How to improve ETG and keep veterans addicted

[Captain Scibra]

My simple answer is more cards, which undoubtedly will come in due time.  Try making them as original and fresh as possible.  Like Psion/SoW was only good to the point that it combine a couple mechanics, nothing new.  Same with Seraph, just a slightly altered perspective to a commonly known mechanic.  To me, the more original and new things are the more they interest me, hence why I love making card ideas, and investigating weird deck combos.

EDIT: Honestly can't expect much more than what's already there, except maybe the Trials, which will hopefully be very diverse and random.

[Rutarete]

My simple answer is more cards, which undoubtedly will come in due time.  Try making them as original and fresh as possible.  Like Psion/SoW was only good to the point that it combine a couple mechanics, nothing new.  Same with Seraph, just a slightly altered perspective to a commonly known mechanic.  To me, the more original and new things are the more they interest me, hence why I love making card ideas, and investigating weird deck combos.

I like your post, and agree

[RRQJ]

AhAh lol @ Mr negativepant

Yeah I want to quite reset the existent decks and try to have some new deckbuilding because I feel that the current metagame is quite anoying and repetitive..

Does your solution actually fix things though?  The proposed change will indeed change things up in the short term, but once the dust settles down, are you sure that the game won't again be repetitive, annoying decks on top?

To be more clear: your change is expected to nerf grabboid rushes.  In the new meta, deck X becomes the dominant deck.  After some time, deck X becomes the "annoying, repetitive deck" that grabboid rushes were.  We're now back on square 1.

[furballdn]

Has the idea of achievements been mentioned in this thread yet? The problem with EtG right now is that there's a lack of things to do. After mindlessly grinding AI3, AI0-3 becomes repetitive and boring. Even among FGs there's only a certain number of them. Sure, the arena opens up "countless" opportunities, but the way it is today, it's just a few different deck archetypes. Having achievements would allow players to aim towards something else while they play. There also might be rewards for getting certain achievements. For example, killing 500 creatures gets you an upped skeleton. Healing over 1000hp gives you an upped heal. The point is, having something like this allows players to aim towards achieving something other than "I need 15000 more electrum for that next deck. Better mindlessly wade through arena again"

[ralouf]

Tbh I don't know if this will make the metagame less annoying. It's just an idea I had ^^

However I'm not sure you get my post, I'm not saying that only graboids rush are annoying but that all the dcks are annoying, due to containing 6 exemplar of a cards, all decks are very limited, usually have a single aim, and get hard countered easily (I mean almost every deck have an easy hard counter, see the FG for example, even with a big boost they are very easy to EM when you know they'll come, except rainbow who use a large array of cards : PC, CC, heal, rush, draw etc..)

I agree with Male that we need fresh new cards. I tried myself to make some with an inexistant success.

What I dislike in the game is the hard counter because it make the game totally annoying.. And what's happening is that when an OP cards come out, instead of nerfing it, they give it an hard counter. (see sosac and purify, see SoFo and CC etc..)

[MasterN]

it kinda boils down to: the first thing we need are more cards....


without even my first question being answered i move down to the second.
do you really think, that having more cards or even less of a kind in a deck will solve the hard counter problem?
sure it will weaken it a bit, but that's all.
i thought you played MtG... it's the same there, even with 60000 cards. the border will be less bound to cards, but more to concepts. best example is rush <-> control.
even with >60000 cards the same concepts still exist.
on the topic on FGs: they are a challenge, until you can farm them. at that point they're just another AI down the road. to me, they don't pose a problem. there are decks with a high win ratio, but they're slow control decks. the question with FGs is: how many upped cards/h do you get. any hard counter strategy related topic is completely wasted on them.

[RRQJ]

What I'm trying to get at is that after you change the limit to four, are you certain that once everyone adjusts to it, that the game won't again become annoying?

What if there are still tons of hard counters?  Then nothing has been solved.  Or what if inconsistency goes up so much that people now become annoyed at the "luck factor" (there are people who despise even the tiniest bit of luck, as you can see among the posts after the nymph buffs were announced).  It's now a different problem, but the end result is still people being annoyed.

[ralouf]

Yeah we need more cards, it'll come with the time for sure..
Also I think that less cards of a kind in a deck will make the hard counter inexistant, hence the game will be more fun. No it's not fun to loose vs an hard counter. So with more option we'll have less hard counter.

Yes I played MtG a lot and I've noticed that most of the time the DOMINANT deck isn't a pure rush or a pure control deck (always some exceptions obv see monored or UW control) but most of the time the best decks are something with a lot of synergy between cards, solid creatures, some CC, some PC. I really love this type of decks because you have a lot of way to win a game : outrush, control, domination, little combo etc.. That's what I want to see in EtG where decks are whether pure rush, whether pure control, sometimes we have some CC/PC in a rush deck but nothing comparable.

Also I thought that the idea of monolith/obelisk I tried to create (see in cards idea or search for monolith on forum to find it) would open new playstyle..

@RRJQ : I'm not really sure it'll solve the problem it's just an idea I had. Though with less examplar of a card, it's obvious that decks are going to be less mainstream right ? hence less annoying in my point of vue.

