Update to false gods to make them fair!

[Seravy]

This is similar to Scaredgirl's False God Realms suggestion, but a bit more detailed.
The original topic can be found here : http://elementscommunity.org/forum/index.php/topic,11606.0.html (http://elementscommunity.org/forum/index.php/topic,11606.0.html)

I. Why is it necessary to change how gods work?

False gods have a huge amount of advantage. Drawing, quanta, life, deck quality, deck size, you name it, they have it.
I've spent hours and hours trying to build an anti-FG deck of acceptable level, but I keep running in circles, failing.
To make a deck that works against all false gods well (Definition of "works well" : at least 80-90% chance to win if you play without mistakes, and your deck is fine tuned to the maximum, the rest will be losses to bad draws, exceptionally good draws for the god. Obviously, playing mistakes, or a few improper cards in your deck would reduce that back to the usual 40-50%, so only the best players who deserve it would be able to take advantage of this win rate. No need to worry about making it "too easy" while the gods have those advantages...)
so, to make a deck that works well against all false gods as defined above, you'd need all of the following :

-A deck as small as possible as larger decks have greater chances for bad draws, and if you really need to play those 45-60 cards to win, the deck is too slow to be usable for grinding. In addition as cards are limited to 6 of a kind and some cards are of key importance, adding too many cards makes them inefficient (SoG works very well in a 30 card deck and not-so-well in a 60 card one, because you won't draw enough of them that way.)

-Deal with creatures and damage in general, if possible in a reusable manner as the god has more resources than you (Entropy, Water, Gravity and Time can do this well. Aether only works partially : Phase Shields have a limited duration and are vulnerable to permanent control too much.).

Without this, you'd lose to most gods, except maybe to Decay and Dream Catcher as those two don't play large creatures, so this one is a MUST. If your deck doesn't include one of those elements, it wouldn't be able to do well against gods in general.
This is the most important part.

-Deal with permanents. (Pulverizer which is two different elements, and Butterfly effect which needs an otherwise unusable creature to function are the only two good options here.)

This one is probably the least important, but often still necessary. If your creature control don't kill creatures, only prevents/heals back damage, which is about half the possible options, the feral bonds, phase and other shields can be a major trouble. No need to say how Obliterator's Pulverizer is also something that is an auto-loss for you if you can't deal with it.

-Deal out a massive amount of damage very quickly. (No standalone element can do this, but combinations can. At least this means +1-2 additional elements you need to include, whichever you choose, as CC elements don't have good damage in their combinations.)

If you don't have this, you'll deck out against Miracle, Ferox, FFQ, Paradox, Dark Matter, Divine Glory, Rainbow, and maybe Morte as well (I don't remember if he has Miracles or not, but probably does). If you rely on fractal for damage, you deck out against Neptune. If you don't rely on fractal, with a small deck, if your damage sources are near the bottom, you'll still deck out, so you need to include at least 3 copies of each, which increases the chances for bad draws too much.
Eternity can prevent decking out, but if you really need to play that long to win, the deck is too slow for grinding anyway, so that is not the best option.
Dealing damage is also possible using a huge amount of bolt spells and going mono-element, however, no element has even half the cards necessary for a deck, and to amass that much quanta in a reasonable amount of time, you'd need to stay mono. This strategy is also defeated by Jade and Mirror Shield both used by some gods, so it is not good.

-Protect your creatures (Aether only, Quintessence)

Needless to say, if your creatures die, you'll lose. Gods with creature control have more of it than you have creatures in your deck, so you need those quintessences, at least as many as you need to win+2, otherwise if they are near the bottom, you still deck out because you can't do enough damage in time.

-Without Quintessence you'll lose against all gods that have strong creature control, and that means about 50% of all gods.

