The only thing Im worried about is that you cant really counter an opponent. So items that counter a specific build are either useless or very frustrating if you run against an item that punishes your build since the opponent couldnt have known you play that and theres no way for you to adapt to that.
Just wanted to add that Ive heard Reynad say that their philosophy is that they would rather have players focus on their strategy instead of denying/countering others from executing their strategy. Therefore this definitly doesnt have to be a bad thing, but could be very good.
Other developers: Just go for a normal build to show of the game Reinald: makes broken sniper build that deals infinite damage the second the fight starts
How do you feel about the lack of counterplay with this matchmaking? A lot of people mentioned the lack of interaction in the Q&A, but I feel like a more important concept is counterplay. I remember Reynad made a video about counterplay some years ago, and I think it is a very important part of any competitve game. Interaction just for the sake of interacting doesn’t provide much, like pressing «ok» in MTG, but having to adapt your strategy depending on what other players are doing is part of what makes multiplayer games fun imo. In autobattlers you can see other players builds to adapt, and draft mode (arena) in HS or MTG has counterplay in the decisions you make in game. However, with automatic fights and random matchmaking you don’t get either of those.
Thanks for writing this. Exactly what I was thinking. At this stage seems like no need for real time PvP if you have no idea what you are going to be facing - what's the difference between a random real time player and a ghost build?
I think the main negative consensus here to this concept is that it's kind of strayed far away from what most people were thinking it was going to be which is a competitive deck builder. The game now doesn't seem like it will be very competitive at all, but that doesn't mean it won't be fun. It's starting to look more and more like a conceptually casual 1-player auto-battler which honestly doesn't sound bad. The reason I enjoy auto battlers is creating all these zany and weird builds based off of amping up 1 effect i find interesting, but if this will work or not is basically up to how you guys balance and if it'll be fun to do on a long term basis. Not sure how you guys will monetize though tbh.
Yeah, I am disappointed, but I also didn't back the game or anything like that, but it is interesting on how they are creating this, even if it is not for me, these videos are awesome
So there are two things that I disslike at this point of development 1-In infinite player pool there is no counterplay or competitive value, you just make best build and that's it and while it sounds cool at first it looks like it will get boring fast, also while it's true that wining is fun enjoyment comes from beating opponent competitively and this just doesn't feel right. 2-From what I've seen so far skill curve just isn't that great here, what I mean by that is by cutting so many features like economy or counterplay you don't really have difference in skill from ok players to great ones, in autobattlers you have economy interests, synergies, positioning heck even buying all of the same cost units so you can get what you want easier, in HS you can predict board clears and so on but here you just take best cards make cool looking synergies(which can't be too complex because of lack of space) and you just play. So in my opinion by trying to make game too easy and non punishing you are just making it worse in long run.
I hope you consider adding a 1v1 mode in addition to the current infinite pool mode. A 1v1 mode offers the players to counterplay each other more than the infinite pool and sounds a little more appealing to me. The infinite pool mode sounds realllly fun and great for mobile, but it seems like it would tend towards players just making the best general build they could while a 1v1 lets players react to each other's build decisions, sort of like side decking in other games. (i hope my explanation makes sense ;p)
My first thought was "how do i 1v1 my friend to show him that i'm better than him" - so I figured it would be a game where you just play each other and the first to 3 losses loses (or can be increased to say.. first to win 5 or 7). But then it runs the risk of 1v1 becoming the main mode, and everyone playing that with a ranking system. But maybe that's also good? Similar to "ranked vs arena". I'm sure both modes appeal to different sets of people.
it's basically playing arena runs, not a bad thing but a different type of experience. You can choose between a general build that does well against most builds or hyper focus on one and hope you don't run into hard counters. It's lacking that direct counterplay but I still like it
i dont even know how they would make that work with the current system. if you lose after three losses, then a 1v1 could never go longer than 5 rounds. Not enough time to fully scale anything or build a comp. this is the same problem if they tried to make is an 8-person lobby as well
At this point it feels like this is a singleplayer game where you battle other player builds. There seems to be no interactivity between players during matches, so I don't see a difference between what playing vs ghosts or players would make. While other autobattlers also don't have much interaction between players during a match, players see what others build, so their buys affect your buys, however as here the player pool is infinite, your tryhard build would end up whatever is the meta build / meta counter right now.
Agree. Lack of decision during fight with player feels like I can do nothing. kind of lottery where I can prepare for something and that it is... not good rng imo. Would love to see that i can either win or lose fight depending on who is better me or opponent and not that he or I just choose by accident the strategy that counters me or him/her. single player game can be fun but not for a long time. also the system of arena like playing... on one hand it is great cause of reason mentioned in video but also makes it much less rewarding in terms of "i good great job and i deserve a win" or "i fucked i need to rethink my decisions". long story short... i would like to see this game more competitive! i know it will be hard task... but that'd be great. at least for me it is kinda most important if not dealbreaking feature ;P that's why i stopped playing HS... is so fuckin unpredictable now... you even cant estimate your chance properly during game even if you know both (opp and yours) decks perfectly... that is kinda stupid lottery. but anyway... game looks nice - just hope for some solutions to make it truly competitive.
Hope this gets seen by the devs. Now there's no point to battling another player in a live match. You can't react to what they are doing and you'll never see that player again. From a development perspective, it would make more sense to go entirely with the ghost system and do no live matches at all.
This comment aged poorly as Backpack Battles proved that this kind of concept can be successful and fun. And OF COURSE it matters that you play against other player builds, because human players define the meta and the power level, not some premade or AI opponents.
The infinite player lobby system sounds absolutely great for everyday play, but I see some downsides with it too. If you face a different opponent each time, you can't prepare for their strategy, which removes quite some depth. Also you can't play with a predetermined group of people, meaning you can't play with friends nor have a proper tournament. I see this as an improved version of the bo1 queue in MTGA, which suffers from similar problems, yet is really popular due to its accessability. But just like competitive play in Magic relies on the bo3 format, so will The Bazaar require a gamemode like 1v1.
It sounds like the best solution here is just to do the same thing as Magic, where you have a mode with a set number of players for tournaments and with friends but the standard mode is the Bo1 infinite lobby.
@@BMVfilms Over time people will Netdeck this game - popular strategies will emerge - so if you simply provide what character you will verse in the next fight - you can often predict a good amount
I saw it as a single player game, but each boss instead of being AI, is a player (so less easy to prepare against). I think that's cool, but it's also feels more playing vs the computer than outsmarting your opponent over the course of many turns. I really like the replay feature and the fact that you can take your time refining a build before facing your next opponent (autochess games always feel like a rush when you first start out)
The buying aspect I think is real solid and fun, but the battles themselves are rather snooze (the early ones more as later they started just ending instantly lol) just looking at timers go off with no interaction. I guess its very auto battler (which I grew bored of pretty quick tbh) but there you could look at your enemies layout and see what is harder to show up and what to counter. The infinite pool is interesting for real casual games, but I think adding also a 1v1 and 8-10 royale for different peoples preference for be a good idea.
While I'm open for anything, I think the matchmaking makes the game move even further away from the original concept. "Half" of the strategy part is gone, as you no longer need adapt to 1-7 fixed opponents with each a specific build, but instead you always have to play against the exact same meta, even if you play 6 hours in a row. It seems fine for a casual mobile game though.
Anything more than 1v1 and it becomes kind of silly to try to "adapt" to your opponents choices. The vast majority of strategy in auto battlers is building the best strategy you can, then maybe slightly adjusting positioning or grabbing an obvious counter card or unit to your upcoming opponent. Disagree that that's "half" of the strategy in those games, although it's a part of it for sure. I do think the meta becoming stale is a concern. Ensuring a large variety of strategies are viable is the only real solution there, even for 1v1 games.
@@myrsta5764 "The vast majority of strategy in auto battlers is building the best strategy you can" This is directly tied to being able to observe your opponent's boards, when there is a shared pool of cards. May not equal half, but it is certainly relevant.
@@xKumei Yeah I agree, I just wanted to contest the point that half of the strategic gameplay is being lost there. Maybe it's different at the highest level, but I think most of the time you can get pretty far entirely ignoring your opponents in auto battlers. I know I have.
On the concept of monsters: maybe make certain monsters vulnerable to certain strategies? Maybe a minotaur has an item with high armor, so he's weaker to large bursts of damage than many small instances. Maybe a meduza has an item that turnns your strongest item to stone, so it's ideal to not "put all your eggs in one basket" for that fight. And you show the players at the start of the day what monster they're gonna face, so they have some time to adjust their strategy accordingly. I'm thinking about something like Slay the Spire or Monster Train, where they show you in advance what the boss will be, so you sort of adjust your deck a little to play to the weaknesses of that boss, which adds more variety to the runs.
I think that would force people to put constraints on their builds, which would be less fun in my opinion. Also, the best strategy might be to just change your build last minute, but if you are unlucky, you could lose the game from that. I would hate so much to lose against a monster just because he hard counters my build or having to change my build just to survive a monster.
@@perplexingpantheon Well to be frank, the game in this iteration feels more like a PvE game than a PvP game anyway. What I mean is that there is no reasonable metric you could use to distinguish between being matched up against a bot vs being matched up against a player. Reynad only played against ghosts in this demo because there were no players to match up against, but even if there were, the experience would've been exactly the same. Not saying this is a bad thing necessarily, but if it's leaning more towards a PvE game, the game could fully embrace that and become a better game. Maybe.
man, i was so excited about this game a while back, when it still was a deckbuilding game against another player. now it seems like you make a few choices, press a button and 5 seconds later the game is over and you have either won or lost, and move on to face another opponent. it seems like i will have to stick to hearthstone for a while longer - even though i absolutely hate that game. but at least in that game you make a deck and play another person, and it is somewhat competetive. i mean, at least your making strategic choices while playing and you actually react to what the other person is doing :P maybe i'm missing something - i've never played an "auto-battler" before. i have to say that my excitement-levels have definitely dropped from 10/10 to like a 2/10, sadly :P i'll keep an eye out though, and will definitely try it out when it releases.
@@xthatwhiteguyx It has no similarity, they are really focusing on what they think would appeal commercially to the largest number of people possible. The current trand right now is autobattler, and they are making it as intuitive and casual as possible so the entry level is next to zero. Feels like a game that you would play in your phone while you go to the toilet. But at this stage I'm skeptical if this game would be a commercial success, I'm affraid he might miss the mark of his original idea and still dont become the next candy crush. Hope I'm wrong.
@@thethingyouarewatching Honestly, who does this appeal to at all? They're trying to make it appeal to the largest number of people without ever thinking if there's even a single demographic it appeals to. Casuals aren't going to play this because it looks and feels way too much like a strategy/competitive game. But it isn't competitive or strategic at all, so it also won't appeal to that demographic. This is going to be a nightmare flop at release if they don't make some major changes.
@@thethingyouarewatching this game, the way it is, is miles behind the level of strategy and replayability that autochess games have. not having to build according to your opponents' builds, which is a crucial part of autochess, just makes it dull. if they dont make some real changes to this format, the game will most definetely not appeal to autochess players.
I like some aspects of the infinite lobby strategy but I do have one major concern with the idea. Won't the best strategy just be to make the most generally good setup you can every turn? You would never do niche things or think outside the box, because you have no idea who you are going to play against. It would always just be best to put up the best board and pray you don't get countered. I think that gets stale really quickly. You could theoretically do some tech stuff to counter meta builds, but you would never completely warp your playstyle. A good basic example is putting your backline to the front if you know you queue up vs assassin in AutoChess. Another more advanced example is how Freeze Mage has to play completely differently than normal to ever have a chance vs Control Warrior. I like how the matchup can force your hand - this might be lost in the new system. Didn't mean to harp on the idea too much. I still totally agree that there are many, many upsides. Just some constructive criticism. I didn't watch the entire video yet so apologies if this is covered later on.
Hey I am a product manager in a tech firm, not been doing this too long but we frequently come across a problem of 'over development' in which previous decisions were assumed to be right and caused long term knock on effects, because the team doesn't reevaluate what they though to be true at an earlier stage of development. This game seems to have that problem - what do you want to be? This game is 9 different things for 9 different people in my opinion.
I'll echo the sentiment of "Why is it even multiplayer, then?" If the game can function off ghosts entirely, then why bother having it be multiplayer at all?
As someone that does not play auto chess, has never seen the appeal, I am not a fan of these changes. It looks like a single player game with a "multiplayer" battle at the end? What does it matter if the opponent is a "Ghost" or not there is no interaction between the players. Why bother making the game PvP if the players cannot interact against each other? It's not like Asynchronous chess, because there each person has full control of their actions, the time they make the action is up to them. Here as no person has no input against the other player, it is just equivalent to a player made deck V. the "AI" of another player's made deck. This is a very common concept in a ton of mobile games. At this point the game looks like it would be better/more fun if it was just a single player game and you removed the multiplayer aspect entirely, à la slay the spire or other similar games. It would be the player against a well crafted and balanced opponent with a variety of card choices and events. Again I never understood the appeal of auto chess, but clearly others did, maybe I am misunderstanding something, but as I see it, these are not great changes.
