HEX: Shards of Fate

[Taskmage]

HEX MMO Trading Card Game by Cryptozoic Entertainment — Kickstarter

Anybody planning to play this? I'll at least be getting in on the beta. I only hope that when the full product is released, it will accommodate people who aren't willing to invest much into boosters.

[Icemage]

Re: HEX: Shards of Fate

Kind of interesting, but I worry about game balance, or lack thereof.

Of their released games, I've only played their DC Deck-Building game, but while fun it didn't strike me as particularly well balanced.

Hex is being presented as a game with a lot of customizable elements that will (probably) take a lot of money and time to collect. While I'm worried about that aspect, I'm even more worried about pay-to-win mechanics where you can win a mirror match just because you bought enough stuff to get superior versions of the same card, and other cards which are just outright broken.

Take for example one of the Kickstarter bonus cards: Replicator's Gambit. It lets you shuffle a creature you control back into the deck, and adds "When this is played from your hand, create six copies of it and put it into play." permanently to the card.

Doesn't seem terribly broken if the minimum deck size is large enough, but then they show another card called Ascetic Aspirant. This card can be activated to transform it into Enlightened Seeker, which is a weak 0/1 that prevents you from playing any cards. But if you have 7 cards in your hand at the end of your turn, you can transform the Enlightened Seeker into a new card, The Ascended.

The Ascended replaces your normal draw by letting you search for any card in your deck and place it into your hand.

So If you can get one of those Aspirants transformed all the way, you can fetch whatever you used Replicant Gambit on and play seven copies of it.

Even that combo isn't terribly powerful if you lose the game because of being unable to either reach 7 cards in hand/losing the very weak Enlightened Seeker/whatever, but it's less scary if you figure that this game likely has some sort of control metagame that slows your opponents down or disrupts them from winning while you put this together, and/or finds a way to draw extra cards.

That basically turns Replicator's Gambit into an I-Win button under the right circumstances, and will seriously impact the design of future cards. Card-searching cards will have to become weaker to account for the broken-tier power of Replicator's Gambit, or the card will have to just be banned or changed to be less broken in some way.

TL;DR: Replicator's Gambit is a broken-tier card mechanic. Effect x 7 is absurd and myopic. Double effect would have already been powerful enough, especially as you can modify Replicator's Gambit to become playable at any time. This instills very little confidence in their designing skills, and bodes ill for the long-term prospects of the game.


Icemage

[Yellow Mage]

Re: HEX: Shards of Fate

Interesting concept, and I think that this guy is on the precipice of a genuinely good idea (though I wasn't a fan of the video's use of shock factor), but I feel that, in more ways than one, the TCG element probably puts some unintended limits to the whole game (especially the MMO element, but also the TCG element itself is making itself its own limiter in here, given how . . . unoriginal its base mechanics are).

In essence, it looks like it's going to be an OTCG with cards that level up (because Tetra Master was a good idea) rather than the "MMOTCG" ideal that they're shooting for. I mean, so far as I see, the majority of the gameplay is by and large single player. I've yet to even look into game balance issues at all, much less to the extent that IM has. So, cool idea, but I feel that they fell a bit short, and so I'll have to pass.

(P.S. 335% funded Good Lord.)

[Taskmage]

Re: HEX: Shards of Fate

I thought the gags in the promo video were pretty amusing.

I think you're making far too much of this Replicator's Gambit combo. It doesn't strike me as being more powerful than say Biovisionary+Rite of Replication in Magic. It takes at minimum seven turns to pull off, during which time you'll have at most two weak plays to defend you, assuming you use the Gambit on your strongest troop on turn 3, and any creature removal at any point in the process brings the whole thing to a screeching halt. There's even a window in which you're not allowed to respond with your own cards.

YM, in addition to the PvP, there are also going to be party-based co-op "raids." These are the same guys who created raid decks for the WoW TCG, which I think went over pretty well. As far as lower level PvE and story is concerned, it's hard to tell what they'll have. The game is pre-alpha, after all.

I will grant that the mechanics so far are blatantly copied from a certain other popular TCG, but until the owners of that property develop a compelling video game, I'll take this.

[Icemage]

Re: HEX: Shards of Fate

I thought the gags in the promo video were pretty amusing.

They seemed contrived and awkward to me. I get the humor, but I find it in poor taste to start a video asking for money by showing a bank robbery.