-Protect your permanents or draw enough to replace them when they are removed (Earth only, Protect Artifact, or Time only : Hourglass)
Again, this is important, more than it looks like at first sight.
Without shards you can't survive against many gods who can bypass creature control with damage, so if they are destroyed, you lose. It's also important against Seism. Unless your deck absolutely doesn't need permanents to survive, either Hourglass or Protect Artifacts need to be included.

If you don't have them, you'll lose against : Divine Glory, Rainbow, Hermes, Chaos Lord, Obliterator, Dream Catcher, Seism

-Heal yourself (mainly SoG)
You'll need these until you get your main creature control working, and it is a must against sources of damage you can't deal with otherwise (spells, posion etc)

Without them, you'll lose against : Morte, Scorpio, Hermes, FFQ (fire lance), Decay (drain life), Octane (Gases).

-Keep the number of different elements used at 3 or less
Currently, we have no stable, reliable way of producing quanta of many elements at an acceptable speed, and at 5 or more elements, Quantum towers are already superior. However, Quantum towers are very slow at producing quanta : with 4 of them in play, on average, you get 1 of each element per turn, so you'd need to wait 7 turns to play a card that costs 7 on average (and much longer with bad luck), and that is far too slow. It works if you use all 12 elements equally, but even then, you'd play nothing but shards for the first 5-6 turns or more, which is just too slow. Rainbow generally solve this with either Supernova (small deck), or Sundials (large deck), but if you don't draw these, or have bad luck with the generated quanta types, you can still lose a lot of games.
Overall, as each card needs many quanta of the same element, the more elements you have, the more turns you'd need to wait before starting to play your cards, and that isn't something you can afford against a false god.

-Resistance to quantum denial
There are no cards currently that provide you this, except for hourglass (drawing more towers than the opponent can destroy/drain).
Without this, you'll lost against Decay, Dark Matter, and if you don't have protect artifacts, against Seism, Obliterator, Dream Catcher. On lucky draws, Rainbow, Eternal Phoenix, Hermes and Divine Glory can also destroy all of your pillars using explosions.

To sum it up, for a good anti FG deck currently, you'd need

-A 30-45 card deck, that includes 6x SoG, about 4x Quentessences (Aether), some creatures that can grow or otherwise improve their damage quickly (two more elements and at least 6-8 cards), a significant amount of creature control (one-two elements, and at least 8-12 cards), Drawing and/or permanent protection (3-4 cards and one more element t least), and enough pillars/pendulums to support all of this, while not going over two-three different elements in your deck and the 40-45 cards.
That is obviously impossible so making proper anti FG decks isn't possible currently.


Conclusion :
You need to pack too many different cards from too many different elements currently as gods have way too different strength and weaknesses.

II. What should be done to solve this problem

Group false gods by ability. We have 24 gods, so 4 groups of 6 gods would be ideal. See the individual groups below. When playing, the player would select which of the four groups he wants to play against, so he needs to build a deck that can beat 6 gods instead of 24.
Obviously, the root of the problem is gods being able to do EVERYTHING extremely well, so grouping is not done based on elements, but rather, on what kind of ability/strategy the god uses, and what it is lacking. This makes deck building possible : You need to build a deck that capitalizes on the common weakness of the group, while able to hold back it's common strength, instead of a deck that can do everything.

Gods that don't need any change are in green, gods that need to have their decks updated are in red with the details of necessary changes.

Group I - Heavenly/Celestial/Good

Common Strength : Massive Healing, Uses creatures for damage well.
Common Weakness : No permanent control, No Creature control, No direct damage.

Ferox
Paradox
Miracle
Gemini  - Instead of massive healing, he uses Phase shields for protection, but the end result is the same : He'll survive longer, just like with healing.
Elidnis
Divine Glory - Remove explosions and fire towers, and add 6x Shard of Divinity...he is called Divine for a reason, and it's a great combo with his Miracles.

Group II - Infernal/Earthly/Evil

Common Strength : Control, especially permanent, and quanta, but also creatures.
Common Weakness : No healing, slow at doing damage, no shields (shields+creature control+permanent control is a bit too much to handle).

