Enhancing Rewards (an improvement to the Slot-Lottery and Electrum)

[Lanidrak]

Referring to the old adage that time is money, I am going to propose a series of changes which will hopefully leave the game relatively unchanged but add more dynamics instead of a simple Win and Lose scenario.

The reason for this suggestion is because I personally find that Electrum and Upgraded Cards are only really achievable through repetitive False God farming. Ie. Mastery = 120 Electrum & a (i think reduced) chance of winning a rare.

Therefore I think a series of Achievements would be a nice way to set yourself some goals in fighting someone/creating incentives to earn Electrum rather than relying on luck for a Rare card win.

*note: the following list is not extensive nor is it entirely balanced, hence it is a suggestion open to improvement/changes from your feedback.

The Achievements
Blitzkrieg - Win a game in less than 8 rounds.
Reward: base reward*5

Defender - Have your shields defend more than 50 damage
Reward: +20 Electrum
Defender II - Have your shields absorb/defend/reflect more than 150 damage
Reward: +50 Electrum
Defender III - Have your shields absorb/defend/reflect more than 500 damage
Reward: +150 Electrum

Strategist - Win a battle lasting more than 20 rounds
Reward: +20 Electrum
Veteran Strategist - Win a battle lasting more than 30 rounds
Reward: +50 Electrum
Master Strategist - Win a battle lasting more than 50 rounds
Reward: +150 Electrum

Decimation - Kill 15 Creatures.
Reward: +20 Electrum
Decimation II - Kill 30 Creatures.
Reward: +50 Electrum
Decimation III - Kill 60 Creatures.
Reward: +100 Electrum

Poisoner - Put 8 poison counters on your opponent in one game.
Reward - 12 Electrum
Poisoner - Put 16 poison counters on your opponent in one game.
Reward - 50 Electrum
Poisoner - Put 32 poison counters on your opponent in one game.
Reward - 150 Electrum

Brutality - Do over 40 damage in one turn.
Reward - 40 Electrum
Brutality II - Do over 60 damage in one turn.
Reward - 60 Electrum
Brutality III - Do over 80 damage in one turn.
Reward - 80 Electrum

Longevity I - Heal yourself for 50 damage in one game.
Reward - 40 Electrum
Longevity II - Heal yourself for 100 damage in one game.
Reward - 75 Electrum
Longevity III - Heal yourself for 300 damage in one game.
Reward - 150 Electrum

Thievery - Steal 3 cards from your opponent.
Reward - 30 Electrum
Thievery - Steal 6 cards from your opponent.
Reward - 60 Electrum
Thievery - Steal 9 cards from your opponent.
Reward - 120 Electrum

Pillager - Destroy 9 Pillars/Towers or Permanents.
Reward - 50 Electrum
Pillager II - Destroy 12 Pillars/Towers or Permanents
Reward - 75 Electrum
Pillager III - Destroy 15 Pillars/Towers or Permanents.
Reward - 120 Electrum

The Reasoning
New players will be able to alter their decks and customize them and therefore get to know the game better at a much quicker rate.

False God farming will not rely solely on the 'luck of the draw' principle in getting an upgraded card. Since only in a False God fight will you be able to pull off multiple achievements, ie. Strategist (the game lasting a long time), Defender (relying on shields to cover damage) and Longevity (healing yourself, ie Miracle, Empathic Bonds).

Besides the incentive for players to unlock these achievements they could also boast either on the forums, or maybe on the splash page that comes up when PvP is loading a sort of list of medals/badges they have achieved.

*note: The amount of Electrum rewarded is just a number I have plucked out of thin air, it has no immediate reference to the game/cost of cards/upgrades etc.

With that in mind, maybe there should be further changes to the overall economic system of the game? With not ALL cards costing 1500 to upgrade, maybe pillars costing less, some creatures costing more, etc, etc!

What's more is, the Achievements could potentially unlock certain cards. Say for example, there is a Legendary card which does a Legendary amount of healing to yourself each turn and creates a Legendary creature. But this card is only available to players who have say for example: unlocked Achievements for Longevity III. Another example, would be, you cannot upgrade Earthquake into Quicksand until you have at least unlocked Pillager II.

Please, any thoughts are welcome! I personally think this is what the game is missing most.

[Kamietsu]

Nice idea, but i think simply just adding more quests will be good enough, if Zanz takes the idea that is. But this makes it feel too much like I am playing a cheap Xbox game.

[assassim]

Very good ideas, but some of the achievements would be way too easy to farm. For some achievements (defender and strategist) could  easily be farmed using quantum pillars, dis field, photon, and eternity. While others require no strategy at all (only if your lucky) like the thievery and pillager achieves. but overall its a good concept but you may want to consider reducing the rewards for the easier achieves.

[Lanidrak]

The general trend of things (as far as I am aware) is that slowly but surely the AI is improving and becoming smarter. As the AI improved, more clever decks (especially False Gods... more than 6 duplicates, more than 60 cards, 200hp etc). Therefore, these achievements would be harder to get as the AI could become smarter.

@assassim: You would have to win the game for the achievement to count. So, in order to unlock Strategist III and Defender III you would have to play a game lasting 60 rounds AND absorb/defend/reflect 500 damage and ultimately win the battle. So building a deck to simply survive for 60 rounds ie. Rewind/Eternity with big shields ie. Dissipation/Phase/Bonewall wouldn't work since you would need offense to ultimately win the game.

In regard to that, decking your opponent should be changed... ie. If I deck my opponent and we both have 100% hp, the game should ultimately be a draw - no lost coins. If I deck my opponent and he has more HP than me, I should lose and vice versa.

