Is there counterplay in alteil?

[Peralisc9001]

I agree with Jesse Ventura's conspiracy theory regarding alteil.

[AquasFire3]

Ever tried to discuss counterplay options? Go look into my thread about return counters. It's full of reasonable suggestions open to get counterplayed by the Falkow player again. Nothing that makes Returngrims suddenly useless, but it does ensue a back n forth between both players.
But here in Alteil we like to follow the same 'structure' each match and see who's buildup stands at the end. Trying to mess with that makes people cry. Because they want to keep their easy matchups and instant-end-all solutions intact.


So forget it. Won't happen. I'm waiting forever for better openskills that heal in anticipation of a BoF/FireArrow. In anticipation of a Return or Tidal. In anticipation of Overdose. But current counterplay to those options plain sux here. It's all on a small level or to big of a gamble to waste filespace & SP on.
Grims that are so specific, you can't include it in your 25 spots and then have only 10% matchups where it's usefull. Examples are like being engage immune or trying to stop MaxHP hate...

I see Alteil trying their best searching for the right way to do this. I see the Grims with like 2 or 3 opens attached to them. I see them getting tagged with multiple effects. But it fails. And i'll tell you why: You may find the use for one of the effects, but you're paying full SP cost to get it.(like the Falkow+Refess Grim) Some options given are even plain overpriced to utilize.(3SP for a revive on the Lawt Grim) And in the end you take the gamble on a GRIM to counter something. If you gamble wrong, you wasted a turn & SP doing nothing.

The only way Alteil counterplay options are currently working, is even when the effect it counters DOESN'T happen in a matchup it's still on a usefull unit with additional purpose and fieldpresence. Openskills like RoyalGuards/AugSorcerer and Pixies are a good example.


I really believe a game is much more fun when you got a good chain of action and reaction going. Predicting your opponents moves and make surprise moves in anticipation. Have the opponent counterplay your moves again etc. But we need more competent designers for that and an attitude change within the community.

I agree with all of this

[WhiteDragon2]

I see the Grims with like 2 or 3 opens attached to them. I see them getting tagged with multiple effects. But it fails. And i'll tell you why: You may find the use for one of the effects, but you're paying full SP cost to get it.

Yeah, I personally would like to see grimoires with multiple effects where you can actually choose which effect activates. However in the current framework it can't be done without extra coding.

The only way Alteil counterplay options are currently worth playing, is even when the effect it counters DOESN'T happen in a matchup it's still on a usefull unit with additional purpose and fieldpresence. Openskills like RoyalGuards/AugSorcerer and Pixies are a good example.

I agree on this.

[AqvasFire2]

Actually, angel, fairy blessing is about as excellent a card as you can get in terms of counterplay. It's like sheer wins, except for engage conditions rather than disengage conditions. If you know your opponent has a rasam SS incoming, this will help. If you hit a shelby song with it, you win the game flat out right there. And worst to worst, it still fetches you some other card.

I just wonder why Refess has to have that card. IMO the condition should be Falkow 3, not Refess 3.

And Gon, I realize I'm talking about the files. For instance, EXLap had some pretty strict requirements. Agi 2- on her start, and lvl 3- Refess on her auto. That sort of put her in a very specialized type of file that, honest to goodness, absolutely needed her so they wouldn't get pounded. When's the last time anyone saw a Solar Kingdom level 3- rush? Not since the nerf to her and Kaldrao, and while Kaldrao was absurd (snowballing defense?! Get the hell out of here.), Lapierre was at least somewhat fine.

In fact, the EXLap nerf is yet another terrific example of nerfing against counterplay. Because her permanent attack stack only mattered if you were winning anyway. After all, if you had your healing going, then Lapierre+Folrart Knight Captain was already a +20, and one general's order would have boosted you to a full field +40 (and +20 on Lappy herself). Instead, what Lappy lost was what kept level 3 solar kingdom in games to begin with.

Same deal with Ruuca. A fire dragon or two will still put down any unit spamming rush for the count. But while she's in her 50 HP engaged state, anyone who can survive fire dragons can just tee off on her. A better solution may have been to have fire dragon provide the opponent with SP, so that they can revive more units from a field wipe and maybe play some critical hand of god or whatnot to at least get a turn to breathe. Instead, her versatility was removed.

Same deal with Jack--if you're a file that depends on rushing out units to create a defensive snowball, then a beating is in store for you. But suddenly, he lost the ability to say, stop Afel+word of dalos or ping EN units for 20 before they'd try facerolling.

Every single errata to major units hasn't been to somehow allow for counterplay against their strength, but to make their weaknesses worse.

All of these are antithetical to having versatile units and versatile files that can stand up to more and more matches. All of these changes take power away from players in the playing of the game and put more emphasis on building the file. A file's list can be shared. Even if the best players don't share their files explicitly, if you observe them long enough and see them taken the distance , you can write down their cards and reconstruct their files. So when people accuse me of not being able to build files, that's perfectly fine by me, since someone else can build a file. I consider filebuilding a triviality, because someone has to build a good file, and then once people copy it, it won't matter who originated the file.

