Just had a bug where my ipad crashed due to low battery; when i returned and lost the duel, i lost 512 gold (which i guess was more than I had), and now my stats show about 50 losses less.
I've started several characters. For all of them, their win/loss ratio improves a lot around, say, level 5. Based on my experience, I think it'd improve the game if it was easier toward the beginning - first "dungeon" or two - but even more difficult later one. Though I've yet to try "Extreme."
Thanks for the info - I'll have to look at both of those. There are checks in there to make sure it doesn't try to take more gold than you actually have. Your record should be getting written to disk after every game, but there is a bug of course. I'll try to reproduce your scenario and see.
Thanks for the feedback! I will be looking to tune the difficulty going forward. Don't want it too hard to start or too easy to finish.
A few more notes on the UI: - my suggestion of moving through cards be swiping left and right when zoomed in, as well as having a button that allows us to act on them (I.e. Move to/remove from deck, or play them) makes sense in the game as well. Just a note. Maybe when one would use the button, you could then just zoom out and show all the possible options for us to drag the card to, and the player can tap on them or drag the card to it. - when editing the deck, moving cards back and forth, unless I'm missing something, there really should be no reason for us to be forced to move the card on top of the exact same card, when adding more than one. Actually, just dragging a card from top to bottom, or from bottom to top should add to/remove from deck. Unless there is a deliberate reason for it that I'm currently missing given my little play time. - for the deck editor, it would be great to have an option to copy existing decks to other slots. So far my new decks are adaptations of current ones, slight tweaks. I imagine the future doing full drafts, but having this option might also come in handy. Keep up the great work, this is a really fun game!
Last night I started looking at swipe left/right in the context of the deck editor and it looks very promising, so I'll continue to pursue that. The action buttons are on the list as well, but haven't looked at it yet. I can certainly see them helping with deck building. Regarding the Deck Editor - you can drag the cards on top of any card, not just a matching one. It redisplays the deck/library after each drag so the cards are sorted properly. The alternate casting mode you are suggesting is interesting; I'll add it to the list to investigate along with the 'copy deck' idea. Glad you are enjoying the game!
Interesting - and sorry for the false report then. I think maybe the sorting made my new card not show in the current page and then I added more, since it didn't go to the page of that card, I thought it wasn't registering. But you are right, it does. My bad. Thanks for looking into this. We should see if someone can get this game on the Pocket Tactics radar, and even Sean Musgrave here on TA.
Did you ever figure something out for pathfinding for the movement ? I think game needs more creatures that add more Aeons for different colors or maybe some fetch lands to promote multi colored decks. As far as the ai goes ( I haven't the slightest idea how hard it is to program it so dont want to sound condescending at all) it needs better creature lane picking. Like blocking a 6 3 that's murdering their face round after round and especially hand management. It seems like it dumps it's hand constantly and then bogs out after round 4. Maybe it gets better at the higher levels but I haven't made it that far yet. On the positive side I still like it a lot and this will stay on my device for a long time.
It needs better everything. I hate to pound on that topic, but throwing out a spell to reduce my gated freebie to 0/1 and then nuking it next round with yet another spell is just crazy. Same with high-cost, neutered creatures. The AI probably assesses danger by creature casting cost, but it absolutely has to realize when a creature isn't dangerous anymore.
Pathfinding movement is still on the list, but have not gotten to it yet. AI improvements are obviously on the list as well and I will start addressing them as soon as possible. The next update is coming soon and will have native iPad support and swipe support (in deck editor, card shop, forge, etc) which turned out not to be too difficult to add and some other bug fixes.
I've played around with creatures that generate other color aeons while planning a future expansion. Making multi-color play easier to pull off will be a consideration.
I'm loving this game and have played it quite a bit, finishing the first three difficulty levels. Extreme is just stupid, though. It is quite impossible to get anywhere playing it legitimately. The difficulty just ramps up too fast. The Rat King is nearly impossible to kill as are the beginning creatures of the Troll Cave. You don't have any resources to buy anything at that point and are constantly losing anything that you do have in your deck. I've been able to cheese my way through it, though, by resetting the app whenever I'm about to lose and therefore having no consequences for a loss. This just feels wrong, though. I know that it's the ultimate difficulty level, but it still shouldn't be impossible to progress, but with the current creatures' levels, it is.
Glad you are enjoying the game. After this next update I will take a look at difficulties and AI in general and hopefully make a bunch of improvements.
Hello! Based on my experiences, with regard to balance I suggest: Make stat improvement more expensive. Make it require more experience points to go up in level. Ideally the AI gets so good I want cheaper stats and more level-ups. But, for now, I think the changes above would go some way toward making the later-game tilt less in the player's favor.
@Tarquelne Thanks for the feedback! I am submitting an update for review tonight, after which I'll be able start focusing on AI improvements. I'll keep your comments in mind regarding leveling up and the later game as well.
Just wanted to drop by and say that I've been having tremendous fun with the game. I ended up accepting that I should drop my multi-colored deck and focus on a single color, and it's been working somewhat better so far. I do wish there were more cards to be gained from duels, but maybe as I progress more will become available. One thing I would comment on, and it's just psychological, but winning a battle and getting single- or double-digit gold sometimes feels low. I would suggest adding an extra zero to every single price/gold value in the game. It would keep the same balance, but the rewards would "feel" greater. That's one of the main reasons why old arcade games scores were mostly multiples of 10 or 100 - it was to give that sense of "wow, this was big" even though it was just a small feat Once again, take this with a grain of salt. It might be related to the difficulty level I'm playing on, and/or it might grow in the future as I make more progress, so feel free to disregard if you feel it's not appropriate Looking forward to the iPad update so I can properly recommend this to a couple of my friends who only have iPads. Best!
Glad to hear you are still enjoying the game and thanks for the comments. I'll give the gold inflation idea some thought for a future update; obviously easy enough to implement. I will also be looking at ways to make multi-color decks easier to create in the future; I've got a few ideas on that front. Lost Portal CCG 1.0.2 has been approved and is now "Ready for Sale", so it should be showing up in the App Store soon. This version includes: - Universal version - native support for iPad in portrait mode - Swipe left/right support while viewing large versions of cards in deck editor, forge, card shop and duel (hand) - Gold losses reduced slightly for easy/normal difficulty levels - Bug fixes and other minor enhancements
