Eredan's World

Rathedan · 30-03-2011 14:09:16

This topic is open until April 4th 10am French time

We're welcoming all constructive criticism and debate on the pirate guild as a whole. Take your time in thinking of your post. If you haven't taken out your pirate decks in a while, go back and play a few trial games with them.

Feerek is looking for suggestions on how to balance the Pirate guild, as well as to improve the current gameplay mechanics that are unique to pirates.

Keep your comments as constructive and meaningful. Any flames or pointless rants will be removed. The goal is to create a discussion that will improve the guild, not tear it apart.

******************************************************************
Here are a few topics you can start with, but are not limited to, in creating your feedback:

- What types of gameplay are used, according to you, the pirate guild? Which are present, but currently unusable?

- Do you play this guild? If yes, what type of deck?

- Do you think pirates are competitive in ELO? If yes, how and with what "tools"?

- Is there a "selling point" (or several) on the Pirates that you find interesting that attracts you to them versus other guilds? (Graphic style, atmosphere, gameplay, music, ...)

- Is there any single thing (or several) on the Pirates that you find boring? (Graphic style, atmosphere, gameplay, music, ...)

- Finally, what are the ideas you think can be used to improve the gameplay of the different types of decks Pirates?

Feedback from this thread will be gathered and compiled and handed over to the new community manager Archibald at the end of the debate period.

steven_allen · 30-03-2011 16:13:04

There are a few key problems with the guild, imo. First, the marauders and mages need alot more attention. That goes more or less without saying.

Without doing a major overhaul of those classes, I'd say instead work with their strengths; craftsmen and powder. Lots and lots of powder. I'll probably get flamed for this, but do NOT release and counter powder cards. Thats all they have going for them, and if thats taken away, they're doomed.

Powder powder powder. More powder stuff. That's the pirates thing. That's what makes them unique. More cards that manipulate powder would be awesome. You can even strengthen those weak classes by adding more powder mechanics. It would be awesome to see more powder mages like Bragan. Or perhaps a weapon that creates powder for marauders? The self destructive nature of powder should play right into the play style of marauders; all or nothing, no holds barred, bloody, violent in-your-face action.

Here's a marauder ability pitch: On X order, (name here) deals x damage to himself and his opponent, where x is the number of powder tokens.

Something like that. The pirate have so much potential to be super creative and original, they just need a push is the right direction.

hutyro · 31-03-2011 14:13:16

pirates are the worst guild (unfortunately because i love them) for 2 reasons:
-1: they need to focus more on theire only mechanic, the powder, im not going to talk about it because steven did that already
-2: they have one only caste and its by far the worst caste, but at the same time it as a huge potential, it just needs more cards.
for example
Magnum drill:item weapon one-handed mechanist
attack +2, odd turns: the opponent has defense -1

hope this helps

Hydragyrum · 31-03-2011 16:47:51

Rathedan a écrit :

******************************************************************
Here are a few topics you can start with, but are not limited to, in creating your feedback:
- What types of gameplay are used, according to you, the pirate guild? Which are present, but currently unusable?
- Do you play this guild? If yes, what type of deck?
- Do you think pirates are competitive in ELO? If yes, how and with what "tools"?
- Is there a "selling point" (or several) on the Pirates that you find interesting that attracts you to them versus other guilds? (Graphic style, atmosphere, gameplay, music, ...)
- Is there any single thing (or several) on the Pirates that you find boring? (Graphic style, atmosphere, gameplay, music, ...)
- Finally, what are the ideas you think can be used to improve the gameplay of the different types of decks Pirates?

I see pirates as highly strategic. For example one can manipulate powder to give [card]Armada[/card] 30+ attack strength pretty easily, but you have to sacrifice a few turns with other characters to do so. Powder weapons, Pirate Codes, Flames of the Phoenix etc. all require you to keep track of who has powder and how much they have. This is a unique tactic to the Pirate guild.

I currently have played with decks focusing on [card]Armada[/card] and [card]Captain Al Killicrew[/card]. I wanted to try a Mechanist focused deck, but there just doesn't seem to be anything competitive in the Mechanist caste.

Considering I have a hard time in the level room, I do not think a pirate deck could compete in the Elo room.

The gameplay mechanics are what appeal to me. As I mentioned, using powder tokens is unique to pirates and add a new feel to the game after playing other guilds.

