The REAL Problem with Shards

[kev]

I don't want to derail a good thread but I felt I should respond to questions.

I don't know any of the specifics on ad revenues, donations for rares or zanz's agreement with Kong.  Any questions on any of those topics are better directed at Admins.  In fact the only reason I know ad revenues have decreased (and I assume donations are correlated) is because an Admin said so during a chat discussion about the decline in forum activity.  So yeah, revenues are down.

[eaglgenes101]

I honestly think that its an overhaul rather than a replacement that is in order.
http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/PowerCrystal
If we can make this series fit that better, I think we can avoid completely trashing shards.

[10 men]

Does that mean people with shards would lose them? If they had shards in their deck, could they end up playing with fewer than 30 cards?

No you see, it would be like when Firefly Queen got changed to 6 from 7 . Your 7 cost FFQs were replaced with 6 cost FFQs.
Hope this helps.

if you take into consideration its text, nymphs should be rejected more that shards.
*Overpowered
*Same art for all
* Ultra rare

- I cannot think of a metric where even a single Nymph could be considered overpowered. You are simply wrong here.
- They have the same art all, which is a minus point of course but the original art is actually decent, which is not really the case for Shards.
- The mere fact of ultra rares existing bothers some people but not a majority.
On the other hand Nymphs are a fantasy trope that most people have heard of already or that they can at least wikipedia for, and they have a common mechanical theme (Alchemy cards on a stick). So while Nymphs aren't completely unproblematic, they are nowhere near as bad as Shards.

And I can not accept it some people's in the forum manipulate and induce a reasoning mistaken of shards, give the printout is mandatory that you use shards, otherwise lose .. What is definitely not true. I play in a competition BL free of restrictions and I can say that I win 40% of my matches without using shards. (And shards are 12 cards), now imagine you separate 12 cards of each element, such as weapons, go on free competition and then see if at least 20% of their matches were unarmed. (ok, weapons are in the game and we have a special slot for them)
 I will then select 12 common cards of each element (firebolt, sanctuary, grabroid, dimensional shield, steal, antimatter, poison, nymph queem, flying weapon, reverse time, mitosis and gravity pull.), now if they are like rare and have the name of shards, now we have a bunch of players complaining about the whole group just because they are rare and powerful!!

Yes one main point of my post was to explain why a card can be badly designed even when it is not unbalancing the game in terms of its power level... did you read it?

Incidentally his revenues have already fallen off considerably.

That is interesting, do you have more detailed insider information on that or are you simply basing it on the fact that zanzarino gets revenue from ads which is proportional to the number of players playing the game which has been on the decrease for some time now? (edit: ok, has been answered while I wrote this.)
Of course this whole developement is very concerning, and pretty much the reason I made this post. I don't see it as fatalistically as majofa but the reality is:
Good changes in the game will cause an increase of players, bad changes a decrease. No changes will also cause a slight decrease over time as players will get bored with the game. Note that these changes do not necessarily have to mean a change in game but could also concern the environment around the game. Elements reached its biggest size due to a number of good changes: The addition of upgrades and False Gods was huge, the growth of this forum community certainly contributed it share, and a few more smart additions, like Pendulums or the Alchemy cards. Lately unfortunately, changes were either really sparse or actually changed the game for the worse (which brings us to the Shards). The worst case scenario from this point would be that changes continue to be sparse or bad, player numbers keep decreasing, eventually the community dissolves and the game dies. Which I think would still take its fair share of time. Still, it can't be desirable to let it even come close to that - the game is just more fun when you play it because you enjoy it and not just out of nostalgia and because you still have friends in the community.

