Balance Patch - Notes and Insights [1.0.6]

Balance and Bugfix Patch 1.0.6

Hello again, this is Michael, handing you a deep dive for patch 1.0.6! Today we are moving the new card balancing changes from the public test branch into the main branch, together with a list of bugfixes! There are also a few changes done to boss decks in part because of the card changes, and in part due to your feedback!

I’d like to take a moment to talk about how we got to where we are in regard to bosses and their difficulty, and what we can do to improve the experience for new players. Let’s dive in!

Opponents and “Luck”

We have looked at feedback from both steam reviews and beyond, and a common complaint we see in negative reviews is that opponents (and bosses particularly) somehow seem to draw exactly the card they need to beat the player’s score. This can make the game feel rigged, as if the game “cheats” under the hood to give the opponent exactly the card they need to win.

However, while it may at times feel like opponents are cheating in this way, there is no “under the hood” card fixing of any sort in Black Jacket. This is not dependent on any difficulty setting; opponents only rely on visible game mechanics to stack their cards in their favour, in the same way that players do.

Funnily enough, the only conversations we’ve had internally on this subject is if it would be possible for us to occasionally reorder the opponent’s cards in the player’s favour. During our development playtests we were already receiving similar feedback, and so we explored if we could come up with some system that could help players down on their luck.

As we discussed how to implement this, it became apparent that Black Jacket simply wouldn’t work with this kind of hidden system together with the actual card mechanics and visuals. The reason is that there are so many things that reveal information about upcoming cards; the card backs being unique, player insight on the opponent’s deck, the fact that boss decks always use the same decklists, that every card has a unique effect so we can’t change only a card’s value; the whole card would need to be swapped with a different card. A system made to help players, for example by preventing an opponent from getting two blackjacks in a row, would be very complex to make. It would also likely fail to work in many situations due to the amount of information available to players, and the fact that any card swaps would need to be completely hidden from the player’s view.

How to improve the experience for new players

The fact that this is how it works under the hood does not help a new player who feels discouraged by Morgan drawing into yet another 21. It is still worth trying to improve that experience. I believe that there are a few reasons for why this experience happens, but mainly:

• Bosses often include insight effects which lets them gain information on what card is coming up. While opponents normally do not know what card is on top of their deck (they do not take card backs into account), they do know which card it is if they leave it there after using insight. And they will ignore their general “pass at 17” rule, if they know that it is safe to draw that card. Insight and multi-value cards are the main methods bosses use to try and avoid busting.

In this patch, I have slightly reduced the number of insight effects in each boss’ realm 1 decklist. This should make the first few runs for new players feel a bit less punishing, as they should be able to make it further into their journey. I have not made similar changes to realms 2 and 3, as I think the new player experience is most hindered by feeling like you can’t even overcome the first realm.

If you previously struggled with overcoming the bosses in realm 1, please let us know what you think! There will still be rounds that are hard to win simply due to randomness, but overall, your experience should be better!

And speaking of better

There was one boss in particular who used a lot of the cards that were adjusted in this balance pass. This boss have had changes done to their decklists for all realms, but the general difficulty is intended to remain the same.

Balanced cards

For a full list of the balance changes done to cards, please read the previous post that dives deep into the changes and why they were made! The only difference will be for Hearts 6, which in the public test branch had hollow. It will not have hollow in the main branch. All other cards will keep their changes from the public test branch.

Bugfixes

The following is a non-exhaustive list of fixes and general improvements in this version.

• Fixed a softlock when the opponent wanted to play a card onto a hollow card before they passed, while being out of cards in their draw-pile. The game would lock as soon as the next round started.

• The actual number of discovered cards and artifacts could get out of sync with the tracking stat. These are now synced to ensure players will unlock certain challenges. This should happen when starting the game.

• On windows builds, the game will now write a backup progress file. If the main one can't be loaded due to it being corrupt, it will load the backup instead. The backup is updated when progress is saved, every 15 minutes.

• Hollow cards played face-down by opponents now activate their effects when flipped face-up due to a card being played into them.

• Fixed an issue where opponents would pass when their last card was a face-down hollow card, and then un-pass once that card was turned face-up. They will not pass, and instead flip their card and play into it.

• Fixed an issue where you could not move down to your sleeve when using a controller while having a stack of 2 or more cards selected.

• You can now draw from the deck in the tutorial if playing a match, quitting to the menu, re-enabling the tutorial and starting the tutorial.

• Fixed an issue where playing a card to the rightmost slot could get the game stuck when playing on difficulty 13+ (issue caused by the coin animator when quickly hovering over a one-cost slot, then two-cost slot and dropping the card immediately).

• The demo now uses a separate progression file to avoid conflicts. The full game will skip the tutorial if it was finished in the demo.

• Opponents will now be able to play into a certain -8 face card with hollow, that swaps sides.

• The artifact list could vanish if quitting to the menu while it is fading in or out.

• Artifacts which add cards to the player deck now count towards the cards added to deck stat. This means that to complete a certain challenge, these artifacts must be avoided.

• Flame VFX now have slightly less waiting time, and will trigger when the card is activated even with no target.

• Embers from ignited/burnt cards no longer vanish but fade out when the card is removed.

• Pressing skip (on controllers) while the intro animation of card events is running no longer crashes the game.

• Fixed some localization issues.

Please keep posting your issues in our Discord, it helps us a lot!

Black Jacket discord server: DISCORD

/Michael, Game Designer