Is Battlegrounds a “Card Game” now?

So I was watching a KT video just now (I know everyone has an opinion but I’m really not here to discuss that kettle of fish) and he made a point that with all the meta defenders coming into the game BGs felt more like a “card game” than an actual 1v1 competitive gamemode.

I mean he kinda has a point and I was feeling this today trying to push, ended up playing for like 2 hours and gained 2 whole points. Now sure there were a couple fights I could’ve done better but for the most part it just felt like the game was won in the draft every time. I mean I was matching against accounts much bigger and players better than me and beating them, then losing to smaller accounts or worse players (I know you can’t judge the “skill” of a player based on 3 fights but people who play BGs will know what I mean) just because certain champions appeared or didn’t appear in the draft.

Maybe it’s because this meta has quite strong attacker and defender boosts so you really feel a mismatch, but the implementation of defenders like Photon, Serpent, Bullseye, Enchantress, Zola etc has made it feel like a bit of a lottery, where if you don’t get a good counter in the draft you’re gonna lose no matter what. Battlegrounds a year ago, or even before then, didn’t feel like this. There were tricky defenders sure, but they were champs like Korg, Nick Fury, Sasquatch, who you could kill with (just about) any high damage decent utility option. Attacker and defender releases this year have felt very specific and targeted, i mean how many champions can take more than one of those defenders i listed above comfortably in a BGs situation? It’s not very many.

Does anyone else feel this way or am I and KT alone on this one?

Comments

GroundedWisdom

It's always been a "card game" in that sense. We have a deck, and select our team, and play the hand we have.

TP33

It's always been a "card game" in that sense. We have a deck, and select our team, and play the hand we have.

Yeah but the point is that now if you don’t get the right cards you’ve basically lost, whereas when the mode started the attackers were better than the defenders and so player skill and intellect was a much bigger determinant of whether you win or lose. Nowadays you just get Zola in the final 3 picks and instant win a round, there’s very little room for player skill with most of these defenders

GroundedWisdom

It's always been a "card game" in that sense. We have a deck, and select our team, and play the hand we have.
Yeah but the point is that now if you don’t get the right cards you’ve basically lost, whereas when the mode started the attackers were better than the defenders and so player skill and intellect was a much bigger determinant of whether you win or lose. Nowadays you just get Zola in the final 3 picks and instant win a round, there’s very little room for player skill with most of these defenders

It's always been a game of picking the right counters for the enemies you're facing.

MrSakuragi

He’s wrong as usual.

Average_Desi

If anything, BG has shown me so many unconventional matchups that work really well.

TotemCorruption

Pretty sure the top Celestial players can kick my butt even if I had my choice of every champ in my deck.

Aleor

The idea of bgs is basically similar to a card game, but card games usually don't have ranks. Put any 5* champs vs r4 7* and you'll lose

It's always been a "card game" in that sense. We have a deck, and select our team, and play the hand we have.
Yeah but the point is that now if you don’t get the right cards you’ve basically lost, whereas when the mode started the attackers were better than the defenders and so player skill and intellect was a much bigger determinant of whether you win or lose. Nowadays you just get Zola in the final 3 picks and instant win a round, there’s very little room for player skill with most of these defenders

Just put a defender your opponent doesn't have a counter for as well. Some time ago it was korg, now it's serpent. If you don't have such defenders, you lost the opening and play with disadvantage. If your champs are not as high in ranks, your opponent gains additional handicap initially. Overall if you want to win in bgs, you have to spend some cash. If you want a fair competition, play chess, mk or something like that. And overall getting stuck at certain rank is expected

TP33

To use an example IMIW, Nick Fury, Korg and Nimrod all used to be top of the line defenders. But CGR could take all of them. Sasquatch, Dr Doom, Thing used to be great at wasting time, but Hit Monkey could nuke all 3.

This balance has shifted such that a defender like Serpent can block off almost every attacker aside from a handful of mystics. Those same mystics really struggle to handle Zola or Enchantress. Attackers used to be multi tools which could deal with more than 1 defender, which meant that when drafting champions, if you had a good attacker, you could handle 2/3 of your opponents defensive options.

