Yet another Hero Deck Post

Alright watched the DEV stream and there was a comment about how the survey showed most people liked the Hero Deck.  That the forum community was not really that in tune with the overall community as a whole when it came to this particular feature.    I guess us active players who have been at it since day one are just playing wrong.

I am curious what the numbers around that are.  Considering the influx of new players of late I feel there is something misleading about that metric.  I recall an influence vote where the #1 issue we as a community wanted addressed was the Hero Deck as it was simply too limiting.  Yet now we love the Hero Deck?  I call bull ***. 

Is it possible with a lot of the new playerbase has simply not run up against the major limitations it adds to the game?  So they just gave you a thumbs up cause its a neat mechanic?  At first I liked the Hero Deck Idea.   Overtime I grew to realize the major limitations it brought to the game.   Now that I have experienced the iterations of the game up to date... I grew to hate it.

I could go into all the reasons it is currently too limiting but since this is the 200th thread on the topic there is no evidence I could provide that has not been provided.   So to avoid wasting time on...

In my opinion in it's current form this is a defect in the current game.   It makes the game less fun for me and a lot of players.   The DEV stream gave the impression that it wasn't that important.   I wanted to re-iterate that it was, it is, and as variety is added to this game it will become even more so a defect rather than an feature. 

Just my 0.10$

I don't really want the Hero Deck removed as I don't want players to switch in too many characters during a match, but an increase on it would be awesome, 5 would be fine imo, or what do you think?

Funny I just watched the dev stream and I was thinking the same thing as your post. When they announced that they were putting up a survey about the hero deck I thought what is this BS. You are going to conduct a survey less then 7 days after going F2P? What the actual filth and fowl fowl and filth is that? You took all these new players that are pumped to play this game and some that never heard of it before and said here is the game. The starting progression forces you to play with only one hero for the first few levels. Most of whom as we have seen have gone full potato DPS huntress and that's it. Then in only a few short days after these masses have played this game, that they may or may not have been jonesing for you asking them "oh so do you like the hero deck?" Of course they say yes you could have asked if they liked the scavenger and they would have said yes because it hasn't even effected them yet and they are just happy to be here.

Just like most people are ok with the new net neutrality laws. They don't understand it and aren't affected by it. 

Doesn't make it good. 

I'd be happy to talk about the survey. At the beginning of the survey, there's a question that asks, "Did you play before or after the F2P launch?" If you answered "after," you wouldn't see the Hero Deck question -- you were sent to another page that talked about Campaign Normal difficulty. Only those who played before our F2P launch answered questions about the Hero Deck. It's possible that some of these players had just picked up the game, but it's most likely that these players had at least a few weeks of playtime under their belt.

What we learned from the Hero Deck survey:

• The Hero Deck has issues, but the general vibe about the Hero Deck system as a whole is generally positive. Players enjoy having a system that surfaces the ability to bring in multiple heroes (which was an issue in DD1). Most players want tweaks to the system, not a removal.
• A large number of players wish they could bring in more heroes.

The survey helped us take some of the comments from the forums and bring them to a wider audience. For example, some players on the forums wish that you couldn't use multiple heroes in a match at all (which, according to survey data, isn't representative of our playerbase as a whole). Some players wish that the Hero Deck only existed in group play (which, according to survey data, does represent the wishes of the playerbase at large). 

The Hero Deck is a topic we can ask again in a later survey. Someone mentioned in another thread that we didn't ask about how many heroes a player had, which is a fair point, and it's something we'll add in when we do another Hero Deck survey question. Our data gathering doesn't stop with one survey. Like all things in our game, it's a continual process.

The takeaway from the survey is that the playerbase at large agrees that the Hero Deck should allow more heroes to be used in a match and that it's possible to address the issues using the current system. If, after we make those changes, the issues are still being reported, then we can take a look at totally redesigning the system.

The takeaway from the survey is that the playerbase at large agrees that the Hero Deck should allow more heroes to be used in a match and that it's possible to address the issues using the current system.

I didn't get that from the Stream.  Obviously with so much to cover in an hour all details wont be covered.  Thank you for clarifying, and also thanks for the details on the survey.  Helps put things properly in context.

@iamisom quote:*snip

Perfect response to the survey thanks. Just typed a bunch of text then deleted it all because I'm so tired of this topic. It's fair to say 90% want it changed but yet we get nothing.

@Chappyy quote:

@iamisom quote:*snip

Perfect response to the survey thanks. Just typed a bunch of text then deleted it all because I'm so tired of this topic. It's fair to say 90% want it changed but yet we get nothing.

so true.. so many posts to state the community's opinion on it, and what does the dev do - set a survey and say hey you guys are fine with it - (back to doing nothing)

Great this subject.

It's really just annoying.

So I'm going to go over it again in key points.

