Depreciation of themes causes stagnation in the meta

Dear DOG,

You were not hear for this transition in Pox. I wish you had been. I am also disappointed that your consultant did not articulate this, as it was largely his efforts that brought theme diversity to the meta play.

Allow me to digress:

Under the direction of CorpsE the game raged with power. As a result, the meta gamer was forced into creating goodstuffs decks to be competitive. In lower rank echelons it was complete chaos, as most of this power was tied up into limited availability releases, it was not available to the more casual player.

This gave rise to the power of the goodstuffs split faction deck. Man those were a beast, they still are, tbh. Problem was, they were very volatile. Once those unbeatable decks were created, they'd be nerfed. The deck builder would go and create a different combination with a different set of split faction. To compete in this erra you had to have access to nearly the entire set of runes. This erra was so devastating to Pox. It even spawned what you now know as Ragick.

So when CorpsE was being chased to the gate with torch-wielding Poxers, a new king rose from the ashes. The very fellow wearing his fingers out championing your revamp.

Sok began with a "mini-revamp" as his first order of business. It wasn't exactly a revamp, per se, but more of a way to get the masses to drop the pitch forks and torches and go home. It was a wide-reaching nerf and adjustment patch.

It didn't do anything to power levels or power trends, as you can see by how Pox was when you took over.

Theme love actually started with CorpsE. Everyone loved it!

Finally! diversity in the meta! When Hawk asked us what we wanted, we'd reply back with 80-90% theme-based demands.

Sok did great things with themes. Maybe he did too much in the way of power, but he laid the foundation that states: A theme can be cohesive and the result of that cohesion can compete with the result of mixing power runes. Outside of that cohesion, the result will vary, but almost always be less.

This took a long time to come about, and an even longer time to develop into a real solution that could be pushed out in multiple iterations to each faction.

Now I am done with my digression.

I believe that if theme development cured or combated meta goodstuffs stagnation, that theme depreciation will cause meta stagnation to resurface.

Exception: Moga. I'm completely lost as to how you say you wanted to change the game and how you brought Moga live, the two are contradictory.

Yours truly,

Bakki

 

Couldn't have said better, agreed 110%.

 

I am also in complete agreement. The dismantling of the vast majority of themes has dramatically reduced my potential enjoyment of this game.

I have never been fond of the meta goodstuff bgs and with the way things are shaping post revamp I fear my interest may wane.

 

This is true. Sadly only a few of us had the courage to speak out against what we knew would kill the game while others chose to ride the powercreep train and drive players away with snarky l2p posts.

 

There are simply too many runes for Pox Nora to be competitive/coherent, without locking players heavily into themes.

 

@Ragic

Eh? I was a major proponent of themes for this very reason. Others could not define the source of their frustration and fell into a darkness of negativity from which they were continually disruptive and always comparing Pox to other games screaming "WHY CABT YOU BE MORE LIKE THIS GAME?!?!"

I pity them, the fault is not their own.

 

It's fortunate for you that the game has jumped forums several times. It makes rewriting history so much easier.

 

This makes absolutely no sense, the anti-theme deck is the power standard. Themed decks try compete through synergy only available within itself (or only available to that degree within itself).

You'll never be locked into a theme so long as the runes are reasonably available. You'd be able to play a different theme or a non theme creation.

The amount of runes we have gives diversity, the difficulty becomes making sure they all have equal potential to competitively participate.

 

id depretiat u

hmu

 

Gah, I had to like a post by Baskit, now I feel more dirty than after a lab day

And damn, that Na_2S_2_O_3 solution was legendarily dirty.

 

Try Purrel, it works pretty good for me when I'm forced to like your stuff.

 

Glad it doesn't take any heavy measures

 

I meant that there are too many runes to try and balance everything on an individual rune basis. Instead, DOG should try to loosely lock (incentize/de-incentize) players into themes, and then balance those themes; while carefully monitoring divergence from those themes for even further balance.

 

O I c, response to that would be, disagree, I think every conceivable deck type should be valid. If issues with a deck, theme, module or some other synergy prove problematic, I think that should be dealt with as specifically as possible to retain the runes integrity in all its applications. Sometimes the need for balance contradicts the runes use in theme and balance should trump and compensation in cost or reworking given when possible.

 

define valid

 

Valid: competitive within reason.

"Within reason": Theres no way to completely balance everything, and you can always put a deck together of all the crappiest crap and say "look I can't compete, you're wrong". But if you are playing a match against yourself, and have all the runes available on both sides, the best deck X theme can make should match in competitiveness to the best deck Y theme can make and the best FF goodstuffs and the best split faction goodstuffs. Some decks will trump others (minos vs fairies, range hate vs range), but if you played a thousand games against yourself all your choices should have had merit if built and played properly.

 

This is a fairly disconnected reply... maybe I'm reading too much into it.

1) "some themes' specific identities were lost in translation" Thats a cheezy way of saying, the translator did not understand how to translate it, or that the translator intentionally "lost" those identities in translation. Which is it? I've been asking the question all over the forums, crickets.

2) "It doesn't mean the theme don't have new identities" Please give an example and please articulate each theme separately as I am aware that Barbarians have a new racial thats still wierd but less powerful.

3) "I mean, it wasn't like that was the original plan for Ferren" Wow, really? You build a theme, people attach themselves to it, they love it and follow it, they champion it. They don't want it to be OP, but they wan't it to keep its identity, its purpose, its flavor, its synergy, its reason to be played. You created these things, Sok. These are your legacy. They do not have a new identity, they have no identity. Just because you didn't write it down on a piece of paper how they would end up does not make their result any less valid.

 

The Zombie and Witch theme seems ripped. Things like Zo.Ap. should be baseline. The theme needs X number of units out to even work. It is now mixed as base and choice on some units...and in some places the other choices are better, thus you don't pick the theme booster. Witches, same, but you can get away with like only 3 coven units. Yes move coven more debuff, but again, if the choice is Coven or Blind... what are you taking?

Meanwhile.
Bonewing. Prior you could make it a unit that wasn't forced to be in a Skel only deck. Now, one upgrade path is JUST Boost:Skel.

I don't dislike change for change, and removing Swiss Army runes is fine, but what happen? Why are some many units @ base over 100! Why did units like Fleshblight Zombie (which is even more questionable now) loose the tricks that made you use it?
Why are 2 of the 5 stiched 2x2 over 100, while the Mirror/Monolith/Tyrant are not?

Also, east target... on a Knight?