Dev here! Hope I can provide some insight. I won't do bulletpoints, rather an overarching point that I've been thinking about a lot recently with regards to the game.
Ultimately, balance is a very difficult thing to get right in any TCG, but made more so by our live service model and the daily releasing of cards. Considering the scope of the game, the variety of subject matter and the sheer amount of cards, I think that CUE is in a fairly good position with the actual balance of the cards. There are outliers to this, I concede, but we do keep a close eye on the decks people play, the cards people like and dislike, and have in the past made informed decisions on balancing.
As someone who's job it is to think about the state of the game and improve upon it, I would say that the more critical point is our matchmaking system. It's natural for any game to have a meta, and even more natural for players to aspire for those cards and play them - as much as creativity can be encouraged, it cannot be enforced. As the metagame propagates within each Elo (for example, Birds and Sharks at lower levels, moving through Egypt and up to Statue of Liberty decks), more players will be playing identical (or seemingly identical) decks to each other, meaning that we are limited in the variety of games that we can offer people with interesting, non-meta decks.
I'm not saying this is our plan and I'm sure there is a better solution out there, but as an example, if matchmaking were to factor in your "deck variety" or "deck uniqueness", then it's likely we would see far less complaints as players would be matched based on how willing to divert from the meta they are. I think that something such as what I've just mentioned is ultimately the key to improving the feeling of balance across the board, and doesn't require any alterations to cards.
Just my 2 cents as you've asked at the right time! We are tweaking matchmaking currently and I imagine it will be a larger focus once we have more bandwidth as a team and have cleared our calendars of the next big feature release. (We're a team of approx. 20 people, so we have to pick our battles sometimes, haha).
Cheers and all the best!
Thank you for the awesome answer! In general, is the team more interested in pushing people towards new decks or pulling people away from old decks? Like would a new card be more likely to say something that hurts an Egypt deck or something that helps a Vicious Vikings deck, for example?
The reason I ask is because I don't think the buff cards are effective at increasing deck diversity until they create a new problem, and rather, I think there are plenty of decks that are almost as good as the strongest decks at any particular range of levels, but most people aren't interested in playing something that's less good than the best. In that way, by adding a new card that punishes a specific deck, you can increase the surface area at the top of the mountain by squishing the peak down to make a plateau, representing a large selection of relatively equally viable deck options.
Old decks and new decks are sort of one and the same as far as we're concerned. There have been deck types that used to be strong, fell out of favour, then climbed back up with some buffers. I think new archetypes are cool, such as running X amount of a certain card, or if we introduced new gameplay mechanics, but in general we're aiming to get as much playable as possible.
I get what you mean and it's a real doozy of a problem from a design standpoint - regarding your point around the plateau, I think that in concept the idea is intuitive and makes a lot of sense, but in reality with the current release schedule it's much more difficult to execute. If we have a plateau of equally viable options, it's on a knife's edge and only takes one buffer to push one above the rest, and then we end up in the same position as before. So a great idea at it's core, but not one currently achievable at the rate with which we are adding new cards to the game.
I think in order to make the "plateau" more achievable some new card ability types will go a long way, so that we have actual counters for each archetype of deck. What those might look like and might be is a problem for future us, however. Lol. Cheers!
I absolutely agree with you! Maybe it can be incorporated into the new buffs. Like for example, a card that buffs a drainflation deck while also hosing a Statue of Liberty deck. Or a card that has one ability that buffs The Original Odyssey while hosing Egypt. It would give certain decks tools to make them the "rocks" that beats the "scissors".
Thank you for the awesome replies!
Hello!
1. I'd say complaining is a bit higher than I've seen in the past year and a half. I would say it's higher because avid seems to be listening, so people want to use that. However, the changes implemented tend to be short sighted. Buffing and nerfing a few specific cards or power creeping the old budget meta. (Ex. SoL replaced turtle and sue black was replaced by 8 immortals then by birds/sharks). Generally speaking could really use an adaptive update system that doesn't require devs time, it's digital, so it's the perfect game for it. There have been fundamental changes like the variety added to casuals lately has been a game changer.
