|
Post by christian on Mar 4, 2016 6:43:01 GMT
Hi all. Some of us have been struggling to provide feedback in the Mantic official forums due to technical issues so we thought it might be good to post feedback here. This thread should be used to provide constructive feedback on the latest set of playtest rules and content. You can download the latest ruleset here: Mantic Playtest RulesThe best feedback is usually in relation to specific tests you've run, either through battle reports or statistical analysis. If you can site the source of the issue and how you produced it, that helps the rest of us try to reproduce the results and help the game design team assess the issue internally. Neither myself nor this thread is official from Mantic so the better and more concrete feedback we can provide, the more likely Mantic will take it seriously and help us all to produce the best version of the game possible. With that out of the way, what things are finding work well? What could use some refinement? Is there anything that you feel just doesn't work or seems out of balance with the rest of the rules? Remember: actual examples and detailed reasoning as to why something doesn't work will get far more attention than a quick and dismissive gut reaction. Thanks!
|
|
|
Post by christian on Mar 4, 2016 6:54:52 GMT
As an example, here is an issue that I brought up in another thread.
The Browning Safari Rifle currently adds a blue die to your ranged attack. The weapon is the most expensive to date (40 points) and comes with the Deadly Precision, Forceful, and Rifle keywords. As a Rifle, it can allow the user to use the Aim action which is a ranged attack that uses 2 actions instead of one to gain an extra orange die. With Deadly precision, the rifle swaps the orange die for another blue die.
The issue I'm wondering about is should the weapon or any ranged attack weapon, have a blue die? The reason is that the blue die is the only die to not have blanks and rolling at least one blank in a ranged attack means you have to roll a check to see if you ran out of ammo. If you have a native blue die for the weapon, the only way you'll roll a blank is if the survivor has Shoot dice that have blank options. Currently Rick has a blue shoot die but I just realized that Tyreese, Dr Stevens, and even Liam all have "-" for their shoot value. If any of these characters use the Browning Rifle, they will never run out of ammo. If they take 2 actions to fire it, they will also roll 2 blue dice against their target (and still never run out of ammo). Ironically, Liam is a decent choice if backed up with Derek or someone to help mitigate Liam's low threat attribute.
I don't think it is in the intention of the game to ever have guns that never run out of ammo (though I really don't have any insight into what the design intent is) so I would suggest the Safari Rifle change to use 1 or 2 white dice (depending on how powerful they want the gun to be). It should also be obvious that no future gun should ever only have a blue die. Deadly Precision or survivors with blue or "-" Shoot attributes aren't really the issue alone so I think this is a pretty easy fix. As with most things, testing in an actual game would help show if this is really that big of an issue or if the game mitigates the benefit organically.
|
|
|
Post by zombiespider on Mar 4, 2016 11:27:57 GMT
I agree that the Browning Safari Rifle is a little unbalanced with the Blue dice, I just had a quick go using it with 2 White dice and it was far better balanced since I did have it run out of ammo after a few shots. It also puts it into better balance with the Remington 700 which adds 2 Red dice and is reliable for 25 points. As it stands the Browning is just ti powerful for its points when compared to other weapons and if you take Andrea she can make a ranged shooting attack rolling Red & White & 2 Blue, far to powerful for 80 points, plus she can do that every turn and hangat the back of the boars without feear of something getting close if she has a cheap melee character ti support her. Plus she spells certain death for anything she shoots at.
Michonne is a bit of a issue too. Her Follow-Up Attackkshould be limited to once per turn, otherwise she can slaughter everything in quit a large area of the board in smaller games. Iiwould also reduce her to 5 Survival Points to make her 45 points (a nice round number) and balance her out better. Right now she is just to damn tough to kill if she has any sort of defencive equipment like Riot Gear.
In the rules themselves we (or at least I) have seen a lot of people asking about the prone rules and how zombies are taken out when prone. I would have Mark Latham address this and clear up the rules. While I understood them after a couple of read throughs, it should be clear right away.
|
|
|
Post by christian on Mar 4, 2016 14:23:50 GMT
Yeah that Safari is a hard weapon, it's really pricey at 40 points but it's so good with the blue (possible 2 blue) that you'll want to have it. The high cost then forces you into more limited builds. Regular Andrea is going to be pretty great but we haven't even seen Sniper Andrea and she is supposed to be one of the best shots in the game.