Hero Deck punishes people that solo.

Hero Deck will have to expand eventually when new classes are released.

Hero Deck's flaws are apparent in NM3-NM4+.

Hero Deck has not solved the Issues from DD1 in anyway shape or form.

Hero Deck needs to go, but it's looking like you guys are fine with it.

So it's pointless to discuss this further.

Now excuse me while I go pass out after coming back from a Halloween party.

@KnowsNoLimits quote:

Great this subject.

It's really just annoying.

So I'm going to go over it again in key points.

Hero Deck punishes people that solo.

Hero Deck will have to expand eventually when new classes are released.

Hero Deck's flaws are apparent in NM3-NM4+.

Hero Deck has not solved the Issues from DD1 in anyway shape or form.

Hero Deck needs to go, but it's looking like you guys are fine with it.

So it's pointless to discuss this further.

Now excuse me while I go pass out after coming back from a Halloween party.

@Orion Aegis quote:

Firstly, everyone gets one shot in nightmare maps (minus tank squires). It would help to include hero health on all gear as a stat but not count it as one of the two stats as it does right now.

Secondly, as it stands, you can have 1 person build and everyone else is either a dps or useless. Give other tower builders the ability to have supporting roles I.E. monk shielding uber.

might fix those dd1 issues

I would like to say that I like the choice that the Hero Deck brings. But yes, it is very limiting in NM4. Maybe when we get more passives, the 4 player hero deck will be enough. But right now, it takes 4 heroes just to build properly and you NEED a dps. 4 is too small.

@KnowsNoLimits quote:

Great this subject.

It's really just annoying.

So I'm going to go over it again in key points.

Hero Deck punishes people that solo.

Hero Deck will have to expand eventually when new classes are released.

Hero Deck's flaws are apparent in NM3-NM4+.

Hero Deck has not solved the Issues from DD1 in anyway shape or form.

Hero Deck needs to go, but it's looking like you guys are fine with it.

So it's pointless to discuss this further.

Now excuse me while I go pass out after coming back from a Halloween party.

Yes this can will continue to be kicked down the road. I will now go and find a Halloween party. 

The people that like hero deck don't click on these posts anymore. I personally like it. It makes you have to think about who you're going to bring before a match. 

I like to relate it to guild wars only being able to bring 8 skills, so people would work really hard trying to make sure they are bringing the perfect 8. You could also link your build so people in your group could see what you're running. People hated it in the beginning, but now everyone looks back and understands how cool only having 8 skills was. The limitation actually allowed for more creativity. 

People are soloing nm4 fine and are not complaining. Sure the build is stupid, but cry about the build, not the hero deck. I'd be sad if they removed the hero deck to be honest. Then everyone just levels 6-7 characters and they all play alone or just have one player and 3 leechers/dps. Unlike in the future where teamwork might be required for some maps, which would be pretty refreshing. 

@iamisom quote:

Players enjoy having a system that surfaces the ability to bring in multiple heroes (which was an issue in DD1).

English please. Looking through lots and lots of DD1 forum pages (admittedly skipping from about pg 25 to 50 to 80), I didn't see any threads in the 30 pages regarding complaints about having access to bring and use all characters.

While I realize you have more info, perhaps the issue here is the fact people (a) never played DD1, (b) don't miss the timers and frantically clicking the rough a list to find the right player and clicking another button to select, (c) are super casual players and haven't progressed to harder parts - 1,000,000 downloads with 10,000,000 hours (your stats, not mine) means the average player has logged 10 hours.

So while I won't dismiss your data collection, perhaps there should have been additional questions. There is clearly a percentage of your dedicated player base that is unhappy. Maybe getting results that don't support that need more than the five questions or so. If someone has yet to try the game solo, there experience will be vastly different than a strictly solo player. A player that's logged 10 hours from pre-Alpha might have just finished up campaign. They wouldn't have the same struggles as someone on NM3 or NM4.

For the record - I've logged around 300 hours, have 8 characters (2 of each class, 7 of them lvl 50), just beat my first attempt of third tier NM3, and only ever play solo. I do not even know what people think the meta is as I consider myself a casual addict that happens to read the forums. I don't watch videos to know what others build. I personally feel a lack of creativity in building. I always have two squires (cannon/harpoon and waller) and a monk (for AA). So I have to decide between a huntress, apprentice, or DPS. As a solo player, I cannot take a DPS and focus on the physical lane since I need to occasionally help or repair other lanes.

I see the Hero Deck is still a target of a lot of people's attentions! 
AH WILD GUTU APPEARED!

Anyway seems the community keeps growing and people keep being real about their opinions which is good and like always the devs been listening and doing their amazing work.

Keep the great job going guys and HAII ISOM HOWS IT GOING MAN?!

