Month: January 2018

Higher in the Spire

After many dungeon runs in Hearthstone, I decided that I liked this idea of roguelike deckbuilder games and picked up Slay the Spire. It was exactly what I wanted, and I immediately enjoyed a four-hour binge.

A great virtue of Slay the Spire is that it is designed to be what it is. The Hearthstone dungeon run is grafting the idea onto an existing game, which has been done quite well in Blizzard games (tower defense, DOTA) but ultimately bears its full flower in a dedicated game. Hearthstone’s dungeon run starts with much greater resources in terms of art, already developed cards and mechanics, and a minion-based combat mechanic. Hearthstone’s dungeon run is bigger and bolder, flashier, and more random and frustrating. Bringing along the infrastructure of Hearthstone brings along the baggage of Hearthstone.

Slay the Spire almost certainly must have configurations that are impossible. It is a roguelike still in early release. It seems to have less opportunity to stack perverse randomness on top of more perverse randomness. With practice, I have become rather good at the Hearthstone dungeon run, but I would be surprised if I could sustainably win more than a third of the time. I get the sense that Slay the Spire takes the same idea and gives it a much higher skill cap, along with more manageable randomness.

: Zubon

Sequel and Expansion Exhaustion

I started Civ VI, but it failed to grab me. It felt a lot like going back to an old MMO after a few expansions: all the mechanics are slightly different, in a way that either inspires or alienates you. Some of the mechanics have the same name but changed, some are more or less the same thing but were renamed to a new system, and there are a few new things that synergize with all of that. I feel like I would need to relearn a game I have already learned at least five times.

It feels like an uncanny valley. If it were less similar to what I already know, I could start on a clean page. If it were more similar, it would be a new edition of something I already know, off to the races. It is disorientingly somewhere in between, where the familiarity makes it more alien.

I like the notion of breaking new ground. Veteran players do not always like that (see hatred of hexes from the last edition), but if we just wanted a new version of something we have already played 20 times, we could get the latest Madden or FPS. Trying something new does not always work, but I already have several versions of Civ. I wouldn’t need to buy a new one if this were just the same thing, started over without the systems that DLC will put back in.

Also, my first game started surprisingly cramped. Within a 7-10 hex radius, I have at least two other civilizations and three city states (or whatever they are called this time), and the only reason I don’t have more is because I started near an ocean. This is after having less than the standard number of nations on a map, so either the map is smaller than I think or the other continents must be really empty. On the forums, people speak of starting with other nations literally within visual range. The game is 15 months old, but there is perhaps some work needed before it is ready for release.

: Zubon

One Mana Cards

Low cost cards are one of the interesting balance decisions in Hearthstone. The real cost of a card is its mana cost plus any built-in penalties plus the fact that it is a card.

As an example of the first two, Squirming Tentacle is a 2/4 minion with taunt that costs 3 mana, and Vulgar Homunculus is a 2/4 minion with taunt that costs 2 mana and does 2 damage to you when you summon it. There are many ways to have costs, and there is synergy in building decks that avoid costs.

The cost of the card itself is a reason why 1-mana cards are more powerful than you would expect. The mana is less of a cost than the fact that you are using up a card. It is an opportunity cost; those cheap cards are only great in the first few turns or to burn extra mana around your stronger cards. If you have played all your cards by turn 5, drawing a 1-mana card when you have 6 mana available is suboptimal. You get one card per turn, and you have seven spaces for minions on the board.

This means that fast, aggressive (“aggro”) decks will always remain fairly effective, like classic “weenie” decks in Magic the Gathering. There are fairly inexpensive counters to large numbers of cheap cards, but cards that are card-inefficient are likely mana-efficient, or else they are just trash cards you would never use. If I can get a 2/4 minion with a special ability for 3 mana and 1 card, I better do better than a vanilla 1/2 minion for 1 mana and 1 card. The only way to keep cheap cards from being overpowered for their mana value is to make them underpowered for their card value.

The full cost of a card includes the card itself. This adds value back to cards that include a draw, although deck-thinning in that way can be a cost or a benefit depending on the context. In Dominion, cards that provide a card plus an action plus something else are popular because they have no opportunity cost that turn; the card refunds both the card and the action you used to play it. But the “plus something else” is usually pretty small unless the card is expensive, and there is still the opportunity cost that you used up the buy for a turn on that Village, when you could have got a Smithy.

: Zubon

Roguelike Deckbuilding Dungeon Crawls

Does Slay the Spire look like the sort of thing Hearthstone’s dungeon run is trying to do? Both are basically what the title says. Monster Slayers is another that came out last year, which I had not noticed. Guild of Dungeoneering does something similar, although there is limited deckbuilding scope within each dungeon run, and the dungeon opponents are less randomized than is common in roguelikes. (Hand of Fate from that post uses constructed decks, rather than deckbuilding within the dungeon, with a lot of roguelike randomness.)