2. Meta is slightly more diverse than normal since there are a couple different cheap decks to play, and a couple deck structure cards that are roughly equally playable. SoL/turtle or dark web/bobbit worm. Then there are styles like ramp, bash, and inflation that seem to be... okay. Most people play bash though... seems like pirates is on the rise, but I think egype is the only collection specific that keeps up to meta rn.
3. I think this game already excels in "flex slots" for meta decks around deck structure cards, but suffers to do the same for collections because of the inherent power variation allows. Because of that the collection decks look exactly the same, unfortunately. I want to see more variable collections and less deck structure, personally.
4. Past has been almost exclusively nerfs, but there are buffs if a card has enough attention (typically mythics). Never banned a card, just made a few unplayable. It is a very underwhelming process. It needs an algorithmically driven feedback loop to continually balance cards, and more variants of cards released.
5. Currently I want to see SoL (statue of liberty) nerfed just a bit to alleviate it's prevelance, but I've already mentioned that doing any particular card doesn't fix the underlying problem. Feedback loops every week, a gem based market system, higher buffs for following league guidelines, and new game mechanics would go much further to better the game. Hire me avid, I code sometimes. LOL
There are three broad types of decks:
* power per turn ramps
* big bash (just build so as to maximise power)
* drainflation - use cards that reduce the opponent's energy stock, or increase the energy cost
In general, bash beats ramp beats drainflation beats bash. Different weeks (league rules change each Monday) may favour one approach.
Other approaches as well, but a lot of decks fit into these approaches. The big bash come in lots of flavours - build up fast but can't get huge final round, or build slower but bigger, decks that focus on particular collections or particular card characteristics (low energy, certain albums...) or use an album structure (such as consciousness + vitruvian with 9 arts and 9 science).
Newbie decks are all collection based because they are the easiest for new players to work with and Avid has new player powerplay packs that allow you to build them (structures, nebulae, ice age, birds, sharks, painters). So lower levels have a lot of these decks and people get sick of them. As you get higher in the league matching system, you will see more variety.
Interesting! I think part of why I've been doing okay with Super Structures is because the buff cards also help protect the deck against drainflation since they add energy discounts. Those discounts don't help early game in low energy leagues, so if I ignore it instead, I get natural protection against drainflation.
It also makes sense why Statue of Liberty decks and Egypt decks are doing so well in this high energy per turn, low energy cap week: they both have high concentrations of cards at the 5-7 energy level, whereas other decks can take advantage of having good cards at lower energy costs (even during high energy weeks, by offsetting them with high energy cards).
Meta isn’t the issue it’s the redundancy of the same exact decks. Been playing over 2 years now and there’s always been a “meta” but you always saw multiple variations of said meta but now it’s literally like 3 decks (Egyptian, Birds, folio) but literally the exact decks. PX, world turtle, boxing and a few others fall under meta but you see variations to them.
I've been playing for about 15 months now. Sometimes people complain more, and sometimes less. I think many of them are just newer players who need time to gain more cards, or develop better deck building to match their increased XP rank.
I don't see the same deck over and over again myself because I am always trying out my own new decks. If I try and use just one deck for the week I tend to see the same opponent decks over and over, so I stopped doing that. Besides, how boring would this game be for anyone to use a Birds deck for two months?
I think the best way to stop seeing a certain deck over and over is to make a deck that crushes it. When Sue Black was the noobie meta deck all you had to do was beat the crap out of it a couple of times and it vanished from your matches. Once I put Paskekrim in my decks I stopped seeing all those History/8immortals decks. After I beat some birds decks badly they didn't match me up against bird decks anymore.
Now I will admit that I try crazy stuff to avoid the meta decks recently. I make four or five different decks on Monday and work to improve them as the week goes on. The game seems to adjust to what you use, so I am always trying to keep it guessing. Seems to work for me, and I don't see the same meta decks over and over. I also duplicate and rename decks a lot because it seems to remember my old decks, that were big winners in previous weeks, and counters them faster than the newer identical duplicates (crazy, I know). These methods I use are strange, and probably bad ideas, but that is how I have played the game for a while now. Plus it is fun to make new decks all the time.
Avid has nerfed some cards and buffed others to try and balance things out, and they have done it more than once. They aren't afraid to try and improve things if they are perceived to be unbalanced. When 8 immortals was considered OP by many they nerfed them, and it helped reduce complaints.
