I wish there were no such things as META. I ran into so many high level players who abuse the meta just for them to win. What happened to playing games for FUN? This is a very well put together video, and I 100 agree with this tierlist. (although I could argue with the no scope sniper changes. I'd go even as far as to make the sniper not shoot at all when no scoping. I mean ffs, It has a scope. Use it!) I've made a bunch of fan made card ideas, and I'll be sure to looking back to this video, to adjust some of those concepts.
Meta will alwasy be a thing cus you cant stop players caring about wanting to win with the best cards and combos available. Its just a questions how well the game is balanced. Healthy and good Metas can be achieved
I'd like to thank everyone who has given such positive feedback in the days following this video's upload! Although I put a lot of thought and passion into this project, I didn't know whether there was a significant audience for this sort of thing, nor what sort of reaction to expect (if any at all). At least in my own quickplay experience, it's easy to feel that most players are loath to explore outside the safe-but-stale meta, lest their win rate suffer. That longtime players have become so accustomed to the way things are that they feel threatened by any proposed rework to their favorite cards. But the comments here reaffirm that there are indeed folks who-despite enjoying the game-are acutely critical of its shortcomings and hope to see its greater potential realized with future changes. Maybe these aren't always the players that we match against or that we see posting on the discord, but they are here nonetheless, and their voices ought to be known.
Awesome video! I 100% felt all of your observations. It's super refreshing to see card talk outside of the usual "how do I get bff" I've always felt that the game revolves around 3-point guns being an insta win, and all the better cards justify their power creep by saying "Well for [2, 3, 4] it's gotta compete with boomstick somehow!". Nerfing the guns from being a flat +5 to being a +2 in their element while -1 out of it (ie: close range vs long range) makes it much easier to justify nerfing all the cards that supersede it. Or at the very least guns should become the be-all end-all in terms of power and other cards come into play to exploit their weaknesses, rather than being a general-purpose god combo greater than the weapon. Hopefully, it would also make disarm and swap weapon feel way less crushing to play against (beyond actively thinking "ok, I burned it, now my other weapon plays are free"). T-0 meta (cards that are played instantly) is another issue draining the game. All the cards that fall into this category deserve a rework so it no longer does. Like you said, there's absolutely no reason to hold onto barbed cards. The later you play it, the less valuable it is. Even health down, which is 99% a t-0 card, you might want to hold on to to surprise a rushing enemy. Adding a timer to a lot of debuffs is an option, but imo that'll devolve into a stall meta which would be campy and awful. I'd honestly wanna flip the purpose of barbed cards. Have it drain 0.5hp/s per card in hand, giving a rare reason to play cards and not want to draw more. Invisible hand can be reworked into only a 3 second blind while an animation shuffles the player's hand. I love the current love letter, so maybe a new debuff card called like "flirty text messages" would be "heal your opponent 12hp per card you play". I think that would discourage spam without being a T-0 since you don't benefit from healing at max health, but I could be wrong. Above all, I really like your emphasis on promoting cards you can make mistakes with. Time / situation-sensitive card playing is a hugely unique part of fvf, and the cards should really emphasize that. My boyfriend mentioned how he thought Garbage Day was super unique since that's an effect that wouldn't work in a traditional turn-based card game. I kind of disagree with the F tier. Combos suck 100%, but on its own, it's a really unique form of silencing that has a skill-based counter, either by finding cover to stall, or just plain navigating your hand faster. Ok I REALLY need to resist the urge to write comments for any other cards... But I had to get those ones off my chest since no one else seems to think they're worth discussing lol
Thank you for making a video like this. Ive always wanted to see more professional opinions when it comes to balance. Def gonna try and make some changes to my main deck based on some of your insight. (Also wish you mentioned something about using reroll after your opponent uses garbage day, its like my favorite strategy when it happens.)
You sort of address the issues with the Katana but at the end of the day any speed difference against the wielder is essentially a "Lost Game" in my eyes. So much so that one of my favorite ways to actually use the katana card in my deck is specifically only using it with "Swap Weapons" to give the opposing player a dud of a weapon when playing Haru. I'd love if there was some sort of mini burst of speed upon reloading the katana, or even a small dash attack that moved you forward to add in some sort of viable counter play. Until a change like that is made though playing Sable Santana is nothing short of handicapping yourself sadly (especially with Haru's popularity). Still good fun to use in chaotic matches of 2v2 with friends of course but sometimes I just feel bad for the Sable mains.
Yeah, Sable is in an uncomfortable spot rn (if they've *ever* been in a comfortable spot in this game's existence). They're even more at the whim of card RNG and many staple meta cards/combos than any other character... and that's saying something. I do think it's also worth mentioning that the speed difference thing can work in reverse too. If you're slowed down and/or the Sable is sped up and you aren't capable of killing them outright before they can close the distance, you often have very little agency in defending yourself. Normally, you can still do matador-like jukes to buy yourself precious seconds against a katana user that's gotten in your face, but that falls apart once the difference in player speeds is too great. Having some sort of limited mobility tool built into the katana might be the best long-term solution for the mobility-arms-race problem. I'd lean towards something like a straight-line dash (a la Doom Eternal) or some other maneuver that can cover distance but has imperfect control; we already know that straightforward walk speed increases for either side have a tendency to trivialize the interaction.
I think “thoughtseize” effect would be cool “target player reveals their hand. You choose a nonland card from it. That player discards that card. You lose 2 life.”, something like reveals target players hand and remove 1 non weapon card you lose 60-80hp(not sure) you can’t heal till all revealed cards are used (goes between rounds not the health loss as that is an upfront but heal effect as penalty for perfect info) high cost any combo aggressive option
I wish there were no such things as META. I ran into so many high level players who abuse the meta just for them to win. What happened to playing games for FUN?
