Oh great and enlightened Idea Guru! Bestow upon me thy vast wisdom, for I am but an unworthy fledgling designee. Here I recount the 7 noble truths of Elements I have discovered through years of meditation. Are these assumptions valid?
No, but they betray(reveal) thought and study.
Having a lot of quanta stored up should be good for every Element.
Not necessarily. To gain an advantage one must have opportunity and be able to pay the cost. Having a store of quanta enables the cost to be paid but their would need to be an outlet for that to be worthwhile. In the absence of expensive outlets players use more cheaper outlets and less quanta production. Excessive quanta production is just as problematic as deficient quanta production. The broader the band between deficient and excessive the more variety there is in gameplay. From a design point of view this implies that adding expensive and cheap outlets helps diversify the game if it can be done with no side effects. One of Fractal's main additions to the game is in this area.
Rainbow quanta production is OP.
QT: Probably not. A standard has to be made between rainbow and mono decks. A theoretical ideal standard would be 2.5
per turn. Unfortunately 1/2 quanta is a contradiction in terms. The 3
per turn based standard has made a respectable metagame.
Nova/Supernova/Immolation: Perhaps. It too sets a standard between long term and short term quanta producers. Standard producer the backbone of metagame structure and thus do not become OP as easily. A different standard might have a larger metagame. That would be reason to change Supernova but would not imply Supernova is OP.
To reiterate: Standards can be suboptimally designed but cannot be OP/UP.
CC that ignores creature defenses is OP.
Not unless your definition of creature defenses includes: HP, Immateriality, 0 attack/momentum, first 5 slots/water. Flooding is not OP.
Granting immortality + activated ability is OP.
No. There is a cost involved to balance the increased resilience of the creature.
No creature left behind, each one should have an ability.
No. Abilities have value. All value should be paid for in the cost. Sometimes you want the creature with the best stats for its cost. A creature without an ability should have better stats for its cost.
Also: Vanilla creatures are useful for expanding the audience to include vanilla only players.
The most expensive cards should be the best cards.
No. The most expensive cards should be the cards with the most powerful effects. However size is not the only important factor when identifying the important cards. Sometimes how soon a card can be played is important. Cards that appear innocent will survive longer.
Instead of always being "better", Upgrades should mean "more".
Upgraded cards get a free 1-2 quanta cost reduction or the equivalent. When the unupped and upgraded cards are comparable the upgraded should be better in the general case. +1 attack +1 cost would qualify as more but would not qualify as an upgrade. -1 attack -2 cost would not qualify as more but would qualify as an upgrade.
http://elementscommunity.org/forum/index.php/topic,34667.0.html
http://elementscommunity.org/forum/index.php/topic,30797.msg462651#msg462651
Too much to answer in those links.
Your directional balance estimations (OP or UP) appear to be fairly accurate though you are less accurate the closer the card is to balanced. You tend to try to complicate things as your solution. You are unaware of some important coding details (cards cannot cost X
, cannot manually target twice during the same effect) which can be fixed by asking Xenocidius in his Coding Q&A thread.