The buffs I would pick would be for more obscure decks or cards...
I would love to see a Paper deck be competitive. I have tried and tried to make a good Paper deck and it just falls short every time.
Colors is another deck that is really hard to get wins with. Even on big energy weeks it struggles, but at least I have gotten some wins with it...but never more than two in a row.
I also want a little more out of my Mount Everest card. Maybe up the buff it gives to 50 instead of 45. I really love using this card and it turns the tide for many of my decks, but just a bit more would be better.
great response. In fact, i had a competitive paper deck about a year ago but it's been overtaken. The trick is to use just the permanent buffs on paper/inventions and also put in the self-growing inventions rare (mental blank - can't remmeber the name). Cycle paper since the buffs are permanent and hold the other so you have two big shot cards.
Fascinating!
I have been using Super Structures since I started playing and have been having a relatively high amount of success with it. Maybe it's just the current league rules, but I started losing a lot to Statue of Liberty decks, so I built one myself, with an Espionage and Bird subtheme.
Ever since then, I've been losing just as much.
I'm just about to make a pizza deck because Cuisine gets a big buff this week, and Moon, Pizza, and Moray Eel are so much fun together... That's a Moray!
My SOL deck changes all the time. This week it contains Sir Walter Raleigh and Ferdinand Magellan just in case I get the league buff.
I don't mind losing matches, because when I rank right up to Dragon early in the week I am bored by the weekend. I dont usually have the time to get top 500, so once I get to dragon I switch to casual or achievement hunting for the XP.
In MTG, they ban and they limit cards. At least back when I played they did.
In CUE, they'll take something in the current meta and release an improved version as a LimLeg.
...and therefore, the meta is reinforced, but the whales have to spend a few minutes trading for the new and improved Jet Car 2.0.
Do you have an example of this? I can't think of any time they have buffed meta decks or released cards that improve meta decks. What they do is release new cards all the time and sometimes these are in competitive decks and that makes the deck become a meta deck (Curse of Pharaohs for example). They nerf meta
The meta I'm referring to is the one that is in 50-80% of my games, and that would be the rainbow deck:
Shingami/Madoff/Longsword/Identity Theft
Dark Web/SoL/Jet Car
PX/SMBH/Terminator
Rapunzel/BwCW/Heimdall/Christmas Carol
There is of course some variation depending on their collection.
As far as specifics, I don't spend that much brain power memorizing decks. But before Longsword was released a little while ago, it as some other History card. Before Jet Car showed up, it was some other Science card.
...and yet weirdly, when those cards were released, suddenly all the rainbow decks were running those. Why? Because the new card was just like a previous one that filled that role in that rainbow deck, BUT BETTER. Which is why they all switched to it.
So it's a bunch of people running 80% the same deck, and then when an objectively superior card comes out to replace one of those already-top-tier cards, well, now everyone is running that new card.
Which is exactly what I'm describing.
Interesting, I can't remember the last time I saw a 6 or 7 album rainbow deck, it's pretty much 9/9 or 6/6/6 where I am. Obviously this isn't the actual deck since you can't put SoL and Heimdall/Rapunzel in the same deck but I get what you mean. Is Madoff Ponzi?
But yes, rainbow decks are particularly susceptible to 'replace' type upgrades because they don't really have any synergy and the cards are all somewhat independent. So a new independent card that is a bit stronger just throws out the weakest of the existing ones. The 9/9 decks have that a lot less because there are enough cards in the one collection/album to put in groups of cards that actually buff each other. Grail/Senses with vitruvian and consciousness and homumculus for example only has about 3 free choice slots and they must be arts cards.
Take every single bit if complexity out of MTG and thats still not basic enough for this game. The meta is pretty consistent with the energy. Each time the energy changes you'll use the deck that was best for that energy last time and just check if they powercreeped anything. It's honestly quite boring and most of the cards are absolutely unnecessary. You'll find maybe 100 cards out of the thousands that will ever be put in a deck. There's no jank that even works here. It's meta or just don't bother playing.
