Remove gold cost of matches

[jippy99]

Here's a good way to put this.  Eliminating the cost makes a lopsided scale.  You have a win and electrum gain on one end and just loss on the other.  To have one without the other does not make sense for it disrupts the balance of the game.  And Im not going to bother responding to that long post, it will just result in bad things for both of us.

[BluePriest]

ANY TIME in real life you enter a game tournament that has the possibility of winning money, YOU HAVE TO PUT MONEY DOWN.Your example, MtG is not a good one. If you were to bet against your opponent, you would have to put money down too. Its a basic rule of life that you have to risk money to earn money. If Im playing mtg for fun then sure, I dont have to pay anything, but Im also not getting anything. Meanwhile, if Im expecting a cash reward, I probably have to risk some money as well.

/topic

[jippy99]

Thank you for saying that.  That is exactly what I meant by all this, I just wasn't too good at saying it.

[Sevs]

Liquid antimatter with all the skips would become the best FG farmer of all time

[maverixk]

If you're going to remove the cost of playing, which then removes the penalty of losing, then in order to keep the balance of the game you have to remove the electrum gained when you win. Which means you can't buy cards and that means it would be nearly impossible to build a deck you want. Therefore the game would be nearly impossible to play well. You might as well go to trainer if you want no penalty and no gain.

Summary:You can't remove the penalty of losing without removing the bonus from winning.
Metaphor-thing:You can't give a child a pat on the back when they do something good but not punish them when they do something bad.

[ikinone]

You have a win and electrum gain on one end and just loss on the other.  To have one without the other does not make sense for it disrupts the balance of the game.  And Im not going to bother responding to that long post, it will just result in bad things for both of us.

You are not explaining your reasoning at all, just repeating your point as if saying it more proves something.

ANY TIME in real life you enter a game tournament that has the possibility of winning money, YOU HAVE TO PUT MONEY DOWN.Your example, MtG is not a good one. If you were to bet against your opponent, you would have to put money down too. Its a basic rule of life that you have to risk money to earn money. If Im playing mtg for fun then sure, I dont have to pay anything, but Im also not getting anything. Meanwhile, if Im expecting a cash reward, I probably have to risk some money as well.

/topic

Okay, I regret mentioning MtG earlier, because people need to stop making comparisons. The reason money is collected for IRL tournaments is to raise prize money. Since I do not believe elements is meant to be making a real life simulator, but more a fantasy game that simply resembles elements of a real life card game, the developers are not constrained to inconveniences that you would otherwise have to deal with in a card game restricted by our economy and laws against simply making money. Thus, inconveniences that you encounter in real life games can be removed. I am sure if MtG tournaments were allowed to print money, and they had an unlimited venue scale, they would no longer require a fee to join.  And please don't write /topic as if you have made some genius point. I am sure you have a high opinion of yourself, but you need to consider other peoples points of view in a forum like this.

Liquid antimatter with all the skips would become the best FG farmer of all time

Then perhaps the deck build needs fixing, not electrum cost. Then again, one build or another will always be better.

If you're going to remove the cost of playing, which then removes the penalty of losing, then in order to keep the balance of the game you have to remove the electrum gained when you win. Which means you can't buy cards and that means it would be nearly impossible to build a deck you want. Therefore the game would be nearly impossible to play well. You might as well go to trainer if you want no penalty and no gain.

Summary:You can't remove the penalty of losing without removing the bonus from winning.
Metaphor-thing:You can't give a child a pat on the back when they do something good but not punish them when they do something bad.

Okay, there are obviously way too many kids/jobless people with unlimited free time on this forum. Not one of you seems to realise that time and electrum are essentially the same thing. Playing a match costs you electrum and time. You can gain more electrum through spending time on low tier AI. Thus if you remove the electrum cost you are simply reducing time spent on matches. I can understand that many of you feel cheated if you have spent hours/days grinding in this game, then it is made easier. However the fact is that right now the game is very unfriendly to casual players. The concept of even attempting false gods appears to involve tens if not hundreds of hours of game play. I know more than one person who has rejected this game purely on that basis. The grind factor is simply too high in what should be a fun and accessible game. The only possible reason I can imagine there is so much grind involved is to make people spend more time in front of advertisements. No game should ever have grinding if avoidable. I think the only reason anyone here is defending grinding is pure selfishness for reasons mentioned above.

[powdergame99]

ikinone, you are an idiot. how old are you? i'm betting somewhere around, maybe 10? have you ever, EVER heard of opportunity cost? you can't get something without giving something up. you can't just get money without giving something in return. jobs don't pay you unless you work. you can't win money in poker, or betting on a game, if you don't put money into the pot. basically, you are saying that we should just get money. IRL, that's called stealing.