Finally, to the various people who are suggesting to keep Shards and simply modifying them. Getting rid of shards might seem overly radical at first, but it really isn't. I feel like your mindset is still rooted in analogue world card games like MtG or Yugi. When the MtG designers screw up, then there is nothing they can do - the cards have been printed, people have bought them, they're going to stick around and they have to live with it. There is no possibility to undo those cards or change them completely retroactively. In a purely digital game like EtG however, we can simply do that! All it takes to cut off the foul branches is maybe a few manhours of programming. It would in fact be utterly foolish to not make use of this option that the digital platform gives us.
Elements right now desperately NEEDS a big change for the better. Shards are by far the worst part of the game right now. Removing shards and replacing them with a good rare cycle is simply the easiest way to drastically improve the game quality right now. Keeping shards around would be another step on the road of mediocrity and the game slowly dying out.

[eaglgenes101]

The most Id consider if i were a dev would be to completely overhaul the series, maybe even removing the shard name and just leaving it as values.
(Divinity: the transcender, Void: the sapper, Gratitude: the giver, Sacrifice: the exchange, Bravery: the gamble, Patience: the enricher, Freedom: the lightener, Integerity: the unification, Readiness: the accelerator, Wisdom: the experience, Focus: the destroyer, Serendepity: the possibilities)

[OldTrees]

Some agreements:
1) Game designers should optimize their game based on the metric of player enjoyment.
2) The art could be better perhaps with different events inside the crystal structure.
3) The flavor is insufficient. Usually shards have only one type of interaction and are flavored as a broken but still partially working enchanted artifact.
4) The mechanically theme is insufficient
5) Your entire section on Rarity

Some disagreements:
1) There is a vocal subgroup of the players that still dislike shards. I am unconvinced it is a majority considering the often our vocal subgroups are vocal minorities.
2) Zanz is making this game as a hobby. He is primarily having fun coding and only secondarily being a game designer.
3) Shards are a fantasy trope. Specifically the magical crystals trope.
4) Shards all share the same shape because that is the standard for the shard fantasy trope.
5) They do have a mechanical theme. "Loyalty bonuses/Disloyalty punishments"

[10 men]

I found it a little ironic that this is coming from the winner of Shard Revolution. Hah.

Well yeah that was more or less an accident though. Had to participate if I wanted to become Master of Time...

Some agreements:
1) Game designers should optimize their game based on the metric of player enjoyment.
2) The art could be better perhaps with different events inside the crystal structure.
3) The flavor is insufficient. Usually shards have only one type of interaction and are flavored as a broken but still partially working enchanted artifact.
4) The mechanically theme is insufficient
5) Your entire section on Rarity

Some disagreements:
1) There is a vocal subgroup of the players that still dislike shards. I am unconvinced it is a majority considering the often our vocal subgroups are vocal minorities.

This does not make sense. First you agree with all my major points, which conclude that Shards are a complete fail design-wise in every category that exists. And then you're still skeptical that the people who don't like Shards are actually in the majority? The whole point of game design theory is to extrapolate what people who do not openly articulate their opinion think about your game.
In fact, if anything it is more likely that the people in this forum who are pro Shards (or at least not against them) are the "vocal minority", since the two groups who do not have problems with them (the hardcore PvP'ers and the bad card designers) are more likely to be active in this community than the average player.

2) Zanz is making this game as a hobby. He is primarily having fun coding and only secondarily being a game designer.

I do not understand your point here. I do not like to make assumptions about other people's motivations if I don't know them very well so I kept them to a bare minimum: Zanzarino made a game and he would like it to be good. So I gave a bit of feedback on how I think it could be improved. Nothing that goes beyond the simple premise of this subforum.
Are you trying to say that Zanz only wants to code and not make a good game? Because that I kinda doubt...

3) Shards are a fantasy trope. Specifically the magical crystals trope.
4) Shards all share the same shape because that is the standard for the shard fantasy trope.

Alright fair enough, I guess the fantasy genre is so vast that my talking toilet brush that I never show to visitors is secretly a fantasy trope. But I maintain that they are not a particularly "high-tier" trope. If you tasked people to tell you the first twenty things that come to their mind when they hear "fantasy" I'm sure no one is going to include "magical Shards hurr". Probably not even in their first 100.
The other question is of course whether it is a particularly good trope... or whether those "magic chrystals" were taken because they are so splendidly easy to render with polygon-based graphic engines...

