Yeah the mage is pretty powerful. Havent played much of the other classes to see their full potential. I play the Guard a lot (i like bruiser classes in most games) but he is pretty weak here. Sure he can sustain damage, but he has unreliable interrupts, and bad lane switches to actually tank for his teammates. My basic strategy with him is to use the Rogue coz she has a variety of lane switch skills and basically a bit of synergy with the Guard's tanking abilities. He's dealing pretty weak damage in general, so i think he's a bit too overshadowed by either the Rogue, Mage or Archer. Havent played a priest yet, maybe there's something there that'll click with me.
Thanks for all the feedback and reports everyone, it's super helpful. It's kind of hard to say if any class is way too strong/way to weak without a lot of discussion about them. I'd really like to hear everyone's opinions on this. Haven't seen this one. Generally 5 turns, but different enemies have different poisons. This is where being able to see all the enemy cards would really come in handy. Adding "track down memory leak" to the list. Ideally the game needs to be enjoyable immediately, not after you have to stick with it. Yeah Arcane Discard is really strong. It used to not be a free action, but I made it so because it only works on spellcasters. Not sure if that was a great idea though. He also does a lot of damage because he has really low health, but I don't think this is a great balancing tool in hindsight, because the game is mostly about using interrupts at the right times to prevent attrition anyway. Due to this, a low health pool isn't a huge deal. I like Archer's design on paper, but yeah interrupts are the strongest thing in the game and she has 3 of them. I could maybe make Tactical Shuffle not a free turn, like Vanish isn't? Insult to Injury needs to be redone because it doesn't work right and is really convoluted. Current plan is to change it to: "Shoots the last enemy that was attacked. Does 25% extra damage if the enemy was attacked by an ally in previous turn." Guard has a lot of health to compensate, though maybe that's not enough to balance her. Everything you listed was intended. I guess the question is, is the Guard too weak compared to the others, so much that it's not worth using the class? And what kind of buffs should it get, if any?
Guard is the weak in the sense that interrupts are more efficient in damage mitigation, which other classes do much better, and they deal more damage than the guard. So in this sense, Guard's tankiness is less a factor than it is given credit for. In other words his strength doesnt feel like a strength at all.
I love the Guard, actually. I kind of like the Archer, but the interrupts aren't especially strong. One comes with Vanish, which means we'll need to reappear to continue attacking. Also, another only works against beasts, which isn't that useful as we need to be in the same lane. I am honest: until someone actually finishes the game consistently, I wouldn't go downgrading classes. I find them to be quite balanced on paper so far.
IMO, on paper, Guard becomes even weaker. He takes damage. Interrupts dont. Unless the Guard has a team of efficient lane-swappers, his high defense is negated coz the others will take damage. Sure he will survive, but the others wont. I admit he has strengths when the other characters can help swap their places around so they dont take damage. Problem is, even if it's just little damage, the Guard will still take it. Other classes will just work with free cycle cards and hope to get interrupts. On paper, this game is all about making efficient turns by taking the least amount of damage each turn while dealing the most damage. None of these align with what a Guard can do better. Another way to cancel out damage is to burst the enemies down to zero. Guard cant contribute much to that goal either. Other classes do. In practice, Guard's tankiness can still be taken advantage of. A team with efficient swap mechanics will make sure they dont take damage while the Guard takes minimal damage. Vanishing allies also do the trick. But here's the catch: If you opt to vanish allies or use swaps that arent free moves, the Guard will take full damage unless he has the multi-turn duration skills active. Vanish and Swaps that use up a turn wont help towards the tanking strategy. Unless the Guard is already in the right spot, efficiency-wise, tanking will be inferior to interrupting or bursting down targets. You are right though, that nerfs/buffs shouldnt hastily be implemented until extensive tests are done. I will not give up on the Guard, hopefully the class will shine in more ways than what i have been able to do with him so far.
I love the guards blocking ability, especially with reflection every now and then. I will enter a battle with only the Guard and still demolish the enemies for the most part, in the first level and second one. I'll see. I originally liked rogue and Archer, but now I'll try guard and another class. Maybe mage.
