Last weekend I was in a discussion and mentioned how I dislike cards being nerfed. Then I thought a bit about this.
And something to think about. There will always be something frustrating to fight against. Fire decks were frustrating? Ok, nerf them and they are no more frustrating. But now (suppose) mono Darkness decks are frustrating. Nerf them, and now Light stall is frustrating, nerf it and other deck is frustrating, and so on. Whats the point? Instead of getting more strategies, we get the ones we have downgraded. Its the wrong way to a card game, I think.
This is true. Mere frustration is not sufficient.
However let us consider for a moment the structure of a metagame. A metagame is composed of 2 important parts: The current deck distribution (what percentage of the time is each deck used) and the marginal player (not an actual player but rather a result of people adjusting to the deck distribution). Each deck has a different set of win rates against each other deck type in the metagame. The marginal player computes the total win rate of using that deck given the current deck distribution. If a higher total win rate is discovered, the deck distribution shifts to include more of those decks until its advantage shrinks to zero.
Next lets consider that one of the main tools for EtG to provide quality entertainment is for it to have variety. This means that lopsided deck distributions are detrimental to the goal of EtG. We see reason to make changes to cards if they increase the number of decks that are competing in the metagame by a significant amount.
Yes, Im convinced that having variety is a good thing, but Im also convinced that messing with people's deck is a bad thing, even more considering how expensive is to upgrade a complete deck. So maybe we can together think about options to increase variety without nerfing cards. Lets brainstorm a bit.
1st, people use to say that cards balance should be based on PvP, and I think its correct. This means that the player deck in PvE doesnt really need to suffer the nerfs effect. Like, there is already a mechanism that downgrade all your upgraded cards when you go for PvP I. I suppose that coding a way to adopt the nerfed version of a card shouldnt really be difficult. Lets use SN as example. If I go for PvP (any of them), my SNs will produce singularities if chained (here is where the nerf is supposed to work anyway). If I use a speedbow vs AI3, I can use my SNs as usual (AI3 wont be annoyed at all
). Having 2 active versions can be a bit confusing but I dont see this as a big problem. Changing a card without any warning is also confusing to people that dont visit the forum. So this is an option that have the job done and doesnt cause trouble in PVE, in the farming routine (which we know is real).
Another thing I think about is the Arena. Sometimes its really repetitive. But here, and specially in higher leagues, cards have powers they dont really have in PvP, due to double deck and double draw. Nerfing cards based on arena decks doesnt seem a good solution, but yes, we want more variety. Them I remembered about another card game I used to play. To add more variety to a league-like thing, each week a group of cards were banned. I think that, if 5 cards (possibly the most used last week) were banned each week, this would increase variety a lot. Of course limitations like this are usually not good, but its better than having cards nerfed because of AI using them in PvE. Another option could be creating some other limitations, like forbid 'other' cards, allow a maximum of 4 elements per deck, choose some random elements for the player to use and not allow cards from the others... Of course Im not suggesting all these being cumulative. But if everyone keep using the same decks, lets limit deckbuilding a bit, instead of changing cards that we can use.
And of course, if there are more options in PvE, Arena wouldnt be a big problem. Lets face it, we could use more AI2 and AI3, at least 40 of each. I also love how AI4 is well designed to have unique games, and I think this could be better explored. Im thinking about a customizable opponent. Not like in the trainer, where you can load a deck to it. Lets imagine it. There is a button in the game interface that calls another screen, like the Arena one. There, I can choose opponent HP (50-200 in 25 or 50 gaps), if he has double draw (AI3, AI4 or FG scheme), if he uses a random deck (like AI5), a strategy deck (coming from a fixed strategy poll we can create), or random, if he has upgraded cards and how many, mark (1x, 2x, 3x), pet (allowed or not), etc. It would be fun, and according to the difficulty, the rewards could increase, maybe even allowing upped spins for the higher ones. I would love something like this.
Well, this is it, Im throwing some ideas, I would like to see some from you
