Manufactured Difficulty - lack of color

Early Access Archive Early Access Game Feedback
1

I began my dailies today with a 2-color paladin (my main, yellow/red) who is the only character I have at lv 50 and is still struggling to complete the story. I noticed yellow and red gems were rather scarce as I completed my dailies and had to do most of my work with skulls, only casting maybe 1 or 2 spells (none during PvPs).

Having hit a wall with my Pally, I switched to my 2-color assassin alt (green/purple) to earn some quick gems. I then noticed how scarce green and purple gems were, and again had to do most of my work with skulls.

It’s entirely possible my own bias is clouding my perception, maybe because spells now cost so much more mana that it simply feels like I’m starved for color. Or maybe not, because it seems like every battle I fight the opening board is devoid of whatever color my character needs.

I love match-3 games and PQ3 is particularly deep and fun, but one thing I expect is total randomization of the board and the various colors. I hope difficulty isn’t being manufactured by starving the player of mana, as difficulty should be entirely dependent on enemy strength in a game like this. No player wants to feel like the game is artificially denying them color and access to spells - a key aspect to keeping battles fun/engaging.

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2

I dont think so, I have noticed this as well.

The opening board is usually pretty even, I always count and nearly always come up with 6-7 of each. It’s the drops that cause the scarcity of what you need. That coupled with the fact that one tends to match (thus remove) the colors that they need leads to difficulty in finding the right colors.

3

They made a change in 0.35 that capped the starting amount of skull to around 5 as well as making gems spawn relatively evenly. There are a few starting items that can break this, but for the most part it is the least RNG it has ever been.

They mostly did this to nerf burst RNG 1st turn builds like when bone ring was meta as well as drastically lowering the chance of a 1st turn board stun compared to pre-0.35. It is still possible to, but a lot less likely.

4

This hit me tonight, as I got excited to finally get the item I needed to upgrade my solitary rare bone ring to epic (my first evolved epic piece of gear), and realized… going from 10 starting mana to 15 starting mana when spells cost 100+ is not quite the big deal it used to be.

5

I checked with the Designers and the colours are evenly weighted.