This game is suffering from, dare I say it, too much community input. The constant balancing changes are driving me insane, to the point where things that never needed to be nerfed are now overpowered, and everything starts playing to the least common denominator of cards.

So long as there is a forum (especially one called "card discussion") there will be people hating a card because they just lost a single game to it. Or, because they couldn't handle it appropriately, because they weren't anticipating it - basically, because an isolated incident caused by their own failure turned the tide of the game against them. It's the nature of the game. These posts will happen as long as the game exists.

The developers can't continue to rely on these posts to nerf cards, because every single card is or will be listed in that forum soon.

Nor can the developers look at the strategy a la mode and immediately try to end that strategy. A new one that 'seems' just as unbalanced will pop up as fast as the old one is no longer feasible. No matter how much data you accumulate on who's winning how much with what deck, it's not a good basis for balancing changes.

The only answer to balancing changes is releasing more cards. Period. If an enchantment like Drain Blood is "overpowered" then release more cards that eliminate space enchantments - spells, other enchantments, creatures, buildings, whatever. If a creature is underpowered, then it just won't see use. Let it die into obscurity, rather than adjusting it every week. If a card isn't seeing play like Light of Day, give us other cards that it works well.

In sum: stop changing shit and move on.

Sincerely,
Minds

_________________
-Minds

Ah, pobrecito. No puedes apprender tanto rapido.

If every race had the same cards with just different names and pictures, you might as well just go play rock paper scissors... and also, you're assuming that the dev's take everything people in the forums say into consideration. Just because the people have a problem with it, doesnt mean it'll change.

I absolutely agree with mindstheatre.
As you remember there was several major weekly changes and Jed was going to make last one and stop changing anything...

I hope we'll stop changing cards soon. The only thing I want to add is that game is still beta and we won't be changing cards after release.

I agree too.

Sorry guys I know it is annoying. But please bare with us I really believe the game will be better long term after this process. There is just one more major set of revisions that I'm putting out today or tomorrow and then the changes are almost done I promise. Future sets will all be tested more thoroughly since I there will be a group of betatesters for them. So they wont have this constant back and forth.

The additional changes were going to be a necessity no matter what because balancing has to be done around the assumption that a player can have three of every card even though that's usually not the case. As time goes by and people start accumulating multiples of rares they might not have had balancing issues were bound to come up. With a beta server it should be a short way to go towards finalization.

I'm a bit surprised by this post honestly. How many changes have been implemented based on posts in the forum? 5? maybe as many as 7, tops? Just look back and count how many posts there are and how many changes, it's not a good ratio.

The vast majority of changes are coming because jed + co aren't happy with the state of the game. The change pushed out today shows that there was a major rework to make splashes more playable. There was never anyone in the forum saying make splashes more playable. I liked the game before, and hopefully this will allow a bit more depth. Time will tell.

But really, is whining about game changes during a beta necessary? It's like complaining that the sky is blue.

Doiron nails it on the head proper.

The recent discussions in the subforum were because developers asked for players opinions.
There is a desire to make the game as best as possible and the current set of cards as balanced/tight as possible.

Youre basically whining about such efforts because you dont like change...
...Yet you play in a beta?!
Wait a bit, the game is close to being finalized.

Wow, so much hatred. Ok, let’s start with the basics.
1) Yes, this is beta, but remember that we are paying for the cards, especially given the no-gold-for-AI games. So there is a real-value impact. Further, yes this is beta, but the purpose of balancing in beta is to make tweaks to fit into a clear and consistent vision of the game. Instead, you get situations like Alabaster which seems to change basic roles in a deck daily. I don’t use it because I don’t know what it does anymore.
2) A ratio doesn’t make any sense as a way to measure what I was saying. In fact, consistently the squeakiest wheel has gotten the nerf, or in some cases boost. You can say these were necessary; that people complaining didn’t cause the changes, but rather both the changes and the complaining were caused by imbalanced cards. But no one was complaining about lava blister until ivan’s post a short while ago, and it just got adjusted. This is just an example, but I feel like the dev’s have been in response mode.
3) None of this addresses the underlying issue. Even if the dev’s are doing their own thing, with their own data, and even if they do have a pristine image of how each card fits into the overall scheme, the game is still caving in on itself. I had to laugh when I read that now, cylone feels like Foul Obelisk is overpowered. And, disturbingly, he’s probably right! But why is that? It didn’t start off that way – it’s because of these so-called ‘balancing changes’ that just leave other cards unbalanced.
Even with the number of cards as limited as it is now, it is impossible to ensure that each card has a perfectly equal role to play proportional to its cost. That should never be the goal. Mtg realized this; how many filler cards came in a pack that almost no one uses? So then the question is, why are they there? For some creative player to use them in unexpected ways and make something where many saw nothing.

Brandeis’ said that the key to fixing bad speech isn’t requiring changes in the speech, but rather having more speech. I think the same applies to cards for the reasons mentioned in my original post.

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-Minds