The Challenge of Balance and a look at an upcoming Hero

Two weeks ago we made some significant balance changes to Kingdoms, with three nerfs and whopping 11 card buffs. The changes seem to have had a positive effect - Raise the Guard is still played a high amount, but has dropped as a "must play". Both Holy Charm and Iron Dragon are still seeing significant play in Limited. Eternal Dragon and Sanity Tapper are now appearing in some decks. All in all, not bad.

I wanted to talk about two of the changes here to go over our new thinking towards post-release card balancing.

First off, Raise the Guard. When Raise the Guard was originally designed, it put three Holy creatures of cost 3 or less from your deck into play. Basically it was envisioned as an Epic level Exalted Enforcements that you had to build your deck around. At some point in development it was changed to "Light Alliance" in an effort to make it more "flexible." This, in hindsight, was a mistake.

At first the card wasn't too much of an issue, but the combination of Thania's release and the re-buff to Dravkas making the Firestorm Shaman deck viable again pushed Raise the Guard over the top.

There was a huge amount of discussion about what should be done about the card. Many people discussed complete redesigns for the card, mostly around making the card more situational. I myself designed a nerf where you'd only get creatures equal to the turn number - making it useless for the first couple of turns. Dr. Bojangles suggested making it only give three if the opponent had a large creature in play - something that I actually coded into the card then removed. And I was still considering putting it back to Holy only.

So why, in the end, did it just get raised to 7 mana?

Because of Quickdraw Cannon.

Quickdraw Cannon had been the bane of Kingdoms since it was printed. It was a simple, powerful and cheap combo deck that worked really, really well and was hard to interact with. When we took over the game, I knew that QDC was on my hit list, but how to fix it wasn't clear.

My first "fix" was to force the card to target creatures first, thinking that players could mount a defence to the card by playing the creatures that they had been using anyway. It turned out that many players felt this was a buff in disguise as it meant that QDC became the ultimate creature killer, and with Corrode in the game, Armor was merely a speed bump.

So Quickdraw Cannon was redesigned again to blow up if it ever triggered five times. It worked - the card was knocked off its mantle, but the resultant card, even if balanced, was a mess. I mean look at it:

What has been two elegant lines of rule text had become a 5 line monstrosity that needed multiple reads to even understand what was going on. Even if it had achieved some mystical level of "balance" it had become a terrible "design".

So we've made the decision to not "redesign" cards once released, and always ensure that our designs our elegant and easy to understand.

So the only solution to Raise the Guard was to look at the one value that was an available lever: its cost. And as the nerf to Essence of Life showed, one mana is often a lot.

And Quickdraw Cannon itself? With this new direction, we put the card back to its original text, with a very simple balancing lever - the number of triggers per turn.

Much cleaner, easier to understand, and if we want to rebuff it in the future we can bump up the number of triggers.

So for both buffing and nerfing, we will put limits, adjust costs, tweak values on the card, add or remove abilities, or adjust the timing of the card (like adding or removing "on enter"), but the card you know will remain the card you know.

NEW HERO!

And now for what you really came for... new hero! This hero is currently in testing, but is in a state that I'm happy enough with to show everyone. Introducing MEK.

(click to view full size)

MEK is the leader of the Mechana construct army. They have broken off from the Gnomes and Dwarves and are forging their own destiny in the battle for Euna. MEK reflects this with THREE token generating abilities. While you know the Construct token (it's from Rapid Prototype), here are the two new tokens that MEK can create (art still pending):

So MEK can absorb damage (take that Goblin Scavenger), create creatures and then can buff them and himself (drawing cards is good). He is definitely a self contained, synergistic hero that could have a strong impact on the meta, and we look forward to having you try out.

While testing might adjust a value here or there, this is the hero you will soon see battling for dominance in the arenas and battlefields of Euna.

Game Down Again

We've had another failure at our service provider. The game is currently down for all players on all portals.

As with the previous service issue, we cannot directly fix this issue and must wait for our provider to get everything running again. We do not have an ETA on when this will be resolved but have been assured that it is being worked on now.

UPDATE: 3:40 PM EST - The severity of the issue is such that we're being told that service won't be resumed for several more hours. We'll keep you posted.

Release Notes - July 23, 2015

In today's release we made a number of balancing changes and added a new promotional bundle for collectors. We also gave a much needed buff to Alisten, who has struggled to compete even after her previous boost. We will be writing a follow up post with a detailed look at some of today's changes.

NERFS MADE

1. Raise the Guard: Raised Mana Cost to 7 (we will discuss this in our follow up post)
2. Iron Dragon: Drop HP to 3
3. Holy Charm: Reworded to “Your hero gains 2 HP. If your hero is Holy, they gain 3 HP instead.”

BUFFS MADE:

1. Perserve:  Corpses now last two turns
2. Explosives Expert – Upped to Volatile 2
3. Ancient Being – HP raised from 2 to 3
4. Faithful Worshipper – Mana cost dropped from 4 to 3
5. Call to Arms – Mana cost dropped from 4 to 3
6. Spiked Armor – Mana cost dropped from 5 to 4
7. Ancient Dragon – HP raised from 4 to 5
8. Eternal Dragon – Now has Indestructible
9. Sanity Tapper – Mana cost dropped from 3 to 2
10. Puresoul Cleric – Mana cost dropped  from 4 to 3
11. Mana Bloom no longer gains Strong. It actually gains ATK instead.

BUG FIXES:

1. Added error protection to Thania’s 2nd ability to prevent it from creating DefID errors
2. Fixed DefID errors with Summoner’s Gambit and Wealthy Benefactor
3. Fixed Power Cast bug that would allow enemy to get benefit if you didn’t play a light alliance creature after playing the spell, and they did. 2012 bug… squashed.

