New Wildfolk Racial Trait: Determination

Feature Requests and Game feedback
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Problem: The Wildfolk are in a sorry state. Next month’s mythic, The Wild Queen, has absolutely nothing by way of synergy with existing Wildfolk. Why on earth would there be when the Wildfolk themselves have no unifying and defining racial trait like, say, the Dwarves or Elves? How does The Wild Queen’s spell and third trait carve out a design space that is tailored towards unique gameplay?

Observation 1: The Wildfolk currently lean towards Fast, Swift, Empowered, and Agile traits, but these are not unique to their troop type. Nevertheless, they serve to convey a sense of speed and unrelenting beatdown.

Observation 2: King Silenus’ third trait, Wild Mana, is at odds with the current design of Wildfolk having Fast, Swift, and Empowered—it makes no logical sense to have this as his trait when 5 of the remaining 11 Wildfolk start with at least 50% mana. That’s almost half the existing cast made redundant.

Hypothesis: Removing all Fast, Swift, Empowered, and Agile traits from the Wildfolk and giving all existing (and future) Wildfolk a new racial trait will preserve the existing design of speed and unrelenting beatdown in addition to further distinguishing the troop type’s design in the same way that the Elves’ Ancestry and Dwarves’ Fortitude have, while carving out a new style of gameplay that does not currently exist.

Solution: A new racial trait called Determination, to be given to all Wildfolk (except for Bard).

Determination: Immune to Stun, Burning, Frozen, Entangle, and Devour.

The rationale behind this is simple: The Wild Queen’s design serves to maximise skull damage. Assuming that we take this as the apex of the Wildfolk’s intended design, making all troops with this type immune to the above status effects will help emphasise skull damage, while also giving King Silenus a reason to be played as Wild Mana will no longer clash with these.

Naturally, The Wild Queen’s first trait, Wildfolk Bond, should be replaced with this new racial trait. King Silenus’ Impervious trait should also be replaced with this as well.

Frequently Asked Questions
Q: The devs can’t/won’t/are incapable of doing this due to [schedule/manpower/technical] reasons.
A: I’ve noticed a recurring habit among a handful of forum regulars to stonewall discussion about new ideas that they personally dislike by providing facile reasons. This sort of response is made for r/iamverysmart—please do not reply as such and think that you are contributing anything of worth to this thread.

The amount of people who have worked on this game and still play it actively are a known quantity, and you’re not fooling anyone by speaking from a position of false authority.

As a rule, unless you are a developer, staff, manager, or former developer (hi ex-guildies!) of the company that is running this game, or unless you are literally the person who created Unity, do not claim to speak on the devs’ behalf, as you are not in a position to do so.

Q: Won’t this break the Bard class?
A: No, just don’t give it the trait. Hell, replace the Wildfolk troop type from Bard with Human to make it more consistent. Anu knows the Dawnbringer-Bard combination doesn’t need to be stronger than it already is.

Q: But my Ragnagord…
A: It will be better, just not in the way that its current incarnation promotes with mindless cookie cutter team builds. You’ll live. Put King Silenus in your team if you want the old Ragnagord back that badly.

Q: “Determination” sucks and so does your naming sense!
A: Everyone’s a critic. Here’s some other name suggestions:

  • Obdurate
  • Irascible
  • Vehemence
  • Adamant
  • Resilience

Q: Why Stun?
A: The reworking of Elves has shown that Stun is still a very potent way of bypassing status resistances, and this should put paid to that loophole. They’re Wild folk, not Easily dissuaded folk.

Q: Why Devour?
A: Look at the heads of the average Wildfolk, especially the ones from Pan’s Vale. Notice the horns? Me too.

Q: Why Burning? Why Frozen? Why Entangle?
A: The Dwarves have Fortitude, which emphasises tanky resilience towards degenerating status effects. Burning and Frozen immunity embody a different kind of resilience geared towards controlling elemental status effects that are widespread.

Entangle is a no-brainer because you want the troop type that emphasises skull damage to actually be able to attack.

Q: This is OP, it will never be implemented!
A: Fascinating yarn, my brethren. Kindly elaborate on your point without appealing to authority, seniority, tradition, or begging the question.

Q: You open a thread in the official forum for your favourite match-3 game.
A: Identifying the reference that the OP made fills you with determination.

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i totally agree here. always like wilkfolks but currently they are just not so powerful.

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I agree that Wildfolk could do with some more work and synergies to make more teams viable. You could say the same though for many other race types.

A racial defining trait like Elves/Dwarves/Undead have is a nice idea - though the wildfolk feel a disparate bunch without much common flavour, being kinda leftovers when the old Wildfolk type was split apart into Centaurs and Tauros and so on.

