openEtG

[Manuel]

So... just to confirm, oetg is dead and Cygnia is somewhat of a new attempt to have an actively developed ETG, right?

in cygnia there are simply new cards made, approved and voted by the community; cygnia and oetg never want to be the new elements, never want to replace elements

elements is still, and will always be, the only real game

[Fippe94]

Not really. OEtG development is mostly dead, true, but serprex still pushes some fixes and minor stuff every few days.

Cygnia is less of a game and more like a "trainer tool", since there is no account system or anything. And Cygnia is possibly more dead, not sure how many plays it at all. I do see a few players in oetg chat sometimes though.

Cygnia was never meant to "replace" oetg or anything, they are different games/tools with different purposes really.

EDIT: and yeah as Manual said, neither of the two was meant to replace EtG.

[js-number]

elements is still, and will always be, the only real game

deservedly so, and it sounds perfect in theory, but in practice, I've seen many great things die out fast when they're closed-source and the lead (or only) dev becomes too busy to maintain the stuff. Basically, I'm just concerned about the general future of ETG since I just discovered it and it appears to be "terminally ill", for lack of a better term.

[JonathanCrazyJ]

Well it's been that way for over 2 years and we're still all here

[Manuel]

elements is still, and will always be, the only real game

deservedly so, and it sounds perfect in theory, but in practice, I've seen many great things die out fast when they're closed-source and the lead (or only) dev becomes too busy to maintain the stuff. Basically, I'm just concerned about the general future of ETG since I just discovered it and it appears to be "terminally ill", for lack of a better term.

u simply need to look the forum more in depth, for see how much activities we (they) made:weekly  tournaments, forum games, competitions; the chat is active 24h/24

[ddevans96]

Basically, I'm just concerned about the general future of ETG since I just discovered it and it appears to be "terminally ill", for lack of a better term.

To elaborate on Manuel and jcj's posts:

The game itself is currently not actively developed, and hasn't been for over two years. The only life we've seen is the developer fixing a few major issues - the game itself appears to have less player traffic with every passing month, though still enough to function, judging by Arena.

Where the game still thrives is through the forums. Many different activities, both competition PvP and non-PvP events, are still active and functioning, some at levels near the golden age of the game. While these too have slowed down a little, they show no real signs of dying any time soon, as long as the game is maintained at a base level, which so far it has been.

[Manuel]

about the player traffic: there are 4 arenas, every arena has a leaderboard with 500 decks: there are at least 2000 players that still plays this game (1500 removing double accounts?), which is a lot for a game that doesn't have a mobile version.

about the developer: being inactive is different from being disapperead.

last september the elements' database crashed, and the game was dead; if the developer didn't care about the his game, he simply let the game die without restoring the database. after some hours, he restored everything and even some accounts manually

http://elementscommunity.org/forum/confirmed-bugs/cannot-log-in-to-elements/
http://elementscommunity.org/forum/confirmed-bugs/cardsscore-missing/

u should give a try to this community and to this game, i did the same in january 2016, after playing this game casually from 2011

[serprex]

Flash is EoL. antiaverage agrees that openEtG needs to be the future

Currently have an #openetg board on discord, am reworking views to be written in preact. This should facillitate design improvements antiaverage would like to see

I do not personally intend to execute the redesign, only act as a resource (& I guess I'm doing this preact port but that's because I'm doing off-hours PD for my job)

Created a google doc to try flesh out requirements

Making this post because as per usual my interest is full disclosure

[ColorlessGreen]

An update on the development of openEtG


Dear Friends,

As many of you are aware, OEtG has resumed active development.

With the looming death of Flash, Original EtG's days are numbered. We want there to be a place where Elements can continue to expand and grow. Based on this, there have been a number of changes to the project staff and the project itself.


openEtG is no longer being considered an experiment and a side project. It is now our intention to build a game that welcomes its players with open arms, and that will grow into a thriving, active community that will one day, we hope, be able to be compared to the great community that surrounded and still surrounds Original EtG.

This means, going forward, there will be a greater focus on making the game accessible, usable, and beautiful. We recognize that OEtG's current form is "rough around the edges", and the user interface and experience need a lot of work. In the coming months, we hope to change that for the better.


Spex, who many of you will know as Antiaverage, has joined the dev team. In addition to the invaluable experience from many years of amazing service as elementscommunity's admin, Spex will be leading the UI/UX redesign. We are all looking forward to seeing what fabulous improvements he can make to the game to make it look and feel smoother. Spex will also be working with Sovereign. Sovereign is our recently-arrived sound designer, who plans to add music and sound effects throughout the game.

Serprex resumed actively working on the project quite some time ago, and has already made a large number of backend changes in support of this next phase of OEtG's life, as well as quite a few in-game changes. For example, take a look at the "decks" button in the deck editor for in-game support of infinite deck storage.