Alright, 3rd time was the charm. I beat it without too much trouble. The Elite Guards at the end just had a bunch of different casting animations that I needed to memorize. I did use items, so I guess the next thing to try will be to clear every dungeon and not use items at all. In general, the game feels maybe a bit too forgiving. I can sympathize with not wanting permadeath on your guys, but with all the healing in the game battles just don't feel too consequential most of the time. Even if I lose 2 guys, all I have to do is clean up with the last one and I should be able to come back. This is definitely a far cry from Wayward Souls, where I would just get my butt kicked on the first world forever until I got my shit together. Overall I don't think class balance is that big of an issue. You did a pretty good job on that. The bigger issues are accessibility to new players, lots and lots of bugs, and a combat system that's a bit too forgiving, given that there's only one difficulty; it's maybe fine as an initial mode, but if so it would be really nice to see a hard mode. So with the caveat that the balance is pretty good, here's a tier list: Tier A: Mage. Arcane Discard is just crazy as a free action. Of note is that the level 5 monsters (boss + elite guards) get hit by it, which is of course super important. I like the idea of just making it a regular action - it will become pretty comparable to other spells in the game. Decay/Ignite/Arcing Blast are all really strong DPS. I said interrupts are strong, but the amount of damage this guy does means he can often interrupt someone just by killing them, lol. Firestorm is a bit ungainly but also very strong when combined with free actions. Banish is a mostly unbuggy interrupt, and Blink is flexible and of course free. He doesn't really have a bad card. Tier B: Guard: I underestimated this guy at first, mostly because his abilities are really unclear as to what they do. The key is that Mirror Guard is actually really strong. It does really really good damage and usually prevents you from taking much chip damage at all. Aegis is really nice because you can cast it a turn early and use it to deal with 2 monsters who are attacking at once. Also this guy seems to just have a ton of HP? So it doesn't matter much that his blocks take some chip damage. Like the Mage none of his cards are that bad. Granted, he doesn't have anything as ridiculous as Arcane Discard, but overall he's really good. Tier C: Archer: I overrated her. This maaaaybe would be Tier B except holy crap her free action interrupt just bugs out all the time on me. I started trusting it less and less to actually work and eventually I swapped her for Guard and never looked back. Unlike Mage/Guard, she also has a bunch of garbage spells. Injury to Insult/Split Shot/Pierce Armor are just all pretty crappy - low damage and low impact. If I'm not mistaken, I don't think any of these can ever be golden? So that puts a subtle nerf on her DPS, a lot of Mage/Priest DPS comes from drawing golden versions of their cards and unloading for crazy damage. Finally, her Beast interrupt can't hit the boss or Elite Guards, which is pretty important. Priest: It's unclear whether she's better or worse than Archer. She also has a bunch of bad spells: Wither/Mercy/Purge are pretty narrow. However, they all have niche uses and ultimately they do damage, so they're okay to plink away wounded enemies, disrupt Assassins or kill the flyers that poison you. It's pretty amusing that Mercy works on the final boss; I didn't expect that to actually work. Divine Will is good damage, and Wrathful Shuffle is great for hitting the poisoning bats and Asssassins in other lanes. Protection is a *REALLY* good "oh shit" spell since it (half) saves anyone, and Sacred Word/Searing Light are of course great. Tier D: I don't like Rogue. He doesn't do as much damage as Mage and Priest, but he's also much weaker defensively than Archer/Guard. He isn't really good at anything? Vanish bugs out sometimes, making it ironically worse than Sacred Word, even though on paper it's close to strictly better, lol. Riposte and Spiked Boot are useless a sad amount of the time for how much he needs them to compete with the other classes. And the rest are just mediocre damage cards. Given he's a Rogue, he's actually the least mobile of all the classes, since his moves aren't attached to free actions or interrupts. He's pretty bad.
The more i play the Guard, the more the character class strengths open up for me. For one, i have the Mage as my secondary, and then got the Archer as my third. First of all, would like to highlight one of the Guard's strengths that i didnt consider before: Soloing. This goes for having only 2 characters with the Guard being one of them. This enhances his ability to tank by forcing enemies to hit him, therefore increasing the viability of his obvious strength which is his kit's tankiness. Placing the Guard in the middle lane puts him in most harm's way, and that is what he wants. Having an archer "vanish" means at least 2 lanes will target the Guard already, which makes his kit a lot more useful. The mage isnt really the stylish type, but he just HITS HARD. I just make him deal as much damage as possible, and dont even really care saving him if that means keeping the Guard at high health. As long as he does damage before he falls, he has done his job. If he has his defensive abilities, awesome, coz he will buy more time and possibly be able to deal more damage. On top of that, he has the ability to save the Guard from taking magic damage using his caster interrupt. So far the Archer isnt as useful as i hope it would, but mostly because i have him vanished most of the time. He's useful to save the Mage a turn, or help whittle down enemy HP. But basically, he is used for his vanish ability which never ends unless you let him take a move. I think depending on the party, the Guard can be very strong or very weak (based on my observations in previous posts). The guard's abilities are very useful IF they proc (like directing himself the attacks), else his abilities are pretty subpar. Right now, Five Card Quest made me stop playing Dead Effect 2 which i easily got addicted to, which is huge for this game. Despite having only a few cards and only 5 to play with each turn, Five Card QUest is a game that has ENDLESS possibilities for party strategies. Simple yet complex, is definitely true for 5CQ. 5-stars. Cheers!
