Hardcore game

Discussion in 'General Discussion' started by Latviak, Apr 20, 2014.

  1. Latviak

    Latviak New Member

    Hi everyone, I am returning player and some people might remember me for making ridiculous posts.
    Nice to see so many changes and so much work from Owls, you are doing brilliant. But today i want to speak about some core aspects of the game.

    So after playing for few days and losing (mostly) to simple decks and lower leagues with my UD goodies i understood that i suck at this game. Most of the time because of one silly misstep.

    Generally what i want to say is that this game is too unforgiving. Basically it comes down to the game of 1 misstep. If current policy is to attract players then imo this is the issue. I have 2 years of experience and i still manage to do these missteps. Now imagine new players getting completely destroyed every time. They will just drop the game. I know the revamp is coming and i think this will be a great improvement but i dont see it fixing the problem because misplacing a champ 1 space will still cost many games(most of them in fact).

    So to raise the discussion i have some statements and questions.
    1. Why this game is/is not "game of 1 misstep"
    2.How much impact this brings on NUX?
    3.Should devs look forward to adress this issue?
    4.If yes then what are suggestions?
     
  2. Dolphinllc

    Dolphinllc Member

    This was part of a push in the early years of the game to remove all randomness from the game. Block, Dodge, etc used to give static percentage to miss, instead of the single 100% use they have now. Some of the more popular and higher ranked players were complaining that they couldn't properly anticipate what was going to happen when they didn't know if their champion would block or not, and that it was ruining their gameplay experience.

    I personally liked the old way, and believe that all real strategy games have some degree of chance in them. I am unsure why Octopi catered to those asking for less chance, because as you are now pointing out, it becomes less of a battlefield strategy game of weighing options and more of a game of rock>paper>scissors with the first person to make a mistake the looser. It reminds me of more Magic the Gathering than a miniature based strategy/combat game in the way that there are so many hard counters.

    I would love to see some randomness back in Pox Nora, and don't really understand why it was ever removed. Removing all randomness from a battlefield strategy game is doing nothing but make it a game focused on hard numbers rather than risk vs reward and tactical choices. With the amount of "Stuff" present on the board and going on in the game, it is almost impossible for new, let alone most players to take it all in and still keep their turns under the maximum timer, and still keep track of everything and being able to count all squares, AP usage on skills, possible spells in the enemies dock, any passive abilities.
     
    Last edited: Apr 20, 2014
  3. Regulate

    Regulate I need me some PIE!

    You are wrong and it makes me angry that you feel this way.
     
  4. Schmacko

    Schmacko I need me some PIE!

    You have to think of it more as chess mixed with MtG than a tabletop dice based wargame mixed with MtG. If a bad chess player makes "1 misstep" against a much better chess player they are going to lose. It just is what it is. You have to learn from your mistakes and do more better next time. The only real random elements left in the game are draw, map selection, and who goes first. You have to try and manage your risk in those elements through your BG creation skillz.

    In an ideal pox enviornment there'd be like 1000 people in the ranked room vs sub 100. You'd then be much more likely to be matched up with someone of your skill level and when you make a mistake there'd be a greater chance of them making one of there own or failing to capitalize. Right now you just kind of have to accept that unforced errors can and will lose you games. Such is life.
     
  5. Greysands22

    Greysands22 I need me some PIE!

    It really has nothing to do with randomness. I am against random chance.

    It has more to do with powercreep. Things are one rounded so easily you leave something in range of an instagib, it's going to get instagibbed.

    And I mean play semi regularly and I still miss things like assault and punish on the same champ and stuff.

    I think maybe when things aren't 7 speed 19 dmg and have 7 abilities it might slow the pace of the game down a bit which would be nice.
     
    Latviak likes this.
  6. Latviak

    Latviak New Member

    Well as in strategy as in real life luck plays important role, after all what is a soldier without luck? What is a general without luck? But honestly i am against adding chance to this game because now if I dont screw the turn then Fortune will. More mess more frustrations.

    As much as i agree with you i would still like to see some changes that would "forgive" those mistakes. This is a silly example but i liked concept in "Battleforge" where you slowly regain resources equal to 80% of your lost troop cost and played spells.