[ZephyrPhantom]

Yeah we need more cards, it'll come with the time for sure..
Zanz is only one person, and not all cards implemented come out well despite the intent to introduce game variety. Is the card development rate fast enough in this game, in your opinion?
Also I think that less cards of a kind in a deck will make the hard counter inexistant, hence the game will be more fun. No it's not fun to loose vs an hard counter. So with more option we'll have less hard counter.
Decks could still be built as hard/pure stalls/rushes/etc..., as long as there are the necessary card components to make said "pure" version of the deck and by extension it probably won't take too long for a "hard" counter of said deckstyle. Unless this heavily discourages the use of purestyle decks I'm not exactly sure how we could eliminate hard counters from the meta.

Yes I played MtG a lot and I've noticed that most of the time the DOMINANT deck isn't a pure rush or a pure control deck (always some exceptions obv see monored or UW control) but most of the time the best decks are something with a lot of synergy between cards, solid creatures, some CC, some PC. I really love this type of decks because you have a lot of way to win a game : outrush, control, domination, little combo etc.. That's what I want to see in EtG where decks are whether pure rush, whether pure control, sometimes we have some CC/PC in a rush deck but nothing comparable.
Pardon my bad reading skills, but I think I'm having trouble understanding this statement. ^^;
Are you trying to encourage all styles of decks to be equally used in the game?


Also I thought that the idea of monolith/obelisk I tried to create (see in cards idea or search for monolith on forum to find it) would open new playstyle..
Well, quantum generation is one of the core parts of any decks after all. In my opinion implementing new quantum generators such as the Monoliths/Obelisks mentioned above would provide a strong boost to variety. (Of course, there should be always be other cards coming in too )

@RRJQ : I'm not really sure it'll solve the problem it's just an idea I had. Though with less examplar of a card, it's obvious that decks are going to be less mainstream right ? hence less annoying in my point of vue.
Decks could still be annoying if designed to be annoying or if the cards used are all very similar in terms of annoying purposes, especially if all the cards involved fit the same particular niche that a 6-copy-card deck would. It seems likely that a reduced-copy limit would result in the same mainstreams decks relying on similar cards, especially after the card pool gets a large boost.

This topic has become a pretty good gathering point for some good flavor/variety ideas for this game, even if people don't 100% agree on all of them. I would really recommend Zanz reads through the entirety of this thread for several ideas (some common, some unique).

As for another idea that might work well with Quests and Achievements, how about Crafting and Materials Cards? Material cards could be part of a new system of Quests that introduces new content in the form of material cards and new challenges (4-copy card limit could be involved in several of these quests too, allowing it to be used in both PvP and PvPE without annoying 6-copy players too much.), and could also have useful game effects that create new variety in decks. We could even integrate the introduction of new pillars like you mentioned above and have something like the Quantum Forge.

[Annele]

Yes I played MtG a lot and I've noticed that most of the time the DOMINANT deck isn't a pure rush or a pure control deck (always some exceptions obv see monored or UW control) but most of the time the best decks are something with a lot of synergy between cards, solid creatures, some CC, some PC. I really love this type of decks because you have a lot of way to win a game : outrush, control, domination, little combo etc.. That's what I want to see in EtG where decks are whether pure rush, whether pure control, sometimes we have some CC/PC in a rush deck but nothing comparable.
Pardon my bad reading skills, but I think I'm having trouble understanding this statement. ^^;
Are you trying to encourage all styles of decks to be equally used in the game?

I think he's saying that in MtG the best decks are the ones with synergy between cards.

[OldTrees]

Yes I played MtG a lot and I've noticed that most of the time the DOMINANT deck isn't a pure rush or a pure control deck (always some exceptions obv see monored or UW control) but most of the time the best decks are something with a lot of synergy between cards, solid creatures, some CC, some PC. I really love this type of decks because you have a lot of way to win a game : outrush, control, domination, little combo etc.. That's what I want to see in EtG where decks are whether pure rush, whether pure control, sometimes we have some CC/PC in a rush deck but nothing comparable.

Your desire is to nerf pure strategies (Pure Rush) in favor of mixed strategies (Rush with CC/PC aka 67%Rush, 33% Control).

In MtG there are enough redundant copies that many decks feature 8-16 copies of a card despite the 4 of name restriction. So evidently reducing the number of cardname per deck is insufficient and unrelated to your goal.

How can this goal be achieved?
1) We need more support for mixed strategies. (There are relatively few cards that operate efficiently as more than one of rush, control or combo. Even fewer can do both at the same time.)
2) We need more need for mixed strategies. Mixed strategies are better able to adapt to the opponent. We need to make adaptation more required in matches. This means there needs to be more interaction between players.

[ralouf]

@Zbalder :
I think that having more cards more often won't hurt, Though I understand that Zanz can't work more.
Yes pure deck will still be available but we'll also have more varied option.
It's my english that is pretty bad I guess ahah ^^ Yes I'd encourage all type of deck to be played with equal chance, but I'd also see more aggro-control deck.
As you said this monolith/obelisk will open an arrray of new deck methink, and make trio/quartet more played I hope.
Yeah we may still have annoying decks, but I'm not sure ^^
Also yes I'd be cool if Zanz can have a look at this thread
Finally I reall like the idea of new pillars you had and it also will help for duo/trio/quartet aka no-annoying deck to live.

Finally I completely agree with OT post, except that I want to keep some pure rush, I want to give choice to player about their decks.