Posted August 09, 2022
Hi there!
TL:DR incoming, apologies in advance! :)
Let me preface this with the fact I played a lot of Thronebreaker, totally skipped GWENT-actual and I am now absolutely loving Rogue Mage. Love the single-player interruption-friendly gameplay and also the RNG mechanics I loved games like Hades and Inscryption and I am loving similar concepts in a GWENT Witcher game.
I personally love the 1-round battles and have absolutely no problem with going away with rounds - I think this change (following in Thronebreaker's Shortened Battles) is very fitting for Rogue Mage's gameplay loop. Love the concept of Key Cards, treasures, map exploration - all of it basically - and I would love to see the game get some love and support. Here are some observations I'd decided to share:
1. Introduce Premium (animated) cards - based on my (layman's maybe) assumption it shouldn't be hard to backport them from GWENT-actual? it would be fantastic if once we complete the main story, instead of staring at broken mutagen tubes we were able to gain mutagens the same way on successful runs and then use the mutagen (or 3 even, or based on difficulty) to upgrade a card of our choice to premium (at least the ones that are the existing in GWENT-actual). I guess there are more than 300 cards in the game currently, having this as a small prize would be great, I think, and really give us endgame activities to strive for.
2. Think about allowing more user-determined steps in the RNG process - for example, allowing us to select next to the current default RNG generation a predefined template when creating the world like:
- "X amount of steps we have to take to the boss" essentially giving the player the ability to select if they want to play a shorter or a longer game;
- "X amount of elite battles" that can be obtained on a path, perhaps increasing difficulty of battles after each elite battle. Player wants to have the ultimate 5 evolved Key Card? We got you covered. Player wants to struggle without even one elite battle? We got you covered.
3. Imagine extending the current Curses - I am personally not a fan of disadvantaging myself (like reducing play area to hold less cards, adding cooldowns, etc.) - I am by no means campaigning for removal of these, just to have a broader selection, so players can actually chose what they like. For example, stuff like "All units are banished when they enter the graveyard", "every time a unit is played, boost all units on the battlefield by 1-2-3-X", "every time a unit is destroyed, damage all units on the battlefield by 1-2-3-X"...
4. Giving the player an option to choose their own deck (similarly to the way we choose spells) - being a single-player game, I really want to try some specific combinations, but am currently limited to Chaos deck RNG. Surely, such change shouldn't be too hard to implement? In any case, it seems that only 3 decks (excluding the Chaos one) seems to be doing a disservice to Siege, Monster, etc. decks from GWENT-actual.
5. This one perhaps might be more difficult to achieve, but imagine a pop-up preview to calculate and show me the effects of my actions - for example, a card that does "1 dmg + 1 dmg per 2 HP enemy has", when I point to the target, a little pop-up will show me how much damage exactly I will make on that target. If I switch to another target that has different HP, pop-up would recalculate based on target. This seems like a small thing, but showing the player the result and not requiring them to calculate this would improve gameplay by a lot in my view.
6. Introduce a "Hold SHIFT + Click" or similar feature to apply X amounts of single-charge boost or damage to a target. For example, evolved Visogota and similar cards with a ton of charges that apply boost/vitality/dmg requires a lot of clicking and losing a lot of time in animations, also sometimes accidentally triggering the order ability of the target card, because you overclicked and ran out of charges eventually.
7. I love the concept of Key Cards - in my view, there are a lot of non-Key Cards that due to their synergies can become very Over-Powered very quickly, but at the same time can be balanced very neatly if they were made key cards and their effects split up a bit.
For example, the "Ethereal" card is infinitely stronger than similar "Kikimore Warrior" cards simply because you can boost them and they make a copy of the boosted card (and not spawn a standard 5-power Kikimore Warrior every time).
Imagine an "Ethereal" with no evolves spawning a base copy; First evolve - say - lets you Play it (so you can chose where to put it, similar to Kikimore Warrior), on Second Evolve - gain zeal; Third Evolve - Spawn/Play a copy of your card on the board (preserving boost and all statuses, including poison, bleed, etc.); Fourth Evolve - same as 3rd, but without copying statuses. Hiding OP effects of imbalanced cards behind Evolve is an awesome way to both balance them and give the player the ability to decide what they want to play).
You can even go beyond (maybe for another installment of the series - I hope, I hope!) and re-design (all) other cards this way and for example, instead of gaining/removing a card from standard battles, add the option to evolve a card of our choice. I understand this is more of core redesign, but still I think it would be great if players are given the choice which cards to play with and which cards to improve.
There are dozens upon dozens of things I can think about how to make this game truly something, alas looking at the forum (apologies if not the right place to post this), not many people seem to be as amazed and happy with Rogue Mage as I am, but I still thank anyone who read this (not too disjointed wall of text, I hope).
Please do not abandon this game, there is still room for such small hidden gems of a single-player experiences - it really would be a shame.