Oh, lol, Mirror Shield is actually bugged for Guard. It's currently just a block that reflects damage 150%. No wonder I thought it was so good, haha.
Yeah I'm just watching for feedback on everything. Distract only works against beasts, but it turns out a lot of the strongest enemies in the game are beasts so it's pretty handy. That and it's also a free turn lane change, so it's multiple great uses all stacked on each other. Archer would probably be the best class in the game, by far, if she didn't have so many garbage moves. We're going to fix Injury to Insult and see what that does to her power. Let me know what you think about the "no items, clear all rooms" challenge. That was supposed to be the game's version of an opt-in harder difficulty. I wanted to try doing something different with death and attrition, so that's why they get up with every fight and the last character gets extra cards to compensate for being in a smaller party. We could tweak this, but I wonder if we should. One thing we could do is make it so characters don't get back up unless you use a healing fountain, so if someone falls in battle you need to use a fountain or shrine to revive them. Will see what we can do for accessibility (given constraints). It's a definite problem, along with the remaining bugs. Tier list thoughts: The Mage and Guard used to be really weak but they got buffed fairly late in the beta. Killing something is the best interrupt, yeah. I could see us making Arcane Discard not a free action, as a slight nerf to the character. That or making it do pretty minor damage. Mage is supposed to be limited by its low health, but it really doesn't seem to matter much in practice. Oh and we need to fix that Mirror Shield bug, it's not supposed to be a block in itself, you're supposed to have to add it to another block. Need to look into the Archer problems more, known about it for awhile but they're hard to figure out. Split Shot was good on paper, because it should be pretty much 30 damage at the cost of coming out next turn, but you really want to concentrate damage in these games. Pierce Armor makes the next attack do double damage, though. Injury to Insult is getting a buff. The final boss used to be a beast, but was changed because the archer could just easily lock him down forever. I like Priest a lot, though if I get a chance I think I might make Purge do 10 damage to all enemies onscreen, but 20 to any that was currently poisoned/burning/etc. Just have priest be the "hit the whole screen" specialist. Rogue used to be really strong, but in an opposite story to the mage/guard she got nerfed late in the beta. For example, Riposte used to always hit, even after a failed attempt. It would just hit harder if you actually blocked something. I still thought Rogue was pretty strong due to Frenzied Discard antics, but maybe we should undo her riposte nerf if nothing else. Thanks, glad you like the game! Yeah the thought with guard is that it doesn't get super great pure interrupts like a lot of the other classes do, but in exchange almost every card prevents at least some damage. So you're constantly reducing incoming damage, and you also have a way bigger health pool than most. This would be even more effective in a game where interrupts weren't so common/powerful, though. Something to think about for later games.
Just purchased not too long ago, but in battle save states would be a pretty elementary feature I would like to see implemented. Battles are not particularly long, but it would be nice to have for those times I need to switch to something else. Dream Quest for instance is also Unity based and excels in this regard. Edit: on rechecking DQ doesn't have mid battle save States. Pixel Heroes Byte and Magic, another party based RL thats quite comparable does though. not sure if that's Unity based.
I just played the Guard card "blocks all damage this turn" and somehow still got hit for 18? It wasn't poison. The only thing out of the ordinary is that it was the last enemy, and was on a different lane. Guard + Mage rocks so far
Contrary to my initial posts, i think the Guard is a bit too powerful now. Earlier today, with both allies dead, the Guard at less than half life took down 4 enemies (2 of which are those dark colored fat enemies, and 2 are zealots). The guard received 2 upgrades btw, so that helped immensely. Since it is bugged, Mirror Shield is pretty OP. That said, im thinking it may be very weak if it works as intended, that it wont have its own innate 100% block til start of his next turn. And yeah, i've had damage pass throuh that prevent-all-damage card thing. Most likely bugged, but cant figure out the conditions that proc it. The more i play with the archer, the more i like the class. Archer fits very well with my Guard-centric strategy as a support. The interrupt+vanish is huge in directing attacks towards the Guard, and her cross-lane skills (one buffs the next damage, the other can interrupt and deal significant damage) are perfect for the support role i need from the class. As a third-man im still not sure which one to go with. Mage is decent, but the role is basically to deal as much damage before going down so the Guard can play cleanup, and the Priest has more tricks like remove debuffs and his own invulnerability skill. He also has a free damaging lane swap, and has a 90 damage skill (30x3). Rogue deals good damage, but sometimes i cant use her skills coz they put the other characters, especially the Guard, in harm's way while without any defensive skills active. The more i played with the rogue the less im liking the class. Sure the rogue deals a lot of damage, but her lane swapping is very hard to work with the rest of the team to max damage output and minimize damage taken. Im pretty sure someone has figured her out and maximizes her strengths well, but i know it wont be me. LOL
Yeah DQ didn't have it. It would be a great feature, just a really hard thing to add at this point. If you track down a way to screw up his block every time, please let me know! I know that this happens, but couldn't ever really track it down. Mirror Shield should be a lot weaker, but hopefully still worth using after it works like it's supposed to. One thing Rogue had that was taken away was the ability to get a Shiny Sidestab card. I think this could do 90 damage when combined with Frenzied Discard, before any leveling or damage boosts. Maybe she got nerfed too much because I thought she was too strong before, but not sure on the balance of it. I figured that Riposte was really strong too, since many enemies in the game are weapon users.