I never really got into auto chess myself, but as someone who likes single player experiences like slay the spire and monster train, I think I'll enjoy it. Agree though that it kinda seems the PvP aspect has little meaning when it can so easily become entirely asynchronous.
i feel the same. i've never played an auto-battler game and don't see the appeal at all. this game seems like you make a couple of decisions and then press a button, wait a few seconds and you either win or lose, without any inputs. then another opponent shows up, you wait a few seconds and you either win or lose, again. where's the gameplay!? :P where's the strategy, if you're facing different opponents every turn, and only for 1 turn? :S i'm so confused :P
as someone who enjoys underlords, this definetly does not have the appeal of auto chess games. In those, you can constantly check out what your opponents are buying, the strategies they are developing, the specific items and positionings they are using etc. Yeah, you dont control the way your units move and attack during combat per se, but if you play enough to get past the basest level of understanding of the game, you realize it takes a lot of thinking and strategizing. the way this is looking, this game has what could be construed as the "boring" part of autochess, which is not controlling your units during combat, without any of the aspects that make those games appealing.
It would be interesting if you could see the player you will face ahead of time so you can spend the day preparing to fight that deck. Might add some tension and strategy as well.
Ngl core gameplay loop looks kinda boring. I like how much the card sizes matter but the autobattling i'm not sure about. Lacks interactivity. Also how about merging weapons together to make new ones?
Also the two characters did not feel different enough, and was hard to see what their identity is. I hope with more items added this becomes more clear. Maybe character has different possible events?
Maybe you should go full async/ghost at this rate. Since battles are just auto and fights are vs a different player each time, I don't see what is the value of having both players there in real time.
I feel like the idea of the infinite pool is super innovative and makes a lot of sense, but it makes me slightly worry that the more competitive audience won't like the lack of a 1v1 system. Being able to strategize about a specific opponent feels like a skill that has a really high potential ceiling, and being able to directly measure your skill vs another player would feel a lot more competitive, imo. Maybe have a 1v1 queue outside of the current infinite pool queue?
I think monster fights should be random to add more tension and a push your luck mechanism. Thinking you get a warning when you're in a dangerous area that there's a chance you might encounter a monster. Maybe even can have certain merchants are in shady areas (like a side alley) and are more likely to have monsters or bad guys nearby
I posted an idea on r/playthebazaar which would fit really well with this. Each day you would explore a new "sector" of the bazaar and each sector would have different chances at each event, with a least one unique event type for each sector. One of the sectors might be the "black market" for example.
I really hope to see monsters connect closely to the bazaar theme. You could have wealthy nobles and their guards, burglars, rival merchants, a guild fee collector, a tax collector, an unhappy customer, beggars, street dogs, urchins, etc. You know, thematic encounters instead of generic spider boss medusa minotaur memes. Guessing you may have already thought of this given your reference to monsters as predominately placeholder encounters at this stage. Build is looking very cool.
Wasn't your plan to monetize via cosmetics? Now that all the interactivity is gone and you can't even play friends anymore, why would I buy cosmetics if no one is going to see them? There is not even any downtime I have to kill to play with my toys. In fact the only thing I can see myself pay money for at this point is a skip-all-animations option that will make every click instant and have every fight end right away (the outcome can be computed in less than a second), so I can consume the only actual gameplay that is left, which is the buying decisions, as fast as possible. And I'm not being sarcastic here. I do play Solitaire games and my favorite ones are those where you can just a click/double-click a card to make it instantly go to the obvious pile. Also when I played Hearthstone I really wanted to turn off all of the animations.
Wow. The game looks super fun - I can't wait to play it. My only concern is regarding counter-play. It seems like there will always be builds outright win against certain other builds, and it would feel pretty bad to just queue into the bad matchup and be eliminated. The best feeling from auto-battlers, in my opinion, is constructing a team specifically to take down a strong comp that you know you have to get through. In the Bazaar with this matchmaking, there will still be counter-play involving tech choices against popular, good builds for sure. However, the result of your attempted counter-play is not apparent from any one run - you would have to play lots of runs to account for variance, and it would ultimately come down to the prevailing meta at any given time.
This build kind of killed counterplay. It seems the player basically just wants to solitaire and optimize in isolation. I think maybe to bring some counter play back and to encourage churn, you could consider this: Go full async matchmaking. This allows you to give the player a preview of your opponents build for the day. This gives the player opportunity to adjust their build while shopping for the day and promotes adjustments, counterplay and churn. Right now it seems the player is currently incentivized to focus on a single good item and keep leveling it throughout the game and build around it with no consideration for your opponents, and just basically hope you don’t get countered
That seems really a smart way to make the game more interesting, you could have a fortune teller/Oracle mechanic that shows you a foe in your future and you can try to prepare for that. Maybe there’s a crystal ball that shows 2 out of the 5 items the enemy will have when you mouse over it. Something like that so it feels flavorful.
@@simonbuysse8559 yea i dont see the reason to keep it sync with the way the combat plays out. You arent interacting with your opponent directly anyway, so it doesnt matter if they are actually there or not. The interaction was in the preparation step as you build up your items before the fight
@Andrew Adams That's why I mentioned for them to go full async. Then you could match up with someone at the beginning of the day and take all the time you want. That matched deck never changes because it's async
I feel sorry for everyone who got scammed into preordering this. What am I saying, you weren't even preordering THIS, it was advertised as a completely different game. This change of design came at an especially cursed time, because not only Slay the Spire clones have been flooding the market for years now, Hearthstone's upcoming new game mode sounds ten times more appealing than this - and I haven't played HS in years, even then I was mostly doing dungeon runs, which were also more engaging than whatever this is.
I know this is extremely reductionist, but a Slay the Spire type game with auto battling where the bosses are other players sounds extremely up my alley. I love the art too. Incredibly excited for any beta stuff. I haven't watched in a few videos, but this just jumped way up my watch list for upcoming games.
I wanted an interactive battle where players try to adapt their strategy to their opponent's. Trying new things is nice but the game is already unique without the infinite pool system and I would be super happy if you implement the 1v1 mode.
I can't wait to see more variety in events that shake up the flow of the day and even the pace. If a wild stampede of Rofallos distract a merchant and you can either protect the merchant or attempt to take an item and give choice to the player to choose more than just items/merchants, that'd be kind of cool. Or specific events that restrict if you see one merchant or another again in your travels could be really fun. The seasons and expansions have a lot of opportunity to shake things up and create a lot of flavor. Also excited to see how humor and general silliness comes into its personality.
Personally don't like the direction the game has gone. Seems as if it offers no competitive value and has pushed completely into the direction of a single player mobile game disguised as pvp since you fight other players build but do not actually interact with your opponents or ever make a decision based on what any of your opponents have done. I can see the appeal of this game, but it has turned into something I am not all that interested in.
I agree, at the point where what your opponent is doing doesn't matter I think there is a lot less competitiveness to the game and it isn't what I am looking for, but I see the appeal
completely agree, I was really excited for a revamped much more competitive version of dominion or something and instead this seems to be what we're getting =/ Really sad considering I backed this game under the pretense it'd be a deckbuilding competitive game
I will still be following this game and certainly hope you pull it off! But, speaking as someone who has followed this since you first unveiled it and watched nearly every video you have done about it, I feel like this new direction.. while maybe not a mistake.. certainly makes it a totally different game than what has been talked about so far. I can't say I'm "not a fan" because it could be really fun. But, no matter how fun a game with this type of match making is, it burns out really fast IMO. It's not nearly as fun to play "ghosts" of people as it is actual people. Will still be following and hoping for the best, but this isn't what I thought it would turn out to be by a long shot and I can't see myself "making this my new game" the way I was hoping I would any more. Instead, it will be a game to download and try.. then forget
@@xthatwhiteguyx pretty much. I was excited for the game up until the last couple updates when they stop having their own vision to just be everyone else. What makes me wanna play reynads game vs the others at that point? They were out first.
@@reynad27 In auto chess games like TFT, there's a pool of units and you know what other people are playing. You can position your units and pivot builds to counter other builds in the lobby. I feel like since there is no lobby, people will quickly find out what is broken, and since there is very little direct interaction, people will only play what is broken instead of adapting to another player. That means I feel like this game will either become extremely stale, or just uncompetitive.
@@reynad27 actually. I was acting too fast like an idiot. An with time and more info, i am now excited for the game again, and understand the decision. I think this is the more fin route to take. I guess "new" is just scary. But we need it. Good job to you and the team 🙏
@@reynad27 lot of ppl come to this channel coz you included myself, most of them pc card players that watch streams not really mobile players, it's something similar to "do you guys have phones" situation, I think the game is looking great, my only suggestion not spend too much time in balance, coz it's gonna be unbalanced no matter what in the beginning, players always do crazy shit
from a flavor perspective: how am I buying a wheelhouse or a lighthouse or a tropical island at a bazaar? it just feels a little awkward to me that I'm buying locations at a bazaar
battle replay is an overlooked but really important feature. ghost makes sense so you dont have to wait too long for the matchmaking. this game showing tons of promise, looking like an autobattler but in a draft format instead of battle royale, which lets a player choose their own pace and agency. super simple concepts that are solved pretty elegantly. the main concern i have is visual impression. the big sell of teamfight tactics would be a big ult or big hits. this seems more similar to hearthstone BG with the cards hitting each other and bigger cards hitting 'harder'. i know this is probably being considered all the time by reynad's team but i hope to see more flashy/interesting visuals during the fight - this would make the replay feature more fun as well.
The fights will get a lot more interesting to watch. In this build we don't have custom visuals effects for each item, but we are working on it. Everything should get an effect that fits it (which will also make the game easier to follow). We are even doing dynamic visual effects, which scale as an item gets stronger. Buffing an item will buff the visual effect too.
@@reynad27 Spitballing, because it's a comment section - You mentioned early in the video that players who queue at the same time get placed against each other. Could you consider having a button where instead of getting auto-matched against anyone, the matchmaker attempts to queue you into players on your friends list that have also clicked that button? Maybe it "holds" your placement, looking for a friend within the next 30-60 seconds? Am not a developer, excited to see where the game goes, best wishes.
@@reynad27 Yeah, this is issue number 1 for my friend & I as well. If we couldn't play HS Battlegrounds together, we would never play but we have sunk 1000s of hours into it.
Hmm. I don't know. I think you lost me. The Bazaar seems too far away from a card game at this point. For reference, the game I'm playing right now is South Park Phone Destroyer, which is a different kind of hybrid between auto battler and card game. From what I've seen in this video I don't feel like dropping SPPD for The Bazaar. I think it's the interactivity between players that I'm missing. At this point it's completely gone from the Bazaar. It's purely a solitaire game. Once you know the game a bit, you will not watch a single fight. You'll click skip if it's available or you'll go do something different during the fight. And that's for both monster fights and player fights. There's really nothing you need to see from the fight because it has no influence on your decision making. You won't face the same opponent again.
I think this is going in a good direction and some great progress is being made on the core design. I can definitely see myself playing this in the future when waiting for the bus, or something similar. I would never choose to play this on a computer, or watch it on twitch though. The lack of interactivity/reactivity makes it very time convenient for the player, but also pretty boring for someone just watching.
that's one of my biggest issues with this game right now, that it's made for mobiles. i don't play mobile games, and i'll certainly never sit down at my computer to play a mobile game. :/
Hey guys, gonna put this out there, maybe you'll read it. You guys seem to be misunderstanding what makes autochess games fun. It's not the fact that you dont have to make a lot of inputs in the combat phases. Yeah, the fact I can play laid back, with only one hand on the mouse is part of the enjoyment, but what actually makes it interesting is that you ARE stratigizing against your opponents. You could play without checking out what they are doing, just focus on a build you decided on and trying to make it strong and then just watching the cool animations during combat, but those are the players that get bored real fast and leave. The ones who are engaged by those games are the ones who are constantly checking on their opponents money, units, items, who is winning against whom during combat, who is strongest, who is weakest, who has your units, and how much will it affect your chances of getting more of them etc. Those are the aspects that make the game complex and fun in a competitive way. Your game, on the other hand, not only does not have cool animations of units hitting each other, just timers on top of cards that "strike" the opponent, which makes for a very boring looking combat phase, but on top of that lacks all the elements of complexity I mentioned above. I feel you guys are to fixated on the concept of variations in buy phase, when that is not something that will make your game engaging enough by itself in the long run. It doesn't matter how many combinations of cards and effects you create, sooner or later people will map out the ones with the highest winning rates, and since you never even see what your opponents' builds are until combat, there would be no point in going for anything other those few, specific builds that are the strongest ones, statistically speaking. The way I see it, you guys either have to give up on this infinetely rotating queu, and go for a more stardart format of 1v1, 1v7, 1v10, whatever, or you are gonna have to make some drastic changes to the rules the game as a whole. One sugestion is to implement a system where you can play multiple games at once. join the queu how many times you want, play as many 1v1 matches you want at once. SolForge did that, and it was great! If players roped you, it didnt matter, as you were playing several other matches at the same time, and since there are no interactions during combat phase, you dont have to be focused on any particular match at any given time. Once it's time to buy stuff again, just put some sort of warning on the screen so the player can see and jump back to that particular match, and there ya go. I believe that would make for a much more engaging game - you can play laid back, not worry about making too many inputs, not run the risk of getting roped, and still get the parts of card and autochess games that actually make them complex and filled with strategy, which is making decisions based on what your opponents are doing, instead of just buying whatever and then hoping it is better then whatever some other random person bought, which you had no idea beforehand.