Neptune Remove dragons and permafrost, add trident and earth quanta for additional control.
Seism Remove healing, Remove Diamond Shield, and remove both Dragons. Add more Pulverizers, change mark to Earth. Replace all Stone Towers with Gravity (for pulverizer) and Time (for reverse time) pendulums instead.
He'll still be the most offensive of the group, because shriekers are very powerful attackers.
Decay
Hermes  Change mark to Fire. Add more control (Explosions, Firestorms, Fire Lances), replace Lava Golems (too strong attack power) with Fire Spirits (more reasonable attack power), Remove earth cards. Gods with a mark not their primary element are a bad idea, they sometimes can't play a single card up to turn 5-10, or more...
Dark Matter Remove all the Light cards from his deck. Change mark to Gravity. Replace all towers with Entropy pendulums. Add Discords, and maybe Butterfly Effects (he can play them on the Otyugh). Focus is on quanta denial via gravity nymph/black hole. Strongest control in the group, so he needs to have the fewest offensive creatures.
Dream Catcher

This is probably the hardest group to beat. It's essential that these gods can't put out too many or too large creatures, because you can't deal with those quickly enough while your quanta is being drained/pillars destroyed.

Group III - Warriors/Destroyers

Common Strength : Dealing damage quickly either using spells or creatures. Good at creature control.
Common Weakness : No permanent control, or healing.

Octane Remove the explosions, add some Air Nymphs, and a few Firestorms.
Graviton Remove explosions, otherwise great the way it is. All of his creatures being 5+ health makes him quite difficult with the usual Otyugh+quint strategy.
Obliterator Remove Pulverizers, otherwise great. Huge damage output with momentum, and Gravity force can kill any creature.
Incarnate
Morte
Scorpio

Group IV - Mages/Creators

Common Strength : Card advantage via Hourglass, Fractal or token generation to overwhelm the player.
Common Weakness : No healing, and limited deck sizes, so they can be decked out, you can afford to dedicate your entire deck to defend yourself against the overwhelming advantage without having to dedicate 25-40% of your deck to win conditions that can also survive said control. (maximum 60 cards in deck, 30 before duplication.)

Eternal Phoenix Remove Firestorm. This group is an ideal opponent for Rol-hope decks, unlike all the others, and that card kills them if it is combined with the Ruby Dragons. Deck should be limited to Phoenixes, Fractals, Dragons, Explosions and maybe a few Fire Lances.
Rainbow Remove Miracles. Seriously, with that kind of card advantage, permanent control, and creature control, while also having a great damage output from the growth creatures, healing is just too much. Deck should be 35-40 cards before duplication, due to hourglasses using it up a bit faster than usual. (Other than removing miracles, just reduce the number of copies of less important cards, like werewolves and the like.)
Chaos Lord Remove the Discord, quanta denial should be limited to group II, otherwise fine as it is. Advantage comes from the "improve" ability and mutated abilities like steal, destroy, devour, etc..
Destiny
Osiris
Fire Queen

With this grouping, if the suggested changes are also made, all four groups have a theme, a common strength they use, and a common weakness that can be built around to have a good win rate even against the unfair advantages of gods, so decks that have a high win % can be made for all of the groups. In addition, no matter how much the AI is improved, they'd still remain beatable at a good chance with the proper deck.

Obviously, you'd need to be expert in deckbuilding, game theory, need to know the gods that belong to the group and their decks, and play 100% flawlessly to farm them easily, which is enough effort IMHO to be worth that reward.

It's also make much more kinds of decks viable, at least against some groups, so instead of 99% of players farming gods with Rainbow or Rol/Hope, people could use their own decks and still have an acceptable win ratio. (In the current system, the best decks have about 40-50% win rates, and any attempt to play something more unique usually drops that way below 20...)
This would actually make earning cards more fun, which is very important because that is the main part of the game...

