Elements the Game Forum - Free Online Fantasy Card Game
Elements the Game => Card Ideas and Art => Design Theory => Topic started by: seulintse on November 21, 2014, 12:16:24 am
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:rainbowbig this has alot of possibilities. it also can have alot of drawbacks, by having a very specific lack of certain cards. It tends to be a more general form of synergy decks between 2 or 3 cards, in favor of inexpensive cards that can generate relatively powerful cards, whether with time, one use abilities, or spawning creatures. That being said, :death, :darkness, and sometimes :entropy tends to have alot of possible decks that involve numerous cards from each element revolving around who guessed, death and darkness. With that out of the way, life and lights possibilities of synergy decks (or specific lack there-of) is kinda what my rant is mainly about. How to introduce more? new cards: certainly a viable option, although I think card ideas is kinda what its about, especially trying to make life or light cards centered around their respective elements that would be effective, purposeful, and of course, balanced. Buffing existing cards: it wouldn't do very much, since, y'know, it would kinda really on using rustlers with light quanta and... some light cards, which would not do very much (especially since... yeah, synergy.) Elsewise, my rant is done now, and for the main purpose of this thread, what elements do you think should have more naturally existing synergies, and should it be improved?
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Well I have listed one or two synergies in this Article (http://elementscommunity.org/forum/elements-articles/list-of-classic-deck-strategies-and-synergies/). There are a lot!
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umm, excuse me sir, but I realize that there are definitely a lot of synergies in the game, but I was more so talking about inherent synergies, like permafrost shield and shockwave, or eternity and skeletons. Not random deck crossovers that can work well, but aren't necessarily in mind when the card was made, or even added into the game (the only real exception I can think of are nymph cards, 'cuz they're so frickin' rare)
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it's better in my opinion to make cards more open. making them synergize strongly with only 1 or 2 cards makes the game boring and more rock-paper-cissory
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umm, excuse me sir, but I realize that there are definitely a lot of synergies in the game, but I was more so talking about inherent synergies, like permafrost shield and shockwave, or eternity and skeletons. Not random deck crossovers that can work well, but aren't necessarily in mind when the card was made, or even added into the game (the only real exception I can think of are nymph cards, 'cuz they're so frickin' rare)
Based on the terms as you are defining them:
Yes, there are inherent synergies but not for every pairing. Yes, there are enough because non inherent(as you are defining it) synergies are better design because they add more options per card. Permafrost being a condition inflicting shield is responsible for many more cross element synergies than the specific freeze + shockwave interaction.
That said, ideas for inherent synergies can be beneficial as they are and can even be adjusted into non inherent synergies in many cases.
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I know different decks can be made from certain things, but I'm talking about cards that have different effects with other cards, whether its dependant on its type of card (eclipse and death creatures), or dependant on a specific card... my main question was kinda because of :life and :light not having much synergy (you can make a deck with rustlers, adrenaline, and ray of lights... thats about the only synergy I can think of that suggests you play life with light) to clarify the thread question, its based on what synergies would you think of as a complete newbie, having just seen all the cards from the bazaar. If you seriously looked at all of them and consider the possibilities, most of the stuff you'll think of will be game suggested, and thats the stuff I'm thinking of.
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You can make a consistent unupped :life :light deck with 4 Rustlers, 6 Emerald Dragons, 4 Mitosis, :life mark and ALL :light pillars. Because 2x quanta and mitodragons is cool un PvP1.
Why don't you suggest cards that let you make this things? Afterall you can't do this things without the cards letting you.
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I know different decks can be made from certain things, but I'm talking about cards that have different effects with other cards, whether its dependant on its type of card (eclipse and death creatures), or dependant on a specific card... my main question was kinda because of :life and :light not having much synergy (you can make a deck with rustlers, adrenaline, and ray of lights... thats about the only synergy I can think of that suggests you play life with light) to clarify the thread question, its based on what synergies would you think of as a complete newbie, having just seen all the cards from the bazaar. If you seriously looked at all of them and consider the possibilities, most of the stuff you'll think of will be game suggested, and thats the stuff I'm thinking of.