Many people are bringing up concerns about interactivity with the infinite lobby system. When the previous build came out, I created a suggestion thread on r/playthebazaar suggesting both the infinite lobby and removed turn timer as well as the day by day progression/exploration. However one of the ideas they didn't move toward was a way to keep a sense of interactivity. It goes like this: 1. Players can have more items in their inventory then they can play in a match, not a ton more, but room for some tech choices. 2. Before a PVP match each player gets to see their opponents inventory - NOT their build, but their inventory. For a set amount of time (say 60 seconds). 3. Players have a window to set their build. 4. The fight happens. Another idea many people are throwing around is for a 1v1 or 8 player lobby mode. If you implement the above system, players could commit to an a synchronous mode where the battle would occur as soon as both players completed step #3. The game could send a push notification that the next round was open. It should even be possible to have this mode wait in the background and be able to continue a regular run in infinite lobby mode.
@@sogeoffsoclean Time to read my idea? To quick preview their opponent to plan for the battle, or time to write out a thoughtful comment that doesn't make them look like an ass-hat?
@@swinkscalibur8506 in like the first minute of the video young reynad is saying ppl dont want to sit around waiting for their opp in a phone game and yet here you are wanting everyone to sit around waiting for their opponent in a phone game. no one has time or cares about that shit dude.
@@sogeoffsoclean You must not know how an asynchronous game works. You don't sit around and wait. You play your game when you want. They play their side when they want. Like "words with friends." Between rounds you play infinite lobby mode. Just one way to make the game more interactive without forcing turn timers or locking you into a game that could take an hour. You might play a match in short bursts over an afternoon or several days depending on you and your friend.
@@swinkscalibur8506 Dont bother trying to explain anything technical to youtube commenters. Anyway I think that sounds good, and clearly it *can* work like with words with friends, but im not sure this is the type of game (gameplay wise) that youd want to break a play session over multiple async steps for. The reason async works so well for games like words with friends and digital board game adaptations is that the board holds all the information about the current game state at a moments glance, and because the players actions have immediate reactions over the course of their individual turn that doesnt need any feedback from another players choices. In this game, if I go to the market for 5 min of gameplay and then queue up for a match but that match comes another 5 min later, the feedback i get is now 5 min divorced from the actions I took in the market phase. The way Reynad has it set up is better because it insures the least amount of time between making your decisions (market) and seeing the feedback of those decisions (battle).
I think this looks like a cool side-mode like Arena in hearthstone, but I'd also like to see a game mode that is more interactive and has counterplay. As it stands, you can put in items and *hope* they counter your opponent, so it ends up basically being a rock-paper-scissors game. Hearthstone felt like a rock-paper-scissors game, and I was hoping we could get away from that by changing our deck mid-battle, but since our opponent changes mid-battle as well, we're right back to that same problem again. Also, it doesn't seem to matter if we have a live opponent or a ghost. In fact, there's literally no advantage to having a live opponent, and all it does is make you wait for the matchmaking servers every round. All-in-all I think this game mode is a great idea for the reasons you stated - easy to pick up for a few minutes at a time and play as a mobile game. But for dedicated PC players who want to sit down for a few hours, and who really thrive off of competition, interaction, and counterplay, we really need a versus mode as well.
Interesting way of doing matchmaking, however I can agree with people saying it feels less interactive and more like just trying build the best combo. Will there be a possibility to matchmake with a friend or a specific group of opponents? That way it is about constantly changing your build to counter the opponents, instead of just trying to find the meta breaking combo. It could be an opportunity to create a form of ranked matchmaking or a form tournament setting.
I don't see any comments about this, but I really don't like the changes to the UI in this build. The more defined middle row looked so clean before. I'm guessing it's to make the game more friendly to smaller screens, but the way the heroes are encroaching on the middle row looks strange. The square portraits also feel out of place.
Why is it that upgrading a level 1 weapon costs the same as ugrading a level 10 weapon, doesn't make much sense considering that you said previously that the more you upgrade the more the damage will increase. But besides that the game is becoming really really good, great job!
I wanted to add a comment that isn't related to judgement about the game mode too, and talk about game mechanics. It seems that our item slots are used for 3 different things: our main combo, specific tech/counter items, and generic consumable/instasell buffs. It's going to end up being pretty necessary to have a few tech items to counter popular strategies, which is going to be a detriment to more combo-driven strategies that probably won't have much free space. You might have to end up increasing the amount of space we have to work around this. Either that or the game will play even heavier into the rock-paper-scissors approach where certain strats just auto-lose to certain others. You could also have designated slots for defensive items, much like how you have the hero power slot. That way you aren't sharing the same resource (space) between different things.
I'm impressed with the decisions you guys have made. Instead of 1v1, going for something close to hearthstone arena, you queue up and commit to playing only for a short period of time. Also, this enables you to think during the buying phase infinately, which is sooo important if playing on a phone. The fact that items have levels, and you can upgrade them using money, and also the fact you can switch passives. Damn, this game is looking good. Can't wait to play it.
Some game design ideas I got from watching your video (open drop down for the long version): 1) Let the player chose the quest order instead of a predetermined track 2) Give the player a side deck for more flexible combo building 3) Add traditional 1vs1 competitive mode were players can only battle with builds from this quest mode Motivation Instead of a linear quest you could show a map with locations and a time budget and let the player chose the order of his/her preparation actions. This gives the preparation phase more strategic feel and is also more inline with the exploration theme. For example I could chose to first go look in all shops to determine the best synergy between the randomly drawn items. However, this costs time that I did not spend battling monsters and earn money. I would also suggest to add a side deck (maybe in the form of a backpack) were you can store more items than you can use in battle. This avoids that you have to commit to one build from the start. It will create room for more strategic depth since you can more easily adapt your build in the quest phase. For example first I buy items to boost my income but are not great in battle and somewhere in between I start to switch towards my final build for the PvP battle. Also if you allow multiple battles between players they could make changes from the side deck. So I can store counters to the counters of my main strategy in my side deck. Finally, I understand that you want to attract both casual and competitive players. By restricting players to builds they created in the competitive mode you force players to play the casual mode and avoid a split between player bases. It also gives you the collecting feel of a more traditional card game since you can collect the builds of your runs.
I like ideas of the new matchmaking, but it has a separate audience and doesn't seem as directly competitive, so I hope you plan on still including a more direct pvp mode, because this all seems too passive for my personal liking. I'd still give it a shot as is, but I would probably drop it after a short while.
Can't wait to play this game.. Just one suggestion for easier balancing and more intense gameplay: I love the exponential scaling but what i would love would be if costs for level upgrades depend on the current level the items already have received therefore its a harder choice for the player how to spend their money. linear costs for leveling? Level 1 costs 1 - 2 costs 2 - 3 costs 3...
I feel like this game went from a set vision to trying to be as open to as many people as they can possibly interest. By having the game place you against a random opponent each round, you're losing a key aspect of both auto battlers and card games where you feel compelled to adapt your strategy against your opponents. This change completely eliminates the gameplay element of counter play, which is important for any successful card game and auto battlers. Having everything grow over time is okay in theory, but now this means that making a strong combo will become obsolete in a few rounds. When it comes to deck building games, decks are made of cards that you got early in the game (which are weaker) and the stronger cards, but you still build your deck in a way so that you can filter through the less powerful cards or combo with them, rather than having things become completely obsolete after a few rounds. I understand that this game is no longer supposed to be a "deck building game" per se, but that genre still seems to be a heavy influence on the overall direction. The game's aesthetic is great, but you're starting to lose me on the actual gameplay now, which is an absolute shame as this was a game I've been looking forward to for quite a while now.
Random opponents each time seems like it encourages players to force meta builds. Because there's no way of knowing what you'll queue into, just go for the general "strongest" thing. Playing against the same opponent gives counterplay, it encourages you to figure out the weaknesses of their build and adapt.
Forcing will be impossible in the final product because you have no guarantee of finding any specific item. The item pool, merchant pool, Hero Skill pool, and event pools will be too big to reliably get any specific meta build. It is about contextual decision-making on the fly.
@@reynad27 fair enough, a game where you can't just force the strong builds sounds good, thanks for clearing it up. I still do rate the counterplay aspects of playing against the same opponent.
@@reynad27 600 items * 30 levels = 18,000 cards to balance which sounds like a nightmare. Provided you want to avoid extremely broken builds, avoid a stale meta where people reset for specific items or even try to make the game competitive.
This is pretty entertaining, I loved your sniper run. I think it's pretty easy to see that even Reynad likes keeping his items. I think it's natural for a person to upgrade what they have more than just ditch their build for something different. I can see that getting new stuff is helpful, but it seems like a combo of just upgrading some items and buy new stuff to support your upgrading item is the typical route. Really looking forward to more!
I don’t exactly know how it could be implemented, but I feel like the occasional option to trade with other players (in place of an AI merchant during one of the buying phases) through matchmaking would be an interesting idea to make the game feel more interactive and alive, and more of a multiplayer game overall. Plus it would fit in exceptionally well with the bazaar theme of the game.
One thing for replay system - make sure it's really easy to both browse/find and then export fights. Some games do this by having a little pop-up after a fight and you click it and then it immediately downloads the fight or takes you to social media of choice with a default post ready for the user to post
Absolutely incredible! I know I am late to the party but the game looks incredible now in comparison to the previous version. Such a fresh idea with the matchmaking.
What about some system, where after a fight, you're able to propose an item trade to the enemy (this would probs exclude monster fights), which gives both items an extra level? Generally, I was thinking that The Bazaar (he said the thing!), although a vie for power, shouldn't always be hostile between the players - even though the items aren't all aggressive, there could still be "intrigue and machinations" via that sort of mutually beneficial deal. At the same time, this would allow for a higher diversity of strategies, as the collective level of both parties involved would grow, making it advantageous to close a such a deal. Simple clause could be that both players have the option to propose an item for the potential trade, but the implementation options are quite open here, I guess. Also, AMAZING WORK! I'm, like, impressed that the quality and creative flourish of this whole project keeps going up with each update!
"We got rid of upgrading item because we want items in the shop to be better than upgraded items in your hand" ...proceeds to upgrade an item in his hand to the point where its better than a higher level version of the same item in the shop. You might want to look into that!
The game feels way more PVE now than PVP. Actually, I am not sure what the point is in fighting players at all. At least when you beat a monster you get loot. You'd think you'd get even better loot for beating a player. You also don't care if they die, because you aren't going to see them again. What's stopping you from going fully asynchronous, or even single player? To be frank, the PVP already feels gutted enough that you might as well go all the way. If the goal of combat is to not have math, then time based combat does not meet that goal. With every item you buy and compare, you have having to divide the length of combat by it. And now that's combined with exponential returns? Having items scale as early as level 1 as well as upgrading seem to go against the philosophy of wanting items to churn. There is a reason Brann, Lightfang, and other cards that give you a direction in battlegrounds are tier 5. On that note, because it isn't immediate clear in any given shop, what makes you decide to pick a direction that isn't based on the cards you already own? Are there build around cards that significantly push you in a direction? If they are also showing up at tier 1, why would you ever switch off of them? I would challenge the idea that dividing up your units into tiers causes less diversity. Isn't the opposite true, for the above reasons? Not switching = less diversity. It would be nice if it were more immediately clear what items belonged to a specific class. Right now it just feels like you are choosing a different skin. Leveling happens to often that the impact of it isn't felt very strongly. I think I would prefer if it happened less often, so the differences between items were more apparent. Final point, the card art looks amazing. I was surprised when Reynad said that they weren't done because it already looked so good.
Honestly, I was skeptical at first when he was talking about playing when you want to, I assumed it would just be you playing ghosts but then I realized you can play all the phases up to the player at your own pace and the player pvp battles aren't super long. Pretty cool
lol what player pvp battles? without any form of actual interaction, they could just build an AI to act as your opponents and nobody would ever know the difference...
I really like the notion of saved states as ghosts. Among low que times it also allows you the developers to create special fights that everyone has a random chance to encounter. Like imagine before you release a new set or even character you "Built a ghost" and before the release you got a chance to randomly fight this character or cards that never existed. It would feel like a true adventure.... Or if an E-sport scene grew imagine saving the year end champions deck and having it floating around so you can randomly fight this mythical character that is the CHAMPION OF CHAMPIONS
Looks like the game went full deck builder auto battler and took out the part where you actually play with the deck, which doesn't completely kill my interest but diminishes it substantially. I'm sure you had great personal / market analysis / design / funding reasons to choose this direction for your game, but it certainly isn't at all what most people signed up for.
How would any kind of professional play work in this new system? Is there any idea or plans for a tournament setup? And how would the "solo queue" ladder system work? Is it just "This player has won X times" or would it be some kind of rating system that increases more for how far you've gotten (+1 for a 3/3 but +20 for a 10/3). Any information on the competitive scene would be great :)
Wow the powder flask sniper rifle combo seems busted lmao The matchmaking seems cool, kind of like Hearthstone duels but with a focus on the deckbuilding. I don't think you've hit the complexity sweet spot yet though, it would be nice to have some more strategy between fights? Maybe some sort of synergy system like traits in auto battlers? That's just a random suggestion, but it feels like *something's* missing... Maybe it's just a balance thing? Edit: Or even better, maybe a short "preparation round" before you fight another player, so that there could be at least a bit of counterplay/preparation? Also, I guess this part is probably not finished, but it seems weird that you get completely random items from the monster fights, with seemingly no connection to the monster at all. It would be dope if each monster had special drops that you can't otherwise find in shops. Then it could be like, "oh crap! the lich! a very hard fight, but at least I get the phylactery combo" or something? Though if early monsters gave too powerful items, then early game might be too unvaried. Maybe even late game if the monster loot is very strong... Anyway, just seems like bad flavor currently. I can't wait to see the more polished version and eventually try it for myself. Seems like a fun game!
