TOPIC: Last Second Changes Made - Sorry! FINAL Contact Sheets

archmage78 wrote:

Mike Steele wrote:

Fiddy wrote:

archmage78 wrote: solve real problems. power cheap is real and needs to be solved. going after 2 classes does nothing and solves nothing.

I'm curious. What is your definition of power creep? As you seem to agree that power creep is real and should be solved.

I think that most participating in the discussion feel that damage dealt in a round is a large aspect of power creep. Is that not a part of your definition?

While it definitely impacts primarily these two classes, I see it more as having a consistent rule across all the classes. Something like "bonus melee or ranged combat damage can only be applied to one slid token per round. If a player's character hits with more than one melee or ranged slid attack in a round, they get to decide which slid attack to apply the bonus damage to".

So again, your solution is to nerf 2 classes and you really believe that your discussion is about power creep?

The crabs in a bucket mentality is strong.

Arcanist Kolixela wrote:
Obsoleting tokens by year is a VERY bad idea in a game where an UR token has a starting price of $100, the average Relic is $400, relics are never reprinted.

Limiting the only tokens "safe" from aging out of use is $1000+ each Legendary tokens sends a very strong message to non legendary players (99.9% of players) that the game is not designed for them, but for the elite 0.1% of players who craft Legendary tokens.

That's not a good design decision for a game you can play every day, it's significantly worse for a game you can play only about once every 3 months and only at specific locations across the USA.

This. 1000% this.

Also, if the perceived issue is power creep then I'm not sure how banning huge amounts of 10 year old tokens would help - surely if the problem is power creep then the new tokens are the issue, not the old ones?

Iross wrote:

Arcanist Kolixela wrote:
Obsoleting tokens by year is a VERY bad idea in a game where an UR token has a starting price of $100, the average Relic is $400, relics are never reprinted.

Limiting the only tokens "safe" from aging out of use is $1000+ each Legendary tokens sends a very strong message to non legendary players (99.9% of players) that the game is not designed for them, but for the elite 0.1% of players who craft Legendary tokens.

That's not a good design decision for a game you can play every day, it's significantly worse for a game you can play only about once every 3 months and only at specific locations across the USA.

This. 1000% this.

Also, if the perceived issue is power creep then I'm not sure how banning huge amounts of 10 year old tokens would help - surely if the problem is power creep then the new tokens are the issue, not the old ones?

Jeff floated the idea a number of years ago of basically obsoleting all the tokens and starting over, and it did not go over well. It would be nice if we somehow could adopt the MTG model of having a standard environment which only accepted recent tokens, and at the same time a Vintage environment that accepted all (or nearly all) tokens. It just seems pretty hard to do when token builds are so expensive and play opportunities are so limited.

Mike Steele wrote:

Iross wrote:

Arcanist Kolixela wrote:
Obsoleting tokens by year is a VERY bad idea in a game where an UR token has a starting price of $100, the average Relic is $400, relics are never reprinted.

Limiting the only tokens "safe" from aging out of use is $1000+ each Legendary tokens sends a very strong message to non legendary players (99.9% of players) that the game is not designed for them, but for the elite 0.1% of players who craft Legendary tokens.

That's not a good design decision for a game you can play every day, it's significantly worse for a game you can play only about once every 3 months and only at specific locations across the USA.

This. 1000% this.

Also, if the perceived issue is power creep then I'm not sure how banning huge amounts of 10 year old tokens would help - surely if the problem is power creep then the new tokens are the issue, not the old ones?

Jeff floated the idea a number of years ago of basically obsoleting all the tokens and starting over, and it did not go over well. It would be nice if we somehow could adopt the MTG model of having a standard environment which only accepted recent tokens, and at the same time a Vintage environment that accepted all (or nearly all) tokens. It just seems pretty hard to do when token builds are so expensive and play opportunities are so limited.

The MTG model is not a nice model... it’s a player hostile spend treadmill that should be avoided at all costs. There is no need to obsolete tokens to prevent creep.

Keep each rarity at a specific power level.

Players will eventually move to the next “level” of tokens organically - you don’t need to creep the power of rare tokens, an engaged player will move on to ultra rare, then relic, then legendary.

Eventually, maybe, someday the entire design space at legendary will be filled. Perhaps there will be, for example, legendary high AC armor, legendary Damage armor, legendary +saves armor, etc. At 3 or fewer legendaries per year, that is going to take a really long time To get there, but once we are there, maybe a player has become maxed out. There will be nothing left for that super old vet to buy (except more dungeon runs) while all the 99.99999% of people below that point still have plenty of room to grow.

Endgame wrote:

Mike Steele wrote:

Iross wrote:

Arcanist Kolixela wrote:
Obsoleting tokens by year is a VERY bad idea in a game where an UR token has a starting price of $100, the average Relic is $400, relics are never reprinted.