Take care and all the best!
TL:DR incoming, apologies in advance! :)
Let me preface this with the fact I played a lot of Thronebreaker, totally skipped GWENT-actual and I am now absolutely loving Rogue Mage. Love the single-player interruption-friendly gameplay and also the RNG mechanics I loved games like Hades and Inscryption and I am loving similar concepts in a GWENT Witcher game.
I personally love the 1-round battles and have absolutely no problem with going away with rounds - I think this change (following in Thronebreaker's Shortened Battles) is very fitting for Rogue Mage's gameplay loop. Love the concept of Key Cards, treasures, map exploration - all of it basically - and I would love to see the game get some love and support. Here are some observations I'd decided to share:
1. Introduce Premium (animated) cards - based on my (layman's maybe) assumption it shouldn't be hard to backport them from GWENT-actual? it would be fantastic if once we complete the main story, instead of staring at broken mutagen tubes we were able to gain mutagens the same way on successful runs and then use the mutagen (or 3 even, or based on difficulty) to upgrade a card of our choice to premium (at least the ones that are the existing in GWENT-actual). I guess there are more than 300 cards in the game currently, having this as a small prize would be great, I think, and really give us endgame activities to strive for.
2. Think about allowing more user-determined steps in the RNG process - for example, allowing us to select next to the current default RNG generation a predefined template when creating the world like:
- "X amount of steps we have to take to the boss" essentially giving the player the ability to select if they want to play a shorter or a longer game;
- "X amount of elite battles" that can be obtained on a path, perhaps increasing difficulty of battles after each elite battle. Player wants to have the ultimate 5 evolved Key Card? We got you covered. Player wants to struggle without even one elite battle? We got you covered.
3. Imagine extending the current Curses - I am personally not a fan of disadvantaging myself (like reducing play area to hold less cards, adding cooldowns, etc.) - I am by no means campaigning for removal of these, just to have a broader selection, so players can actually chose what they like. For example, stuff like "All units are banished when they enter the graveyard", "every time a unit is played, boost all units on the battlefield by 1-2-3-X", "every time a unit is destroyed, damage all units on the battlefield by 1-2-3-X"...
4. Giving the player an option to choose their own deck (similarly to the way we choose spells) - being a single-player game, I really want to try some specific combinations, but am currently limited to Chaos deck RNG. Surely, such change shouldn't be too hard to implement? In any case, it seems that only 3 decks (excluding the Chaos one) seems to be doing a disservice to Siege, Monster, etc. decks from GWENT-actual.
5. This one perhaps might be more difficult to achieve, but imagine a pop-up preview to calculate and show me the effects of my actions - for example, a card that does "1 dmg + 1 dmg per 2 HP enemy has", when I point to the target, a little pop-up will show me how much damage exactly I will make on that target. If I switch to another target that has different HP, pop-up would recalculate based on target. This seems like a small thing, but showing the player the result and not requiring them to calculate this would improve gameplay by a lot in my view.
6. Introduce a "Hold SHIFT + Click" or similar feature to apply X amounts of single-charge boost or damage to a target. For example, evolved Visogota and similar cards with a ton of charges that apply boost/vitality/dmg requires a lot of clicking and losing a lot of time in animations, also sometimes accidentally triggering the order ability of the target card, because you overclicked and ran out of charges eventually.
7. I love the concept of Key Cards - in my view, there are a lot of non-Key Cards that due to their synergies can become very Over-Powered very quickly, but at the same time can be balanced very neatly if they were made key cards and their effects split up a bit.
For example, the "Ethereal" card is infinitely stronger than similar "Kikimore Warrior" cards simply because you can boost them and they make a copy of the boosted card (and not spawn a standard 5-power Kikimore Warrior every time).
Imagine an "Ethereal" with no evolves spawning a base copy; First evolve - say - lets you Play it (so you can chose where to put it, similar to Kikimore Warrior), on Second Evolve - gain zeal; Third Evolve - Spawn/Play a copy of your card on the board (preserving boost and all statuses, including poison, bleed, etc.); Fourth Evolve - same as 3rd, but without copying statuses. Hiding OP effects of imbalanced cards behind Evolve is an awesome way to both balance them and give the player the ability to decide what they want to play).
You can even go beyond (maybe for another installment of the series - I hope, I hope!) and re-design (all) other cards this way and for example, instead of gaining/removing a card from standard battles, add the option to evolve a card of our choice. I understand this is more of core redesign, but still I think it would be great if players are given the choice which cards to play with and which cards to improve.
There are dozens upon dozens of things I can think about how to make this game truly something, alas looking at the forum (apologies if not the right place to post this), not many people seem to be as amazed and happy with Rogue Mage as I am, but I still thank anyone who read this (not too disjointed wall of text, I hope).
Please do not abandon this game, there is still room for such small hidden gems of a single-player experiences - it really would be a shame.
Take care and all the best!
