Elemancer v5.5 plans
To start things off I want to note that playtesting of the balance changes in v5.1 has been very positive. The typical max damage of an end-game build is in the 28-31 range for all Elements with very few outliers. Electromancy is still an outlier, but less consistently so; the highest hands can hit 40+, but typical hands are 30 or below. The gameplay has felt smooth for the most part, and players are completing the questline in a timely manner.
Version 5.5 will have three main focal points: the Questline, Chronomancy, and combat rules. The latter two are inherently linked, as the interaction of current Time abilities wants to push combat in a more complex direction. I feel that the combat rules should be straightforward, but individual Time cards may allow some bending of those rules. This is a classic feature in card games, where the rulings on the cards will supersede the basic rules of the game. In this way, rules provide examples of exceptions and actually help to reinforce the basic rules.
Regarding playtesting feedback, I noticed there are several abilities that are underutilized (modes of modal cards that are unused). I consider Channel cards modal, which means that they have multiple options when played. In this case, they are either played in combat for their standard effect or Channeled outside of combat for a different effect. While some cards are meant to be Channeled more often than they are played (or vice-versa) there are some cards where the split is 0-100. These cards may as well not be modal at that point if there isn’t an interesting decision to be made. Aeromancy cards, in my experience, have been the most egregious offenders in this area. I don’t consider this a major focus of v5.5 but there will likely be some tweaks to Air abilities in this update. If I determine that a larger overhaul is necessary then it’ll be part of say the v6 update.
Questline
While there’s still not a huge incentive to complete Stage 5 after completing Stage 4 (in terms of the damage bonus it grants), the automatic Showdown feels like a good change. One option to mitigate this is to tie the Showdown to completion of Stage 4, which feels like a much more inevitable stage as you traverse Tier 3 zones. In that case I would give players 5 or 6 turns after the first player completes Stage 4 (in contrast to 2 turns after completion of Stage 5). In this paradigm, Stage 5 is purely a bonus and the rewards for Stage 5 should be higher so that players don’t just take those 5-6 turns gaining more Tier 3 cards. There still needs to be an incentive to fight monsters and a more significant passive damage bonus could provide than incentive.
The current gameplay loop has spikes of PvE combat, while the majority of the game is managing resources to gain cards. The Questline may need to be subdivided further to create a better mix of fighting and gaining cards. I don’t want to lose the Tier 3 monster fights entirely, those should be a fun buildup to the Showdown. The boss fights are a good test, but those typically happen in Stage 4 whereas Stage 5 is when you fight the generic Tier 3 monsters.
The Questline is not set in stone, so inter-Stage timers/countdowns could be implemented. I’d only utilize this in the later Stages to direct players towards the end-game, not pressure the players to rush through the early stages of the game. Nailing down the Stages and requirements will be an ongoing task as playtesting continues.
Combat & Chronomancy
One anomaly in the gameplay is Chronomancy, and that will be my main focus of v5.5. Some of the interactions are clunky, but it’s not inherently illegal to Channel abilities mid-combat. Let’s look at an example sequence (if you’ll excuse my chicken-scratch) just considering these three cards in hand:
The crux of the issue is that Chronomancy has a fair number of combat abilities that discard mid-combat. This sequence would be ideal if you could discard #2 (“+4 if this card was discarded this turn”) to get the bonus on #1 (“+4 if you discard another card”), activate #3’s Channel ability (“return another card that was discarded this turn to your hand”) to return #2 to hand so you could play it for full damage in the same combat sequence. That’s how I want it to work, because it feels clever and satisfying to piece together the abilities in this way. But this contradicts typical combat rules, which are that your cards are all laid out, then resolve all at once as they are ‘flipped up.’ This doesn’t preclude abilities from playing extra cards mid-combat, but as-written it does prevent you from playing new cards from hand.
I think the former (play abilities all at once) is best for tracking most Elemental synergies, but Chronomancy would much prefer that cards were played and resolved individually. For example, it’s much easier to track what color Gems are played for Geomancy and how many different Elements are out for Hydromancy if everything is face-up at once. If you were resolving cards one-at-a-time then Aeromancy sequences would be constantly changing as bonuses are added or lost as more cards appear before and after each other.
This means Time cards need to adhere to the standard combat rules, which necessitates a widescale overhaul. With this in mind, Chronomancy could be poised to carve out a new mechanical niche. Recent updates have shifted Chronomancy towards “Channel-matters” synergies alongside the longstanding recursion mechanics. Swapping cards in and out of the discard pile and sending cards into future hands feels like the timey-wimey shenanigans I’d expect from Chronomancy. But that’s just my opinion.
I don’t know exactly where Chronomancy will end up, but now that Elemancer is in a more substantial state it is high time to hammer out inconsistencies in the rules.
Air: modal failures
This is a less notable, more minor section (that won’t prevent me from writing exhaustively about it), but I noticed that Air needs a couple tweaks. A few Air monsters with old fight mechanics could use an update, though in one playtest the old mechanics were actually a compelling point of contention. So that is more of a consideration than a concrete change.
Another issue I noticed was that I wasn’t making use of the Channel abilities that I’d added several versions back. These were added to mitigate cards that encouraged playing fewer cards in combat, namely those with bonuses for playing “exactly one card before” and “exactly one card after” them. If you wanted to maximize the damage from that particular card, you would play that card 2nd and exactly one card before and one after it, so only 3 cards from your 5 card hand. So I figured that if you could Channel the other two cards in your hand for bonus damage, then that could be an optimal play pattern. In practice, the damage bonuses from “exactly one before/after” weren’t enough to justify not playing another card from hand. On top of that, the Channel damage bonuses were only 2 damage, which is far from enough damage per card in end-game scenarios.
A potential change would be to beef up the Channel effects to double the damage of a card, but if I’ve learned anything it’s that doubling effects are bad news for balance. A simpler solution would be to buff the damage, but it would have to be at least 4 bonus damage to justify Channeling. That’s not unreasonable, it just feels like a lot for a non-combat ability.
It’s just this subset of effects that felt underutilized to me. Aeromancy has performed well following the changes in v5.1 so it doesn’t need a buff but, again, the issue is that these “modal” cards were not as modal as I’d hoped.
Once the tweaks to Chronomancy are in place, I feel that the game will be much less esoteric and much easier for the casual gamer to comprehend. This should expand my pool of potential playtesters, so hopefully I can leverage that to get more gameplay data in the future. More consistency and clarity are just good in general.
