Feedback & Suggestions

[chriskang]

Thanks for the list Blood.
A little bit to late for Earth, Life & Fire. But I'll be sure to consider your propositions for the 6 remaining realms.
And BTW most of your ideas for Earth, Life & Fire are actually very close to the real thing. You even have 2 perfectly right guesses

[Bloodshadow]

Yeah, I just want to make sure I've got some things right.

It is possible to make Reverse Time kill a creature, right? You just cancel the step where the creature is returned to your deck.

And it's possible to make Hourglasses use random quanta instead of Time, right? If it is not, then all Gods can have Time mark.

[bobcamel]

I tried to make a Water/Dark, but it also used Death. For both sorts of Poison.

[chriskang]

One thing you might not know Blood is that card statistics (i.e. summon cost, skill, skill cost, skill element, atk, def) are shared by both sides. I can change those values but the change would apply to player AND cpu. So letting hourglass be cast with random quantums would probably make some FG harder but most of the time, it would also be abused by player. All in all, I don't think it's the best choice to increase the challenge.
On the other hand, skills EFFECTS have duplicate code whether they apply to the player or to the cpu. That's where I can change things to one side only.

Suggestions in green can be applied to Gods only
Suggestions in orange can be implemented but both sides would benefit from them
Suggestions in red will only see the light of day if I get the source code

It is possible to make Reverse Time kill a creature, right? You just cancel the step where the creature is returned to your deck.
And it's possible to make Hourglasses use random quanta instead of Time, right? If it is not, then all Gods can have Time mark.
Indestructible Diamond Shield, and it blocks 5 damage instead. If this is overpowered, the defense can be reduced.
Quicksand will destroy 4 pillars instead.
Burrowing will not halve ATK points.
Protect Artifact now works on creatures. Is this possible?
Indestructible Jade Staff, and it heals 10 HP per turn.
Empathic Bond will now heal TWO HP per creature.
All Growth will gain +4 instead of +2. If this is OP, then reduce it.
Improved Heal will heal for 20 HP. If OP, reduce it.
Indestructible Fahrenheit, and it deals 2 damage per 5 quanta. If this is OP, then change it to 3 damage per 10 quanta.
Indestructible Fire Buckler. Brutal enough already.
Rain of Fire will deal 5 damage to all creatures, and Fire Lance will deal 5 damage per 10 quanta.
Ablaze will gain +5 instead of +2.
Indestructible Dusk Mantle, with 75% chance to evade attacks.
Indestructible Vampire Dagger, and it denies 10 quanta per turn instead of life; this effect is the same as Devourers. This shouldn't be too overpowered, since the Entropy Realm destroys 24 quanta per turn, and the Gravity Realm destroys all quanta above 5.
Pests will drain 2 quanta per turn.
Siphon Life will drain 3 HP per 10 Dark quanta.
All freezing will last for 5 turns.
Indestructible Permafrost Shield, with 75% chance to freeze for 5 turns.
Ice Lance has 75% chance to freeze for 5 turns, and it deals 3 damage per 10 Water quanta.
Reverse Time will kill the creature instead. This is achievable, right?
Indestructible Turtle Shield, will cause all creatures to be stuck in time bubble for 2 turns.
All Gods start with 3 indestructible Electrum Hourglasses, and they use random quanta instead of Time. This is also achievable, right?
Indestructible Electrocutor, but it can make other creatures Immortal instead. To prevent this from being OP, the ability can cost 3 Aether or more.
Phase Shield will last for 4 turns.
Phase Dragon has 1 HP, unblockable by Gravity Shield.
Maybe Twin Universe can cost a lot less.
When using Miracle, it does not wipe out all Light quanta.
Blessing will give +6/+6. If this is OP, then the amount can be decreased.
Holy Flash will heal for 20, and it will be mainly used to heal the Gods. If OP, can be reduced.
Indestructible Eagle's Eye, and it deals 5 damage instead.
Lightning Storm will deal 3 damage to all creatures.
Dive will TRIPLE attacks instead of double.

[Bloodshadow]

If you can give Gods indestructible weapons, then why not indestructible Hourglasses?

And so you cannot give cards new abilities to replace their old ones? But then, you were able to get rid of Titan's Momentum ability, and give it Scramble instead.

[chriskang]

If you can give Gods indestructible weapons, then why not indestructible Hourglasses?

Weapon, shield & mark are treated differently than other permanents. They have special functions to handle them where I can modify whatever I want.
Other permanents are treated all at once. I could probably put the same card on all (19) of them but as there's no refresh after init, most of them would be invisible (actually all except weapon, shield & mark). Not counting all the problems this would create: seriously overpowered, no more empty space for another type of permanent, and so on.
If I'm bored someday, I could also try to put an hourglass in the shield slot. This should work. But is there really a point in doing this?

And so you cannot give cards new abilities to replace their old ones? But then, you were able to get rid of Titan's Momentum ability, and give it Scramble instead.

