This post is not going to be a background or primer on the new Ethereum based TCG Gods Unchained, but more of an initial reaction after being in the Closed Beta for the last couple weeks, as well as a laundry list of feedback and suggestions for the team at Fuel Games.

This is also not going to focus at all on card design, or power level of the cards themselves in game, as currently within the Closed Beta all of the cards are not released, so its impossible to really tell what sort of initial “Meta” shapes up until we can play around with the full collection.

(I will be doing a comprehensive constantly updated “Tier List / Meta” post once all cards are released)

First, a bit of background on myself:

I have been paying attention to the Crypto scene since 2011, and have been directly involved since 2013. From 2014–2017 I founded and was the CTO of a company called Lawnmower “Turn your spare change into Bitcoin”. At the beginning of 2017 Lawnmower was acquired by the well known Crypto media company Coindesk, and since I have moved onto other projects within the space.

In addition, I have also been an avid Hearthstone player since the Closed Beta (August 2013), hitting Legend over 10 times, being infinite in Arena, and having 4+ Gold portrait characters with the rest less than 100 wins away each.

I am also currently an avid player of Artifact, even though they have had problems with their own launch, the polish and general feel of playing that game is something that should be looked up to and mimicked.

This is not supposed to be a skill brag by any means, just some background that I have put an extensive amount of hours and thought into a game that Gods Unchained closely resembles.

I have been following Gods Unchained since packs started going on sale, and have very high hopes for this game to not only directly compete with every other digital TCG on the market today, but also introduce many people to Ethereum and help spur adoption.

Below you can find my discord, and in game information, as well as my stream link. I will be streaming Gods Unchained once the Closed Beta opens up to additional players.

Discord: Loeras#3966

In game name: Loeras

Twitch: https://www.twitch.tv/hsloeras

Twitter: https://twitter.com/parchambeau

Now, onto the meat of this post.

Feedback / Suggestions

To help organize my thoughts (there are plenty) I am going to separate the feedback into sections depending on its place within the game. (Deck Editing / Collection / Game Board / Game Client)

Deck Editor / Collection:

There should be the ability to hover over cards in your deck when you are editing and see a preview of the card. We shouldn’t have to go searching for the card again just to see the stats / card text.

At the top of each deck being edited there should be a box that displays a preview of the current “Mana Curve” of your deck.

There should be a small animation when you add cards to your deck when editing, (click on a card to be put in). Having it just pop up on the list to the right is “enough”, but it doesn’t feel as polished as it could be or as fluid.

Left clicking a card when it is in your deck list should NOT take it back out of your list. Instead, a left click or a “hover” over the card should bring up a preview of the card.

To remove a card from your list, you should need to right click the card. This makes it harder to accidentally remove something, or also you could add an X next to the card, or some type of “REMOVE” button that can be pressed once a card has been highlighted and then it would be removed.

In the collection viewer, you should be able to “Click” each card, and have it come to focus, zooming in on the card for easier viewing (exactly the same as Hearthstone does it) This isn’t a major issue, but it just adds a nice bit of polish to the game.

The cards put into a currently being edited deck “Auto Save”, which is a nice feature, but it is also not apparent right away that that is what is happening. There should be some sort of text, or reassurance to the users that changes they make to their decks are saved on the fly, or you could also just add a “Save” button, even if this does not do anything besides confirm the list that is already saved, it would be a nice “Confirmation” for the users that everything is in fact good to go.

Adding the ability to “Share” decks with Deck Codes. Players could import decks directly from online. This helps players more quickly build decks, and “net deck” meta decks.

In game / Game Board:

During the mulligan phase there should be better effects showing what cards are currently being swapped, or being kept in hand. Currently it is very hard to really tell what is happening, there just needs to be better user feedback as to what you are doing. Adding little X’s, check marks, or a better overall highlight green / red color could do the trick.