Limiting the only tokens "safe" from aging out of use is $1000+ each Legendary tokens sends a very strong message to non legendary players (99.9% of players) that the game is not designed for them, but for the elite 0.1% of players who craft Legendary tokens.

That's not a good design decision for a game you can play every day, it's significantly worse for a game you can play only about once every 3 months and only at specific locations across the USA.

This. 1000% this.

Also, if the perceived issue is power creep then I'm not sure how banning huge amounts of 10 year old tokens would help - surely if the problem is power creep then the new tokens are the issue, not the old ones?

Jeff floated the idea a number of years ago of basically obsoleting all the tokens and starting over, and it did not go over well. It would be nice if we somehow could adopt the MTG model of having a standard environment which only accepted recent tokens, and at the same time a Vintage environment that accepted all (or nearly all) tokens. It just seems pretty hard to do when token builds are so expensive and play opportunities are so limited.

The MTG model is not a nice model... it’s a player hostile spend treadmill that should be avoided at all costs. There is no need to obsolete tokens to prevent creep.

Keep each rarity at a specific power level.

Players will eventually move to the next “level” of tokens organically - you don’t need to creep the power of rare tokens, an engaged player will move on to ultra rare, then relic, then legendary.

Eventually, maybe, someday the entire design space at legendary will be filled. Perhaps there will be, for example, legendary high AC armor, legendary Damage armor, legendary +saves armor, etc. At 3 or fewer legendaries per year, that is going to take a really long time To get there, but once we are there, maybe a player has become maxed out. There will be nothing left for that super old vet to buy (except more dungeon runs) while all the 99.99999% of people below that point still have plenty of room to grow.

The thing you do then is try to talk Jeff into creating artifacts again >.>

NightGod wrote:

Endgame wrote:

Mike Steele wrote:

Iross wrote:

Arcanist Kolixela wrote:
Obsoleting tokens by year is a VERY bad idea in a game where an UR token has a starting price of $100, the average Relic is $400, relics are never reprinted.

Limiting the only tokens "safe" from aging out of use is $1000+ each Legendary tokens sends a very strong message to non legendary players (99.9% of players) that the game is not designed for them, but for the elite 0.1% of players who craft Legendary tokens.

That's not a good design decision for a game you can play every day, it's significantly worse for a game you can play only about once every 3 months and only at specific locations across the USA.

This. 1000% this.

Also, if the perceived issue is power creep then I'm not sure how banning huge amounts of 10 year old tokens would help - surely if the problem is power creep then the new tokens are the issue, not the old ones?

Jeff floated the idea a number of years ago of basically obsoleting all the tokens and starting over, and it did not go over well. It would be nice if we somehow could adopt the MTG model of having a standard environment which only accepted recent tokens, and at the same time a Vintage environment that accepted all (or nearly all) tokens. It just seems pretty hard to do when token builds are so expensive and play opportunities are so limited.

The MTG model is not a nice model... it’s a player hostile spend treadmill that should be avoided at all costs. There is no need to obsolete tokens to prevent creep.

Keep each rarity at a specific power level.

Players will eventually move to the next “level” of tokens organically - you don’t need to creep the power of rare tokens, an engaged player will move on to ultra rare, then relic, then legendary.

Eventually, maybe, someday the entire design space at legendary will be filled. Perhaps there will be, for example, legendary high AC armor, legendary Damage armor, legendary +saves armor, etc. At 3 or fewer legendaries per year, that is going to take a really long time To get there, but once we are there, maybe a player has become maxed out. There will be nothing left for that super old vet to buy (except more dungeon runs) while all the 99.99999% of people below that point still have plenty of room to grow.

The thing you do then is try to talk Jeff into creating artifacts again >.>

I'd try my hardest to talk Jeff out of doing Artifacts again.

Endgame wrote: Keep each rarity at a specific power level.

Players will eventually move to the next “level” of tokens organically - you don’t need to creep the power of rare tokens, an engaged player will move on to ultra rare, then relic, then legendary.

This model only works if you've exhausted the design space at a certain power level. The game is far from the point. I'd actaully say a lot of the "power creep" over the past 10 years has come from simply filling out the design space according to this exact model.

Take boots as an example. At UR, there definitely seems to be some design book ending like you suggest:
+3 to one physical stat & part of a set without +level
+2 to one physical stat & part of a set with +level
+3 typed damage to one attack type; +5 for 2-handed weapons
Rogue stuff

But, with the 2021 set, there's ostensibly "power creep" with the debut of +3 Strength boots that add a "to hit" component to the +damage before.

So, given that design space is far from exhausted at UR, and probably not even at Rare (see: Belt of the Sweetwoods, lack of Dex/Con analogs to Amulet of Vigor, etc.), how would book ending alone keep power levels steady as the design space fills out?

