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Offline iDaireTopic starter

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EtG: Slot Mechanic Theory (Incomplete) https://elementscommunity.org/forum/index.php?topic=59439.msg1203788#msg1203788
« on: September 04, 2015, 06:55:35 pm »
Currently in Elements the Game, there's a very simple system as to how you get your cards on the field. You gather up enough quantum on the field and when you feel it's the right time to put your card out there, you click it, and it goes into one of the predefined slots, where the card then does whatever it's going to do and the game goes on as usual. For most of you, this is how Elements is supposed to run. I mean, this is the system that's been with Elements forever and even Open Elements the Game runs on this system. There's nothing wrong with how Elements is run.

Well, me personally I see an area of Elements that is mostly left unattended, and unaddressed to a similar extent. When people bring up the flaws of Elements, the first things we usually think to bring up are the cards of Elements, but, I see an area that could open a whole new dynamic of strategy onto the game we know as Elements. What if before we placed our creatures and permanent on the field, we could select where they would be placed and what slot they would fall into?



Allow me to give a brief explanation of how this feature would work. You gather the amount of quantum that you need to play your card first, foremost, and always, and then, you click on the card when you are ready to play it. Similar to how spells allow you to target creatures, you would be greeted with a prompt as to where you want to place the card you are putting down. This would make Elements somewhat of a chessboard, except none of your "pieces" are on the board as of yet.

As anyone would know, there are three types of cards in Elements: creatures, permanents, and spells, the prior two having the ability to either be placed on the field or to be placed in the hands of the owner as a weapon or shield. For this system, you can determine where you want to place your creatures and permanents. Spells aren't cards that can be placed on the board, and to avoid confusion, I'll come back to those later. So, the idea is that there are five rows (combining the rows for creatures and permanents) that you can place any of your able cards on. You can place your card in any slot in any row as long as that slot isn't occupied by any creature. This basically works like checkers if you have ever played it, or connect four...yeah. That said, there are 7 slots in each row.




Now, some of you will probably already be thinking that you have heard this complaint before, most likely in consistency with flooding, and that this isn't a prevalent issue in Elements, probably not as prevalent an issue in Elements as things such as some of the cards in Elements. Sit down and think about it however. How would Elements change if we were to just be able to change the slot that our creatures are summoned in? The answer probably comes back as not at all. Currently in Elements, it matters not if we had the ability to determine where our creatures would fall. Only flooding would be a card that might have little to do with this matter.

In which case, what if we also implemented cards into Elements that would exercise said ability?

Like I've said before, there are five rows delegated to each player, and seven slots in each row, allowing for 35 cards to be placed, and potentially more depending on cards that can be added. Using this new slot mechanic, we can finally make cards based on where cards are placed and as such, there are new opportunities and deck ideas that could be added as well as cards that could be created. Elements becomes something similar to chess: knowing when to protect your pieces and knowing how to checkmate the king. Of course, this is only the tip of the iceberg. This slots mechanic can be expanded on. If you've understood what's been said so far, and you have a valid idea of what I'm saying, let's move on to how this can get more advanced.



Getting into the more advanced part of how this slot mechanic can be manipulated and made into something completely strategic, we are already aware that we click on a creature or permanent and we can play it anywhere on the field, which has now been turned into a grid, correct? We can expand on this and make this idea bigger.

As of right now, there is zero purpose in doing any of this unless our objective is to just eliminate all of the creatures on the enemy's side of the field, so what if you can only attack your opponent if you have a clear shot of your opponent? What I mean is, you can only attack the enemy directly if there are no creatures in front of you. If there are creatures in front of you, you would by nature attack them instead to get to the owner behind the creature. Essentially, you need to clear the column in front of your creature to deal damage to the owner. So, you'd need to be wary of where you've placed your creature and if you'll have a clear shot to the opponent. This alone gives cards like photon, ash eater, and spark a little extra significance in the game, since you could just use them to block a creature's path of assault, albeit temporarily.