I think a cool addition could be different sound effects for weapons based off of how much damage they do or what effects they possess. Example could be that if you have a sniper rifle, it makes the sound effect of a sniper, and then once it hits your opponent's portrait, it makes a really satisfying blow to them because you did a big chunk of their health with that attack. I think this could definitely make each item feel more different too. I would love to see items have different sound effects based off of what item they are and depending upon how much damage they output. I guess damage output wise, you could set it up in about 5 different ways. 1 is little damage. 2 is a moderate amount of damage. 3 is a pretty big hit. 4 is a massive blow of damage. And 5 is just fucking deadly. And since there's healing items, you could make the healing items have different sound effects based off of how much health you restored. I also thought about once you click on a merchant / vendor / special encounter / enemy encounter, they have voicelines. Like let's say for instance you click on an enemy named like... Idk, Legendary Dark Knight Kaito, he has a dark deep voice and says: "you will perish... beneath MY legendary power!!" and then whoever you're playing as could be like "We'll see about that, Kaito!" And then there could always be a few interactive voicelines. Then as for a merchant, once you click on them, and deciding upon who you chose, they'll have different things to say. "Welcome to my store. Buy, buy, buy!" "Pick an item... or get out!!" "I sell only the finest of weaponry." "If armor and defense is what you need, I sell ;)" "Oh honey, you can't go wrong with my wares. " So forth, so on. It would take a lot of voice actors. But I for one WOULD LOVE to see this all. And I would LOVE to voice act for free. I'm sure a lot would tbh. Lol or for very cheap at least. :)) I hope you guys see this!! ❤️❤️❤️
-Everything about this build looks great as a proof of concept. All the tools are set up to make something great when flavor, balance, and personality is added. -The 10 wins till the run ends seems like it might be a little long, but the autobattler nature might mitigate that. My frame of reference being Legends of Runeterra where their runs are a complete slog to try and get through and Hearthstone arena runs can be multiple hours. - After the game releases, new game modes like a king of the hill variant is something that I'd like to see. 4 players so it's fairly easy to get a friend group together and have fun.
About not having to wait for opponents: The system I liked best was Solforge where you could play multiple games in parallel and you would have the icon for switching between game boards light up to indicate that it's your turn on another game. This was combined with a time bank so you could still take your time to think about difficult turns. If you allow people to play as many games in parallel as they want, impatient players can just queue up more games till they are at the point where things progress fast enough for them.
i do really love that you fixed the turn timer issue, but i think having no turn timer at all might be a bad thing. maybe this is just a me problem, but when im playing a strategy game and there's no timer at all, i tend to overthink every decision to the point where it stops being fun. it could even be abusurdly long with an option to pause the game if you have to go do something and i think thatd still fix the potential issue. a lot of the fun of strategy games to me is getting quicker and quicker at thinking through what you need to do. when im playing a game with no time pressure though, this doesnt really happen for me to an extent where i start to feel like im getting really good at it. again, maybe this is just a me thing, but it doesnt seem that weird to me?
I am kinda confused as to what the purpose of the player characters (vanessa and pig) is in the current edition of the game? Seems pretty much just aesthetic?
I think adding a 2 or 3 slot "backpack" inventory would be good. Have a storage for items you want to save for later or swap out for a potential re-build. It feels a little weird just skipping a few merchants/monster rewards every day.
I have always felt like auto-battlers were just table top deck builders with a much smaller deck. My only thought throughout the demo was that the "battle" felt pretty bland, not flashy or exciting enough. Not sure if adding a speed up timer is good enough, because you want the battle to be informative enough to make decisions but quick and flashy enough to want to get to the next battle.
56:12 I love how there's this legacy ghost with massive health just floating around...none shall ever be able to challenge him. Maybe it'd be kind of funny to incorporate this in some kind of random or joke encounter? Anyway, great stuff, love to see the game unfolding before our very eyes!
I'm not sure if I like the permanent stat changes on items even after the buffer item is sold because it may discourage changing them out. You may end up running into the problem where players feel like if they don't get buffer items early on in their run they just lose against people who did. I don't mind item stat changes, but I feel like grindstone and lighthouse should feel like a tradeoff of space for power. Buffer cards seem like something hard to balance because on one hand you don't want them to be too weak that they are not a choice later on in runs, but also not too powerful that they roll runs. (Don't really have a good solution. Maybe the numbers just need tweaking and they are fine as is, but those are my concerns with buffer cards.)
the matchmaking system sounds really interesting; the option for private games (vs friends) would be a neat feature as well. I really hope you include this for the final product. awesome update, keep them coming! ...and nice hair, reynad.
Not sure how I feel about infinite lobbies, definitely feels like it removes counterplay from the game. Will there be a 1v1 mode? Can you play against your friends?
I believe you need more items that merge and destroy items. I know this is hard to design but it does open up design space in a fun way. Like cooking or crafting , it offers so mucc creative potential
Random thought... what if, each turn, people had the choice on whether they could go out and fight a monster, or go to the market/bazaar and buy equipment? The more monsters you fight, the stronger they get, but the stronger the RANDOM loot drops if you defeat them (like any rpg). Futhermore, the more monsters they defeat, the higher level the HERO (your character, or YOU) becomes (as opposed to your weapons, you get stronger). This way, people have to manage going out enough to get stronger, versus going to market and buying better equipment. It’ll make it seem like you, as the player, have control of your day, and gives you a sense of “journey”. Once again, just a random thought. Nice update, regardless!
I am intrigued by the flexibility of the infinite lobby and the general day progression. However In the two games you showed the board space really seemed to limit the game in a negative way. Not having a deck that you flow through, adding or maybe removing cards to combo together or a traditional auto battler with a bench that 3x upgrades and lets you move items into and out of play seemed awkward. It seems like you have so many opportunities to buy thing but no where to put them so why buy things at all unless it fits perfectly and just save money to upgrade your specific combo. I think having a bench or a way you flow through your items could really open things up.
Man I just watched all of theese videos in 1 sitting, I have to say that I love how you were so brave to innovate your whole game, and I think it's for the better. All your design choices were accurate, and instead of taking the old genres for granted you analysed their key properties and kept the good things mixed them together and removed the bad things. The only thing I would go for is to keep a 1v1, as drafting like this would make you go for the most broken build possible without really a control over your opponent playstyle etc... it would either be that you try to build a strategy with the higher number that beats your opponent number (like throwing dices, where you try to increase the number on your dice at every merchant). Or it is just rock paper scissors, for example fast spam beats one big burst which beats stun lock which beats fast spam, and every time you queue you just hope that you get a scissor since your deck is a rock. In either scenarios, throwing dices or rock paper scissors is not really the best example of a strategy game, and this drafting system would make this incredible design go to waste. My suggestion is to keep this mode for more casual players, but also let competitive players enjoy a 1v1 game even if it takes a bit of time for every game. LoL is one of the most popular games out there, and it is very complex and takes a lot of time, don't be scared to make it less accessible, because otherwise it will cost you in terms of gameplay
the way this is going, I predict that either they will realize they are making the game boring and noncompetitive by not allowing players to build around their opponents, and make changes that adress that, they'll make a 1v1 mode that'll be the one people actually play, or their game will crash and burn because once people learn what is the fastest combos, they'll all play those for like a month and then just get bored by it.
If items like the iceburg cant be leveled up then there should be something on the card to make it clear it cant be upgrated like change the color blue around the level to a diffrent color or a border around to make it look diffrent from other items at that level.
The game looks very fun now. The obvious problem is that you are pretty much always looking for the same thing. It would be great to be able to see your opponent at the start of the day, so you can adapt your choices throughout the day for the fight. You could start the day at a board with papers attached to them. There would maybe be 3 papers on the board with different opponents and you could choose which one you wish to face at the end of the day. It could even include players on a higher day so that the player can choose if he believes his build counters the enemy enough to still beat them (or will be able to at the end of the day). The player will then be rewarded for his risk if he manages to beat the thougher opponent. Thematically this could be either a board for bounty hunting or challengers for a late night showdown. With this of cause you would only be able to play against ghosts, but for me thats not a big deal. The important thing about playing other players is just that there is endless variety. The bigger problem with this is that math becomes important and for that reason there would either have to be simplified numbers or random numbers. The game could also show if you are gonna win or lose during the buy phases. Thats a bit anticlimactic, but it would save you the math. To add more feeling of playing an online game, the ghosts could actually be quite interresting. You could have a big list of all the ghosts you have added to the game. Then you can sort of build your own arena where you handpick 2-6 (whatever number makes it the most fun to play) ghosts for each day and then you can challenge your friends to try out your arena. The challenger will then only be able to chose between those handpicked ghosts at the start of each day for their opponent for the day. So there is kind of another dimention of the game where the goal is to build up the strongest arena, as well as trying to beat your friends arenas. This also makes it so that when you play the game, you can choose between if you are playing to win or to build a ghost for your arena. There might also be competitive aspects to this where participants of a turnament can spend a week (or whatever time unit fits best) building up their arena. Then on the turnament day, one arena will be chosen and all the other participants can simultaniously try to get 10 wins in that arena. After the arena is beaten, after everyone has had a fixed number of attempts or after a time limit, the players could move on to the next arena and repeat until every players arena has been played. Points could be given for how far you get in each arena and how well your own arena does. The optimal format is not obvious, but im sure there is a fun way to run a turnament.
I'm really liking the direction the game is currently heading! One thing I would like to see is adding more items that you can activate during battle. Something like once used, will block like 20% of the next hit you take or an item that reduces the cooldown of your attack by X amount of time. Currently, the battles seem to play themselves and adding more active items introduces a whole new level of strategy and makes the game feel more interactive! I'm still really excited to try out the game!
So... it's not a competitive deck-building game anymore? It's become an auto-battler? Odd Honestly hoping you reverse course before it's too late. The world needs a PvP deck-builder; not an autobattler.
It would be cool if higher-level cards wouldn't only get bigger numbers but also more interactive perks at like every 5 levels or something like this. Kinda like an inherited version of the special item upgrades which were in the last update video.
I'm not sure this will feel like a PvP game which is what I wanted. But it's hard to say just from 1 vid.a If there is strategy and depth then this looks fantastic
I hope game releases with a few game modes (or more than 1 :D). I could really see this concept work with an offline mode against monsters where you can try to get high scores or beat progressively more challenging "days". Could also set up crafted daily or weekly challenges for people to play in offline mode. It would be a nice way to test out builds without having the stress of queuing into other players or in a ranked/competitive mode.
I think monster fights taking away HP from actual PVP fights is a really frustrating mechanic. Knowing you are going into a PVP fight with less HP because of a random monster that counters your build really takes away from it imo.
This looks really interesting so far, and so much has changed for the better. I definitely trust that the released game will be balanced more than this too, keep it up. Will the player ghosts be able to use their interactable items if the player used them or how does that work? For the replay speeds, is x0.75 and x3 speeds really necessary? It seems like that's just an additional click to make it to fully slow or fully fast. Also maybe adding keyboard shortcuts for the replay would be worth it, so you can pause as soon as you hit replay.
The matchmaking concept is extremely interesting. I'm glad that you guys aren't afraid of trying new stuff as a brand new IP.
i would like to see items that can fuse together under certain conditions
The only thing Im worried about is that you cant really counter an opponent. So items that counter a specific build are either useless or very frustrating if you run against an item that punishes your build since the opponent couldnt have known you play that and theres no way for you to adapt to that.
Just wanted to add that Ive heard Reynad say that their philosophy is that they would rather have players focus on their strategy instead of denying/countering others from executing their strategy. Therefore this definitly doesnt have to be a bad thing, but could be very good.
We believe innovation is key in creating the experience we want for players. We want The Bazaar to feel new and exciting every time you play it!
Bazar Update:
Reynad and Ben swap hairstyles to see how it will change the tempo of the game.
Other developers: Just go for a normal build to show of the game
Reinald: makes broken sniper build that deals infinite damage the second the fight starts
This is the funniest shit ever
How do you feel about the lack of counterplay with this matchmaking? A lot of people mentioned the lack of interaction in the Q&A, but I feel like a more important concept is counterplay. I remember Reynad made a video about counterplay some years ago, and I think it is a very important part of any competitve game. Interaction just for the sake of interacting doesn’t provide much, like pressing «ok» in MTG, but having to adapt your strategy depending on what other players are doing is part of what makes multiplayer games fun imo. In autobattlers you can see other players builds to adapt, and draft mode (arena) in HS or MTG has counterplay in the decisions you make in game. However, with automatic fights and random matchmaking you don’t get either of those.
Thanks for writing this. Exactly what I was thinking. At this stage seems like no need for real time PvP if you have no idea what you are going to be facing - what's the difference between a random real time player and a ghost build?
I think the main negative consensus here to this concept is that it's kind of strayed far away from what most people were thinking it was going to be which is a competitive deck builder. The game now doesn't seem like it will be very competitive at all, but that doesn't mean it won't be fun. It's starting to look more and more like a conceptually casual 1-player auto-battler which honestly doesn't sound bad. The reason I enjoy auto battlers is creating all these zany and weird builds based off of amping up 1 effect i find interesting, but if this will work or not is basically up to how you guys balance and if it'll be fun to do on a long term basis. Not sure how you guys will monetize though tbh.
I’m pretty sure Reynard said in a previous video that monetization will come from cosmetics only. That was a while ago though.
