Elements the Game Forum - Free Online Fantasy Card Game
Other Topics => Forum Archive => World of Elements => Topic started by: YoungSot on October 19, 2011, 08:10:14 pm
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I thought it might be useful to have a more detailed list of the various issues and improvements left to be done before WoE is ready to launch. I will try to keep this updated as issues are resolved, and hopefully this will be useful for everyone looking to help with brainstorming and problem solving. Feel free to suggest items to be added to this list, or discuss things related to the progress of WoE as a whole, but let's keep the actual discussions of each particular item in the appropriate feedback thread (if it exists).
Updated: 11/08/11
Game Design:
- How fast should the characters be able to gain levels?
- Will veteran players get any sort of reward when their characters get reset? (possibly "Ascending" to their own map and missions)
Rules:
- Improve Starter Guide (should be done last)
- Balance Starting decks (or switch to starting with electrum instead of cards)
- Fix or remove "Reset" option (exploitable atm, as you can trade stuff away then reset to not lose anything)
Map/Cities:
- Add effects for different terrain types
- Finish "City Improvements" (http://elementscommunity.org/forum/index.php/topic,32033.0.html)
Nations:
- Design Tech Trees. (http://elementscommunity.org/forum/index.php/topic,33151.msg447578#msg447578)
- Add diplomacy rules (http://elementscommunity.org/forum/index.php/topic,25368.0.html)
- Fix "Wanted" system.
Jobs:
- What jobs will be needed? (http://elementscommunity.org/forum/index.php/topic,32879.msg444476#msg444476)
- How do we deal with the organizers having insider info?
Quests:
- Determine how much XP they give in general, compared to combat.
Merchant System:
- Balance merchant prices vs crafting costs vs player income vs skill related income vs salvage/discard.
- What purpose do moneymaking skills have, compared to the work action?
- Make sure the card buying system creates opportunities for player merchants.
- Fix crafting skills to ensure they have a purpose.
Skill Trees (General):
- Make skill trees more balanced vs each other.
- Change discard-reducing skills to balance with 6 card discards
- Add additional skill trees (http://elementscommunity.org/forum/index.php/topic,32751.msg442939#msg442939)
Skill Trees (UP):
- Curse of the Undead
- Poisonous Cloud
- Fortitude
- Champion of Entropy
- Pack Hunter
- Protector
- Lightbringer
- Adventurer
- Manipulate Time
- Critical Strike
- Revenge
- Assassin
- Champion of Underworld
Skill Trees (OP):
- Improved Resurrection
- Diversion
Skill Trees (Boring or Poor Design):
- Fog of War
- Trickster
- Fiery Rush
- Destroy
- Steam Pirate
- Plunder/Improved Salvaging
- Champion of Darkness
http://sync.in/LUMGsFyMRB
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0AqwbWqlis8bLdFFCYVU5VGNVTWRJRU1JVDVKVllrVUE&hl=en_US#gid=0
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Nice work m8!
Just a few thoughts, I'll get back at this when I get back from vacation:
- Maybe add some sort of newbie-support. Either assign someone to assist new people in WoE (I did alot of that in beta and wouldn't mind to do so again) or make a bigger WoE starter-guide.
- Give some kind of role/purpose to team UW? Emphasise the whole mercenary/rogue theme a bit more?
- Change the starter decks a bit? Some decks were clearly superior to others in beta.
- Diplomacy system! It'd be great if we could start making official allies and enemies from the start. Beta was very unofficial when it came to alliances.
- Terrain. Not vital to do this from launch but it would be cool if Hills, Mountains, Rivers etc would have more effects/influence.
- Alternative ways to make electrum or spend your time in towns. (including the new town/city buildings SG posted about earlier)
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-If we're still using Improvements that can be built from certain skills, I'd like to see some expansion on that.
In the mood for a bit of skill reworking.
Skill Trees (OP):
- Evasion
- Improved Resurrection
- Diversion
Evasion
You are now immune to 'Charge' and 'Aggressive Charge' stances.
