I posted this years ago, just after the arena had been implemented, but got a fairly anemic response. It's just as true now as it was then, and immortality continues to rankle me every time I play against Lionheart, Morningstar, etc. - how do you all feel about immortality and player powers? The game is certainly mature enough now that I expect people to have robust opinions on the matter.
Posted in 2011:
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I don't come to the forums often so it's possible that this has been argued to death. Sorry about that, but... anyway.
We've just had a major new feature release and obviously all effort for the immediate future is going to go towards tweaking and updating the arena. That's fine, that's as it should be. However, playing against other players' decks these last few days has refocused my attention on a couple things that I think could be done better than they are now. Consider these suggestions for the long term.
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1. Immortality is not fun.
Since I haven't played in the Top 50 category for a long time, and I never play PvP, immortality hasn't been so much of a problem for me. Now though, in the Arena where every other deck is an annoying control deck, use of Quintessence and Enchant Artifact just seems to be assumed. The thing is, that's just not fun.
Consider a player who puts out an Otyugh and throws a Quintessence on it - with only two cards, the entire rest of the game has been defined and there's essentially no recourse for the other player. A Pulverizer is even worse and these are just examples, there are many cards that can dictate how the game plays out if you're unable to do anything about them. Sure, in this example a player who has just the right deck you could possibly shut down their gravity quanta production, maybe, but that's a fringe case. The point is not just that immortality is extremely powerful, it's that you're almost forced to use it yourself or be put at a huge disadvantage. Or, at a minimum, account for it with some defenses in your deck (Fire Shield, Thorn Carapace). The big problem with that, the thing that I really don't like about this, is that it limits creativity in deck construction.
So one solution might be to simply remove immortality, this is rather drastic. What I propose is to make it temporary instead. Consider the following changes:
Quintessence: Functions the same way, but lasts for only three turns.
Enchant Artifact: Same as Quintessence, three turn effect. The only problem here is that this might make Quicksand a little too powerful. There are ways to address this, however. Just for example, a new card - Robust Ecosystem (life): none of your pillars can be destroyed, Robust Ecosystem spawns a 1/1 creature (Peppy Pengolin) every turn. If you don't like that, there are other ways to balance the change to Enchant Artifact.
Phase Dragon: Losses immaterial, but gains the ability Phase: This creature can not be targeted for three turns. (Four turn cooldown.)
Immortal: Remains as-is. This card is weak enough that I don't see it as being too harmful, and permanent immortality is something that could set it apart - it's defining characteristic.
Turquoise Nymph and Anubis: Could adjust their ability so that it's similar to the phase dragon's, temporary with a cooldown, but since the point is to avoid permanent immortality it would need to be arranged in a way that would either not let them target themselves or have a cooldown long enough that they wouldn't be able to maintain immortality on both themselves and another creature. Maybe something like "Grants Immortality for two turns and Frailty for three (can not be targeted by Immortality while Frailty is in effect)."
Immaterial shields I'm okay with - that's part of the point of those particular shields and it doesn't feel overpowered. Morningstars are fine as long as they're not flying... This is debatable, but my fix in this case might be to give Morningstars immortality for three turns after they're flown, then have it wear off after that.
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2. The additional abilities that you can take advantage of when building your arena deck are great, things like dexterity and the increased mark allow for builds that just wouldn't have been viable otherwise. Dexterity in particular - I often feel like any deck that doesn't include either Hourglasses or Mindgates is underpowered for longer games. You're just not bringing in the resources that a deck containing those would have.
Building creative decks is where most of the fun is so I'd really like to have some access to those abilities in my non-arena deck, but obviously that needs to be done in a way that won't unbalance things too much and that means trade-offs. You can draw an extra card per turn, maybe, but that means no mark and possibly some reduced life. Something along those lines.
Ultimately, doing this at all, even with the trade-offs, would mean increased power for players. This is partly just because increased ability for specialization always leads to some advantages, and partly because we don't currently have much to trade in for the added abilities. By no means do I think that players should have powers approaching that of the arena decks, but some increase would be great for the added versatility.
Now, for implementing this, what I'd like to see is gaining these powers through additional quests. It's been a long time, but I remember really enjoying those when I was starting out. This would also give some opportunity for different kinds of challenges - in one quest you might need to beat some enemies with a triple mark and while drawing two cards per turn, but without the ability to place any pillars or use any Supernovas. Just as an example.
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Anyway, those are my two suggestions for the future. It's mostly about deck building versatility - I feel like I've had too many good deck ideas squashed because I need to fill them with hourglasses or dedicate too much to accounting for immortality.
