[Study]When do Instakill cards become okay?

[OldTrees]

If I remember correctly, Wizards plans to increase the base costs of those kinds of cards by 1 (DB-style cards costing 3, Wrath-style cards costing 5), as well as using more -X/-X and other control-style effects at lower CMCs. Is instant kill designing controllable if developers do not hold onto the belief it is absolutely necessary for the game?

Believing the game needs ultimate attacks has negligible impact on the ability to balance an ultimate attack("an attack without a defense" to differentiate it from things like Otyugh). And, like all design, designing such effects is inherently controllable.

It is the far reaching impact of the design that controls design of other things(Fractal's impact on creature design is a similar example albeit a weaker control). These are design choices that must be made while taking the entirety of the game into account including all of the future.

EtG can handle these kind of cards, however doing so correctly would take much more time than we took designing that Air Bird(I forget the name) with the Swift "Ren"(aka bounce) skill and that spent a long time in development before we released it for peer review.

[ZephyrPhantom]

If I remember correctly, Wizards plans to increase the base costs of those kinds of cards by 1 (DB-style cards costing 3, Wrath-style cards costing 5), as well as using more -X/-X and other control-style effects at lower CMCs. Is instant kill designing controllable if developers do not hold onto the belief it is absolutely necessary for the game?

Believing the game needs ultimate attacks has negligible impact on the ability to balance an ultimate attack("an attack without a defense" to differentiate it from things like Otyugh). And, like all design, designing such effects is inherently controllable.

It is the far reaching impact of the design that controls design of other things(Fractal's impact on creature design is a similar example albeit a weaker control). These are design choices that must be made while taking the entirety of the game into account including all of the future.

EtG can handle these kind of cards, however doing so correctly would take much more time than we took designing that Air Bird(I forget the name) with the Swift "Ren"(aka bounce) skill and that spent a long time in development before we released it for peer review.

Noted. Fenghuang's development did indeed take an unbelievably long time (several months, I believe) even if the resulting card was very high quality. It'd be difficult to imagine the timespan a group would have to take to balance killspells, especially seeing that MtG is now only beginning to work on making it more reasonable after years of Terror/Doom Blade/similar cards.

(That being said, I still would be interested in seeing the steps individual designers would take to attempt to balance killspell designs.)

[OldTrees]

(That being said, I still would be interested in seeing the steps individual designers would take to attempt to balance killspell designs.)

I would start by noting that killspell design puts a hard cap on creature value. So the first thing to do would be to ensure that hard cap was high enough. I would start that by identifying the planned sweet spots of creatures(for instance we chose Fenghuang to be focused on skill use and have a cheapish body 4-6|3-5 because that allowed for early play, medium value per turn, and long lifespan). These sweet spots would be the things we would want to protect from too low a hard cap. Then I would use mass playtesting to determine if the predicted sweet spots existed and if there were any other such spots. Then I would spend time imagining how the game would change over the years and how those changes would impact these sweet spots(Ex: Fractal). This last step of this first part is the hardest, longest, and tied for the least accurate step.

Remembering that the cost to the opponent of using the killspell determines the hard cap and now knowing what I want to protect, I would start working on the cost of the killspell. Since EtG is a deckbuilder game I would need to estimate the frequency of the killspell so that I can balance its cost in a way that creates a RPS (cheap creatures > killspell > expensive creatures > cheaper CC > cheap creatures). This would put the cost to the opponent of using the killspell at some amount(determined above) below the cost to use the most expensive creature sweetspot. This metagame prediction is the other least accurate step.

Then I would add the card, take a month vacation, and return to see the adjusted metagame. Using that adjusted metagame I would use mass playtesting to see how the card needed to be adjusted(as well as start finding out which unforeseen restrictions it will put on me as the designer).

[serprex]

I'm pretty sure "Destroy target creature" as a spell is balanced at ~5 quanta. In elements every creature gets to at least attack once before dying. RT honestly demonstrates that "Destroy target creature" could work at 4 quanta, but there it may impact meta more, & at 3 it starts to really matter _which_ element we're assigning the spell to. In the end basically got it for 2 & for 3, but & op, what's new?

[Sera]

Good thing this was posted, as I wanted a more thorough discussion about this.

I believe that kill spells balance out at some point before it becomes a 1-for-1 trade against a target, taking quanta cost into account. The main use of single-use control spells in the game is an advantageous quanta tradeoff (2 for a 10-cost dragon, etc), though with the added value of potential removal of a combo. The downside is that there's a chance that you might not be able to get a good tradeoff, like if targets are cheap, or if there are no targets at all. A vanilla instakill card would also meet the same problems, so the only question now is when that 1-for-1 trade balances out with the problem of not being able to do advantageous tradeoff. For sure that's below 10 in a mono setup, and I'm leaning to agree on serprex's 5, or maybe 6 if we're being conservative. And we have to face that Elements is not as combo-intensive as Yu-Gi-Oh: stopping a world lock with minor control will definitely win you the game, but destroying a momentum-adren staff does not exactly have the same impact as there may be 4 or 5 more in the deck.

Only problem I see now is that it depreciates HP, like what Ginyu had said. But as of now, "soft CC", as most people call it, also stops creatures with any amount of HP. That's pretty much hard CC, in my opinion. It's something worth comparing with instakill.

Spoiler for Hidden:

A Bigger Bottle of Basilisk's Blood:
6 Spell
Target creature is disabled for 15 turns.

It's not instakill, but it might as well be.

[Higurashi]

A Bigger Bottle of Basilisk's Blood:
6 Spell
Target creature is disabled for 15 turns.