Instead of outright banning the attack actions, it could provide a minor penalty, such as -2 upgrades for a Charge and -4 upgrades for Aggressive Charging. Alternatively, reduce the discard penalty on attacks from a Charge or Aggressive Charge. Being prepared for an attack doesn't mean you can outright dodge the enemy army, but if you're prepared you can minimize losses or maximize any nearby benefits.
Improved Resurrection
When defeated in battle, you resurrect immediately without having to go to Spirit World.
A choice between doubling your discard for an immediate resurrection or spending a turn in the Spirit World - if you want to get back into the action faster, it gives you a price for requesting the aid of the gods.
Diversion
Before a battle, choose a Common, non-Pillar card. Not you or your opponent can use this card during the battle.
If you use this skill, use 2 less upgrades this battle. Simple tradeoff for a simple skill.
Alternatively, you can only ban a card you currently own (knowledge is power, though this nerf might be too much).
One other nerf is to render you unable to ban cards of the enemy's main element.
Skill Trees (Boring or Bad Design):
- Fog of War
- Trickster
- Fiery Rush
- Destroy
- Steam Pirate
Fog of War - Was changed recently from the looks of things, but I'll comment on the current skill nevertheless:
Fog of War2
Use up to 2 copies of the Improved Fog card during any battle. Cards disappear after the battle.
The fog can be used to create illusions and disorient enemies - a possible change that more accurately reflects the nature of fog could be allowing Air players to 'flee' if they haven't won a battle and their opponent goes 3-0. Discard and salvage are negated, but winner gains another +1 XP for your cowardice.
Trickster
Before a battle, choose 6 elements. Your opponent can use any mark that is NOT from any of those 6 elements.
This seems kind of silly for what it currently does, especially late game where people will probably have easier access to rainbows, duos, trios, and the like.
Before a battle, choose 3 elements excluding your opponent's main element. Your opponent can only use 3 unique cards from this element (not including pillars ).
'3 Unique cards' means that your opponent can use up to 6 copies of 3 different cards. So if I ban :life , my opponent could use Rustler, Life Pendulum, Emerald Pillar, and Thorn Carapace in a legal deck.
Doesn't punish the enemy too hard, becomes Shapeshifter's offensive counterpart, and becomes a bit more 'tricky' since enemies will have to figure what they'll have to use with their limits.
Fiery Rush
While Charging, if you win all duels within 12 rounds, losing player must discard double the amount.
I don't see this boring or bad design as much as straightfoward. Fire is the element of destruction, and this fits nicely. I'm not exactly sure what '12 rounds' is, but to be fair, you could add a 'fuel to the fire' sort of gimmick that involves a recharge time of 1 day or discarding a card in order to activate the double discard.
Destroy
Destroy an enemy improvement in your current hex. +1XP
Unless improvements are going to become very important to the game, this looks almost like a Lv 1 skill or a skill that could be accessed through a system other than the 13 factions (e.g. Guilds, a magical item, etc...) I would suggest replacing it with something more interesting, like "Spark - If you win a match in a battle, you can use 1 more upgrade the next match"
Steam Pirate
Steam Cannon: Discard Unstable Gas and Burning Pillar to inflict 6HP damage to a Wall.
Should probably be more intimidating or less situational given that it's a level 3 skill. If the siege system is to be kept, I would change the current card requirement to 1 random card and a Burning Pillar.
Also, since Pirates should have some powerful skill at sea, perhaps another bonus like "Use up to 6 additional 'Machine' cards while in battle. If you're not on a Water or Ice hex, this is lowered to 3."
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*snip*
Good thoughts. I think the "fleeing" idea is pretty interesting, though it might take some thought to get it properly balanced.
Rather than having discussions over all the different issues in this one thread, I think it will work better if we keep the different suggestions in their respective feedback topics.
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I will read the rest of the topic later, but meanwhile please do not post quest ideas here. The point is that the quests should be a surprise, and if people post those ideas here, it will ruin the surprise.
If you have quest ideas, please PM them to me or Kuro, although quest ideas are not what we really need atm because we have hundreds of them. The lack of quests in beta wasn't caused by lack of ideas, it was caused by those ideas not being made a reality because testing other things had higher priority, and the quest button thing wasn't working.
