False gods are one of the most discussed things on the forum. Are they too strong? Are they too weak? How do you farm them better? How do you counter them when the Oracle does you a favor? A lot of the time, people want the false gods nerfed. I've seen threads asking for dark matter to be nerfed. The new pufferfish buff makes scorpio harder, and a lot of threads think scorpio is too difficult now. If you look at the new FG proposals, none of them are conventional 30 card decks, they're all designed as beatable decks. Nothing that would succeed in PVP. When there was a contest to design FGs, several decks got critiqued as too hard. I even saw one humorous post that claimed it was physically impossible to beat rainbow.
Clearly, people want a weaker high-level AI to fight against.
Surprisingly enough, the AI5 are one of the least discussed things on the forum. They're too weak, too slow to farm, and don't grant enough of a reward to even be bothered with. If you remember, the AI5 were introduced so players would have a weaker-high level AI to fight against. They were designed as a transitionary enemy so you could jump between farming AI3 and the gods more smoothly. This did not turn out to be the case.
Clearly, people want a stronger mid-level AI to fight against.
To complicate matters more, the concept of AI7 has been introduced, and I think a lot of people like the concept. The false gods have gotten extremely stale and they act like a plateau in the games difficulty curve. Instead of people climbing our metaphorical difficulty mountain, and bragging about how high of AI they can beat, they instead all reach the top of the AI6 and stand on their rhetorical tippy-toes, bragging how their farm deck has a 2% higher win rate. The concept of a impossible to farm AI7 is an AI that would be rewarding when beat. And I don't mean rewarding in game. It would honestly be something to do that would make you proud of your deck, as opposed to the current system, where the pinnacle of gaming is making a deck that is a hundredth of a turn faster and debating whether it's better to take RoL or spark in a cremate deck.
Clearly, people want a strong high-level AI to fight against
So to summarize:
AI5 need to be stronger. It's too weak to bother farming.
AI6 need to be weaker. It's too difficult to farm.
AI7 need to be implemented. Farming is boring.
And this is when I get confused.
Maybe I didn't get the memo, but is it really so radical to think AI6 aren't supposed to be farmed? People ask for a super difficult enemy when they already have one! They want unfarmable boss battles, but that's exactly what AI6 are designed like! It's a hidden fight you can't attempt without lots of hard work. It's high risk, and you probably won't win, but if you do it's worth it. Sounds like a boss fight to me.
Meanwhile, it seems to me the AI5 should be exactly what the AI6 are now. Farmable upgraded decks.
So here's what I propose:
~Get rid of the current AI5 decks. The whole 144 deck system, with every possible mono/duo combination, just isn't working. You can't just take two halves of a successful deck and cram them together, expecting the deck to function. And even if it were working, the decks don't matter. They simply aren't played against, and in most cases, they're skipped over all together.
~Move the easier AI6 decks to AI5. Come on, you know which ones I'm talking about. Miracle and Paradox are the best examples of false gods that get overly abused. And morte? Who thought light went well with death anyway?
~Replace the easier AI6 decks with harder versions of themselves. Make miracle a light+earth deck out deck with time mark, eternities, and shriekers. Make morte a death/air wings deck with flying EEs and vultures. Add a fire stall FG. Or do something completely different, just make them harder. This is going to sound really radical, but what if we made every false god as difficult as dark matter on purpose?
~Increase the rewards from AI5 to slightly less than the AI6 reward is now. This step is kind of a side note, everyone farms the AI for cards anyway, so if the AI5 get buffed to be like the worse false gods, then the amount of cards won will double and it'll be worth farming again.
~Increase the reward for beating the AI6. A gravity nymph is a fair reward for beating dark matter. Or even if the change isn't that drastic, maybe increase the spins to five? Something.
If we implement those changes, two very important things will happen that everyone will like. Farming will get easier. Auto-quits will be a thing of the past. Noobs can go pro with relative ease. Meanwhile, Pros who have 6 of every card can spend their time developing anti-AI6 decks, which will have to be the most elite decks ever made. Most importantly, no new AI level needs to be added. No new button needs to be crammed into the game menu, and instead of adding new content (difficult to do), zanz can just fix whats already there (relatively easier, and better for the game).
Right now, people who farm AI3 don't know upgraded cards exist. People who can upgrade cards farm gods, and don't remember AI3 exist (and don't care). People who are good enough to take on a higher challenges don't know what exists and what doesn't (they just live their lives babbling about whether you should take 3 hopes or 4, rocking slowly back and forth in the corner). And maybe that's the way the game is supposed to be. I don't know. But on the keep-things-the-same to change-things-for-better-or-for-worse spectrum, I'll always lean towards the change side of things. And as long as this problem is around, I'll keep stoning birds.
This just seems like a method that wastes less stones. It should - at least - be considered.
