Elemancer v5 observations and updating end-game conditions
Playtesting results from the v5 changes show that things are getting more balanced and the game plays out smoother. The Showdowns have been relatively close (I’m playtesting mainly 2-player, so the Showdowns have been 1v1), which is encouraging. That said, the players who have been behind (i.e. didn’t complete Stage 5 of the quest before the Showdown) haven’t won, though the games were mostly competitive, and the losing players’ decks definitely had the potential for more damage, they just didn’t perform at that moment. I’m hoping that low-rolling during the Showdown isn’t discouraging or unsatisfying, and that the head-to-head aspect is an exciting culmination of the game. Still, I want to delineate the current status of the “Showdown” alongside potential areas of improvement.
With that said, there were three outliers in the data: Electric, Ice, and Time. Yes, Electromancy with the Chain mechanic is still problematic because of how some of the cards compound. Outside of the extremes, the expected damage of these builds is within reasonable range. Cryomancy was still too low, while Chronomancy had some surprisingly large damage output. Let’s look at these and break down the issues individually.
It’s the Final Showdown
While playtesting I updated the rules on the overarching questline and how the showdown triggered. Now I want to tie it to completion of Stage 5 of the questline. After the first player completes Stage 5, the Showdown will trigger two rounds after the end of the current round. Along with this, the reward for completing Stage 5 is a passive +1 damage buff during the Showdown rounds. I’m also testing an incentive for players to take the time to return to the start, another passive +1 damage buff during the Showdown. That may not be enough for players who completed Stage 5 to opt to travel instead of attempting to gain more Tier 3 cards. However, I’ve found that the turns trekking back to the start are great for curating your hand. Regardless of questline completion, players are warped back to the start at the end of the 2nd full round after a player completes Stage 5, as previously mentioned.
One concern is that there’s not enough pressure or incentive to end the game, as players can simply choose not to complete Stage 5 and thus never trigger the end of the game. With this in mind, I may need to add external pressure to ensure the game ends in a timely manner.
During initial playtesting (v1/v2, so a while back) before I had proper win conditions I’d playtest out 30 turns and stop there to see where the decks were at. Ironically, I might just implement a 30-turn limit to the game, since in playtesting I’ve found that players complete Stage 5 around turns 25-27, which means the game would be over around turn 30 anyway. I didn’t intend for that to be the timing/pace of the game, but that’s how it turned out.
Electromancy: too strong, again
I thought “1 damage for total Chain this combat, +2 Chain” was a cute and clever ability, which by itself provides only 2 damage. If you happen to draw three of those in the same hand then each is only 6 damage, which isn’t unreasonable for a Tier 3 card. The issue is that it keeps scaling after that, which is part of the point of a setup + payoff strategy like Chain though that doesn’t mean it isn’t unbalanced. Now, end-game builds I’ve tested always have their boss ability available, and for Electromancy that means a passive “Electric Affinity +1” (a standard reward for all Dragon bosses) and a passive “+2 Chain during each combat.” This itself isn’t egregious, and I’ve had cases where even with the free +2 Chain I didn’t hit all the payoff thresholds (the highest are 5 or 6 total Chain). But with too many multiplier effects, it still adds up.
Previous nerfs to Electromancy removed the “2 damage per Chain” effects entirely and changed some to thresholds (i.e. “2 damage, +2 if your Chain is at least 3 this combat, +2 more if your Chain is at least 6 this combat”). I think I may need to shift even more cards to the threshold layout, which is a nice way to cap the amount of damage that a high Chain hand can deal. It makes Chain more of an enabler rather than direct damage, which will mitigate massive high-rolls when you have 8 or more Chain on top of multiple multiplier payoffs.
The alternative would be to reduce Chain across the board, but I think that would lead to too many low-roll hands where you don’t even hit the 3 Chain threshold consistently. I need to do another evaluation of Chain and payoff effects for expected damage calculation purposes. Previously the average was ~1 Chain per Electric card, and +1 damage payoff per Chain per Electric card. So for the purposes of expected damage: 1 card=1 Chain, and 1 Chain=1 damage. For example, the average expected damage from a “2 damage, +1 Chain” card is 3 total damage. The expected damage from a “1 damage for each Chain this combat” is 4 total damage (expecting 1 Chain from each of the other 4 cards in hand). Here’s where the Chain abilities are at right now:
Looking at the distribution of Chain setup and payoff abilities in Electromancy
The totals include Channel abilities that add Chain, so the numbers themselves don’t represent unique cards but rather how often the effects appear. Notably the “+3 Chain” effects appear most often as Channel abilities on Tier 3 cards with Chain payoff abilities as their combat/normal effect. I left in the 2x Chain payoff section even though that is no longer present. It could come back in the future, to be fair. Current data says that is unlikely, though.