Hi Kepa, One humble suggestion then, if I may. It seems that the biggest problem with the game is tracking down these weird cases that we seem to accept they are there, but can't really consistently replicate. You also seem to have a good set of users here that are eager and willing to help out. Why not implement a game log, both text and debug info, and an option to report a problem? Hopefully it wouldn't be an excessive amount of investment, and could help make this game work fully as intended. Just a thought. Alternatively, if you'd rather just have that in a debug version, I'm happy to install and run a debug version of the game if it helps. Best.
Also, a note. I'm finding myself avoiding picking up a third party member as it dilutes the card pool of guard/mage cards. Would it make sense to have an extra card if you have 3 party members? Similar to the fact that you only have 4 useful cards if you have only one member, I believe. (If that's not the case, maybe consider that).
Having a really good debugger would have been great, but it's a pretty big task. Especially something advanced enough to say the "why" of the problem. We have a debug version now but it's not nearly as strong as what you're thinking, sadly. I can see most of these problems when they happen, but the tricky part is figuring out what causes them to happen reliably. If it happens like 10% of the time or less, seemingly at random, it can't really be fixed. Figuring out how to make a bug happen consistently is most of the battle, really. It's rough with this game because there's little tiny things happening behind the scenes at all times. It turned out to be a bigger problem than our usual, much bigger action games. I don't mind if people go for just 2 party members. You'll get less healing and free levelups that way, is the idea. Part to discuss: Is this really much of a disadvantage? Does getting less healing even matter? I'm thinking of doing that thing earlier where if someone gets to 0 health, they won't revive in the next fight like they do now. You'd have to use a shrine, fountain, or replace them with a new recruit to get them back up. Just thinking about it though, not sure if we'll try it this next update.
I don't disagree having that as a harder option - even though, to be fair, if there's no real way to heal people other than fountains and some items, it might make sense, as carrying around some almost-dead party members all the time is also kind of weird. That works in other games as you get potions and stuff you can use between battles. I would, however, moderately revive them if you have the skill that grants you energy between floors. Other than that, I actually think it might make sense to try out. About the debuggrr, though, I understand the complexity there, but what I had in mind is really just an audit trail that would allow you to, manually, replicate the behavior. Even if just a sequence of cards the player played, and who attacked who (I.e. Type of enemy, player party member targeted). A suggestion, then, if it isn't easy to pull that off: in the debug version (or even in the release one) have a training mode where you always have all cards available. I suspect it may make it easier to replicate things. I suppose the challenge of replicating it at the moment is that we can't guarantee we'll have the same sequence of cards to try out. That is a randomness factor that could be mitigated if you had all cards to test. Just some thoughts. As for the smaller party, I didn't know about those side effects. It might even things out. I'm just trying out playing a small pay for fun.
Sorry to interrupt the forum, but why is the appstore review so negative? I rarely take heed of the store reviews but simply curious as to why this title has such ratings.
It's not an easy game to get into without early handholding. Mobile gamers are spoiled by move and attack control, or simple tap this swipe this to win. 5CQ requires strategy from the get-go. Even those inclined to understand the game right away need to play through the game and see things out for themselves before really knowing what's going on, and will keep failing before coming up with strategies to get them to the end. To add to that, knowing when to use the right cards is key as well, and not knowing how each enemy behaves can throw you off easily. You wont be able to know what an enemy does until you've seen it a few times. A lot of mobile gamers will straight away write that off as something they cant get into And then blame the game, hence the reviews. Rocketcat made a fantastic choice of creating something totally new, but that is a risk in an environment like mobile where 90% of users are casual gamers.