The draft used to be won by selecting good attackers, it felt more fair and player based, and instead of being a card game the fights were really important, saving health and time was vital for winning. Now it’s the other way around, if you’ve placed a Red Skull and your opponent doesn’t have a counter, you can take all the time and damage you want but you’ll still win.

Skill is far less important, having the newest and toughest defenders now decides games, it feels less player freindly and more of a gamble/lottery

Emilia90

To use an example IMIW, Nick Fury, Korg and Nimrod all used to be top of the line defenders. But CGR could take all of them. Sasquatch, Dr Doom, Thing used to be great at wasting time, but Hit Monkey could nuke all 3.

This balance has shifted such that a defender like Serpent can block off almost every attacker aside from a handful of mystics. Those same mystics really struggle to handle Zola or Enchantress. Attackers used to be multi tools which could deal with more than 1 defender, which meant that when drafting champions, if you had a good attacker, you could handle 2/3 of your opponents defensive options.

The draft used to be won by selecting good attackers, it felt more fair and player based, and instead of being a card game the fights were really important, saving health and time was vital for winning. Now it’s the other way around, if you’ve placed a Red Skull and your opponent doesn’t have a counter, you can take all the time and damage you want but you’ll still win.

Skill is far less important, having the newest and toughest defenders now decides games, it feels less player freindly and more of a gamble/lottery

You can still beat accounts much larger than you, whaling doesn’t make you more skilled. Of course you need counters, but having one champ take all of them isn’t really feasible. And there are still champs that are incredibly versatile and cover a large range of matchups. Starky, Onslaught, Red Guardian, Hulkling, Tigra, Shathra, etc

captain_rogers

They make problematic defenders and then make niche counters who don't work well against non target matchups. Like spiral or gentle.

BKSwisherSweet

Sorry Zelenskyy but you don’t have the cards, but Kabam will take your valuable resources

Squidopus

Idk how controversial a take this is if at all, but I did want to get it off my chest at some point; I actually like the defensive powercreep that everyone’s been complaining about, at least in the grand scheme of things.

People say that before the new wave of defenders that bgs was only about skill, and that was true in a sense, but if you played at any reasonably high skill level then what that usually meant was that your defender was getting nuked in ~30 seconds no matter what you did so it became this extremely tense match where the slightest error or AI inconsistency cost you a few seconds and thus the round. Lots of my games came down to me losing because I nuked my opponent in 31 seconds at full health but my opponent nuked my defender in 29 seconds at full health so too bad. Part of this was that the nukes were so versatile, so people had very little reason to switch off the meta of CGRs and Archangels and Hulklings; the few defenders that stood a remote chance against one usually folded like paper against the others. Drafts felt very samey, and if the opponent had the meta attackers I couldn’t really stop them from using them barring a ban.

With the defensive powercreep matches have become more unstable and with higher variance, and I actually like that. Defenders pose problems that can’t easily be solved by blowing them up before they do anything. If I take some unnecessary chip damage in a fight, it no longer feels like trying to finish the fight is a formality since I’ve already lost; fights go sideways much more often. In the early seasons when I was still barely scraping by into GC I so frequently hit the wall of nothing but 55k scores (50k when they reduced time points). Now I can regularly get into fights in Quantum and still see matchups that get “scrappy”, where we’re both backed into uncomfortable positions and it feels like anything can happen. I know people say that certain defenders without a counter are a death sentence, but if you can pose enough of a problem for your opponent you’ll find that what’s an acceptable “counter” is broader than you think. You’ve still got the meta options, and there was growing pains when it was just Onslaught and Serpent and Bullseye as the “busted” defenders but now that we’ve had room to grow the defensive backbone a bit it feels like you have options in deckbuilding (the 30 champ limit comes into play, you can’t have everything so you gotta decide which pieces you find most valuable). With a few exceptions (Serpent should’ve been nerfed) I like where we’ve ended up more than where we once were.