With this grouping and these changes, you'd only need to include these against the various groups :

Quints : For group 3 mainly,  in some cases for group 2.
Protect Artifacts : For group 2 and 4.
Massive damage output : For group 1 only.
Average damage output : Against 2 and 3.
Creature control : Against groups 1, 3 and 4.
Healing : still useful against all of them, but not really necessary against some. A must against group 3 only.
Small deck : primarily against 2 and 3.
Larger deck : primarily against 4, and maybe against 1.
Permanent control : necessary against group 4 only, but can be useful in some other cases.

The most important in grouping is that players will no longer need to skip games : If they can beat a god well in the group they play, they'll have a reasonable chance against all the others as they are similar after minor improvements to their decks. (like adding Lobotomizers if momentumed creatures break through the creature control, or use more healing, or different kinds of CC)

Clicking level 6, checking the name of the god, quitting, and repeating is a waste of time, score and electrum, but most importantly, it's a psychological thing : You have to give up before even playing because you know it is hopeless half of the time, which is definitely harmful for the player's subconscious as it carries the message of "yeah, no matter what I do, I'm not good enough for this. I failed.". Even if you don't care, your brain will record the failure, and that's a bad thing on the long term (and will also make players angry, and quit. I wanted to quit several times already, too). What's even more harmful than that is building decks for hours, or days, and still have bad results all the time : While it is mathematically impossible to build a good deck (there are too many cards that are absolutely necessary if you want to do well against all 24 gods to keep the deck size at a reasonable rate...often even 60 cards aren't enough to fit in everything necessary), people will think they are bad at deck building, which will make the very frustrated.

The grouping must be in a way so that NO gods need to be ever skipped with a proper deck, as each and every god in the said group results in a ~80-90% win rate with flawless play. There won't be any god that gives you only a 20% or less chance when you beat the rest most of the time. (Dark Matter against normal Rainbow or Rol decks, good luck with getting 20% wins from that!)

If all of the above gets implemented, it'd increase the playability of many cards and strategies, and we'd finally see an environment where everyone can build their own favorite anti-FG deck instead of ending up with the same Rol or Rainbow deck after hours of attempt to figure out something better only to realize there is no such thing at all.
In addition, players will be HAPPY, and HAVING FUN while playing the game instead of angry, frustrated, or bored. Games are supposed to be fun to play, if we want unsolvable problems, there is IRL for that.

Please implement this suggestion. Until then, I'll wait patiently, and avoid playing because getting angry at false gods all the time is not fun.

[smuglapse]

I can see you put a lot of thought into this but I have to question why you feel this is necessary.

If this were implemented, and win rates went up to 90%, a lot of people would be demanding a greater non-PvP challenge.
So, what would be the greater challenge...AI7?
Then when AI7 is implemented with average win rates of 40%, will people complain that that is too hard?
It just makes for a never-ending escalation.

Many games come with different difficulty levels, usually arranged as: Beginner, Normal, Hard, and Extreme.  I had the impression the FGs were supposed to be in the extreme category.  A lot of people, my self included want an extreme AI.

If this is in concern for making electrum/upped cards easier to obtain, might I suggest just sticking with the request to make Half-bloods more rewarding?

[Korugar]

Well, he didn't actually say to make the FGs beatable 90% of the time(unless I'm mistaken), he said to make them beatable 90% of the time with a good draw, and no mistakes made by the player. That said, I too think they would be easier than they should be, I'm just making the clarification.

[jmizzle7]

Clicking level 6, checking the name of the god, quitting, and repeating is a waste of time, score and electrum, but most importantly, it's a psychological thing : You have to give up before even playing because you know it is hopeless half of the time, which is definitely harmful for the player's subconscious as it carries the message of "yeah, no matter what I do, I'm not good enough for this. I failed.". Even if you don't care, your brain will record the failure, and that's a bad thing on the long term (and will also make players angry, and quit. I wanted to quit several times already, too). What's even more harmful than that is building decks for hours, or days, and still have bad results all the time : While it is mathematically impossible to build a good deck (there are too many cards that are absolutely necessary if you want to do well against all 24 gods to keep the deck size at a reasonable rate...often even 60 cards aren't enough to fit in everything necessary), people will think they are bad at deck building, which will make the very frustrated.

