An Interview With A Former Elements Player

[Exeneva]

Done as both part of my school thesis and also as research for the project I'm working on.

http://www.zems.com/blog/interviews/interview-with-a-former-elements-player/

[Sevs]

mmm I somewhat agree and somewhat disagree. I liked the interview, but it seems like the person interviewed doesn't have the greatest understanding of the game. and having only 60 upgrades sort of shows that.

Agree that weapons are strong but they have plenty of weakness's with only 1 spot available for them.

I however disagree with the elements description about hourglasses and the meta.

[UTAlan]

Basically once a player got more Hourglasses, you could pretty much tell who was going to win from there.

lol

[Exeneva]

mmm I somewhat agree and somewhat disagree. I liked the interview, but it seems like the person interviewed doesn't have the greatest understanding of the game. and having only 60 upgrades sort of shows that.

Agree that weapons are strong but they have plenty of weakness's with only 1 spot available for them.

I however disagree with the elements description about hourglasses and the meta.

Well he didn't say he only had 60 upgrades, he said he was able to upgrade his entire deck. I found it doubtful that a player would never change cards in his/her deck and therefore only have 60 upgraded cards.

In regards to the meta, you have to remember he quit playing about 8 months ago, so what he said about the meta is no longer valid.

Basically once a player got more Hourglasses, you could pretty much tell who was going to win from there.

lol

I believe what he was trying to say is that once a player got card advantage, it was clear who was going to win from there. Taken at surface level, then getting more hourglasses as an equation to winning is laughable indeed.

[UTAlan]

But I've been playing for over a year and a lot of that has not been true for at least that long. For example:

There wasn’t any sort of pillar that gave you a mix of two colors.

Umm, hello Pendulums.

[Exeneva]

But I've been playing for over a year and a lot of that has not been true for at least that long. For example:

There wasn’t any sort of pillar that gave you a mix of two colors.

Umm, hello Pendulums.

Like he mentioned in the interview, those were probably implemented after he quit.

[Sevs]

But I've been playing for over a year and a lot of that has not been true for at least that long. For example:

There wasn’t any sort of pillar that gave you a mix of two colors.

Umm, hello Pendulums.

Like he mentioned in the interview, those were probably implemented after he quit.

Pendulums came out in august of 2010 smack in the middle of his playing time

[Exeneva]

Well I can't account for any sort of inaccuracies he gave in the interview. But I think we're arguing small attentions to detail and ignoring a lot of the more important aspects of the interview, such as the meta and whatnot. I mean, so far what I'm hearing from you guys is that he got some things wrong, but a lot of what he said is right by the lack of response.

[Silver]

i dont think its unreasonable for people to be upset that their favourite game is being misrepresented

mayble subtley hint that he has an average point of view or something

[Exeneva]

Well it's just the opinion of one player who has played the game for a year.  And you're right, nobody currently playing the game is going to like the interview. But I'm sure there are quite a few people who used to play Elements that would agree with a lot of things in the post.

[pikachufan2164]

That’s another problem – there is no removal. You just had to keep attacking until you got rid of the creature.

Obviously, creature control didn't exist when they were playing either ಠ_ಠ

Like, some colors couldn’t even deal with weapon cards, and that alone made them unviable.

So 8/12 elements ( ) are unviable because they can't deal with permanents? I think not.

"Nothing exists that cannot be countered." -OldTrees on indirect counters

The unupped metagame is actually quite balanced as a whole (judging from player experiences in Beginners League). Lots of viable options, and each viable deck is at the very least soft-countered by another one of the viable decks.

Prior to Pendulums, it was still possible to run solid duos by just running the second element off the mark. Examples of decks that can do this are Speed Poison (runs Freezes and Chrysaora off a Water mark, with the rest of the deck being Death cards), Ghostmare (runs Nightmare and Vampire Dagger off Darkness mark), and Arctic Infection (runs Shockwave and Fog Shield off an Air mark).

[OldTrees]

Although I would not call the interviewee an expert on the game at that time, they were fairly accurate and highlighted some important points. Below I either defend his point or argue against it.

1) Many weapons are card advantage. The game still has insufficiently available answers to weapons.
2) Imbalance reduces the available metagame thus restricting player options.
3) Waiting for the right card to answer a threat is less than ideal. Anti-Immaterial cards all suffer from extremely diminishing returns for each additional copy added to the deck. This increases the wait when faced with an immaterial card.
4) Removal is less available than they were used to. This is actually an improvement. The lower availability (in general) of removal encourages people to invest in their position. It also forces more minute imbalances into the light to be observed and fixed. Unlike the "OP cards are balanced by the fact that cards cannot survive." philosophy.
5) Some elements do not have sufficient answers to threats. This is being improved but it is far from done.
6) Card advantage is less significant in EtG than it is in similar games like MtG.
7) The mana/lands system is mechanically better than the quanta/pillars system.
8] They left before pendulums. This means they were off about the time period they played. Support for Duos and Trios has improved from semi viable to competitive. Now it is Quads and Quints that need more support.
9) The game has moved on from the Rainbow vs Mono meta.

General summary:
Increased availability of answers (both direct and indirect) and increased support for various quanta bases (Trio, Quart, Uneven ...) would improve EtG.