When people think of Paladins -a class based FPS- the first thing that comes to mind is 'Overwatch clone' or 'the other Team Fortress'. In reality, however, the game distinguishes itself with its card-based customization. Unlike Overwatch, any character can be tweaked with the card system, allowing any strength or weakness to suit the unique style of the player, rather than the other way around.
Despite Paladins being a legitimately good game on its own, this hasn't stopped Hi-Rez studios -the game's developer and publisher- from making some really dumb decisions with their updates. The vast majority of which come in the form of counter-intuitive balance updates, which are seemingly designed to unbalance the game.
Kinessa, the flank character and resident sniper of the game, needs to use meter in order to do something as simple as looking down the scope of her sniper rifle. Meanwhile, Lex, a flank character, dual wields pistols that rapid fire like an automatic shotgun, and can kill pretty much anyone in two hits. You think they would have nerfed his ass by now, but they've been buffing his character with every update, giving him all the advantages of a damage class with none of the drawbacks a flank would normally have.
Pay-to-win card system?
All of these counter intuitive balance issues pale in comparison to the most polarizing update yet, known as OB64. The most controversial update in Paladins OB64 by far is the inclusion of Cards unbound, which completely overhauls the card system and turns it into a less-skill-based system.
In the past, players would use a currency earned in game called Essence, which used to be a dedicated currency to the old card system. It was required to unlock new cards for your Champion, and once you buy them, you are required to divide twelve 'points' between the five cards in your loadout for a character. These would include things like speed increases, damage buffs, and reduced cooldowns for a champion's special abilities. the more points of the twelve you put in a particular card, the stronger that card's ability is.
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| What the older --better-- card system looked like. |
In the past, players would use a currency earned in game called Essence, which used to be a dedicated currency to the old card system. It was required to unlock new cards for your Champion, and once you buy them, you are required to divide twelve 'points' between the five cards in your loadout for a character. These would include things like speed increases, damage buffs, and reduced cooldowns for a champion's special abilities. the more points of the twelve you put in a particular card, the stronger that card's ability is.
However, with the cards unbound update, the Essence currency is removed from the game altogether, allowing all the cards to be unlocked from the start. If you want to buff any particular card, you are now forced to grind through a random loot box system, making it very unlikely that you will rank up any of the cards you actually want to use. Getting duplicates of the same cards is how cards are ranked up now, and you can even get duplicates of cards you already maxed out. To make matters worse, the chests you use to grind cards are the same chests you win skins and emotes from, further decreasing the likelihood that you would ever get duplicates of the cards you actually need.
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| This is what the new card system looks like. A card's level is determined by how many times you win duplicates in an item drop. You can't rank a particular card up yourself, you have to pray to Jesus while sacrificing a small goat during a full moon to get a needed item from a loot chest. |
Hi-rez tries to offset the outrage over the new card system by separating them by game modes, such as Unbound Classic and Cards Unbound. Unbound Classic is supposed to represent the old loadout style, except it doesn't really. Your loadout consists of five un-buffed cards that you have to divide points between, but instead of having twelve points, you now get 25 points to divide among your loadout. for example, a front-line like Fernando can buff a lifesteal card for nearly 150% damage, which is where in-game balance gets tossed out the window. In fact, buffing flanks-who already do a ton of damage- with lifesteal cards that can be worth more than 4 points is ultimately a game-breaking balance change that makes passive support classes like Jenos and Grover practically useless when healing a Damage or flank class who doesn't have a health boosting card worth more than 4 points in a loadout.
Adding modes divided by old and new card stacking styles also runs the risk of dividing an already small playerbase between the modes. And since Unbound classic exists in both casual and ranked game modes, it would mean that the playerbase is getting segmented at least four times; increasing an already long matchmaking wait time.
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| This is me trying in vain to get a ranked card for Jenos -my main support class- in the loot chests using a support-enchanted key for the 2nd time. I never played three out of the four characters on this picture. As far as I can recall, Mokoa (Giant tirtle) is a front line, and Androxus is a Flank. Why are there two non-support classes getting ranked up cards if I had a support class enchanted key again? |
This also runs the risk of being prohibitively confusing for new players. This game isn't even in its alpha stage, and already, we have two card systems in one game that aren't compatible with each other
It's also worth mentioning that the effect of the OB64 update will very by platform. The console version of Paladins is drastically different from the version on Steam right now, since it has yet to recieve a port of the OB64 update that everyone has been complaining about.
People are leaving Paladins behind
It comes as no surprise then that most of the YouTube community-based Paladins players have announced that they will be leaving the game behind once the update is launched. Players like sneak310, Joshino, and Paladins TV all quit, expressing disdain for the game over what many are calling a push toward a pay-to-win system.
A large portion of Cards Unbound's detractors have been comparing OB64 to EA's Star Wars Battlefront II controversy.
I'm not against microtransactions as a whole. I believe there are certain circumstances that make microtransactions justifiable, and even -indirectly- improve the games they are made in. For example, if there is something in a game that I earned through gameplay that I could have paid for, by a matter of exchange, that means that a monetary value can be measurably attributed to my participation in the game. It implies that my gameplay is just as good as the money I would have spent playing. Having character tiers and items that you can't work for sharing the same space as the items that you could grind to get will ultimately diminish the value of the game.
Update: the console versions of the game's updates seem to have caught up with the Steam version in OB65, meaning everyone is stuck with cards unbound now.
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