Altered TCG New Update - November 11th 2024
We've just passed the two month mark since the official launch of Altered, and we at Equinox have been overwhelmed with the way the community has embraced the game. Altered players from all backgrounds, both seasoned TCG veterans and new to TCG players alike, have been exploring the Tumult in many different ways–relentlessy building decks, trading cards, organizing grassroots Altered tournaments, and of course, searching for that perfect Unique card.
Within this time frame, we've been listening to the discussions about gameplay experience in as many different communities as we can. As a result of these discussions, along with our own analysis, we are making an adjustment we feel will have a positive impact on the Altered experience of many.
Robin Hood’s ability
Changes
Common Robin Hood
Old: ~~Characters your opponents play cost {1} more~~
New: Characters your opponents play can't cost less than {2}. (If they would cost less, they cost {2} instead.)
Rare Robin Hood
Old: ~~Cards your opponents play cost {1} more~~
New: Cards your opponents play can't cost less than {2}. (If they would cost less, they cost {2} instead.)
Unique cards that used to have Robin Hood’s ability now has the new corresponding ability instead. Unique cards will only use the short version of the text.
Characters your opponent plays can't cost less than {2}.
Cards your opponent plays can't cost less than {2}.
Every unique card that used to have twice Robin Hood’s ability (Double Tax Robins) has its text replaced twice.
This change only affects that specific section of the card’s abilities. For example, a unique card with the ability ‘If you control a token: Cards your opponents play cost {1} more.’ becomes ‘If you control a token: Cards your opponent plays can't cost less than {2}.’
Effective date
This new ruling will be effective starting Friday, November 15th.
Changes will be available on the website and in your collections on Thursday, November 14th. The patch will be deployed in the afternoon but it might take 24 hours before everything is completed, in all supported languages. On Board Game Arena, changes will be effective on Thursday 14 as well along the same timeline.
Can I still play with the pre-erratum of my card in tournaments?
Since Print-on-Demand as a service is not available yet, there is currently no way to play in paper with the post-erratum version of the cards impacted by this decision. For this reason, we are allowing players to play with the pre-erratum version of their cards for now. If they do, when they play the card, they will be required to disclose any change to the card to their opponents and allow them to access the information by scanning the card.
Highlighting the issue
To better explain how we arrived at this erratum, we invited the Game Design team to share their approach of the matter and provide an overview of the details that led to this decision.
“Robin Hood is Altered’s most controversial card so far. We’ve had a lot of feedback from the community regarding the gameplay experience of playing against Robin Hood that led us to make this decision.
Robin Hood was intended as a thematic design that would “tax the rich” by making life harder for people that wanted to play a lot of cards in the same day. In practice, however, even players with average-cost or expensive cards get punished by Robin Hood.
Robin Hood had a tumultuous development, and is one of the cards that changed the most during work on Beyond the Gates. When the tax ability was added to the card file, the card originally costed 5 mana. Testing this version led us to believe that the card was quite weak and had almost no chance of seeing play. We did receive feedback that the card could be frustrating in some situations, but as the card was weak and it had already changed so much, we decided not to overhaul it again.A lot of balance changes happen during the last weeks of a set’s design, and a lot of card costs and statistics are fine-tuned. Critically, amongst many other changes that have had a positive impact on the game, we decided to reduce Robin Hood’s cost, in a bid to save the card from being unplayable.
We’ve learned a lot from everything that has happened surrounding this card, particularly surrounding last minute balancing changes. We’ve since worked hard to implement internal systems to prevent us from repeating these mistakes.
Playing against Robin Hood is frustrating, as it leaves you with no good decisions, depending on if you play around it or not. It is also hard to interact with, as it taxes removals that would get rid of it, which allows him to stay in play for up to 4 days with Waru’s ability to put it asleep. Additional copies of Robin Hood hitting the board often means the opponent can only play one card a turn, leading to uninteresting gameplay and a setup that is very hard to recover from. Furthermore, some unique Robin Hoods with the double tax ability make this even easier to set up, further worsening the situation.
When creating Altered, we aspired to create a TCG where each player would always be able to meaningfully interact with the game. However far behind a player may fall in terms of expeditions, we still wanted them to be able to develop their gameplan, and achieve whatever their deck and their hero is trying to do.
All in all, we decided that the ability to prevent the opponent from playing the game is against the spirit of Altered.
We decided that this announcement was absolutely necessary to ensure that players are having fun when playing Altered in the Beyond the Gates metagame. We are aware that this will have an effect on the power of Waru decks and we will keep monitoring the bureaucrat strategy and the impact of this change on the format.”
How we came up with this erratum
“We explored a wide range of solutions to the issues created by the Robin Hood line of text. Here are some of the options that we considered:
Banning rare Robin exclusively: most decks are filled with Characters, so Common Robin would just take its spot and lead to the same outcome we had before. While it would be slightly worse against spell-based decks, it would still remain frustrating to play against.
Banning rare and common Robin: players would turn to unique Robins or Uniques with Robin’s effect, most likely greatly increasing their price while being equally frustrating to play against.
Banning every instance of a card featuring the line of text of Robin (common, rare, unique Robins + every Unique that has a Robin line of text): this would hit the widest range of cards of all the options we considered, including some that weren’t contributing to the issue.