@@SerWhiskeyfeet cosmetic and buying hero, a bit like league's current monetization last I've heard him mention it.
Yeah, I am disappointed, but I also didn't back the game or anything like that, but it is interesting on how they are creating this, even if it is not for me, these videos are awesome
So there are two things that I disslike at this point of development
1-In infinite player pool there is no counterplay or competitive value, you just make best build and that's it and while it sounds cool at first it looks like it will get boring fast, also while it's true that wining is fun enjoyment comes from beating opponent competitively and this just doesn't feel right.
2-From what I've seen so far skill curve just isn't that great here, what I mean by that is by cutting so many features like economy or counterplay you don't really have difference in skill from ok players to great ones, in autobattlers you have economy interests, synergies, positioning heck even buying all of the same cost units so you can get what you want easier, in HS you can predict board clears and so on but here you just take best cards make cool looking synergies(which can't be too complex because of lack of space) and you just play.
So in my opinion by trying to make game too easy and non punishing you are just making it worse in long run.
I hope you consider adding a 1v1 mode in addition to the current infinite pool mode. A 1v1 mode offers the players to counterplay each other more than the infinite pool and sounds a little more appealing to me. The infinite pool mode sounds realllly fun and great for mobile, but it seems like it would tend towards players just making the best general build they could while a 1v1 lets players react to each other's build decisions, sort of like side decking in other games. (i hope my explanation makes sense ;p)
Exactly my thoughts too
My first thought was "how do i 1v1 my friend to show him that i'm better than him" - so I figured it would be a game where you just play each other and the first to 3 losses loses (or can be increased to say.. first to win 5 or 7). But then it runs the risk of 1v1 becoming the main mode, and everyone playing that with a ranking system. But maybe that's also good? Similar to "ranked vs arena". I'm sure both modes appeal to different sets of people.
it's basically playing arena runs, not a bad thing but a different type of experience. You can choose between a general build that does well against most builds or hyper focus on one and hope you don't run into hard counters. It's lacking that direct counterplay but I still like it
i dont even know how they would make that work with the current system. if you lose after three losses, then a 1v1 could never go longer than 5 rounds. Not enough time to fully scale anything or build a comp. this is the same problem if they tried to make is an 8-person lobby as well
@@T.Miller1234 can just have a different win condition. First to 8 wins or something
At this point it feels like this is a singleplayer game where you battle other player builds. There seems to be no interactivity between players during matches, so I don't see a difference between what playing vs ghosts or players would make. While other autobattlers also don't have much interaction between players during a match, players see what others build, so their buys affect your buys, however as here the player pool is infinite, your tryhard build would end up whatever is the meta build / meta counter right now.
single player but user generated / ghost sounds good to me - better than standard single player where it's dev generated / procedural
Ye. Lack of interaction is a really odd decision. Game looks great and I wish Reynad and everyone the best of luck but this isn't appealling to myself
Agree. Lack of decision during fight with player feels like I can do nothing. kind of lottery where I can prepare for something and that it is... not good rng imo. Would love to see that i can either win or lose fight depending on who is better me or opponent and not that he or I just choose by accident the strategy that counters me or him/her. single player game can be fun but not for a long time. also the system of arena like playing... on one hand it is great cause of reason mentioned in video but also makes it much less rewarding in terms of "i good great job and i deserve a win" or "i fucked i need to rethink my decisions". long story short... i would like to see this game more competitive! i know it will be hard task... but that'd be great. at least for me it is kinda most important if not dealbreaking feature ;P that's why i stopped playing HS... is so fuckin unpredictable now... you even cant estimate your chance properly during game even if you know both (opp and yours) decks perfectly... that is kinda stupid lottery. but anyway... game looks nice - just hope for some solutions to make it truly competitive.
Hope this gets seen by the devs. Now there's no point to battling another player in a live match. You can't react to what they are doing and you'll never see that player again. From a development perspective, it would make more sense to go entirely with the ghost system and do no live matches at all.
This comment aged poorly as Backpack Battles proved that this kind of concept can be successful and fun. And OF COURSE it matters that you play against other player builds, because human players define the meta and the power level, not some premade or AI opponents.
Reynad's comments during the gameplay are killing me.
"Fun and interactive" great to see a dev play his own game :D
The infinite player lobby system sounds absolutely great for everyday play, but I see some downsides with it too. If you face a different opponent each time, you can't prepare for their strategy, which removes quite some depth. Also you can't play with a predetermined group of people, meaning you can't play with friends nor have a proper tournament.
I see this as an improved version of the bo1 queue in MTGA, which suffers from similar problems, yet is really popular due to its accessability. But just like competitive play in Magic relies on the bo3 format, so will The Bazaar require a gamemode like 1v1.
It sounds like the best solution here is just to do the same thing as Magic, where you have a mode with a set number of players for tournaments and with friends but the standard mode is the Bo1 infinite lobby.
100% my concern is not knowing what builds are out there to counterplay. Might start to feel like multiplayer solitaire.
@@BMVfilms Over time people will Netdeck this game - popular strategies will emerge - so if you simply provide what character you will verse in the next fight - you can often predict a good amount
I saw it as a single player game, but each boss instead of being AI, is a player (so less easy to prepare against). I think that's cool, but it's also feels more playing vs the computer than outsmarting your opponent over the course of many turns. I really like the replay feature and the fact that you can take your time refining a build before facing your next opponent (autochess games always feel like a rush when you first start out)
@@ZarrocLP i feel like that’s exactly what they DON’T want - a feel that you’re boxed into only a few viable strategies
The buying aspect I think is real solid and fun, but the battles themselves are rather snooze (the early ones more as later they started just ending instantly lol) just looking at timers go off with no interaction. I guess its very auto battler (which I grew bored of pretty quick tbh) but there you could look at your enemies layout and see what is harder to show up and what to counter. The infinite pool is interesting for real casual games, but I think adding also a 1v1 and 8-10 royale for different peoples preference for be a good idea.
While I'm open for anything, I think the matchmaking makes the game move even further away from the original concept. "Half" of the strategy part is gone, as you no longer need adapt to 1-7 fixed opponents with each a specific build, but instead you always have to play against the exact same meta, even if you play 6 hours in a row. It seems fine for a casual mobile game though.
for a mobile game sure, for a esport that wants to be taken seriously? not a chance if you ask me im afraid.
Anything more than 1v1 and it becomes kind of silly to try to "adapt" to your opponents choices. The vast majority of strategy in auto battlers is building the best strategy you can, then maybe slightly adjusting positioning or grabbing an obvious counter card or unit to your upcoming opponent.
Disagree that that's "half" of the strategy in those games, although it's a part of it for sure.
I do think the meta becoming stale is a concern. Ensuring a large variety of strategies are viable is the only real solution there, even for 1v1 games.
@@myrsta5764 "The vast majority of strategy in auto battlers is building the best strategy you can" This is directly tied to being able to observe your opponent's boards, when there is a shared pool of cards. May not equal half, but it is certainly relevant.
@@xKumei Yeah I agree, I just wanted to contest the point that half of the strategic gameplay is being lost there. Maybe it's different at the highest level, but I think most of the time you can get pretty far entirely ignoring your opponents in auto battlers. I know I have.
On the concept of monsters: maybe make certain monsters vulnerable to certain strategies? Maybe a minotaur has an item with high armor, so he's weaker to large bursts of damage than many small instances. Maybe a meduza has an item that turnns your strongest item to stone, so it's ideal to not "put all your eggs in one basket" for that fight. And you show the players at the start of the day what monster they're gonna face, so they have some time to adjust their strategy accordingly. I'm thinking about something like Slay the Spire or Monster Train, where they show you in advance what the boss will be, so you sort of adjust your deck a little to play to the weaknesses of that boss, which adds more variety to the runs.
I think that would force people to put constraints on their builds, which would be less fun in my opinion. Also, the best strategy might be to just change your build last minute, but if you are unlucky, you could lose the game from that. I would hate so much to lose against a monster just because he hard counters my build or having to change my build just to survive a monster.
I think that sounds fun exclusively for a single player adventure type mode. I feel that can risk funneling builds down a certain path in PvP
@@perplexingpantheon Well to be frank, the game in this iteration feels more like a PvE game than a PvP game anyway. What I mean is that there is no reasonable metric you could use to distinguish between being matched up against a bot vs being matched up against a player. Reynad only played against ghosts in this demo because there were no players to match up against, but even if there were, the experience would've been exactly the same. Not saying this is a bad thing necessarily, but if it's leaning more towards a PvE game, the game could fully embrace that and become a better game. Maybe.
man, i was so excited about this game a while back, when it still was a deckbuilding game against another player. now it seems like you make a few choices, press a button and 5 seconds later the game is over and you have either won or lost, and move on to face another opponent. it seems like i will have to stick to hearthstone for a while longer - even though i absolutely hate that game. but at least in that game you make a deck and play another person, and it is somewhat competetive. i mean, at least your making strategic choices while playing and you actually react to what the other person is doing :P maybe i'm missing something - i've never played an "auto-battler" before.
i have to say that my excitement-levels have definitely dropped from 10/10 to like a 2/10, sadly :P i'll keep an eye out though, and will definitely try it out when it releases.
I think he's missed the mark, completely. What we're seeing here has no similarity to his vision, several years ago.
@@xthatwhiteguyx It has no similarity, they are really focusing on what they think would appeal commercially to the largest number of people possible. The current trand right now is autobattler, and they are making it as intuitive and casual as possible so the entry level is next to zero. Feels like a game that you would play in your phone while you go to the toilet. But at this stage I'm skeptical if this game would be a commercial success, I'm affraid he might miss the mark of his original idea and still dont become the next candy crush. Hope I'm wrong.
@@thethingyouarewatching Honestly, who does this appeal to at all? They're trying to make it appeal to the largest number of people without ever thinking if there's even a single demographic it appeals to. Casuals aren't going to play this because it looks and feels way too much like a strategy/competitive game. But it isn't competitive or strategic at all, so it also won't appeal to that demographic. This is going to be a nightmare flop at release if they don't make some major changes.
@@wardm4 I'm afraid you are right. Seems too odd for a casual game and too casual for a competitive, strategic game.
@@thethingyouarewatching this game, the way it is, is miles behind the level of strategy and replayability that autochess games have. not having to build according to your opponents' builds, which is a crucial part of autochess, just makes it dull. if they dont make some real changes to this format, the game will most definetely not appeal to autochess players.
I like some aspects of the infinite lobby strategy but I do have one major concern with the idea.
Won't the best strategy just be to make the most generally good setup you can every turn? You would never do niche things or think outside the box, because you have no idea who you are going to play against. It would always just be best to put up the best board and pray you don't get countered. I think that gets stale really quickly. You could theoretically do some tech stuff to counter meta builds, but you would never completely warp your playstyle. A good basic example is putting your backline to the front if you know you queue up vs assassin in AutoChess. Another more advanced example is how Freeze Mage has to play completely differently than normal to ever have a chance vs Control Warrior. I like how the matchup can force your hand - this might be lost in the new system.
Didn't mean to harp on the idea too much. I still totally agree that there are many, many upsides. Just some constructive criticism.
I didn't watch the entire video yet so apologies if this is covered later on.
Hey I am a product manager in a tech firm, not been doing this too long but we frequently come across a problem of 'over development' in which previous decisions were assumed to be right and caused long term knock on effects, because the team doesn't reevaluate what they though to be true at an earlier stage of development.
This game seems to have that problem - what do you want to be? This game is 9 different things for 9 different people in my opinion.
They said it would be a competitive Esport game. its lightyears from that i seems.
They either completely changed their goal with the game or they have no idea what the game should be anymore
I'll echo the sentiment of "Why is it even multiplayer, then?" If the game can function off ghosts entirely, then why bother having it be multiplayer at all?
As someone that does not play auto chess, has never seen the appeal, I am not a fan of these changes. It looks like a single player game with a "multiplayer" battle at the end?
What does it matter if the opponent is a "Ghost" or not there is no interaction between the players. Why bother making the game PvP if the players cannot interact against each other? It's not like Asynchronous chess, because there each person has full control of their actions, the time they make the action is up to them. Here as no person has no input against the other player, it is just equivalent to a player made deck V. the "AI" of another player's made deck. This is a very common concept in a ton of mobile games.
At this point the game looks like it would be better/more fun if it was just a single player game and you removed the multiplayer aspect entirely, à la slay the spire or other similar games. It would be the player against a well crafted and balanced opponent with a variety of card choices and events.
Again I never understood the appeal of auto chess, but clearly others did, maybe I am misunderstanding something, but as I see it, these are not great changes.
I never really got into auto chess myself, but as someone who likes single player experiences like slay the spire and monster train, I think I'll enjoy it.
Agree though that it kinda seems the PvP aspect has little meaning when it can so easily become entirely asynchronous.
i feel the same. i've never played an auto-battler game and don't see the appeal at all. this game seems like you make a couple of decisions and then press a button, wait a few seconds and you either win or lose, without any inputs. then another opponent shows up, you wait a few seconds and you either win or lose, again. where's the gameplay!? :P where's the strategy, if you're facing different opponents every turn, and only for 1 turn? :S i'm so confused :P
as someone who enjoys underlords, this definetly does not have the appeal of auto chess games. In those, you can constantly check out what your opponents are buying, the strategies they are developing, the specific items and positionings they are using etc. Yeah, you dont control the way your units move and attack during combat per se, but if you play enough to get past the basest level of understanding of the game, you realize it takes a lot of thinking and strategizing. the way this is looking, this game has what could be construed as the "boring" part of autochess, which is not controlling your units during combat, without any of the aspects that make those games appealing.