5) They do have a mechanical theme. "Loyalty bonuses/Disloyalty punishments"

By a very liberal definition you can take that as a mechanical theme but it's a pretty far stretch. Initially they all had such a clause because Zanz wanted them to be "other cards but not quite". That's like saying that Discord and Butterfly Effect share a mechanical theme, since they are both Entropy. Now that they are in-element the respective clauses barely make sense anymore and there have already been calls to just remove them since much of the time they are just a waste of space.

[ZephyrPhantom]

I do agree that certain shards don't really have rare-appropriate effects anymore and that the theme could be overhauled. However, I also agree that majofa's first post about shards becoming important to certain decks ; it's been true ever since SoG's existed.
I think the best solution to this issue would be to 'devalue' certain shards to common - some effects like SoG (now) don't really 'feel' rare but still are used, whereas some cards like SoFr and SoSe still do something different that players really notice. The more 'generic' effects could be reworked thematically/mechanically and rebalanced while more appropriate 'rares' are added as replacements.

That being said, this small exchange called my attention moreso than any shard problem:

He's lost touch with his game... and until his revenue starts falling off, will probably not care too much to do anything.

Incidentally his revenues have already fallen off considerably.  I don't think the single act of reworking shards, even if they were done perfectly, would change that, though.

If that hasn't motivated him, then the game might be reaching its end.

First off: kev, I don't know where or how you found out about the game's declining revenue, but the phrase "fallen off considerably" in regards to finances is something most people shouldn't overlook. I now have thoughts ranging from, 'well that completely sucks' to '...does he now have a NEGATIVE NET PROFIT from trying to host this game?'; I'd like to see some numbers, if you have an estimate, because aside from finances, the community needs to find a way to entice zanz before we have an apocalyptic meltdown.

And second, majofa - while your comment might indicate the final stretch, whose to say that this isn't technically the epilogue? I know that sounds depressing, but with the way things are now, this entire situation honestly feels like one tireless epilogue that keeps on truckin' along rather than an 'end' or a conclusion.

Maybe that's how he sees us. I don't know.

However, I think this is the real issue of Elements, especially the part I've bolded. Honestly, it’s difficult to expect that this game will get more interesting with the lack of updates and new content - sure, there are tons of ideas submitted to the forum (even outside of the CI&A!) but as long as nothing gets through an active Zanzarino, nothing changes. We had an update 3 months ago, but that's been what feels like a feeble interruption to a rather long slump we've had since 1.31 - most of the 'development' comes now from what the forums creates in an attempt to keep things interesting.  Isn’t it the game developer’s responsibility to make/support the majority of interesting features, or at least acknowledge that’s he inactive?

EtG really needs the 'smaller and more frequent updates' that Zanz proposed a long time ago if the game wants to catch people’s attention again. However, if Zanz doesn’t care about his game, then what's the point of discussing changes?

[eaglgenes101]

Zanz last logged in 12 days ago.
Is he working on the trials? His word would be helpful to us.

[OldTrees]

Some agreements:
1) Game designers should optimize their game based on the metric of player enjoyment.
2) The art could be better perhaps with different events inside the crystal structure.
3) The flavor is insufficient. Usually shards have only one type of interaction and are flavored as a broken but still partially working enchanted artifact.
4) The mechanically theme is insufficient
5) Your entire section on Rarity

Some disagreements:
1) There is a vocal subgroup of the players that still dislike shards. I am unconvinced it is a majority considering the often our vocal subgroups are vocal minorities.

This does not make sense. First you agree with all my major points, which conclude that Shards are a complete fail design-wise in every category that exists. And then you're still skeptical that the people who don't like Shards are actually in the majority? The whole point of game design theory is to extrapolate what people who do not openly articulate their opinion think about your game.
In fact, if anything it is more likely that the people in this forum who are pro Shards (or at least not against them) are the "vocal minority", since the two groups who do not have problems with them (the hardcore PvP'ers and the bad card designers) are more likely to be active in this community than the average player.