That's a sneaky trick. To replace a skill by another you have to check that:
- both skill names have the same size ("Momentum" = 8 letters = "Scramble")
- the code can handle both skills on this card type (Momentum and Scramble are both weapon skills so it works but it would be impossible to put Empathy on a creature or Devour on a permanent)

[Bloodshadow]

I have done some hex editing before. Many people said that you can only replace hexes, and you cannot add or remove hexes; the new word must have the same number of letters as the old word. But when I tried it, I was able to change "redfire" to "greenfire" or something like that, and it worked perfectly with no bugs or crashes. I was using Hex Editor Neo, and in it there are options to add and delete hexes.

What is the quanta-draining ability called, anyways? On Devour it was not shown due to Devour having Burrow. But is it strictly a creature skill?
For Lobotomize, it is both a creature skill (Mind Flayer) and permanent skill (Lobotomizer).

And for the Realm of Time, can you enable the Gods to draw three cards per turn or more?

[chriskang]

I have done some hex editing before. Many people said that you can only replace hexes, and you cannot add or remove hexes; the new word must have the same number of letters as the old word. But when I tried it, I was able to change "redfire" to "greenfire" or something like that, and it worked perfectly with no bugs or crashes. I was using Hex Editor Neo, and in it there are options to add and delete hexes.

It depends on the file format. Some formats like XML can be modified with a simple plain text editor (Notepad) but SWF contains data blocks with a fixed given size and some actionscript with jumps inside the code. Look at the specifications here:
http://www.adobe.com/devnet/swf/pdf/swf_file_format_spec_v10.pdf

It IS technically possible to change the size of those structures but this requires the modification of:
- the total file length in the Header (see page 25)
- the tag length of each modified structure (see page 27)
- the offset of all jumps where the actionscript code is included both conditional AND unconditional (see page 84 & 85)

As I told before it takes me something like 2 hours to create 1 single environment effect (the hardest part being to identify the exact position where the code has to be modified). And this is just for 1 or 2 hex-editions. If you feel like doing 4 or 5 times more for a single effect, I'd be happy to include your contributions in my trainers.

What is the quanta-draining ability called, anyways? On Devour it was not shown due to Devour having Burrow. But is it strictly a creature skill?

It's called "maintain" and yes, it's only coded for creatures. No way to apply it to permanents/weapons/shields/spells.

For Lobotomize, it is both a creature skill (Mind Flayer) and permanent skill (Lobotomizer).

All weapon skills are also coded for creatures to handle flying weapons. But the reverse is not true.

And for the Realm of Time, can you enable the Gods to draw three cards per turn or more?

No.

[Scaredgirl]

I have some suggestions regarding Hall of Fame and scoring seen here:
http://elementstheforum.smfforfree3.com/index.php/topic,985.0.html (http://elementstheforum.smfforfree3.com/index.php/topic,985.0.html)

Hall of Fame scoring
In soccer league (and in other sports as well) it doesn't matter how many goals you score during the match, winner always gets the same amount of points in the league scoring. Only if the score is the same, we take the number of goals into consideration. This is how it should be in this Challenge as well imo. Winner would always get a fixed number of points that is not based on the actual score he got.

Also it might be a good idea if the scores from the first challenge were deleted because it was supposed to be "beta" and there was no talk about Hall of Fame. This is only because it's more difficult to get new players to join if there are already people in the top-10 with insane scores.

One option would be to reset the whole Hall of Fame and start fresh with 3rd challenge.


False God Scoring
I think the score difference between first and last False God is too big.

Lets take that first Challenge as an example. Before I went to sleep I killed the first three False Gods gaining 15 points. Among those first 3 was Ivy which I considered to be one of the most difficult False God in the bunch. Later Dragoon killed the last False God (easier than Ivy) gaining 12 points which is almost the same amount that I got from killing all three!

Also the guy who kills the last God second (with a copy-paste deck) gets more points than the guy who kills the first or second God first. This is wrong.

When the challenge starts I have no idea which God is easy and which one is difficult. I could end up trying to beat the most difficult God first, gaining only pathetic 4 points if I do.

My suggestions are this:
- No God should be worth more than twice the worth of two other Gods.
- No second kill should be worth more than the first kill of any God.

How about this:

1st False God = 9 points, 4 points, 2 point2nd False God = 10 points, 5 points, 2 point3rd False God = 11 points, 5 points, 2 points4th False God = 12 points, 6 points, 3 points5th False God = 13 points, 6 points, 3 points6th False God = 14 points, 7 points, 3 points7th False God = 15 points, 7 points, 3 points8th False God = 16 points, 8 points, 4 points9th False God = 17 points, 8 points, 4 points10th False God = 18 points, 9 points, 4 points

This would mean bigger numbers but at the same time it would make a lot more sense. What do you think?

[chriskang]

Hall of Fame scoring

Do we really need to merge scores from different challenges?
The only players who took part in both are Amilir and you SG.
IMO, we should just trash the previous Hall of Fame each time a new challenge comes out.
Players who remain faithful to the game for more than 1 month are VERY rare.