I think you're making far too much of this Replicator's Gambit combo. It doesn't strike me as being more powerful than say Biovisionary+Rite of Replication in Magic. It takes at minimum seven turns to pull off, during which time you'll have at most two weak plays to defend you, assuming you use the Gambit on your strongest troop on turn 3, and any creature removal at any point in the process brings the whole thing to a screeching halt. There's even a window in which you're not allowed to respond with your own cards.

We don't know what the starting hand size is, nor do we know how many cards are drawn per turn, nor do we know what cards can be used to stall your opponent or draw extra cards.

The specifics of it don't really matter though. What bugs me is the design philosophy on display. Replicator's Gambit is a ticking time bomb. Even if the first run set of "cards" doesn't end up with some broken mechanic that includes it, it severely limits future card designs because of its power.

Biovisionary + Rite of Replication isn't an appropriate counter-example because in order for it to even work you need 9 mana to cast Rite of Replication with the kicker cost, and there's no way to sidestep that cost, and is a two color combo.

The problem isn't so much the Ascetic Aspirant > Enlightened Seeker > The Ascended, which I agree is a relatively fragile combo engine and would need significant amounts of protecting to achieve. It's the fact that these sorts of overpowered mechanics exist at all that causes potential problems down the line.

Imagine if a card like Replicator's Gambit existed in MtG. Can you imagine how broken it would be? Cast it on a 1/1 Muscle Sliver (+1/+1 to all Slivers), then Worldly Tutor for it. All of a sudden you have 8 x 8/8 creatures on the board (and this probably isn't even the most broken combo you could come up with).

I foresee a lot of mea culpas and errata in this game's future.


Icemage

[Taskmage]

Re: HEX: Shards of Fate

Starting hand size is seven, and normal draw is one card per turn. Again, conspicuously similar to another game we know. Who knows how much of this will stick for the final product, though. It could be they're just starting from systems they're intimately familiar with and modifying from there.

gameplay video

Biovisionary + Rite can be accelerated, though, unlike the Aspirant, is much less vulnerable to disruption by the opponent, and actually wins you the game the turn you play it. We're not going to get an granny smith to granny smith comparison, but my point was simply that it's a rather slow strategy that's vulnerable to either disruption or aggression.

I just seems to me that it's a card that won't be seriously successful without either a very effective combo engine behind it or cheap tutoring effects, design restrictions against which should be in place anyway. I mean, there are reasons Worldly Tutor has no equal in Modern Magic. Its closest relative is banned. Without those things, the card is going to give you a free win maybe one in forty games, which I expect is the kind of high-risk high-reward evaluation that will get it cut from most high level decks.

If you were running four copies with a full complement of rare and legendary equipment, I could see the concern, but who knows how realistic that would even be or what power level might exist on the other side of the board at that level of play.

- - - Updated - - -

Kindof funny. In this video they talk about Replicator's Gambit and a card with very similar mechanics to Muscle Sliver called Pack Raptor as being two of their favorite cards, so that exact combo is being pushed from the beginning.

TCG video

Also, this card was highly amusing to me:

Spectral Lotus

It's basically a Blacker Lotus

[Icemage]

Re: HEX: Shards of Fate

You wouldn't need much to abuse Replicator's Gambit, though. It doesn't even need to be an instant-game-winner type of card. I think it'd be balanced if it was 2 extra copies of the card being played, but x7 turns even mediocre or even sub-mediocre cards into instant game-winners.

"3 damage to target when this card is played from your hand" = 21 damage, and instant game win in nearly all circumstances. Even 2 damage to target player would probably be a game winner.
"Return target card to owner's hand when this card is played from your hand" = 7 permanents off the board, effectively winning the game.
"Draw a card when this creature comes into play." <- How many creatures in MtG do this, or some variation thereof?

These aren't even super-good creature effects. There are many more extreme examples.

On the other hand, if you make tutor-type cards extra-weak, that causes another problem where the only thing you get are aggression deck types, so that's another issue.

I'm also disappointed to see that they've retained silly things like tap mechanics when there's no physical card. They had the right idea with the double-back and transforming cards - without the need for a "face down" "side", cards don't need to be bound by the laws of physics. Also disappointed to see them still go with the mana system from MtG, as its a bit archaic and produces many bad-draw situations.


Icemage

[Taskmage]

Re: HEX: Shards of Fate

Neither of the "played from your hand" creatures would do what you say with Gambit, because the copies aren't played from your hand. Even if they did, there would be an exceptionally low chance of it happening, since you're hoping to draw one card out of ~50 from your deck, making for a very small impact on win percentages. Draw seven cards isn't as impressive of an effect as you think, considering you put yourself at a two card disadvantage for multiple turns to set up the effect, and have to play a third to cash in on it. In the end it's a long investment for a 4 card advantage costing at least 5 mana, probably 7. You still see competitive control and combo decks in Modern Magic, and to my knowledge none of them rely on tutoring. I dunno, maybe you're right, but I'm just not seeing it.