It would be interesting if you could see the player you will face ahead of time so you can spend the day preparing to fight that deck. Might add some tension and strategy as well.
thats impossible, cause the system cant tell when youll queue and when anyone else will.
Ngl core gameplay loop looks kinda boring. I like how much the card sizes matter but the autobattling i'm not sure about. Lacks interactivity. Also how about merging weapons together to make new ones?
Also the two characters did not feel different enough, and was hard to see what their identity is. I hope with more items added this becomes more clear. Maybe character has different possible events?
Maybe you should go full async/ghost at this rate. Since battles are just auto and fights are vs a different player each time, I don't see what is the value of having both players there in real time.
I feel like the idea of the infinite pool is super innovative and makes a lot of sense, but it makes me slightly worry that the more competitive audience won't like the lack of a 1v1 system. Being able to strategize about a specific opponent feels like a skill that has a really high potential ceiling, and being able to directly measure your skill vs another player would feel a lot more competitive, imo. Maybe have a 1v1 queue outside of the current infinite pool queue?
I think monster fights should be random to add more tension and a push your luck mechanism. Thinking you get a warning when you're in a dangerous area that there's a chance you might encounter a monster. Maybe even can have certain merchants are in shady areas (like a side alley) and are more likely to have monsters or bad guys nearby
I posted an idea on r/playthebazaar which would fit really well with this. Each day you would explore a new "sector" of the bazaar and each sector would have different chances at each event, with a least one unique event type for each sector. One of the sectors might be the "black market" for example.
I really hope to see monsters connect closely to the bazaar theme. You could have wealthy nobles and their guards, burglars, rival merchants, a guild fee collector, a tax collector, an unhappy customer, beggars, street dogs, urchins, etc. You know, thematic encounters instead of generic spider boss medusa minotaur memes. Guessing you may have already thought of this given your reference to monsters as predominately placeholder encounters at this stage. Build is looking very cool.
Wasn't your plan to monetize via cosmetics? Now that all the interactivity is gone and you can't even play friends anymore, why would I buy cosmetics if no one is going to see them? There is not even any downtime I have to kill to play with my toys. In fact the only thing I can see myself pay money for at this point is a skip-all-animations option that will make every click instant and have every fight end right away (the outcome can be computed in less than a second), so I can consume the only actual gameplay that is left, which is the buying decisions, as fast as possible.
And I'm not being sarcastic here. I do play Solitaire games and my favorite ones are those where you can just a click/double-click a card to make it instantly go to the obvious pile. Also when I played Hearthstone I really wanted to turn off all of the animations.
Wow. The game looks super fun - I can't wait to play it. My only concern is regarding counter-play. It seems like there will always be builds outright win against certain other builds, and it would feel pretty bad to just queue into the bad matchup and be eliminated. The best feeling from auto-battlers, in my opinion, is constructing a team specifically to take down a strong comp that you know you have to get through. In the Bazaar with this matchmaking, there will still be counter-play involving tech choices against popular, good builds for sure. However, the result of your attempted counter-play is not apparent from any one run - you would have to play lots of runs to account for variance, and it would ultimately come down to the prevailing meta at any given time.
This build kind of killed counterplay. It seems the player basically just wants to solitaire and optimize in isolation. I think maybe to bring some counter play back and to encourage churn, you could consider this:
Go full async matchmaking. This allows you to give the player a preview of your opponents build for the day. This gives the player opportunity to adjust their build while shopping for the day and promotes adjustments, counterplay and churn.
Right now it seems the player is currently incentivized to focus on a single good item and keep leveling it throughout the game and build around it with no consideration for your opponents, and just basically hope you don’t get countered
That seems really a smart way to make the game more interesting, you could have a fortune teller/Oracle mechanic that shows you a foe in your future and you can try to prepare for that. Maybe there’s a crystal ball that shows 2 out of the 5 items the enemy will have when you mouse over it. Something like that so it feels flavorful.
@@helixier6629 that's some nice flavor with the oracle/crystal ball thing!
I really like this idea, but people in the comments seem to hate that it can even async at all :(
@@simonbuysse8559 yea i dont see the reason to keep it sync with the way the combat plays out. You arent interacting with your opponent directly anyway, so it doesnt matter if they are actually there or not. The interaction was in the preparation step as you build up your items before the fight
@Andrew Adams That's why I mentioned for them to go full async. Then you could match up with someone at the beginning of the day and take all the time you want. That matched deck never changes because it's async
I feel sorry for everyone who got scammed into preordering this. What am I saying, you weren't even preordering THIS, it was advertised as a completely different game.
This change of design came at an especially cursed time, because not only Slay the Spire clones have been flooding the market for years now, Hearthstone's upcoming new game mode sounds ten times more appealing than this - and I haven't played HS in years, even then I was mostly doing dungeon runs, which were also more engaging than whatever this is.
I know this is extremely reductionist, but a Slay the Spire type game with auto battling where the bosses are other players sounds extremely up my alley. I love the art too. Incredibly excited for any beta stuff. I haven't watched in a few videos, but this just jumped way up my watch list for upcoming games.
Remember when this was supposed to be a deck builder deck? Those were the days.
Some day a slay the spire PVP game has to come up
I wanted an interactive battle where players try to adapt their strategy to their opponent's.
Trying new things is nice but the game is already unique without the infinite pool system and I would be super happy if you implement the 1v1 mode.
I can't wait to see more variety in events that shake up the flow of the day and even the pace. If a wild stampede of Rofallos distract a merchant and you can either protect the merchant or attempt to take an item and give choice to the player to choose more than just items/merchants, that'd be kind of cool. Or specific events that restrict if you see one merchant or another again in your travels could be really fun.
The seasons and expansions have a lot of opportunity to shake things up and create a lot of flavor.
Also excited to see how humor and general silliness comes into its personality.
Personally don't like the direction the game has gone. Seems as if it offers no competitive value and has pushed completely into the direction of a single player mobile game disguised as pvp since you fight other players build but do not actually interact with your opponents or ever make a decision based on what any of your opponents have done. I can see the appeal of this game, but it has turned into something I am not all that interested in.
agree 100%
Yep another slay the spire piece of poo
I agree, at the point where what your opponent is doing doesn't matter I think there is a lot less competitiveness to the game and it isn't what I am looking for, but I see the appeal
Agreed. But I guess this genre has its own audience.
completely agree, I was really excited for a revamped much more competitive version of dominion or something and instead this seems to be what we're getting =/ Really sad considering I backed this game under the pretense it'd be a deckbuilding competitive game
I will still be following this game and certainly hope you pull it off! But, speaking as someone who has followed this since you first unveiled it and watched nearly every video you have done about it, I feel like this new direction.. while maybe not a mistake.. certainly makes it a totally different game than what has been talked about so far. I can't say I'm "not a fan" because it could be really fun. But, no matter how fun a game with this type of match making is, it burns out really fast IMO. It's not nearly as fun to play "ghosts" of people as it is actual people. Will still be following and hoping for the best, but this isn't what I thought it would turn out to be by a long shot and I can't see myself "making this my new game" the way I was hoping I would any more. Instead, it will be a game to download and try.. then forget
So from deckbuilder to auto-battler to almost PvE-like roguelike. I swear it's going to be a strand type horror game in another half a year
From the sound of it, it'll be whatever genre of game got big 12 months ago.
@@xthatwhiteguyx pretty much. I was excited for the game up until the last couple updates when they stop having their own vision to just be everyone else. What makes me wanna play reynads game vs the others at that point? They were out first.
By the direction it is going, it already is
I just wanted the card game Reynad himself would love to play for hours and hours to climb a ladder.
But I dont think this is it anymore. :(
Why?
@@reynad27 In auto chess games like TFT, there's a pool of units and you know what other people are playing. You can position your units and pivot builds to counter other builds in the lobby. I feel like since there is no lobby, people will quickly find out what is broken, and since there is very little direct interaction, people will only play what is broken instead of adapting to another player. That means I feel like this game will either become extremely stale, or just uncompetitive.
@@reynad27 actually. I was acting too fast like an idiot. An with time and more info, i am now excited for the game again, and understand the decision. I think this is the more fin route to take. I guess "new" is just scary. But we need it. Good job to you and the team 🙏
@@thelog7426 don’t be a bitch just cause he replied to you dude. Tell us why you don’t like the game
@@reynad27 lot of ppl come to this channel coz you included myself, most of them pc card players that watch streams not really mobile players, it's something similar to "do you guys have phones" situation, I think the game is looking great, my only suggestion not spend too much time in balance, coz it's gonna be unbalanced no matter what in the beginning, players always do crazy shit
from a flavor perspective: how am I buying a wheelhouse or a lighthouse or a tropical island at a bazaar? it just feels a little awkward to me that I'm buying locations at a bazaar
Could be a deed I guess?
It's real estate!
it’d be nice if these “deeds” has a mechanic like landmarks features places as a card in runeterra
Made weirder by the fact that everything has roughly the same cost. Would you rather buy a lighthouse or a barrel?
battle replay is an overlooked but really important feature. ghost makes sense so you dont have to wait too long for the matchmaking. this game showing tons of promise, looking like an autobattler but in a draft format instead of battle royale, which lets a player choose their own pace and agency. super simple concepts that are solved pretty elegantly.
the main concern i have is visual impression. the big sell of teamfight tactics would be a big ult or big hits. this seems more similar to hearthstone BG with the cards hitting each other and bigger cards hitting 'harder'. i know this is probably being considered all the time by reynad's team but i hope to see more flashy/interesting visuals during the fight - this would make the replay feature more fun as well.
The fights will get a lot more interesting to watch. In this build we don't have custom visuals effects for each item, but we are working on it. Everything should get an effect that fits it (which will also make the game easier to follow). We are even doing dynamic visual effects, which scale as an item gets stronger. Buffing an item will buff the visual effect too.
Will we still be able to battle friends? That's the only reason I play card style games
Making card games more social is a big goal for us. We're definitely looking at ways to make this happen
@@reynad27 Spitballing, because it's a comment section - You mentioned early in the video that players who queue at the same time get placed against each other. Could you consider having a button where instead of getting auto-matched against anyone, the matchmaker attempts to queue you into players on your friends list that have also clicked that button? Maybe it "holds" your placement, looking for a friend within the next 30-60 seconds? Am not a developer, excited to see where the game goes, best wishes.
@@reynad27 Yeah, this is issue number 1 for my friend & I as well. If we couldn't play HS Battlegrounds together, we would never play but we have sunk 1000s of hours into it.
This looks sick. Counterplay is only fun for one person so I’m glad we have deck game which moves away from this one sided frustration
There should really be a backpack to buffer a few items, didn't feel great to keep skipping each time once your build had solidified more.
47:48 Nice Pirates of the Caribbean music, that won't get you into trouble knowing Disney.
it's barely similar tho
Heard it too. Probably not bad enough for legal troubles but pretty clear where they got the "inspiration"
y'all it's probably placeholder taken from a Pirates game
Hmm. I don't know. I think you lost me. The Bazaar seems too far away from a card game at this point. For reference, the game I'm playing right now is South Park Phone Destroyer, which is a different kind of hybrid between auto battler and card game. From what I've seen in this video I don't feel like dropping SPPD for The Bazaar. I think it's the interactivity between players that I'm missing. At this point it's completely gone from the Bazaar. It's purely a solitaire game. Once you know the game a bit, you will not watch a single fight. You'll click skip if it's available or you'll go do something different during the fight. And that's for both monster fights and player fights. There's really nothing you need to see from the fight because it has no influence on your decision making. You won't face the same opponent again.
100% this yes.
I think this is going in a good direction and some great progress is being made on the core design. I can definitely see myself playing this in the future when waiting for the bus, or something similar. I would never choose to play this on a computer, or watch it on twitch though. The lack of interactivity/reactivity makes it very time convenient for the player, but also pretty boring for someone just watching.
that's one of my biggest issues with this game right now, that it's made for mobiles. i don't play mobile games, and i'll certainly never sit down at my computer to play a mobile game. :/
Hey guys, gonna put this out there, maybe you'll read it. You guys seem to be misunderstanding what makes autochess games fun. It's not the fact that you dont have to make a lot of inputs in the combat phases. Yeah, the fact I can play laid back, with only one hand on the mouse is part of the enjoyment, but what actually makes it interesting is that you ARE stratigizing against your opponents. You could play without checking out what they are doing, just focus on a build you decided on and trying to make it strong and then just watching the cool animations during combat, but those are the players that get bored real fast and leave.
The ones who are engaged by those games are the ones who are constantly checking on their opponents money, units, items, who is winning against whom during combat, who is strongest, who is weakest, who has your units, and how much will it affect your chances of getting more of them etc. Those are the aspects that make the game complex and fun in a competitive way.
Your game, on the other hand, not only does not have cool animations of units hitting each other, just timers on top of cards that "strike" the opponent, which makes for a very boring looking combat phase, but on top of that lacks all the elements of complexity I mentioned above.
I feel you guys are to fixated on the concept of variations in buy phase, when that is not something that will make your game engaging enough by itself in the long run. It doesn't matter how many combinations of cards and effects you create, sooner or later people will map out the ones with the highest winning rates, and since you never even see what your opponents' builds are until combat, there would be no point in going for anything other those few, specific builds that are the strongest ones, statistically speaking.
