A dreaded suggestion regarding Immortality.

[Lanidrak]

Okay. 3 Cards.

Compare that to the number of cards and effects which do direct damage - around 12. The point I was making is that even if Ethereal cards are vulnerable to global effects, their is nothing stopping us from suggesting that immortal and ethereal creatures still have high hp. IE. 4hp means protection to 1 rain of fire. And yes, Eclipse/Nightfall should effect Ethereal creatures if they have the right element. Death or Darkness in the case of Eclipse/Nightfall.

[tyranim]

i like the concept of immortality. its absolutely thrilling.

[Lanidrak]

With the poll as it is, it's like

50/50 split between people who want a specific Card to remove the Immortal status and between people who want Immortality to stay as it is. The rest of the votes want a distinction between Immortality and Ethereal.

[Boingo]

Before nerfing an entire element ( ) it's probably best to have a larger consensus about making a change to a crucial quality of the element/deck. 

You pay a high cost for a phase dragon (13 for 8/6) or immortals (6 for 4/3) for a reason--they are untouchable.  At least they were--now they take damage from things like fire shield.  It appears some players would like to add a card with the ability to remove the immaterial status.   

What would be a fair price for such a card that could remove this essential quality of these cards?  It appears equivalent cards can be approximated more cheaply with Anubis/quintessence.  Don't believe me?  When was the last time you ran into an Immortal or Phase dragon that wasn't in a mono-aether deck?  What about the last time you ran into another creature that gained the special status secondarily?  I'll bet you've seen 10x as many creatures with special status added after the fact as compared with creatures who have it at their essence.

Consider the following:
A shrieker + plate armor costs 9 , gives you a creature that's 8/6, plus it can burrow!  You could add quint to it for 3-4  (an Anubis will do it for 1-2  ) and you've reproduced your phase dragon.

A stone dragon costs 10  , and has 8/8 stats--cheaper and more hp than a phase dragon.  Add quint and it costs 1 more than the original phase dragon, but gets 2 more strikes against an opponent with fire shield.

A blessing on a Giant frog would give an 8/6 creature for 2  and 3  .  Add quint, and you've got a phase dragon for 4 fewer quanta.

So I say let's drop this talk about removing introducing a new card which removes immaterial status absolutely on all creatures at all times.  What you really want is a card which will remove a spell that was added after the card has been played.  That would mean Immortals and Phase dragons would have a special status since they wouldn't be affected by this powerful new card.  But since they cost more to play to begin with, it's probably a fair deal over all.

Does this sound fair to anyone else?

(The alternative would be to remove quintessence and the ability of Anubis so that nobody but Phase dragon and Immortal gets immaterial status.  But I don't see that idea getting much traction since so many players have adapted to having that in their arsenal.)

[Glitch]

My suggestion is slightly different:
  Immortal: Immune to damaging effects*.
  Ethereal: Cannot be targetted.

*Damaging effects include: Firebolt, Icebolt, Drain Life, Paradox, Chaos Seed, Aflatoxin, Poison, Infection, Gravity Pull, Devour, Rage Potion, Rain of Fire, Fire Shield, Inflate, Holy Light, Thunderstorm, Owl/Eagle Eyes Attack and Lightning.

Hold up.  I would prefer Immortals ability to say "having life points below 1 does not cause this card to die".  Simply because if a card removing immortality is made, that damage hasn't gone away. Being devoured/paradoxed simply makes their life become zero.

[Lanidrak]

My suggestion is slightly different:
  Immortal: Immune to damaging effects*.
  Ethereal: Cannot be targetted.

*Damaging effects include: Firebolt, Icebolt, Drain Life, Paradox, Chaos Seed, Aflatoxin, Poison, Infection, Gravity Pull, Devour, Rage Potion, Rain of Fire, Fire Shield, Inflate, Holy Light, Thunderstorm, Owl/Eagle Eyes Attack and Lightning.

Hold up.  I would prefer Immortals ability to say "having life points below 1 does not cause this card to die".  Simply because if a card removing immortality is made, that damage hasn't gone away. Being devoured/paradoxed simply makes their life become zero.

Don't like this suggestion. Creatures with hit points below zero?! Not a fan.

In this case, it will completely negate the use of Firebolts/Icebolts/Drainlifes/Sniper/Thunderstorm/Rain Of Fire, or any card which does "x damage to creature(s)". It will be a lot more quanta effective to use Devour; can theoretically do (Otyugh Hitpoints-1 damage) or Paradox; pretty much instant kill provided x is higher than y, if x/y are the stats of a creature.

