Shards have been the most controversial feature of Elements ever since their large scale inclusion to the game. The most recent Shard change (them being moved to in-element cards) has spawned some discussion among various subforums. A popular excuse to exclude Shards from PvP Events so far has been that they were "other" cards and thus "not really part of Elements" or something. So now that they are in-Element, should they be allowed? Well if we want to depopulate PvP once and for all then right on.
My keen observation of the rest of the forum also
seems to indicate that people still don't really like them, to put it politely. What I have noticed though was that while the vast majority of the forum goers are united in their rejection of shards, no one of them is actually able to explain their contempt properly. This makes it somewhat hard for zanzarino as an amateur game designer to actually improve his game. The 1.32 patch seems to have fixed several superfacial problems with Shards - they are now in-element, and the before overpowered Shard of Focus is now probably just balanced. Nevertheless, they have remained banned in Tournaments, War and pretty much all the other PvP Events.
The real problem that people fail to point out, and that wasn't fixed with the latest patch either, is that they are simply awful game design. I posted a
tl;dr of this a long while ago, but people didn't really believe me then so I feel like I should elaborate this a little more.
Here is a bit of game design 101. Players are going to come to your game with certain expectations. Your job as game designer is to meet them. Does that sound wrong to you? Shouldn't a game try to surprise its audience? No, only in a much lesser magnitude. Put simply, if you open up a stand and put up a sign that says "Hot Dogs" you should sell Hot Dogs inside, not lettuce. That's what Shards do however.
There are two factors that contribute to people's expectations in respect to Shards:
a) They are
cards in Elements the Game.b) They are
rares in said game.
Let’s first examine point a). The most basic statement about Elements is that it is a fantasy card game. And here we already have the first problem with shards. Shards simply aren’t a typical fantasy trope. Dragons are, as are Angels, Elves, undead creatures, many things which Elements already features. Shards however aren’t. This is not an immediate problem. Any fantasy universe should have something unique to it, so why not Shards for Elements? Unfortunately this only works if this specialty is done really well; in that case it can even enrich the world tremendously. For Shards this is not the case however. I’ll just list a few issues they have:
- Bad/Lazy Art: The original Shard Art is not exactly spectacular, and then there are 10 carbon copies of it with nothing but a different color filter. If you want to really bore people give them eleven times the same thing.
- No Flavor: What do shards do? Based on those you have seen in real life you would expect them to lie around most of the time. However in elements some of them seem to have really fleeting properties, appearing in one second, doing some magic trick and then immediately disappearing (the spell shards). Others can apparently walk around and kill people, if you enrage them, at least (Shard of Focus). There is no clue given why some do this and some do that, after all the art is exactly the same for all!
- No Mechanical Theme: If their art is all the same and there is no cohesive flavor, you would at least expect some common mechanics, right? But here also, no avail. If you do a cycle spread across every Element, and give them all identical art, people will look for some pattern, some common denominator that unites them all. The shards mechanics however are all over the place. Some just have a really basic, generic effect for the element. Others are completely unique within the game with seemingly random mechanics.
That was the first problem, shards being badly designed for a fantasy card game.
The second problem is their rarity. The fact that they are rare firstly amplifies the first problem - rares are the focus of the game, they are what people play/grind/donate for. As such, players will naturally look at them more critically. There are many cards in EtG that aren't great design (such as Dragons, Blue Crawler, Black Hole, Spine Carapace, Guardian Angel to name a few) but the game does not revolve around them as much so players won't take notice (and they aren't as bad).
Additionally, simply the status of a card being rare creates further expectations. Being the goal that people crave after in seemingly endless grinding sessions, they expect to get something special. The question is, how can you make a card feel special? One simple way, albeit not a very elegant one, is to make it very powerful. This is frowned upon, rightfully as overdoing it would unbalance the game. However, at no point should a rare card just be weak. There are many other ways though to make a card feel special. For example through flavor: If you were to write a novel about Elements, non-rares are those the hero meets all throughout the story, rares are the ones he meets at the climax. The big dragon, the legendary weapon. (A shard? Err likely not.) Another one is to set them apart mechanically, by giving them an effect that is otherwise unique to the game, or that appears to be exceptionally powerful (even though the savvy card designer knows that it is not) or is fun to play with.
Ok back to Shards. Their balancing has gone through highs and lows, but balancing is the problem that can most easily be detected and solved (by banning the biggest offenders) by the community. I would like to focus on the mechanics, as we have already established that their flavor is an epic fail across the board.
