Balanced around everything being overpowered.

[Toge111]

I was playing arena and when I faced several decks there this thought occured to me. Everything is very powerful. If you have Otyugh on the table, the opponent likely can't play any creature without it being eaten. If somebody has Mind Flayer, all played creatures of opponent will lose their ability to use their special. Dimensional shield makes you invulnerable(!) for three turns and can be chained without restrictions. One Antimatter on dragon reduces your damage output by around 20 points and there's very little you can do about it. Discord / Black hole / Earthquake combinations make it so that you can't play any card besides pillars on your turn. Just a couple of Feral Bonds with tons of creatures will de facto overcome any damage.

Yet everything is balanced. There's no single deck or card that beats all the rest. One kind of OP'ness can be responded by different kind of OP'ness. I think this kind of good design creating different routes to victory is what makes Elements have lasting appeal.

[Absol]

It's not OP if it's canceled out by other's OPness. It's called strategy.
OP is if something can't be countered without building a deck specifically to counter it.

Besides, when you post your arena deck, your deck will also be strong.

[Calindu]

First, this isn't the right place, for 2nd why do you think those cards are OP?
And to have a balanced meta not some cards must be OP.

[Atico]

I would like to see something like "Big balanced project" for 7-10 days. Lets put in game or in trainer few changes on a week (in 90% change is easy, beause it is only cost or attack/hp) and we will see which changes are really good and neccesary. Here is a good topic, a lot of post and ideas: http://elementscommunity.org/forum/index.php/topic,34667.0.html
Maybe it is worth to do some changes from this list.

[Toge111]

Not a day passes and my thread gets moved to trash bin. Does a small browser game like this really need 93 subforums for topics? (yes I counted them)

[ZephyrPhantom]

Not a day passes and my thread gets moved to trash bin.
It's not even in the Trash Bin. It's in Game Suggestions and Feedback, where all balancing talk goes.
 Does a small browser game like this really need 93 subforums for topics? (yes I counted them)
Considering that we're a pretty developed forum and have done so many things based on this game from Lore to PvP Events, it's pretty well justified.

Anyway, I doubt "everything is overpowered" is a good way to balance the game. That seems to imply poor design to me as new cards will be forced to be overpowered to trump old ones that are also overpowered, and cards will inevitably slide towards the bottom of the tier. When designing a game, having a 'balanced' but flexible and expansive base is important, even outside of CCG's. Everything being overpowered seems to imply a more RPS type of gameplay as "X OP card counters Y OP Card."

I also doubt that's the game balance will be heading towards a balanced state by the increase of card power given that a lot of recent demands seem to nerf a large amount of central cards to the game (such as Supernova) compared to the small amount that need to be buffed (Antlion, Trident).

[RootRanger]

Yet everything is balanced. There's no single deck or card that beats all the rest.

It's obvious that everything can be beaten; otherwise, hardly anyone would want to play competitively.
But that definitely doesn't mean the game is balanced.

Counterable is not the same as balanced.

Certain cards completely outshine other cards in almost every way possible. Some of the cards have very little, if any, competitive use, while other cards are seen in many of the most popular decks. Some cards force players to bring one of very few counters, in a game of hundreds of cards, in order to win.

Maybe it's just me, but this is a problem.

Not a day passes and my thread gets moved to trash bin. Does a small browser game like this really need 93 subforums for topics? (yes I counted them)

You've been moved to the second best major subforum (first is Events and Competitions). Show some respect.

[Xamuel]

I think you guys are mis-understanding OP because he could've expressed himself better.  I think what OP is saying is that it's a GOOD thing the way Elements has so many seemingly-game-breaking cards, and yet, they're so finely balanced, that they don't break anything.  And he's right... if you think about it, it's really striking.  Quite a lot of cards seem quite strong.  One way to see this is to imagine these cards in some other type of game.

>Flooding in a real-time strategy game.  Enemy army (except 5 random soldiers) wiped out.
>Rewind in a racing game.  Sends enemy racecar back to the starting line.
>Precognition in a game of poker.  Where your poker face NOW biznitch  8)
>Antimatter in a Street Fighter II game.  Enemy's attacks now heal you.
>Quintessence in a 1st person shooter.  God mode activated!
>Cloak in the game of chess.  Enemy can't see where your pieces are.
>Maxwell's Demon in an MMORPG raid.  Uberboss instantly killed.

[plastiqe]

If you're counting subforums of subforums it is way, way more than 93.  War alone has at least 46 subforums.  I once tried to get them to delete my Draft Battle Results subforum but they wouldn't do it.  I think SG just said "resistance is futile".  It has something to do with Star Trek: First Contact and the Borg being Swedish.  : P

Anyways, all those OP cards the OP is talking about, I say nerf em all and let the metagame sort it out.