Drawing from what I've learnt of the game through the wiki, there is a variable, somewhere, which is used to store an array of spell and creature effects. The most notable example thereof, is Mutate, and the 'random effect' it causes, when it does not 1) kill or 2) mutate the creature.

It will be therefore, relatively straightforward to implement this suggestion:
Immortality: Immune to certain damaging effects*

Simply put (Firebolt, Icebolt, Drain Life, Paradox, Chaos Seed, Aflatoxin, Poison, Infection, Gravity Pull, Devour, Rage Potion, Rain of Fire, Fire Shield, Inflate, Holy Light, Thunderstorm, Sniper, Unstable Gas Effect and Lightning) to an array. And every time a spell is cast, if it is held by this array, then it cannot target an immortal.

Conversely,

All these effects (Rewind Time, Antimatter, Blessing, Holy Light, Freeze, Adrenaline, Basilisks Blood, Momentum, Chaos Power, Improved Mutate); these all work on Immortal creatures. As in, Immortal creatures can be targetted by these spells.

Liquid Shadow, Lobotomize - these two spells both remove abilities, it would be most logical, in my opinion, if these two abilities can remove the Immortal status from a creature.

Ethereal creatures simply cannot be targetted by anything. Perhaps Quintessence should make a creature ethereal. Not sure.

Your thoughts are welcome.

[Glitch]

You've clearly put a lot of thought into this, and actually, you and I are arguing the same thing.  The only difference between your post and mine is what happens to immortals when the status of immortality is removed?  Should they be at full health, or should they have lost any health you made them lose?

My method
1|1 Immortal
Fire ball
1|-2 Immortal
Card removing Immortality
Immortal is dead

Yours
1|1 Immortal
Fire Ball
1|1 Immortal
Card removing Immortality
1|1

[Lanidrak]

You seem confused.

You cannot even target an immortal with a fireball in the first place. So you will still have the fireball in your hand. You just need a card to remove the immortality status first, then you can cast as many firebolts you want on that immortal.

With your suggestion, what happens when I devour an immortal making him 5/0. Can I just keep devouring him? Also, if you devour an immortal, does it count as 1) a creature dying? 2) does my Otyugh gain the +1/+1 - since he technically hasn't eaten anything.

[Glitch]

Of course you can keep eating an immortal, but the otyugh doesn't grow.  Imagine eating an immortal apple.  It'd come out the south end the same way it went in the north.  You didn't get any nutrients, any sustenance, but you could eat it again if you truly wanted to.

[Xinef]

In my opinion immortal should mean one thing: creature is unable to die... ever
At least that's the literal meaning of this. If you can ever die, you are mortal. If you will never die you are immortal.

The way I see it - immortal creatures can be targeted, harmed etc, but when their hp drops below 1 they lose their ability to attack (similar to creatures with 0 attack), but stay in play. They can still use other skills or synergize with empathic bonds, and no 'on creature death' effects take place (and skills like devour, paradox, mutate, or aflatoxin-turning-it-into-malignant-cell just do not work). The creature simply cannot attack (until you increase it's hp above 0). All shields work normally. There should be no way to remove immortality (by definition), especially because immortality is not overpowered. It costs a lot and you could include more cards instead of quints/anubises and experience shows both ways are equally powerful (and Anubises are prone to creature control).
If you want to remove an immortal from play for good, simply lobotomize him (so he cannot use his other abilities if he has any) and deal enough damage, so his owner is unable to bring him to over 0 with healing/buffing). Synergy with empathic bond should stay (you can always destroy EB).

As for the ethereal ability - good idea to make it separate, although it should be much cheaper than immortality in my opinion (the fact you cannot target your creatures just as your opponent cannot is enough of a disadvantage).
I think such creatures should be unaffected by area spells (they can shift out of plane to avoid them), but affected by shields (they have to shift back to attack and then they are like normal creatures) also if frozen/stunned by a shield they can be targeted, because they are frozen/stunned while in normal plane.

On the other hand - burrowing is in my opinion underpowered. It halves damage and is affected by shields, which often halve the damage once more, so eg. a burrowed shrieker against a dusk mantle does 2 damage on average... this makes burrowing not worth it more often than not. Buffing a creature before burrowing is also expensive and usually it's better to buff and quint a creature, or quint a growing creature, than buff and burrow a creature. In my opinion burrowed creatures should be unaffected by shields (because they attack from underneath) and it would make burrowing more worthy and also they would be the only creatures immune to shields.


