Mage Wars > Mages

flipping the channeling paradigm

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DaveW:
I believe, as has been pointed out in a number of other threads, that it is more player ability that will determine a winner, rather than the "tier" of the mage used. For example, I know my usual opponent has often thought of a dozen things during our games that never occurred to me, knows how to use spells better, knows how to build better books... such that if I win, usually it is either that I luck into pulling the right spell at the right time, or that he is playing a non-competitive build against the best that I can create.

What you would need to do would be to play the same person(s) with all of the mages without messing with channeling, and then playing all of those same person(s) with the same mages against the same mages with changes in channeling... and then a number of times each to get rid of statistical deviation... it would potentially take years to test these changes.

zot:
challenge accepted!   :D

Enti:

--- Quote from: DaveW on October 06, 2019, 06:15:25 PM ---I believe, as has been pointed out in a number of other threads, that it is more player ability that will determine a winner, rather than the "tier" of the mage used.
--- End quote ---

I think nobody who has played more than a couple of MW games will disagree with that statement. Especially no one who is still active in this forum. Skill is the most important factor but you cannot use it as an argument for not balancing the mages properly. And they are _not_ balanced right now. Not at all.



--- Quote from: Arkdeniz on October 05, 2019, 07:09:36 PM ---All up I would rate action generation as more important than mana generation. If I can do 4 actions on my turn and you can do 2, then in more games than not I will beat you.

--- End quote ---


I'm afraid that is a too simplistic approach since 4 spawnpoints do not benefit you if you don't have the mana to properly use them. Proving that action-advantage of its own isn't worth all that much. And you can expect that there are books that have a 100% winchance if you start a match with the Siren by casting 4 spawnpoints with your first 4-6 actions :D


Knabb's suggestion on the other hand seems quite... carefully thought through imho.
He notes that changing mages themselves should probably be the ultima ratio and I agree. Necro certainly is very strong, but as he said, it mainly is because of the brute (+ graveyard). If we'd nerf the brute it would automatically and directly weaken the necro as well because the "zombie-necro" is far stronger than every other necro.




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Before we change anything we should ask ourselves: What is our goal?

Should it not be that in a perfectly balanced game you can play every single mage in a tournament? And even better, shouldn't the balancing be that good, that you can even play those mages in a different way?!
For example if I see a necromancer high up in a tournament, I know exactly what is waiting for me.
I know, many games who have a much higher budget as MW does do not even achieve my second standard because it's so hard to pull of.
Take Magic for example, you can play (constructed and limited) at the top with every color. But often once you see the color, you know more or less what his deck is about and which cards he has in his deck.


How to achieve this 'first balance level' is relatively easy I dare to say. (The one that every mage is playable in a competitive environment)
As long as we have a clear powerlevel difference we can easily adjust the manacost. Either make keycards the current top builds use more expensive or make keycards weaker decks use cheaper. It's not complicated, just a lot of work...  because messing with the card-abilities, general concepts or how the cards interact is far more complex and not needed at that point.

zot:
and this is why I proposed a more simple approach at initial balance with the flip of the channeling for the top mages and raising the lowest mages up. just to see if that was enough to get some data. sure will take a while. I also agree with davew where the wizard having less channeling is not thematic. but just for testing is all I suggested.

Knabbmaster:
I know it is silly but I just wanted to point out that PERFECT balance means that any legal combination of cards would be equally likely to win.

Now I dont think that the meta is in that bad of a spot if you only consider mages. Like we have 3 at the very top and at least 5 that are playable in a competetive setting. Compared to color combinations in magic or classes in hearthstone this seems normal. I don't want all mages to be top tier, it is fun trying to win with terrrible mages when I'm in the right mood. Though you could argue that a game with fewer changes requier an even better meta.

The two problems IMO are:
 
Certain tools not beign viable or too important. Reffering to movement incantations and incorporeal creatures. This is because of pillar which does not really support any mage or gameplan in general but still makes other cards better/worse.

Mid-game stratergies dominating (what I consider mid-game is basically creature spawnpoints + extra eco). This IS bad because even though you can swap the flavour (school) of you cards you basically do the same thing in each game.

I feel like the bigger problems are due too specific cards and not the mages who are almost fine IMO.

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