But when you take away the meaning of actually playing the games, then what are you left with?

Alteil is pretty simple to play. You can tell any random player:

"First you play exgirl, then you play rapid growth, then you play BKR", or "First you play ref citizens, then charity, then miffyre". Simple crap.

The way you make a game good is by creating counterplay, allowing players to take advantage of knowing what their opponents will play, and giving them the chance to make mistakes. I'm not saying I'm a perfect player by any stretch of the imagination. I lost to Johnjo in quite hilarious fashion earlier on this morning, but the loss was fun, because I should have said "doh! It was JOHNJO, so how did I forget that he could be a troll with a sin last?!"

When someone loses because they made mistakes, they can go back and say "I made a bad play here, here, and there," or "My opponent read me like a book and had more experience in this match. GG." That's fun. In fact, that's normally the silver lining in losing--to learn from the loss.

When you lose simply because you didn't have the proper file to beat your opponent, what do you learn? Where's the fun?

[AquasFire3]

Dg i dont understand how you dont consider filebuilding important if your a good file builder it means you know alot about the game and helps you become an even stronger player.Usually most people who are great file builders can play most any deck and still do great.Compared to those who cant.

[AqvasFire2]

Dg i dont understand how you dont consider filebuilding important if your a good file builder it means you know alot about the game and helps you become an even stronger player.Usually most people who are great file builders can play most any deck and still do great.Compared to those who cant.

I'll tell you how: because any good, healthy game will have an established metagame. Yes, there will be those who blaze new trails, create new strategies, and do well with them, such as Canis with the original Urgrant file, or whoever in the Magic: the Gathering circuits. Well, good for them. And all I have to say to that is: big F'ing deal. If it's a good strategy, it'll get disseminated among the community, taken, improved, innovated upon, with different players finding their own adaptions that suit their playstyles.

I'm not big on invention in general, aquacks. Google wasn't the first search engine (remember Alta-Vista or Lycos? Or are you too young?). Apple wasn't the first company to come up with the idea of a portable music player. Facebook wasn't the first social network (MySpace?). But each of those companies found different ways to innovate on something that was a good idea started by someone else, make some tweaks to it, and make it great.

Even the file I got 2217 with was invented by Worthing. Of course, did Worthing actually ever break 2.2k RP? Nope.

In fact, the whole **** of someone that simply invents a new meta in Alteil is actually a clear symptom that this game isn't all that it can be, because a healthy game has a healthy, defined meta, with a healthy and thriving competitive community, instead of even some of the better players thinking that no file should have complete counterplay options to contest every match. And a healthy game also has on its balance team its historically best players, as well. That's what makes M:tG so much better than the rest--it hires its pro tour winners on its R&D team. Instead, Logress (and even the community itself) dismisses what I did as a fluke, looks down upon camping (wouldn't need to camp if Alteil had better counterplay, would I?), and finds a whole bunch of excuses as to why I shouldn't be on the balance team even though I play all four spheres, and have better data analysis skills than the rest of the balance/testing team combined.

People ask why this game isn't what it can be, and then we get excuses, not action into implementing better counterplay, **** of someone who comes up with a file instead of takes an existing one to new heights, and anything that achieves top RP gets subsequently hammered with nerfs.

You can't have a healthy game without a core community. The core community is competitive. If the game doesn't promote healthy competition, there's no reason for others to buy in and join.

[AquasFire3]

Funny you compare to mtg because i actually hate that game xD.I was just saying as all dg most people who invent files do way more successful and are way better players in general.Then people who dont.

Honestly im not a big fan of everything being meta the reason i liked this game because some decks are hard to play and you actually have to out think people. i dont like anything that feels like second nature. i like being surprised.and trying to adapt to any random deck that gets thrown at me. So i have a way different perspective then you.Since i am not and never will be a meta gamer.

[shadowsketch]

This is more of some talk about counterfiles than counterplaying, but I like having set 11 for free since it means that there's more of an established metagame since people have access to the cards. Set 11 provides access to cards for running Augments and Mid Refess, so those are decks I can expect to play against. Before that, people just had to play with whatever cards they got, so the matchups were more random.

That said, counterplaying is in Alteil. It just hasn't been around since recent sets have more brute strategies. Back in the day, people would try to win Miracle Fruit rolls versus Return or bring out Garfath if they predicted a Fire Arrow or Ball of Lame. I don't see counterplay happening much since the new sets are more about building a field and overwhelming the opponent.

[GonFreeces31]

I mean the bottom line is counterplay is something that's never directly talked about in design/balance considerations, to my knowledge. It kinda sucks, I know.

[Romdeau]

I mean the bottom line is counterplay is something that's never directly talked about in design/balance considerations, to my knowledge. It kinda sucks, I know.

This is not true for Alteil.