QUICKDRAW CANNON REFACTOR:

1. Quickdraw Cannon had gotten overly complicated and has been simplified. It has been returned to its original text, but limited to a maximum of 3 triggers per turn. Buff or Nerf? For you to decide. (we will discuss this in our follow up post)
2. There was actually a bug in the old QDC code that allowed you to avoid destroying the QDC on the 5th trigger. It has been fixed and applied to the new design.

ALISTEN REFACTOR:

1. Imposing Visage (3 Charge) now gives Intimidate to friendly creatures or timid to enemy creatures
2. Dragon Calling (6 Charge) now puts a random Ancient creature with cost of 5+ into your hand (not from your deck) rather than drawing a card.

New Ability: Support

 Support is the defensive equivalent of Allegiant. Whenever a creature of the same Kingdom comes into play, a creature with Support will gain 1 HP. At this time no card directly give Support, but it can be gained through cards and text that grant random abilities.

New Negative Status: Doomed

 A creature with Doomed is not dead yet, but they will be soon. A creature with Doomed will die at the end of their controller's next turn. Note that this is not a destroy effect, so will not be prevented with Indestructible or by card text. So get your last hit in. There are currently no cards or abilities that will give Doomed to a creature.

Prizes Updated for Season 4

The Prize Card for Season 4 is Variant Art Soul Drain. ALL players who are eligible for prizes will also receive a Variant Art Disintegrate - so whether you're rated 2000+ or 1300, get your games in and you'll receive a promo!

Echo Blast Promo Pack On Sale Now!

For veterans looking to make their deck unique or new players looking to get one of the top cards in the game at a discount, we've created the Echo Blast Promo Pack. For just $20 USD, you will receive 4 variant art Echo Blasts with Limited Edition etching, plus 50 Gems! This offer is only good available until the end of August.

Kingdomsccg is offline

Our service provider has just informed us that they have a fibre cut that is affecting our services.  There is no ETA at this time.  We keep everyone updated as best we can.  Thank you

Downtime: July 16, 2015

Just a quick note to let players know that Kingdoms CCG will be offline from 8 am EST until noon EST tomorrow, July 16, 2015.

This will be for another pure server maintenance. No new content or coding changes will be made at this time. This should complete our maintenance and we'll be back to getting new content up next week.

One of the things we'll be putting up next week is our Season 4 prize card... a variant art version of the popular card "Soul Drain". Here is the final artwork:

Check out some additional new artwork, including our upcoming Heroes on our Facebook fan page here: https://www.facebook.com/KingdomsCCG

A Look At Arena Season 3

Arena Season 3 is now in the books and its time to look at how we're doing from a balancing perspective.

Limited right now is a surprisingly good state. For the first time that I can remember, there is no hero that appears in 20% of games (looking at the top 100 players). The most used Limited Hero is Bahamut who appears in 19% of battles, and has a positive win ratio, but a ratio that is no higher than Akatril who appears in just 7% of battles.

The top 5 heroes in Limited by usage are: (remember % will total 200%, not 100%):

Bahamut: 19%

Arcanos: 18%

Abaddon: 16%

Amarus: 15%

Jorma: 15%

(Ichor and Devroth are next, both with 14%)

Overall I'm very happy with Limited right now.

Standard, on the other hand, has really come down to three decks:

Thania Raise the Guard/Paragon

Dravkas Raise the Guard/Paragon/Firestorm Shaman

Arcanos Burn/Control

These three decks appear in 90% of battles:

Dravkas 32%

Thania 30%

Arcanos 28%

As well, the Raise the Guard combo - Manacycle Wizard, Fae Paragon and Raise the Guard - take up three spots in the top 10 cards played in Standard (2, 3, and 6 respectively).

Raise the Guard was one of the first cards on the Watch List and we are now looking at how to get it under control. Both Fae Paragon and Firestorm Shaman (which itself has been a concern for two years) are also being looked at. We will be announcing what changes, if any, will be made next week and encourage players to discuss these cards in the forums.

Please note that if Raise the Guard is changed, we will be offering a trade in period.

We're not only reviewing the over achieving cards, but also looking at many of the "bottom of the barrel" rares to see if we can give them a little boost. Sure, most still won't make a large impact on competitive play, but if we can make them more fun to allow for niche play, it will be worth it. A thread on this topic can be found here.

Have a great weekend and we'll see you on the battlefield!

Update is Live!

For a full run down of the improvements in today's release, please read last week's blog post.

Of course we have a few extra surprises for you:

Summoner's Gambit Bundle

The Bard Bundle has been replaced with a new bundle that includes PvP season 1's Summoner's Gambit card instead of the Bard. It's an amazing value with 150 Gems and the card for just $10!

If you've already purchased the Bard Bundle you WILL be able to purchase this bundle as well. And if you hadn't, don't worry we'll switch between the two bundles every so often so that players can get both if they so desire.

And yes, if you do purchase the new bundle, you will unlock Summoner's Gambit in the Prize card section of the shop so that you can get copies 2-4.

Purchase Bonus Packs

Now when you spend $20 or more on a single Kingdoms purchase, you will receive Bonus packs in addition to everything else you purchased. Each Bonus pack contains three cards, two of which are guaranteed to be rare or better. It is even possible to get a Rare, Epic and Legendary in a single Bonus pack.

Spam Account Prevention

Recently we had the unfortunate situation where a user repeatedly spammed chat with the use of alt accounts, creating a very negative user experience. To prevent this from happening in the future, all new accounts will be required to get 10 wins before they can join the chat. We hope that this will create a serious enough speed bump for those who wish to abuse chat with multiple accounts and help our moderators maintain an enjoyable chat space.

We hope that you enjoy these new changes to Kingdoms CCG and we'll see you on the battlefield!