I moved that one quest post to secret section.
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I will read the rest of the topic later, but meanwhile please do not post quest ideas here. The point is that the quests should be a surprise, and if people post those ideas here, it will ruin the surprise.
If you have quest ideas, please PM them to me or Kuro, although quest ideas are not what we really need atm because we have hundreds of them. The lack of quests in beta wasn't caused by lack of ideas, it was caused by those ideas not being made a reality because testing other things had higher priority, and the quest button thing wasn't working.
I moved that one quest post to secret section.
I removed the Quest Ideas item since it sounds like we're already set there. Let me know if there are any other items which don't need to be on the list, or which would be worth adding.
Now it's time to get to work! Do you already have something in mind for the new merchant system SG? Cause that's where I think it would make sense to start.
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Napalm and I (with the occasional interjection from Onizuka and YawnChainHow) spent several hours brainstorming on the merchant and crafting systems, and I'm quite happy with our results. Here's the link to the PiratePad page (http://piratepad.net/gRYJUmlGlk), and I'll add our thoughts to the respective feedback threads in the morning. Please take a look when you get a moment SG!
Edit: Piratepad has issues. I moved the notes to Sync.In. We'll see if that's any better.
http://sync.in/iIQuj4w3oK
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Thanks for making the list.
I have a couple of comments.
- Starter Guide should be done when everything else is ready. Otherwise we need to rewrite it every time something changes.
- Balancing starter decks is something we should not worry too much about. It should be based more on the card values, and less on the PvP effectiveness. Besides, starter decks are supposed to be a secret, so we cannot really build them together.
- What does "Fix "Reset" option" mean?
- Quests will be done by the quest staff. Any kind of public planning would just spoil it.
- When talking about merchant system, it's important to understand how it currently works. For example that one suggestion is that you can only buy rares that have been sold, cannot be done because we have no records of rares, or any cards, being sold. We only have the amount of cards the players currently have, and we use that information to determine the prices. The huge advantage of that system is that it's fully automatic. The disadvantage is that when cards appear out of nowhere, like crafting or quest rewards, it affects the prices in a weird way. For example if 200 Skeletons are suddenly added to the total card pool, that actually increases their prices, instead of decreasing it, which would make more sense in the traditional supply/demand sense. The way I see it, we could fix this problem in two ways:
1. Build a new "real" inventory system that requires players to go to some page and push some buttons to buy/sell stuff
2. Manually increase the stock of merchants where cards are added either using crafting, rewards or skills
Latter is definitely the easier method. First one needs tons of more work from both the organizers and the players.
- Mark skills have already been fixed. The current plan is that you gain one new Mark for each 3 levels. This means that maximum level player would have a total of 8 marks.
That's all the "problems" I could find in the list (I skipped the skills). Rest of them are more or less what we need to do.
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What jobs, and how many of them, do you think we'll have?
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- Starter Guide should be done when everything else is ready. Otherwise we need to rewrite it every time something changes.
Agreed. I'll add a note about that.
- Balancing starter decks is something we should not worry too much about. It should be based more on the card values, and less on the PvP effectiveness. Besides, starter decks are supposed to be a secret, so we cannot really build them together.
Currently, buying cards costs more than you get by selling cards. So the team that can use their starter deck mostly as-is will be better off than the team that has to trade out most of their deck to make it competitive. That plus the fact that whoever designs the starter decks can't play the game, makes me think just giving an amount of Electrum would be better. If we do stick with prebuilt decks, they need to be fairly well balanced.
- What does "Fix "Reset" option" mean?
Currently there's nothing stopping a starting player from giving their stuff away to their friends and then resetting to get it back free.
- Quests will be done by the quest staff. Any kind of public planning would just spoil it.
Makes sense. Someone should probably still think through how the typical xp rewards for quests vs combat ought to compare with each other.