[Pineapple]

1. The game would be too boring without grinding. If people could have access to all the cards within a short period of time, then the sense of progression would be even WORSE than it is now. That's the reason this game is boring: not because it's difficult to get the cards, but because there's no leveling up or playing through a story.

2. Look, we're not "just repeating a point as if saying it more proves something." We don't need reasoning, because opportune cost is EVERYWHERE, not just in Elements, not just in MtG tournaments. Have you EVER played a game where potions are free, where you can max your stats or learn all the spells once you start out, or where you can do everything in the game within an hour? Ever played Pokemon, Final Fantasy, Warcraft, DoTA, StarCraft, WoW?

[maverixk]

For the record, I am just a casual player, and I still have fun. Just because I have to play a lot of games to get good, which makes perfect sense, it doesn't make the game less fun. All it does is make me want to keep coming back so I can get better. The electrum cost of games really doesn't affect people that much. Most new players won't try to take on the Ai's or PvP's that are higher level because they can infer by the cost that they're harder.

[BluePriest]

So far you have gave NO reasons as to why your idea should be implemented, nor have you given any rebuttal to the arguments made against it.
Argument 1-It will be easy to take an FG deck with a good win rate against certain FG's and just skip Gods until you find one it has a good chance of winning against. Thats one of the failsafes of having an enterance fee. It was easily /topic because the only reason you have given is that no other game is like that. Monster Hunter Series. If you havent played it, look it up. You have to be careful upgrading your weapons because if you arent, you will end up with not enough money to go on a quest. Virtually every game requires you to earn things before you can use them.

So lets refresh this debate so we can start from the beginning again. State your platform. What you believe (aka that there shouldnt be a fee) and why. For the time being, we dont have a single good reason why it should be removed.

[ikinone]

ikinone, you are an idiot. how old are you? i'm betting somewhere around, maybe 10?

Good effort. I am highly insulted. Carry on.

have you ever, EVER heard of opportunity cost? you can't get something without giving something up. you can't just get money without giving something in return. jobs don't pay you unless you work. you can't win money in poker, or betting on a game, if you don't put money into the pot. basically, you are saying that we should just get money. IRL, that's called stealing.

Part of the point of computer games is that they do not have the same boundaries as physical activities.

Look at it this way:

Imagine the majority of computer games that haev various difficulty modes (e.g. Diablo II (normal / nightmare / hell / hardcore)

Most games do not force you back to an easy mode if you die on a hard mode constantly. People would find that absolutely insane. Imagine trying hardcore continually only to be bumped back to normal mode. People would just say "wait, why do I have to go through normal mode again? It's boring and unchallenging." That's exactly what happens with this game.

The electrum cost does reduce the ability to farm the higher end content. However the main restriction to farming high end content (FG etc) is the difficulty of it.

I am making a genuine suggestion to make this game more fun and accessable to new or casual players. Even with no electrum cost, people would not hit endgame any time soon. Probably the only people who coudl manage that are experienced players with the knowledge to create specific decks. As I mentioned earlier anyway, perhaps some decks simply need balancing.

I am absolutely sure there are a lot of old timers here who detest the idea of the game requiring more grinding, mostly because they have spent a lot of time grinding. Sorry but that is the most awful and selfish reason not to improve a game.

1. The game would be too boring without grinding. If people could have access to all the cards within a short period of time, then the sense of progression would be even WORSE than it is now. That's the reason this game is boring: not because it's difficult to get the cards, but because there's no leveling up or playing through a story.

A 'short' period of time is a matter of opinion. Some people think it is okay to invest hundreds or thousands of hours in this game to make various decks. The key point here is I believe it would take less time to make various decks,

There is very little sense of progression right now, because it takes so bloody long to progress. To be honest if you have such a vast amount of spare time, go and buy World of Warcraft. I guarantee you will no longer be twiddling your thumbs. It does a far better job than this game ever will of sucking up your free time. Currently this game seems to want to use the same amount of your time with vastly less content, which is why it sucks. I feel sorry for anyone who has spent so much time grinding this game to play high end stuff.

Quite frankly if the community and developers of this game want it to remain that way, fine. I have better ways to spend my time than grinding all day. I simply beleieve this game could be more fun, but people resist that because they want to spend a lot of time on it, because they simply have nothing better to do. Well, fine. If that is what people want, I cannot sway you in that. Enjoy your grinding and good luck.