Banning or errating Waru: this would still leave the root of the issue untouched, with Robin Hood strategies still able to emerge in Gulrang or Sigismar. Those would probably be less powerful, but equally frustrating to play against, which is the issue we’re trying to solve.
Removing the bureaucrat subtype from Robin Hood: this doesn’t solve the issue for the unique bureaucrats with the Robin Hood ability, and changing the bureaucrat type for each of those uniques isn’t a viable solution.
The option of doing an erratum avoids all of the pitfalls of the aforementioned options. We intend to restore Robin Hood’s initial identity of taxing players that play a lot of cheap cards. We expect it to be a good card against Treyst, Afanas or Sigismar decks with low curves, while being easier to play around for other decks. This also ensures that the Uniques with this ability remain relevant and interesting.
We acknowledge that it can be a disheartening decision for Robin enjoyers out there and people who were invested in building the best Waru decks they could, but we believe that player enjoyment and competitive integrity is the most healthy priority for the game.”
Players compensation
Errata or ban of cards generally have a market impact on their value. Ensuring we put other considerations on top of this aspect (Fun, Game balance etc.) does not mean we forget about those that do own the cards that are impacted by a change and we will always do our best to mitigate this effect in the future (acting quick when issues arise, communicating, errata instead of bans when possible etc.).
The very fact that we can decide to erratum a card instead of having to ban it opens doors for opportunities. And one of them is “print on demand”. While we can not share more details with you at this point, we will as soon as possible. (Note that this would possibly “not” be synchronized with the release of the print on demand service, but come at a later stage.)
Altered’s balancing
"Our goal with Altered is to offer a unique deck-building experience and to reward players who find creative solutions to challenging puzzles. With this change, we want to take the occasion to give you more insights into the early stages of our approach to game balancing and how we envision it."
Fun first
"In Game Design, our primary goal when creating a card is to bring enjoyment to players. However, the concept of enjoyment—or "fun"—is broad and subjective, especially in a collectible card game where the player experience unfolds across multiple layers. There’s the immediate enjoyment of playing the card, but also the excitement it generates simply by reading its effects, as with cards like Sakarabru or Hydracanea. Then there's the fun of crafting a deck around a card—many players likely remember the thrill of building strategies with The Foundry, Axiom Bastion, or Lyra Festival. And finally, there’s the satisfaction of winning, particularly in competitive play."
Metagame Health
“While we won’t disclose specific numbers, our goal is to ensure diversity in archetypes and factions at all levels of play, from weekly Expeditions to the World Championships. We recognize that many players feel a strong connection to a particular faction, so if any faction consistently underperforms, we will investigate and seek solutions. Additionally, we aim to have a variety of deck types represented across all factions.”
Reducing Splash Damage
“With its rarity system, Altered creates strong connections between cards. Not only are cards grouped within families, but they are also linked through the generation system of unique cards. In Altered, a card’s ability can be shared across multiple other card families (e.g., Robin’s effect appearing on non-Robin cards). As covered earlier within the options we considered for this change, this means that banning or modifying a card can cause ripple effects that extend far beyond the original card, introducing new layers of potential balancing challenges we want to avoid whenever possible.”
More data, more tests
“Game balancing is a challenging task. While we do our best to prevent any issues before a set goes into production, we also need to monitor each set’s impact both during its time on sale and in the future, as new sets start interacting with older ones. The more sets there are, the harder this task becomes.
With the official release of the game, we now have access to a LOT more data: your numerous and passionate feedback, tournament results, and last but not least, data from Board Game Arena. The combination of all this information, along with the development and improvement of our internal tools and the growing experience of our playtesting team, shall help us identify and plan future balancing decisions with increasing accuracy.”
Slow and steady wins the race
"When a problem seems to arise, players often feel it’s crucial to address it as quickly as possible especially when they believe they know the ideal solution. We, too, share this impatience (we’re also players, after all).
However, to address things properly, it’s essential to follow a few key steps.
First, we need to determine whether it’s a rules issue or a balancing issue.
Then, confirm the problem—this usually involves increasing the number of test games and analyzing the available data.
If it’s a balancing issue, it’s possible that players simply haven’t yet discovered a counter-strategy, though one may exist.
We also need to track community sentiment on the issue. Sometimes, unforeseen situations arise, and the community expresses a preference for keeping a card as-is rather than ‘fixing’ it.
Another factor to consider is the potential impact of a problem in relation to future sets. A card’s impact may be less significant over time as new cards are introduced—or, conversely, it may become stronger.
Finally, we need to explore solutions and test them, which can take several weeks.
On top of this, there’s the technical implementation to consider. Due to the digital nature of our game and its connection to BGA, modifying thousands of cards carries risks for the database, so any change needs to be carefully tested."
Conclusion
We know that many of you are truly committed to the game, invested in the search for great Uniques and innovative deck building. Our motto will always be to encourage you to try solving the pieces of the puzzle and not discourage you from doing so.
Making balance changes is a delicate task. When cards are changed or banned this can be frustrating to players who have spent so much time and effort gathering them while taking no action risks an unhealthy play experience, which could cause even more frustration.
Altered is innovating in many areas in the TCG landscape, and because of this we believe that it's even more important to quickly recognize and act on our mistakes. With this change we hope to inspire fresh momentum in the current Altered meta, giving underplayed Heroes a chance to shine and see you try even more new strategies.
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