1st False God = 9 points, 4 points, 2 point2nd False God = 10 points, 5 points, 2 point3rd False God = 11 points, 5 points, 2 points4th False God = 12 points, 6 points, 3 points5th False God = 13 points, 6 points, 3 points6th False God = 14 points, 7 points, 3 points7th False God = 15 points, 7 points, 3 points8th False God = 16 points, 8 points, 4 points9th False God = 17 points, 8 points, 4 points

10th False God = 18 points, 9 points, 4 points[/list]

That's OK for me. But I feel bad to change that now as I clearly said before the start that we were keeping the same rules.
If everyone (kiszol, bobcamel, Amilir, Cless, YoYoBro, Bloodshadow) agrees, I'll update scores. Otherwise, it'll be for part 3.


PS - Everyone who's interested in the challenge, read this please:
http://elementstheforum.smfforfree3.com/index.php/topic,1261.0.html

[Scaredgirl]

Hall of Fame scoring

Do we really need to merge scores from different challenges?
The only players who took part in both are Amilir and you SG.
IMO, we should just trash the previous Hall of Fame each time a new challenge comes out.
Players who remain faithful to the game for more than 1 month are VERY rare.

You are right, lets trash them. In the future if this Challenge still exists and same names keep showing up, then we can do a all-time Hall of Fame with scores from all the challenges.

That's OK for me. But I feel bad to change that now as I clearly said before the start that we were keeping the same rules.
If everyone (kiszol, bobcamel, Amilir, Cless, YoYoBro, Bloodshadow) agrees, I'll update scores. Otherwise, it'll be for part 3.

No need to change anything with this challenge. Lets do it at part 3. And we still have to decide what the scoring will be. What I wrote there was just a quick suggestion. There might be a better way.

[kiszol]

I like this but I have another suggestion: Most players use a tweaked but more or less stadard anti FG rainbow deck. That's a bit boring. So why not use this system?

We don't need 9 Gods simultaneously. What if we try 2 Realms in one Challenge this way:
On Thursday, Chris starts the first Realm with 3+3 Gods. 3 very strong like the ones in JFF2 (or a bit stronger) and 3 with the same cards but weaker effects. For example we have 3 Life Gods, Big Bang, Opus and Tardis. There would be a better and a weaker from each. The Better Opus would have 300 HP, 5x Mark, and very good enviromental effects while the weaker one would have 200HP, 3x Mark and weaker effect.

You could use everything against the stronger Gods and there would be a point system like this:

First God to fall: 20 points, 10 points, 7 points
Second God to fall: 30 points, 15 points, 10 points
Third God to fall: 40 points, 20 points, 14 points

But there would be strong restrictions against the weaker Gods:

You can't use Quantum Pillars/Towers and Novas/Supernovas.
You can use maximum 2 different Towers.
No restrictions for your mark.

If someone beats a God, no other player can use that 1-2 Towers that he/she used.
Points would be the same for each of the 3 Gods and it would look like this:

First kill of a God: 10 points
Second kill of a God: 12+1 points
Third kill of a God: 15+2 points
Fourth kill of a God: 19+3 points
Fifth kill of a God: 24+4 points
Sixth kill of a God: 30+5 points

Notes:
-> You get the +x points if you use a Mark which wasn't used before.
-> The same player can beat a Weaker God with two or more decks and if he/she does, he/she gets the points for all decks!
-> If someone posts a win and he/she use a Tower that was used before than he/she won't get any points.

Example

Gods:
Stronger: Opus(S), Tardis(S), Big Bang(S)
Weaker: Opus(W), Tardis(W), Big Bang(W)
Players: I,II,III,IV,V,VI

Opus(S): I,II,III,IV,V,VI -> I: 20p, II: 10p, III: 7p, IV,V&VI: 0p
Big Bang(S): III,I -> III: 30p, I: 15p
Tardis(S): V,VI,I,II -> V: 40p, VI: 20p, I: 14p, II: 0p

Tardis(W): I,II,IV,I,IV,III

Player (Used Towers, Mark): Points
I (Light+Air, Life Mark): 10p
II (Fire+Death, Earth Mark): 13p
IV (Aether, Time Mark): 17p
I (Entropy+Darkness, Life Mark): 19p (No extra 3 points because Life Mark isn't a new one.)
IV (Death+Water, Aether Mark): 0p (Death Towers were before, he won't even get the extra 4 points for the new Mark (Aether).)
III (Gravity+Earth, Time Mark): 30p (No extra 5 points because Time Mark isn't a new one. Earth Towers aren't a problem, there was an Earth Mark before, but that's not count.)

Maybe it sounds a bit difficult but imo it would be a more interesting system. You have the motivation to beat every God 5-6 or more times with different decks. That's real challenging and this way the challenge can deal with ~20 players. On Thursday, the first Realm starts. Than, on Saturday the second Realm starts. That's a total of 12 Gods, but for Chris, it's easier since there are 6+6 Gods, and the second 6 are almost the same.