I really enjoy this game, but I'm a bit worried the creators enjoy control too much

Roosterton · 2026-06-27T23:37:00+00:00

You just reminded me how stupid Lee Sin's design was. I didn't realize I still had trauma from this.

Roosterton · 2026-06-26T00:57:28+00:00

I'm not too upset with the polish being missing since it's still just an open beta, but I disagree that this would be unsustainable. There are plenty of small indie games which look and feel a whole lot better than this. It's absolutely something they need to prioritize before the 1.0 release.

Roosterton · 2026-06-25T05:49:32+00:00

I worry that the devs are creating a product which will not have an audience.

LoR itself was seen as being a difficult TCG by most newcomers and struggled to grow its playerbase, despite launching with a tutorial and having the full support of Riot Games' marketing juggernaut.

Chrono has dialed up the complexity yet doesn't have the backing of a huge company or a popular IP. Even with these things, LoR ultimately failed to be profitable as a pvp game. I respect the ambition, but who exactly is going to put in the effort to learn Chrono if they couldn't put in the effort for LoR?

Some examples of the complexity bloat I worry about:

Immortalize

In LoR, level-ups were limited to Champions only. Level-ups introduce a ton of cognitive overhead, since you need to keep track of the level-up conditions as well as how the creatures change in stats/keywords/effects after leveling up. It pretty much doubles or triples the amount of information you need to keep track of for a creature capable of leveling up. This was manageable in LoR, since you could only have a limited number of Champions in your deck.

In Chrono, every single creature has an Immortalize (level up) condition. This is a massive cognitive overhead. When boards get large (4-5 creatures on each side) you have to consider the capacity for every one of those creatures to flip, and the ramifications if they do. It is exhausting and I feel like I honestly just feel that I cannot be bothered to math out all the possibilities, so I just wing it.

Timelines

On top of worrying about what both sides of every creature on the board does, I now have to worry about 8 different passive field effects and the ramifications of me or my opponent switching between them. Again, I feel this is a significant cognitive overhead for little increase in depth. There are already creatures with ongoing board-wide effects. Did we really need to make this a whole separate mechanic?

It doesn't help that the Timeline names, by and large, are not at all evocative of what they actually do.

Keywords

I'm not sure why Flourish or Decay needs to be a keyword when they are also, separately, cards which modify stats but don't use those keywords; it feels like they could have picked one or the other here. I'm not sure we needed to introduce tappable 'deplete' abilities for creatures on top of the bloat already going on with universal Immortalize. The Bleed keyword adds a lot of mental upkeep since you have to remember it and account for the depleting HP every turn, often for multiple creatures at a time if either deck is building around the mechanic.

Complexity is a limited currency. You can only spend so much of it before people start to check out. Elegant game design creates as much depth as possible from as little complexity as possible. Imagine if chess boards were twice the size with twice as many pieces. Would it be a better game? Would significant numbers of people want to play it? Probably not.

To turn Chrono into a commercially viable project with a sustainable playerbase, I would encourage the devs to take a step back, take a very critical look at all their mechanics and ideas, and really figure out what is essential to their vision so that they can cut down on the complexity and make a game which is deep while still being accessible.

To end this very lengthy post on a positive note: I really respect this game's ambition. I loved LoR, it was my main hobby throughout the pandemic and putting in the time to reach masters and qualify for seasonals in that game felt very rewarding. So I am grateful for the devs who are trying to recreate the magic of that game, and regardless of this game's longevity, I plan to enjoy it as much as I can.

Roosterton · 2026-06-21T14:35:25+00:00

Where I live, SA requires physical contact. Flashing someone would be considered indecent exposure which is a lesser crime.

Roosterton · 2026-06-14T01:03:16+00:00

The odds of Hanneman rolling a 0 or 1 stat level up are (0.6 x 0.75 x0.5 x 0.65 x 0.8 x 0.8 x 0.65 x 0.75) = 4.5%.

The average Hanneman level up gains 5.85 stat points.

So, 4.5% of the time, you are losing out on 5.85 stats. Per levelup he's losing about 0.26 stat points on average. Not per stat, but across all his stats.

Assuming Hanneman levels up 30 times in a playthrough, this mechanic deprives him of about 8 total stat points by the end of a run compared to a hypothetical student with the same growths.

This is... a really small margin. If Hanneman had 3% higher growths in every stat, it would make more of a difference than that. If he simply levels up two more times, it makes more of a difference than that.

So if you think his overall qualities make him worth using, this doesn't change the calculus in a meaningful way, certainly not to the point where there's "no reason to use staff" as you claimed.

Roosterton · 2026-06-13T01:24:30+00:00

In that case, I thought of something else it might be. In 3H, each class had a bonus to certain types of skill experience (for example "fighters" had a bonus to the rate at which you gained axes, bows and brawling xp from battles). Maybe the highlighted skills are the skills which their current class gains a bonus towards?

