MtG cards are NOT necessarily unique snowflakes, themes are not accidental, so I don't know where you get that MtG players wants those things.
Either way, my point is that when mechanics work together and a theme builds an identity, whether or not it has a single ability as a "racial" or if they are all named the same becomes largely irrelevant to whether people identify them as a theme. While having a racial and lack of additional identify and mechanics tend to make themes boring or simply not work at all. And this sentiment from you Ragic also seems serves to inform me as to why you really like the subscription model for Pox from another point of view - you see this as an "army" game, and not a card game. And for anyone that doesn't consider this a deckbuilding card game, the idea of buying packs of random cards basically has to by definition be ill-fitting. And certainly the Warhammer model of buying exactly the guys you want seems like something you'd prefer (and has obviously been successful for them). (I am not making a judgement here, but it is something that just came to mind.)
I think it'd interesting to think about where themes came from in Pox. Factions are, in their own way, a theme. FS is the "water" theme faction with aquatic creatures and things. And when the game isn't that large, most of the runes in the faction "fit" that larger theme for the most part. As the game expanded though, sub-themes began to develop and introduce as designers explored more of the design space. I think this is pretty inevitable for a game of this type which releases quite a bit of content and relies primarily on expansions for money. Contrast this with a true tabletop game like Warhammer which introduces far less new content, and relies on a significantly higher price point per unit and the fact that most people buy slowly over time for their revenue.
from the first preview... "Themes In the next week or so I will post some more concrete examples. Themes are fun, thats clear. Fun way to build a battlegroup, fun way to play. However I have less of an affinity for obvious/forced themes. " btw, the other difference between pox and warhammer is that warhammer survives almost exclusively on the concept of balanced competition whereas pox survives on the idea of being 'content driven'. iow, balanced competition is deliberately sacrificed in order to sell powercreep.
My interpretation of a "forced" theme is a theme in which there's a specific way to build it and the runes are designed to only work well in that deck and work poorly anywhere else. I think example of forced themes is any theme from YuGiOh, they're all incredibly forced.
Hey, there are dozens of ways to build Harpies, various to construct Mist Valley ... Sure, there are some that will not work with anything else, but most have a good chunk of flexibility.
They have some flexibility. Older themes in YuGiOh are better but even they aren't the best. Take almost any theme from the last couple years in YuGiOh, all the cards for it are printed across 2-3 expansions, there's exactly enough good cards with the appropriate theme specific tech plus staples to fill out the 40 card deck and almost every rendition of those decks is identical. There are a couple of good themes (Blackwings, Heroes, etc...) that have been printed for a long time but the vast majority of the themes are very forced.
You will have to ask Gedden to explain that one. I suspect Gedden is referring specifically to racials that basically say "play all these things together all the time and not with anything else." Personally, I think you can explicitly design themes, while still leaving room for them to be used in theme or not. There's a pretty big difference between the original Barb racial which basically said "you'd better cram as many of these dudes in there as possible" and some of the others. I would also note that the new ZA is still more "forced" by this definition, but seems to be acceptable for the dev.s I would say that Warhammer is theoretical balance, but if you actually play it, I've found most games tend to play out fairly lopsidedly (usually on the part of the person who is luckier, more nitpicky or more knowledgable). The game's strength comes from its stories and heroic moment. That game where my warjack survived 2 more rounds than he should have and I flanked with such and such. Or that crazy roll that suddenly turned the game around. No one from my group ever talks about "balance" when it comes to Warhammer. I would also note that "decks" aren't "themes." So when we have someone like iPox discovering a cool combo - we praise him because it's cool and accidental, but at the same time that's a deck and in no way would I call it a theme. Admittedly, definitions for these things kind of loose for the most part, but that's my opinion.
while themes offer "forced" (to some extention) synergy, their development is still benefitting the game. the sole reason for this is that developing themes helps to build both type of decks: those race-themes decks and ability-synergy ones. I do understand how good ability-synergy decks seem in theory. however, pox has shown us that the best way to develop those decks is actually not to develop them at all. in other words, they will tweak themselves with a time, naturally. everytime developers try to help one of those so-called hipster decks, they fail. and it's not their fault. it's just that they go against their (those decks) nature. on top of that, the synergy is usually tend to be overkilled. we have heard plenty of "too much synergy" complains overtime. one of the bigguest issues with non race-themed decks is absolute lack of consistency. abilities tend to work diferently and it's not the matter of bugs or not WAI, but usually lack of thoughts how they should be coded. it seels like the person who is coding the game doesn't work closely with the person who is designing the game and thinking about ideas. in fact, my guess would be that some part of design is sacrificed/killed just because of the coding person not playing the game (?). I wish revamp would be about mainstreaming abilities. that's like the only way to success if we're really interested in synergy decks.
