Nerfing Telluria (Mar 2020 HOTM) ---> POLL IN POST #2; [Staff Comment Post #1445 & #4422]

And she wasn’t, on her own she is not a threat. I was one of those that kept stating that among Zim - Zeline - Vela, Vela had the worst ability and utility. She was so easy to take down on defenses when I wasn’t running a red stack. If I was forming a rainbow team, I would probably never consider her on my offense, she doesn’t bring enough to the field. Not to counter a single or two reds on the enemy team.

She only turned out extremely effective when green tanks were introduced. No one was really used to green tanks, we were too focused on purple and yellow with occasional Black Knight or Aegir. It was overlooked that if a powerful green tank hero is introduced that requires red stack to be taken down, Vela will become immediate threat. Especially that her DoT type stacks with other more common types (it was weird to see water type DoT as separate one… but now we know why, and it changed from the underwhelming utility to quite powerful perk just because of stacking with other DoTs). It also became clear to me why JF was nerfed even though I argued for dozens of posts that it was an overkill. “People have emblems in Guin, in Onatel, in Zeline, they would never deemblem these for JF”. Turns out they would. All the other Wizards suddenly have no place in the game today.

I am pretty sure the data at devs disposal is shouting at them desperately that they made a mistake. I am pretty sure that if they care for the wellbeing of the game (and I am pretty sure they do) they are scratching their heads now thinking how to fix this and make everyone happy. They may only have one shot at this. I hope that this will change how they approach introducing OP heroes in the future, even if intentionally going for powercreep. Or that the rules of the game will be updated in a way that even such powerful heroes do not change the game into pulling a lottery ticket for a good or bad board.

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It’s especially disconcerting for those of us who finally got a good hero and this “has to” be nerfed because people who have every hero in the game can make a powerful defense with it. I don’t have Vela, I don’t have Gravemaker. I do have Telluria, and would like to be able to use her before she gets nerfed into oblivion. But it’s looking like I’m going to “lose” her before I even get to use her.

I think that we should give this some time, as people are going to come up with ways to beat the difficult combos given time, just as people are now perfectly capable of beating Gravemaker, Ursena, Guinevere and Kunchen.

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Again I will go back to my Magic the Gathering comparisons, since they have made many similar designed mistakes leading to horrible meta games where they lost 20-30% of their player base.
Say you create card A - card A is very strong but in a vacuum (ie if it existed on its own) is powerful but fair. You then create card B - card B is very strong and in a vacuum is also powerful but fair. If card A and B existed in separate dimensions all would be good. You would have singularly strong, powerful but fair cards. But if card A and B existed together it would lead to a degenerate game where it is the sole winning strategy. You could use other cards, but it would put you at a severe disadvantage.

So as a game designer you now have a couple of choices:

  1. Ban/ Nerf one of the cards and leave the other card as is - In this case, we are asking for Telluria to be adjusted and vela/ grave maker to be left as is. This would mean that defences that invested heavily on Telluria/ Vela/ Gravemaker, green tanks would still be plentiful BUT it would not be the de facto choice. This is also the best choice to help protect everyone’s ‘investment’. A small change to Telluria, may however lead to the metagame being unchanged and it still being a persistent problem. This has happened before in the past with WOTC/ Hasbro where they thought banning one card (skull clamp) would hurt the strategy of the Affinity deck. Instead players just adapted and Affinity was just as degenerate. This lead to…

  2. Ban/ Nerf multiple cards - In some cases, a game designer may choose to nerf multiple cards. This is usually done because they want to encourage a brand new metagame. If they nerfed Telluria + Vela + Gravemaker, then this would encourage other defences to be used instead. While it would be a refreshing change, this option would severely hurt more people from an investment point of view. Going back to the Affinity example above, in the end WOTC/ Hasbro had to ban multiple cards to encourage a completely new metagame.

  3. Do Nothing, and wait to release counters - In the past this was something that WOTC/ Hasbro adopted. They were blatantly aware of overpowered cards and waited for the next set (usually 3 months time) to release counters. The problem is even 1 month is a very long time for players. When it stops becoming fun, people will stop playing and move on. There is so much competition out there both in terms of mobile games as well as console games.

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So damn stupid. Don’t go nerf. Present the remedy or buff some classics. My first special was Guin. I invested a lot in her. Money and time. You nerfed her three times. I did get nothing back. Ursena went me by, so did Gravemaker, Kunchen, Finley, Kageburado and others. Finally I get a new tank and you are considering nerfing her too? All the money, and all the material out in the blue. Including I redistributed Guin’s emblem. Learn the game and stop complaining. If you nerf Telluria, I’ll stop playing this game. If you pay for a Porsche you expect a Porsche. You can not come to my place and exchange it for a ten year old Volvo after the deal is made

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I’ve been looking for this ”perfect” solution to this mess, but it’s come to my realization there is none. There is no win win solution to this anymore for all, at least not one that can be implemented right now and make everyone from all sides satisfied. Game is imbalanced, it’s a fact whether you believe a nerf should happen to Telluria or not.

Currently I’m most sold on the reduce her mana degeneration to -24%. Which means I take back my no vote. Would be a reasonable nerf and make the game a bit more bearable while we wait during this phase for more effective counters and preferably counters that won’t be hidden behind a paywall too.

It is what it is. This Telluria/Vela synergy was inevitable and there will be more. The collection of heroes with creative special skills is only growing.