2) Zanz is making this game as a hobby. He is primarily having fun coding and only secondarily being a game designer.

I do not understand your point here. I do not like to make assumptions about other people's motivations if I don't know them very well so I kept them to a bare minimum: Zanzarino made a game and he would like it to be good. So I gave a bit of feedback on how I think it could be improved. Nothing that goes beyond the simple premise of this subforum.
Are you trying to say that Zanz only wants to code and not make a good game? Because that I kinda doubt...

3) Shards are a fantasy trope. Specifically the magical crystals trope.
4) Shards all share the same shape because that is the standard for the shard fantasy trope.

Alright fair enough, I guess the fantasy genre is so vast that my talking toilet brush that I never show to visitors is secretly a fantasy trope. But I maintain that they are not a particularly "high-tier" trope. If you tasked people to tell you the first twenty things that come to their mind when they hear "fantasy" I'm sure no one is going to include "magical Shards hurr". Probably not even in their first 100.
The other question is of course whether it is a particularly good trope... or whether those "magic chrystals" were taken because they are so splendidly easy to render with polygon-based graphic engines...

5) They do have a mechanical theme. "Loyalty bonuses/Disloyalty punishments"

By a very liberal definition you can take that as a mechanical theme but it's a pretty far stretch. Initially they all had such a clause because Zanz wanted them to be "other cards but not quite". That's like saying that Discord and Butterfly Effect share a mechanical theme, since they are both Entropy. Now that they are in-element the respective clauses barely make sense anymore and there have already been calls to just remove them since much of the time they are just a waste of space.

First section:
I was hoping that by putting the agreement section first you would interpret my overall opinion as agreement. However I tend to be complete with these types of responses thus some nitpicks are also listed among the disagreements.

While shards are obviously suboptimal to the norm for cards added to EtG, it is not obvious if their problems are greater than the benefit they brought as new cards. Since they are not obviously harmful to game theorists I suspect that non game theorists are equally divided between the "Bad" and "Positive but suboptimal" camps. (The pro shard camp is practically empty.) So while I do agree that the majority considers Elemental Weapons to be a better addition than Shards, I am still unconvinced that the majority believes the Shards were worse than nothing.

Second section:
This was a reminder that while Zanz is motivated by the motives inherent in game design, there are times when his personal preference for the game may influence the result. This is to be expected, accepted and critiqued when/if it happens. (The graveyard veto is a possible example)

Fourth section:
While I dislike and have critiqued the Loyalty bonus mechanical theme, I think you are being very unfair to it with your Discord-Butterfly Effect analogy. (unless that was meant as hyperbole)

[Marvaddin]

I agree that shards are not good about theme. I would like to see them replaced by normal cards, because art and theme is a joke. Shard of... Shard of Readiness? Really? Shard of Freedom sounds like something you get so your wife wont bother if you return to your home completelly drunk at 4 am. Lol.

About the mechanics, I would also suggest some changes:

  >>> stall, and now evasion to immortal creatures? I would change it completelly. If a shard is a creature buff, to me it wouldnt be aether, and even less avaliable to immortal creatures with a defense evasion. How about a big effect that lasts 1 turn instead? Like, "For next turn, all your creatures deal spell damage (or all enemy creatures are in a time bubble, maybe, something that affect a major part of the game table, as a effect of universes clash), and your opponent is silenced"?

  >>> another one that is very very bad. Get some of these and creatures do bigger damage, evade shields and are immune to CC.  Sounds like the aether one, buff + evasion + immunity (well, these have global effects, but are vulnerable to PC). How about "target creature gains +3/+1, airborne and sniper skill (cost in its element quanta)"?