To add onto this, it should be the same way when choosing God Powers, make the animations during this phase of the game more “tight” and user friendly, as this is the first thing that a user runs into during each match, you wanted them to feel like everything is polished right from the get go, and that they aren’t at a disadvantage because they did something (choose wrong power / mulligan wrong cards) bad just because the interface was giving them trouble.

Make a better “Card Draw” animation, right now the way the cards kind of just show up in hand just feels kind of lackluster.

There needs to be a “cards played” history somewhere on the board that both players can view during the game. Currently if you look away for 1 second and miss a card played, you are not able to know exactly what happened, and this is especially annoying with the current mana bugs, as sometimes you can’t even tell if they used mana with the card that was played.

You should be able to press escape, or just click outside of the void to move out of checking your void and your opponents void.

Cards should not be highlighted in your hand on your opponents turned, it seems like its always checking your “current mana” to see if a card is playable even if it isn’t your turn.

Exactly the same as hearthstone there should be the ability to “See” when your opponent is hovering over certain cards (The cards jump up slightly in the hand), not only does this make it “feel” like you are actually playing against someone and seeing them pick and choose which cards to play, it also adds the ability to “Bluff” and “Read” within the game at a higher level of play, which just further increase the skill cap of the game.

There should be a deck tracker built into the client (at least for your own, Artifact does it for both players as the cards are played) If there is not one built in, 3rd party’s will just build them, and that is a worse user experience overall for new players who do not know about deck trackers.

There should be a built in chat system within each game, the ability to chat to your opponent in game (with an easy mute button to be able to stop toxic people) Also, adding in emotes would be great.

The “Targeting” animation / graphic really needs some work, sometimes it doesn’t “Stick” properly when scrolling over cards, or heroes, also, the animation itself seems a bit bad in general, could definitely use a lot more polish here.

Many animations (cards / hero powers) still feel a bit “Clunky”, I am positive that you guys know this already, and are just prioritizing actual bugs / gameplay issues (which makes sense), but definitely having the animations tightened up overall by the time the game launches would help it feel like more a “legit” card game such as Artifact / Hearthstone / MtGA / Gwent.

To add to above, general polish of the game would have a huge effect on the “Stickyness” of new players trying the game. If they are turned off but this on their first play, they will not stick around to keep trying it.

The “Shinyness” of the game and effects should be toned down a bit. A more “Flat” style of art on the board would go a long way to help reduce a lot of the noise that the current interface has. I am not a designer by any means, but I have played a lot of digital card games, and this has always been preferred.

Game Client:

There should be a way to cancel “Searching for an opponent” once you click it, even if a penalty is added for you to not queue again for some minutes.

Ability to directly challenge friends (I am positive this is slated for before launch already).

Ranked Play from the beginning. A huge mistake that Artifact made with its launch was not having in “hooks” that kept people playing right from the beginning. Having a Ranked system in place, with rewards for certain tiers, card back customization, titles, and other cosmetics will really help keep players coming back for more.

A built in “profile” page, where you can see your stats, not only personal ones such as W/L ratio, current rank (when ranking system is out), but also your stats for your specific decks against other classes.

Once an Arena Draft / Battle Royale mode is implemented there should be stats specific to that on display somewhere within the client as well.

A built in tournament client very similar to Artifacts’ should be added into the game. This would be HUGE for allowing 3rd parties to easily host tournaments and help evolve the community outside of just Fuel Games having to put effort into tournaments. A large 3rd party tournament scene will keep the game fresh and going for a long time. Not only from a gameplay standpoint, but also from the card economy standpoint. Meta’s evolving around certain tournaments would help highlight certain cards that become useful at them, and drive demand for different archetypes of decks. I hope that this is something that will be added in at launch to help this game take off right from the start.

A built in “replay” system would be a great thing to have as well, this does not have to be a full live preview of the gameplay, but at least a “log” of all of the turns that occurred, and the state of the game at that time. Something that a user could go back and see exactly what cards were played.

One thing that Artifact did do right was have a Free “Social” (unranked / unrewarded) draft mode. Where players who do not want to spend money on the game can just play draft as much as they like. This will help keep people logging on and over time convert them into paid customers (You could add very small rewards to this as well to entice users to continue playing).