Building on powder and adding more Mechanist cards would make the guild better. Also, fix the bugs with current cards. [card]Powder Keg[/card] does not work properly, and I've read posts on [card]Pistolblade[/card] being inconsistent with dual wielding. With so few cards in the pirate guild it really hurts when a few don't work properly.

Falanin · 31-03-2011 22:32:02

Pirates are amazingly fun to play, and I love the art. That said, they're not terribly competitive.

The powder mechanics are awesome. Unfortunately, they're also blindingly obvious, so if your opponant has cards that can let him take the hit... he has time to draw to them. A few more cards that manipulate powder could make this be less of an issue.

More later as I think on this topic.

nemoutopia · 01-04-2011 00:20:57

Overall
I agree that the pirates are one of the most fun but unfortunately least competitive guilds at the moment. I've always been a steam-punk fan, so the steam-tech and gunpowder on the high seas...the way the art is done it's just plain fun. The addition of [card]Catch![/card] was a really important one in terms of manipulating powder, which until that point was either stuck on you until pistol-bladed, [card]Armada[/card]-ed, or phoenix-ed (which isn't really healthy for you). The only other ways to currently avoid this setback were [card]Potato Peeling Duty[/card] or [card]Fiery Sword[/card], and then having [card]Fierce Lion[/card] on [card]Nut[/card] with the Mechanist release.

Powder
To contribute to the pirate theme, it might be good to add some kind of equipment (say, "Volatile Hand Cannon") which reacts to fire damage if the user has powder. The user still takes the fire damage unless it comes from consuming powder [basically, Flames of the Phoenix], but the flame sets off the powder in the cannon doing 1 fire damage per powder token to the foe currently in battle and 1/4th to 1/2 damage to the pirate holding the cannon. You get the idea. More powder manipulation = more yarrrrr, matey without relying on mechanics other guilds can access.

Marauders
The other shortcoming of the Pirate deck in competition is that the guild only has two Mages and only recently got a true Marauder stable. Although [card]Narwhal[/card] and Pirate Marauder actions can make them very unpredictable, they rely on outside attack buffs to have any chance of overcoming high-defense / Armor opponents. The time it takes to set up three [card]Jolly Roger[/card]s and utilize your [card]Extortion[/card]s to keep the opponent in check is a big hit to deck space and doesn't seem very 'in-you-face' Marauder-style.

Mages
Back to Mages, I haven't really seen anything go here. The Lightning theme is very interesting (and certainly grounds us from the shock of thunder-Bragan) but has no match for Noz Dingard's lightning AoE just yet. Dance is a decent single-target hitter and they can use Static and Chains, but they need something to match the Noz's defense/spirit stacking and level 3 Lightning Bolts (Lightning Rod helps a bit).

Castes
And of course, each of the other guilds has a full-fledged caste-deck at this point, and many dual-caste options. Even Eclipse, World Tree, and Compendium can field three members. I'm not sure what all could beef up the caste, but there's a lot of open pathways there. And, of course, there are plenty of options for another caste or castes. Pirates could take on affiliations by Captain [Kilcrew, Mylad, Hook(?)], loyalty [Loyalists, Mutineers], or secret society [White Isle Vagabonds?].

Santuros · 01-04-2011 00:57:48

Actually this is the only guild i find boring to play with, several reasons for that...

1. Their graphics and style are really boring to me... i mean, there is nothing that caughts my attention when i see a pirate...

2. they are suffering of important bugs for dual wield pistoblade and powder keg AND ports, you cant discard them at all!!!

3. There is no posible interaction with the powder system unless you are a pirate too, i was always expecting for the debut of an item that could erase the powder tokens or something like that.

4. Their style of playing seems easy to me just add powder and powder to armada, or just the basic style of playing with the ports... I dont see ussually see a pirate marauder deck or other type of pirate deck... They dont have a complete caste..

And finally, no, i dont play this guild and i wont play them for a while

Dernière modification par Santuros (01-04-2011 03:53:04)

UIA · 01-04-2011 18:13:39

Maybe pirates are weakest in elo like ppl say but good pirate decks can be just as hard to beat as anything else. Lets see, you have armada who's can one-shot nearly everything once setup, the captain with very solid stats, excellent regen, decent support, and good damage once she's got her chain items up also has the ability to utilize the most damaging AoE in the game, flames of the phoenix, and that mage who starts everyone with powder and is going to fiery sword you into oblivion if you don't kill him fast enough. Most of the good opponents I've faced don't seem to have that much of a problem getting enough powder attached to everyone to start causing some serious damage within a few rounds and if they don't, well those are the breaks but the potential is there nonetheless.