It's not instakill, but it might as well be.

Strange as it may seem, this is a long way from instakill. For rushes and 30-card domination decks it is, but rushes won't pack expensive single-target spells unless they can also target HP and do decent damage. In a long game, soft CC like this can essentially become negative card value as you will have ended up paying 1 card for 0 cards. The reason stalls would still pack this is because there is already more CC and healing in the game, and a way to make it repeatable (BB into Auburn Nymph or healing+Diamond nullifying damage completely).

Either way it's not an equivalent to instakill in the majority of games for 50% of decks that would use it and thus doesn't fit into a balance discussion on instakill effects (it will be different in some domination deck matches too), but it IS a viable alternative.

[ZephyrPhantom]

A Bigger Bottle of Basilisk's Blood:
6 Spell
Target creature is disabled for 15 turns.

It's not instakill, but it might as well be.

Strange as it may seem, this is a long way from instakill. For rushes and 30-card domination decks it is, but rushes won't pack expensive single-target spells unless they can also target HP and do decent damage. In a long game, soft CC like this can essentially become negative card value as you will have ended up paying 1 card for 0 cards. The reason stalls would still pack this is because there is already more CC and healing in the game, and a way to make it repeatable (BB into Auburn Nymph or healing+Diamond nullifying damage completely).

Either way it's not an equivalent to instakill in the majority of games for 50% of decks that would use it and thus doesn't fit into a balance discussion on instakill effects (it will be different in some domination deck matches too), but it IS a viable alternative.

Does the same hold true for a spell that doesn't kill, but inflicts so much damage that it technically will kill any creature in the game without outside interference? (See example below.) Unlike Puff's example, Unlimited Blaze Works essentially guarantees a creature will be permanently removed from the board.

Unlimited Fire Works | Unlimited Blaze Works
12 | 10
Target enemy creature takes 50 damage.

No regular creature in EtG will survive a card like this without Immaterial outside support, so what stops it from being made? Like Holy Light, it doesn't truly "kill", but instead deals damage.

[serprex]

[snip] I would start by noting that killspell design puts a hard cap on creature value. [snip]

Parallel Universe limits design space enough all on its lonesome

[Higurashi]

Does the same hold true for a spell that doesn't kill, but inflicts so much damage that it technically will kill any creature in the game without outside interference? (See example below.) Unlike Puff's example, Unlimited Blaze Works essentially guarantees a creature will be permanently removed from the board.

While it's possible to buff a flying Titan or Colossal Dragon to withstand 50 damage, you'd then be paying two cards to resist one and it all turns into technicalities. For all practical purposes, 50 damage is certainly instakill.

There seems to be a threshold where soft CC/instakill becomes preferable, and the best way to measure it should be to use Fire Lances since it's the most powerful CC. If a monofire gets to 20 before using a Lance as CC, it'll still succeed in stopping most of the damage an early creature would do. That's a 9 HP threshold, but that requires a monofire. The best killing CC card any deck can splash is Lightning, and we all know what an effect that has on the unupped meta. That's a 5 HP threshold.

Then there's repeatable damaging CC in OE and Dexterity in Arena making cards like upped Steamie invaluable, but that's a different issue. We also have to separate the unupped and upped meta, as Thunderbolt sees a lot less use than Lightning. Not even Rage Elixir is used as much as Lightning, proportionally speaking, although perhaps it should be.

[OldTrees]

[snip] I would start by noting that killspell design puts a hard cap on creature value. [snip]

Parallel Universe limits design space enough all on its lonesome

Yes, PU likewise installs a hard cap.
And our quanta system and max hp install soft caps.
And then there are a bunch of lesser but notable impacts.

The existence of these caps is not bad in itself. Well placed caps still allow more than enough design space to create an ever expanding game. However it is the placement of these caps that makes designing this effects take more development time to do correctly. So to add them, one should spend the extra time needed.

Does the same hold true for a spell that doesn't kill, but inflicts so much damage that it technically will kill any creature in the game without outside interference? (See example below.) Unlike Puff's example, Unlimited Blaze Works essentially guarantees a creature will be permanently removed from the board.

While it's possible to buff a flying Titan or Colossal Dragon to withstand 50 damage, you'd then be paying two cards to resist one and it all turns into technicalities. For all practical purposes, 50 damage is certainly instakill.

Yet a creature with 51hp would be fine. This marks a significant difference between an "attack that overwhelms all existing defenses" and an "attack for which there can be no defense". Having a card that deals 50 damage does not prevent me from making a creature that is worth 20 (although our quanta system does a good job of discouraging that). It merely requires that such a creature has a defense against 50 damage(say by having 51hp).

However this distinction only matters in the future, in the present there is no significant difference between the two.

[Tiko]

Correct me if I'm wrong, but it's somewhat strange for me that the (potentially) most brutal mass-instakill card hasn't been mentioned yet; Flooding. It also introduces mechanics unique to it, like the 'upkeep-or-destroyed' behavior or placement check. Examining this may add another approach to the topic.

But then again, Flooding is even more of a rare encounter than Freeze+Shock..

As a sidenote, the "last updates" brought the pace of the game even to a higher level, and various powerful creatures have been added to the bestiary, like Seraph (the Fire equivalent of the Graboid/Shrieker), Psion, or Focus - which all are dangerous and hard to deal with. I'm sure that more forms of direct damage cards, combos or even instakill spells/abilities would be an overall welcome addition to the game.

[Espithel]

Flooding is less of an instant kill and more of an imposition, much like silence/sanctuary.

It stops you from playing multiple creatures more than it kills multiple creatures.