The conclusion to your argument is flawed. It is impossible to predict how people will react to pretty much anything, especially when it comes to something like deck performance against the false gods.

Poor performance is caused by many things, not the least of which is the learning curve. It is extremely naive for anyone to think that they can throw some cards together, fight some super powerful boss they have never faced before, and win. The false gods' decks are finely tuned and are generally quite effective at executing a very focused strategy, so naturally, it takes time to learn their strategies and to think of ways to combat them. Thus, it takes a finely tuned deck to be able to compete with these false gods. Of course, the deck you use also has a learning curve.

Advanced decks are typically less redundant than beginner/intermediate deck builds (e.g. only 1-2 copies of key cards), so personal deck knowledge, intuition, and correct play hold much more value than the cards one draws in a match. These skills take time to develop, so it is advised to first test a potential anti-false god deck out on a lower level AI (e.g. level 3) just to develop a feel for how the deck performs.

Instead of assuming how a large number of players will react to poor performance against the false gods, I think it is more important to focus on how the false god content could be changed to further enhance the "AI end game" experience. Different false god realms open up the opportunity for realm-specific rare cards (not unlike WoW's epic gear), and also allow for more customizable deck building against smaller groups of false gods. Overall, I love the idea for false god realms.

[cebra]

Really, really good post and it´s absolutly right what you say

I think, you´re totally right. Building and fine-tuning a deck to be able to defeat 24 super powerful and absolutly different opponents is just not possible. But doing for 6 opponents, that follow a common strategy is absolutly possible.

[Seravy]

If this is in concern for making electrum/upped cards easier to obtain, might I suggest just sticking with the request to make Half-bloods more rewarding?

No, this is in concern to me logging in, thinking for hours to find a way to enjoy the game by building decks and playing them, and instead ending up wasting my time, getting angry, and pressing alt-F4 a few hours later, then coming back next day and doing the same. While I admit that Half bloods being an alternative to play would help, the root of the problem is not that.
False gods provide a challenge that is impossible to win if you goal is not "beat god once" or "have a 40% win ratio" but to beat them consistently, with you own deck.

Poor performance is caused by many things, not the least of which is the learning curve. It is extremely naive for anyone to think that they can throw some cards together, fight some super powerful boss they have never faced before, and win. The false gods' decks are finely tuned and are generally quite effective at executing a very focused strategy, so naturally, it takes time to learn their strategies and to think of ways to combat them. Thus, it takes a finely tuned deck to be able to compete with these false gods. Of course, the deck you use also has a learning curve.

Ok, then tune me a deck that can beat every god at a 90% chance in an average situation. (you know, no messed up starting hand with 0-1 pillars, and the god not playing 6-8 explosions in a row the first two turns, but "normal" games that give the majority of time we play)
Can you?
Ok, here is an easier one then : Tune me 10 different decks, of different base concepts that can each get a 60% win ratio. 60% isn't that good, it should be possible, am I right? If it's just the learning curve...

The fact that the very best, tuned to maximum, top tier decks can only reach 60% at best (1-2 decks can get there only, all being entropy rainbow, which is a heavily luck based deck), and most GOOD, tier one anti FG decks get around 30-40, while tier two boasting 10-20% wins only, means something.

I have tons of experience in card games, played MTG, L5R, Yugioh, Pokemon, Harry Potter and a few others as well, so it's reasonable to assuming the problem is not with my deck building skills.

