It is rare that I would feel so strongly about a community issue here that I would write my views into an editorial, but the latest drama over the pro-Light events card in War has tilted the balance far enough.
For those not yet aware, War is the largest community event here at Elements, where players join one of 12 teams, each team representing and using cards from a given Element. Each "round" of tournament-style fighting that happens has a random "event card" associated with it that gives random advantages or bonuses in certain circumstances. The first round was a success; the event card was a bonus to beating your opponent 2 games to 0 instead of just 2 games to 1. The second round's event card was recently posted and almost instantly caused a boycott amongst players because they thought it was unfair. The card enables all Light-element cards to be played as upgraded cards, and that gives an advantage to the Light-elemental team over the others (although every team can use the bonus to a lesser extent).
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To put it succinctly, I am majorly disappointed in this community.
Good sportsmanship is an important quality in all aspects of life, and it is a basic quality of maturity. We are here in a community around a game which by definition depends on an element of luck. Anyone who is unwilling to have to face bad luck should not be playing this game at all; anyone who feels cheated by a slight advantage -- which is what the round 2 card is -- should remain polite to the people who have spent lots of time setting this up for us (which many of you have utterly failed to do and you owe those people an apology), and then instead of whining, do their best to design a strategy for success in spite of the hardship.
One thing that separates adults from children is that children never seem to understand the necessity -- and the real benefit -- of a challenge. If something is hard, they complain. "It's unfair!" Few seem to realize that exactly what makes a game enjoyable or worth playing is that there is a challenge, and there's the fact that not every roll of the die is going to go your way.
If you honestly think the Light-upgraded advantage is unfair, you are just plain wrong and frankly I think creating a boycott is juvenile. Probably you have made the event worse for everyone because now we are unlikely to have event cards at all.
Let's say you think the "Age of Element" cards need a redesign. That's a fine opinion. This is a community and your opinion should be heard -- especially if a lot of people agree. It is excellent that you want to contribute and there should be a complete discussion about these things. However there is a right way to do this and a wrong way to do this. The right way is it should be discussed and taken into effect for next War. The wrong way is to create a problem now and complain. You don't change the rules of the game after you start playing. Wanting to do so is a quality of a coward, not a winner.
On team Entropy we took the news of the new round by saying "wow" and then immediately "how should we strategize about this." We thought about how this would change our opponents' moves, how it would change our salvages, etc.
Just the same way team Entropy was forced to fight against THREE masters in the first round when most of you had to fight one or zero as a team, instead of complaining we took the challenge head-on and enjoyed coming up with counter-strategies.
It's about time people stopped acting like crybabies and took the round 2 card in stride. Figure out a strategic solution. Yes, Light has an advantage this round -- that's nice for them. I think it's utterly unfair and shameful and disappointing that this community has now threatened to take away that advantage from Light just because they got a lucky draw. It's like wanting Rastafla to give up all his nymphs that he's won from the Oracle because it's "unfair" that the rest of us aren't so lucky.
Grow up, community. Grow up.