- When talking about merchant system, it's important to understand how it currently works. For example that one suggestion is that you can only buy rares that have been sold, cannot be done because we have no records of rares, or any cards, being sold. We only have the amount of cards the players currently have, and we use that information to determine the prices. The huge advantage of that system is that it's fully automatic. The disadvantage is that when cards appear out of nowhere, like crafting or quest rewards, it affects the prices in a weird way. For example if 200 Skeletons are suddenly added to the total card pool, that actually increases their prices, instead of decreasing it, which would make more sense in the traditional supply/demand sense. The way I see it, we could fix this problem in two ways:
1. Build a new "real" inventory system that requires players to go to some page and push some buttons to buy/sell stuff
2. Manually increase the stock of merchants where cards are added either using crafting, rewards or skills
Latter is definitely the easier method. First one needs tons of more work from both the organizers and the players.
I'm still unsure that the possible benefits of trying to simulate supply and demand in that manner really out weigh the extra effort in organizing it. We can still have a viable economic side to the game (with a central market, "trader" characters, and valuable high demand items,) by simply restricting available cards to their respective cities and making some of them cost more or be unavailable for outsiders. On the other hand, it doesn't hurt anything, so if someone's willing to do the work, then we might as well.
- Mark skills have already been fixed. The current plan is that you gain one new Mark for each 3 levels. This means that maximum level player would have a total of 8 marks.
Ok then. I'll remove that from the list.
That's all the "problems" I could find in the list (I skipped the skills). Rest of them are more or less what we need to do.
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Just to ask,could we have a central market place? like a broad average price tag with the list of cards(like in the bazzar for the real game). From there, we can just do a subtraction or addition of prices by percentage? Like for example, i am in Aether city and i want to buy a aether pillar. normal price = 10 electrum. and lets say i get a 20% discount for aether cards, then i would pay 8 electrum instead and if i am in war with air for example, if i buy air cards, then i get a increase of price by 10%?. That way, the merchant would be affected by the relationship of elements?
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Big problem with the Devotion skill tree is that some elements :cough:WATER:cough: are pretty much crippled when you're forced to use marks of your own element only. Easy solution: allow each player to start with their own Mark skill + 2 others that don't count against the Devotion tree. That would open up a lot of pretty good deck archetypes without aribtrarily requiring some elements to waste levels on other people's mark skills (fire, water) while other people can just spam mono very successfully (dark, life) and not waste any precious skill slots on other Marks.
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Just to ask,could we have a central market place? like a broad average price tag with the list of cards(like in the bazzar for the real game). From there, we can just do a subtraction or addition of prices by percentage? Like for example, i am in Aether city and i want to buy a aether pillar. normal price = 10 electrum. and lets say i get a 20% discount for aether cards, then i would pay 8 electrum instead and if i am in war with air for example, if i buy air cards, then i get a increase of price by 10%?. That way, the merchant would be affected by the relationship of elements?
Here's the current plan:
We will have 13 different lists of items, just like we have now. But instead of having only one price, we will have multiple different prices, and each customer uses the price that applies to him/her.
Prices will probably include these three:
Regular Price 100% (own element or alliance)
Discount Price 75% (Bargaining skill, high rep etc.)
Increased Price 125% (off-element)
Double Price 200% (bad rep, war etc.)
Something like that.
So the regular price would be determined by general supply and demand (geographically furthest elements are the most expensive ones). Other prices would be calculated using the regular price.
Then there's also the Auction where players themselves decide the prices.
Big problem with the Devotion skill tree is that some elements :cough:WATER:cough: are pretty much crippled when you're forced to use marks of your own element only. Easy solution: allow each player to start with their own Mark skill + 2 others that don't count against the Devotion tree. That would open up a lot of pretty good deck archetypes without aribtrarily requiring some elements to waste levels on other people's mark skills (fire, water) while other people can just spam mono very successfully (dark, life) and not waste any precious skill slots on other Marks.
Actually the mark thing has been changed. Marks no longer require skill points. Now you get a new Mark for each 3 levels, so the maximum number of marks a player can acquire is 8.
I forgot who suggested this in chat, but it's a really simple and great way to make the event more fun.
