Famine badly needs a nerf

Gameplay Chat (PC/Mobile)
121

The problem with your request is that any single example would be easily dismissed as some random event that is likely to happen to someone when enough players play enough games and every single turn is subject to a random event as gems refresh.

So the problem becomes, “how much video, and how much analysis, would constitute a sufficiently large sample to be convincing?” An hour? Certainly not. 20, 50, 100 hours? Maybe, but who has the time to analyze all the drops and cascades, and who is posting the companion PC/Mobile video for us to analyze and compare? I see weird strings of same-coloured mana dropping in vertically all the time, but I can also go for hours with it not happening. I hear the same experiential impressions and anecdotes, and I have formed a mild impression that there is something to it based on the testimony of these multiple witnesses. I think what would be helpful is for PC/Mobile players to post counter-examples that show that you get exactly the same kind of experiences on your platform that we do on ours. If enough of those appear, then maybe the console players can be convinced that we are not subject to anything that you don’t also deal with on a daily basis.

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122

The bottom line Stan, is you don’t make claims if you can’t back them up. Basic scientific process.

Show proof or …that’s it. Show proof. It is not up to anybody to prove a negative or establish testing parameters for other peoples’ claims.

edit: But until anybody shows me a video that a reasonable person could look at and say “yeah there might be something here” I don’t want to go in circles any more about this.

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I replied to that video that it is nothing I’ve not seen on a continual basis on PC. What more can I tell you. I saw the video, it established that there is not even casual credibility to the claim in my eyes.

edit: You’ve expanded the claim with “That video shows up what is we have to put up with pretty much every few games”. Ok. Show me. My eyes are open and so is my mind. Somebody please show me.

edit2: This is a “nerf Famine” thread originally. I feel there are perhaps other existing threads to take the “magic cascades” discussion to. Somebody please make a new thread and post a video, until such time, my opinion on this subject has been given.

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This a very good analysis and example of the challenges developers/designers have to face…
11/10 = Would give you a like again if possible.

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125

But you can’t just “show proof” of this kind of thing. Random is random. If things are truly random, then anything can happen. I think that the people that are claiming that this happens ALL THE TIME, or every single game, or whatever, are exaggerating, but that doesn’t mean there isn’t some truth in what they are saying. If the difference exists, I think it would be impossible for any player to prove it.

The console devs used their powers to run some tests a while back to show that the console AI was not more lucky than the player. While some people would doubtless accuse them of lying or doing the test wrong, if they were to do a similar test with a high “n” on both platforms, maybe they could either confirm or refute the hypothesis that the console gem-refresh is streakier (or whatever) than the pc/mobile version.

Edit: just saw your comment about taking this discussion elsewhere. Personally, I don’t think there is anything new to talk about, so we can drop it and get back to nerfing Famine.

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126

As a PC/Mobile player, I sometimes see amazing cascades too. Both for me and for the AI. However, it is not often that I lose due to that, and that might be due to the guarantee of Skullbaiting working.

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127

Takes me back to the old days of MtG and how “fun” it was to play against a stasis deck.

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128

Hey, you should pay more attention to Tacet’s stream. In the past week I’ve seen these cascades on his stream, videoed out to hundreds of people.

However, neither of the cascades I saw this week ended his game like the examples given above. They were just a thing where he was careful not to give a long cascade match to the opponent, makes a move, the opponent only has a couple 3 matches to choose from. It takes one and then launches into a 5-10 cascade that fills all the troops and gets the opponent at least 2 skull matches.

The only reason Tacet survived is his maxed out troops.

But I can verify that if I WERE recording every game I’d have a catalog to show you where the opponent takes control for 5 minutes plus and destroys half my team from a series of lucky cascades. It’s just that what you’re asking for is unreasonable because people complaining often don’t have capabilities to record constantly and even those that might have it aren’t going to spend the extra hours editing it just to prove you wrong!

So the flip for me is that I’ve personally gotten lucky cascades that go on for minutes and make me feel guilty for getting super lucky. I’ve had it happen in Guild Wars where I win in like 2 turns thanks to lucky drops and super-cascades that fill my team and give me a bunch of skulls to pick from. The problem is I hate it just as much when it happens to me and I’ve complained about it here multiple times over the years.

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129

Get a phone and record it. Stop making excuses. I’m not going to scour Tacet’s videos to search for evidence of YOUR CLAIM. My opinion at this time is that there is no reason for the video not to exist, other than the fact that console players don’t actually want it to be seen or that it cannot be captured because it doesn’t exist. You think video “just happens” on PC? No it’s work just like anything.

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130

I really appreciated this comment :smiley: And I’m going to ramble too in my reply !!

One example of what you’re saying (not suggesting I’m the only one to notice this) is the Freeze Status Effect. I think we all agree Extra Turn is a mechanism that cannot be without counter. Yet the current implementation of this counter (Freeze) is just painful from that player-experience perspective.

If we collectively ranked experiences in this game from least-to-most frustrating, the hell and helplessness of sitting there with a rich board and a frozen team surely must rank near the top. Games need to work to keep players within a window of emotional dis/comfort but Freeze explodes the window into a trillion pieces and sends the pieces to the sun.

Another thing that comes into this discussion is DM. The psychology of DM. I used to run a very poor Defense team that had over 70% win-rate at the highest ranking guild/players in the game. It had Penitent up front with Sylvanimora elsewhere.