TLDR: having a proper defensive lineup and more variable fight results as a consequence is actually kinda neat, even if there is some cost in higher draft reliance. I like “scrappier” matchups where people aren’t guaranteed the perfect solution to every problem and have to pick their poisons and know their matchups.

YodaKaj

Pikolu

It's always been a "card game" in that sense. We have a deck, and select our team, and play the hand we have.
Yeah but the point is that now if you don’t get the right cards you’ve basically lost, whereas when the mode started the attackers were better than the defenders and so player skill and intellect was a much bigger determinant of whether you win or lose. Nowadays you just get Zola in the final 3 picks and instant win a round, there’s very little room for player skill with most of these defenders

At high levels, the draft has always determined who wins. That's been a complaint since season 1 of BGs, it isn't anything new.

PT_99

It sure is card game when we're talking about top celestial BG games because skill up there is almost same and win/loss depends on what heroes you pull.
Good thing is that 99% of community isn't playing up in celestial ranks.

So no, BG is still a mixture of skill + good deck mode.

Just like how football, hockey, NFL, NBA is also game of individual skill + good deck of players.

Jack2634

I think it takes more then drafting. Cuz if it is only about deck and draft, players like Bero can't get that much c1 titles back to back, as celestial players often play perfectly, so we can call their skills even. Apart from drafting, you also have to know the limits and matchup duration.

startropics

there are f2p players with relatively very small accounts and they regularly hit celestial and i'm sure that the same groups of players always bunch up near the top, so it's never about luck in the long run.

ESF

Idk how controversial a take this is if at all, but I did want to get it off my chest at some point; I actually like the defensive powercreep that everyone’s been complaining about, at least in the grand scheme of things.

You’ve still got the meta options, and there was growing pains when it was just Onslaught and Serpent and Bullseye as the “busted” defenders but now that we’ve had room to grow the defensive backbone a bit it feels like you have options in deckbuilding (the 30 champ limit comes into play, you can’t have everything so you gotta decide which pieces you find most valuable). With a few exceptions (Serpent should’ve been nerfed) I like where we’ve ended up more than where we once were.

TLDR: having a proper defensive lineup and more variable fight results as a consequence is actually kinda neat, even if there is some cost in higher draft reliance. I like “scrappier” matchups where people aren’t guaranteed the perfect solution to every problem and have to pick their poisons and know their matchups.

This is a tremendous post IMO; I trimmed a bit out of it to emphasize these portions of what the OP said, but I encourage everyone to read the full post because, IMO, all of it is great.

But I did want to talk about this because at some point, I was going to write about this topic, but now that it’s done, awesome.

I really like Battlegrounds, even though I am not the best 1v1 player because I just have always been a slower, more methodical player. I can/do all that the game requires, but I am not elite or flawless. I make mistakes. I always say I am about a B-level player who can have some A- moments.

But what the OP describes as “defensive power creep” is what I call “game balance,” and I totally agree that the game is getting healthier as a whole now that more kits are able to FAIRLY — OP is correct: Serpent should have been nerfed and I have a 7r3 and still feel that way — avoid being nuked so you have to actually fight, to some degree.

This game felt unhealthy TO ME maybe…two-plus years ago. I am Valiant and not very deep into Act 9, but the reason I am not all the way caught up is I don’t hate how it feels and plays, but I don’t necessarily think it’s fun. Running through Acts 6-8 wasn’t always fun TO ME, tbh, because my biggest complaint about this game is that it pretty much forces you to rank up the same meta-relevant characters as everyone else. Because it’s a competitive game and nodes add specific kit requirements to deal with them.

But TO ME, JMO, the game is much, much better when players can look at the 300-ish characters available and basically clear content and be competitive in Battlegrounds with as many of the kits as possible?

Why?

SO YOU CAN USE YOUR FAVORITE CHARACTERS.

Right?!?!

The whole point of this thing for some of us is to collect and play characters who we actually like, from whatever media/lore we consumed that got us here in the first place.