[Falconian]

If you have Otyugh on the table, the opponent likely can't play any creature without it being eaten.

Rage Pot/Elixir, Lightning, etc.
If you don't have creature control in your deck it's your fault, not opponent being "powerful".

If somebody has Mind Flayer, all played creatures of opponent will lose their ability to use their special.

Mind flayer has 2 hp, even a Drain with no dark quanta can kill it.
Again. Creature control.

Dimensional shield makes you invulnerable(!) for three turns and can be chained without restrictions.

Dimensional shield can be shattered, stolen and bypassed in many ways.
Any decent deck has a way to deal with permanents and shield.

One Antimatter on dragon reduces your damage output by around 20 points and there's very little you can do about it.

Sort of agree.
I feel Antimatter is slightly OP not by itself, but when used in the deckout decks as multiple AMs are not realistically counterable.
It should be like the steam skill, the attack turns say from 5 to -5 but then every turn the creature gets +1 attack until it goes back to the default attack.

Discord / Black hole / Earthquake combinations make it so that you can't play any card besides pillars on your turn. Just a couple of Feral Bonds with tons of creatures will de facto overcome any damage.

Earthquake is fine, Discord is somewhat OP if played first turn, if it was playable on 3-4th turn it would be ok.
Black hole is in my opinion the most gimmick unbalance in the game if used with certain decks.
I know a complete noob who got super high ranks in gold league with Black hole spam deck. Meh.
First ranks should be for people with GOOD decks not for noobs with OP cards.

Overall, I think overpowered cards should be there, because they make the game fun, BUT more limited than 6 per deck.
2 OP cards per deck limit would be ok.
I.E. you don't take 6 black holes, 6 rewinds, 6 antimatter, 6 nightmare, 6 miracles, 6 Jesuses and 6 Thors.
You take 2 of each and that's it.

Being blackholed twice can be countered, being blackholed 6 times means you're just hitting spacebar the whole game.

Until they decide to give OP cards a limit per deck people will continue to fill their rainbow decks with 6 of each.

[omegareaper7]

Overall, I think overpowered cards should be there, because they make the game fun, BUT more limited than 6 per deck.
2 OP cards per deck limit would be ok.
I.E. you don't take 6 black holes, 6 rewinds, 6 antimatter, 6 nightmare, 6 miracles, 6 Jesuses and 6 Thors.
You take 2 of each and that's it.

Being blackholed twice can be countered, being blackholed 6 times means you're just hitting spacebar the whole game.

Until they decide to give OP cards a limit per deck people will continue to fill their rainbow decks with 6 of each.

Please correct me if i'm a little bit off on my assement.
It seems like you want to get rid of the cards that make a few decks good, 2 rewinds per deck would pretty much ruin the point of it and force the use of eternity.  Who would be crazy enough to use any more then 4 miracles in any given deck.  Blackhole is only an issue with rainbows, or when paired with discord. Nightmares only really big thing is ghostmare, otherwise its not a super awesome card, still helpful but not amazing. And similarly to miracle, antimatter isn't going to see more then 2-4 copies outside of monos.

[Falconian]

Please correct me if i'm a little bit off on my assement.
It seems like you want to get rid of the cards that make a few decks good, 2 rewinds per deck would pretty much ruin the point of it and force the use of eternity.  Who would be crazy enough to use any more then 4 miracles in any given deck.  Blackhole is only an issue with rainbows, or when paired with discord. Nightmares only really big thing is ghostmare, otherwise its not a super awesome card, still helpful but not amazing. And similarly to miracle, antimatter isn't going to see more then 2-4 copies outside of monos.

I only want to get rid of the "oh look, you're hitting spacebar and nothing else for the next 10 turns" aka "please quit game" cards/decks.
I'm fine with everything that's counterable, or at least I like to be able to do, uh, something during that game.
Being locked one turn or two is ok, being spamlocked the whole game is boring: there is nothing worse than sitting there doing nothing.
The whole fun with Elements is based on "what will the opponent do now? how will he counter this?", this fun magically disappears when one player is not playing.
You could as well play solitaire if you like playing alone 

As for antimatter, I like the concept of the effect very much, makes games interesting.
I just don't like how the effect is permanent.
Let's be honest here: when you face a deck with 2/3+ antimatters your entire focus goes on countering the effect.
It's you vs antimatter not you vs the other person's deck, so obviously something needs to be done with that card.
If your creature gained +1 attack back every turn or if the duration of AM was limited in turns, then it would be ok.