On May 05 2018 03:06 alone wrote: Anything happening in prismata right now? Ive been away for a while and over one night game went from 50 ppl playing to 400+ with record 1200.The only thing i see on reddit is Golden Cup.
On May 12 2018 07:52 Garbels wrote: Right now i'm stuck on the last masterchallange 'Extremely unfair Challenge' so it seem I have a lot to learn still.
The title of that level does not lie! It's stupidly difficult. I kinda feel bad for including it.
Have you tried the Expert Challenges in campaign mode? Some of those are pretty brutal as well (especially the bonus missions).
I bought this game a few days ago before seeing this post.
I want to say congratulations on the game, I was impressed by how many features were implemented (even spectating the matches of the best players) and how the whole interface and presentation is very solid.
I love card games and I love RTS, so when I saw this on Steam I had to buy it instantly... although I hate to say this but... I got tired of it after 2 hours or so. Maybe I missed something, so please take this comment with a grain of salt, but even in more advanced games that I've spectated, the core gameplay seems to lack depth. The decision making process ends up about optimizing your build order (when to switch from economy to offensive units), but I saw little to no strategy per se.
Here's a few humble suggestions :
1- More hidden informations could add room for so many surprises and mindgames - Some kind of Fog of War mechanic would be great imo. Maybe each side could be divided into 4 sections, both players get to choose in which section they put their units, and each section is hidden and cannot be attacked unless it's scouted. - Or maybe players could hide what they're doing by paying for some tech.
2- It would be neat to have some limited resources that the players would fight over. - Instead of spending your attack points on the opponent, what if you could choose to attack neutral units that would grant all sorts of bonuses upon death? They could replenish some unit reserve, add Money for next turn, or join your side and act as a new unit. - Same idea but with money. What if there was a Neutral market mechanic where both players can instead spend their money on exclusive Mercenaries and Buildings? It could act as a drafting mechanic, so there's only 3 items for sale every turn, and after they're bought, they're gone, and the market replenishes every turn. - Maybe you'd need to build a specific building to have access to the market.
Thank you for reading this, I hope some ideas maybe some sense at least and best of luck with the project!
On May 14 2018 16:48 lepape wrote: I love card games and I love RTS, so when I saw this on Steam I had to buy it instantly... although I hate to say this but... I got tired of it after 2 hours or so. Maybe I missed something, so please take this comment with a grain of salt, but even in more advanced games that I've spectated, the core gameplay seems to lack depth. The decision making process ends up about optimizing your build order (when to switch from economy to offensive units), but I saw little to no strategy per se.
This is a comment that I find a bit perplexing, since a common opinion among our players is that strategies seem very complex and set-reading is something that even good players struggle with. Decisions like economy size, tech choices, etc. are very tricky, and mechanics like chill, frontline, and absorb denial create a lot of situations where the optimal play is far from obvious. We've had alpha players who've been laddering for 3 years and insist they're still learning new things and still improving!
What I'm most curious about is what caused you to come to that opinion... I mean obviously it's hard to really judge a complex strategy game after only 2 hours, but what about the game gave you the impression that it wasn't deep? We know that a lot of the more complex/tricky units are only unlocked at a higher level; were you mostly watching streams/top live games and just forming your own opinion based on what you saw?
On May 12 2018 07:52 Garbels wrote: Right now i'm stuck on the last masterchallange 'Extremely unfair Challenge' so it seem I have a lot to learn still.
The title of that level does not lie! It's stupidly difficult. I kinda feel bad for including it.
Have you tried the Expert Challenges in campaign mode? Some of those are pretty brutal as well (especially the bonus missions).
I completed the 'Extremely unfair Challenge' after sleeping on it once more. Similarily to that I had to take a longer break after banging my head against the 'Amporilla Challenge' for a while only to beat it really quick after the break.
Did all the expert challanges but the bonus mission of Ep1 today. 'Scap an Scrutiny' was a strange one that took me way to long and the bonus one looks like it will keep me a while.
The puzzles are very captivating and I often find myself doing them for way to long when I should be doing something else!
Started playing a few days ago, I'm about 30 hours in, and I'm really liking it. A few notes:
1. The music and sound effects in this game are top notch. Single player campaign is really well polished too.
2. Love spectating and other QoL features.
3. Just played the Blitz event tonight and it was pretty fun, though I'm definitely not familiar enough with the cards to play at all well at that speed. (One game I lost simply because I hadn't had time to see that Polywall was in the unit pool, and I was building regular Walls instead.)
4. "Tickets" are not explained at all as far as I can tell. I had to read a couple google search results to figure out the general idea. I still don't fully understand them.
5. My experience leveling up and unlocking new blueprints had me playing games with chill and frontline units long before I got to their introductions in the combat training / puzzles. Are players intended to complete all the combat training before queueing for casual games? Maybe make more levels (beyond 40) and introduce the blueprints more slowly. I understood the chill mechanic easily enough because it's described in parentheses on every chill unit, but I had no idea how frontline units would actually function, despite the description on the unit.