This could be a new sub-genre.

: Zubon

The Hedgehog and the Fox

Yesterday‘s quote, “luck is where preparation meets opportunity,” is of disputed origin. There are several possible attributions, with an interesting one being a line that Seneca the Younger attributes to Demetrius the Cynic:

“The best wrestler is not he who has learned thoroughly all the tricks and twists of the art, which are seldom met with in actual wrestling, but he who has well and carefully trained himself in one or two of them, and watches keenly for an opportunity of practising them.”

I feel like I could mine that quote for hours.

For reference, consider the hedgehog and the fox. The fox knows many things, but the hedgehog knows one important thing. Continue reading The Hedgehog and the Fox

Luck Is Where Preparation Meets Opportunity

I am still indulging in a bit of Hearthstone. I am not interested enough to invest the money it would take to be competitive, so I have mostly played modes where your card collection matters little or not at all: Tavern Brawl and Dungeon Run. (I could also play Arena, but there is a gold cost there.)

In both modes, I must say that the skill ceiling is a little higher than advertised. I would not say a lot higher, but there is clearly better and worse, and you can see worse decisions being made. Tavern Brawl may tend towards very messy randomness, but understanding how to use that randomness can be the difference between winning and losing. I have won several games I should have lost because my opponent kept rolling the dice after reaching a decisive lead. As in, they could win simply by attacking, but instead they triggered a random effect that wiped the board. This is a skill important in many games (and outside them): recognizing that you have already won and taking your victory.

Continue reading Luck Is Where Preparation Meets Opportunity

Talent Tree as Loot

I have seen some versions of this in games, but I would like to see more: replace loot with a talent tree. Have something like LOTRO’s legendary item system, or otherwise just make the loot another skill/talent tree. Instead of finding a stream of disposable loot, with the occasional upgrade, just build the loot into the character. This especially goes for games with ridiculous amounts of trash loot, like Diablo or Borderlands.

We probably still need some sort of grind or loot accumulation, but build that in too. Instead of picking up vendor trash, have monsters drop crafting components. You need 200 green floozles and 10,000xp to give your staff Healing Floozle, whatever. It must be an easier setup than hundreds of different loot objects.

I am probably odd, and Diablo-style loot seems popular. People like that slot machine. I find it dull, and the occasional good hit on a slot machine makes the rest even more dull, because I know all the loot below color X is vendor trash. You know what rarely excites me in games? Vendor trash, nor its friend inventory maintenance.

: Zubon

Constructs

Trying something other than my usual playstyle, I have been playing Titan Quest as a Rogue. When they offered me another mastery, I doubled down on melee DPS and went with Warfare. Assassin, ho! I stab things, until I get to things that are big and scary, at which point I use DoTs, a trap, and kiting.

Rogues can put points in a “disarm traps” ability. This is standard RPG fare, something that rogues and thieves do. Titan Quest is an action RPG though, so it does not have D&D style traps. Well, there are trapped sepulchers, but you cannot disarm those. Instead, traps are huge structures that shoot fireballs and such. You disarm them by killing them, like any other monster. Rogues just get a bonus to damage against them and a reduction in damage from them. This ability also applies to construct monsters.

This seems not just thematic but mechanically necessary. Rogues get a lot of their damage from poison and bleeding. Guess what does not affect traps? Actually, I am not 100% sure that is true in-game, and it looks like I have successfully poisoned and bled skeletons. But these things presumably have high (or 100%) resistance, so rogues need something else to keep up. The undead remain a problem.

This is a factor in some D&D editions, notably 3rd. There are entire categories of abilities that do not work on non-biological targets, the most prominent of which is a Rogue’s sneak attack damage. Rogues hate undead, constructs, and oozes. At least one of those gets knocked off the list in Titan Quest.

: Zubon

Cycle of Violence

As I play Titan Quest, I get the strange sense that it is all pointless violence. That is not exactly a critique, so much as the point of the game. It is not quite the same feeling as “I have killed this goblin 10,000 times before,” more of wanting more from a central quest perhaps. It does not really matter what the story is; so long as I kill in the relatively straight line available to me and click on the NPCs with !s over their heads, I get loot and power and an official victory.

Some of that is the side quests, with the feeling of “I have saved this farmer 10,000 times before.” Someone in town wants me to go kill monster X because it killed his goats, stole his dowry, or kidnapped his daughter. Great, maybe I will see monster X along the way. It is all an excuse plot to give you a reason to go kill a few thousand things. I sometimes wonder if my presence in the world makes things worse, due to the common mechanic that certain enemies do not spawn unless you have the quest for them. The only reason the monsters exist is that I am there to kill them; had I never come to this town, the monsters would never have spawned and attacked it.

But the class listed on my character sheet is Assassin, so perhaps I am not worried about whether monster X deserves to die. Click, there it goes.

: Zubon