I bang this drum ALL THE TIME, but that’s why the buff program was/is so important —
Magneto should be awesome! OG/Superior Iron Man should be awesome! Juggernaut should be awesome! Blue Cyclops should be awesome!

That’s what the game needs most — not characters with built-in/fake mechanics that are basically cheats, like Serpent’s end mechanics, but kits that are a good balance of offense and defense and utility that represent the source material.

If you bring an OG Storm into BGs, you should have a chance to win. You might not be the fastest so you lose, but the offense/defense/utility should be there so you COULD win.

The OP is right in that the game had to get more kits into it that forced players to not rank up the same 50 kits. It was so boring and I hated going into BGs and seeing the same kits.

I put my money where my mouth is, too — you know the kit of mine that gets banned the most? No lie, depending on the nodes?

My 6r5a Sig 200 Annihilus. Gets banned all the time.

That’s what this game needs more of, even today — there’s still quite a few kits that need help and that why it’s frustrating that even 3-6 months, the buff program takes more hits.

This game is better when the floor of kits is “good,” not when the ceiling of kits is “great.”

I just wanted to agree with the OP and say, again, that the work of the buff program really wasn’t finished and to me…the more kits that are “good,” the better the game experience is in all modes, especially BGs.

Herbal_Taxman

Idk how controversial a take this is if at all, but I did want to get it off my chest at some point; I actually like the defensive powercreep that everyone’s been complaining about, at least in the grand scheme of things.

People say that before the new wave of defenders that bgs was only about skill, and that was true in a sense, but if you played at any reasonably high skill level then what that usually meant was that your defender was getting nuked in ~30 seconds no matter what you did so it became this extremely tense match where the slightest error or AI inconsistency cost you a few seconds and thus the round. Lots of my games came down to me losing because I nuked my opponent in 31 seconds at full health but my opponent nuked my defender in 29 seconds at full health so too bad. Part of this was that the nukes were so versatile, so people had very little reason to switch off the meta of CGRs and Archangels and Hulklings; the few defenders that stood a remote chance against one usually folded like paper against the others. Drafts felt very samey, and if the opponent had the meta attackers I couldn’t really stop them from using them barring a ban.

With the defensive powercreep matches have become more unstable and with higher variance, and I actually like that. Defenders pose problems that can’t easily be solved by blowing them up before they do anything. If I take some unnecessary chip damage in a fight, it no longer feels like trying to finish the fight is a formality since I’ve already lost; fights go sideways much more often. In the early seasons when I was still barely scraping by into GC I so frequently hit the wall of nothing but 55k scores (50k when they reduced time points). Now I can regularly get into fights in Quantum and still see matchups that get “scrappy”, where we’re both backed into uncomfortable positions and it feels like anything can happen. I know people say that certain defenders without a counter are a death sentence, but if you can pose enough of a problem for your opponent you’ll find that what’s an acceptable “counter” is broader than you think. You’ve still got the meta options, and there was growing pains when it was just Onslaught and Serpent and Bullseye as the “busted” defenders but now that we’ve had room to grow the defensive backbone a bit it feels like you have options in deckbuilding (the 30 champ limit comes into play, you can’t have everything so you gotta decide which pieces you find most valuable). With a few exceptions (Serpent should’ve been nerfed) I like where we’ve ended up more than where we once were.

TLDR: having a proper defensive lineup and more variable fight results as a consequence is actually kinda neat, even if there is some cost in higher draft reliance. I like “scrappier” matchups where people aren’t guaranteed the perfect solution to every problem and have to pick their poisons and know their matchups.

Couldn’t agree more. Variety and unexpected outcomes are welcome. It’s the same reason I enjoyed the outlier metas like power burn or sharpened claws. There’s a greater chance that something interesting will happen, as opposed to many of the metas where you know as soon as the draft is over “Well, this is going to be three matches that finish 51,000 to 50,500 and I hope I’m on the right side of the AI behavior.”