I agree that King Silenius’ trait isn’t so well-placed - but I think a better fix could be to change him rather than change a bunch of other troops. M

I dislike the Adamant trait suggestion - don’t like the name much, or feel it has any fantasy concept much to the troop set - but primarily just because slapping on a shuffled set of status immunities doesn’t feel very new or different.

Mulling on a possible Wildfolk family trait idea, my own quick suggestions might be along the lines:

  • all ally Wildfolk gain +X mana at start of battle, where X is the number of ally Wildfolk (mix a few of those in with the Fast and Swift and Silenius and a Wildfolk team could get fully empowered? Sounds fun), or
  • the troop gains a 20% chance to dodge any damage, from spells or attacks (and maybe also dodge status effects?) - something that plays to many of them being fast and nimble

As a side note I rather resent the tone in the post suggesting that people who’ve been around the forum longer are less entitled to challenge or post their own views. A few years of familiarity and practice can certainly help bring a range of balanced views; we see a lot of utter unthought nonsense suggested here. This thread definitely isn’t utter unthought nonsense, mind. I’d suggest that the standard ‘stonewall’ challenge of ‘devs are too busy’ is fair, but can also be parked. Devs have consistently shown that they prioritise new things over fixing old ones, and content that will monetise over upgrading things everyone already has… but they do occasionally revamp an old set and Wildfolk could do with some of that. Debating whether devs would ever give it resource is a distraction - fine to debate here whether we like the new idea or not - as it happened I didn’t like this one.

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You’re right, the name sucks. I was more concerned with putting the idea out there before it slipped away, but since this game is already chock-full of references… I suppose I’ll edit it to the one I’ve been coming back to, even if it’s a lot more meme-y.

I think another poster on this forum put it best when they said that Undine is basically a rarity-gated anti-Dawnbringer; I’m bringing this up because I feel like frozen, burning, and stun are way too prevalent as abilities, and we want this game to have a long and healthy life with new players constantly coming in and old ones staying, don’t we? Why should resistances to common status effects be limited to Impervious, the troop itself, and higher rarity troops?

Simply put, I feel like the Elf and Dwarf reworks for their racial traits made the game a lot more accessible to newer players by virtue of how you’re no longer limited to a subset of usually rarer troops if you want counters to popular archetypes. Want an anti-Drain team? Put together a simple Elf team, and they don’t even have to be legendary. Want something to stop Devour or Stun? Literally any Dwarf will do.

The Wildfolk have no existing theme at the moment, and a beatdown archetype is what the new mythic promises to support, so why not a new racial trait that also answers two of the most prevalent and widely used status effects?

I get where you’re going with the first one one, but traits that are variables instead of static values seem confusing. Second seems more along the lines of the original design, but doesn’t feel like it synergises enough with the new Mythic to make matching skull gems easier.

You’re absolutely right. I made this thread on the confidence of what they did for the Elves and the four different Ancestry traits, and I believe they could do the same again.

You mentioned how the Wildfolk were splintered into Centaurs and Tauros, and that what’s left are the dregs—maybe the three troop types could share a common racial trait with a few differences like what the Elves have currently? Just a thought.

Thanks for understanding where I’m coming from, and I appreciate the feedback. This wasn’t meant to be a callout thread by any means, but I’ve seen too many idea threads headed south that I felt it was a necessary pre-emptive.

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I have not seen her because I don’t like spoilers, but I take Fuligin’s word for it. Good idea with the Determination thrait, @Fuligin, and I also think that Wildfolk also needs a great damage dealer in the way of what Ketras is for Divines/Tauros’es, that also have nice syngery with existing Wildfolk. King Silenus alone, just doesn’t make enough damage for endgame players that wants to run a full Wildfolk team or so.

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The best thing about the mythic spoiler:
Capture

It’'s kind of hard to see where they’re going with Wildfolk. You can argue that other races have issues like this too, but they’re not the ones getting a mythic that does nothing to fix the problems. There’s a lot of interesting elements here (she has vines growing around her arms but she can be Entangled? She makes skulls but is completely useless the instant her team is Entangled?) but none of them seem to be used properly.

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I really despise Devour, to me it’s a mechanic that should never existed.

With that being said, i’m not convinced all wildfolks should be immune to it, because giant monsters like Maw probably feel tickles devouring horned creatures.

Considering the disparity mentioned by Jainus i remember Nax is just an human, while others are Fey-like or “Furries” to a certain degree… So Wildfolks are not exactly a race, as in you don’t need to be born one, but a group of creatures/beings sharing an attunement with chaotic and wild aspects of te world it seems.