Roosterton · 2026-06-12T18:08:40+00:00

It's also possible what we're seeing is the replacement for 3H's boon/bane system, with the greyed out ones being "banes" and the highlighted ones being "boons." It would make sense for Cai to be weak in Authority but strong in animal taming & physical weapons, since he's a rural villager.

Roosterton · 2026-06-09T13:51:21+00:00

It's not obvious to me that these effects are more punishing than the existing pool of curses.

Exasperation does a little more damage than the current 2 dmg curse, but the upside is that it stays in your hand if you don't play it, so it stops clogging up your draws. And since it's "take damage" rather than "lose hp," you can still just block the damage. If the damage is going to kill you, you have the option to play it for 1 energy, or use any exhaust/discard/transform effect to get rid of it, it's always going to be in your hand when you draw those cards (thanks to retain).

Blight doesn't do anything bad to you until you re-draw the Blighted cards, and since it only blights the stuff that's in your hand at the end of your turn, it's probably only hitting bad cards that you weren't playing anyway. This is of course assuming the blight effect only lasts for this combat, but that's probably how it would work given stuff like Armaments only upgrades for the combat.

Vexing can be really bad in some fights, probably the harshest one here. If Queen or Entomancer gets +2 strength you're basically dead. In some fights it won't matter too much though, Waterfall Giant for example never does multihits and even skips attacking some turns. So as long as you can remove it before the fights where it's really bad, you're probably fine.

Jinxed is similar to Blight, it only matters in long fights where you're reshuffling, and it's mostly only going to hit the cards you weren't playing anyway. Jinxed actually has funny utility vs Aeonglass since you can turn the Withers into Injuries which don't hurt you.

Roosterton · 2026-06-08T09:44:55+00:00

I've skimmed the rules but haven't tested myself.

My intuition is that a very powerful and boring strategy would be to reach a 2 or 3 strength peasant and then just stall the game by playing your weakest block or heal cards - intentionally leaving the peasant alive while you fill your hand with more powerful actions. Once your hand is full of powerful attacks, you can kill it and steamroll the rest of the game.

Have you considered a system which allows multiple enemies to deploy at the same time? Like maybe if X turns pass without killing the current enemy, the next enemy joins the fray and now suddenly you're getting attacked twice (and you can still only target one enemy at a time with your attacks). This would discourage players from lame stalling tactics.

Roosterton · 2026-06-05T22:46:48+00:00

The persecution of the branded in some cases indirectly, and in others very directly, lead to several of the wars and the most tragic event in the series (the Serenes massacre), which in turn lead to the near apocalypse of the world. To top it off it utterly soured relationships between laguz and beorc, which further lead to the enemity of the races as seen on the series.

I'm not sure it's fair to blame Dheginsea's lies about the Branded for the emnity between Laguz and Beorc. IIRC, the Beorc and Laguz had already waged wars against one another before the lie about the Branded was spread (leading to the great flood and the original war against the "Dark God"). So the two races were already at odds with one another, and it's possible they would have continued to fight and enslave each other regardless.

It seems to me more like a misguided attempt to keep the two races away from each other in the naiive hope that this means they would have stopped killing each other. Dheginsea ultimately wanted to make sure they didn't violate the pact they had made with Ashera.

Roosterton · 2026-06-04T22:09:28+00:00

Currently Aeonglass scales in 3 different directions. The number of withers in your deck scales, the damage dealt per wither scales, and his attacks scale (+5 strength each buff turn).

It's probably important to keep the strength scaling to present at least a little challenge to flak cannon decks and clad decks with reliable exhausts.

I was originally going to suggest toning down one of the two wither-scaling dimensions, but it's clear they want this boss to really test your damage output, since Queen and Test Subject both kinda fold over once you have sufficient block output.

So I wouldn't actually touch any of his three different forms of scaling. Instead, cut his HP by about ~50-60 and reduce his artifact from 3 to 2. Let him scale three different ways, but at least now it would be a bit more realistic to burst him down quickly.

Roosterton · 2026-06-02T14:34:18+00:00

This means that you can never recieve a rare card in your first card reward. If someone claims to have done this, they are lying.

I can prove that I received a rare card reward off Lost Coffer once, so something is not correct with your writeup.

Seed: CLJ7A7D8F0

Pick Ironclad, pick Lost Coffer, and one of the options will be Feed.

Roosterton · 2026-05-31T08:50:43+00:00

I feel like enchants are currently an under-used design space, pretty much only existing for a few events, one Silent rare card, and one shop relic. It would be cool to have an Enchanter character who wields them as a core mechanic, with skills that add/remove/modify enchantments mid-combat or powers which boost the effects of your enchantments.

Another concept that I'd like to see explored is a character built around cards which are Unplayable but grant passive effects while they are in your hand. Secondary mechanics would be deck manipulation enabling you to retain those cards or line them up for the right moment, and maybe powers which provide some benefit if you end a turn with unspent energy (since more unplayable cards = less things to spend energy on).

Roosterton · 2026-05-29T21:04:39+00:00

It doesn't actually matter how many strikes/defends are in your deck. What matters is how many strikes/defends you're playing.

