Elemancer v2/v3 updates and further playtesting
Life has been busy for the past few months, but in that time I’ve been able to playtest the game and make several sweeping updates based on observations, data, and feedback. I’d consider the current game as of today to be v3, sorry I haven’t added any updates leading up to or following my v2 changes but I can roll some of those into this post.
Along with more documentation of playtesting sessions, I also added a section on average/max/expected damage per card to my card database (an Excel workbook). That was eye-opening and confirmed some of the feelings I had while playtesting, the most obvious being that Electromancy and Geomancy builds were too strong starting at Tier 2. I had one game where there were no Tier 3 Earth zones, but I was able to make a very strong deck in spite of that. So in the v2 and v3 updates I addressed the power outliers and Elements that were lagging behind, in particular Air and Ice.
Aeromancy ran into a mechanical issue where a lot of cards had high potential damage but they restricted how many cards you could play. For example, there were too many cards that wanted exactly 1 played before and exactly 1 card played after them, or the particularly egregious “highlander ability” that got a massive bonus if it was the only card played (but not enough to make up for the fact that you only played one card).
Cryomancy was not as well-defined mechanically, it had a disruption/discard theme but some cards just weren’t interesting, such as getting a damage bonus for having fewer cards in hand. During combat you typically want to use most of your cards anyway; having a bonus for actions you’d normally take isn’t interesting or strategically rewarding. I’m keeping an eye on the disruption effects that Ice can dish out, since it can really throw a wrench into your turn. The effects are also exacerbated in a 2-player game as “each opponent” and “target opponent” discard effects are effectively the same in that scenario. Dominion often hampers this by adding a “discard down to X” limit or “each other player with X or more cards” clause to prevent locks. I think I’ll have to add something similar as a safeguard.
Some of the earlier changes were to address the flow of the game such as the ability to gain a wider variety of Gems and traversing the map quicker. These were simple to test and the impact of the changes was immediate. It could still feel like a chore to trek across the map, so a map rework was one of the big changes in v3. It’s still not final, but we’ll see how the new map fares with the old movement system (4 base movement, several Aeromancy and Electromancy cards that provide extra movement) and make any tweaks necessary.
I’ve also honed in on some bigger-picture decisions/paradigms for the game. One is that I want the Tier 3 Temples to have cards strictly of the zone’s Elements, in contrast to Tier 1/2 zones that have generic cards of other Elements. Initially the variety was there to allow you to pick up cards of other Elements and get a taste for some of the other mechanics that each Element cares about with a secondary benefit of helping to support multi-Element builds and Hydromancy in particular. But I felt that when I’m in a Tier 3 zone, I expect the cards to give me strong abilities in the Elements I’m hunting for. With that, the Tier 3 Temples also contain the cross-Element cards, which were initially in Tier 3 Shrines. I realized that initial distribution was wrong; even though I wanted to offer cross-synergy cards as an incentive in Tier 3, players can find them at Temples while Shrines will better serve mono-Elemental builds. As such, the Affinity Channel abilities were all moved to the Tier 3 Shrines, as well as “if only <Element> abilities are played” cards. I’ll be keeping an eye on how the Tier 3 changes affect Hydromancy in particular, but I did add extra “wildcard” Water abilities (“you may treat this as an Element of your choosing”) to compensate. Hopefully this still incentivizes multi-Element builds, but more explicit rewards might be necessary. For example, more “if played alongside an <Element> ability” effects.
I added Tier 3 boss monsters during v2, and they’re still undergoing some changes. At present I’ve reduced the amount of VP you gain from defeating one to hopefully discourage players from sniping bosses out from under other players who could actually use the boss abilities in their build. The rewards are instead powerful, often persistent abilities that should scale the late-game (Tier 3) builds into end-game levels of damage. Tier 2 wandering/boss monsters could still be on the table, but my plan is to have multi-step quests that will present goals for early/mid/late game. With that in mind, extra bosses are a bit much and would be more along the lines of Tier 3 monsters but earlier.
I’m very excited for the next rounds of playtesting, as the game feels like it’s spiraling towards something engaging and deep (but I am a bit biased). Hopefully you, my imaginary audience, can one day enjoy my creation too!