Anyway, haven't played in a while i know there are more character slots, I dunno how the game is right now but I still think the way would be to have no limit but something had to be done in terms of gameplay (and not paying) to achieve more slots. Well my opinion doesn't matter much i just really came to give a quick check on the forums and found this interesting and wanted to say HI!

Good to see you Gutu thought something unfortunate had happened to you in RL.

I just wanted to point out from my experience with the hero deck. When I played 5 months ago the hero deck was 3 so when I started to play again like 2 weeks ago I was kinda happy with 4, because now I can have all my builders. When I was progressing thew the game I found that 4 hero deck slots felt like enough so when I took the survey I said that 4 slots was fine.

All of that changed when I started to do NM3, and it was solidified when I started to solo NM4. Right now you need 4 heros to build with which means as a solo player you don't use a dps hero. This means you have HUGE issues with air units overall. Skyguard cant be used in NM4, because their little 30k dps isn't even close to enough to take down the hordes of 200k health wyverns, and using just frosty towers to take down air units generally causes a couple to leek threw that you still have to dps down on your builder hero.

If I found out how to retake the survey now, I would definitely say that for SOLO play you shouldn't have a hero deck, and instead be allowed to use all your heros. Its hard enough to gear 5 heros, why not let them use them at that point?

The game play from the start of the game is much less punishing then at end game. I feel that if you wanted a more accurate survey then you should ask the players what the farthest difficulty they have completed, and if they are solo or group players.

Hero deck makes sense if there was no limit then best strategy would be make a character that specialized in 1 specific defense and keep swapping each character for each type of defense.

Hero deck doesn't bother me only because I only got 4 slots anyways.  Imagine joining a game and a guy with like 20 characters was able to use them all to surpass everything I can bring to the table.  That would make me feel bad, but least he's supporting the developement of the game with spending money.

I don't see a easy solution to this. Was sort of boring joining games in DD1 knowing you would not get to build anything. Because X player was hardcore farmer and had it all.

I would say increase it to 5 or 6, then make solo mode have like 8. 

But down the line, when we have 10 builds per hero. Again we would be at the point we are now, you cannot build everything.(Not even thinking about new heroes, lol)

So Trendy should either embrace that and say this is a coop game you'r supposed to team up to beat harder content. Which will no doubt piss off the solo players, even team players because when you have no one available. What do you do? 

Or just remove it. Which would result in one guy often building everything. No need for team mates, except to get more loot or look at them as repair bots.

Could a simple solution like being able to swap heroes on you'r deck in build phase work? Towers placed ofc would loose their stats if you took it out.(Talking about group play on this one, not for solo)

It does need a change. I don't have a solution that would satisfy everyone, or even myself. So well, good luck Trendy. Either route you take, there will be people quitting because of it.

I like the hero deck. I think people that actually enjoy it just don't go on making threads about it. It helps so the game doesn't turn into something too easy and autistic.

You have to make choices if you're solo. That's nice. Solo should not be able to beat maps easier than in a group.

I am a solo player, i have 9 heroes, and i think it would be just stupid to give this kind of facilities to people like me... because it IS way easier to beat maps solo, it just isnt viable to do it in NM4 because you have the hero deck restriction, which make perfect sense in a coop oriented game.

Extreme solo grind is niche, there's no reason to shift the game basis into this direction. We just need a better matchmaking experience.

@AshaMarie quote:

Hero deck doesn't bother me only because I only got 4 slots anyways.  Imagine joining a game and a guy with like 20 characters was able to use them all to surpass everything I can bring to the table.  That would make me feel bad, but least he's supporting the developement of the game with spending money.

If you played DD1, it wasn't like that at all, at least playing with randoms. Typically there was one guy that had higher level chars of the 3-4 classes required to do much.

As a solo player, it isn't so much that I want to make 20 level 50 characters that can do niche things. It's that NM2-4 pretty much require at least 1 character specialized in making walls. You typically need at least one character for physical resist and one character for magic resist. I haven't gotten to NM4 yet, so maybe this will chance, but Monk's AA tower is still the best in my set up. That's four characters. About half the gear that drops is for DPS and yet, as a solo player, literally cannot do anything, but give it to my DPS character that I never get to play or sell it.

I think the main issue here, which hopefully Trendy addresses, is for one set of rules for solo players and one set of rules for grouping. In theory, a group of four friends have access to 16 characters. Each person could make two niche builders and two of whatever they want. You would then net 8 niche, specialized builders, and another 8 DPS/builders, depending on what people wanted to play (how nice would that be!?). Many MMORPGs with PVE and PVP elements (like WoW, Rift, etc.) have had issues with balancing abilities and gear for PVP play and PVE, since they offer different needs. I know WoW had a big issue with this when I played it. I know there some games like City of Heroes where stats/abilities had totally different rules and even functionality in solo play. While I'm not saying I think solo players should have a cannon that shoots two projectiles, I think allowing at LEAST 8 characters would be fair (I got 8 from the number the smallest possible group could bring).