For the future I hope there’ll be a better plan regarding the heroes, in which order they are released. To avoid another OP synergy as good as we can and to avoid a situation where we in worst case scenario wait several months for even one counter too. I can see this becoming a repeating cycle in the future, hence I hesitated in the beginning to vote yes. Repeatedly nerfing new favourite heroes will make people lose their trust in the game over time hence these situations must be avoided.

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Going to drop this in here (as people seem to be getting attached…)

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The differences are that the game never saw such a strong synergy like GTV before and Telly is the mountain everyone is facing because she is the tank.
What really is important now in my eyes, is to break the synergy, not Telluria herself.
Reducing Telly’s manadegeneration could be an option, but I’m still curious if Yunan and especially Heimdall are on par with Telluria, when we put them together with GM and Vela.

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There is the solution that is adopted by many console game developers. They have the ability to patch a game multiple times or release new updates. Developers like Capcom/ Blizzard have used this to their advantage because they can repeatedly patch a game with buffs/ nerfs and as such alter the metagame. This is not a new concept - Blizzard was already patching Starcraft/ Diablo/ Warcraft repeatedly introducing new buffs and nerfs hence ensuring the same game felt fresh and dynamic to all players and provides longevity.

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Have you ever checked Titan Mafia analysis? https://titanmafia.com/ It’s a benchmark for those looking for how top 100 in this game looks like, what heroes are used etc. It’s a tool showing effectiveness of defenses.

Till Telluria, you would see quite a diversity there, proving that the game was complex, many heroes had their places even in top tier squads, unique and rare heroes also changed how people were building their defenses etc. It was healthy, it was showing that the game is complex, diverse and colorful. Now I am pretty sure the next edition will have 90%+ of Telluria. That is not a diverse game, that is not a colorful game, it is a game that can be only played in one certain way to succeed and even if right now you are benefitting from that because you are on the shiny half that got Telluria, I can assure you that few months from now this will be boring as hell. Why would I be excited about a new hero XYZ if all I need is certain 5 heroes on defense and certain 5 heroes to beat everyone elses defenses that looks the same for 90% of time? Believe me, I am using Telluria + Vela on my own defense as well, I win 80% of the defensive raids and I can only tell one thing - it is extremely BORING. I don’t even think I want to pull on Valhalla now, if none of these heroes will help me beat Telluria or be place on my defense because Telluria + Vela just beats every other combination with 50% effectiveness.

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Yep…But I would imagine the fallout from the nerf would be extremely damaging…more so than catering to the complaints. Loss of faith in the company, loss of revenue. As someone mentioned, the market is jam packed with mobile gaming. If we start losing what we paid for, then I would expect a mass exodus of people willing to find better business practices.

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I believe that they also need to improve the quality of alpha and beta testing. Also, one of the bloggers from YouTube (who is also a beta tester) said that Telluria would be unbalanced at the time of release, even after those minor changes that were made to it. All of this was expected.

Repeat:

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Just as it is boring to face opponents where every single opponent has Guinevere as tank. Which is a real thing, too. I would be less annoyed with this if there were calls to nerf BOTH Vela and Telluria. But it’s “OMG Telluria is impossible! Nerf her, but leave my Vela because I already put emblems on her.” There’s never going to be a solution that satisfies everyone, but it’s not making me happy…

Exactly, this is not such a simple matter. And many players also have their arguments and votes for not nerfing Telluria, even if they have or do not have Telluria, they also should feel that the game has become unplayable and broken due to Telluria being there, but they are fine with it. I am not talking about feeling excited to hold cups, but about those repercussions they should be facing or at least should perceive as a problem that raids are not fun anymore, war has become a total pain, not a fun activity, but it is not so. Having a Telluria does not eliminate the other arguments mentioned for the players, as one of the main reasons voiced is that only those that have Telluria are voting for not nerfing her.

There are those who have Telluria and they also vote to be nerfed because they worry not about their “precious”, but about the game as a whole.

I am playing around 2600 trophies for like a year now and I can assure you, I was never in situation where rerolling was giving me all the time the same tanks. For long time I was avoiding Kunchens and Ursenas, but with 2-3 rerolls I could find Aegir, Guin, Black Knight, Richard etc. It was never the case that I would reroll 20 times and was seeing all the time the same tank over and over again. More so - the same tank AND flank. Not to mention wars where I am looking at the table now and it’s literally 30 times the same 3-4 repeating heroes on the squads. It took all the strategy and planning away.

I am advocating for a change to Telluria which would add a drawback that she casts on her flanks. My idea is that it will cause the flanks to be unable to cast status ailments on the enemies (maybe also allies?) for x turns. It would then aim certain flanks (especially GM and Vela), but not destroy the hero on its own. It could force different strategies, eg. flanking her with Killhare?

But reducing her -mana gen to 24% also makes sense. If you check the numbers, she is now changing fast heroes to almost very slows. I think changing fast heroes to about slightly slower than average would be enough. She is buying her team a lot of time by the minions + HoT anyway.

@IvyTheTerrible says than for Heimdall there is no significant diff between Vela and other good flank, but his data is very small.

Of course, I was just commenting on those that either do or do not have her and have voted for not nerfing her due to their own opinion and arguments, that the should also feel that the game is unplayable, as having a Telluria does not automatically remove those outside factors for the players that voted no. This just proves that they are still able to enjoy the game and do not feel that anything is broken to an extent where the game is unplayable. Having a Telluria does not make facing Telluria tanks in raids and wars easier in a direct way :), thus they still should feel frustrated. That just proves that the perception of the current situation differs.

Just stop crying and wait for new counter hero.

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Which will finally kill the balance in the game:)))