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Improving deck management
🕑 Added 2025-08-02 09:51:29 +0000 UTCThe way the deck management worked changed with Update 3 to allow a more dynamic deck size. You would now manage your deck size by adding and removing cards, instead of swapping every time with a fixed deck size.
The change had upsides and downsides. It did feel a bit clunky at times, and I knew it was something I wanted to improve on, I just needed more time for design and implementation. This improvement should come with Update 4.
With Update 4, card removal is gone. You get to keep all of your cards until the end of the run.
Instead, you get to enable and disable cards at will, to pick which ones you will be playing with. Because of this change, there is no downside to picking new cards.
The only restrictions is that some cards obtained through events can't be disabled by regular means, and that a minimum deck size is needed. (that deck size requirement increases throughout the run)
The points I'm trying to address are:
People love adding cards to their decks. Beginners often pick too many cards, bloating their deck. This is especially bad with Pearl. This system should allow them to pick as many cards as they want without punishing them.
At higher levels of play, it's often best to not pick too many cards and take a lot of removals. This streamlines the gameplay a bit too much, reducing fun variance. The minimum deck size might be harsh for some, but it's probably for the best without being an active punishment for low deck sizes.
Beginners don't value card removal enough, often ending up with basic cards for a long time. They can get stuck in hand at critical points and feel unfun. The rapid cycling at the start should ensure basics never stick around for too long.
Unlike deck management prior to Update 3, you don't have to get rid of any card and can play with a larger deck for more possibilities.
With that change, card choice become much stronger, as it can also double as card removal, by allowing you to swap another card out. To compensate for that, another resource has been added: Insight.
Card choices will still drop after each fight, but only if you have insight, spending that resource in the process. If you want to see new card choices, you are going to need to gather insight. You start with 5 and can obtain more as fight reward.
This process is still undergoing fine-tuning, but seems good enough for me to share it with you. Hopefully it makes the experience better, I know card management was a controversial point in the last update.
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As a last point, I'd like to address the obvious: I've been late again for this update. I've been frozing subscriptions payments to alleviate (also the case in August) but I know that doesn't make it fair, part of the deal is I'm supposed to provide regular content, and I've been lacking. I'm back in full force, working on this. I have the incredible chance to have an amazing community and I don't want to lose that or the trust you have in me.
Despite that, I don't want to rush the process, I want to make a good update and also want to take some more time on bug fixing so that the game is stable and the enjoy as soon as the update drops. So yeah, still a couple weeks.
Note: I'm aware of many bugs on the current version, I'm steadily fixing them but minor patches are a bit tough to push currently for technical reasons.
Comments
hoped1988
This is a pretty good way to make a lot more people happy. ^^ I hope 'insight' thing works. I'm grinding shards currently an it gets pretty boring if you already played every tactic with a character which is possible. I don't want to get even less shards just because I need insights for my decks now. :/
Milk-N-Potatoes
Actually incredible decision. I can't believe this is the first game of this kind I've heard of to play it like this. Some might claim it would make the game easier, remove a core challenge. I would argue it makes the game more fun.