Cheesy as it may sound such trait could be called “Blessing of the Wild”. And if you want to pursue this path:

It would be interesting giving different blessings to each type of Wildfolk we have.

For example:

  • Wild Blessing of Mind: Nax and Tezca, one is crazy and the other has a sharp mind, but both have spells involving Magic Buff. So immunity to Silence can fit well and maybe something else…

  • Wild Blessing of Nature: The wildfolks more attuned with nature could have this one. Immunity to Burning and Freeze.

  • Wild Blessing of Body: Immunity to Stun, Devour and recovers “X” Life each turn. (I said i wasn’t convinced by your suggestion to make all wildfolks immune to devour.)

  • Wild Blessing of Mana: Here we could use Jainus suggestion for the mana boost, but for this troop only and pair it with Mana Drain/Steal and we have a good measure of a trait for spellcasters.

  • Wild Blessing of Speed: Immunity to Entangle, 20% chance to dodge skull damage.

Well, this is a quick unfinished concept, i did what i could in one go, and now i’m hungry…

My general idea is pairing two blessings together as a single trait, for example: “Wild Blessing of Body and Nature” makes a wildfolk very resilient. So in this sense we would have a set of particular aspects for the Wildfolks in general but still particular sets fitting each different individual.

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Just had a Daily Task for Wildfolk. It was fun and only 5 battles not 15, so that’s nice! Yes, they do need some serious help. A unique Racial trait would help by giving them more power (multiple traits in on a single slot), BUT that applies to every underpowered Race/Kingdom, in addition so would a full Kingdom rework (like they used to do).

Removing Agile, fast, swift is a unique approach, And could work. But I don’t agree with the hypothesis Wildfolk conveys “unrelenting beatdown” when there are no damage dealers. Let alone repeated damage dealers. If the develops wanted Wildfolk to have non-stop beatdown they would have create a troops that can apply damage, they did not.

I don’t agree with your oversimplification on your Q and Awnser about manpower. Just because you linked an example doesn’t mean that it always meant to shut down discussion universally. But just point out a true fact, posters frequently forget. The developers have limited manpower and its primarily devoted to new content, not rehashing old troops. Even though I personally always like the Kingdom refreshes.

All that hidden text makes your post harder to read than it should be.

TL,DR Even though I think your idea is off about Wildfolk, the new Universal Trait proposal is interesting for them, or even a new Race. As would ANY proposal to create a unique Racial Trait to help Wildfolks and their current underpowered nature.

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For people who argue that the devs “don’t have time or resources to upgrade older kingdoms”. If this is the case they should not be bringing attention to these exact weaknesses by making a mythic in said kingdom. You don’t put a beautiful expensive couch on top of the ugliest carpet in the world then say “but it was there this whole time and would be too expensive to replace!”. Obviously if she has other uses then it negates this argument somewhat but so far I haven’t heard anyone defend this mythic as being useful and wanted.

Everything you said is amazing to me. I feel like @Fuligin was going for something simple to think through and implement, similar to past adjustments to the game. Your suggestion feels like the more ideal and fitting way to go about it, but it would be a lot more work to think through and balance (which as people suggested the devs might not be up for). Either way, it feels like something needs to be improved because I’m not exactly excited for any mythic that’s being brought into an environment that isn’t fit for it. It ruins the exact excitement that makes a game like this thrive.

Also, great naming sense for all the blessings. I love properly themed things :wink:

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A side issue but I’m also a bit disappointed because for some reason I thought the new Mythic was gonna be a gloss on the Red Queen from Lewis Carroll’s Through The Looking Glass.

Instead it looks like we’re getting another Pinup Girl… the GoW artists need to get out and start dating, maybe then we’ll get more female characters that don’t look like “Mai Waifu!”

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But what if this is the first one I want as mai waifu? Poor thing will be the epitome of “trophy wife” at the rate we’re going though.

On a separate topic, I’m slightly bothered that Undine is a gruff merman instead of a hot lady covered in water like in all the JRPGs. He could at least be a HOT gruff merman, but no he looks like an angry grandpa that wants to yell “get off my sea turf!”

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:joy:
But then, this describes most of the male troops in the game other than “The Voice!”

Likewise most of the female characters look like Angry Grandpa’s Naughty Granddaughter. :stuck_out_tongue_winking_eye:

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I’m halfway on board, except they really shouldn’t be releasing more “Wildfolk” in the first place (I know there will be, but honestly, this troop type should have been phased out a long time ago). Also, for a racial trait buff to actually have the desired effect of maybe making some of them viable, you need to replace the troops’ worst traits, not their best ones, and certainly not the defining trait of the troop. No reason to take away the few that are actually viable by saddling them with Silenus so that a few others are slightly less unviable. Silenus is really really poorly designed to have him give mana on a troop type that doesn’t have any tools to speak of outside of a few troops that already have the ability to start with half or more mana, not the other way around.