6. Regarding the depth of the game, I can see that it certainly has some depth to it. I've played quite a bit of Dominion in my day so I'm familiar with the "find the best strategy with a unique set of cards" concept. I like how this game incorporates a lot more of "change your game plan based on what your opponent is doing" than Dominion does.
7. However, one thing I've realized that seems pretty unintuitive and was unexpected was this: it seems like it's better to rush out attack power than it is to drone up. In nearly every game I've spectated and played, the first player to start building attack units wins. The player who builds more drones almost always loses. This was very unexpected, as coming from Brood War Zerg my general game plan has always been "hold off with as little as needed, then overwhelm them with macro." That simply doesn't exist in this game as far as I can tell.
The difference in the number of drones needed to go from being able to build 2 attacking units a turn to 3 is large enough (in most unit pools [again, in my limited experience]) that it's not worth droning up past whatever you need to pump out 2 attackers per turn. If my opponent drones up further, they will be put in a position where they need to build defenses in order to not lose the drones they just made. This starts an inevitable cycle of
I build attack units they build defenses I build more attack units and destroy their defenses they build more defenses I build more attack units and destroy their defenses ... Eventually my attack value is larger than they can defend and I win.
Their defenses die, but my attacking units attack forever. Strategically, the game seems like an arms race (incidentally, Arms Race seems quite strong).
That said, there are a lot of interesting variations on this, such as units that hit every 2nd or 3rd turn, one time hits like Pixies / Gauss Charges / Grenade Mech, or units that cost attack value now in order for great value later. Threatening lots of damage is often better than actually dealing it, because it forces the opponent on the defensive much earlier and more efficiently.
Anyway it was just unexpected / unintuitive. I was expecting to outmacro people at first. Of course I might be completely wrong about this, because when I watch better players play, they tend to build a ton of drones. Which is really confusing, because when spectating, I can often predict who will lose based on who built more drones.
8. I really like the way the first player / second player was balanced. After 30+ hours, and even considering point (7) above where I feel that attacking first is the best strategy, I'm not sure whether going first or second is better. The extra drone, and different gold counts at early turns, means that the best strategy for the first and second player may often be very different, which is a really great quality.
Are you willing / able to share data on winrate going first vs going second, winrate of the player who builds the first attacking unit, average max income of winner vs loser, etc?
edit: This got kinda long. Anyway, great game, highly recommended, keep up the great work!
On May 15 2018 14:25 Dromar wrote: Are you willing / able to share data on winrate going first vs going second, winrate of the player who builds the first attacking unit, average max income of winner vs loser, etc?
p1/p2 balance is within about 1.5% of perfectly balanced, with a slight edge to P2. It varies a bit with which units are available, some units give a slight edge to p1 and others to p2, but usually only by a percent or two even in the worst cases. In the past we've had to nerf units because they were too strong for one player or another, like years ago in pre-alpha we had a version of scorchilla that was 60% p2-favoured because there was this insane rush that worked out perfectly for player 2 and was hard to counter. But we're much better at making balanced units now.
In terms of building the first attacker, it depends a lot on the size of the biggest absorbing defender. In sets with Energy Matrix or Centurion, you might want 20+ Drones. If you open DD/DDA into Tarsiers in those types of sets, your opponent is going to defend your rush and then smash you with a superior economy, because your first 4 Tarsiers do nothing against their Energy Matrix.
It's part of a *very* involved series of game design articles I wrote on Prismata. More stupidly theoretical than necessary. But might be a fun read. ^_^
I am sure you have done WAY more balance testing than I could ever imagine compared to my ~400 games played, but I was wondering have you ever thought about making P2 have 6 drones + 1 doomed drone at the start instead of 7 drones.
This gives P2 a 4 gold advantage for being 2nd instead of X gold advantage.
I am not sure if this would be too punishing and swing things back to p1 favor but as a newer player, P2 has always felt significantly stronger than p1, and my P2 win rate looking at stats shows that for me at least I grasp how to play as p2 a lot better.
On May 17 2018 09:36 Danxor wrote: I am sure you have done WAY more balance testing than I could ever imagine compared to my ~400 games played, but I was wondering have you ever thought about making P2 have 6 drones + 1 doomed drone at the start instead of 7 drones.
This gives P2 a 4 gold advantage for being 2nd instead of X gold advantage.
I am not sure if this would be too punishing and swing things back to p1 favor but as a newer player, P2 has always felt significantly stronger than p1, and my P2 win rate looking at stats shows that for me at least I grasp how to play as p2 a lot better.
That would be way too much. The correct adjustment amount is probably something like "player 1 should get 6.07 Drones and player 2 should get 7 Drones". A Doomed Drone is worth probably 75% of a Drone, so it's likely about 3-4 times more imbalanced than the current setup.