This is a very well put together video, and I 100 agree with this tierlist. (although I could argue with the no scope sniper changes. I'd go even as far as to make the sniper not shoot at all when no scoping. I mean ffs, It has a scope. Use it!)
I've made a bunch of fan made card ideas, and I'll be sure to looking back to this video, to adjust some of those concepts.
Meta will alwasy be a thing cus you cant stop players caring about wanting to win with the best cards and combos available. Its just a questions how well the game is balanced. Healthy and good Metas can be achieved
I'd like to thank everyone who has given such positive feedback in the days following this video's upload! Although I put a lot of thought and passion into this project, I didn't know whether there was a significant audience for this sort of thing, nor what sort of reaction to expect (if any at all).
At least in my own quickplay experience, it's easy to feel that most players are loath to explore outside the safe-but-stale meta, lest their win rate suffer. That longtime players have become so accustomed to the way things are that they feel threatened by any proposed rework to their favorite cards. But the comments here reaffirm that there are indeed folks who-despite enjoying the game-are acutely critical of its shortcomings and hope to see its greater potential realized with future changes. Maybe these aren't always the players that we match against or that we see posting on the discord, but they are here nonetheless, and their voices ought to be known.
Awesome video! I 100% felt all of your observations. It's super refreshing to see card talk outside of the usual "how do I get bff"
I've always felt that the game revolves around 3-point guns being an insta win, and all the better cards justify their power creep by saying "Well for [2, 3, 4] it's gotta compete with boomstick somehow!". Nerfing the guns from being a flat +5 to being a +2 in their element while -1 out of it (ie: close range vs long range) makes it much easier to justify nerfing all the cards that supersede it. Or at the very least guns should become the be-all end-all in terms of power and other cards come into play to exploit their weaknesses, rather than being a general-purpose god combo greater than the weapon. Hopefully, it would also make disarm and swap weapon feel way less crushing to play against (beyond actively thinking "ok, I burned it, now my other weapon plays are free").
T-0 meta (cards that are played instantly) is another issue draining the game. All the cards that fall into this category deserve a rework so it no longer does. Like you said, there's absolutely no reason to hold onto barbed cards. The later you play it, the less valuable it is. Even health down, which is 99% a t-0 card, you might want to hold on to to surprise a rushing enemy. Adding a timer to a lot of debuffs is an option, but imo that'll devolve into a stall meta which would be campy and awful.
I'd honestly wanna flip the purpose of barbed cards. Have it drain 0.5hp/s per card in hand, giving a rare reason to play cards and not want to draw more. Invisible hand can be reworked into only a 3 second blind while an animation shuffles the player's hand. I love the current love letter, so maybe a new debuff card called like "flirty text messages" would be "heal your opponent 12hp per card you play". I think that would discourage spam without being a T-0 since you don't benefit from healing at max health, but I could be wrong.
Above all, I really like your emphasis on promoting cards you can make mistakes with. Time / situation-sensitive card playing is a hugely unique part of fvf, and the cards should really emphasize that. My boyfriend mentioned how he thought Garbage Day was super unique since that's an effect that wouldn't work in a traditional turn-based card game. I kind of disagree with the F tier. Combos suck 100%, but on its own, it's a really unique form of silencing that has a skill-based counter, either by finding cover to stall, or just plain navigating your hand faster.
Ok I REALLY need to resist the urge to write comments for any other cards... But I had to get those ones off my chest since no one else seems to think they're worth discussing lol
Thank you for making a video like this. Ive always wanted to see more professional opinions when it comes to balance. Def gonna try and make some changes to my main deck based on some of your insight.
(Also wish you mentioned something about using reroll after your opponent uses garbage day, its like my favorite strategy when it happens.)
You sort of address the issues with the Katana but at the end of the day any speed difference against the wielder is essentially a "Lost Game" in my eyes. So much so that one of my favorite ways to actually use the katana card in my deck is specifically only using it with "Swap Weapons" to give the opposing player a dud of a weapon when playing Haru.
I'd love if there was some sort of mini burst of speed upon reloading the katana, or even a small dash attack that moved you forward to add in some sort of viable counter play. Until a change like that is made though playing Sable Santana is nothing short of handicapping yourself sadly (especially with Haru's popularity).
Still good fun to use in chaotic matches of 2v2 with friends of course but sometimes I just feel bad for the Sable mains.
Yeah, Sable is in an uncomfortable spot rn (if they've *ever* been in a comfortable spot in this game's existence). They're even more at the whim of card RNG and many staple meta cards/combos than any other character... and that's saying something.
I do think it's also worth mentioning that the speed difference thing can work in reverse too. If you're slowed down and/or the Sable is sped up and you aren't capable of killing them outright before they can close the distance, you often have very little agency in defending yourself. Normally, you can still do matador-like jukes to buy yourself precious seconds against a katana user that's gotten in your face, but that falls apart once the difference in player speeds is too great.
Having some sort of limited mobility tool built into the katana might be the best long-term solution for the mobility-arms-race problem. I'd lean towards something like a straight-line dash (a la Doom Eternal) or some other maneuver that can cover distance but has imperfect control; we already know that straightforward walk speed increases for either side have a tendency to trivialize the interaction.
Yeah if we add mobility to katana block would need to be removed
holy shit that second clip was insane with big mag getting the kill
Heartless+wall still works and is pretty good but its just out of use because fire is dominating the meta
I think “thoughtseize” effect would be cool “target player reveals their hand. You choose a nonland card from it. That player discards that card. You lose 2 life.”, something like reveals target players hand and remove 1 non weapon card you lose 60-80hp(not sure) you can’t heal till all revealed cards are used (goes between rounds not the health loss as that is an upfront but heal effect as penalty for perfect info) high cost any combo aggressive option