News from PaizoCon

[MauGibrin]

From a game design point of view, a Stash would probably be a nice feature in the physical game. But if you analyse the game components, you would run the risk of having too few cards of some types if you allowed each player to keep a few spare cards aside - specially with 6 players (think of a party with 4 divine casters, for example). That could cause trouble when building locations, specially in the first chapters of the game.

 

That's why I think they didn't implement it on the original card game. But with a virtually infinite amount of cards at their disposal, I don't see why they shouldn't feature a stash in the electronic version...

 

Cheers!

 

Mauricio

[Namyra]

To your point about the changes, we should have a blog post coming out next week that goes over some of the features/changes.

 

The roll success chance was something I requested a few months ago. After watching new users play the game (physical and digital) one thing that became apparent was that many people drastically overestimated their chances of success. Hopefully this bit of UI will help new players understand when they need additional help to succeed on a roll.

 

For users that would rather not see the UI, it can be turned off from the options menu.

 

Glad to see the mills turn, if slowly. I suggested this feature pretty much right after the game came out. Cool to see it's finally coming!

 

Will be great for everyone to curse Lem all the more when they realise he just failed a 97.2% roll! ;P

[Fade2gray]

I'm really excited to see the new dice percentages and like the stash idea. I'm not the greatest at guesstimating dice odds (and too lazy to pull out any sort of dice calculator) so that will be a huge help. As someone who only just recently picked up the game, I can also very mush testify to how confusing the Treasure Chest > Vault > Scenario > Hero > Back to Vault concept is at first. There are two layers of game mechanics between seeing card in a treasure chest and getting it into one of your heroes' hands. Not say that's bad, but it isn't intuitive. 

 

Regarding banish-on-use cards, I tried to re-frame my mindset to accept that using banish cards (like potions) is a regular part of the game, but I've found that I tend to just hoard them because they might be more useful later ("you only get to use this once so better make it good!"). I'm not entirely sure the stash will change that behavior, but it might.

[Ethics Gradient]

As someone who only just recently picked up the game, I can also very mush testify to how confusing the Treasure Chest > Vault > Scenario > Hero > Back to Vault concept is at first.

Actually... its even a couple layers even more complex!  Something like:

 

Treasure Chest > Treasure Pool > Scenario Treasure Selections > Scenario Vault > Scenario Heroic/Elite Card Removal > Party Card Removal > Scenario Locations > Hero

 

I have a few posts kicking around the forum describing vault-building mechanics (like this one from earlier today).  The app appears to go through a whole bunch of steps to prep the cards for play for each scenario.

[Fade2gray]

 

As someone who only just recently picked up the game, I can also very mush testify to how confusing the Treasure Chest > Vault > Scenario > Hero > Back to Vault concept is at first.

Actually... its even a couple layers even more complex!  Something like:

 

Treasure Chest > Treasure Pool > Scenario Treasure Selections > Scenario Vault > Scenario Heroic/Elite Card Removal > Party Card Removal > Scenario Locations > Hero

 

I have a few posts kicking around the forum describing vault-building mechanics (like this one from earlier today).  The app appears to go through a whole bunch of steps to prep the cards for play for each scenario.

 

 

Gee-whiz! I've been reading up on the physical card game rules and assumed that the mechanics for building location decks were pretty similar in the video game. I guess that just goes to show just how unintuitive the treasure chest rewards are. Thanks for the info. 

[Ethics Gradient]

Gee-whiz! I've been reading up on the physical card game rules and assumed that the mechanics for building location decks were pretty similar in the video game. I guess that just goes to show just how unintuitive the treasure chest rewards are. Thanks for the info. 

 

The app is actually a pretty close approximation to the tabletop rules.... except that instead of retrieving the box (The Vault) from under your bed, it starts every game by unwrapping each of the dozens of packs of cards and sorting them into all the various decks, and rebuilding each of your characters.

 

The treasure card system is awkward by design (I guess?) to keep the base game from being completely drowned out by Treasure cards.  Even if you have 3000 treasure cards in your vault, no more than maybe 120 or so random cards will be mixed into the base game before a scenario.