Cryomancy: sometimes solutions present themselves
When crafting the rules for the final Showdown, I attempted to account for players/strategies that want to activate Channel abilities and interact with opponents before combat. At present, players can activate Channel abilities before the combat, so there is a separate Channel phase and then combat phase. The alternative to this would be for each player to play individually, i.e. the first player would activate Channel abilities and then play their cards, then the second player would activate Channel abilities and play their cards, etc. But I don’t want to create situations where the later players count up their damage in hand and decide to concede the round instead of playing it out. Ideally all players reveal their combat sequence at once and you see who has the highest damage.
But Ice abilities care about discarding, and there are even abilities that can force your opponent to discard mid-combat. This is why I implemented the Channel phase in the first place, giving Ice builds in particular the opportunity to discard other players’ cards. This proved messy and balancing player order in these situations is another beast entirely. I was beginning to form a system that would’ve hopefully been fair, but I realized there is a much simpler solution that addresses basically all of the problems.
Essentially, the players’ hands during the final round would all be empty as everyone is in combat at the same time. This means that all of Cryomancy’s “if an opponent has four or fewer cards in hand” or “for each opponent with four or fewer cards in hand” effects are active. So Ice abilities deal their max damage without having to worry about getting the right combination of discard effects and payoffs. Hopefully this doesn’t prove too boring, but it does make Ice much more balanced (it has consistently underperformed in damage output). This also means I don’t need to change any of the cards, they all work as written during the Showdown. The current maximum output of Ice abilities should be within a reasonable range, but we’ll see what the numbers look like in the next round of playtesting.
Two final thoughts to wrap things up. First is that I do want to readjust some of Ice’s Tier 2 cards to make them more interesting. Ice may still run into trouble fighting monsters during the mid-/late-game when your damage bonuses rely on you setting up discard effects. Second is that I’m looking ahead to potential future design space. I was planning on a Void Element (Kenomancy) that cared about emptying your hand and how many cards are missing compared to a starting hand of 5. Current Ice cards only care about the “four or fewer” threshold, which works with this new Showdown paradigm. Void may need to find a new niche, but I’ll cross that bridge when it’s relevant.
Chronomancy: surprisingly effective
This one came as a surprise when it put up such large damage numbers, especially after nerfing the boss ability that gave +2 damage per card discarded to only give +2 damage per card Channeled. But the culprit is likely abilities that return themselves to your hand at the start of your next turn and abilities that allow you to draw extra cards at the end of your next turn. This means you could have 7+ cards in hand. I love the flavor of Chronomancy sending cards to the future, but it is probably how some of the damage numbers got out of hand.
I don’t want to take away this fantasy entirely, I even changed most of the Channel effects that did this previously to instead put the card back into your hand at the end of the turn. But there were a couple that I left as-is, which gave you repeatable 6-card hands if you wanted (of course that would mean you’re never actually playing that 6th card, but Channeling it for +2 damage effectively for free was enough I guess). So I’m planning to make those even rarer.
I’m also removing the abilities that drew you cards in future turns. Looking at this made me realize that some of the Tier 2 Time abilities were unbalanced in a way I didn’t expect. Most of the mechanical identity is centered around Channeling cards and returning cards that were discarded this turn (either to your hand or directly to combat). Extra card draw isn’t necessary for Time in contrast with Air which has some payoff cards that want you to play out 6+ cards in combat for maximum buffs.
v5.1 Preview
Recently I took the time to utilize more of Excel’s functionality rather than doing my calculations and analysis by hand (referenced in the Electromancy section). I now have an automatic way of tracking certain card abilities and their frequency across Tiers and Shrines/Temples. I can use this data to drive some balance changes, though playtesting results will still be the best indicator of game flow. One anomaly I found was that Gem-specific synergies were centered in Orange, Green, and Teal. However, in the v5 update I shifted Earth cards into mainly Orange, Red, and Teal.
Stats after I updated abilities to favor Red over Green Gems, a relic of pre-v5 Gem distributions
The Showdown is ever-shifting, but the changes outlined above are what I’ll be testing in v5.1. I’m also updating all of the Horror bosses to more heavily favor one Element. Unlike Dragon bosses, they aren’t immune to other Elements and I ran into a situation where one player could’ve defeated the other player’s Horror boss out from under them (as alluded to earlier, Chronomancy had some surprisingly high damage results). Perhaps in future iterations the bosses will not be freely available on the board, but will have to be specifically targeted and unlocked through questline progression.