We already have a button for starting the game with a private tavern. Why not add one for "strictly solo"?

I think there is a disconnect in the way we're discussing this. There are two issues:

1. The existence of the hero deck (this allows you to bring 4 different heroes and build combos)

2. The limitations of the hero deck (this keeps you from bringing more than 4 heroes)

From what I've heard and seen, most people love number 1, and most people hate number 2. I noticed this when I was talking with a friend who just started the game. I mentioned people hating the hero deck, and he said "Wait what? The hero deck is awesome, it's one of the best parts of this game." He was referring to liking number 1, while I was referring to disliking number 2.

So, that's just my 2 cents. Bringing multiple heroes and combos are cool; being limited to 4, especially in solo, is frustrating, and needs to be addressed somehow.

@jmhjm quote:

@AshaMarie quote:

Hero deck doesn't bother me only because I only got 4 slots anyways.  Imagine joining a game and a guy with like 20 characters was able to use them all to surpass everything I can bring to the table.  That would make me feel bad, but least he's supporting the developement of the game with spending money.

If you played DD1, it wasn't like that at all, at least playing with randoms. Typically there was one guy that had higher level chars of the 3-4 classes required to do much.

As a solo player, it isn't so much that I want to make 20 level 50 characters that can do niche things. It's that NM2-4 pretty much require at least 1 character specialized in making walls. You typically need at least one character for physical resist and one character for magic resist. I haven't gotten to NM4 yet, so maybe this will chance, but Monk's AA tower is still the best in my set up. That's four characters. About half the gear that drops is for DPS and yet, as a solo player, literally cannot do anything, but give it to my DPS character that I never get to play or sell it.

I think the main issue here, which hopefully Trendy addresses, is for one set of rules for solo players and one set of rules for grouping. In theory, a group of four friends have access to 16 characters. Each person could make two niche builders and two of whatever they want. You would then net 8 niche, specialized builders, and another 8 DPS/builders, depending on what people wanted to play (how nice would that be!?). Many MMORPGs with PVE and PVP elements (like WoW, Rift, etc.) have had issues with balancing abilities and gear for PVP play and PVE, since they offer different needs. I know WoW had a big issue with this when I played it. I know there some games like City of Heroes where stats/abilities had totally different rules and even functionality in solo play. While I'm not saying I think solo players should have a cannon that shoots two projectiles, I think allowing at LEAST 8 characters would be fair (I got 8 from the number the smallest possible group could bring).

We already have a button for starting the game with a private tavern. Why not add one for "strictly solo"?

So tired of the DD1 refrence of one builder builds all. Why you ask? Because it was a matchmaking list and you knew by the description of up and rep that you were not required to do anything.  If you didn't like this then you simple did not join. If you wanted to be carried you joined. The point is you knew before you got in a game what it was going to be like. 

If you want to be challenged with 4 heros go ahead by why do you want to ruin what I think is fun? Because you think it won't be fair if I can use all my heros while you use 4?

I didn't read when the posts became walls of texts, and i don't know if this has been suggested before, but how about if we try giving players the option to enable or disable the hero deck for a while? 

I have no idea how you guys built the system but if this is something that you can do by inserting a few lines of code and disabling the UI when its off, then this might work better than some survey if you keep track of the amount of people who choose to use it vs the ones that don't.

@Companhero quote:

I like the hero deck. I think people that actually enjoy it just don't go on making threads about it. It helps so the game doesn't turn into something too easy and autistic.

You have to make choices if you're solo. That's nice. Solo should not be able to beat maps easier than in a group.

I am a solo player, i have 9 heroes, and i think it would be just stupid to give this kind of facilities to people like me... because it IS way easier to beat maps solo, it just isnt viable to do it in NM4 because you have the hero deck restriction, which make perfect sense in a coop oriented game.

Extreme solo grind is niche, there's no reason to shift the game basis into this direction. We just need a better matchmaking experience.

Too easy and autistic... that's a new reason I've yet to see in the dozen+ hero deck threads I've had the (dis)pleasure of sifting through.

I've been trying for months to understand the rationale behind people liking the hero deck

Solo should not be able to beat maps easier than in a group. 

^Aside from the fact that there's no reason that needs to be true - how does my NM4 greystone plaza run get easier if I had access to all my heroes?  The only thing that would make a noticeable impact is going on my DPS app when the difficult lane is on the singular physical resist lane.

...because we already know the highest DPS/DU is traps+frosties, and we can fit that in 4 hero deck currently.  I don't think "making the game easier/harder" really has a place in the hero deck discussion atm.   And if we project a hundred different builds in the future that just exasperates the rationale for removing the hero deck.  So, idk where this line of thinking is going or has been