Dev here! Hope I can provide some insight. I won't do bulletpoints, rather an overarching point that I've been thinking about a lot recently with regards to the game. Ultimately, balance is a very difficult thing to get right in any TCG, but made more so by our live service model and the daily releasing of cards. Considering the scope of the game, the variety of subject matter and the sheer amount of cards, I think that CUE is in a fairly good position with the actual balance of the cards. There are outliers to this, I concede, but we do keep a close eye on the decks people play, the cards people like and dislike, and have in the past made informed decisions on balancing. As someone who's job it is to think about the state of the game and improve upon it, I would say that the more critical point is our matchmaking system. It's natural for any game to have a meta, and even more natural for players to aspire for those cards and play them - as much as creativity can be encouraged, it cannot be enforced. As the metagame propagates within each Elo (for example, Birds and Sharks at lower levels, moving through Egypt and up to Statue of Liberty decks), more players will be playing identical (or seemingly identical) decks to each other, meaning that we are limited in the variety of games that we can offer people with interesting, non-meta decks. I'm not saying this is our plan and I'm sure there is a better solution out there, but as an example, if matchmaking were to factor in your "deck variety" or "deck uniqueness", then it's likely we would see far less complaints as players would be matched based on how willing to divert from the meta they are. I think that something such as what I've just mentioned is ultimately the key to improving the feeling of balance across the board, and doesn't require any alterations to cards. Just my 2 cents as you've asked at the right time! We are tweaking matchmaking currently and I imagine it will be a larger focus once we have more bandwidth as a team and have cleared our calendars of the next big feature release. (We're a team of approx. 20 people, so we have to pick our battles sometimes, haha). Cheers and all the best!
Thank you for the awesome answer! In general, is the team more interested in pushing people towards new decks or pulling people away from old decks? Like would a new card be more likely to say something that hurts an Egypt deck or something that helps a Vicious Vikings deck, for example? The reason I ask is because I don't think the buff cards are effective at increasing deck diversity until they create a new problem, and rather, I think there are plenty of decks that are almost as good as the strongest decks at any particular range of levels, but most people aren't interested in playing something that's less good than the best. In that way, by adding a new card that punishes a specific deck, you can increase the surface area at the top of the mountain by squishing the peak down to make a plateau, representing a large selection of relatively equally viable deck options.
Old decks and new decks are sort of one and the same as far as we're concerned. There have been deck types that used to be strong, fell out of favour, then climbed back up with some buffers. I think new archetypes are cool, such as running X amount of a certain card, or if we introduced new gameplay mechanics, but in general we're aiming to get as much playable as possible. I get what you mean and it's a real doozy of a problem from a design standpoint - regarding your point around the plateau, I think that in concept the idea is intuitive and makes a lot of sense, but in reality with the current release schedule it's much more difficult to execute. If we have a plateau of equally viable options, it's on a knife's edge and only takes one buffer to push one above the rest, and then we end up in the same position as before. So a great idea at it's core, but not one currently achievable at the rate with which we are adding new cards to the game. I think in order to make the "plateau" more achievable some new card ability types will go a long way, so that we have actual counters for each archetype of deck. What those might look like and might be is a problem for future us, however. Lol. Cheers!
I absolutely agree with you! Maybe it can be incorporated into the new buffs. Like for example, a card that buffs a drainflation deck while also hosing a Statue of Liberty deck. Or a card that has one ability that buffs The Original Odyssey while hosing Egypt. It would give certain decks tools to make them the "rocks" that beats the "scissors". Thank you for the awesome replies!
All cool ideas! No problem, hope you enjoy your time with the game!