Regarding Michonne, her follow up attack is limited to once per turn on the card. It's the first thing written but the rules are too fun so you might have skipped that ;-)
I agree that removing prone figures is buried in the rules and needs to be made very obvious as the survivors in the base set don't have a lot of "!" dice options so new players may think they can never kill walkers. The Bruiser attribute rule really helps though as they get an auto "!" when on the winning melee side so bruisers should be able to take down a walker per round assuming they win.
|
|
|
Post by zombiespider on Mar 4, 2016 15:57:31 GMT
Yeah, I remembered later that it was once per turn, lol. I will be having a go with her at 5 survival point s and 45 points though. Even so, whenever I have given her riot gear she never seems to dip below 2 or 3 survival points even with a couple of shots heading her way each turn.
|
|
|
Post by christian on Mar 4, 2016 16:17:28 GMT
Riot Gear is odd as it only affects melee and for that price (and thematically), I wonder if it should affect ranged attacks as well, even if it is less effective (like grants an extra orange die instead of white against range). Didn't Glenn take a close range shot to the chest from a rifle wearing Riot Gear?
|
|
|
Post by zombiespider on Mar 4, 2016 18:49:42 GMT
Yep, Glenn got shot at close range and survived with only some bruising and some cracked ribs so I am surprised by the ruit gear rules. However, to keep it simple you could just inventer a bullet proof vest for the game and do it that way instead but sayung you take one or the other (since both would be body items). The BPV would be white against ranged and nothing against melee sinve people can always stab where you aren't protected
|
|
|
Post by psykotyk on Mar 6, 2016 4:07:37 GMT
Currently Rick has a blue shoot die but I just realized that Tyreese, Dr Stevens, and even Liam all have "-" for their shoot value. If any of these characters use the Browning Rifle, they will never run out of ammo. I believe that the "-" value means that they are not able to use a gun at all. So those characters cannot even fire a gun if they get one. That is why it makes sense that Tyreese's shoot value is "-" because in the comics he is a horrible shot. I know what you mean about the Rifle being a little powerful, but I think there are only a few characters with a Blue shoot value, and having them equip with a the rifle really makes them quite expensive. So that is definitely where the squad building strategies come in. Lets say you are playing a 150 point game, you could take Andrea, Rick and the Safari Rifle and be almost at 150 points (possibly more, I dont have the cards in front of me as I type). Sure Andrea will never run out of ammo and drop people like flies while Rick controls the threat. But if your opponent decides to run 10 really horrible 10 - 15 point characters, it suddenly becomes a game of 4 actions (really 3 if you use Andrea's second action to aim) against potentially 20 actions. Sure they will all be panicking by round 2, but thats a lot of actions. What i'm saying is the Rifle does balance out due to the cost of actions to use it really effectively. Also it does have an incredibly high point cost. I think the misinterpretation of the "-" value is what was making it seemingly super over powered. Still that Rifle with a Blue shooter is never gonna run out of ammo
|
|
|
Post by christian on Mar 6, 2016 7:00:55 GMT
Actually, the "-" just means they have absolutely no skill in shooting and don't get extra dice, not that they can't do it at all. This was confirmed by Mantic in the KS comments and also pg 13 of the rules under Ranged Attack Rolls alludes to it when it says: (Bold emphasis mine) So the "-" "bad shooters never running out of ammo" problem will definitely need to be addressed if that goes against the design intent (which I have to assume it would).
