Hello friends and readers. With the new expansion Rise of the Bloodborn dropping, all the forums, Reddit, Discord etc. are full of opinions and calls about power levels, buffs to old cards and our favourite word – nerf. Now, there are plenty of high quality players and theorists who have already posted their impressions about the cards in the expansion, so I won’t repeat a lot of their mostly accurate analysis. Instead, I will change my perspective from salty over-exuberant player and put on my designer’s lens, and we will have a look at the probable future design direction of Duelyst.

The concept of fairness

There is something I (and many other players) have unending arguments about – and that is the trifecta of ‘fair, balanced and interactive’, a mantra of what some of us consider the backbone of good multiplayer game design. In effect, we want games that:

feel like both sides (or as many as are playing) had a (relatively) equal chance to win at the start and through at least some of the play period

one player does not have something available to them which creates a sudden unassailable advantage without prior preparation or indication

both players have at least the opportunity to impede the other’s win condition to further their own side’s chances at victory

Here I might be performing one of the more unexpected turns as far as the previous paragraph goes. Duelyst does not have a direct relation to the above points, simply because it doesn’t play like a multiplayer game, rather it is approached as a single player CCG battle arena where the other side just happens to be a physical player. As such, the current expansion adds content you use to win your games – not content to make long gruelling battles. Let me clarify.

Design Vision

Something we don’t often get to see as players is the design ‘vision’ of the developers. Going by the promotional matter we have about Duelyst – Combine the depth of tactical combat with the possibilities of a CCG; Lightning Fast matches – it guides us to expect a design utilising a board and then some cards, where each individual game is decided quickly. The reviews on the promo page mostly relate to card games. As such, we must consider Duelyst to be a card game with a board on the side, not the other way round.

It’s a shift in design that has either been a relatively recent decision (less than a year) or maybe we’ve just been slow at perceiving it. By and large, we’re getting strong ‘reinforcement’ for broad play styles, getting rewarded for investing more into a specific strategy. We’re moving away from pure midrange into heavy aggro and control with burst featuring as a component of all decks – ‘high risk high rewards, your eggs are best in one bucket’ type of play.

Burst was always a part of Duelyst – a year ago, the game was more deterministic, more duel-y, but just as bursty if not more – however, for a period of time earlier this year, it seemed that the devs were not sure where they wanted to head and slowed the game down for a few patches. The decision it seems has been made now. It is worth noting here that there is no ‘right’ or ‘wrong’ design, just different design guided by different end goals. Rise of the Bloodborn sets this goal up more clearly than ever before. Polarity of design is increasing – MORE crazy aggro vs MORE crazy control – and I refuse to believe the silly notion that the devs and their dedicated play-testers are somehow incompetent. They have to have envisioned the state of the game post-expansion and as such we are to believe that this is the intended direction of the game.

A moment to consider something Eric Lang mentioned as we moved into the draw-one-at-end-of-turn patch – early game plays were consistently the same and stagnant, and combos were perhaps too readily available – (paraphrased). With RotB, there is a distinct attempt at returning multi-card draw to the game, but with the added advantage (yes, advantage) of randomness. The game now is quickly back to a state where you rarely feel like you’re stalling for your next card – either you or your opponent will draw you a card, either via minion or via spell. Each individual game will be over soon, and it will be because one side had a blowout. There needs to be nothing fair or interactive, whatever method we lose to is just as unfair as the method we will win with – and surprisingly, this is actually fine, because we’re still in a card game. This is perhaps not completely acceptable to all of us, but it does feel like a founding principle for the game.

Pro-active strategies

The faster speed of the game also fits with the vision. In fact, there’s good reason to call the game ‘Snowballyst’- extremely robust pro-active strategies are available and recommended for all factions and generals, while a reactive strategy comes with many inbuilt flaws. Later win conditions ARE supported – if you are in the right faction. Games will usually be decided in the first 4-5 combined turns after which it is a matter of ‘converting the point’ while protecting from heavy burst. It’s actually quite similar to how Yu-Gi-Oh plays like – two monster trucks on a field with random powerups, one runs over the other, then both go away to another game and rinse, repeat – quick, fun when you win, and has the ‘one more game’ feel if you lose one. After a few games though, you get quite drained and feel rather like you’ve been run over by a monster truck.

Balanced?

Now the question changes to – is it balanced for X faction to have Y available to them for so cheap? (Entropic Gaze and Darkfire Sacrifice into Variax are popular examples)

The answer is again, that its actually ok. Over years of adding expansions, Magic: the Gathering and Yu-Gi-Oh (among other slightly younger card games) have provided one big thing – a strong level of independence in deck-building relative to other decks. In both mentioned here, you pack a small array of standard traps/counters to what is in the meta, and then build to win – with an unfair condition. There is no over-arching ‘balance’ argument one way or another – we don’t compare individual Qliphorts to Shaddolls, or lose our cool over there being a strictly better Red card for the same cost as a Blue one.

Evaluating the value of effects becomes difficult when the effects are not comparable to a known standard – a 2/3 vanilla and a 2/2 with flying is easy to understand, printing a 3/4 flying for the same cost obviously breaks the cost curve – something like Entropic Gaze feels undercosted, but we have no way of concluding this since there are no old cards to compare to, but also the set has brought so much change upon us that comparing to similar old cards may well be an outdated concept – what should Concealing Shroud cost? Enfeeble? what about Shim’zar’s Pandamonium? – what is the cost of Variax’s effect? that of Incinera’s? of Embla’s?

The more cards with strong incomparable effects come through, the less likely it is that we can make points about over-arching balance with any sort of empirical data. This is in fact, as mentioned, not unprecedented – because over time decks ought to diverge in such a manner that only some specific neutrals and tech additions aside, every card used is for assisting the deck’s winning plan. Win rates and popularity are crude indicators for future balance (so-called Tier-0 decks), and the more the card sets expand, the more likely it is that they remain the only relatively reliable ones.

Just before we leave, a word about the monetisation model used for the expansion. Essentially a flat fee of $20 for the whole thing, and a fair few cards contained within should see regular/niche play. For existing collectors and serious players as well as the casual player who can afford a little extra spending, it turns out to be an excellent affair, and one of the more generous deals in recent times over many CCGs. The small downside is that at least currently, it puts a bit of a hurdle for the newest F2P since Bloodborn orbs compete with Core Set orbs and they cannot craft a shiny copy of Grandmaster Variax for themselves.

Unfortunately it has been difficult to reconcile the needs of both new and existing players in the business model of almost all long-lasting CCGs of note, and as such, we can be quite pleased with the relatively player-friendly system CPG has adopted with this expansion.

Well, that’s quite a lot for now – I’ll return with more in-game strategy material next time, and the concluding part of the piece on Bloodborn Spells. Until then, take care and don’t let the Serpentis bite!