The way I see it, you guys either have to give up on this infinetely rotating queu, and go for a more stardart format of 1v1, 1v7, 1v10, whatever, or you are gonna have to make some drastic changes to the rules the game as a whole. One sugestion is to implement a system where you can play multiple games at once. join the queu how many times you want, play as many 1v1 matches you want at once. SolForge did that, and it was great! If players roped you, it didnt matter, as you were playing several other matches at the same time, and since there are no interactions during combat phase, you dont have to be focused on any particular match at any given time. Once it's time to buy stuff again, just put some sort of warning on the screen so the player can see and jump back to that particular match, and there ya go.
I believe that would make for a much more engaging game - you can play laid back, not worry about making too many inputs, not run the risk of getting roped, and still get the parts of card and autochess games that actually make them complex and filled with strategy, which is making decisions based on what your opponents are doing, instead of just buying whatever and then hoping it is better then whatever some other random person bought, which you had no idea beforehand.
Many people are bringing up concerns about interactivity with the infinite lobby system. When the previous build came out, I created a suggestion thread on r/playthebazaar suggesting both the infinite lobby and removed turn timer as well as the day by day progression/exploration. However one of the ideas they didn't move toward was a way to keep a sense of interactivity. It goes like this:
1. Players can have more items in their inventory then they can play in a match, not a ton more, but room for some tech choices.
2. Before a PVP match each player gets to see their opponents inventory - NOT their build, but their inventory. For a set amount of time (say 60 seconds).
3. Players have a window to set their build.
4. The fight happens.
Another idea many people are throwing around is for a 1v1 or 8 player lobby mode. If you implement the above system, players could commit to an a synchronous mode where the battle would occur as soon as both players completed step #3. The game could send a push notification that the next round was open. It should even be possible to have this mode wait in the background and be able to continue a regular run in infinite lobby mode.
no one has time or cares for that shit dude
@@sogeoffsoclean Time to read my idea? To quick preview their opponent to plan for the battle, or time to write out a thoughtful comment that doesn't make them look like an ass-hat?
@@swinkscalibur8506 in like the first minute of the video young reynad is saying ppl dont want to sit around waiting for their opp in a phone game and yet here you are wanting everyone to sit around waiting for their opponent in a phone game. no one has time or cares about that shit dude.
@@sogeoffsoclean You must not know how an asynchronous game works. You don't sit around and wait. You play your game when you want. They play their side when they want. Like "words with friends." Between rounds you play infinite lobby mode. Just one way to make the game more interactive without forcing turn timers or locking you into a game that could take an hour. You might play a match in short bursts over an afternoon or several days depending on you and your friend.
@@swinkscalibur8506 Dont bother trying to explain anything technical to youtube commenters. Anyway I think that sounds good, and clearly it *can* work like with words with friends, but im not sure this is the type of game (gameplay wise) that youd want to break a play session over multiple async steps for. The reason async works so well for games like words with friends and digital board game adaptations is that the board holds all the information about the current game state at a moments glance, and because the players actions have immediate reactions over the course of their individual turn that doesnt need any feedback from another players choices. In this game, if I go to the market for 5 min of gameplay and then queue up for a match but that match comes another 5 min later, the feedback i get is now 5 min divorced from the actions I took in the market phase.
The way Reynad has it set up is better because it insures the least amount of time between making your decisions (market) and seeing the feedback of those decisions (battle).
I think this looks like a cool side-mode like Arena in hearthstone, but I'd also like to see a game mode that is more interactive and has counterplay. As it stands, you can put in items and *hope* they counter your opponent, so it ends up basically being a rock-paper-scissors game. Hearthstone felt like a rock-paper-scissors game, and I was hoping we could get away from that by changing our deck mid-battle, but since our opponent changes mid-battle as well, we're right back to that same problem again.
Also, it doesn't seem to matter if we have a live opponent or a ghost. In fact, there's literally no advantage to having a live opponent, and all it does is make you wait for the matchmaking servers every round. All-in-all I think this game mode is a great idea for the reasons you stated - easy to pick up for a few minutes at a time and play as a mobile game. But for dedicated PC players who want to sit down for a few hours, and who really thrive off of competition, interaction, and counterplay, we really need a versus mode as well.
Im so happy you guys are going outside of the box with it
Interesting way of doing matchmaking, however I can agree with people saying it feels less interactive and more like just trying build the best combo.
Will there be a possibility to matchmake with a friend or a specific group of opponents? That way it is about constantly changing your build to counter the opponents, instead of just trying to find the meta breaking combo. It could be an opportunity to create a form of ranked matchmaking or a form tournament setting.
I don't see any comments about this, but I really don't like the changes to the UI in this build. The more defined middle row looked so clean before. I'm guessing it's to make the game more friendly to smaller screens, but the way the heroes are encroaching on the middle row looks strange. The square portraits also feel out of place.
Looking at it more, everything was just so neatly partitioned before, now it feels kind of messy, like the corner toys were just thrown in there
Why is it that upgrading a level 1 weapon costs the same as ugrading a level 10 weapon, doesn't make much sense considering that you said previously that the more you upgrade the more the damage will increase. But besides that the game is becoming really really good, great job!
I wanted to add a comment that isn't related to judgement about the game mode too, and talk about game mechanics. It seems that our item slots are used for 3 different things: our main combo, specific tech/counter items, and generic consumable/instasell buffs. It's going to end up being pretty necessary to have a few tech items to counter popular strategies, which is going to be a detriment to more combo-driven strategies that probably won't have much free space. You might have to end up increasing the amount of space we have to work around this. Either that or the game will play even heavier into the rock-paper-scissors approach where certain strats just auto-lose to certain others. You could also have designated slots for defensive items, much like how you have the hero power slot. That way you aren't sharing the same resource (space) between different things.
I'm impressed with the decisions you guys have made. Instead of 1v1, going for something close to hearthstone arena, you queue up and commit to playing only for a short period of time. Also, this enables you to think during the buying phase infinately, which is sooo important if playing on a phone.
The fact that items have levels, and you can upgrade them using money, and also the fact you can switch passives. Damn, this game is looking good. Can't wait to play it.
Some game design ideas I got from watching your video (open drop down for the long version):
1) Let the player chose the quest order instead of a predetermined track
2) Give the player a side deck for more flexible combo building
3) Add traditional 1vs1 competitive mode were players can only battle with builds from this quest mode
Motivation
Instead of a linear quest you could show a map with locations and a time budget and let the player chose the order of his/her preparation actions. This gives the preparation phase more strategic feel and is also more inline with the exploration theme. For example I could chose to first go look in all shops to determine the best synergy between the randomly drawn items. However, this costs time that I did not spend battling monsters and earn money. I would also suggest to add a side deck (maybe in the form of a backpack) were you can store more items than you can use in battle. This avoids that you have to commit to one build from the start. It will create room for more strategic depth since you can more easily adapt your build in the quest phase. For example first I buy items to boost my income but are not great in battle and somewhere in between I start to switch towards my final build for the PvP battle. Also if you allow multiple battles between players they could make changes from the side deck. So I can store counters to the counters of my main strategy in my side deck. Finally, I understand that you want to attract both casual and competitive players. By restricting players to builds they created in the competitive mode you force players to play the casual mode and avoid a split between player bases. It also gives you the collecting feel of a more traditional card game since you can collect the builds of your runs.
I like ideas of the new matchmaking, but it has a separate audience and doesn't seem as directly competitive, so I hope you plan on still including a more direct pvp mode, because this all seems too passive for my personal liking. I'd still give it a shot as is, but I would probably drop it after a short while.
Can't wait to play this game..
Just one suggestion for easier balancing and more intense gameplay:
I love the exponential scaling but what i would love would be if costs for level upgrades depend on the current level the items already have received therefore its a harder choice for the player how to spend their money. linear costs for leveling? Level 1 costs 1 - 2 costs 2 - 3 costs 3...
I feel like this game went from a set vision to trying to be as open to as many people as they can possibly interest. By having the game place you against a random opponent each round, you're losing a key aspect of both auto battlers and card games where you feel compelled to adapt your strategy against your opponents. This change completely eliminates the gameplay element of counter play, which is important for any successful card game and auto battlers. Having everything grow over time is okay in theory, but now this means that making a strong combo will become obsolete in a few rounds. When it comes to deck building games, decks are made of cards that you got early in the game (which are weaker) and the stronger cards, but you still build your deck in a way so that you can filter through the less powerful cards or combo with them, rather than having things become completely obsolete after a few rounds. I understand that this game is no longer supposed to be a "deck building game" per se, but that genre still seems to be a heavy influence on the overall direction. The game's aesthetic is great, but you're starting to lose me on the actual gameplay now, which is an absolute shame as this was a game I've been looking forward to for quite a while now.
Random opponents each time seems like it encourages players to force meta builds. Because there's no way of knowing what you'll queue into, just go for the general "strongest" thing. Playing against the same opponent gives counterplay, it encourages you to figure out the weaknesses of their build and adapt.
Forcing will be impossible in the final product because you have no guarantee of finding any specific item. The item pool, merchant pool, Hero Skill pool, and event pools will be too big to reliably get any specific meta build. It is about contextual decision-making on the fly.
Also there are 6 classes, each with their own 100 card set. Battlegrounds has like ~100 in the entire game.
@@reynad27 fair enough, a game where you can't just force the strong builds sounds good, thanks for clearing it up.
I still do rate the counterplay aspects of playing against the same opponent.
@@reynad27 600 items * 30 levels = 18,000 cards to balance which sounds like a nightmare. Provided you want to avoid extremely broken builds, avoid a stale meta where people reset for specific items or even try to make the game competitive.
This is pretty entertaining, I loved your sniper run. I think it's pretty easy to see that even Reynad likes keeping his items. I think it's natural for a person to upgrade what they have more than just ditch their build for something different. I can see that getting new stuff is helpful, but it seems like a combo of just upgrading some items and buy new stuff to support your upgrading item is the typical route. Really looking forward to more!
I don’t exactly know how it could be implemented, but I feel like the occasional option to trade with other players (in place of an AI merchant during one of the buying phases) through matchmaking would be an interesting idea to make the game feel more interactive and alive, and more of a multiplayer game overall. Plus it would fit in exceptionally well with the bazaar theme of the game.
One thing for replay system - make sure it's really easy to both browse/find and then export fights.
Some games do this by having a little pop-up after a fight and you click it and then it immediately downloads the fight or takes you to social media of choice with a default post ready for the user to post
Absolutely incredible! I know I am late to the party but the game looks incredible now in comparison to the previous version. Such a fresh idea with the matchmaking.
The music is awesome. Super immersive
What about some system, where after a fight, you're able to propose an item trade to the enemy (this would probs exclude monster fights), which gives both items an extra level?
Generally, I was thinking that The Bazaar (he said the thing!), although a vie for power, shouldn't always be hostile between the players - even though the items aren't all aggressive, there could still be "intrigue and machinations" via that sort of mutually beneficial deal. At the same time, this would allow for a higher diversity of strategies, as the collective level of both parties involved would grow, making it advantageous to close a such a deal.
Simple clause could be that both players have the option to propose an item for the potential trade, but the implementation options are quite open here, I guess.
Also, AMAZING WORK! I'm, like, impressed that the quality and creative flourish of this whole project keeps going up with each update!
"We got rid of upgrading item because we want items in the shop to be better than upgraded items in your hand"
...proceeds to upgrade an item in his hand to the point where its better than a higher level version of the same item in the shop.
You might want to look into that!
The game feels way more PVE now than PVP. Actually, I am not sure what the point is in fighting players at all. At least when you beat a monster you get loot. You'd think you'd get even better loot for beating a player. You also don't care if they die, because you aren't going to see them again.
What's stopping you from going fully asynchronous, or even single player? To be frank, the PVP already feels gutted enough that you might as well go all the way.
If the goal of combat is to not have math, then time based combat does not meet that goal. With every item you buy and compare, you have having to divide the length of combat by it. And now that's combined with exponential returns?
Having items scale as early as level 1 as well as upgrading seem to go against the philosophy of wanting items to churn. There is a reason Brann, Lightfang, and other cards that give you a direction in battlegrounds are tier 5.
On that note, because it isn't immediate clear in any given shop, what makes you decide to pick a direction that isn't based on the cards you already own? Are there build around cards that significantly push you in a direction? If they are also showing up at tier 1, why would you ever switch off of them?
I would challenge the idea that dividing up your units into tiers causes less diversity. Isn't the opposite true, for the above reasons? Not switching = less diversity.
It would be nice if it were more immediately clear what items belonged to a specific class. Right now it just feels like you are choosing a different skin.
Leveling happens to often that the impact of it isn't felt very strongly. I think I would prefer if it happened less often, so the differences between items were more apparent.
Final point, the card art looks amazing. I was surprised when Reynad said that they weren't done because it already looked so good.
Honestly, I was skeptical at first when he was talking about playing when you want to, I assumed it would just be you playing ghosts but then I realized you can play all the phases up to the player at your own pace and the player pvp battles aren't super long. Pretty cool
lol what player pvp battles? without any form of actual interaction, they could just build an AI to act as your opponents and nobody would ever know the difference...
I really like the notion of saved states as ghosts. Among low que times it also allows you the developers to create special fights that everyone has a random chance to encounter. Like imagine before you release a new set or even character you "Built a ghost" and before the release you got a chance to randomly fight this character or cards that never existed. It would feel like a true adventure....