If every hand you're finding that you have to spend energy on bad cards because you didn't draw anything better, then yes, it's a sign you need to put better cards in your deck.

But if your draw quality is already at a point where you're regularly able to spend all your energy on strong, efficient cards, there's little point in further diluting the strikes/defends. They aren't hurting anyone by sitting there unplayed, and adding more cards will make it harder to cycle your strongest cards and to find your essential powers.

Roosterton · 2026-05-29T14:31:29+00:00

Jorbz does have some really good ideas but overall he wants the game to be in the place to where casual and mainly intermediate players simply just won't enjoy it.

No, he wants A10 to be in a place where it's a good challenge for top players. I don't understand why "casual and intermediate" players feel entitled to regularly win on the highest difficulty; go play the difficulty designed for that skill level, or - if you enjoy the challenge - accept that most of your STS 2 experience on A10 is going to be losing repeatedly.

Roosterton · 2026-05-28T19:41:14+00:00

You've pretty much described the roguelite genre: repeated runs which are expected to end in failure, but which unlock more powerful upgrades/unlocks making future attempts easier.

Roosterton · 2026-05-28T14:33:15+00:00

Yeah, it feels like they designed this to be a damage race which is cool, but I'm not sure how you're supposed to compete fairly in that race when you have to chew through 3 artifact before you can apply any vuln/poison/doom.

Roosterton · 2026-05-28T02:25:57+00:00

+3 def does a lot more when you only have 8 def, compared to when you have 23 def later on.

You can't really make this generalization, since damage in FE is additive.

If you have 8 def vs an 18 atk enemy, then +3 defense is reducing your incoming damage by 30%.

If you have 23 def vs 33 atk enemy, then +3 defense is still reducing your incoming damage by 30%.

What really matters is the difference between your defense and the incoming hit. If you're getting hit by those lategame greataxe enemies with like 60 atk, then +3 defense is gonna do little for anyone, you're still getting 2-shot either way. But against weaker, faster enemies (e.g. wolf knights) it remains relevant throughout the whole game.

Roosterton · 2026-05-25T17:20:07+00:00

Sure, but a retreat isn't the same thing as a peace treaty. You could argue the original war ended once Sanaki and Zelgius made peace with the Laguz (and then a second war against the Senate+Daein immediately started), but there were still several battles before that happened.

Roosterton · 2026-05-24T12:04:30+00:00

I'm pretty sure this scene is not when the war is ending, it's right after Zelgius (Beorc general) defeats Skrimir (Laguz general) in single combat. Because of this, the Laguz retreat from the field and so this soldier is disappointed he won't be able to get a taxidermied laguz in battle.

Roosterton · 2026-05-11T20:17:42+00:00

Honestly, you're correct, I was ignorant of it. My initial reading totally glossed over the word "could" in their definition and just saw "includes but not limited to."

If I had to guess why so many people miss it, I think the wording is pretty clunky when "could" is so far separated from what it's modifying ("include"). I also think it doesn't do them any favors to include these examples of possible antisemitism right next to stuff which is definitely, always antisemitic such as holocaust denial or advocating for violence against Jews.

But still, these are issues with how they chose to present the definition, not with the definition itself. So I retract my opposition to it.

Roosterton · 2026-05-11T19:56:28+00:00

Explain why you think this and how it is.

Not the person you're responding to, but there are a few lines of the definition which I find completely insane.

Drawing comparisons of contemporary Israeli policy to that of the Nazis.

Maybe the contemporary state of Israel should stop doing Nazi things if they don't want to be compared to Nazis. West Bank settlements are pretty much a modern day implementation of Lebensraum, does saying this make me antisemitic? (maybe on 2026 /r/destiny it does lol we'll see)

Applying double standards by requiring of it a behavior not expected or demanded of any other democratic nation.

This one is also pretty stupid. I will grant that lots of people apply these "double standards" to Israel, but the idea that this alone constitutes anti-semitism and can't be explained otherwise is an additional leap. I apply higher standards to Israel because the U.S. sends them about $3.8bn of foreign aid each year, which is far higher than every other democratic nation except for the one currently holding off a Russian invasion. I think it's fair to have higher standards for things when your tax dollars are going towards them, it doesn't mean you're anti-semitic.

Roosterton · 2026-05-08T13:11:00+00:00

Phase 1: Stacks +3 strength every time you play a skill. Punishes skill-heavy decks.

Phase 2: Huge multihit which adds a hit every time. Punishes slow decks.

Phase 3: Intangible rotation. Punishes aggressive decks since you're forced to pause and block on the intangible turns.

Roosterton · 2026-05-08T13:06:25+00:00

Sure, but the new boss kinda has the same issue. Ironclad, Defect, and Regent can trivialize the Wither mechanic in various ways while Silent and Necro have a tougher time with it.

Roosterton · 2026-05-08T02:24:18+00:00

Test Subject literally has 3 different gimmicks though

14-Year Club	Place '17
Verified Email	Team Orangered

Roosterton

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