Over the last days and weeks I have noticed several threads pondering possible future directions that Elements could take from where it stands now, and I figured that as one of the oldest (since Summer '09) and most invested (arena lvl. 83) players around here I'd share my perspective. While most people agree that some changes need to be implemented, I find that most proposed changes are only punctual and not well-eleborated, such as "Add those 3 cards from CIA!", or "Dim Sheild cost +1!". What I would like to do in this post is to take a look at some aspects of the game and apply some game design theory to extrude some more in-general guidelines on how to progress the game. One preface I'd like to make here is that this is not intended as a diss towards Zanzarino or Elements, which still remains a tremendous original work by zanz. This of course doesn't mean it is without flaws. In this post I will try to list and explain some of them, mainly those which I think would take little time to correct compared to the increase in game quality that would bring with it.
So the first, and most obvious issue to get out of the way is that an active developer is needed. That's pretty much the consensus already though, so I won't elaborate much on that.
One thing I do want to adress here is how the design
quality of the card game can be improved. I'm going to mainly demonstrate this by giving a few in-game examples:
- The first thing that I would like to adress are the shards and I sadly can't anything more positive than they are way overdue to get axed. They have utterly failed in refreshing the game and have even actively driven a good number of players away from it. I have discussed their flaws in-depth in
this post. Naturally, you can't just kick them out with no replacement, so a different, newly designed rare cycle would have to take their place. This wouldn't be too difficult to realize either, just make something cool for each Element that fits, like Darkness could have a big Demon, Fire some kickass Dragon, Aether... already has Fractal, Water some cthulhu-esque Monster, et cetera. Vital requirement though is that they
have to be epic, which is not something I see very often in contemporary CI&A, probably because the creators fear to come off like some newb kiddie on a power trip. That's what you'd have to go for here though.
- Next, I'd like to take a side-by-side comparison of two cards that don't seem to have much in common but will help us understand one aspect of good design: Thorn Carapace and Golden Hourglass. Thorn Carapace is a unique card in Elements in that it is, while not actually a very strong card, does something no other card does: It kills everything. Even immortal creatures or those mighty Massive Dragons will die to it within a couple turns. So, what is the problem? It is a Life card. So you're in the paradoxical situation of a Life permanent being the most reliable mass-killer in the game. (Now, some smartass might say that Death is a part of Life, and no, that doesn't count when there's an actual Element called Death in the game as well.) Ideally, the mechanics of a card, how it plays out, already give you a feeling for its background flavour, without looking at its nameor anything. Conversely, let's take a look at the Hourglass: You play it, and what happens now is that the longer the game progresses, the more likely you are to win as the Hourglass will generate you a small advantage each turn:
Time is on your side. See? Creating some flavour-mechanical
synesthesia can be that easy. Logically, Life, purely mechanically speaking, should be focused on creatures, all with a variety of abilities that allow it to handle most threats - Life is adaptable after all. Another takeaway here is, that not only should cards be made with their elemental background in mind, the y also shape how an Element is perceived on the whole. If an Element has a clear identifieable identity, this is much more evocative than just a pile of random cards that you could somehow justify to put in there. This is why "complete" Elements, that can accomodate any possible playstyle, are simply a design flaw. Each Element should have their strengths
and weaknesses, as well as some sort of mechanical identity.
- For another comparison I would like to summon Dimensional Shield and Nova. Both of these cards are currently exeptionally powerful. Which one of them should be nerfed? Well Dimensional Shield definitely has to be. Nova on the other hand, even though it is probably actually a little ahead of Dim Shield in power level, is a much closer call. Why is that? Not all cards are created equal, and some are simply more worthy of receiving a little push from the balancing side. This can be due to its mechanics being for fun in gameplay, as it is the case for Nova. Yes, it is somewhat opressive on the metagame, but it also enables an enormous variety of decks and rewards creative and unconventional deckbuilding. Maybe 3 years ago more so than nowadays, but you can still see an interesting new brew in a restricted even every now and then. Plus those colorful Nova decks are just visually pleasing to look at. Dim Shield on the other hand makes for mostly bland games. It single-handedly shuts down literally half the cards in the game, reducing interactivity to a simple rock-paper-scissor type game of whether you brought an answer for it, or not. Pretty much the same is true for Discord, by the way. Now, Nova and Dimensional Shield were examples for cards that should be balanced differently based on their mechanics, but this can also apply to flavor. More evocative, insipring concepts certainly deserve to be pushed a little bit over more generic cards.
- Next, let us look at the innocuous-looking Blue Crawler. What is my beef with this card? Simply put, bland flavor. The thing that you can take away from the name, is that it is blue... and that it can crawl. What has Water done to deserve such an unimaginative abomination? There are so many cool possibilities for Water without even drifting into the realm of fantasy...
Angler Fish. Torpedos. Flying Fish. Do you see how these cards almost design themselves? And that's just scratching the surface. We can definitely do better than Blue Crawler I would say. Of course the poor Crawler isn't the only offender in this category. Another huge obstacle here are the entirety of the dragons. They are all vanilla, any Elements gets one, and they are commons. Dragons are one of the most awe-inspiring concepts in all of fantasy, yet in Elements they are normal commoners, abundant in availability and an easily despended commodity. A very similar point can be made for Guardian Angel, whose outstanding crappiness as a card stands in stark contrast to the lengths that people have gone to to make it playable (There even used to be an FG farmer with it at one point). Angels are cool, so there should be a kickass angel.
