Todd. You have to learn strategies to beat these teams or avoid fighting them
There did used to be a combo-breaker mechanic many years ago. Which would progressively reduce the chance of getting an extra turn from spell casts.
I believed it had been turned off but not sure.
Changing those mechanics only would lead to people quitting the game. That’s for sure. With all the flaws this game has, why would someone actively target one of it’s benefits?
On the contrary, I believe this is very much “intended gameplay for those sorts of troops”. I believe this is intentional, as to allow players with fewer resources to blow through Journey in ways it wasn’t possible to do with the first two Pathfinders.
Because if this wasn’t an ongoing, intentional thing, we’d see the newer Pathfinders with different spells. It could have been an “accident” the first time when that spell was handed to Chalcedony, but compounding it with Seekra Darkwood and Todd Greenwood and next week’s release of Huntmaster Arboreus – the latter with a spell that upgrades when Shiny – is clearly an active plan of some sort.
It is obnoxious, it can be difficult to work against, and it can lead to a very swift “You Lose” if you run into such an opponent and they get going, much like how that happens occasionally in high-bracket Guild Wars against teams with multiple Empowered Converters running roughshod over you if the board simply falls the wrong way at the start.
But I do believe the developers know what they’re doing here. They simply don’t care about how it has impacted the game and the metas and all the rest.
Oh, yes, that makes sense! Sadly I avoid using stun troops because the sound effect for stun drives me crazy. It’s very jarring to me…definitely a weakness on my part.
I think it’s still around. It starts to kick in after 5 consecutive extra turns, with a 20% chance to intentionally place created gems in a way that prevent another extra turn. The chance goes up by 20% with each further extra turn you get without handing over control. It obviously doesn’t work for troops that come with a built-in extra turn (goblins) or troops that spam so many gems that the game can’t place them in a way that wouldn’t grant an extra turn (pathfinders).
That’s actually an interesting idea. Any individual spell you cast gets disabled until you hand over control. That allows you to still top up mana on your troops and remove dangerous board situations, you just can’t go on forever.
I tried some sleuthing and it seems to be off for ranked PvP, which makes sense. I’m not sure what game mode the OP is talking about but I would hazard a guess its ranked PvP
I’ll say the least fun I have in the game is when I’m in ranked PvP, I take my initial turn, then spend the next 2-3 minutes watching the enemy team combo and slowly whittle down my team.
I did an experiment. Vulpacea explore difficulty 5.
Team: Todd (first place) and 4 Wargare allies. I had traited Harper in team which gives darkstorm at the beginning on battle. This leads to worse outcomes. I only noticed it afterwards.
Simple plan:
Get Todd to full mana (12).
Cast Todd’s ability.
Repeat step 2 until something stops it.
Streaks begin from first casting of Todd’s ability.
Here are the results:
Green gems at start Consecutive casts Ended because
#1 10 10 win
#2 9 9 win
#3 12 12 win
#4 9 11 win
#5 9 11 win
#6 8 3 lost turn
#7 20 6 win
#8 8 1 lost turn
#9 12 13 win
#10 8 1 mana not full
#11 18 9 lost turn
#12 13 4 win
#13 11 3 lost turn
#14 19 7 lost turn
#15 10 12 win
#16 10 9 win
#17 6 1 mana not full
#18 12 9 win
#19 10 6 lost turn
#20 13 4 win
#21 7 1 lost turn
#22 15 10 win
#23 11 12 win
#24 8 8 win
#25 11 4 lost turn
#26 12 1 lost turn
#27 14 7 win
#28 8 11 win
#29 8 3 lost turn
#30 15 8 win
Average 11,2 6,87 60% winrate
Shoddy formatting, but we can conclude from this experiment that Todd getting turn at full mana results in their side getting the win with 60 % probability straight away. There’s also 95,3 % chance to continue turn after Todd has cast his ability and Todd gets to cast his ability around 7 times consecutively.
Note that this experiment is naïve on purpose. Results could be improved with proper team composition that gives possibly green storm, bonus mana from green gems, match 4 effects, effects on ally spellcast and so on. And of course deviating from plan when there’s free 4+ matches to play between casts but I didn’t play those.
Edit:
I changed team to Todd, Hero (Spiritwalker talent level 20), Foxfire King, Persistence. I just had a game with 39 consecutive turns with leafstorm on Vulpacea explore 12… this is so completely broken.
IIRC, Chalcedony was the first to establish this pattern (Yellow/Brown, creates Brown Gems based on Construct allies, including self).
I’ll agree that endlessly looping turns is NOT good game design, because (by definition) there is no means to counter/stop it. There’s prevention, and … well, yeah, that’s all you can do. Otherwise, once the enemy team decides it’s not going to BE your turn; they’re just going to keep having THEIR turn over and over until you give up (or lose outright).
Note that infinite looping teams have existed prior to the debut of Hellcrag, but were mostly limited to certain modes (King Jarl Firemantle being all six colors, Copycat or Necrocorn looping into itself, etc).
There’s also a question of: Are troops such as Chalcedony and Todd Greenwood “stronger” or “weaker” at looping compared to other looping teams? On one hand, it’s SUPER easy to set them up because their loop condition is based solely on the team composition. On the other, provided you can Freeze the looped color (or eliminate at least one troop) then this shuts off the looping condition rather quickly.
I used to watch the CPU roll over me in Ranked PvP. But not anymore as I just cut the match short by quitting the match. I could not had given you a better advice.
The real torture, “as usual”, is when it happens in the Guild Wars. Hundreds of these threads is created for the very same reason: A player loses a Guild Wars battle.
Use the team I recommended. I assure you won’t lose any battle where opponent doesn’t freeze your green troop. Get Todd to 12 mana and you win the match because the opponent won’t get a turn. Opponent won’t get a turn because with green storm odds of getting 4+ match is very close to 100 %. I did that test with wrong storm and still got 95,3 % chance for back-to-back extra turns regardless of starting green gems on board.
Some people saying this is fine and working as intended. But isn’t that the definition of imbalance that you must run direct counter to tactic or you lose to it? They had to overload the Elementalist class with “stun, freeze, burn, entangle random enemy with 4+ match”. That’s a good counter. But at the same time this power creep is quite hilarious when majority of traits are like “gain 1 life with 4+ match” and most of the abilities are in the form of deal a bit of damage and pass the turn.
Developers are now running events where you must use troops of certain color or certain kingdom. I think it’s good to have variety in decks.
because she cleanses all allies when matching 4. But I still have a fair amount of success against her with a freezing team, especially one with direct damage. Freezing teams are also good against goblin teams that I have also long hated for the endless extra turn. But to me the most overpowerful card is Queen Beatrix.