-Can you beat a CC false god without immortal sources of damage, or a way to replicate your creatures? If not, you do need aether in the deck for Fractal or Quintessence.
-Can you beat a perm control false god without either having card advantage, protect artifacts, or a huge amount of permanents in the deck? If not, you also need to include Time with many permanents or Earth.
-Can you beat a creature swarm false god without good creature control that deals with many creatures? If not, you'll need Otyugh, firestorm or something similar, so you need to add a third element.
-Can you beat a false god playing huge creatures (10/12 attack dragons in multiples) without an other form of creature control not based on creature size? If not, you need to include Antimatter, or Permafrost or something equivalent for a Fourth different element. At this point you are already forced to use rainbow, which is the most luck based of them all : Quantum towers generate random quanta, and supernovas are limited to 6 : you either draw them or not.
But the list continues...
-Can you beat a false god without sources of healing for damage you can't handle using CC? (Momentum, direct damage spells, poison) If not you'll need to include a major healing source (primarily SoG, but maybe Feral Bonds, Miracles, SoD as well, because large deck = not enough SoG drawn.)
-Can you beat a false god that keeps healing itself without a major damage source? Something bigger than 6x phase dragons because with that, you still cannot beat a lot of healing gods...if the answer is again no, you need to add even more elements, and many cards : damage sources cannot come late, you can't include just 1-2 of them and hope you draw them in time, you'll need at least three. When playing Rol-Hope, I've learned, that pretty often even 10 12/12 dragons are not enough to win, and if both dragons are near the bottom against certain gods, you can't win. Permanent control can help against feral bonds, but nothing can stop miracles (except playing all creatures at once, but for that, you need tons of them, and quanta, most likely with fractal)
-Can you beat a quanta control FG without a lucky draw of quanta sources or a way of protecting them? If the answer is no, you'll need more than the usual quanta sources, or a way to protect your quanta...actually many ways to protect it : against Dark Matter, you need to kill the Gravity Nymph early, but against Seism, you need protect artifact instead, and against Decay...well, you better play Quantum Towers or can fractal some quanta generating creatures after drawing a large number of aether towers, or you'll be in trouble.

Now, can all of these fit into a fine tuned deck and still provide consistent draws? I don't think so. Do you have the option of not playing rainbow? I don't think so. Rol/Hope is the exception because it does so many things with only 3 cards : Hope can control both small and large creatures in any amount, it is resistant to permanent control by itself without the need of any extra cards, Rol has outstanding quanta generation due to Fractal, and  Fractal also provides outstanding damage when played on Dragons, which you couldn't afford in a normal deck, but due to the Rays, here, you can.
No other 3 card combination from only 2 elements can provide a massive, CC resistant damage source with a permanent control resistant way to handle every enemy creature using a single card. And with that outstanding synergy, a fine tuned 30 card rol/hope deck still needs to autoquit against 50% of the gods, and even by adding a few cards, you'd still need to autoquit at least 30-40%, but the win ratio against that now 60-70% playable gods would be much worse even that way than the ratio when you only play half of the gods.

Advanced decks are typically less redundant than beginner/intermediate deck builds (e.g. only 1-2 copies of key cards), so personal deck knowledge, intuition, and correct play hold much more value than the cards one draws in a match. These skills take time to develop, so it is advised to first test a potential anti-false god deck out on a lower level AI (e.g. level 3) just to develop a feel for how the deck performs.

