technically the solution the OP offers is efficient and easy to implement. ie a bandaid. bandaids are ugly and people play games for the aesthetic appeal as much as anything else.
Band-Aids can always be replaced with a gaze pad later. He is not saying that it is a fix all. He admits that. I think he just wants something in-place while it gets looked at more. Though I don't like his specific Band-Aid idea; I can agree with his overall opinion. This game has the merits of a TCG, and a Table Top game, but it also has the detriments. One of those is Draw luck. I am for alleviating it. Thebigchiefs idea of a mulligan is also a good idea.
There are two things I've long thought the game could use: Mulligans: At the cost of 1(or 2) less reveals, completely re-shuffle and reveal a new set of runes. (Of course only available on the user's first turn). AP pool of 3: Single use, Costs 12 Shrine health, grants 3 ap to a single target -- This is to prevent speed draw wins. Too many preordained runes, although supportive of certain BG archetypes, are a cause of worry. The preordained ability should be reserved for runes who have to have it to be at all effective. Not something carelessly used that would likely result in more problems than it fixes. Strategy begins at the deck building stage, with mulligans, and a proper build it should be exceedingly unlikely that the user would have no champions, limiting this case mostly to users who do not include enough champions for a competitive BG, which should be cause for punitive circumstance where they start with nothing.
im not arguing that his solution doesn't fix it. im arguing that his fix is unappealing with regards to the look and feel of the game. you could make the case that a first turn stealth champ in some cases can be game winning. or a first turn flier. should we have counter champs to those mechanics modified in a similar fashion? why not just start with the whole runedock revealed?
Currently, I believe, we have two good candidates for the first turns issue, of which neither appears as a bandaid-solution if done right, which we may hope are easy to implement: Mulligans (see posts #12, #13 and #23) Shrine generated emergency Champions (see posts #3, #9, #11) Game begins with closed Fonts (see posts #27 and #28) Game begins with all Runes revealed (see post #35) Edit: Will update this list in the original post from now on.
At this point why not just start the game with the font closest to shrine already capped... because that's basically what I'm getting here with a layer of hair-splitting.
Well, that would be another possiblity. We have such an effect in the Rune Consume Resources. I'm not certain how hard it would be to create such an effect, but I will add this as third current solution. The point is, and I repeat myself here, if we make suggestions, those suggestions have to work and those suggestions have to be easy to implement. It's easy to find solutions that work, the forums are full of those. But what our developer team needs are suggestions that solve possible issues, and are reasonably easy to implement. This plea becomes more important the less important the issue at hand.
Haven't read all suggestions since I am sleepy, but why not just make certain number of spaces between the nearest shrine deployment zone and the first font? Like Between 1 and 6 is okay. 7, 8 and 9 are not okay. Between 10 and 12 is okay. This would make it so champions with movement speed 7 to 9 can't contest fonts champions with 6 movement speed wouldn't be able to.
Developer time is a limited resource, and whenever I read these forums, I get the impression that there are so many issues that need to be addressed. The lession is: If you only ask for the proper, most complete and time consuming solution, chances are nothing will happen.
Would something along the lines of a already deployed speed font for both sides that allows runes to race to a font and pushes all runes that are within an area from the font are adjusted to a preset speed kind of thing work? Just think even your slowest rune can become Sanic
The breadth of balancing options involving current variables should be fully explored and tinkered with before new mechanics are introduced as compensation.
I was actually serious when I asked why not start with the runedock revesled. Tcg's use draw luck to provide play diversity but in a strategy game those luck elements are unappealing. Pox is more of a strategy game than a tcg. Talking about dev time I can think of no easier fix. If this creates new problems it's only because some champs are balanced around the fact that you might not draw it first turn. That would need to be addressed as well I suppose.
The only problem I see with this suggestion is that it alters the game way more than any of the other suggestions. But I'm not the judge here, therefore I add it to the list of options to consider.
I think any idea with a champion being spawned is bad. As if you do have a bad draw and the opponent has a good one. Suddenely you are facing an 8 speed and seven speed champion.
I'll be honest, I haven't read this yet, but any time I see ipox post something I get nervous that he's discovered the next shrine explodingly annoying trick.
Although difficult to alter, we are committed to reworking the map system under the hood, as soon as we get the time to - its not going to be until after the expansion sometime, but its something discussed regularly internally and we have already begun planning some changes with the council for maps. So its just a small matter of time now, compared to before when it seemed like an impossible goal.
What i was thinking is that the problem is the dimensions of the the map. you guys can't change the it right so i'm what i'm suggesting is complete remake of the maps start from the design stage since you know what the map looks like all we need to do is ask the artists to recreate the whole map and while changing the dimensions of the map makeing it bigger/wider This will be helpful for the Auxilium map.