And if you think immortality should really be nerfed, I would suggest:
quint 5
upgraded quint 4

anubis: ability cost 4
elite anubis: cost 10 ability 4 comes into play immortal (or can use his ability the turn he is played)

and still the best tactic against immortals is simply overrunning them with more, more powerful, cheaper mortal creatures, basically making a good immortality deck requires a lot of cards, so they often have much less permanent control and creatures (I am talking about eg. immortal otys, not ethereal dragons).
And it is hard to use both immortality and PU/DS in a single rainbow deck and a deck with DS and a few more mortal creatures can win against a deck with immortals easily.
I guess it's simply the fact people are so irritated by immortality the reason why they want to nerf it. Well I guess making such creatures targetable would be enough to change it.

[Lanidrak]

In my opinion immortal should mean one thing: creature is unable to die... ever
At least that's the literal meaning of this. If you can ever die, you are mortal. If you will never die you are immortal.

So, Immortality means protection against these:

Firebolt, Icebolt, Drain Life, Paradox, Chaos Seed, Aflatoxin, Poison, Infection, Gravity Pull, Devour, Rage Potion, Rain of Fire, Fire Shield, Inflate, Holy Light, Thunderstorm, Sniper, Unstable Gas Effect and Lightning - which all have the potential to kill.

And Immortals can be affected by these:

Rewind Time, Antimatter, Blessing, Holy Light, Freeze, Adrenaline, Basilisks Blood, Momentum, Chaos Power, Improved Mutate - which under no circumstances can kill a creature.

I'm laboring the point here, I'm completely against the notion that "immortal creatures can have their hit points lowered beneath zero" and "when an immortal creature 'dies' it stays in play but with no attack" or "if an immortal creature is damaged, it's attack power gets lowered instead of its hit points".

In fact, that last one I sort of made up, but I'm not entirely against it.

All these options will require a much larger re-working and implementation of new code. Whereas my opinion on the matter will simply divide spell effects into two categories: those which kill and those which do not. Then immortals simply gain immunity to the former but will be vulnerable to the latter.

It seems to me a backwards step in the game development that shield effects (especially Fire Buckler) can cause damage to Immortal creatures. While, Procrastination and Permafrost both seem highly logical to me, that they can effect immortals since they do not kill them.

With my suggestion, you will never be completely able to remove an immortal from play - but basilisks blood, congeal, rewind time and antimatter will be your best options to counter immortals. Improved Mutate will also be a viable option, but you run the risk of giving your opponent 1) another immortal creature 2) a more dangerous creature or 3) a creature with a dangerous ability, such as steal, devour or destroy.

[Xinef]

In fact rewinding and mutation could both be used to kill an immortal creature.

If you make a creature immortal with a spell/ability, then it is rewinded and you play it again, it is once again mortal and can be killed. Logically though it is still the same creature (even if from games point of view it is a new creature).

With mutation it is similar - you change an immortal creature into a (probably) mortal creature and kill it, even though it is still the same creature.

I think if immortality is to be treated seriously, killing an immortal should not be possible any way, not just harder (if it was just harder we should call them 'hard to kill' not 'immortal'). The only way to deal with immortal creatures should be to stop them from attacking and/or using their abilities, or to kill their owner.

On the other hand I am pretty much sure adding a simple condition
if(creature.hp < 1) {
 if(creature.immortal == true) {
  creature.ableToAttack = false;
 }
 else {
  creature.die();
 }
}

(and a similar condition when a creature is healed/buffed to check if it can attack once again)
is much easier (and requires A LOT less maintenance and is much less prone to bugs)
than having a list of spells that can or cannot hit an immortal creature and having to decide with each new spell if it should affect immortals or not (imagine a spell with two effects like icebolt, should it be able to freeze but not damage a creature?, or just not possible to cast on immortal creature?)
On the other hand my solution solves it straight away (you can freeze and damage, just not kill).
On the other hand just add a few more statuses (like invisibility, ethereal, burrowed, probably more in the future), and for each you have to decide if a spell (or for example some permanents effect) can affect it... it is a lot more work and many more possibilities for programming bugs. Well, for some statuses it will be necessary, but I think for immortality it is not... (or in fact we only need to consider spells/abilities that can affect immortality like lobotomize/rewind/mutate, which is still much less than all damaging and instantly killing spells and abilities).

It's just an opinion though, and I don't know how it is really coded, so I might be wrong.

______
EDIT:
I wonder how instantly killing skills are coded...
I guess they might need a bit more work then I guessed at first, but right now they can see a difference between targetable and untargetable (right now immortal and burrowed) creatures just like any other skill, so it might need adding a distinction between abilities which will require some work, but Lanidrak's solution as well.
Anyway I am not an experienced game developer, and NOT an elements developer, so these are still wild guesses...
I have no experience with browser games, and my only experience with coding a game like this was making a deck builder in Java for a custom-made card game for an Objective Programming project which is a much simpler work