    Yes, this will be a great deal, but i think it has something to do with a single champion being too important piece of the battlefield, losing one champion (even if it wasnt in a single turn) sets you into too big disadvantage. When i started playing i remember myself thinking that to win this game you have to take out a single opponent champion before he takes yours and then things will just snowball. Seems like this is still a thing.
     
  7. Dolphinllc

    Dolphinllc Member

    Perhaps I used the term strategy in too broad a sense. There is overall strategy in all games, even chess and checkers. Battlefield Strategy is what I was referring to. Whereas Chess and Checkers are not representational of a dynamic battlefield, but are merely physical representations of the same static possibility. They are more akin to mental training and logic puzzles than strategy.

    In a chess type game, strategy is boiled down entirely to one single thing: Anticipation/Foresight - seeing what possibilities exist on the board. In a strategy game, chance gives many more aspects that just that one game winning attribute, and is thus more forgiving to those that are not masters of it.

    edit:

    Instead of forcing everyone down the same path, I think it would be great to open up some new game styles with features such as Fog of War, entire army starting deployed, random chance, etc.

    So many possibilities I am surprised they haven't branched out in terms of gameplay already. That may be due to the pbase size though and possible dilution.
     
    Last edited: Apr 20, 2014
  8. Zenity

    Zenity Devotee of the Blood Owl

    Two things:

    1) Like others have said, this really is a lot like Chess, and just like Chess, the better player can quickly gain an almost insurmountable advantage. A single misstep can ruin the whole game for you. But just like in Chess, it's usually the player to make the "second to last mistake" who wins. Chess actually isn't a fantastic game for this reason, and it's almost pointless to play it with somebody out of your skill range. This isn't necessarily a huge problem, unless almost all the current players are a lot stronger than a beginner would be. Which just happens to be the case with Pox... So anybody who believes that a beginner can have fun with the game right now, is simply fooling themselves. It's not going to happen until the game has a critical mass of new players to play against each other again.

    2) The revamp will play a bigger role in this than you give it credit for in my opinion. It doesn't take that much time to learn the rules of Chess, and then you know when you screwed up and why. But right now Pox is so overwhelmingly complex, that a beginner has no chance whatsoever to understand all that's going on, and that's simply frustrating and unfair. I recently saw a match between top 20 players in which at least one of the players was making a bunch of horrible mistakes (which I would have made as well of course), because he seemingly missed or misunderstood some details of the rules. The goal of the revamp has to be to make the game readable "over the board" again.

    When it comes down to it though, Pox will probably always be a hardcore game, dressed in a casual suit. That's what it excels at, and I don't think that needs to change.
     
  9. Zenity

    Zenity Devotee of the Blood Owl

    Chess is 95% tactics and 5% strategy, but there are deterministic games which have a much larger element of strategy. Go for example is very much about strategy and still has not a single random element to it.

    That said, Pox Nora will always have a large element of chance and unpredictability to it, because you don't know your opponent's hand. I don't believe that it requires any additional elements of luck on the battlefield to create unpredictability.
     
    DarkJello likes this.
  10. RedDain

    RedDain I need me some PIE!

    I think the best thing would be to make it very clear to all newcomers that this game is frigging HARD. That they WILL lose a LOT of games before they are comfortable. That the ply depth of Pox is many orders of magnitude greater than Chess or Go, and that the complexity and depth of the game will ensure multiple losses in their early days.

    Next, strictly enforce a set of "beginners' arenas" and "beginners' ladders" - people with less than X number of games, rank lower than Y, and fewer than Z wins do NOT get matched with experienced players, unless it is a friendly, intentional, created match. Uncommon beginners should never be matched with Exo veterans, and uncommon beginners should never even get matched with uncommon veterans, unless they specifically and intentionally choose to do so.

    Once a beginner has won enough games against other beginners, they should then be allowed to join the ranked ladders.

    The above would also prevent alt-making for purposes of noob-farming and rank-jumping on the part of veteran players.
     
    DarkJello, Nemorga and Dolphinllc like this.
  11. Latviak

    Latviak New Member

    It is not so much about overall complexity, i am adressing "1 little misstep determines the game" problem. If i lose a LOT i want to at least lose because opponent outsmarted me not because i misplaced my Grimlic 1 space too close. Snowball effect from losing a single champion is too big.
     
  12. exiledtyrant

    exiledtyrant Active Member

    I hate when I attack the wrong unit or make my unit move rather than attack. It's also infuriating to put my equip or spell buff on an opposing unit by mistake. I wish the camera could get swiveled a bit so i can see what's going on better, and that there was a confirmation for equips and spells. Playing with a lot of units especially something like a map full of zombies can make it very hard to be precise at times. Is there a cancel spell button at all? Sometimes I pick an global spell instead of the rune next to it and I have to just drag it across the screen so it misfires. That's not really ever explained though.
     
  13. Boozha

    Boozha I need me some PIE!

    Chance is okay in macroscopic games, not in a microscopic game like this. If you use 100 gunmen and 50 miss it is much more averaged than if you use 2 champions and each has a chance of 50% to miss. Even Age of Wonders has cut back on chance.

    As for accidentally making the wrong move, thats a problem of user interface, which is, in Pox, not the dream of my sleepless nights, to translate a German saying.

    To intentially cancelling spells, if you drag them back to the rune dock they do nothing.
     
  14. LoganMkv

    LoganMkv I need me some PIE!

    You try to persuade yourself that it's a problem, but in fact your problem is same as for people blaming rarity, powercreep, unique design runes, complexity, and whatever else — you just can't accept losing. Lost a game because of bad positioning - not a big deal, q again and don't make that mistake next time. Eventully you'd make far less mistakes, and even if you make one you'd see comeback options.
     
  15. only

    only Active Member

    well, a luck question was touched and I would share sentiment that a little bit of healthy randomness might be fresh for the game. the thing is that with stupid random factors broought by Kas Guide and Seekers of the Source, I doubt community would stand it.

    healthy randomness is a fun way to increase strategy/outcome chances. on top of that, you could also create random factors that way you could minimize them. I really dig those designs.
     
  16. Sarashu

    Sarashu The King of Potatoes

    The idea of 'snowballing' seems negative to me. Think about it, does snowballing make the first mistake determine the outcome, even if the other player makes mistakes after that? Rather each mistake should give the opponent a degree of advantage, and the one who makes the most clever moves/fewest mistakes should win (generally). Would you want your game to be ezmode if your opponent makes the first mistake?

    That said, if a person really makes zero mistakes compared to their opponent, they do probably deserve to win. Hmm, perhaps a very skilled player against a less skilled player could 'look' like snowballing, if they just kept increasing advantage. But it would only 'truly' be snowballing if the first mistake > everything else between similarly skilled players. (Alternately, if the opponent set up some sort of 'master plan' and you fell for it, he probably deserves to win). In the OP's case, we don't know if he was truly similarly skilled to his opponents or it just 'seemed' to be snowballing. Of course, this is all conceptual, I am a newbie and can't assert much about the game itself.

    As for randomness, it can definitely be a good thing. If it keeps creating new 'battlefields', and new decisions to make every game, it definitely adds something to the game. I'm not sure about % dodge and things, but random drawing is used so much because it's a good way to scramble up new 'battlefields'.
     
    Last edited: Apr 20, 2014
  17. Latviak

    Latviak New Member

    Yes, I agree with all your statements, however wouldn't it be better if game was less punishing? For example making all runes cheaper so that if you lose a piece it is not big deal. I know it is silly example yet better than saying "everything is fine, git gud scrub". I mean do you really like to play this way?

    All I am saying is that this advantage is too big r well since i am the only one thinking this way probably I am wrong.
     
  18. Boozha

    Boozha I need me some PIE!

    This game has always defined itself in an elitist manner: It is extremely complex, hard to learn, incredibly hard to master. If you removed ranking completely I could tell you which league someone was in with some reliability just based on how elegantly he plays.

    As for snowballing, I don't like losing on one disadvantage either, but it kind of is the name of the game. There have been many cool games I watched which sported incredible comebacks, but all in all, making a mistake is going to give you a hard time indeed.
     

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