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Weekly Design Contest / Re: Weekly Design Contest #185: It Takes A Village
« on: May 03, 2023, 01:45:15 pm »These is kind of posts that ""show"" how strong/overpowered new cards are is one of the few comments you see on these forms. They all seem to be patterned after the a kingdom has X or Y this card would be too strong or comparing the card to many official cards that share DNA.Not sure if this is supposed to be a criticism, but if so, I have to wonder what other way you suggest for judging the power level of a card? That is always relative to other cards.
You sometimes get comments here like "this interacts badly with some specific other card", and I agree that that's not generally a big problem unless the interaction is completely game-breaking, since it comes up quite rarely.
So I had to rework that first section a few time to not come off as hostile as I am become frustrated at this forms as it seems like many users here submit cards and get little to no helpful feedback. Most times posts just get met with silence or a mention on grammar issues. The other feedback I tend to see is usually a "This is too op" and not much data showing why? Very few posts comment on how exciting it would be to play that card or oh that is interesting but under-costed compared to these official cards or based on this writing from the designer that core design has been playtested found to be problematic. But as a commenter maybe I am wrong, you as the creator should playtest your card and get back to us at the forms with your findings. I know we all don't have too much time to commit to other people's creative efforts but isn't that the point of these forms, right?
Your comment that a +2 Favor terminal was a playable card felt to me like you were out of touch with the balance of the game. As you are a mod who does post quite a bit, I did initially doubt myself and had to reconsider my submission. So I spent a couple hours investigating how crazy my card was. Starting with you claim a terminal +2 Favor card at $2 would be see play at all.
This is my analysis for the ($2cost Terminal +2 Favor) not PP
Plateau Shepherds - players can do an alt VP deck but it still takes time/actions, many buys/gains, and clutters their deck a lot with $2s. This would mostly see play to 3 pile rushes or an engine deck would try to use it to recoup the lead a Big money deck would have over them after taking time to build an engine. Now this is only playable in my mind if players have access to +Buys or workshops and there are no other better Alt VP cards in the kingdom. Still the best Ally for this +2 Favor terminal card.
Crafters' Guild - this just turns it into a limited Armory that can be purchased alongside another $4/$5 on the first two turns. Decent but should not be too game warping. I see it similar to when a card is targeted by a trait and it is considered strong but really it is fine.
Peaceful Cult - this would be like a double rat catcher but much worse as the +2 Favor card itself does not replace either the Action nor the Card. Still it would see play if other trash options were limited.
League of Shopkeepers - this is after enough play it becomes a +$1, +1 Action, +1 Buy. Is this good enough no except when no other +buy options are on board or players need a non-Treasure payload for Library decks. as it is still worse than Candlestick Maker.
Please check my work as I am human and make errors. These are the only allies I would expect to even consider making the above card playable. So really 2/23 is 9% and if you were stretching 17% if all four cases were considered playable.
Now overall I do think my card Penny Pincher is overpowered and might need some tuning. I have found for my initial playtests of new designs it is far better to be overpowered by being undercosted for example then get ignored by players. So I am going to try out as is and get back to the form with my findings and I hope you can be okay with that. I am really excited to see if “too much Favor” can supercharge a very bad core into playability.
However, it's different for the interaction of a Liaison with an Ally. The chance of a Liaison being paired with a specific Ally is significantly bigger than the chance of it appearing in the same kingdom as some specific other card, and that won't change unless there's an expansion coming that revisits Allys.After looking at all the official Allies again I noticed a trend that the biggest powerful combos or break cases for PP were gains, +$, or +Cards which is the biggest downside PP has as it lack them. But the ratio of Allies that do that vs total allies is 7/23 so ~30% .Many of the other allies seem to be focused on providing extra +Buys, +Actions, or Shifting which are much less useful for PP. As breaking the cardis turning PP into a constant payoff source vs the decent enabler that I want it to be.Yeah it's "not all Allys" but if the card is OP 30% of the time it's still not a good design.
Now what level of OP% is considered ok? like many of the official cards are over tuned and played well over 30% of kingdoms they appear in, right? Like Chapel, OG Witch, Gardens and Wharf either reshape how the game is played significantly or are on their face just a wrong number somewhere but they are still very core to Dominion and its play experience. Also with the inclusion of trait cards in the game, how balanced any card is in any given kingdom is really thrown out the window. Like half or more of the skill in the game of Dominion if finding the OP effects in the current kingdom and taking advantage of them. So personally a card being strong/OP in only 30% games is great, if its in more than half that maybe time to reconsider. Maybe I am way off base and would love to hear from others how much OP% they are okay in this community.