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I’m all for this, but do you really want half the Wildfolk in existence to be immune to stun, frozen, burning, entangle, devour, and start off with anywhere from half to full mana, with some of them being 20% harder to hit? There’s wanting to have your cake and eat it, and then there’s… this.

Starting with some amount of mana has never really been unique to the Wildfolk and I don’t think they need an additional edge if my proposed change goes through.

Upon further thought, you would have a solid point if every Wildfolk had some mana to start out with or Agile, but the other 6 don’t, and I feel that this substantially weakens your point. There is no defining design element present in the Wildfolk right now.

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I agree that Wildfolk need some love. Pan’s Vale is actually the current kingdom we’ve been looking at in recent months around other things. (No ETA when it will happen though)

Potential problem with them getting a racial trait is that racial traits are for a single race, and the wildfolk tend to include all the Beast races (and a few other critters as well) that don’t have their own troop type. With other races with alternative versions (aka Elves) we did alternative versions so they had similaritys but still had an aspect that was unique to them as if they had all once been a single race before going their own way.

Now this doesn’t mean we could potentially explore the idea, but we need to keep this in mind that not all Wildfolk as Satyrs or Tuskar or Bug people etc, and each of them deserve something that allows them to keep that identity.

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Thanks for the reply, really encouraged to hear your feedback. Just to riff off the suggestions of @Razzagor, I feel like I could narrow down the Wildfolk into three categories:

Humanoids: Nax, Tezca(?)
Animals: Ragnagord, Desert Mantis, Tuskar, Monkey Disciple
Fauns: Everyone else

What if I took my original suggestion and tailored them for each of the three with Devour and Entangle being the variables, and adding a new immunity? So:

Primal Determination: Immune to Stun, Burning, Frozen, and Devour. (Fauns)
Fancy Determination: Immune to Stun, Burning, Frozen, and Silence. (Humanoids)
Flighty Determination: Immune to Stun, Burning, Frozen, and Entangle. (Animals)

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I agree. It is to this point that I find it extremely confusing that there are troops attempting to tie Wildfolk together as a cohesive type, like Silenus (and the upcoming spoiler troop) when they aren’t cohesive at all, they are a collection of leftovers with disparate designs that synergize extremely poorly with each other in most cases.

Guess thats what I get for just putting out the tl;dr version of my thoughts without explaining them first.

Most Wildfolk’s spells are extremely underpowered and largely irrelevant. The only currently existing Wildfolk troop I’d even give pause to adding additional immunities to at this point is Ragnagord because cascades can get crazy and freeze/entangle is a barely a soft counter, maybe the Mantis because he is self-loop capable. And really, thats mostly freeze. Half of them could be made Impervious replacing their worst traits and nobody would really care.

As an example, Fast is the defining trait of Ragnagord. He is an exploder that can get off his first cast in 7 mana. You put him on the team for a quick start and stack the team with damage and possibly other exploders. Yes, theres Silenus that can still make him fast, but Silenus is the aberration here - he came late to the party, he didn’t need to exist in the first place, and you certainly shouldn’t need a two-troop setup to do something trivially possible now with one. Is the whole mana race boom boom explodey time speed meta easy mode and makes the game less engaging overall? Perhaps, but Ragnagord is not the only culprit here. Would removing fast for an immunity trait be seen as a nerf to Ragnagord and cause backlash? Absolutely.

An example of this buff/nerf situation was when Crimson Bat was “buffed” to go from 8 static life gain to stealing life from all enemies, but also changed to scale with half magic making him much worse at dealing AoE true damage. But people weren’t using him as primarily growing threat lifestealer, they were using him primarily as AoE true damage. People were understandably upset, because this “buff” fundamentally changed his role and instead came off as a “nerf”. Crimson Bat was put back to dealing true damage and his static life gain was instead changed from 8 to 16. We later got a new troop that better fits the identity they tried to change Crimson Bat to - Draakulis, albeit with full magic scaling and at mythic rarity. Another example is Dark Maiden. When she received the Elf racial trait, she initially lost snare. When it was brought up how useful this was and that many people were using her for this express purpose, she lost Cursed instead. Troops that lost something that might have been significant was generally not an essential part of their design, or the troop wasn’t popular enough to matter.

