Our Duty to Elements...

[Lanidrak]

In the modern game industry, the most successful games are the most well balanced and unique.

Zanzarino has done a great job giving us an extremely fun and unique gaming experience, and what's more is, it is completely free to play.

The balancing is something that requires man-power and time. And since Zanzarino is but merely one man, he cannot be expected to completely balance, test and make this game perfect all by himself.

I was Farming the AI level 3 using this deck:

18 Aether Pillars
6 Phase Dragons
6 Phase Shields

I played a total of 10 games - and won all 10 of them.
It took me 17 minutes and 8 seconds.
The average game length was 1 minute and 42 seconds.

I won a total of 402 electrum coins. 195 from victory and 207 from selling cards that I won.

That's roughly 0.4 Electrum coins per second on average that I earned.

We can all help improve elements by conducting research, if you will, into the effectiveness of decks and the benefits of duelling different Tiers.

Here's how I did it.

I started a timer (on my phone) as soon as I clicked AI 3 - which then starts the game with the coin toss.

I then proceeded to play against the AI as quickly as I could, on the lowest graphics setting (I found this sped things up by about 10 seconds per game).

As soon as the game finished I stopped my timer, I then copied down the time that game took me to complete, the coins I won, and whether I won anything in the spinner.

You can help contribute to this project, by trying to - as accurately as possible - record data from your games, using a simple stop watch.

As I mention before, this testing helps balance the game, and without it we might lose track of some fundamental changes that will put the game on track.

What's more is, I earned 400 Electrum coins in roughly 15 minutes... That's nearly 1/3 of an upgraded card. Yet I can play against the False Gods for 45 minutes and sometimes end up losing money.

Anyways, it's late, tell me what you think - this was meant to be an inspiring call to arms, to try and accumulate data about the game and ultimately help improve it.

Good night

[Essence]

Wow.  I never thought of turning the quality down as a way to improve farming speed.  That's pure genius.


Also, this should be in General Discussion, it's way too important to be in Suggestions and Feedback. 

+Karma.  Nuff said.

[Lanidrak]

Sweet , cheers for the Karma.

Everything I generally post is a suggestion, a card idea or some sort of feedback (ranting), so I rarely venture out of these boards...

[Scaredgirl]

hm.. the problem here is that 10 games is not enough because the margin of error is way too high. You need hundreds of games from the same player to have any kind of statistical relevance. Sure this can still be done for fun, but you can't really draw any valid conclusions from it.

Here's a picture for those who get it:

[Lanidrak]

I think against AI 3, the margin of error is significantly reduced.

The deck I am using is intentionally simple.

You have a 33.3% chance of drawing a Phase Shield, a 33.3% chance of drawing a Phase dragon and a 66.6% chance of drawing a Aether Pillar.

This usually results in 4 to 6 pillars in your starting hand. Additional pillar (usually) on your second turn. With your mark adding one Aether per turn, generally you have 1 Phase Dragon in play by the 3rd or 4th turn.

The only things that really defeat this deck is
a) Fire Shield - but 3 Phase Dragons can still kill an opponent who has a Fire Shield since turn 1. So that's irrelevant.
b) Destroy/Steal Shield - The guy running Pulverizer has no Gravity Quantum, and the guy running Steal doesn't really do enough damage to endanger you.

Sure, there might be a margin of error in the timing of your game, you might not follow the exact protocol that I did - resulting in either
a) Drastically different times.
b) Similar times give or take a few seconds.

That is why an average comes in handy.

Finally, I think 10 games played is not really statistically relevant, which is why, (if I was more awake when creating this thread) would have been more persuasive in urging people to try and contribute.

It took me 30 minutes to completely play, time, record and calculate the results for 10 games.

If 9 other people do the same, for one hour, we can have results for 180 games.

Then, I think we will have statistics that talk. And then, with relevant data we can start having meaningful discussion about what is balanced and what is not balanced about how the game works. Instead of the current practice of speculation vs argument vs feelings vs ideas vs suggestions - which ultimately reaches no firm conclusions.