Doldrums

[psyscowasp]

I just found out about this game about a month ago. I've spent some time playing around, mostly with a mono darkness build. I started a second account to play around with some other elements. Once I hit the point of boredom (for me, grinding T3 for coins) I hopped on the forum. This opened me to farm builds (poison, phase shield), as well as SGs un-upgraded FG farmer. I sold off my upgrades to build that deck, and have been farming T5 and FGs both to learn the deck, and hopefully get enough coin to start doing what I want to do. That lasted a week, and now I'm back to being bored.

Currently I think the entry curve to the game is off kilter. Any CCG player can jump in and be farming T3 with no issue. However, aside from the intro quests, this doesn't gain them anything. Grinding T3 for upgrades is a LOOOONG process, even if you run something that specifically can win with full life each time. Past T3, you have T50, which is full of fully upgraded, fully tuned decks. You can get wins on the few that require strategy, but it's a losing proposition. T5 has hax, but you have a better shot due to the decks not being fully upgraded. You also have the added advantage of random cards maybe being rares or upgraded cards.

Moving into FGs, well, you have a series of finely tuned decks with double health, double the cards, and triple the quanta production, all with their own quirks and counters. Without knowing your upcoming opponent, and deck built for these guys has to be built for ALL of them. But this is all a gateway to the PvP scene, which requires all those pretty upgrades.

My issue is that no matter what you are doing, you can't get what you need. My deck needs a pair of Lobos. How do I get that card? I have to farm T50, T5, and FG, hoping to A) pull an opponent with the card, B) win the match and C) win the roll for the card I'm looking for. That's a lot of randomness to do something as simple as get a card you need for a build.

So far my complaint is that the entry requirements to having fun in this game is time. Not player skill or creativity in deckbuilding, just a ton of time to do the same thing over and over hoping you land what you need. It's an MMO, not a CCG. There isn't anything I can do to get 2 Lobos, or 2 Momentums, or another vamp dagger for the builds I'd like to play.

I love the CCG aspects of the game, but I can't stand the fact that it's going to take me a couple years of the same boring fights to be able to play the decks I want to play.

[jmizzle7]

Welcome to the forums.

It's great that you want more from your Elements experience, but it seems that you are still unaware of the PvP tournaments and leagues, otherwise you would not have made those comments about PvP. Almost all PvP tournaments and PvP events allow only non-upgraded cards, so people new to the game have a fair shot at the prize. I suggest you take a look.

PvP Tournaments - http://elementscommunity.org/forum/index.php/board,77.0.html
PvP Leagues - http://elementscommunity.org/forum/index.php/board,78.0.html

[psyscowasp]

You're right, I wasn't aware of the PvP scene and its format. I guess we'll change the feedback either to 'the logical next step to start PvPing isn't apparent' and/or 'wasp needs to lurk moar.' I'll let you guys decide.

[SickPillow]

My issue is that no matter what you are doing, you can't get what you need. My deck needs a pair of Lobos. How do I get that card? I have to farm T50, T5, and FG, hoping to A) pull an opponent with the card, B) win the match and C) win the roll for the card I'm looking for. That's a lot of randomness to do something as simple as get a card you need for a build.

There are ways to get what you need.  You need a pair of Lobos, so you farm T50 where some people have put up "farm" decks with free rare cards.  If nobody is running a farm deck with a lobo, then you can ask people in chat to add one for you.  There are a few nice people who will do this.  So if you don't care about your win/loss percentage, you can keep looking for farm decks in T50 and just quit out of the other battles... this gains you all the rares very fast.  And they are "rares" so they should actually be hard to collect.  I got 6 copies of all of the rare cards doing this in a matter of 3 days.

So far my complaint is that the entry requirements to having fun in this game is time. Not player skill or creativity in deckbuilding, just a ton of time to do the same thing over and over hoping you land what you need. It's an MMO, not a CCG. There isn't anything I can do to get 2 Lobos, or 2 Momentums, or another vamp dagger for the builds I'd like to play.