Related to that, you now get 1 Skill Point for each level (not 2 for level 1), making the maximum number 24. That means you can max out 2 skill trees if you so choose.
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Actually the mark thing has been changed. Marks no longer require skill points. Now you get a new Mark for each 3 levels, so the maximum number of marks a player can acquire is 8.
I forgot who suggested this in chat, but it's a really simple and great way to make the event more fun.
Related to that, you now get 1 Skill Point for each level (not 2 for level 1), making the maximum number 24. That means you can max out 2 skill trees if you so choose.
VERY bueno. I'm totally going to try to become champion of Light and Water. Bring your Abominations and little else!! :))
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Napalm and I are working on redesigning the skills listed in the OP. Here is our WIP list of new skills:
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0AqwbWqlis8bLdFFCYVU5VGNVTWRJRU1JVDVKVllrVUE&hl=en_US#gid=0
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Napalm and I are working on redesigning the skills listed in the OP. Here is our WIP list of new skills:
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0AqwbWqlis8bLdFFCYVU5VGNVTWRJRU1JVDVKVllrVUE&hl=en_US#gid=0
I took a quick look at the suggestions. Some have potential, others not so much.
Evasion cannot be done like that because of the way updating is done. It would require the organizer to remember who moved where, which is impossible when you have 100+ players running around the map.
I think the current Shadow Leap is better because it's more simple, and I see no reason to nerf it like that. Limiting the distance might work if the players didn't have to count the hexes manually, but because they do, it might get annoying and lead to user errors.
Curse of the Undead with an unlimited duration is pretty nuts. I could see a skill like that make players rage-quit because they are forced to use a mark that is useless to them and they lose every single battle.
I like the mechanics of Seismic Strike but I'm not sure about the theme. A skill like that might work better for say :fire, that uses a rush approach more than :earth, which is much more defensive. But yea.. hopefully that can be used in some shape or form.
Hallucination could work as well, but it should be limited to same or adjacent hex. Yep, that could be cool.
To be continued..
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Napalm and I are working on redesigning the skills listed in the OP. Here is our WIP list of new skills:
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0AqwbWqlis8bLdFFCYVU5VGNVTWRJRU1JVDVKVllrVUE&hl=en_US#gid=0
I took a quick look at the suggestions. Some have potential, others not so much.
Evasion cannot be done like that because of the way updating is done. It would require the organizer to remember who moved where, which is impossible when you have 100+ players running around the map.
Ok. We'll try to think of a better way to nerf Evasion (feel it needs it, as it's too easy to avoid all combat in it's current form.)
I think the current Shadow Leap is better because it's more simple, and I see no reason to nerf it like that. Limiting the distance might work if the players didn't have to count the hexes manually, but because they do, it might get annoying and lead to user errors.
We felt it had the potential to become too powerful, especially mid to late game, where all darkness players will probably have the skill, and it would allow the entire darkness team to instantly move to anywhere at least one member of the team was standing. giving it a max distance was a fairly simple way to limit it. I don't really understand how counting the hexes manually is difficult. You just count from your hex to the target hex, to make sure it's not too far. Not any different than most boardgames.
Curse of the Undead with an unlimited duration is pretty nuts. I could see a skill like that make players rage-quit because they are forced to use a mark that is useless to them and they lose every single battle.
I think you're overestimating the negative effect of having to use a death mark. It's mostly an annoyance, similar to having your opponent win the cointoss. Napalm thought this skill was still too weak to be appealing, and I just wanted to keep it because it's interesting and has a nice "infected" theme.
I like the mechanics of Seismic Strike but I'm not sure about the theme. A skill like that might work better for say :fire, that uses a rush approach more than :earth, which is much more defensive. But yea.. hopefully that can be used in some shape or form.
Glad you like it! As for putting it in Earth, since Earth already has tons of defensive abilities, we thought it might be nice to give them an ability that was more proactive, while still hopefully fitting the Earth theme. Seismic Strike is basically the WoE version of the Earthquake card, allowing you to weaken the enemy infrastructure.
Hallucination could work as well, but it should be limited to same or adjacent hex. Yep, that could be cool.