2. Look, we're not "just repeating a point as if saying it more proves something." We don't need reasoning, because opportune cost is EVERYWHERE, not just in Elements, not just in MtG tournaments. Have you EVER played a game where potions are free, where you can max your stats or learn all the spells once you start out, or where you can do everything in the game within an hour? Ever played Pokemon, Final Fantasy, Warcraft, DoTA, StarCraft, WoW?

Sorry every debate needs reasoning. Please avoid this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argument_from_ignorance

I am not claiming everything be made free. Stop being so emotional and exaggerating. Even without the  cost, this game would still take a long, long time to consider anywhere near complete.

For the record, I am just a casual player, and I still have fun. Just because I have to play a lot of games to get good, which makes perfect sense, it doesn't make the game less fun. All it does is make me want to keep coming back so I can get better. The electrum cost of games really doesn't affect people that much. Most new players won't try to take on the Ai's or PvP's that are higher level because they can infer by the cost that they're harder.

I agree, the game can be fun as a casual player. However, it does not mean it cannot be improved.

Your point about playing more games to get better however is nonsensical. There is almost no skill in actually playing this game. The skill is in building the deck. If you have a deck and you play 100 games against AI1, you will play just as well as if you play 10000 games. This game consists of making a deck, and grinding till you can make an upgraded deck, that is all there is to it.

I simply want the grinding aspect reduced. Making new decks is fun, but really I wish upgrading did not exist in this game. Upgrading is obviously there as an incentive or goal for people to achieve should they play long enough. Really I detest this kind of goal. The game would be exceptionally better if no upgrading was involved, but as mentioned, it would not have so much lastability.

Instead of grinding for upgaded cards, there would need to be an alternative, the best of which would be vastly, vastly more card options. Longetivity would be inspired by the appeal of trying new deck builds, rather than the anticipation of one day having those upgraded cards. Of course, that would involve a lot more development time, so for now upgraded cards is basically a quick fix to make people play the game more. I really appreciate the work the developers have put in to this game, and I respect that they need some way to get people to play a lot. For now upgrading cards does seem like the best option.

As I cannot imagine upgraded cards being removed, the best option is to simply reduce the grind aspect (hopefully) to the extent where it is more feasible to try various deck builds. Right now the concept of trying different upgraded deck builds is a bit of a joke.

[Pineapple]

Let's say you die on hard mode. Do you have to play through the beginning of hard mode again? Yeah.
Everything would be so much better if nothing happened when you die. But then there would be no incentive for survival, you would just max out DPS and grind until you can one-hit whatever you're going to face. As you can see, in a game like Diablo II, something akin to "removing gold cost of matches" would make it more casual, aka easier, but wouldn't improve the playing experience at all.

If you want to build decks, use the trainer (http://elementsthegame.com/trainer).
If you want to use decks, however, spend time on the game. Since you said "it doesn't take experience to know how to play a deck" (which isn't true, since so many noobs fail with CCYB, Shak'ars, and LSAM), then being able to build decks should be fun enough for all these poor, pitiful "casual players", even if they can't use the decks they make, right?
Now, maybe you want them to be able to PvP with the decks, too. Making a deck isn't as fun as playing with the deck? That is saying that you want everyone to reach the end-game as quickly as possible.
This is a strategy card game, not a collectible card game. You only need all the rares and all the upgrades if you want all the rares and all the upgrades. The people who want to reach the end-game will reach the end-game, the people who don't want to reach the end-game won't. Imagine if Blizzard flattened the EXP curve so that everyone could reach the level cap in a day. They would have all the benefits possible, what's wrong with that? They shouldn't have to waste time to be able to PvP competitively with people of higher levels.

You asked us for reasoning, but your request was redundant. Opportune cost exists, we don't need to prove it exists because it exists. Saying things like that is like saying "prove that the sky is blue" or "prove that the grass is green." No pain, no gain. This is a rule ingrained in our very society, you can't just dismiss it as a premise by saying, "You didn't prove it yet."

None of us are exaggerating. You're underestimating. This game's interface of losing money if you lose isn't the problem, the problem is in the fact that newbies cannot get the information that allows them to make the highest profit in the long-term. Without the electrum cost, you would be able to upgrade 30 cards each hour, farming with the right un-upgraded deck. You say that maybe the decks need balancing, but the thing is that if the FGs were so powerful that no two FGs could be countered by the same deck, then is there really any point to farming FGs at all? Unless the FGs are uber-buffed, you would need to re-balance every card in the game so that no one deck can beat more than one type of opponent. This is the inevitable outcome your suggestion, either the game becomes too easy, or the game becomes stupid.