In regards to a swarm group vs a highly specialized minimum group, I ran a test with 8 survivors at 200 points vs the Governor, Martinez, and Gabe and the group of 8 lost pretty bad since they are the most susceptible to being one-shotted by ranged attacks. Also the really low point guys don't usually have a shoot or melee die so without a weapon, they usually die from walkers really easily. I'm not saying a swarm group can't work, but my first attempt failed miserably. Not being a credible threat to walkers meant that they had to slow play around them and couldn't go on an action run grabbing loot counters. Also, against a gun-rich opposition, 2 gun shots and a walker melee means everyone is either panic rolling on round 2 or people are burning actions trying to Hold Your Nerve. Not impossible but I'm not seeing any super cheap, efficient survivors that you can spam into a competent swarm group.
|
|
|
Post by psykotyk on Mar 6, 2016 20:28:44 GMT
Ahhh OK that makes a lot of sense. Is anyone really going to spend 40 points or whatever it is to put a really nice gun on a character that doesn't have any additional shoot dice just for the guarantee of not running out of ammo? That's why I don't see it being too much of a problem, because they really make you pay for the rifle. You're not going to be killing people in one shot with Tyreese even if you have the Safari Rifle...also most people are going to be running in with Tyreese anyway. But again I totally get what you are saying, it just doesn't seem that unbalanced to me because the practicality of running a character with no additional shoot die and the Safari Rifle isn't really there in my opinion Thanks for the clarification on the rules though!
|
|
|
Post by christian on Mar 6, 2016 23:19:24 GMT
I think it is more for the cheap Liam who now doesn't run out of ammo (or Doc Stevens for 3 more points). They can aim too which will add another blue die to the attack. You're right that a single blue die is likely not worth the 40 extra points but 2 blue dice can max out at 8 damage and run an average of 4.36 per shot, which can kill a few weak survivors if they whiff a defense roll.
I think the high cost won't be as big of a factor because I think tournament games are supposed to be around 200-250 points. At that size of game, a 40 point super gun doesn't hurt like it would at 100 points or something like that. My main issue with the whole weapon is that it actually gets a bonus for using survivors that can't shoot well. Running out of ammo is pretty big in this game and makes all guns a risky investment. I haven't seen a game yet that didn't have all the guns out of ammo before the end. I guess we'll see how it all comes down. It may be perfectly fine. Just odd that you can game the system that way.
|
|
|
Post by psykotyk on Mar 7, 2016 0:12:57 GMT
Yeah for sure. That bugs me as well that someone like Tyreese could be shooting for 8... But I guess if you rationalize that its a sniper rifle then anyone could use it half decently...its still really dumb though. Its hard for me to really have a solid idea of how to guns run in a standard game because I have been playing mostly solo (My friends don't like playing with the paper cut outs and D&D mini's ). I probably have no idea how useful the guns actually are because in solo play, guns are almost counter productive because they bump up your threat quite a bit and threat is the one thing you really are trying to deal with in a solo game. I'm really excited to start playing more competitive games of AOW though.
|
|
|
Post by Troy (Admin) on Mar 7, 2016 13:39:00 GMT
So, I was thinking that in order for a comprehensive list of rule changes and additions, to be complied and submitted, it would have to be organized, to the point, and contain some rational and play testing feedback. I purpose that to get started we should organize this information (as below) and have the wording of these proposed changes short and to the point. Once we flush it all out, we could polish it up into a word or pdf doc and submit it on behalf of the community... what do you guys think?
Existing General Rules & Game Mechanics
Rule
Suggested Alteration
Rational
Play testing Feedback
Event Cards Event
Suggested Alteration
Rational
Play testing Feedback Character Cards Character
Suggested Alteration
Rational
Play testing Feedback Equipment Cards Equipment
Suggested Alteration
Rational
Play testing Feedback Supply Cards
Supply
Suggested Alteration
Rational
Play testing Feedback Suggested New Rules & Game Mechanics
New Rule
Rational
Play testing Feedback
|
|
|
Post by misterc on Mar 7, 2016 14:59:57 GMT
That's a great idea. Mantic have shown themselves to be very open to listening to the fans in the past. No idea how much freedom they have here, given that there is another party involved, but it can't harm to try.
|
|
|
Post by christian on Mar 7, 2016 16:18:49 GMT
That sounds great. I think I can change the topic name of this thread to be focused on the "discussion" side of testing feedback. Troy, do you want to create a stickied thread that is only for the organized/cleaned up feedback? Maybe you could then keep the first post up-to-date on the clean feedback that is submitted?
|
|