You don't need all the cards to have fun in the game... or at least you shouldn't.  Getting the cards is at least half the fun.  If you want all the cards immediately, you can play the trainer at http://www.elementsthegame.com/trainer .  You do need skill in deckbuilding.  You seem to think T50 is nearly impossible without upgraded cards, but this is just false.  I farmed T50 with an un-upgraded fire deck that wins around 80% of the time... it is tweaked to kill rainbow decks, which is what you see most in T50. 

I love the CCG aspects of the game, but I can't stand the fact that it's going to take me a couple years of the same boring fights to be able to play the decks I want to play.

again, you can play the trainer to try out all the decks you want.  but i think the "solutions" are out there for getting the cards you want, you just have to find them... i'm not saying it won't take time, but you definitely don't have to grind AI3 until you get the cards you want.

[tinkady]

i agree that getting cards takes a while (a lot less once you have a fully upped FG grinding deck) but I almost never play the real game anymore, the trainer is just great for fiddling a round with whatever ideas you want without caring whether they're worth the investment or not

[3D House of Beef]

All suggestions are good.  I entirely agree with the OP though.

I enjoy creative deckbuilding, trying out new ideas, fighting new opponents.  All of these things are very limited for the starting player.  Grinding is required to earn cash for cards.  The opponents available are limited, and the quests run out very quickly.  You are left with playing thousands of games vs. the same AI opponents.

If there were more AI opponent levels to fight, that would allow some feeling of progression from place to place as one grinds.  If there were more quests available, it would also help.

There is a real wall you hit once you decide you want to up some cards.  You are into playing a couple thousand games to get a fully upped deck to try out an idea.  It's just plain tedious.  Certain steps along the current AI path are a little off as well.  AI5 takes a lot longer to battle than Top50 due to the doubled health.  The rewards though, are minimal due to the way that spins work, and the large amount of total cards, and the upped/unupped cards in their decks.  It makes AI5 a disappointing level between Top50 and False Gods.

I don't want to sound like I am complaining too much, because I am quite pleased with the recent addition of cards, but I think some more AI levels added in there from the AI3 levels onwards, would be well received by new players.

[Vineroz]

dude, being bored to the game is way better than being addicted to this game, if you know what I mean....

[Robotocracy]

Forget AI3.
http://elementscommunity.org/forum/index.php/topic,5828.0.html (http://elementscommunity.org/forum/index.php/topic,5828.0.html)
A deck like this is sufficient for playing T50, and it's accesible to new players.  T50s use a lot of rare weapons and have a decent amount of cards, so you should be able to find whatever card you're looking for (excluding nymphs and the like).  From there, if you want start farming FGs ScaredGirl's almost unupped rainbow doesn't have that many upped cards so is relatively cheap, and can win against FGs:
http://elementscommunity.org/forum/index.php/topic,1615.0.html (http://elementscommunity.org/forum/index.php/topic,1615.0.html)
It's true that sometimes to get the cards you want takes a lot of grinding.  But I don't think the curve is quite as bad as a lot of people make it out to be.

[catalyzeme]

Yeah, I agree about T50 being perfectly accessible to new players. I actually have never really grinded AI3, but I've never been going for score. I think for money and rare cards, even fully unupped, T50 is the way to go. And I think the only time I ever thought upgrades were slow to come by was for the first one or two, when I was still getting used to the game anyway. If you are going to accumulate cards and not sell anything, then yeah, it'll take a while to get upgrades, but you can easily get a couple per day grinding T50 and selling everything, even starting with no upgrades. Upgrading would be kind of dumb if you could easily upgrade a full deck in a day. It's supposed to take a while.

I think a lot of people want to play casually (play a couple nights for a couple hours) and still be able to get tons of upgrades. Card games aren't really like that, though, where you can "beat" them in a night.