- Two Elements are not named correctly. They are the opposite pair of Entropy and Gravity. First let's look at Entropy. Thermodynamics quiz: What does the concept of Entropy have to do with randomness? If your answer is "literally nothing", then you are on the money... a good number of Entropy cards, and certainly the most popular ones, mechanically reference randomness. And this is just fine the way it is, it's just that the label doesn't fit at all. Gravity's problem is somewhat more deep-rooted in that the label is unfitting as well, but that there have been made unsuccesful attempts to accomodate that label. The problem is that the concept of gravity doesn't really fit into a fantasy world. The most egregious example for this is the card Black Hole - any reasonable expectation for what a card with that name could do would range somewhere between "all players lose their entire board" and "both players are disconned from the game". In EtG it is a cheap utility spell. Some other gravity cards just have the prefix "Graviton" in their name, without giving a hint on what exactly makes this card Graviton. For some cards, the Gravity background was just ignored entirely - "This guy eats things, that's kinda Gravity-ish, right?". Gravity is just too much of a science related concept to fit into a fantasy world. The most simple, and therefore best, solution to this dilemma is to rename Entropy and Gravity to Chaos and Order. Chaos could mostly just stay the way it is with a more fitting name, while Order would finally have a solid fundament to build its card base on.
- Something that needs to be given extensive thought is the Supergame; i.e. the game that surrounds the actual card game. One aspect of the supergame are the - explicit or implicit - goals it sets for the player. Currently those are:
- Finish the early quests (learning the game)
- Breaking the various "sound barriers", as in consistently beating various challenging opponents - mainly False Gods and Arena Gold & Platinum League
- Collect all the grindable rares
- Open-ended grinding (increasing your score & money)
The biggest current problem with this setup is that it simply takes far too long to reach that last stage. Currently the optimal grinding path is probably something like this:
- Grind AI3 until you can afford an unupped FG grinder
- Grind FGs until you can build an upgraded Bronze League grinder
- Grind Bronze until you have the rares needed for a Platinum / Gold League grinder
Given that there are also a number of "trap" opponents that just aren't worth playing, ever (AI4, random PvP, usually Silver League), this is just a maze for new players. Elements, as is, is a highly strategic game already - building decks is challenging enough for a new player, people should not have to figure out which opponent to play against optimally. To fix this problem, firstly rares need to become more accessible as their limited availability is one major hurdle for building the current top-grinding decks. Secondly, the number of available opponents needs to be reduced. Both of these issues will probably require a revamp of the Arena.
Now, obviously this change means that there will be less overall PvE gameplay time (at least for those not so interested in op-ended grinding). This is acceptable, since playing against a PC gets repetitive fairly quickly anyway. The much better way to keep the players invested after they have "beaten" the computer is PvP. This is the way that countless other games are doing it, and an online CCG should lend itself very wellto it. So let's talk about how PvP can be improved:
- Make it so it doesn't crash, as in it works and there are no desyncs. Also getting spectate back would be wonderful. Yes, I am stating the obvious here, and the advice is not particularly helpful, but since these are pretty much technical problems and this post is about game design, I just can't say much else here.
- Speaking of technical problems, higher automation of tournaments would be nice. Nothing against the weekly chat-meetup, but having an in-client solution would be far more elegant.
- A built-in limited format for Elements basically would be the holy grail. I suspect the Elements card pool right now just wouldn't be fit for one (too few cards amongst which there are too many blanks), but it should be kept in mind for a mid-long term goal.
Beyond that, there have been a few more approaches thrown around on how to alter the supergame, which I'd like to discuss now.
The first thing that comes to mind is the map that was/is supposed to get added in Elements 1.4. The idea here is probably to give the game more of an RPG-feel. The problem I see here is that while RPGs are certainly nice, a map is really only just the beginning. Just having a map doesn't change a thing, if anything it just makes it more tedious to get from one fight to the next. Basically, the two aspects that make an RPG great are
a) Experiencing a cool story and
b) Having meaningful ways to develop your own character.
The current Elements 1.4 preview has absolutely nothing to offer in those two categories, and I fear that implementing them would simply take too much manpower. People will always compare an RPG to other RPGs like Skyrim, and I mean, Bethesda has a couple hundred professionals working for them. There is certainly nothing wrong with adding a few RPG elements to EtG, but the map is at this stage just unnecessary.
Implementing more individual quests into Elements is certainly more feasible though you also have to keep in mind what I said about RPGs. If your quest idea is something like "Defeat 3 Level 2s", then just forget about it, it doesn't add anything to the game. A better way of implementing more advanced quests would be to first come up with an interesting story, and then think about how that could be implemented into the game.
One other idea that I have been carrying around for a while and that I believe has also been tossed around in the oEtG project, would be to make FG-like powers accessible for the player. In PvP this could be a fun alternative mode. For PvE one possibility could be an Elements "Titanfall" where you charge up points through wins and then get to play as an FG for a short time.
- Lastly, one completely random idea that I had is that individual subrandom numbers for each instance currently using random number could potentially provide a more satisfying gameplay experience than those generated from a conventional pseudo-RNG.
This concludes my little brainstorming for possible directions that Elements could take. One last thing that I would like to address here is that I predict that most people will find my ideas too radical. This would not surprise me as gamers who are still invested in their game generally tend to dislike change. However I guarantee that all my proposed changes would make the game more attractive to people outside the game, while still staying as true as possible to the core of Elements gameplay. What I'd like to remind you of is that with the current configuration, the Elements playership has been bleeding out for years now. At the same time, other online CCGs like most notably Crackstone, have started emerging. Right around now would be a good, if not the last possible opportunity to advance Elements to the next level.
With that said, I would like to thank everyone who made it down here for reading. :) 10 out.