As you've probably heard, you can also place permanents anywhere on the field as well, but such freedom doesn't go without inhibition. Creatures destroy the permanents in front of them in one hit, or if there is a stack of permanents in front of them, they destroy one permanent from the stack each time they hit. So, it isn't that wise to place your pillars front row unless you feel like losing some quantum or nullifying a single hit. This would also change the function of certain permanents such as bone wall. Since there are seven slots in each row, bone wall would probably span across all seven slots, and any deaths would add bones to random walls. Still with me?

Well, that's one way we could go with this. A different way is that we can have each enemy be an actual person on the field with the ability to move which slot they are on each turn. In addition, your creatures can also be moved into different slots at the start of each turn but permanents can't. What this would mean is that if your player is being assaulted, you can move him out of the way, but in doing so, the creature assaulting you can also be moved. This adds yet another dynamic into EtG. We could make spells and permanents based on just get the player into one spot and dropping their health. In this scenario, Elements truly becomes a game of chess, in which point your objective is to capture the king.

In addition to what was previously stated, we could also introduce the ability for certain cards to be summoned on the enemy's side if the field or for certain cards to be able to reach the creature's side and hinder the opponent's strategy. If this is very confusing as of right now, I'll have pictures of everything later to explain it all.

So basically, do you guys have an idea now of how useful utilizing something as miniature as a slot mechanic can be? This is an incomplete thread, a stub if you will, so I will add some more on to this, but I'd appreciate feedback if you've read this far with me. Thank you for your patience. iDaire out.


« Last Edit: September 04, 2015, 06:58:37 pm by iDaire »

Offline Tirear

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Re: EtG: Slot Mechanic Theory (Incomplete) https://elementscommunity.org/forum/index.php?topic=59439.msg1204329#msg1204329
« Reply #1 on: September 07, 2015, 03:51:44 am »
A lot of existing decks work because CC is something you specifically have to dedicate card slots to. When horned frogs work like eagle eye without the high quanta costs, it changes everything. Really, it sounds like you want to play a different game. Might I recommend Heavenstrike Rivals?

I suppose I could see this being implemented like Real Time Elements was. No need to balance the game around photons being able to destroy pillars, players aren't forced to rebuild their decks to accommodate the new format, but a lot of people will have a lot of fun doing something different every now and then.
« Last Edit: September 07, 2015, 03:56:29 am by Tirear »

Offline iDaireTopic starter

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Re: EtG: Slot Mechanic Theory (Incomplete) https://elementscommunity.org/forum/index.php?topic=59439.msg1205778#msg1205778
« Reply #2 on: September 16, 2015, 09:40:22 pm »
It's not that I want to play a new game altogether. I want to expand on the original game with a mechanic that has yet to be tapped into and currently does little more than protect five creatures. I will elaborate more on this when I get the chance, but for now, this thread is an incomplete stub.

Offline CleanOnion

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Re: EtG: Slot Mechanic Theory (Incomplete) https://elementscommunity.org/forum/index.php?topic=59439.msg1205780#msg1205780
« Reply #3 on: September 16, 2015, 10:03:42 pm »
Bearing in mind that this is a work in progress, I have to admit it sounds like a quite a good idea. However, it's not EtG and many (if not all) of the cards would have to be rebalanced or just changed/removed - which would change the whole game and you'd have some form of EtG with a new letter prefixing it.

Perhaps larger creatures could occupy more slots? An Armagio might spread its health around a square of 4 slots, blocking 2 paths to the healthbar?

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Re: EtG: Slot Mechanic Theory (Incomplete) https://elementscommunity.org/forum/index.php?topic=59439.msg1205785#msg1205785
« Reply #4 on: September 16, 2015, 10:51:28 pm »
You might like this card design project:
http://elementscommunity.org/forum/idea-factory/(community-project)-implementing-field-manipulation-series-into-cygnia/


But you are absolutely right, creature/permanent position is a vast untapped area of design for EtG. This has been know about to greater or lesser degrees by a fair number of card designers in the card ideas and art section of the forum.


However in some ways you are talking about an addition of such scale that it is best to think about it as a new game in order to grant the idea the respect and care it deserves. (All the more so now that Zanz has apparently decided not to develop this game further)
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