Crusaders as a game has suffered from many problems affecting the overall quality and balance of the game. Early on, the card pool was small and offered few options for varied deck design.
This was remedied by having nearly 150 cards to choose from, a notable feat for the small size of our development team.
Another issue was defining the exact turn and attack order to make attacking consistent and avoid conflicts.
A problem stretching from the early days until present day is balancing out certain characters against other characters. The goal was to make sure all characters have a fighting chance against all other characters in set one. That would be 10 characters to be balanced, a lofty goal. However, the process grows exponentially easier as each is balanced since each change adds to our lessons learned.
A solid issue emerged however.
Even given the best card pool and consistent rules left some games stalled out and taking as long as an hour. This is unacceptable in order to have the game be able to be played in organized play events.
We attempted to balance the game by playing a variant of the game where all damage from attacks is increased . This made the game faster but created a substantial rift between characters with higher HP and defensive abilities and those who did not.
It unbalanced the game in a way that we couldn’t lightly fix.
The solution would have to come from a new direction. The game at the time lacked any alternate means to win the game besides KO’ing the opponent. What could fix this?
Story.
Story is the reason we have a game and adding to the story element would allow our alternate means to win a game to feel natural.
Enter Heroic and Villainous Feats. An alternate but story driven means to win will change the game to be supremely better.
Stay tuned, Chaos’ dark heart will enter the game.
The Crusaders© Card Game 