Skills are nice and everything, but tell me how to win if the 1-2 damage sources are all near the bottom (assuming the deck doesn't have an eternity just to prevent decking out), or when the 2 pulverizers are in the last 10 cards and the god uses feral bonds, and such situations. Unfortunately, in many cases, if you can't draw the key card, you lose. Without a pulverizer, you lose against feral bonds (unless you can put out 200 damage in a single turn), you lose against an opposing pulverizer (can't survive without shards and shields), you lose against a chain of phase shields (if you can't do damage, you deck out), etc... yeah, the standard Rainbow does have alternatives for most everything (You can mutate creatures until you get the destroy ability for example), but can you do that in ANY other deck? Not really... If you don't draw a Dragon in a Rol/Hope deck, you lose by deckout. If you don't draw a Rol, Fractal or Hope, you lose from being unable to stop the incoming damage. If you don't draw a lobotomizer and the opponent has creatures with momentum, or pharaohs for example, can you handle them in any other way? No, you'll lose. Most cards can do only one thing, there are a very limited number of cards that are versatile.
If we had cards like "return target card from your graveyard" or "search your deck for target card", or other, versatile cards, then you'd be right, and we'd need only 1-2 copies of key cards. Currently, the 99% of the cards in the game can only do one thing, and nothing else. The remaining 1% being the cards like Fallen Druid/elf(mutation can get any ability), or Liquid Shadow (lobo+healing+poison effect), and the like. While certain situations can be handled multiple ways (ferals can be handles both by CC and PC), others cannot (if the god uses miracles, you need to do a lot of damage, and that's the only option...)

If this were implemented, and win rates went up to 90%, a lot of people would be demanding a greater non-PvP challenge.
So, what would be the greater challenge...AI7?
Then when AI7 is implemented with average win rates of 40%, will people complain that that is too hard?
It just makes for a never-ending escalation.

There is no need for opponents where the very best you can get is a 40-50% win ratio. If you want something challenging, add quests that provide additional conditions you need to achieve other than just winning. (Beat <opponent name> without killing creatures for example, I posted more of these ideas in the thread about the Half Bloods.)
Alternatively, play PVP. It is always more challenging than AI, because the opponents might be on the same level or even better than you are.
That 90% would still be only for the best players, the rest would probably spend months to build the ideal deck per group of gods to reach that. (Sure, you can use the deck ideas from the forum, but why would you do that if your own deck also works at an acceptable rate? There is no fun in using someone else's deck vs AI.)

Different false god realms open up the opportunity for realm-specific rare cards (not unlike WoW's epic gear), and also allow for more customizable deck building against smaller groups of false gods. Overall, I love the idea for false god realms.

Realm specific rares are a great idea. That'd give the players a reason to fight in all realms, and build the four different decks necessary to do that.

[TheOwner]

I agree, FG's are very hard.  Just think about the reward though... Averagely you win a card for every three wins, with the CCYB decks you win about two-thirds of the time.  Thats about 2500 electrum every nine games.  You can't complain that's horrible.  In general I just farm them and keep on trying.  Against harder gods I usually end up with either a total domination (they crush me before I do anything) or a horrible draw for them.  I've beaten all the gods, you can't complain too much.

You could've just made this into a strategy guide using most of that and been loved by all players everywhere.

[10 men]

The real question in my opinion is: "How difficult do we want False Gods to be?"
Making different realms for them would be flavourful and all, but not necessary to balance them.
Prior to the Sundial (and Bone Wall) nerf anti-FG decks had a win-rate of 75-80%, but a lot of people back then complained that FGs were too easy...

[jmizzle7]

Poor performance is caused by many things, not the least of which is the learning curve. It is extremely naive for anyone to think that they can throw some cards together, fight some super powerful boss they have never faced before, and win. The false gods' decks are finely tuned and are generally quite effective at executing a very focused strategy, so naturally, it takes time to learn their strategies and to think of ways to combat them. Thus, it takes a finely tuned deck to be able to compete with these false gods. Of course, the deck you use also has a learning curve.

Ok, then tune me a deck that can beat every god at a 90% chance in an average situation. (you know, no messed up starting hand with 0-1 pillars, and the god not playing 6-8 explosions in a row the first two turns, but "normal" games that give the majority of time we play)
Can you?
Ok, here is an easier one then : Tune me 10 different decks, of different base concepts that can each get a 60% win ratio. 60% isn't that good, it should be possible, am I right? If it's just the learning curve...

(long rant...)