The 6.07 comes from the ratio 6.07/7 = 7/8.07, meaning that the "half-turn advantage" of p2 over p1 is the same as the half-turn advantage of p1 over p2 after going DD on the first turn.
Man, this game is awesome! Banged 20+ hours on it already and still counting. I played all single player modes a bit, don't understand much in a game yet, but won a weaker master bot on my 1st attempt ^_^
A couple of notable things: 1. I love how you balanced "white" and "black" in this game by adding a drone to black, and for the first turn or two they simply reverse their positions (with 1 extra drone for both), I think it's a brilliant idea: simple and elegant beyond words.
2. Puzzles and expert challenges are amazing. I've only managed to do 4 expert challenges in 1st campaign chapter so far (and I spent a lot of time on them). I deem myself like sort of a smart dude, but, man, these challenges introduced me to reality.
3. So far I like puzzles and campaign more than regular games (balanced for 2 human players), because of their variety. It's a little bit difficult to gauge all variety in multiplayer/bot games brought by random cards for a newbie, and so far all of my games there were very similar. Maybe I should check out multiplayer to be introduced to this variety by my opponents and get my backside kicked Puzzles on another hand are much more varying even on surface.
Eagerly waiting for another campaign chapter while I'm bashing my head against the wall trying to solve another expert challenge This stuff is addictive. Props to the developers for making this great piece of art,
We will eventually be transitioning fully to free-to-play, this is just a test weekend if you want to get in early. You can keep the game when the weekend ends.
The free version includes Campaign episode 1, plus 50 combat training missions and all the multiplayer modes (with no pay-to-win, only pay-to-skin).
Hi there! I played it due to your post and I have to say it exceeded expectations by far with a solid single player. Haven't played something quite like it before.
It's a surprising mix of turn-based strategy gone count-crazy: Take the interface of classic strategy games, refine it, add the best bits and pieces of tactical RPGs and modern card games.. types of games I usually get bored of quickly.. To make it short if space plants vs. zombies and non-fantasy Hearthstone had a beautiful baby that loved throwing puzzles around, Prismata would be it (for Hearthstone especially the memorable moments of the single-player) . Not sure why, but it tickled my brain the way the combat in Banner Saga (or Into The Breach) did, as well as the classic XCom games and late-game chess.. probably for the frustration tolerance!
This kind of monetising (cosmetics and taunts/emotes only) is also laudable.
Being in early-access(!), a few suggestions and unreasonable opinions: 1) The game looks improved for mobile or, likely, tablets. On desktop some of the big text/bold fonts stand out so much it's at a the point of 'in-your-faceness' sometimes. Unit design is very strong (improved for clarity a tad too much maybe), but doesn't seem streamlined in entirety, like the final finish comes from more than one design (red and blue icons as well as the energy lightning bolt for example). 2) Opening the crystal shards to find items/rewards inside?, doesn't make much sense the way it is. A space-saloon aesthetic, coming from the campaign, was what I had expected at first (or opening coffers delivered by otherwordly drones). Also it's unintuitive what infusions do, other than sparkle? Change the colour of emotes? 3) Also in the campaign, how/where the robots physically fight never appears on screen (how an onlooker would see what the fight would look like/the outcome is or how the resources and units are delivered into the battlefield). This seems like a blunder, omitting a "cool, so this is how I steer and command" moment that could also be a frame for the PvP side of the game. 4) Lost is what I feel! Sometimes Prismata makes you feel helpless/frustrated like an expert chess player beating you without you even seeing it coming. Tough elite challenges, tough AI bots, it's easy to go on losing streaks, while one doesn't even always receive XP for losing. Might be ok for veterans but unappealing for newcomers. Also there's an overwhelming amount of blueprints. Maybe use hints to couple the elite missions and new blueprints to relevant single player challenges!? At least for some of the blueprints unlock an individual challenge using that unit, by a "play with this blueprint now" button!? 5) Googly-eyed skins are fun, but see 1)
PS: Thanks for hotkeys, that's what makes it really awesome to play for me. (lvl2 challenge "Fragility in Defense" can be solved just by hitting the recommend action with Q =P )
I like the new units but the master bot seems weaker; even without them in the set. Beat my previous highscore, from more than a month ago, two times in the last two days.
Tried to get some of my friends playing, but failed. Mostly because of the graphics/the way it looks. 'Interface looks old' was also one of the first things I wrote down in my notes about prismata but that perception vanished after a few games. I very much like the way the game looks now. Very clean and efficient.
The free-to-play version has full support for competitive multiplayer with no pay-to-win or card packs. Also has over 60 single player scenarios, missions, and puzzles.
You can upgrade to the premium version to play the full single-player campaign and get a boost on your cosmetic rewards (which don't affect gameplay).