It won because once the first inevitable 4-Match occurred the game was pretty much over unless before going into the fight the player had investigated my team and adjusted accordingly. Because now you either take a useless Skull match because you’re Entangled or let Penitent hit you and apply DM. Thinking about that ranking-of-emotional-experiences I was talking about above, and we can see that psychologically that is one of the worst experiences to be in as a player and I exploited the bleep out of it.

Loved your comment and would love to ramble any time with you, friend :slight_smile:

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Hope you made a video about this defense team, else i can’t believe that.
Also Penitent doesn’t apply DM on skullhits, so…
Also also i refuse to believe 70% of highest ranked players still can’t deal with Death Touch to a degree that they automatically lose to it.

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I am using this example to talk about psychology and emotion within the game. Sorry I mis-spoke about Penitent, the DM is on his 8-Mana spell and he has Double Skull vs. DM. Whoopsie I guess a team I haven’t used for 5 months isn’t top of mind exactly. 5 months old yes because eventually people got wise. Eventually. The thrust of all my statements are true, but of course you tend to doubt 100% of what I say regardless.

If you would like to discuss the point of my comment great, but I’m not going to argue micro-details because the greater discussion could actually be worthwhile. Focusing on meaningless details that are secondary to the point are pretty OT I think.

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Rich coming from the questioning-everything-and-demanding-videos-or-it-didn’t-happen guy.
But sure if your claim is that Penitent in a defense grants 70% winrate against the highest ranked players of this game, then i do 100% doubt that indeed.
While the greater discussion may be worthwhile i don’t think it is progressed in any way by made-up stories, even if you call it meaningless details.

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135

Let’s get ready to ramble !!

Ok, i like your story because it allows the introduction of the ideas of “Proactivity” Vs “Reactivity”
Most players hate when they can’t react. So they will complain about certain Troop or mechanics.

The usual smarty reply is to be proactive.
“oh, i don’t fear Famine thanks to my Spirit Fox!” and such.
Basically: you don’t like something? Then don’t let it happen. Proactivity.
We can all stop everything by just preventing the opponent from playing. Just make one of the 2 easy-done Loops, and play forever. Really. I can beat 4 Famine with just an Alchemist and a Hellcat.

The problem is, sometimes, the frustrating culprit will happen anyways. It takes 1 lucky match to fill a mana-producer. And then the thing you are trying to prevent will happen.

That is why it is important, as a “fun” mechanic, to have the opportunity to react. Or to know that, with the right Troop, you could have reacted.

So, back to your story.
First Troop entangled. First opponent Death Marks (let’s say it’s a Wraith, or Chtxxyzyzxyys).
On the proactive side, you could have a first Troop that is immune to DM or entangled.
But, you also have many Reacting option.

  • Do a gem match that will displace the skulls.
  • Cleanse the entanglement or upcoming DM.
  • Entangle the opponent!
  • Use an exploder to just remove that Skull match.
  • Use a mana creator of a Skull remover.
    Possibilities are many, you could even, yes, use Elspleth to remove the entangled troop AND modify the board.

The frustration form a game mechanic is lesser if you know that you could react to it.

So, Famine and Devour uh. These 2… you cannot react to. If Famine cast, you are out of mana (and one troop less, probably). You can’t just react because all, i mean all your mana has been removed.
Same for Devour. You Devour my troop… it’s done. I can’t react to that, the troop however big it was, is gone, and you have those stats now.
Mab-Looping… is different. The freezing your can react to with cleanse. I think the frustration comes from the looping. With Valk on the team, the A.I can play 10+ turns, not only freezing you, but getting a few mab-burns in, and buffing the others, and by the time you play again, you already lost 2 troops.

Anyways, all this Famine talk is making me hungry.

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136

I think famine need a buff i would like him at 12 mana cost

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137

Why have him at 12 mana when you can buff him in the form of Empowered?!

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138

Yup i like it

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139

Yeah, they were quite good at preventing this sort of thing for a long time, but recently they made a lot of mistakes. Research and Development not being able to prevent some really broken stuff from happening (PM if you want to laugh/cringe to the details of their most recent failures) and things got so ugly they had to announce the recruitment of a whole new RD team to restore the public’s faith.

Personally i consider MtG a mathematical work of art for how simple it is (in essence, but also deeply complex and challenging depending of your game/deckbuilding style) while evolving and reinventing itself during years to come. Two colors still lacks balance, but at least some steps were taken in the right direction in the last five years…

GoW have the same potential and hopefully it will thrive once it’s ported to Unity removing the limitations of the old plataform. (And hopefully no more visual glitches/corrupted pixels on my phone on every update…)

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Cascades happen, it’s part of RnG. Long multi-cascades should happen far less, but they are not unexpected, they are well within the bounds of what should occur given enough samples. I’ve seen a bunch of Tacets videos plus my own experience/play on mobile, and I’ve reviewed a number of the videos (including the extended ones from @Stan) on console. Nothing I have seen shows a problem or anything abnormal on either system. The cascades and skydrops seem reasonable, and don’t seem to favour either the player or the AI. It did appear that the console gem creation algorithm is a little more streaky than mobile, still within expected bounds, but noticeable even from a quick examination of a couple hours of video. A tongue-in-cheek description would be console is random, but mobile is “more” random, and both seem fine.

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The MTG talk made me think.
At some point, they had to create formats and leagues.

What if GoM created 2 playing field. As a player, you pick you PvP format:
Classic (same as current)

or

Restricted (no duplicate Troop per team).

This way, players that “invested” in getting multiple Mythic can play classic, and players tired of double Famine - Kerb - Krys - Krak - #abusive card of the month can switch to restricted.

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