I am resuming my role as forum admin for the time being, and have also joined the team to focus on card balance and in-game improvements. Due to this, going forward, balance changes and other in-game changes will be decided jointly between Serprex and myself. We hope this will bring a sense of stability to the in-game meta.

Lastly, Fippe94 has left the team to focus on his own project, Fragments. We hope he will continue to visit us while he works on his game, and we hope you will take a look at Fragments in addition to OEtG.


Due to these substantial changes, we are considering OEtG to be back to an "alpha" stage of development. Changes will happen frequently, instead of monthly releases, while we are figuring things out. We will attempt to keep in-game changes from occurring too frequently and from interfering with ongoing pvp events, but expect a lot of things to change frequently and without warning. Once the new UI is fully in place, we will consider the game to have gotten back to a "beta" stage and we will resume scheduled patches.

Even though we're in alpha, though, there's no need to wait. The game itself is amazing, and we're here to help you past the rough patches while we work on smoothing them out. If there's anything you're having trouble with, just find us in Discord or post on the forum.


If you can help, we would love your help. Let us know what you can do. If you aren't sure how to help, the biggest thing you can do is be a part of the community. Test the game, let us know what needs looked at. Help us grow the community. We need more eyes on the project to find all the issues. We need to get the PvP scene active again so we can fine-tune the balance. We need people designing new cards and testing old ones. We need you and we need your friends. Please help us.


We are all very happy to see this project moving forward, and we hope you are too. If the game is too rough for you right now, we understand and we hope you'll come check it out once we've been able to smooth things out a bit more. But we hope you'll give us a chance. We have something wonderful here.

Have fun!

cg, Serprex, and Spex

[ddevans96]

This means, going forward, there will be a greater focus on making the game accessible, usable, and beautiful. We recognize that OEtG's current form is "rough around the edges", and the user interface and experience need a lot of work. In the coming months, we hope to change that for the better.

Will all of these improvements also be applied to oETG-v?

Will there be transparency and free dialogue between the development team and the community about the planned direction of the game, especially (but not exclusively) where balance and meta are concerned?

In the long-term, will an emphasis be placed on thematic integrity? That is, ensuring every element has a defined set of design objectives, cards are designed so all of their components fit together, and names and artwork feel like they belong in the environment of the game?

Will the development team eventually being willing to commission professional artists, writers, or the like?

EDIT: Additionally, does the development team still intend for oETG to be entirely non-profit?

[Submachine]

I'm glad to see that this project is still going. I saw yesterday that oETG is uploaded to Kongregate and created a new account there. There I noticed the following thing:

When I played an Owl, I noticed that the AI had Immolations and Sparks in his hand but didn't play anything. It's a weird behavior.

[ColorlessGreen]

Will all of these improvements also be applied to oETG-v?

Outside my area of knowledge, but I believe that's likely

Will there be transparency and free dialogue between the development team and the community about the planned direction of the game, especially (but not exclusively) where balance and meta are concerned?

Yup. Currently occurs in discord, ingame chat, and on forum. The next oetg event has an additional prize added for providing a writeup on pvp balance and meta, as a way of actively soliciting more input than we already get, which is something I plan to continue for a little while. We've internally discussed "request for comment" systems to actively obtain input on larger areas of game direction. There's a thread up right now soliciting comments about overall game speed, for example.

In the long-term, will an emphasis be placed on thematic integrity? That is, ensuring every element has a defined set of design objectives, cards are designed so all of their components fit together, and names and artwork feel like they belong in the environment of the game?

Subjective, so I can't say if it'll be that way for you. It's that way for me right now. We want development and design to be done by as many community members as are willing to help, which can cause less apparent cohesion than with a single designer. I find that to be a part of the beauty of the game. In-game mechanics are addressed at a holistic level to make sure new cards/features and balance changes work together with the rest of the game. We are also adding alternate art options sometime soon, so there will be something of an ability to pick your own artistic themes if you'd like.

Will the development team eventually being willing to commission professional artists, writers, or the like?

Can't say for sure, but currently unlikely, as it is an entirely volunteer project at the moment with no income streams.

EDIT: Additionally, does the development team still intend for oETG to be entirely non-profit?

I personally have no intention for that to change at any point in the foreseeable future, and I have not heard any indications from anyone else that they would want that to change. Speaking hypothetically, about the farthest I could see things going at some point in the far future would be to have some way to donate in exchange for only cosmetic rewards to offset server costs. But I am not aware of any plans to that effect anywhere on the horizon. It is currently entirely free and entirely volunteer-operated and is going to stay that way for a while.

When I played an Owl, I noticed that the AI had Immolations and Sparks in his hand but didn't play anything. It's a weird behavior.

It might just not have needed the quanta so didn't see any benefit to playing it. Regardless, I posted it to the AI problems thread. Thanks for the report!


I'm glad to see some interest. I hope you'll keep giving us a look as we're moving forward.