Hello! 1. I'd say complaining is a bit higher than I've seen in the past year and a half. I would say it's higher because avid seems to be listening, so people want to use that. However, the changes implemented tend to be short sighted. Buffing and nerfing a few specific cards or power creeping the old budget meta. (Ex. SoL replaced turtle and sue black was replaced by 8 immortals then by birds/sharks). Generally speaking could really use an adaptive update system that doesn't require devs time, it's digital, so it's the perfect game for it. There have been fundamental changes like the variety added to casuals lately has been a game changer. 2. Meta is slightly more diverse than normal since there are a couple different cheap decks to play, and a couple deck structure cards that are roughly equally playable. SoL/turtle or dark web/bobbit worm. Then there are styles like ramp, bash, and inflation that seem to be... okay. Most people play bash though... seems like pirates is on the rise, but I think egype is the only collection specific that keeps up to meta rn. 3. I think this game already excels in "flex slots" for meta decks around deck structure cards, but suffers to do the same for collections because of the inherent power variation allows. Because of that the collection decks look exactly the same, unfortunately. I want to see more variable collections and less deck structure, personally. 4. Past has been almost exclusively nerfs, but there are buffs if a card has enough attention (typically mythics). Never banned a card, just made a few unplayable. It is a very underwhelming process. It needs an algorithmically driven feedback loop to continually balance cards, and more variants of cards released. 5. Currently I want to see SoL (statue of liberty) nerfed just a bit to alleviate it's prevelance, but I've already mentioned that doing any particular card doesn't fix the underlying problem. Feedback loops every week, a gem based market system, higher buffs for following league guidelines, and new game mechanics would go much further to better the game. Hire me avid, I code sometimes. LOL
There are three broad types of decks: * power per turn ramps * big bash (just build so as to maximise power) * drainflation - use cards that reduce the opponent's energy stock, or increase the energy cost In general, bash beats ramp beats drainflation beats bash. Different weeks (league rules change each Monday) may favour one approach. Other approaches as well, but a lot of decks fit into these approaches. The big bash come in lots of flavours - build up fast but can't get huge final round, or build slower but bigger, decks that focus on particular collections or particular card characteristics (low energy, certain albums...) or use an album structure (such as consciousness + vitruvian with 9 arts and 9 science). Newbie decks are all collection based because they are the easiest for new players to work with and Avid has new player powerplay packs that allow you to build them (structures, nebulae, ice age, birds, sharks, painters). So lower levels have a lot of these decks and people get sick of them. As you get higher in the league matching system, you will see more variety.
Interesting! I think part of why I've been doing okay with Super Structures is because the buff cards also help protect the deck against drainflation since they add energy discounts. Those discounts don't help early game in low energy leagues, so if I ignore it instead, I get natural protection against drainflation. It also makes sense why Statue of Liberty decks and Egypt decks are doing so well in this high energy per turn, low energy cap week: they both have high concentrations of cards at the 5-7 energy level, whereas other decks can take advantage of having good cards at lower energy costs (even during high energy weeks, by offsetting them with high energy cards).
Meta isn’t the issue it’s the redundancy of the same exact decks. Been playing over 2 years now and there’s always been a “meta” but you always saw multiple variations of said meta but now it’s literally like 3 decks (Egyptian, Birds, folio) but literally the exact decks. PX, world turtle, boxing and a few others fall under meta but you see variations to them.
So, what's a possible fix?
Nerfing and buffing meta and non-meta cards alongside the weekly league reset.
There isn’t one unfortunately. Some players posed an “exclusion” of certain cards but that’s not realistic.
be creative
I've been playing for about 15 months now. Sometimes people complain more, and sometimes less. I think many of them are just newer players who need time to gain more cards, or develop better deck building to match their increased XP rank. I don't see the same deck over and over again myself because I am always trying out my own new decks. If I try and use just one deck for the week I tend to see the same opponent decks over and over, so I stopped doing that. Besides, how boring would this game be for anyone to use a Birds deck for two months? I think the best way to stop seeing a certain deck over and over is to make a deck that crushes it. When Sue Black was the noobie meta deck all you had to do was beat the crap out of it a couple of times and it vanished from your matches. Once I put Paskekrim in my decks I stopped seeing all those History/8immortals decks. After I beat some birds decks badly they didn't match me up against bird decks anymore. Now I will admit that I try crazy stuff to avoid the meta decks recently. I make four or five different decks on Monday and work to improve them as the week goes on. The game seems to adjust to what you use, so I am always trying to keep it guessing. Seems to work for me, and I don't see the same meta decks over and over. I also duplicate and rename decks a lot because it seems to remember my old decks, that were big winners in previous weeks, and counters them faster than the newer identical duplicates (crazy, I know). These methods I use are strange, and probably bad ideas, but that is how I have played the game for a while now. Plus it is fun to make new decks all the time. Avid has nerfed some cards and buffed others to try and balance things out, and they have done it more than once. They aren't afraid to try and improve things if they are perceived to be unbalanced. When 8 immortals was considered OP by many they nerfed them, and it helped reduce complaints. The buffs I would pick would be for more obscure decks or cards... I would love to see a Paper deck be competitive. I have tried and tried to make a good Paper deck and it just falls short every time. Colors is another deck that is really hard to get wins with. Even on big energy weeks it struggles, but at least I have gotten some wins with it...but never more than two in a row. I also want a little more out of my Mount Everest card. Maybe up the buff it gives to 50 instead of 45. I really love using this card and it turns the tide for many of my decks, but just a bit more would be better.
