Boosts, Commanders and Defenders OH MY!

I'm digressing but i think prestige should be turn to AOE as well giving global immunity to fear is annoying as hell same with motivate

 

Boost rnk3 range 6

while for defender i would like to see something like this:

Defender rank 1: +1 def range 5
Defender rank 2: +2 def range 4
defender rank 3: +3 def range 3

Or only rank 1 and rank 3 but with more defense, less range.

 

Please remove HP from limited-range abilities.
It always feels so bad when moving a unit in the wrong way causes it to suddenly die, and you have to micro to not kill it.

As a related proposal, can a detection unit be made to stop when it detects something, so you don't have to move it one space at a time?

 

I would prefer it if Boosts (not the suggested ones) got removed.

Boost Skele/Construct make them powerful, but are very bland and could be replaced with more interesting mechanics.

 

Agree 1000000% with both of these.

Disagree with the proposed changes. Make boost global to help improve the racial themes and not make it so you have to constantly count squares and micromanage movement. Commander should be a better ability because it's on racial "leaders" and +1 damage, whoop-dee-doo. +1ap at the start of the turn for classes/races within 5 spaces (and a higher nora cost) would be more thematic and beneficial. Defender is an ability I hate to see go race/class only. Not everything has to be restricted to race/class and a guy who makes his nearby allies more defensive regardless of what race they are is not a crazy idea. I'd suggest cutting the range to 3 and cutting nora cost in half.

With faction bonuses and these changes and others, I think you have to really be careful about not making everything too bland. The proposed commander change wouldn't make me think twice about including the unit unless I liked its nora cost and other abilities/stats. Boost is nice but, again, I'm not gonna include the rune in my bg for +4 or +7 hp in a limited area unless it brings more to the table. I'd much rather see the runes with those buff abilities be considered very important, and a painful loss if they get killed.

 

What about the variations of boost such as the pride and soul racial bonus of leoss, or regal presence which gives abilities and stats in a bundle? Theoretically would they be replaced with the new boost system or would boost be stackable with the racials? What happens when a non racial based thematic boost (ie. a class based paladin style) overlaps a racial boost?

 

Personally I would just make the HP loss apply at the end of the turn or when an ability (including basic attack) is used.

 

One issue with this vs. constructs is that the boosting unit in constructs would not benefit from the boost. In, lets say skeletons, the boosting unit benefits from the boost, so 2 boost units next to each other are an advantage. This is not the same with constructs.

What this means is, Boost MY RACE should cost more than Boost YOUR RACE, as it is easier to stack MY RACE units together.

 

I don't particularly like the limited range for the bonuses...but I guess it beats turtling back with all your buff guys so whatever.

On some maps half your champs will never get the bonuses.

 

@Sokolov would boost 1 stack with boost 2? I feel the answer is the most obvious one but I was curious.

 

Not really. Restrictions bread creativity. Freedom of choice almost always results in optimization which leads to the same bg or bg types over and over again. Games have built in rules/restrictions for a reason and so should/do factions.

Im not saying factions dont or shouldn't have tools to deal with situations, every faction should have a way to "cleanse" but how they cleanse or counter any situation should matter. Learning to leverage the factions, and their respective inner themes strong and weak points is an important part of the game. Otherwise its just who can build the best circus deck with in some named rune grouping.

Hell IS vs ST dawn of war style phalanx vs snow cone makers was an amazing frustrating and rewarding game. 60+ def phalanx units moving 2-3 spaces through impeding snow while taking a frost cone to the face every other turn or so for 2-5 damage. It came down to who could work their theme/faction better and who had better timing/ play options built into their deck. Yet either player COULD win and either faction had those tools they needed to win.

Be it as simple as shrine rushing or drowning( stupid frog jerks) or defensive counters or a hammer strike to lock down a teleporting mage. It was winnable, maybe some match ups were harder then others but thats a GOOD thing.

 

Its a good thing in so far as not every faction can do it AND its a semi unique playstyle which helps break up the routine of play game after game against the same type of decks.

And just saying its unstable is the same as saying its good. Perspective.

Again what makes it seem like to much or very well BE to much right now is the ease of which its done, the price vs cost of most of the abilities/runes that do it, and the loss of the built in restrictions to those abilities and the factions that wield them. Which we agree on. Make it harder to do with range restrictions that actually pose a placement challenge, target restrictions that actually reduce the ease of use of the booster, price them correctly as they are very powerful, rebuild factional weak points that justify the ability to create phalanx like units. This is true for every buffer type unit not just defensive buffers.

 

Those kinds of changes might work, they seem fine. It sounds rooted in a core attitude towards Pox I don't wholly agree with, but that's fine.

Unstable in no way means good. See Chopping Blocks. Made a huge ol' post about it a while back. Unstable means likely to be great or terrible with less chance for a consistent space in between - pretty much what it sounds like.

 

Which is a viable balance design. They are usually called situational and have existed through out all games like this. There are whole player types that like random chance and situational awesome runes. Its usually when the situation is unfair i.e. faction hunter type runes that people have issues with it. I mean think about games that have elemental weaknesses or crit% chances. They have skills that are huge risks for high rewards and its usually balanced by that risk to fail or the ease of countering which again is higher now then ever before. Its just the ease of stacking and the power of those stacks vs their price is also higher then ever before.

 

Not quite what I mean by unstable. Here's that post I was talking about that goes through what I mean: http://forums.poxnora.com/index.php?threads/chopping-blocks.8875/#post-120942

Saying phalanxing is unstable is a bit harder of a sell than a simple system of numbers, but I find it convincing. Which is, of course, not to say something being broken is bad, like you say (although not quite with the same target): I'll repeat from that post that Dark Souls and Demon Souls PvP wouldn't be what they were if they weren't broke as hell.

 

Really? I can't see consolidation as a higher priority than, well, than anything whatsoever. Especially since Ronin was a strong move in the opposite direction.

My immediate reaction to the proposal: you're continuing to break the back of PvE in order to homogenize PvP even more. This isn't consolidation so much as global ner***e, particularly the change to Commander. Don't get me wrong; I've no doubt you'll re-balance campaigns and skirmishes sometime within the next decade. I'm looking forward to the return of fun in PvE so I can go back to spending money on the game.

 

What was fun about PvE before?

AI was trash since the beginning of the game, so I'm interested in people's opinion about that.

 

Wouldnt splitting the boost and bonuses like that make skeleton decks even slower than before requiring multiple champions to be deployed to get a similar effect to the old boost and that's even if fw gets the new boost, defender , and commander considering that the ability's would effect almost all fw decks

 

It depends how you look at it, you can get some boosts out quicker because they are cheaper.