No cash loss?

[Canola Oil]

I believe that players shouldn't be penalized for losing, considering how much luck affects the outcome of battles. Can players only lose score and not cash upon a loss? Or maybe the amount it takes to join a battle can be decreased?

PS: I have no idea how to make an avatar....

[finkel]

If players didn't lose cash from battles, then people would construct false-god decks capable of beating a small handful of the false gods nearly 100% of the time, and just farm mercilessly. At least, I would. After making enough money (winning enough cards) to upgrade their deck, they could easily regain the score through score-farming level 3/Top 50/pvp. FG's only cost 30 electrum anyway to beat. One upgraded card will buy you 70 games' worth of electrum against FGs, and a single elemental mastery gets you 4 games' worth of electrum.

I think it's fine the way it is. Newbies can't construct a deck capable of EMing every time against a few gods and just grind until they fight one of those. That would allow players to progress too quickly, without having to earn it. I bet a deck with nothing but flying lobotomizers, a few enchant artifacts, and a spine carapace or fire shield could beat quite a few gods by stopping their creatures before they start and killing those with any attack left. Of course, this would only work against gods reliant on their creatures' abilities and/or with creatures that start off with little attack (shriekers, almost anything with growth, etc.) This idea would fail a considerable amount of the time anyway, and all of the time against the vast, vast, vast majority of gods. Without a significant fee, this sort of deck would be exploited.

EDIT: you can't make an avatar, you don't have enough posts yet (ones in the forum games section don't count). You need 200, I believe, to pic a custom one, and something like 30 to pic a picture of an elements card (any card).

[Canola Oil]

Ahh, I see. TY

Still, it's a shame that we're penalized for losing. IRL card games aren't so competitive....

[finkel]

IRL card games aren't so competitive....

I call bullshit. Any popular CCG nowadays is RIDICULOUSLY competitive. In yu-gi-oh, magic, whatever else people are playing, players continuously buy new cards (really expensive new cards) just in order to have a fighting chance. Players without all the new cards don't stand much of a chance, which is really sad, pathetic, and totally against the principals of a collectible trading card game. The companies (Konami, for example) release continuously BETTER cards that are simply, well, better that the previous ones, so players HAVE to buy them in order to compete. It's a corrupt strategy, but it works. They make lots of money, and I know from experience that you can only get so far in tournaments from a few boosters and some basic decks. I placed 18th in a 250+ person yugioh tournament with a deck full of entirely common/semi-rare cards and the brilliant strategy of basiclly having endless low-star creatures and the ability to do ridiculous crap with them. However, everybody I lost to had some ridiculous new card that, for example, removed cards from the game, which was simply unfair since I had a counter to having them removed from play.

Elements doesn't rely on people buying cards, so it can focus on balancing the cards overall and selectively eliminating any overpowered synergies. Elements isn't nearly as competitive as those, it's much more about the process and enjoyment of playing. It's much easier to enjoy losing when you have (almost) as much access to cards as your opponent, and the game's about your style and capability as a deck-builder and player.