"Tap" or "exhaust" or whatever you call it is just a simple marker for whether an ability can be used once or multiple times. Sure, it could be represented differently, but there's no need to do so.

- - - Updated - - -

Actually, I ran the numbers, and if you played Gambit on turn 3, then drew 10 more times, you would have a 22% chance of drawing into your modified card. So not that bad, but still a significant investment into a strategy that, even if a control opponent doesn't disrupt it in any of three possible windows and also has no way to clear the board, or if an aggressive deck can't manage to kill you in the first 7-13 turns, still has a 78% to fail. And that's assuming disastrously bad deck building or draws on your opponent's side.

[Icemage]

Re: HEX: Shards of Fate

I specified "played from your hand" because the effect of Replicant's Gambit specifically triggers only when the original card is played from the hand, but you should have understood the gist of what I was getting at. x7 effect is overkill for specific types of effects.

It's not even necessarily a -2 card effect when played really. Replicator's Gambit has an equipment modifier that lets it be played as an instant, so you can use it to save something that's about to be destroyed anyway (or block before shuffling it back in).

Combine with a board-wiping card of some type plus a few stall cards and you've got the foundation of a potentially dominant combo deck.


Icemage

[Taskmage]

Re: HEX: Shards of Fate

Ehh, I disagree. It's high reward but also high risk, and not that big of an issue to design around. Little can be said for certain without knowing what the rest of the environment looks like.

[Yellow Mage]

Re: HEX: Shards of Fate

TM, I don't know anything about WoW TCG "raid decks," so mind explaining that to me? Because as far as I see, their entire "PvE" experience are essentially just these self-contained dungeon sets of minigames. And again, single-player. Not even an overworld experience to link them all.

It's like the beginning of that "The TCG" video you linked, where they go "this is a full-fledged TCG," to which I say, "well, yeah, I don't doubt that," and their "The MMO" video wasn't that much more convincing. Again, so much as I'm aware, this is basically Tetra Master: the Gathering with Dungeons.

(I'll further note that having your created character have an impact on the types of cards you can play, skills you can have, and other further potential game balance reckoning issues is somewhat novel in that you're given the freedom to completely customize said character, it's not the first time I've seen the idea of a "player effect" in general, either.)

[Taskmage]

Re: HEX: Shards of Fate

I don't know much about it myself other than that 3-5 players team up against a special deck representing the dungeon. I only know that much because Penny Arcade did a series portraying one. I'll see if I can dig up something more substantial.

But yeah, it's early in development and all. They clearly don't have much to show yet in terms of the world and story and non-TCG mechanics yet.

- - - Updated - - -

Couldn't find much more information than that. The raid decks seem to be like MTG Archenemy Duel Decks. I did find these posts by the lead PvE designer over on Quarter to Three:

The Raids (Multiplayer PvE battles) aren't Archenemy. We designed each Raid Deck with all unique cards. (Except the first raid, which is basically a raid tutorial, so we didn't also introduce new cards there.)

They're pretty unique as well. The goals aren't always just 'Deal X damage to the enemy'. In one you have to force a horrible invincible monster back through a portal, and in another you have to complete a bunch of tasks while the raid boss is trying to murder you.

Anyhow, they're all hand designed decks down to the card. Each raid boss has a unique deck using cards you won't ever see anywhere else.

The majority of the dungeons are single player. The only part of the game that require you to party are raids, and they're not put on the main storyline. I don't have the numbers (we're looking to expand dungeons and raids due to the KickStarter), but 90%+ of the game can be done in single player mode. That ratio isn't going to change.

[Yellow Mage]

Re: HEX: Shards of Fate

Okay. Not sure what these raids actually imply for my hypothetical aggro-cleric setup, but okay. Just because the raid is using unique cards doesn't mean that we necessarily are.

I mean, I guess the point would be to build decks specifically to beat whatever the raid's challenge is, but that kind of cookie-cutter type of gameplay is pretty much the exact opposite of what I'm looking for in a TCG.

"The only part of the game that requires you to party" at least assures me that it will be possible to party at all in this game, but will it be possible, or better yet, feasible to do outside of raids?

On another note, back to the TCG video you linked earlier, when the guy said "we mined all of the digital-only design space," I hear "we blew our load on every gimmick we can use in the first one, maybe two blocks in the game."