Interview With The Players

[EmeraldTiger]

I will start with five questions.

It has been said that the PVP part of the game is imbalanced. Is this true?

If it is true, What exactly is the problem?

What adjustments are needed in The Arena?

Is there anything that should be added or removed from game environment?

What is the one thing about the game that is most enjoyable?

Edit: I just  thought this; If you have a question for other players, ask it at end of your post.

[TheIdioticIdiot]

this has already been started
I was one of the few SG picked (based on post count)

[EmeraldTiger]

No, this is something different I am attempting to gain insight on how player's feel about the game.

These questions are totally from me.

[RootRanger]

It has been said that the PVP part of the game is imbalanced. Is this true?

Yes. But every game is imbalanced to some extent, and Elements is better off than most games.

If it is true, What exactly is the problem?

A few cards are too powerful and constrict the metagame. Nerfing these cards would open PvP to more cards and decks.

Firestall: Fire doesn't just have the best rush; it has the best stall due to three key cards: Fire Bolt, Rage Potion, and Fahrenheit. Since stalls cause games to last long, a stall deck will have a huge surplus of quanta late in the match. No other Element can match the damage per turn of a Fahrenheit without using something vulnerable to CC. Fire also has the best bolt. Since bolts are usually used for CC, damage is a top priority. Fire bolt does 50% more damage than the other two bolts, which is definitely more valuable than the secondary effects of Ice Bolt and Drain Life. Fire also has Rage Potion. The only damage based CC cards that can beat the speed of Rage Potion are Lightning and Shockwave, but Aether and Air don't have a Bolt or weapon that can become extremely powerful with a lot of quanta. In BL, I've seen Firestall more than any other stall, which is because the other stalls can't match Firestall.

Just look at its stats: 8 damage for 4 quanta and a one turn delay. Nothing in the game can match that. Graboid also has versatility. It can stay unburrowed or burrow (if it has already become a shrieker) if something like Maxwell's Demon or Owl's Eye comes in to play, threatening to kill it. Other attackers like GotP, Mummy, and Toadfish can't do this. Graboid is extremely powerful, and it's the main reason QP Grabbow dominated BL until Sanctuary and GotP came out. But Graboid is still an extremely strong card, and only one creature can match its strength (Phoenix).
Nova rainbows need fewer quanta producing cards than mono and duo decks. A Nova rainbow can work well with only 8-10 quanta producing cards, but monos and duos need 12-14. Nova rainbows can have a much more efficient Deck Size:Quanta card ratio and can have an advantage over a lot of decks that aren't hard counters. Grabbow was very common in BL 1/2011 and it's still a great deck, partly because Nova allows few quanta cards to be necessary. If you need evidence, I finished 2nd place in BL 1/2011 (with a better W/L ratio than 1st place) by using Nova based rainbows almost every single game.

The original list had five cards/combos, and two have been nerfed.
However, I have two more cards to add.
Although Discord has many weaknesses, it can provide a major advantage against many types of decks. But a big problem is that it is not beneficial to the metagame. Grabbow and Sanc Firestall are overpowered decks because of their efficiency and synergy. They have significantly fewer counters than the rest of the possible deck types. Discord only makes this problem worse by being weak against Grabbow and Sanc Firestall while being effective against almost anything that isn't Grabbow or Sanc Firestall. Discord not only destroys deck types by itself, but increases the strength of decks that are already overpowered.

Well, here's the problem.

Hardly anything can beat Firestall as well as SoX decks.

This turns the game into RPS between Firestall, Stallbreakers, and SoX. There will be little room for creativity or original deck types. This really isn't the kind of game we want.

From my experience in CL, I've realized that two of the already mentioned cards are significantly more OP in upgraded play than unupgraded play.
Upgraded Supernova is a much worse problem than the already overpowered Nova. By turn 0-2, it generates the amount of quanta that a tower could generate only after 21 turns! Supernova also comes with variety that monos and duos could never reach. Supernova rainbows can take the strongest cards of each Element all in one deck and play them much more quickly than monos and duos can. With common 6-turn wins, PC through Improved Steal/Explosion, denial from Discord and Black Hole, and defensive anti-rush cards, good Supernova rainbows are impossible to consistently answer. They are the one deck that cannot be hard countered.
Firestall gets even stronger in upgraded play. With towers, Firestall can reach the crucial 10 Fire quanta a turn faster, which is enough to make a large difference. Another problem is that almost all of the counters to Firestall are weak to Supernova Denial Rushes.

What adjustments are needed in The Arena?
Even though cards should be balanced based on PvP instead of Arena, the Arena could use fixes. One problem is that the Arena doesn't really have a changing metagame because most of the people playing arena do not pay attention to what cards and strategies are currently popular. This means that if a card or strategy is overpowered, it's going to be extremely popular for a very long time. The thumbs up/down system hardly does anything to stop this since most Arena grinders don't thumbs up/down based on how popular their opponent's deck is. Some people thumbs up every time to be nice, some thumbs down every time to help their own deck, and some thumb up and down depending on their mood or even random reasons. This (http://elementscommunity.org/forum/index.php/topic,30663.0.html) is a good answer, and I'm a bit disappointed zanz chose the thumbs up/down method instead. Another problem is that some decks receive almost twice as many plays as others in a day. This can cause a mediocre deck to make more electrum than a great deck; seriously? Here (http://elementscommunity.org/forum/index.php/topic,29507.0.html) is a good fix.

Is there anything that should be added or removed from game environment?

Outside of Arena and card balance and creation, there aren't any major changes that need to be made. There are many small suggestions that would improve the game; I'm not going to link them all.

What is the one thing about the game that is most enjoyable?

Competitive PvP (tourneys, events, etc.)

[dragonsdemesne]

It has been said that the PVP part of the game is imbalanced. Is this true?
-That's a rather ambiguous question.  Strictly speaking, it isn't, because everyone has access to the same card pool on both sides.  However, I suspect what you meant is whether certain deck archetypes or cards are problems, and in that case I would agree.

If it is true, What exactly is the problem?
-Certain elements are weaker than others, and there is not enough diversity in the card pools of certain elements, wheras others have multiple possibilities.  An element like darkness has healing, permanent and creature removal, a good shield, and decent creatures.  An element like life has a bunch of creatures, none of which are particularly spectacular beyond Giant Frog, and a bunch of healing, carapace, and that's it.  Fire has faster, better creatures than Life, even though Life is supposed to be about fast creatures, and it has permanent and creature removal as well.  Those are just a few examples.  A larger card pool would help a lot.  Certain elements are extremely predictable and/or weak, such as Life, and this makes them poor choices in PVP.

What adjustments are needed in The Arena?
-The arena is at a fairly reasonable level of difficulty versus reward in terms of winning rares, but the electrum/score won is too high.  Also, the rewards for posting a good deck in the arena are quite poor; even if you get to the #1 spot and hold it until you drop to 1hp, you only get the electrum of four or five platinum arena wins.

Is there anything that should be added or removed from game environment?
-This is awfully general.  I'd say we need more cards, more quests, geared both at newbies and veterans, more PvP events, more reasons to randomly PvP (pvp1, pvp2) as well as a pseudo-random pvp system that paired you against players of similar skill.  (which currently cannot exist since pvp1/2 is pretty much empty)  I could list a lot more, but those are pretty big ones.

What is the one thing about the game that is most enjoyable?
-It never seems to get old.  I've got over 10k games played, and I'm still here.  I don't play as much as I did when I started, but it's still a fun diversion.