I was discussing about game balance (mainly about new AI3) with some people here in the forums and that made me think about ways to:
- have an appropriate, fitting challenge for any player
- offer sufficient gains for choosing higher level AIs
So here are my ideas:
AI3: maybe tone decks just a bit down – keep three rares –
Imo AI3 will be the first major stop for new players, some decks maybe quite hard for them. If i got that right, the reason AI3 decks were improved in 1.26 a lot, the improvements were mainly to make extensive farming with advanced decks a bit longer and a bit more difficult...with most of the following ideas, i want to move these farming runs towards higher AIs, so AI3 can be focussed on early midgame players and their needs.
AI4 – T500: like the new, planned version by zanz, following ideas to that:
- win card by oracle, allowing to build his T500 deck – altered rules:
All cards within T500 are kind of “virtual” – players can use any card (like in trainer), but they cant use them in their “real” decks. With following restrictions:
o 6 fixed UPGRADED versions of last card won in oracle.
o max. 6 Rares (to limit excessive rare farming – apparently not wanted)
o All other cards would have to be unupgraded.
- Remove pet from oracle (useless), instead offer a one time reward for next match, that is also added to T500 deck (when card is won, one time reward is always included):
o +50 HP
o double draw
o triple mark
These changes would open the way to a huge variety of unique decks in T500 AND give the players some edge for the next fight. By applying these mechanisms T500 would be tougher then AI3, but probably not as tough as it is right now. (Fighting against 100% upgrade decks without a chance to win upgrade is painful for me)
6x one single upgraded card would make AI4 worth fighting. By allowing any player to use any unupgraded card, this would even allow new players, who dont own all cards, to setup a cool deck for T500.
AI5: make preconstructed decks for Half-Bloods, (up to) 50% selected upgraded cards. Give Half-Bloods only 1 or rather 2 of these selected boni:
+ 50 (maybe – 100 HP)
double draw
double - triple mark
double deck
With up to 50% upgraded cards, there would be a reasonable chance of winning an upgraded card. Their modular build would again raise plenty of opportunities for unique decks. I think a half-blood would be tougher to kill as AI4, but putting “normal HP” half-bloods into the mix would make some of them more interesting for farming (faster), while still offering some challenge. But a half-blood would always be faster to kill as a FG, due to his limited amount of boni.
Electrum gain: imho its the need for huge amounts of
right now, which drives people into sensless grinding/farming. Id like to do more quality fights and less grinding. The following two ideas are meant to achieve this:
Tie amount of electrum gain of different AIs to players score -> the more score you have, the more electrum you will gain in higher Ais, but the fewer Electrum you will gain in lower AIs. And partly: The fewer score you have, the more electrum you will gain in lower AIs. But you should be penelized for fighting tough AIs.
I somewhere picked up the term “rubberband” mechanic.
Meaning: If things go wrong (loosing a lot, thus loosing score), you can always go back to regain strength, cause rewards with low AIs will be greater for low score Players. If you are successful, your rewards will simply much better when facing real challenges.
This should end the need of vets to do low AI grinding for best electrum results. The vets would always want to choose the most advanced AI they can take on for maximum card/electrum gain.
Alternatively: A betting system – i already suggested this before and i still like it
You are allowed to bet a certain, additional amount of electrum. The higher the AI-level, the more you are allowed to bet. Maybe there could be settings like “always bet maximum” “never bet” and so on.
Again this is meant to encourage vets to go for higher AIs, even if it will take them longer to kill them. e.g. you can bet up to 50 electrum vs. AI3, but up to 500 electrum vs. AI5.
So defeating a single AI5 can earn you ten times electrum, making it worth it spending 10x more time for that...plus the chance of upgraded cards.
But only FGs still have their full amount of boni and pure upgrade decks. Most challenging, most rewarding.