Complete newbies are not limited to what you called inherent synergies(need a better term, even explicit synergies does not fit). But I do agree that :life and :light do not have very many direct synergies(cards that interact with each other to be better than the sum of their parts). I think that the divide between direct and indirect synergies is probably the the divide between what new players can see and experienced players can see.
For instance Blessing is a good Light card that is a good foundation for direct synergies. Blessing + Vampire is something that a complete newbie would be able to see and access. A benefit of Blessing's design over Eclipse's design is that Blessing creates more synergy bridges since it is not element specific.
Life is creature focused, let us work with that. A common direct synergy model for creatures is the creature + buff spell model especially since all elements have creatures and several elements have buff spells. It is also easiest to suggest 1 new card than to suggest a pair of new cards. So what are some examples of:
A Life buff that has synergy with a Life creature, a Light creature and creatures in general?
A Light buff that has synergy with a Life creature, a Light creature and creatures in general?
A Life creature that has synergy with a Life buff, a Light buff and buffs in general?
A Light creature that has synergy with a Life buff, a Light buff and buffs in general?
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Complete newbies are not limited to what you called inherent synergies(need a better term, even explicit synergies does not fit). But I do agree that :life and :light do not have very many direct synergies(cards that interact with each other to be better than the sum of their parts). I think that the divide between direct and indirect synergies is probably the the divide between what new players can see and experienced players can see.
For instance Blessing is a good Light card that is a good foundation for direct synergies. Blessing + Vampire is something that a complete newbie would be able to see and access. A benefit of Blessing's design over Eclipse's design is that Blessing creates more synergy bridges since it is not element specific.
Life is creature focused, let us work with that. A common direct synergy model for creatures is the creature + buff spell model especially since all elements have creatures and several elements have buff spells. It is also easiest to suggest 1 new card than to suggest a pair of new cards. So what are some examples of:
A Life buff that has synergy with a Life creature, a Light creature and creatures in general?
A Light buff that has synergy with a Life creature, a Light creature and creatures in general?
A Life creature that has synergy with a Life buff, a Light buff and buffs in general?
A Light creature that has synergy with a Life buff, a Light buff and buffs in general?
that last part got me confused. Ehhhhhh (lol) I don't think I'm clarifying enough what the topic was supposed to be about ('cause apparently I suck with words...), and I was talking about cards that explicitly mention other elements, like fire eater, forest spirit, and stuff like that, typical stuff that would make most people say "d'oh, this would duo good with >insert element<, because it costs X quanta from the first element and 2 quanta from the other element" or something like that, or mention a different card from another element (even if its not very common for cards to do so, still). Typically, the rule is cards that mention other elements take priority for duos and possibly trios, being it FFQ decks, pegasus, graviton fire eater, lava golem, forest spirit, and the like (don't ask me why I didn't think of any spells that cross over, I just didn't). But in my original rant, its because... you can't do much with strictly life and light, really, kinda just restricted to RoL with adren. and a rustler. With darkness and death, though, you can just throw a bunch of bonewalls, graveyards, condors, a nightfall or an eclipse, soul catchers, and death for a mark and you can probably defeat AI4 pretty decently easy, maybe a few schrödingers' cats in there.
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I was talking about cards that explicitly mention other elements, like fire eater, forest spirit, and stuff like that, typical stuff that would make most people say "d'oh, this would duo good with >insert element<, because it costs X quanta from the first element and 2 quanta from the other element" or something like that, or mention a different card from another element (even if its not very common for cards to do so, still).
No, you were very clear. I just do not think your means are ideal for your goals. Your goal is to provide more new player friendly synergies maybe as an end in itself or maybe to help smooth one of the rough patches in the learning curve. Your means are adding cards that fall in the explicit combos subset of cards with explicit synergy. From my experience and theory-crafting, I have noticed that cards with explicit synergy that are not limited to explicit combos are useful to more new players.
Take Vampire and Adrenaline for example. One is an On Attack ability and the other gives More Attacks. The synergy is explicit and easily accessible to any skill level(unlike indirect synergies). What is more, discovery of this synergy lets the player think of every connected synergy. An Explicit combo does not have connected synergies and thus is a learning dead end(and sometimes a trap if the combo is inefficient).
That is one of the reasons I think that direct synergy is a better means towards your goal than explicit combos.