Announcing an upcoming God rank tournament, and an in-depth discussion regarding Pandora.
God Rank tournament
As we mentioned previously in our post announcing ladder seasons, we have some special plans in store for those who make it to the highest God ranks in Faeria. The real fruits of our labor in this regard will be revealed next week. Season Two and onward will be affected by those plans.
However, since we wanted to make sure the current highest Gods from Season One are not left unrewarded, will be hosting a $300 tournament for the Top 8 Gods from this Season!
As a reminder, ladder seasons reset on the first Monday of each month. That means Season Two will start on Monday, June 6th - a little over a week from now. Secure your slot in the Top 8 to earn a spot in this clash of titans!
Pandora
As mentioned in today's patch notes, we have been listening to the heavy amount of feedback following Pandora's release.
Pandora's rewards
Firstly, we need to talk about why the improved reward system didn't make it into the game this week. What we really need for Pandora is a long-term, sustainable reward system that encourages continued play as much as possible while rewarding you for your efforts in ways that are far more special than flat gold amounts. One way we plan on doing this is by adding the chance to win special, cosmetic "Mythic" versions of the cards.
There's a sneak peak at what these will look like. While we have the assets ready for this, we need to do some further development on the reward structure for Pandora to make sure it makes sense and is healthy for the game in the long run. We apologize for the delay.
Pandora's design goals
Now let's talk about what Pandora is meant to achieve.
The design goals behind Pandora are quite simple:
- Rich gameplay in a highly varied drafting environment
- A fresh experience: both in the visual and gameplay sense
- Experience the maximum amount of excitement possible from playing Faeria
Let's talk about the first point. How do you actually approach variety in a limited environment? We didn't want to design a drafting game where a card's general "value" primarily dictates the cards chosen. A drafting environment that is all about drafting value can feel nice because it makes the structure of the card base readable, which creates a sense of comfort for the players. On the other hand, drafting in such an environment gets repetitive very fast and doesn't significantly challenge a player's deck building skills. Drafting should challenge the player's ability to maximize synergies between cards. The goal was to create a sufficient variety of synergies in the card base in order to set the right balance between value-drafting and synergy-drafting.
Now, on to the second and third points. These design challenges were handled with a somewhat non-classic approach. Initially, there was absolutely no plan to make Pandora's core gameplay any different from the constructed experience. We knew that option was viable, and would be in fact the easiest way to implement the gameplay model. Pandora has been in development for two years - not continuous development of course, but it's been a discussion and design topic at Abrakam for at least that long. We've played a ton of Pandora. It's only recently that we came to the conclusion that Faeria simply doesn't work properly in limited. The general gameplay was way too "controlly," and as a result - games lasted over 25 minutes consistently. It's not surprising after all: the Faeria Wells act as magnets, offering an infinite potential of resource advantage. Combine this with an environment where decks tend to lack focus and you get a game mode where all you want to do is to draft the creatures that are best at collecting Faeria, stalling the game until you've stockpiled enough value to mathematically be the winner. To be honest: That gameplay is simply miserable, and we refused to admit it for a long time. The problem in a limited environment is that aggressive decks are inherently weaker when you can't fine-tune your decklist to its maximum potential. We've intentionally balanced aggro decks to be "OKAY" in constructed, or in other words - just viable enough. You can imagine how much harder it is to make decks like that work in a limited format when you cannot automatically select 3 Khalim's Follower's, 3 Khalim's Prayer's, etc...
Therefore, we had reached a dead end. We had to think out of the box, no pun intended. Simply put: We found that there was a brighter future for Pandora if we accepted to change the core rules of Faeria itself. We iterated and tested several game systems with the assistance of our ever-helpful Vanguard testers, and that's how we ended up with Faeria Wells depleting and a doubled economy.
The last remaining Pandora features to explain are the "Artifacts of Pandora". These were necessary to fulfill the third design goal: maximize the excitement of playing Faeria.
Why do you keep playing a game? Why do you keep watching someone playing a game, or even, what makes you want to see the next episode of a television series? Conversely, when an outcome is already certain, where's the point to continue playing or watching? Our lust to clear up uncertainties is inexplicable, yet it's a strong psychological trait we all share. It is in fact the meat and bones of a card game: the fun of drawing a card each turn is purely about clearing up an uncertainty. That uncertainty will offer you a new solution and will challenge your opponent in an unexpected way. Pandora's artifacts were created with this in mind. They help us keep players interested in the game, in fact - they let us tap into the fundamentals of card game psychology even more thoroughly than normal. Additionally, supported by our recent statistics after releasing the game mode, the win rates in Pandora and Constructed tend to coincide. It confirms for us that we haven't broken the skill barrier in Faeria. Luck doesn't decide most of the outcomes because Pandora is about adapting to cards you get to draft from and the constant changes brought by the artifacts during a game.
That said, it's important to know that we're still in a observational stage for this game mode. We analyze as much data and feedback as possible regarding Pandora. There might be further adjustments to the system, changes in artifacts, etc. The good news is that it's much easier to tweak a limited mode than a constructed one - because the player's don't own the cards. ;)
Thank you for reading this far, and please continue to know that we value your support and feedback highly. Even if we can't respond to each person, our ears are wide open, especially when listening to anything regarding this important game mode we have invested a lot of love and care into.
Weekly Top 30
-The Faeria Team