I don't understand why you think that building a deck that wins at least 90% across the board is balanced. I played Elements when the AI was so stupid and Sundial so overpowered that I actually did have a win rate of around 90%. Of course, there were fewer false gods and the game was much more imbalanced then. I just don't understand your reasoning to make it so that beating opponents with twice the amount of hp, double draw, and triple mark is just as easy as AI level 3 or top 50. They are designed to be unfairly difficult, so having a positive expectation from false god battles (i.e. win more than you lose) at all is a pretty good deal, especially given the prize potential. There is nothing wrong with the current state of the game regarding false god win percent.

I do think that false god realms are a good idea, but only as a means to increase AI end game content, and nothing else.

[Seravy]

I don't understand why you think that building a deck that wins at least 90% across the board is balanced.

Because
-I'm playing against an AI. Something that doesn't think and throws cards at the table randomly.
-I'm playing against on opponent whose deck I know in advance. You know, if you already know your opponent will go by "Rock", usually, you win 100% of the time, unless the opponent is cheating...yes the gods are cheating that's why I said 90, not 100.

A deck that wins 90% across the board is not balanced. However, AI farming is NOT about across the board, it's about providing a reasonable speed for getting cards to the players, and more importantly having fun by testing your skills against a difficult challenge. It might be different for each person, but for me, playing a deck that has a lower than 75% win ratio versus previously known, AI opponents, is not fun.

The whole point would be being able to take advantage of knowing their decks in advance, and if they are so different, that is completely lost, making it no different from playing a random opponent in PVP that has a powerful deck and also happens to be able to cheat, but is obviously stupid to play because he prefers to cheat instead of learning to play.
Do you like playing against random cheaters? I don't.
If I know their decks in advance and can beat them with that information despite their cheating, now that is fun, and challenging. What we have now is not a challenge, but a source for frustration, because with that many different gods, it's basically a random opponent and you have no information you can use for deckbuilding.

The real question in my opinion is: "How difficult do we want False Gods to be?"

There are two real questions :

1.How difficult we want false gods to be?
My answer to that : Possible to defeat at a high (90%) win rate if you are a very good player and have all the cards and experience necessary.
It might be subjective, but I consider a challenge beaten if I can consistently beat it, not if I can beat it when I'm lucky.

2.How difficult we want it to be to earn upgraded cards?
My answer : In the endgame, it should be much easier than now. Something like a 30-45 card deck should be possible to make with at most a day of playing (8 hours), without having to skip games and resorting to the fastest and most boring FG decks. So 5-6 upgraded cards should be the average amount won by first, and second tier decks, not something you can ONLY achieve with a single deck, and skipping half the games.

Of course, a major Half Blood reward buff+difficulty nerf could achieve that, so the 1. is the more important question, indeed. (The ability to win upped cards in PVP could also help.)

[TheOwner]

So basically your saying...

-I want all the cards upped and unupped
-I don't want to have to spend any time working on it
-I don't like challenges

That sort of is the point of a game....

[10 men]

So basically your saying...

-I want all the cards upped and unupped
-I don't want to have to spend any time working on it
-I don't like challenges

That sort of is the point of a game....

Yeah that's just BS...
It's not like FGs weren't challenging or skillintensive before V.1.15.

There are two real questions :

1.How difficult we want false gods to be?
My answer to that : Possible to defeat at a high (90%) win rate if you are a very good player and have all the cards and experience necessary.
It might be subjective, but I consider a challenge beaten if I can consistently beat it, not if I can beat it when I'm lucky.

2.How difficult we want it to be to earn upgraded cards?
My answer : In the endgame, it should be much easier than now. Something like a 30-45 card deck should be possible to make with at most a day of playing (8 hours), without having to skip games and resorting to the fastest and most boring FG decks. So 5-6 upgraded cards should be the average amount won by first, and second tier decks, not something you can ONLY achieve with a single deck, and skipping half the games.

Two more questions that come to my mind:
- How long should an average game take?
- Should FG-farming be the fastest way to gain score?
I'd be really interested how the majority feels about this, maybe we could have a poll on this thread or somewhere else?