Or if an E-sport scene grew imagine saving the year end champions deck and having it floating around so you can randomly fight this mythical character that is the CHAMPION OF CHAMPIONS
Looks like the game went full deck builder auto battler and took out the part where you actually play with the deck, which doesn't completely kill my interest but diminishes it substantially. I'm sure you had great personal / market analysis / design / funding reasons to choose this direction for your game, but it certainly isn't at all what most people signed up for.
How would any kind of professional play work in this new system? Is there any idea or plans for a tournament setup? And how would the "solo queue" ladder system work? Is it just "This player has won X times" or would it be some kind of rating system that increases more for how far you've gotten (+1 for a 3/3 but +20 for a 10/3). Any information on the competitive scene would be great :)
Wow the powder flask sniper rifle combo seems busted lmao
The matchmaking seems cool, kind of like Hearthstone duels but with a focus on the deckbuilding. I don't think you've hit the complexity sweet spot yet though, it would be nice to have some more strategy between fights? Maybe some sort of synergy system like traits in auto battlers? That's just a random suggestion, but it feels like *something's* missing... Maybe it's just a balance thing? Edit: Or even better, maybe a short "preparation round" before you fight another player, so that there could be at least a bit of counterplay/preparation?
Also, I guess this part is probably not finished, but it seems weird that you get completely random items from the monster fights, with seemingly no connection to the monster at all. It would be dope if each monster had special drops that you can't otherwise find in shops. Then it could be like, "oh crap! the lich! a very hard fight, but at least I get the phylactery combo" or something? Though if early monsters gave too powerful items, then early game might be too unvaried. Maybe even late game if the monster loot is very strong... Anyway, just seems like bad flavor currently.
I can't wait to see the more polished version and eventually try it for myself. Seems like a fun game!
I think a cool addition could be different sound effects for weapons based off of how much damage they do or what effects they possess.
Example could be that if you have a sniper rifle, it makes the sound effect of a sniper, and then once it hits your opponent's portrait, it makes a really satisfying blow to them because you did a big chunk of their health with that attack.
I think this could definitely make each item feel more different too.
I would love to see items have different sound effects based off of what item they are and depending upon how much damage they output.
I guess damage output wise, you could set it up in about 5 different ways. 1 is little damage. 2 is a moderate amount of damage. 3 is a pretty big hit. 4 is a massive blow of damage. And 5 is just fucking deadly.
And since there's healing items, you could make the healing items have different sound effects based off of how much health you restored.
I also thought about once you click on a merchant / vendor / special encounter / enemy encounter, they have voicelines. Like let's say for instance you click on an enemy named like... Idk, Legendary Dark Knight Kaito, he has a dark deep voice and says: "you will perish... beneath MY legendary power!!" and then whoever you're playing as could be like "We'll see about that, Kaito!" And then there could always be a few interactive voicelines.
Then as for a merchant, once you click on them, and deciding upon who you chose, they'll have different things to say. "Welcome to my store. Buy, buy, buy!" "Pick an item... or get out!!" "I sell only the finest of weaponry." "If armor and defense is what you need, I sell ;)" "Oh honey, you can't go wrong with my wares. " So forth, so on.
It would take a lot of voice actors. But I for one WOULD LOVE to see this all. And I would LOVE to voice act for free. I'm sure a lot would tbh. Lol or for very cheap at least. :)) I hope you guys see this!! ❤️❤️❤️
-Everything about this build looks great as a proof of concept. All the tools are set up to make something great when flavor, balance, and personality is added.
-The 10 wins till the run ends seems like it might be a little long, but the autobattler nature might mitigate that. My frame of reference being Legends of Runeterra where their runs are a complete slog to try and get through and Hearthstone arena runs can be multiple hours.
- After the game releases, new game modes like a king of the hill variant is something that I'd like to see. 4 players so it's fairly easy to get a friend group together and have fun.
About not having to wait for opponents: The system I liked best was Solforge where you could play multiple games in parallel and you would have the icon for switching between game boards light up to indicate that it's your turn on another game. This was combined with a time bank so you could still take your time to think about difficult turns. If you allow people to play as many games in parallel as they want, impatient players can just queue up more games till they are at the point where things progress fast enough for them.
music design is god tier!!!
i do really love that you fixed the turn timer issue, but i think having no turn timer at all might be a bad thing. maybe this is just a me problem, but when im playing a strategy game and there's no timer at all, i tend to overthink every decision to the point where it stops being fun.
it could even be abusurdly long with an option to pause the game if you have to go do something and i think thatd still fix the potential issue.
a lot of the fun of strategy games to me is getting quicker and quicker at thinking through what you need to do. when im playing a game with no time pressure though, this doesnt really happen for me to an extent where i start to feel like im getting really good at it.
again, maybe this is just a me thing, but it doesnt seem that weird to me?
I am kinda confused as to what the purpose of the player characters (vanessa and pig) is in the current edition of the game? Seems pretty much just aesthetic?
If I'm right, they come with their own items in the market.
At 21:36 there were hero powers that you can choose from. I assume these options will be different based on your character
They have Cards specific to their characters, similar to Hearthstone Class Cards.
I'm pretty sure only Vanessa can use the Sniper, for example.
I think adding a 2 or 3 slot "backpack" inventory would be good. Have a storage for items you want to save for later or swap out for a potential re-build. It feels a little weird just skipping a few merchants/monster rewards every day.
The way the matchmaking works makes degen builds like this completely fine. This is awesome
I have always felt like auto-battlers were just table top deck builders with a much smaller deck. My only thought throughout the demo was that the "battle" felt pretty bland, not flashy or exciting enough. Not sure if adding a speed up timer is good enough, because you want the battle to be informative enough to make decisions but quick and flashy enough to want to get to the next battle.
56:12 I love how there's this legacy ghost with massive health just floating around...none shall ever be able to challenge him. Maybe it'd be kind of funny to incorporate this in some kind of random or joke encounter?
Anyway, great stuff, love to see the game unfolding before our very eyes!
I'm not sure if I like the permanent stat changes on items even after the buffer item is sold because it may discourage changing them out. You may end up running into the problem where players feel like if they don't get buffer items early on in their run they just lose against people who did. I don't mind item stat changes, but I feel like grindstone and lighthouse should feel like a tradeoff of space for power. Buffer cards seem like something hard to balance because on one hand you don't want them to be too weak that they are not a choice later on in runs, but also not too powerful that they roll runs. (Don't really have a good solution. Maybe the numbers just need tweaking and they are fine as is, but those are my concerns with buffer cards.)
the matchmaking system sounds really interesting; the option for private games (vs friends) would be a neat feature as well. I really hope you include this for the final product.
awesome update, keep them coming!
...and nice hair, reynad.
Not sure how I feel about infinite lobbies, definitely feels like it removes counterplay from the game. Will there be a 1v1 mode? Can you play against your friends?
please consider going for a pvp deckbuilder instead and trash the autobattler features
I believe you need more items that merge and destroy items. I know this is hard to design but it does open up design space in a fun way. Like cooking or crafting , it offers so mucc creative potential
The team is always open to the criticism. I'm excited for the next update!
Random thought... what if, each turn, people had the choice on whether they could go out and fight a monster, or go to the market/bazaar and buy equipment? The more monsters you fight, the stronger they get, but the stronger the RANDOM loot drops if you defeat them (like any rpg). Futhermore, the more monsters they defeat, the higher level the HERO (your character, or YOU) becomes (as opposed to your weapons, you get stronger). This way, people have to manage going out enough to get stronger, versus going to market and buying better equipment. It’ll make it seem like you, as the player, have control of your day, and gives you a sense of “journey”. Once again, just a random thought. Nice update, regardless!
I am intrigued by the flexibility of the infinite lobby and the general day progression. However In the two games you showed the board space really seemed to limit the game in a negative way. Not having a deck that you flow through, adding or maybe removing cards to combo together or a traditional auto battler with a bench that 3x upgrades and lets you move items into and out of play seemed awkward. It seems like you have so many opportunities to buy thing but no where to put them so why buy things at all unless it fits perfectly and just save money to upgrade your specific combo. I think having a bench or a way you flow through your items could really open things up.
That being said if more items were like chocolate bar where they get consumed every round that could help with the board space awkwardness.
Man I just watched all of theese videos in 1 sitting, I have to say that I love how you were so brave to innovate your whole game, and I think it's for the better. All your design choices were accurate, and instead of taking the old genres for granted you analysed their key properties and kept the good things mixed them together and removed the bad things.
The only thing I would go for is to keep a 1v1, as drafting like this would make you go for the most broken build possible without really a control over your opponent playstyle etc... it would either be that you try to build a strategy with the higher number that beats your opponent number (like throwing dices, where you try to increase the number on your dice at every merchant).
Or it is just rock paper scissors, for example fast spam beats one big burst which beats stun lock which beats fast spam, and every time you queue you just hope that you get a scissor since your deck is a rock.
In either scenarios, throwing dices or rock paper scissors is not really the best example of a strategy game, and this drafting system would make this incredible design go to waste.
My suggestion is to keep this mode for more casual players, but also let competitive players enjoy a 1v1 game even if it takes a bit of time for every game.
LoL is one of the most popular games out there, and it is very complex and takes a lot of time, don't be scared to make it less accessible, because otherwise it will cost you in terms of gameplay
the way this is going, I predict that either they will realize they are making the game boring and noncompetitive by not allowing players to build around their opponents, and make changes that adress that, they'll make a 1v1 mode that'll be the one people actually play, or their game will crash and burn because once people learn what is the fastest combos, they'll all play those for like a month and then just get bored by it.
If items like the iceburg cant be leveled up then there should be something on the card to make it clear it cant be upgrated like change the color blue around the level to a diffrent color or a border around to make it look diffrent from other items at that level.
or let it say “MAX”
The game looks very fun now.
The obvious problem is that you are pretty much always looking for the same thing. It would be great to be able to see your opponent at the start of the day, so you can adapt your choices throughout the day for the fight.
You could start the day at a board with papers attached to them. There would maybe be 3 papers on the board with different opponents and you could choose which one you wish to face at the end of the day. It could even include players on a higher day so that the player can choose if he believes his build counters the enemy enough to still beat them (or will be able to at the end of the day). The player will then be rewarded for his risk if he manages to beat the thougher opponent. Thematically this could be either a board for bounty hunting or challengers for a late night showdown.
With this of cause you would only be able to play against ghosts, but for me thats not a big deal. The important thing about playing other players is just that there is endless variety. The bigger problem with this is that math becomes important and for that reason there would either have to be simplified numbers or random numbers. The game could also show if you are gonna win or lose during the buy phases. Thats a bit anticlimactic, but it would save you the math.
To add more feeling of playing an online game, the ghosts could actually be quite interresting. You could have a big list of all the ghosts you have added to the game. Then you can sort of build your own arena where you handpick 2-6 (whatever number makes it the most fun to play) ghosts for each day and then you can challenge your friends to try out your arena. The challenger will then only be able to chose between those handpicked ghosts at the start of each day for their opponent for the day. So there is kind of another dimention of the game where the goal is to build up the strongest arena, as well as trying to beat your friends arenas. This also makes it so that when you play the game, you can choose between if you are playing to win or to build a ghost for your arena. There might also be competitive aspects to this where participants of a turnament can spend a week (or whatever time unit fits best) building up their arena. Then on the turnament day, one arena will be chosen and all the other participants can simultaniously try to get 10 wins in that arena. After the arena is beaten, after everyone has had a fixed number of attempts or after a time limit, the players could move on to the next arena and repeat until every players arena has been played. Points could be given for how far you get in each arena and how well your own arena does. The optimal format is not obvious, but im sure there is a fun way to run a turnament.
I'm really liking the direction the game is currently heading! One thing I would like to see is adding more items that you can activate during battle. Something like once used, will block like 20% of the next hit you take or an item that reduces the cooldown of your attack by X amount of time. Currently, the battles seem to play themselves and adding more active items introduces a whole new level of strategy and makes the game feel more interactive!
I'm still really excited to try out the game!
So... it's not a competitive deck-building game anymore? It's become an auto-battler?
Odd
Honestly hoping you reverse course before it's too late. The world needs a PvP deck-builder; not an autobattler.
It won't Happen. Don't get your hopes up
Whats the difference? First time im hearing these terms
@@deantjewie Deckbuilder: Heathstone, Autobattler: Battlegrounds.
It would be cool if higher-level cards wouldn't only get bigger numbers but also more interactive perks at like every 5 levels or something like this. Kinda like an inherited version of the special item upgrades which were in the last update video.
I'm not sure this will feel like a PvP game which is what I wanted.
But it's hard to say just from 1 vid.a
If there is strategy and depth then this looks fantastic
I hope game releases with a few game modes (or more than 1 :D). I could really see this concept work with an offline mode against monsters where you can try to get high scores or beat progressively more challenging "days". Could also set up crafted daily or weekly challenges for people to play in offline mode. It would be a nice way to test out builds without having the stress of queuing into other players or in a ranked/competitive mode.
I think monster fights taking away HP from actual PVP fights is a really frustrating mechanic. Knowing you are going into a PVP fight with less HP because of a random monster that counters your build really takes away from it imo.
This looks really interesting so far, and so much has changed for the better.
I definitely trust that the released game will be balanced more than this too, keep it up.
Will the player ghosts be able to use their interactable items if the player used them or how does that work?
For the replay speeds, is x0.75 and x3 speeds really necessary? It seems like that's just an additional click to make it to fully slow or fully fast.
Also maybe adding keyboard shortcuts for the replay would be worth it, so you can pause as soon as you hit replay.