  >>> I dont see it as so UP as people say. The real problem is, if you have creatures damaging the opponent and he has no healing, the shard does nothing. It could be something like: "Players and creatures cant be healed. Deals 2 damage to opponent." However, this fits better to Fire theme, I think.

  >>> a shard of Death that does healing, keeping you alive? In a OP way? I would prefer a strong single CC that Death doesnt have (except for Virus, which is weak, vulnerable itself, and is more important to trigger death effects). Like: "target creature receives -2/-3, is poisoned and lobotomized"?

  >>> I see no problem with the current Shard of Integrity. Of course, if we were going to revamp the shards, this card needs to be redone. Maybe something that creates a Golem based on pillars, or permanents, removed from your hand?

  >>> although Im not really claiming it, I feel myself somewhat creator of this card, because of this. Its one of the best, people say. Although I dont see an entropy card being a positive side anymore. Its a card designed for rainbows (no one will use in a mono or duo, because most times you get 2 useless cards), and now it consumes the entropy quanta. I would just change that.

  >>> good one, too. Wouldnt change its effect although it could fit other elements better.

  >>> this was OP, everyone knows. 3 free PC and a Black Hole. Combined with Gravity Force, even worse. People say its balanced now. I disagree. Maybe 2 PC were good enough. Or HP could decrease if you use the skill, so it wouldnt be recharged by Gravity Force, or wouldnt become that juicy target for catapult or acceleration. Initial HP could of course be lower. Maybe like 0/9, and getting -4 for each use. You would still have 1 use most cases, but the using it would be risky.

  >>> surely, doesnt deserve to be a rare card. I think, Life already has heal from permanents (Bonds) and spells (Heal), why not having a creature with heal? And low health, and like 3 cost to use skill (otherwise mitosis would be a pain). But of course, wouldnt be a rare. We would need design another rare.

  >>> I think its ok, but could use another type of effect too. Like a defensive boost for you and your creatures. Now, it looks like the Heal spell.

  >>> the effect is cool, but could be at other elements. Like light (I think about this as an inspiration of how to do things more efficiently, or a gift from heavens, lol). Deck acceleration is already a theme of Time, the Fire Shard could fit in here, and you could draw 1 card more than the opponent.

  >>> I like the card effect. Growing creatures in exchange of not attacking looks good to me.

These are just some suggestions I think could improve the game. But like people said, I dont really think its even worthy discussing unless Zanz wants to change something, which is hard to know.

Its his game and he always does what he decides, not really caring about the community opinion. Look at the Card Ideas forum. How many interesting ideas lying there to never see the light outside. Some have been voted and advance to 3rd stage, and then he comes and decides to add a card of any stage (why the stages, why the voting?). Sincerely, hes not taking elements developments seriously (for any reason, maybe because he cant), and I dont see all the community effort is worthy. He can create a competition about designing shards, get tons of suggestions, ignore them all and design a stupid Shard of Wisdom. In fact, was this shard invasion really wanted by the community? He started with an idea for SoSac (which would last for 5 turns if Im correct) and decided that every element would have a shard, simple as that. He disappears for like 1 year, and when he returns hundreds of card ideas later, he adds 3 cards (2 of them having the same coding). Where are the new quests? Or new content? Nothing was added after the Arena. When were the last FGs (or even AI3 decks) added? Wait a moment, I will check: hmmm, late 2010.

I really doubt he have a big revenue with the game, and seriously, he doesnt deserve it. Sincerely, this game will never be as good as it could because of him. Lack of updates, lack of caring about the community, poorly designed cards, cards nerfed just because are used... do you think he will even read these lines? I seriously doubt it. So, yeah, shards will change... WHEN, and IF he feels like that, period. Although I would like it.

[RavingRabbid]

If we go by pageviews on the forum, we are at the same level of last june, basically.

This means, the game is not losing popularity, but is not actually gaining it.

[pulli23]

Everything said here can also be said for nymphs:

why are they allowed and shards are not?