It's worth keeping in mind that much of the ability coding has likely been done by various individuals over a long time. PoxNora's ability code is legacy at this point and can be hard to modify as a result. Personally I get the impression that much of the code isn't very well encapsulated. If each ability/event did exactly what it said it did and then let whatever other abilities go it should work pretty closely to how the player thinks things should work but I imagine that there's some gimmicking in the code that get's things done in ways that simulate the desired effect rather than enact them in a more direct fashion. If that doesn't make sense I blame the CS part of my brain.
Just as a side note, IS as an example when the game came out had no forced theme or synergy outside of IS faction. Phalanx was the original IS theme that may or may not have been intended by the devs, but which was embraced later especially by its player base. There were no forced interactions or restrictions other than you had to play the runes in a specific way i.e. in a tight group using AOE buffs or target buffs. However you were free to leverage it in different ways with the focus being on how you wanted the phalanx to build, if you wanted it to be a pure phalanx or have potential to rush out and break out if need be. Incidentally that theme also leveraged the unique designs of each race with in IS. Humans were faster, mostly more damage focused with lower hp and defense but they kept the IS flavor of support abilities being a key point with units like the barbarian commander but for the most part even that unit was a combat unit. Renegade, interrogator , houndmaster all had a faster, more offensive mindset compared to the axe guard, defender, pov etc. Races had a purpose to exist and added to the the theme in their own way. Their was NO dwarf deck, construct deck, barbarian deck and honestly the themes were better for it.
I feel that some part of potential decks in META rotation are drown just because of that. I'm not blaming anyone who is reponsible for design/code. in fact, I think it's more of our, players, fault that we found so many synergies/interesting ways to play (yay to us!), but it feels like now is the best opportunity to achieve it. I honestly expected this is what revamp will be. so that's why I was disappointed by those previews. it was nothing like that... it's virtually impossible to toy with META. not everything should be about how you pilote specific deck, some decks could be driven by META. in other words, some decks based on countering. we could rotate META. remember, when IS/FW equipment ap denial was the hottest thing few months ago? what you could you do? even running Unstoppable champions (which would seem naturally reasonable counter to it was not a tool at all). not everything should be nerfed, maybe we could spread some tools to play around specific FOTM. but all these things sound good just in theory. in poxnora, coding is from 1997 so all you can do is just hope thing will work. at the moment, it would be reasonable to think that anti-relocation things (Planar Dissonance, that KF mass equipment spell or Punish+Assault) could help you against META. nop, everything works as they want. that relocation thing from minotaurs, it's not exactly relocation. and that's enough to say how stupidly some things are designed/outdated...
Given the amount of code I must assume is involved to house the function of every single ability I've no doubt that it would take DoG at least a year if they wanted to recode them to work properly. The only other option is that they can fix non-WAI interactions as they come up band-aid style. It's a bad position either way.
I know some people doing coding professionally, and one working in a Bank told me: Of all solutions band-aid fixes last the longest. I've made the same experience in other regards; once a system is settled, changing it is a major pain in the ass. Not that it would become less necessary because of that.
Interesting, that's never been my experience. Not that band aid fixes don't work but because the types of things they usually fix are indicative of a larger disconnect between how the code works and how the coder/player thinks it works. A band aid fix may fix a particular broken interaction but often won't account for any other interaction with that rune/ability that's broken.
I liked the ZA one. For Nokhan Do, It seems clumsy, I prefer a more understandable one: NKD 1 - CD 2, Next time target champion within 10 spaces makes an attack against this unit, that attack automatically misses. This effect is hidden until triggered. This effect does not trigger if this unit is Paralyzed or Stunned. NKD 2 - CD 2, Next time target champion within 10 spaces makes an attack against this unit, that attack automatically misses. If the attack missed, this champion performs a basic attack against the enemy. This effect is hidden until triggered. This effect does not trigger if this unit is Paralyzed or Stunned.
Yes, the saying isn't a sign of quality of bandaid fixes, its just saying that it is prohibitively expensive/inconvenient to change them when you can make do with more bandaid fixes. So your point is exactly right - it should be fixed properly, but somehow you usually don't get around to.
