How to improve ETG and keep veterans addicted

[ralouf]

Also a new idea :

What if instead of lwoering the amount of all the cards, just lower the authorised amount of annoying/OP cards ?

Sosac, dim, BH, RT, Dials etc.. ?

[Fireleaf]

That kind of subjectively picking certain cards to hard-code nerf in that way isn't something I think Zanz would do. Look at SN, which some people thought was the most OP card in game; it's nerf was to limit use to one per turn unless you want a Singularity. There's a choice for the player. This limiting to 4 per deck just kind of says, "well, I can't balance this, so maybe it won't be as OP if you can only use 4 of it." IMO, it's better to buff/nerf cards by changing cost, effect etc, than to artificially balance them in this way.

[Cannibal7]

By limiting the maximum number of card copies to 4, while this definitely helps trios and rainbows, it kills monos imo.  Don't get me wrong ralouf, I actually love your idea! Being an mtg player myself, I can completely relate to a 4 card copy maximum, 60 card minimum metagame.  The thing is, even in type II standard (mtg tournaments with the last 2 blocks of cards), mtg decks have a minimum of about 800 cards to choose from.  Elements decks don't have that luxury.  So, I like your idea, but I feel like we'd need more cards  before we could enact this change, in order to not kill monos.  That being said, dropping the maximum number of card copies to 5 now might still be viable.

playing MtG since 2000 and 7th edition/ invasion block but is not exctly like that. 800 cards when the 700 are unplayable (unless you draft) and rarely you see mono coloured decks. we have a huge majority of elements 2 pick from (12) instead of MtG (5) where the quanta/mana base doesnt have any synegism in some colours depending the set, yes more EtG cards would help but doing it like mtg and keep decks at 60 cards with 4 copies of each would change game the same for all. you will see more balanced fights as it will be harder 2 lock up your opponent in like turn 2 like i do with pestosis.
An other idea is 2 limit some op cards like shards. like 2/ deck or 1 or something. I am fair new here so i dont know the environment that good 2 say more.

[OldTrees]

Also a new idea :

What if instead of lwoering the amount of all the cards, just lower the authorised amount of annoying/OP cards ?

Sosac, dim, BH, RT, Dials etc.. ?

Treats a symptom not the cause.

New decks would arise and the metagame would still be dominated by pure decks rather than the mixture of pure and mixed strategies you desire.

[dragonsdemesne]

Lowering the amount of OP cards legal in a deck wouldn't really help, unless they were outright banned.  For instance, suppose we restricted Quicksand to one copy per deck.  Imagine your opponent's rage at the RNG when you play quicksand turn 1 anyway; he'll scream how you were lucky to get the one copy in your opening hand and wreck his game.  And he'd be right; you would have beaten the odds to draw that.  It's like in MtG where you suddenly topdeck Balance or something :p

[yaladilae]

Every week they should give us 10% of your number of wins in the form of electrum

Then veteran will be more interested since we have a bigger number of wins!

[dracomageat]

Except electrum means nothing if you have every card.

[ralouf]

Every week they should give us 10% of your number of wins in the form of electrum

Then veteran will be more interested since we have a bigger number of wins!

That may be cool be I have  1500000 electrum and no use for them..

[DarkBaron12390]

I can sympathize with this topic, very much. I have ~150k points (and ~5k games, admittedly at least 1k were ragequit.. i'll get to that at the end), placing me at like level 65. I kind of hit there by accident just by grinding. I remember the first time I had a "soft quit" (in that I kind of just drifted and stopped coming) was when I was farming T50 to get all the rares. Once I got 6 SoD and 6 SoG all upgraded, and a few duplicates of weapons, I stopped. I'd still come maybe once every few months for a day to farm the FG for an hour. Then I began getting bored again a few months ago and came back to a radically different Elements, which was nice. Around the 1.27 patch or something.

Now I've accrued 6 of every upgraded shard (except SoW... missing two), and have many unupgraded ones. I also have at least 6 of every other rare card in the game, like weapons. I also have like 15 nymphs. And honestly, the only reason I keep coming back is that I am a completionist, and want every rare card so I have all doors open for me in decks. In short: I oonly return to get the rares (almost done), and spin nymphs. I had a time where for a month I only logged in, spun the oracle, then never returned.

In summary, I do not play this game, and haven't played this game, for its actual content. The last time I played this game for enjoyment from the elements and experimenting around was when I was newer, about 2-3 years ago. Moreso 3 I think. It just lost a lot of its potential in my eyes, and is the same rehashed stuff over and over and over again. And I'm not talking about the grinding mechanic - I'm okay with that. Now to return to how over 20% of my games were ragequits. It'd hit the stage where whenever I faced a boring deck, I'd quit. E.g. Discord|BH? Quit. I don't care if I have a chance to win - It's not FUN! There's no fun anymore, unless you want to rehash an old and tried deck to combat another rehashed old and tried deck.

In terms of solutions, I think this game currently needs an overhaul in its metagame structure. I honestly don't see new cards fixing it at this slow a rate. How: I couldn't tell you. The new cards and the nerfs are fixing symptoms of an even bigger problem. I can't quite pin it down with brevity at this time, but others may be able to for me. The metagame always seems to shift into a little niche, and it's been a similar niche for years now, regardless of the updates and irrespective of nerfs.

[RRQJ]

Unfortunately, what you're having a problem with is part of the nature of CCGs.  Once an equilibrium is reached, people will gravitate towards decks that work.  The better the deck, the more likely it'll be used.  The same problem exists for other CCGs like magic or yugioh.  Their solution is basically to eliminate equilibrium with rotations/bans/new cards/etc.  Elements can only add new cards (except within pvp tournaments and other forum events, where they can make up special rules).  And even then, that solution is what you consider "fixing symptoms" and not the problem.

The only way that the problem could be fixed would be to not allow everyone to have access to every card.  e.g. create more nymph-like cards.  That's actually something zanz is/was considering: create more nymph-like cards so that eventually people can create their own unique deck.  Downsides? (Perfectionist) Collectors will suffer (a lot), and people who dislike "luck" will rage.  But that's probably the only way to completely eliminate the problem of seeing the same stuff over and over again.

Otherwise, I think all you can do is to make changes/add cards to temporarily mess up equilibrium.  When equilibrium occurs again, make more changes.  Rinse and repeat.

[dragonsdemesne]

That's actually something zanz is/was considering: create more nymph-like cards so that eventually people can create their own unique deck.  Downsides? (Perfectionist) Collectors will suffer (a lot), and people who dislike "luck" will rage.

This is true, though if the nymph-like cards were obtainable by skill, rather than luck, then it would be one way to separate players more based on skill level, which this game needs.  (and being a perfectionist and a collector, if they were luck based I'd go insane... it already drives me bonkers needing to farm hundreds of nymphs/marks from the oracle and tourneys :p)

[ralouf]

Made a long post but it disapeared.

Noob will complain that it's not fair that vets have access to other cards. In RPG that 's notmal though, in WoW when you get WTFPWNED by a lvl 80 when you're a noob it's normal no ?

Also original decks always loose those days (In CL when I used something else than a DBHbow or sosac deck (with a little excpetion though) I lost.