Elemancer v7.5: Sidetracked by Sidequests
I’m back from my hiatus, but even so I have been slow to update Elemancer. Part of this is because I have been attempting to add more mechanics and points of interaction. The thought is that I want to have excess things and peel them back based on player feedback, drop mechanics that don’t jive with the testers or feel clunky. I’ve been considering adding spaces that trigger a player versus player competition at the end of the turn, a mini showdown with marginal rewards. I’ve also been considering “Sidequests” which would be cards that you reserve and add to your deck after meeting some requirement over a number of turns. As for potential drastic changes, I’m considering changing the game to have alternating phases of card acquisition and combat. This would necessitate a change to the Questline and possibly a removal of Essence tracking entirely (which are essentially a way to track how many monsters you’ve defeated).
Balance Changes
Other updates from v7.4 to v7.5 include some economy improvements, balance changes, and buffs to monsters. I wanted to add more Channel effects that accelerate the game and give you a better rate than existing actions. Existing generic actions exchange one resource for another: 3 cards for 1 Gem, 2 cards for 1 movement, 3 cards for 2 new cards, 3 Gems for 1 Gem of any color. Some existing Channel effects did provide a better rate for card draw, but now I’ve added 2 cards for 1 Gem and a Channel ability that exchanges 1 Gem for any other Gem.
For balance, I made some Water abilities less restrictive and thus more powerful. All Elements are looking well-balanced otherwise. I’m tracking which boss abilities result in power outliers, both lower and higher. I’ve tweaked a few to make them (hopefully) more comparable to the other abilities. Metrics I look at are average damage per hand and max damage across 10 hands per simulated endgame deck. I updated the wording of certain discard attacks to explicitly instruct opponents to reveal a hand without [Element] card if they don’t discard.
The monster buffs are straightforward, I increased the health on Tier 3 monsters to make them more compelling during the late stages of the game. Rather than being a trivial task that you just need to check off the list, Tier 3 monsters should still create some tension as you’re moving from the late game to the endgame. I only increased them by like 1 health, but it’s something. Testing will determine if this change has any impact.
Sidequests
Sidequests could be added to the Temple deck, acquired via a new special space, or reserved as a reward for completing stages of the Questline. Initially I planned for Temples and Shrines to have variable costs/requirements, so this is potentially a reimplementation of that idea. One issue is that I’d want lots of variants for the requirements and the rewards, which would necessitate another large deck. One fix to that would be to have the Sidequest requirements be separate from the reward card. However, I like that in Elemancer I consolidate requirements and rewards on the same card, it’s a convenient feature. One solution could be a small deck of Sidequests and a small deck of reward abilities, however I like when players can see the reward upfront. Even drafting one of 3 or 4 reward abilities feels like it might be too random, but digging through the entire pile could be too open. That said, I’d anticipate there would be only 1 or 2 reward abilities for each Element, so the choice would likely be straightforward. With that in mind, searching the entire deck wouldn’t be too bad! Glad we sorted that one out together.
The point still stands that splitting the Sidequests and their respective rewards into separate decks makes for yet more clutter and game pieces. But the entire point here is that I can remove mechanics that are not well-received. This mechanic still needs to be implemented well and have the right support. In this case there needs to be a way to acquire Sidequests, perhaps multiple per Tier or Stage.
Phasing
Alternating acquisition and combat phases would make the incremental updates to your deck more tangible. You’d be able to see your deck get better every other turn. This does throw a wrench into planning your turns for card acquisition, since every other hand would be used for combat. Although I think you could choose to opt out of combat, and that would just provide you a chance to curate your hand. Defeating a monster every other round could still provide Essence as a reward or be a requirement of the Questline. I’d also want to add some other incentive to those rounds, likely just 1 bonus Gem for defeating the monster (if defeating monsters isn’t part of the Questline). Another change could be that instead of having the intermittent showdowns tied to Questline progression, there would be predetermined PvP combat rounds to replace the usual monster attacks/encounters. Say every 5 combat rounds is PvP, with the addition of Stadium cards (previously implemented) to shake things up.
I may try to develop two different testable versions of the game, one as normal and one with this alternating phase structure. The flavor would be that the players are defending the central location from periodic monster attacks. If you fail to defeat monsters, you can’t level up and complete the Questline to reach higher Tier zones. In this version of the game, Monster Dens would probably be removed. I suppose you could still choose the Element of the monster you fight, which would depend on your hand. This would mean that you can’t really prepare as well for combat rounds, and Monsters will likely need a small health nerf to account for this. This version of Elemancer more closely matches how I test the endgame viability of decks: testing multiple hands to determine the power level of an average deck for each Element. Because this is how I balance the combat abilities on cards, it might behoove me to adjust the game to reflect that.
For now, I should probably just test the v7.5 changes and not worry about flipping the game pacing on its head. That said, one concern is the length of the game. The game lasts 25-30 turn cycles, so it comes down to what the length of a turn is for a player not as familiar with the rules. There’s a lot of information on the board, but not all of it is relevant each turn. However, if you want to plan ahead then you should be looking around at all face-up cards. Analysis paralysis could rear its ugly head here. It’s possible that rebalancing and restructuring the game for alternating acquisition and combat phases could increase the pace of the game. Adjusting the expected number of turns is doable using the Questline to accelerate progression of the game.