Endgame wrote: The area between book ends is the design space for new tokens, and keeps an expected progression. Like no drawback +2 str rare gloves -> No drawback +4 str UR gloves -> +5 str no drawback Relic gloves -> +6 str no drawback legendary gloves.

I know this doesn't add to the conversation, but Berserker Gloves would like a word with you

Philip Goodman wrote:

Endgame wrote: The area between book ends is the design space for new tokens, and keeps an expected progression. Like no drawback +2 str rare gloves -> No drawback +4 str UR gloves -> +5 str no drawback Relic gloves -> +6 str no drawback legendary gloves.

I know this doesn't add to the conversation, but Berserker Gloves would like a word with you

Seriously, though: how did those get printed at Rare when Gauntlets of Ogre Power exist?

Marc D wrote:

Philip Goodman wrote:

Endgame wrote: The area between book ends is the design space for new tokens, and keeps an expected progression. Like no drawback +2 str rare gloves -> No drawback +4 str UR gloves -> +5 str no drawback Relic gloves -> +6 str no drawback legendary gloves.

I know this doesn't add to the conversation, but Berserker Gloves would like a word with you

Seriously, though: how did those get printed at Rare when Gauntlets of Ogre Power exist?

My guess is that completion tokens are not discussed in token development. It's cool because we get surprised by completion tokens. The drawback are tokens like this and the melee damage ioun stone tokens this year:

Ioun Stone Jasper Ellipsoid +2 melee damage
Ioun Stone Jasper Prism +1 melee damage

These don't quite make sense when compared to a UR from the previous year:
Ioun Stone Infernal Fire Prism +2 melee damage as fire

I'm sure many would have recommended against these completion tokens, had they known about them prior to printing.

Marc D wrote:

Endgame wrote: Keep each rarity at a specific power level.

Players will eventually move to the next “level” of tokens organically - you don’t need to creep the power of rare tokens, an engaged player will move on to ultra rare, then relic, then legendary.

This model only works if you've exhausted the design space at a certain power level. The game is far from the point. I'd actaully say a lot of the "power creep" over the past 10 years has come from simply filling out the design space according to this exact model.

Take boots as an example. At UR, there definitely seems to be some design book ending like you suggest:
+3 to one physical stat & part of a set without +level
+2 to one physical stat & part of a set with +level
+3 typed damage to one attack type; +5 for 2-handed weapons
Rogue stuff

But, with the 2021 set, there's ostensibly "power creep" with the debut of +3 Strength boots that add a "to hit" component to the +damage before.

So, given that design space is far from exhausted at UR, and probably not even at Rare (see: Belt of the Sweetwoods, lack of Dex/Con analogs to Amulet of Vigor, etc.), how would book ending alone keep power levels steady as the design space fills out?

Ideally, the bookends would have been created in the first several releases of tokens, but I think we are mostly there anyway. Lets go with boots, as you suggest. We have:

+1 damage uncommon boots
+2 damage Rare boots
+3 damage boots for 1H
+5 damage boots for 2H.

These are the bookends for damage. Creating a +3 Str boot does not exceed the bookend for damage, so we're OK. There is an undefined bookend for + hit on boots, but the Str boots have traded some +damage for some +hit, so we are not creeping damage with the new release.

Rare neck is its own oddity, because it was never developed more or less from its inception. Prior to 2019, the high water mark was.... +2 AC at rare. Following the progression from rare to UR on other slots, amulet of vigor doesn't go far enough to follow the progression.

Maybe 2022 should be the year to book end a few missing pieces?

Marc D wrote:

Philip Goodman wrote:

Endgame wrote: The area between book ends is the design space for new tokens, and keeps an expected progression. Like no drawback +2 str rare gloves -> No drawback +4 str UR gloves -> +5 str no drawback Relic gloves -> +6 str no drawback legendary gloves.

I know this doesn't add to the conversation, but Berserker Gloves would like a word with you

Seriously, though: how did those get printed at Rare when Gauntlets of Ogre Power exist?

TL;DR: Because it helps players learn.

Many game designers of collectible games find it a good thing to differ the power level of tokens.

There are no "good" tokens unless there are also "bad" tokens - there would just be average tokens if there were no bad ones.

A token like this gives a new player, early collector, or non-tokenaholic a good chance at an "a-ha!" moment: Gauntlets of Ogre Power are strictly better that Berserker Gloves.

That person may then begin to look at the rest of their collection for other places they could upgrade.

The Berserker Gloves were a completion token. What could be more enticing to bring someone into buying tokens than to give them one which has a clear upgrade path for a few bucks.

New players to TD tend to prize AC and HP boosters. Experienced players prize damage and saves.