One thing that is really going to separate this digital TCG from others is the addition of the “Battle Royale” mode that has been mentioned. I believe that this is something that the team should really focus on and make an amazing experience. If this is something that can separate Gods Unchained from every other digital card game out there, it will attract and keep players right from the start. Especially if there is a solid way to “e-sport” this new game mode.

Shop System / Card Prices:

I know that many 3rd party resources will exist to be able to Buy / Sell cards outside of the game, but adding in an “official” (even if its just a white labeled exchange behind the scenes) way to Buy / Sell specific cards within the game would be AMAZING. Artifact currently does this (even though it is obviously a closed system) and it feels really great to be able to Buy and Sell all within Artifact, and then be able to immediately use those cards to put into the decks you are building. Having to go outside of the game to purchase a card, and then come back into the official client adds a additional layer to the process which is going to turn some people off.

In addition to the above, all cards should have their “Current Market Rates” displayed somewhere where you can see them (When you click / hover a card, and additionally when they are within your deck) This would help players understand how much more they would need to “Complete” a deck they are building, without having to go outside of the game client to figure it out. Even if you can’t buy directly within the client, pulling the data from the 3rd party websites that are selling the cards should be done.You could have users choose within the game which source they want to choose from, or just create some type of average across the main exchanges.

On this same note, there should be a “Total Deck Value” in USD (or your local currency, or Ether) somewhere at the top or bottom when you are editing a deck. This could change with each card being added or removed. This would allow users to see if they wanted to sell this deck right now how much could they get for it, and just in general having that additional information feels good as a player. This could be added somewhere in a Box right below the Deck Name (Where a Mana curve preview should go as well).

The ability to digitally “Sign” cards, within the game with your account “signature” would be a great addition and set this game apart from others out there now. This is something that would be stored on the token itself on the Ethereum ledger. This is a way of showing who has owned this particular card, and the history of it over time. This addition would allow famous streamers / pros who win tournaments, to sell off the exact cards that they used in those tournaments as collectors cards to other players.

Additional and Closing Thoughts

I wanted to close out this post by adding in some just general thoughts that don’t fit any specific portion of the game, but should definitely be talked about internally by the team at Fuel Games. I have bolded this entire section below as I think that it is very important to keep in mind if Gods Unchained is going to try to take a chunk out of the digital TCG market.

Right now the way this game plays is very similar to Hearthstone. This is not a bad thing by any means, Hearthstone is an amazing game, BUT the only downside to the game being like this is that players who are looking to switch over (or at least spend some of their time) from Hearthstone, need to have a reason to keep logging onto Gods Unchained instead of Hearthstone. And even more so than that, it cannot give them a reason to NOT log on, as they already have another very well made and designed card game (that they have most likely spent a lot of money on) already waiting for them. That means that Gods Unchained needs to be released with a lot of polish, and the new user experience needs to be focused on. If a potential “convert” from Hearthstone, comes to Gods Unchained and runs into even the smallest of problems, there is a high chance they will just go back to Hearthstone and never log on again since the gameplay is so similar. Things such as the other game modes, Battle Royale, are great differentiating factors I do agree, but initial retention of users will be hard if you can’t keep them interested right from the start.

Now, looking back through all of this it looks like I have a lot of problems with the game in its current state. My motives here are not at all to talk down about this game, or expose all of it’s current flaws. I know that we are still in a VERY early Beta stage, and a lot of what I mentioned has already been addressed by Fuel Games as things that they want to add and improve. My motive in making this post was just to try to get a nice “laundry” list of everything down somewhere where members of the community can take a look and also give back their own input.

I really do believe that this game has set itself on the right path so far to succeed, especially as more updates are released, more players are allowed into the Beta, and we get closer to the tournament slated for next year.

I would love to hear from the community how they feel about my feedback, or any additions that they might have to it. I am pretty active within the official Discord, and always down to chat.

Looking forward to seeing you guys in game :)