While looking through the Faëria forums to see if there was any feedback on the last play test, I came across this month old post from the devs that goes into the thinking about the major revisions of the game:
It’s a good read, so I recommend checking the whole thing out. The bottom line is that they want it to be more accessible to casual players (more specifically, the “Timmys” of the Spike/Johnny/Timmy trinity).
I get it, but one of the responses to the post finally put into words what I’ve been instinctively feeling: This new path is making Faëria feel more like all the other CCGs out there. If a lot of the feedback they get is that their game isn’t very accessible, then I understand why they would want to make this shift, from both a design and commerical standpoint.
This bit on the"staring contest" and adding strikeback is interesting. While I initially liked the idea of strikeback, I think in practice I’m less enthused by it. Playing creatures feels a lot more disposable now. Attacking is pretty much suicide. No matter how awesome the creature, it’s likely to be dead within two turns. You also lose the drama of a unit hanging on by a single point that somehow still manages to save the day (I’m definitely a Timmy, with a splash of Johnny).
Anyway, like I’ve said before, I’m willing to give them the benefit of the doubt. The new version is entertaining, but, even with the board game dynamic, I fear it’s starting to lose some of it’s unique identity. Anyone think they’re absolutely moving in the right direction? I’d love to hear some other thoughts.
I don’t know if I’d use the word absolutely, but the game in its old state- revolved too heavily around the combat tricks and felt like the meta was degenerating rapidly.
There was definitely more back-and-forth last weekend. I guess it depends on what type of game you prefer.
I do think some rebalancing does need to be done, but that’s a given. The double plains and how ranged operate seem to be the big potential stumbling blocks.
I’ll also be PM-ing keys to those who went in with me on the Kickstarter. Constructed is first, then in a few days, the Arena opens. Let’s see how it all goes this time. :)
I only had a single PM, so here are the rest for anyone interested.
4GMFCK5Z5H4D668F23CX
HZMKLW2KEFFRHSGWA8W8
YWZK8PXCDSSAND89H36G
DDFULZGKPXSRMPDRH574
Yea, I backed the Kickstarter before it fully funded in 2013 for a variety of reasons, not the least of which was the explicit promise of this being a “one-time purchase TCG” (as seen on the Kickstarter campaign page):
But okay, things change. I guess they can’t expect to lure players to their Computer CCG if they’ve got a pay wall now days; because it doesn’t matter how differently games like this might be from games like Hearthstone, all the uninitiated are going to see is an “expensive” Hearthstone wannabe. So fine, they find a new way to monetize the game in order to keep potential players from laughing at the price of the game and going in another direction. I don’t have a problem with that. But it does bother me that they’ve changed the benefits of my reward tier, if only because it’s added a small layer of ambiguity in regards to what exactly I’ll be getting for the replacement reward.
They’re no longer rewarding backers at my tier with the “one-time purchase TCG” we supported, instead we’re getting $50 in space bucks. I’d be pretty annoyed right now, but instead I’m waiting to find out if such annoyance it justified… because they’ve also announced a $50 “Full Core Collection”(in the open letter) which gets you the 256 core cards at release. Now, if I can spend my $50 in space bucks on this core collection, then no harm no foul, I got the tier reward I was promised, a one-time purchase TCG (future content notwithstanding). But if this core collection is only purchasable for $50 in real money and not $50 in space bucks, then we have a problem. And before anyone tries to suggest that it’s only common sense it should work either way, I’d like to point out that other companies have been notorious about pulling stuff like this over the years with certain deals, so call me apprehensive until I see how it plays out.
As of right now all I can do is wait. I’d almost run out of fucks to give about this game back in 2014. So while I find some of this stuff sort of annoying, it’s not like I’m hyped enough to become maniacal (last time I played it I wasn’t having the greatest time anyway).
I’m an annoyed backer as well. They had a great game to start and they kept “hearthstoning” it up, making it worse with each pass. What made this interesting and unique is the strategy element of the map, which they’ve now made so small there’s hardly and room for a strategy. It’s a slugfest and whoever has the best cards wins. Your strategy hardly counts anymore. The game is going to fail, unfortunately. They aren’t going to be better than hearthstone and they lost the most interesting part to me.
I haven’t kept up with the specifics of each update, but I’m guessing this is what they’re referring to when they talk about simplifying the game because it was too difficult to learn.
At the time of our Kickstarter, the game had a very steep learning curve. Most of you even said too steep. Based on that, we had to go back to the drawing board and re-think the game to make it closer to the vision we had of Faeria: ‘easy to learn / hard to master’.
Not haven’t played the most recent iteration, I can only guess at how simplified the experience has become, but I’m hoping the strategic elements are more than mere window dressing, at least as higher tier decks/cards/(maps?) come into play. The strategy was a big deal, and really set this thing apart… and was sort of what would help make it so deep we’d want to play it forever.
Another backer disappointed here. Faeria fell off my radar a long time ago, but I was hoping that one day the long development would finally pay off and they would release something polished and well designed. I haven’t played since the first beta, but I thought the game was really fun as it was with just some things that needed to be tightened up. I don’t know that a total redesign was necessary as they insist. I’m all for streamlining, but I will be sad if they ended up oversimplifying the game.
You can use those spacebucks to buy the core set if you wish. Just got confirmation on that.
As for the game itself, if you backed- you will get an EA key on Steam- so no harm in trying it.
They also promised that expansions come with a one-time purchase price as well, and that buying boosters and then the full game gets you the booster price refunded as in-game currency (so you don’t really waste money on boosters)
Payment option: there’s a F2P option like Hearthstone if you want to try it out that way. If you want all the cards at once, that’s $50. Also cosmetics for sale either with real money or (eventually) dust.
I’ve been testing this a bit, the state of the game in terms of being finished, I’d say it’s mostly bug free (a few bugs here and there, but it’s where a near-release title should be), with a few minor features missing, but very playable right now.
Faeria is running a promo event now where existing players can permanently gift one of the early access packages to a couple friends. The event will go away in about 48 hours:
