A little bit about what we've been working on, and some clarification on our mulligan system. Can you guess which card is getting the new art below?
Hidden fixes
We did a small game server update this week to fix a few bugs. It required no client update and did not warrant any server restarts. It was the spooky ghost patch that you never knew existed. The following issues were corrected:
- Fixed an issue where Rapala's 3rd Epic quest actions could be bugged for the first action of every turn
- Fixed a bug that sometimes could cause the AI to loop forever while calculating a reply
What's to come
One of the most common questions we get is: "What's coming next?"
As mentioned in our Roadmap post in late July, we have a lot of work ahead of us before we're ready to exit Early Access.
We generally try and avoid revealing too much about our tasty new features until they're well out of the oven and ready to share with everyone. It makes our big patches more exciting and keeps development fluid. It's not great to announce "Krog is getting a new T-shirt," only to find out a week later that maybe giving Krog that new T-shirt isn't such a great idea, or that maybe he should wear a sweater instead. In such a case, we have to be the bearer of bad news and let everyone know that Krog won't be getting that T-shirt so many players already fell in love with, after all.
Rest assured that we, as always, have a lot of features coming down the pipe - many of which were raised in priority, or added high on the "to-do" list thanks to community feedback. What you share with us really can change our direction significantly at times. Keep it up!
Mulligan numbers
"Why do I so often redraw the same card during a Mulligan?"
It's a common question we're asked. So common, in fact, that we ran some tests to be sure there weren't any problems with the mulligan system. So far, we've found it to be working 100% as expected - and suspect this may mostly be somewhat of a perception issue, negativity bias, or even a misunderstanding of how our mulligan system works.
In Faeria, as in many "real world" card games, when you select a card to be mulliganed, you shuffle it back into your deck before you redraw another card. This means it is completely possible to redraw that same card, or even another like it from your deck. The lack of an animation showing you this may lead to some confusion here. Let's go into some numbers that may be helpful.
⚠️WARNING: DANGEROUS MATHS AHEAD.⚠️
Let's say you mulligan all three cards you're presented with, and your deck consists of 30 unique cards. The odds you see at least one of those cards again after redrawing are about 28%. In other words, a little less than a third of the time you're going to see the same card again.
Now let's say your deck has 3 of each card, or 10 unique cards in the entire deck. If you mulligan all 3 of your cards, there is a 67% chance you're going to see at least one of those cards return to your hand.
If you have a deck with 3 of each card, keep two cards, and mulligan only one, the odds to redraw that card or one of the same type are about 10.7%.
Why not make it so the card you mulligan isn't shuffled back into the deck?
This would solve a lot of the negative feelings associated with this specific problem, but otherwise significantly impact the balance of the game as a whole and the pool of decks that are generally reliable to construct. Suddenly, you'd be much more able to tailor your starting hand and have that "perfect rush start" or "perfect combo" most of the time, or at least more of the time. This is the same reason we were hesitant to implement the new mulligan system as-is. (Remember, not so long ago in Faeria, mulligans were all or nothing.) It's also part of the same reason players start with only 3 cards and not 4, though that also has to do with simplifying the amount of starting options a player is presented with. We're talking about the fundamental mechanics of Faeria here - the subtle things ticking under the hood that keep everything in delicate balance. Change such load-bearing variables and the consequences are not small.
Anyway, if you still think you're seeing odd Mulligan behavior, please continue to let us know - but try and keep the numbers above in mind. If things still seem way out of whack to you, we need to know!
Monthly Cup and ESL
It's time for Monthly Cup qualifiers again. Watch them streamed live this weekend on https://www.twitch.tv/itscappuccino, the current #1 Ranked God!
Note that our esports website has been loading a little slowly lately. It's a known issue that we're working on. Thank you for your patience.
This Sunday is also the last ESL Go4Faeria Cup for September. Register and play to earn your points and qualify for the $400 finals! You can find current point standings here.
- Sign up for Sunday's ESL cup
By the way, you may have noticed some familiar faces strewn throughout this news post. They're part of our new set of BetterTTV emotes that are on their way, which are tied to our Discord channel. If you want to use them in Twitch chat, you'll need to install the BTTV browser extension.
Have a fantastic weekend.
-Gary (@Atmaz)