*Note: Not sure how these changes would go down with the general playing public, but to me it seem's a little cheap to build a deck with the primary goal of surviving until your opponent runs out of cards (happens quite a lot against AI since AI has no conception of using Eternity on himself to keep his deck at 1 card.)

@Kamietsu: I suppose you are right. More quests would be nice. But as the game is now, the entire gameplay is revolving around:
1) enter a battle (mostly random as to who or what you are up against)
2) play your game (again mostly random as to what cards you get, it is a card game after all)
3) Win or Lose.

What I propose is instead of just aiming to win, you could aim to I don't know let Firefly Queen fill her board with creatures and then use your Firestorm x2 to unlock Decimation as well as Defender and maybe Strategist.

[assassim]

That was more of build to not die and deck out your opponent to make the match last longer while not dieing yourself

[trozman]

Strategy against Destiny.
Play a 60-card stall time rainbow. Have a couple of quints and an anubis for more quinting. Requires a purple nymph (preferably SoRed and quinted). A chrysora would be nice but you can always mutate out a poisoner. Rest is standard Scaredgirl (FFQ, bonewall, graveyard, fallen druid, otyughs) with 6 SoGs, 6 SoDs and some SoRs and other stalls (permafrost, etc.)

Your strategy is simple, stall and control Destiny's creatures with a quinted otuygh UNTIL you can get a quinted nymph out. Then antimatter all of Destiny's creatures. Then when you get a quinted FFQ out, start antimattering all its creatures. Once your quinted fallen druid is mutating, antimatter THOSE as well. Because you want Destiny to keep living.

Then once you have completed all the achievements except for 80 damage a turn, start mutating the weakest creatures (leaving the strongest antimattered ones keeping Destiny alive). Then eventually you can set it up so you're healing Destiny completely but still doing 80 damage. Then you can mutate the rest and win.

Use a shield - eventually you absorb >500 damage -> Defender III -> +150 electrum
Game can last forever, i.e. over 50 turns -> Master Strategist -> +150 electrum
Use your quinted otuygh to eat your own skeletons/fireflies -> Kill 60 creatures -> Decimation III -> +100 electrum
Have a quinted chrysora -> put 32 poison on Destiny -> Poisoner III -> +150 electrum
Do over 80 damage in 1 turn -> easy with quinted fallen druid and quinted firefly queen (once Destiny starts rewinding its own creatures, it can't remove yours) -> Brutality III -> +150 electrum
Quinted purple nymph + miracles + SoGs + feral bonds -> Heal yourself for 300 damage in one game. -> Longevity III -> +150 electrum
Mutate creatures until you get one with steal -> steal 9 times pillars or anything else -> Thievery III -> +120 electrum
Mutate creatures until you get one with destroy -> destroy 15 permanents -> Pillager III -> +120 electrum

Total: 1090 electrum extra.
Plus you get about 240 electrum for having extra health from SoDs -> 1330 electrum.

This would potentially work against any god who has Eternity (Osiris) or who could steal and use Eternity (Chaos Lord, Rainbow).

So... yea. XD That'd be awesome though.

[Innominate]

The general trend of things (as far as I am aware) is that slowly but surely the AI is improving and becoming smarter. As the AI improved, more clever decks (especially False Gods... more than 6 duplicates, more than 60 cards, 200hp etc). Therefore, these achievements would be harder to get as the AI could become smarter.

@assassim: You would have to win the game for the achievement to count. So, in order to unlock Strategist III and Defender III you would have to play a game lasting 60 rounds AND absorb/defend/reflect 500 damage and ultimately win the battle. So building a deck to simply survive for 60 rounds ie. Rewind/Eternity with big shields ie. Dissipation/Phase/Bonewall wouldn't work since you would need offense to ultimately win the game.

...

@Kamietsu: I suppose you are right. More quests would be nice. But as the game is now, the entire gameplay is revolving around:
1) enter a battle (mostly random as to who or what you are up against)
2) play your game (again mostly random as to what cards you get, it is a card game after all)
3) Win or Lose.

What I propose is instead of just aiming to win, you could aim to I don't know let Firefly Queen fill her board with creatures and then use your Firestorm x2 to unlock Decimation as well as Defender and maybe Strategist.

The poison rush deck would become an insanely good AI3 grinder. You could finish some matches in under 8 rounds (base reward*5) and would get 8 or more poison counters (depending on how fast you do it, you could get more than 16).

In regard to that, decking your opponent should be changed... ie. If I deck my opponent and we both have 100% hp, the game should ultimately be a draw - no lost coins. If I deck my opponent and he has more HP than me, I should lose and vice versa.

*Note: Not sure how these changes would go down with the general playing public, but to me it seem's a little cheap to build a deck with the primary goal of surviving until your opponent runs out of cards (happens quite a lot against AI since AI has no conception of using Eternity on himself to keep his deck at 1 card.)

No, absolutely not. If you run out of cards, you should have more cards in your deck. Otherwise, you just need to kill faster. If your opponent causes you to run out of cards, you just got outplayed. Do you really think that a deck which does a tiny amount of damage and then simply stalls long enough to run out of cards (if time/aether, it could happen in ~18 turns) should beat you? I assume you don't intend this to work against FGs either, because taking Miracle down to 99 health while you sit at 100 and then decking yourself would defeat the entire purpose of that encounter (which is to either kill in one go or survive long enough to exhaust the Miracles).

As to the AI, they most definitely do use Eternity on themselves. They try to keep their deck at 5 cards remaining. In any case, outlasting an opponent's entire deck should be considered enough to win a match.