Others, like the Monkey Disciple, are in a similar place - having Swift is a huge part of his kit, since he is a risky starter that buffs life. Replacing it with a multi-immunity wouldn’t give you a “better” troop, it would give you a different one that you use in different situations. Faunessa is a decent fodder blocker for same color teams, but the loss of empowered would severely limit this. Blade Dancer is a decent early fight pseudo AoE troop that becomes an expendable fodder blocker as the fight drags on, so he benefits heavily from both fast and agile, but could still work with immunities instead (particularly entangle).

A King Silenus that loses Impervious makes a bad troop worse… for no reason.

Now, some of them would be largely improved even if you killed their “best” traits, but very few of them to the point of viability. A Sylvaisi without agile but that is immune to entangle and freeze and miscellaneous would be better in my eyes since it supports his role as striker (shifting it more toward offense), but still probably wouldn’t see play because his mana cost is pretty absurd for what he does at this point in the game. A Nax that loses Fast for some immunites… might be better off. Guess it depends on how many people use him with Silenus. Or at all.

tl;dr: I do think many Wildfolk need to be buffed. I do think some would do well with some better traits, especially ones tailored toward their sort-of subset of Wildfolk types, but many need spell tweaks as well. I don’t think all Wildfolk need to be cohesive or they all need even the same overlapping immunities (I like the split multi-trait ideas, but don’t necessarily agree with the ones laid out). I don’t think Wildfolk are a cohesive type - Silenus is a mistake, and you-know-who spoiler troop with their current trait is doubling down on that mistake. I don’t think we need to destroy any popular troops current identity to nerf/buff a handful of troops.

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I would put Nax in the Fauns category as he’s an human who believed that he’s a Faun.
Tezca in the Animal even if I believe that we will get one day a Lapina kingdom.

Then only one trait for the Wildfolk - Fauns troops:

  • so the trait fits only one group,
  • then you know that a troop without this racial trait is not really a Wildfolk,
  • trait could be the one with Entangle that you proposed,
  • or a more specific trait. I am not a big fan of the set of immunities trait, that’s too easy. I like the Orc one. Why not something similar but about stealing stats? “Steal X Attack/Life/Armor/Magic when casting a spell/doing damage”
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I’m going to stop you there. This is a classic case of the cart leading the horse and definitely not where game balance should be headed.

Let’s take your basic premise: “You shouldn’t mess with popular troops that form the core of the majority of teams because people might be unhappy about it.” So let me ask you: Where does this madness end?

Who says, for instance, that exploders must start at the artificial baseline of 7 mana in its current state? What about teams with Mab, Infernus, EK, Mab-Infernus, Mab-EK, Mab-YC? Will people who painstakingly assembled teams with a focus on frozen, burning, stun, and entangle have more say in this, if popular consensus and possession of the affected troop are highly prized voices that are given more weight in the debate on overall game balance?

Maybe exploders don’t have to start at 7 mana. Maybe Ragnagord could be reduced to 12 mana to compensate for this and Captain Skullbeard made the new benchmark of exploders at 11 mana. All for the price of what, a whopping 12 troops now being universally viable instead of the current 1 or 2?

If I take your reasoning to its logical conclusion, nothing that’s the cornerstone of the meta could ever be touched for fear of fanning the flames—yet this isn’t an issue regarding a single card or even exploders so much as it is overarching issues regarding an entire troop type that’s painfully, woefully underused.

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Just saying that if a troop needs to be balanced down, it should be done so on its own merits. Not by way of a “buff” that totally changes what role it is intended to perform. And also that Ragnagord does not need to be nerfed for other Wildfolk to be buffed (nor do the others that use swift/fast/agile). A racial trait is not the only way to buff them. Just because we must do something, and this is something, does not mean we need to do this.

What I was getting at was more akin to “Nothing that is the cornerstone of a meta should ever be fundamentally changed just because it might fit more thematically with stuff that doesn’t even have a consistent theme to begin with. It should be changed because the troop is overpowered, underpowered, overcentralizing, or doesn’t really fit anywhere”. I’m open to discussion about how exploders like Ragnagord overcentralize the offensive meta, though it would probably be better in a different thread. We’d probably even agree on some points. But having a measure of “Ragnagord gets nerfed” (and yes, requiring Silenus to make him fast is a hard, full stop nerf) tacked onto the bill of a “Wildfolk get buffed” rings hollow to me, as if the former was the target the entire time.

I’m also saying that the proposed trait changes, by themselves, won’t make painfully, woefully underused troops suddenly viable. It would make some of them less viable, some of them only viable in different situations that they are used for now with varying degrees of success, and some of them better but still not really viable late game. Troops that only buff or deal a small amount of damage without a disabling status or chance at an extra turn/board mod are generally pretty bad, even if they are immune to all status effects.

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