2 weeks ago DC decided to implement random rules per player per attempt in Soulkeep to try to combat issues with multi-accounts and strategy sharing.
DC certainly went all in on the randomness. As you can see mentioned, the overall battle rules, the specific values of the battle rules, the number of fiends and how much damage is dealt all have some random factor involved now. This random factor is applied for each tournament attempt a player takes.
Personally I'm not liking this change to tournament gameplay at all, though if I was playing SK in a single player mode I likely wouldn't mind and probably would even appreciate the added randomness to keep things a bit surprising.
The tournament battle rules determine the max score potential for a given map. Spawn rate changes can add or decrease the number of mobs available during Mana Mania for example or determine if a Voodoo Sapper gets overwhelmed or can get boosted kills on everything passing by. There was already some random factor built into things with Tower and Spell blocker. If RNG doesn't like you for that run, Tower or Spell blocker can keep the cards you need locked down and unplayable.
The difference in battle rule values can be quite significant now from player to player and attempt to attempt.
Here I have a run with Better Ability boosting the mobs 11% per wave. Honestly that's not all that much, though it can add up on longer maps.
Here I'm running against mobs boosted 37% per wave! A Slaying Mantis boosted such is spawning Terror Mites off screen before you can even see it. It almost doesn't move forward down the path, it takes half a step and spawns, half a step spawn repeatedly just keeps spawning more and more. Imagine playing rounds where your Pixies are healing all the mobs around them 37% more often while your opponent's are only healing 11% more often.
Mistakes are much more costly now. It use to be if you messed up you can buy another attempt and fix the mistake you made & work out a strategy for that map/rule combo. Now though if you mess up, while you can buy another attempt it will be under different rules and different values which means you can't fix your mistakes anymore. A new strategy is required per attempt. Additionally if you mess up on what is considered a "good" set of battle rules, you may not get another "good" set if RNG hates you that day.
Personally I don't think these changes really did much to change things up for the top level players or even for the multi-account players the changes where meant to combat. Most of them were already buying multi-attempts to compete against each other. Now they can attempt to just buy better rules than anyone else.
If you use to do decently well on 1-2 attempts previously though chances are you're not going to be doing as well now. For 2 weeks prior to these changes my record was 9,5,9,11,13,9,9,9,11,13,5,4,11,7 for a 2 week average of 9 on 1 attempt per day except 1 day I ran twice. Since the changes my record has been 19,13,22,25,14,4,18,17,26,10,30,14,6 with today's run yet to do. Even if I somehow pull out a first place win later today my 2 week average since this change will have dropped to roughly 16. I went from mostly placing in the top 10 daily to once a week if I'm lucky.
I really hope that DC has something else planned that will return things to a more even and fair playing field soon. In its current form, it just isn't as fun to me to pull the lever and see if I get lucky.
