Addressing Titania’s Majesty

Dan Clark wanted to take a moment to address some concerns.

Hi HEXers, Dan Clark of the Development team here and we wanted to address the community about some concerns of Titania’s Majesty.

The launch of Armies of Myth has been a very smooth one and we’ve been able to address major bugs. Although one card has stood out as being somewhat problematic, and that card is Titania’s Majesty. When we made the card, we knew that we wanted to watch the card once it was released to see what impact it was having on the player experience and the evolving format of constructed HEX. The intention was to create a card that would promote a new deck that deck would become a powerful contender, then other decks would rise to quell the numbers and keep it in check. Unfortunately, Majesty’s presence has been slightly bigger than we expected and the combination of cards in this deck is leading to a frustrating experience in how it plays. After reviewing the data and talking it over internally we’ve been able to finally make a decision. Therefore, we will be adding Titania’s Majesty to the constructed PvP banlist.

Why are we doing this?

This is important to get into so we can express why we are banning this card. Frequently we hear “this is too powerful please ban card x” but power level does not necessarily warrant a banning. Although Titania’s Majesty is powerful, the real concern that R&D has with this card is how it feels to play with, and against it. This card is frustrating because it does not promote interactivity in the game in order to win. When Majesty successfully hits an Ozawa, Cosmic Elder or a Walking Calamity, most often there is no gameplay after that. The opposing player has very few options once Majesty resolves and successfully hits, which is the opposite of the back and forth feeling we hope to achieve for the best gameplay experience.

In order to successfully fight against this deck, a player would have to focus their deck just to beat it, but since Majesty is more about “play this card and that is all you have to do to end the game”, and one of the best ways to fight against it is to just flat out stop them from playing Majesty, which ends up promoting decks that are also somewhat “unfun” to interact with. Either attempting to pick apart the opponents hand with cards like Inquisition or using cards like Countermagic to cancel the card they are playing. Both of these tools can lead to a bad expirence on the receiving end.

Circling back to the player playing the deck, there is one more part that leads to a frustrating experience. Since the deck is geared to just playing Majesty for the most part. When Majesty does not happen in the game or you play it and it just misses, even the player who is playing the deck ends up having a worse experience as well. Which begs the question, “Who is having fun with this card?”

How did this happen?

There are a lot of factors that go into designing cards and card sets, but I want to shed some light on some of the bigger factors for Majesty. As a digital TCG, we want to push the boundaries for what traditional TCG’s can do. Socketing is a prime example of innovation in the digital space that players can utilize at the start of HEX. Being able to customize a card as you choose is certainly a sweet experience for players but can be particularly rough on development to make sure that all of the cards possibilities are still within the aimed power level of the card. With Armies of Myth, we wanted to add a new twist to socketing, cards that socket previously unsocketable cards. This greatly expands the creativity with sockets while being a developer’s nightmare. For context, developers test the game to ensure that the game is fun and the power level of cards are balanced and in the right place. For socketing cards we have to look at the card and make sure it lands correctly with every possible socket it can have, when any troop can have a socket, it becomes very difficult to perceive all potential outcomes.

What does this mean for you?

Titania’s Majesty will be banned from play inside of constructed PvP tournaments effective immediately. We feel as though this is the correct decision for the health of the game. With this card leaving the format should be refreshed with new innovation to discover now that Majesty is gone. Banning a card is never something that we want to do but we believe that players will find the new format without this card more enjoyable.

We always have our finger on the pulse of the community, looking for feedback to implement and improve the experience and enjoyment of HEX. We appreciate the response from players to let us know their thoughts on this.

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