Oops yes it was supposed to be limited like that. Forgot to clarify that in the wording. thx :)
To be continued..
Thanks for looking. We'll keep brainstorming in the meantime. :)
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Yea, Evasion will definitely be nerfed. I've been planning on doing that a long time now, and now that marks skills are gone, it's going to need an even bigger nerf. First of all, it must be moved to Tier 2. Then I was thinking about changing the skill so that it gives immunity to Aggressive Charge, but not regular Charge. This would kind of make sense because you would need to get closer before you can charge someone who has Evasion.
About Shadow Leap.. don't forget that it requires that..
1. Everyone has that skill
2. One player is where everyone wants to go
I understand that when people see this skill, they might envision huge armies jumping around the map, killing everything. In reality though, it won't be as easy as that. About counting hexes.. it's not that it's difficult, it's just something that should be avoided if possible because first players have to count, then the organizer has to count to make sure it's a legit move. If we want to nerf it somehow, I think it should be something else than distance limitation. Unlimited distance is what makes the skill interesting and cool.
Being able to use only one specific mark when your cards don't match, is a total nightmare. I don't understand how you can compare it to losing the coin toss, when it can completely mess up your deck and strategy.
About "WoE version of the Earthquake card".. I don't see how that mechanic is related to Earthquake because that neutralizing thing is an expansion skill that should belong to one of the more aggressive elements or UW. Hmm.. it might not be a bad idea to have an :earth skill that destroys buildings inside the City. That would fit perfectly.
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Yea, Evasion will definitely be nerfed. I've been planning on doing that a long time now, and now that marks skills are gone, it's going to need an even bigger nerf. First of all, it must be moved to Tier 2. Then I was thinking about changing the skill so that it gives immunity to Aggressive Charge, but not regular Charge. This would kind of make sense because you would need to get closer before you can charge someone who has Evasion.
Very similar effect to our version, but less complicated both in wording and for the organizers. That sounds like a perfect solution to me. :)
About Shadow Leap.. don't forget that it requires that..
1. Everyone has that skill
2. One player is where everyone wants to go
I understand that when people see this skill, they might envision huge armies jumping around the map, killing everything. In reality though, it won't be as easy as that. About counting hexes.. it's not that it's difficult, it's just something that should be avoided if possible because first players have to count, then the organizer has to count to make sure it's a legit move. If we want to nerf it somehow, I think it should be something else than distance limitation. Unlimited distance is what makes the skill interesting and cool.
Ok I can understand not wanting to get rid of the unlimited distance part, and since the skill requires a bit of effort to work we certainly don't want it to become too weak. I'll just leave it alone.
Being able to use only one specific mark when your cards don't match, is a total nightmare. I don't understand how you can compare it to losing the coin toss, when it can completely mess up your deck and strategy.
I still disagree. The worst that will generally happen as a result of this skill is that someone either uses a slightly less optimized mono (useless mark = slightly slower start. add a couple extra pillars perhaps) or has to use pillars instead of pends for their duo (slightly less consistent). If it happened to one of my characters, I wouldn't consider it a big deal. But hey, I won't be forced to take this skill, so I guess I can leave complaining about it to future death players, if they care. =P
About "WoE version of the Earthquake card".. I don't see how that mechanic is related to Earthquake because that neutralizing thing is an expansion skill that should belong to one of the more aggressive elements or UW. Hmm.. it might not be a bad idea to have an :earth skill that destroys buildings inside the City. That would fit perfectly.
I actually really like the thematic feel of Seismic Strike, so I'm gonna keep arguing for it, if you don't mind.
EQ destroys pillars, reducing the opponent's economic foundation. In WoE, Hexes are the basic income producers. Wiping out all sources of quanta with EQ is arguably one of Earth's most prominent abilities, so I thought it would be fun to have the WoE team earth possess a similar power, so that a group of earth players could wipe out another nation's economy much more quickly than other Elementals. Destroying buildings inside the city would work too, but personally I would leave economy-wrecking to earth and instead give the ability to destroy city improvements to someone like fire.