I'd like to see cards that get rid of powder like Throw Torch :all opponents powder is removed and they suffer fire dmg of 1/2 amount removed ; this could be handy for both pirates and non-pirates alike

Also anyone else think port should be limited to a caste like mechanic ? its already powerful enough without allowing every single craftsmen to multi-task one to your hide, sick of getting chewed to death by everlasting mechanical bugs yarrrr

reedwine · 02-04-2011 11:53:47

imho pirate mage is need more damage
maybe another lightning magic with powder (like fiery sword)
or feerik can change the current lightning chain in to pirate guild also remove the aoe attribute so it woun't overpower the current noz mage
and another pirate mage char to complete the combo

pirate should use token
and i like the idea of lightning pirate

artemis_fowl · 02-04-2011 14:32:29

i love pirates!
it was love at first sight.
although i'm not a casual user of the powder pirate deck.but i think a complete powder deck is already competitive at elo with A-bomb and other decks alike, they got big physical damage with bragan and armada and a right timed fire of the phoenix.

i use them because of the ports and other mechanist cards like nut and detonation.
how about a nut variant than can also use ports? ports should be mechanist-craftsman, not craftsman only.
the mechanist caste only has few usable cards like detonation and time bomb, and time bomb sucks big time more than it helps. so feerik could realease mechanist cards at one time to expand their versatility and mechanists decks could also be popular rather than the famous yilith with sideports.

there should be cards that would make the caste mechanist stand out not like adding many new cards and a new caste into an already over designed guild like noz with compendium.

Cossette · 04-04-2011 10:29:53

Pirate Guild? Harrr Harrr!!!

Have the highest potential to be the best, because they have special tokens that can be manipulated give different strategies... it only needs new cards specially items/weapons that use powder tokens (e.g. Cutlass that gain chain if there's a powder token attach or some Cannons that do AOE damage)

And the mechanist caste are a work in progress additional characters would improve the caste... wish they would make more "Clockwork Golems" that feeds on powder to make them stronger

The [card]port[/card]/[card]starboard[/card] already a staple cards, but wish it would best if a full pirate characters can utilize its ability more and make them more versatile... and yea!!! [card]port[/card] almost indestructible "three cheer for the [card]port[/card]"

Mage pirates sucks ;p [card]Mylad[/card]'s much better a Sap Heart, and [card]Bragan[/card]'s don't have the spirit to clash against other mages only thing he's useful is the [card]fiery sword[/card] and other spells doesn't fits him... the lightning Theme is weak can't really compare with Noz lightning. But i still have hope for those two maybe giving a caste of their own would change the outcome...

Lastly Marauder are slowly becoming a hit... sniping unexpected characters is the best tactics i seen in pirate yarrr... only need more anti-defense and chainable item it will rule....

That's all i can say "So be warn you land lovers arrrr! ye! pirates are coming and they got the big guns"

Dernière modification par Cossette (04-04-2011 10:35:33)

Rathedan · 04-04-2011 14:26:58

Closed

Thanks for participating!

Eredan's World

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#1 30-03-2011 14:09:16

The Pirate Guild: Open Debate Limited time!

#2 30-03-2011 16:13:04

Re : The Pirate Guild: Open Debate Limited time!

#3 31-03-2011 14:13:16

Re : The Pirate Guild: Open Debate Limited time!

#4 31-03-2011 16:47:51

Re : The Pirate Guild: Open Debate Limited time!

#5 31-03-2011 22:32:02

Re : The Pirate Guild: Open Debate Limited time!

#6 01-04-2011 00:20:57

Re : The Pirate Guild: Open Debate Limited time!

#7 01-04-2011 00:57:48

Re : The Pirate Guild: Open Debate Limited time!

#8 01-04-2011 18:13:39

Re : The Pirate Guild: Open Debate Limited time!

#9 02-04-2011 11:53:47

Re : The Pirate Guild: Open Debate Limited time!

#10 02-04-2011 14:32:29

Re : The Pirate Guild: Open Debate Limited time!

#11 04-04-2011 10:29:53

Re : The Pirate Guild: Open Debate Limited time!

#12 04-04-2011 14:26:58

Re : The Pirate Guild: Open Debate Limited time!

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