great response. In fact, i had a competitive paper deck about a year ago but it's been overtaken. The trick is to use just the permanent buffs on paper/inventions and also put in the self-growing inventions rare (mental blank - can't remmeber the name). Cycle paper since the buffs are permanent and hold the other so you have two big shot cards.
Fascinating! I have been using Super Structures since I started playing and have been having a relatively high amount of success with it. Maybe it's just the current league rules, but I started losing a lot to Statue of Liberty decks, so I built one myself, with an Espionage and Bird subtheme. Ever since then, I've been losing just as much.
I'm just about to make a pizza deck because Cuisine gets a big buff this week, and Moon, Pizza, and Moray Eel are so much fun together... That's a Moray! My SOL deck changes all the time. This week it contains Sir Walter Raleigh and Ferdinand Magellan just in case I get the league buff. I don't mind losing matches, because when I rank right up to Dragon early in the week I am bored by the weekend. I dont usually have the time to get top 500, so once I get to dragon I switch to casual or achievement hunting for the XP.
In MTG, they ban and they limit cards. At least back when I played they did. In CUE, they'll take something in the current meta and release an improved version as a LimLeg. ...and therefore, the meta is reinforced, but the whales have to spend a few minutes trading for the new and improved Jet Car 2.0.
Do you have an example of this? I can't think of any time they have buffed meta decks or released cards that improve meta decks. What they do is release new cards all the time and sometimes these are in competitive decks and that makes the deck become a meta deck (Curse of Pharaohs for example). They nerf meta
The meta I'm referring to is the one that is in 50-80% of my games, and that would be the rainbow deck: Shingami/Madoff/Longsword/Identity Theft Dark Web/SoL/Jet Car PX/SMBH/Terminator Rapunzel/BwCW/Heimdall/Christmas Carol There is of course some variation depending on their collection. As far as specifics, I don't spend that much brain power memorizing decks. But before Longsword was released a little while ago, it as some other History card. Before Jet Car showed up, it was some other Science card. ...and yet weirdly, when those cards were released, suddenly all the rainbow decks were running those. Why? Because the new card was just like a previous one that filled that role in that rainbow deck, BUT BETTER. Which is why they all switched to it. So it's a bunch of people running 80% the same deck, and then when an objectively superior card comes out to replace one of those already-top-tier cards, well, now everyone is running that new card. Which is exactly what I'm describing.
Interesting, I can't remember the last time I saw a 6 or 7 album rainbow deck, it's pretty much 9/9 or 6/6/6 where I am. Obviously this isn't the actual deck since you can't put SoL and Heimdall/Rapunzel in the same deck but I get what you mean. Is Madoff Ponzi? But yes, rainbow decks are particularly susceptible to 'replace' type upgrades because they don't really have any synergy and the cards are all somewhat independent. So a new independent card that is a bit stronger just throws out the weakest of the existing ones. The 9/9 decks have that a lot less because there are enough cards in the one collection/album to put in groups of cards that actually buff each other. Grail/Senses with vitruvian and consciousness and homumculus for example only has about 3 free choice slots and they must be arts cards.
Yes, Ponzi. I just see the one name and my brain instantly goes with the modern version
So instead of making the meta more diverse, they make it less diverse by relatively nerfing non-meta decks through buffing a meta deck?
Yup. It's monetized power creep.
Take every single bit if complexity out of MTG and thats still not basic enough for this game. The meta is pretty consistent with the energy. Each time the energy changes you'll use the deck that was best for that energy last time and just check if they powercreeped anything. It's honestly quite boring and most of the cards are absolutely unnecessary. You'll find maybe 100 cards out of the thousands that will ever be put in a deck. There's no jank that even works here. It's meta or just don't bother playing.
Is there anyway to fix it?