For the mechanics we get mixed impressions. An example for a mechanic done well is Shard of Serendipity. It is definitely unique to the game (probably even to CCGs as a whole) and it appeals to new players, who like randomness and getting to see cards in action they otherwise wouldn't, as well as to experienced players who like the challenge to win with any three given cards. Shard of Gratitude and Shard of Divinity are examples for mechanics that would be fine on any given card in the game, but are completely inappropriate for rares. They both provide the most basic version of an effect that is repeated several times in the game but offering various twists. Sanctuary does the exact same thing as Shard of Gratitude, except it also protects you quanta, yet it can be bought cheaply at the bazaar while Shard of Gratitude is rare. Antimatter and Empathic Bond are both riffs on SoG's mechanic of healing the owner every turn except that they can potentially give much more spectacular results. This is the complete opposite of what it should be. Common cards should give the basic solid but boring effect, rares the exciting version of it. Or something completely unique.
To give a comparison, I'd like to examine with my criteria a rare cycle that was and is well received and that no sane person would ever consider banning from events: The rare weapons.
- Art: Eh it's okay. It's Spore art and some of it was originally meant to depict spaceships or something, but it's unique, their color fits the respective Elements and we're really not expecting all that much from a free game.
- Flavor: A first plus, legendary weapons are a common trope in fantastic stories and quite often they are even a main focus of the story. Fitting both as cards and as rares.
- Mechanical Theme: Well they are all weapons so that's an easy enough to spot pattern. It also makes sense that every Element has their own.
- Balancing: Not a single one of them is underpowered, even the ones that are perceived as such by the community are usually seen as such because they are subconciously compared to other cards in the cycle, not to other cards in the game. Even the weaker ones like Trident or Druidic Staff are still roleplayers for certain decks in unrestricted Events and in more restricted Events are often seen dominating. My biggest headache on the list would actually be Discord for being too strong and promoting unfun gameplay.
- Mechanic: Something almost all of the rare weapons do really well is giving a feeling that the game revolves around them when they enter play. They do this by either having the potential to kill the opponent all by itself without help of any other creatures (Arsenic, Fahrenheit), by having a repeatable effect that will generate card advantage over time, or simply by providing large damage swings. Notable here is that they are actually not oppressive doing that: While Owl's Eye for example offers a strong repetitive anti-creature effect, it is still possible to beat with a creature based deck. A card like Shard of Sacrifice has a much more binary gameplay in contrast. Those repetitive mechanics are also good examples for mechanics that excite players, even though they might not be all that strong. When Trident came out first, people were downright terrified: Earthquake, one of the stronger cards in the game already, on a stick?! Well as it turned out that's actually pretty fair, but people when it came out, as well as new players who see it for the first time, have been and will always be impressed by it. Another thing of note is the harmonic coexistance of the rare weapons and the common weapons. Just as I described, the common versions are very plain objects - a sword, a bow, a hammer, a dagger - and unspectacular, solid cards. The rare ones are obviously a lot more splashy - but at the same time not totally overshadowing the normal ones! There are still quite a few decks that will want a simple Hammer, or a Long Sword instead of the fancier versions.
From the discussions on Shards on the forums that I followed there seem to be four different general opinions on Shards:
- (pro Shards): From the CI&A camp usually. Shards are good for the game/can be good for the game/SOME Shards are good for the game because... [some weird reason always]. The problem is that players who actually play the game (or worse: used to play the game) nearly all hate them unison. Your job (what I'm doing for you right now) would be to explain and understand why they hate them, not explain to them why they should not hate them.
- (anti Shards): Shards are bad because... they are unbalanced/too new/other cards/.... These are the players who try to find reason for why they dislike Shards. The problem is that most of the arguments I have seen so far are debunked really quickly, such as: Unbalanced? Definitely not all of them, simply ban those who are and allow the rest. New? So are Psion and Seraph. Undertested because they are rare? So are all the newly buffed Nymphs. Etc.
- (pro Shards): Often in response to the previous group. If their arguments are wrong why not use Shards? More cards are more good right? These people are basically the hardcore "Element is Math under a GUI" crowd. There's no shame in that, I personally as a player am totally one of you guys.
However we need to accept that the vast majority of players and potential players do not think as we do.
- (anti Shards): Shards are bad because... I HATE THEM SHARDS ARE LAME SCREW THEM. Which is actually a pretty spot-on statement but its line of argument is kinda lacking. The idea behind this post is to provide one.
Lastly, as an outlook: How can Shards be fixed? My definite advice for zanzarino would be: Do not try to fix them again. It'll suck but I strongly recommend to bite the sour apple and scrap them entirely, replacing them with a new rare cycle. Some of the issues with them that I mentioned might be fixable but it will take a lot of work and the product will still be mediocre at best. As a rare cycle, they are a dead end. Save some of the code though as some of their mechanics definitely can and should be recycled on other cards.
Ok that was it. Thanks for reading and please excuse the length of the post, I did not have the time to put it more briefly.
