EtG gains curve favors older players?

[Guizonde]

Fikraxtein and i were grinding the arena and lvl 4 together, when we found something odd: i'm currently level 44 whereas she's level 18. her account isn't as old as mine, and so i have more upgraded cards. what we found (taking into account my account's age and hers) was that i was grinding WAY more electrum, spins, and EMs. we're talking grinding 1.4k+ electrum for me per hour, and about 200 for her.

it seems to me that there's a very clear speed curve regarding your gains that correlates directly to your gains: the older your account, the more cards and ups you have, therefore the more rewards you get. what seems odd is that older players shouldn't need that much cash, it should on the contrary be newer players that benefit from cash boosts.

i may have not posted this in the right section, so please move this if need be, but i was wondering what the rest of the forumites thought about this situation.

before anyone mentions efficient grinders: she's using mono-:fire and mono- to grind bronze league, and adrenavamps for level 4, and try as we might, we simply can't find a cash-cow deck to even begin getting some upped cards for her.

[OldTrees]

Stronger decks gain more. (Upgrades are an investment)
More experienced players gain more. (Games are experience)

An exponential curve should be expected from the investment - reward relationship.

[Cheesy111]

You pretty much need to grind the 9000 electrum to get RoL/Hope.  Whether you do that through AI4 or Silver or AI3 or PvP1 or whatever is up to you - those are all viable farming options.  After you get RoL/Hope, you get enough cash for an arena grinder which gets you the shards for Instosis.  With Instosis and a Silver or Bronze farmer, you have as much cash or rares as you have time or effort.

[Guizonde]

You pretty much need to grind the 9000 electrum to get RoL/Hope.  Whether you do that through AI4 or Silver or AI3 or PvP1 or whatever is up to you - those are all viable farming options.  After you get RoL/Hope, you get enough cash for an arena grinder which gets you the shards for Instosis.  With Instosis and a Silver or Bronze farmer, you have as much cash or rares as you have time or effort.

fair enough, but that doesn't seem too fair for new players and non-forumites (i count myself as lucky for finding decks that work without resorting to grinding with instosis)... dare i say it, it makes grinding even more monotonous due to having a strict progression to follow to grind quickly.

i'm thinking of the newbies here, so all opinions are valid.

[Cheesy111]

You pretty much need to grind the 9000 electrum to get RoL/Hope.  Whether you do that through AI4 or Silver or AI3 or PvP1 or whatever is up to you - those are all viable farming options.  After you get RoL/Hope, you get enough cash for an arena grinder which gets you the shards for Instosis.  With Instosis and a Silver or Bronze farmer, you have as much cash or rares as you have time or effort.

fair enough, but that doesn't seem too fair for new players and non-forumites (i count myself as lucky for finding decks that work without resorting to grinding with instosis)... dare i say it, it makes grinding even more monotonous due to having a strict progression to follow to grind quickly.

i'm thinking of the newbies here, so all opinions are valid.

There is a fastest method to grinding.  There are always other methods as well.  You can use an old SGbow (bad but you gain money over time), or monoaether, or ghostal, or just grind AI3 and bronze.  Whatever works for you. It would be ridiculous to ask that every deck be equally efficient.

[ralouf]

Oh she doesn't win a lot of money when farming bronze league ? how weird..

Also I'll take care to expalin : farming bronze is for rare cards and totally suxx for electrum.

[vivimancer]

Stronger decks gain more. (Upgrades are an investment)
More experienced players gain more. (Games are experience)

An exponential curve should be expected from the investment - reward relationship.

but its more than that. The understanding of the game amd how to exploit it only comes with experience, eg knowing that an opponent with an aether mark will probably use dimemsion shield or you should beware playing perms if your opponent has darkness pillars.
 
some random guy on the elements chat once said
"a good score doesn't make a good player but a good player makes a good score"

Also the rule of three says, pvp1 for coins, AI3 for spins and bronze for rares

[Guizonde]

good points all. i'm guessing it's been done before (especially seeing the stickied tutorials and faqs) but i think just bringing up a point like this can help neophytes seeing it talked about.

@vivimancer: what does the pvp1 meta look like currently, you seem to favor that playground. any hints for entreprising newbies?

[Fikraxtein]

Oh she doesn't win a lot of money when farming bronze league ? how weird..

Also I'll take care to expalin : farming bronze is for rare cards and totally suxx for electrum.

I know this is mainly for rares, lvl4 helps me for gaining electrums; it's just that all decks I saw in community-recommended forum to grind gold/platinum all decks had a lot of upgraded cards; this would take me too long to build a deck just for arena so I just keep at bronze and sometimes silver; nonetheless this thread may just underline the fact that newcomers might get weary of taking too much time in getting a full-upgraded deck or just an efficient one enough, or just about getting more electrums or rare cards...

[Pineapple]

Well, that's not really a problem in the game, but a problem in either your perception or the community.

The topic of this thread is that "EtG gains curve favors older players." However, there is absolutely no problem with this. In fact, is there even a game where killing higher-level mobs nets less exp-per-minute for higher-level players? RPGs are supposed to get easier as you play, lest there would be no reason for grinding, and it would not be an RPG. This is the same with balanced CCGs.

Silver, AI3, and maybe even PvP1 net more electrum than AI4. Even if you choose to farm AI4, adrenavamps is a pretty slow (compared to rushes) and fragile (compared to Mono-Aether). Maybe you're just farming on the wrong things, or with the wrong decks?

As for there being multiple decks having upgraded cards, this is because upgraded decks are simply better than unupgraded decks (obviously, this makes sense and should not be changed). When a veteran posts a deck that can grind better than previous decks on the forum, he aims for the largest group of players in the community. This is not the group with all the nymphs or the group with no upgraded cards, but the group that can easily obtain upgrades and non-nymph non-mark rares. That is why there is a greater amount of upgraded decks on the forums.

However, this doesn't mean that the unupgraded decks on the forum are sub-par. There are some very efficient unupgraded grinders floating around. While, as expected, unupgraded decks are not as good as upgraded decks, the only reason a veteran would not post a more efficient unupgraded grinder on the forums is because he is spending his time developing upgraded grinders or because the better alternative for the most efficient grinder currently on the forums simply does not exist. Either instance is not a problem in the game.

[OldTrees]

The topic of this thread is that "EtG gains curve favors older players." However, there is absolutely no problem with this. In fact, is there even a game where killing higher-level mobs nets less exp-per-minute for higher-level players? RPGs are supposed to get easier as you play, lest there would be no reason for grinding, and it would not be an RPG. This is the same with balanced CCGs.

There are 3 exp models Exponential, Linear and Logarithmic.
Logarithmic exp is common in RPGs.
Exponential exp is common in CCGs

[vivimancer]

@vivimancer: what does the pvp1 meta look like currently, you seem to favor that playground. any hints for entreprising newbies?

In  pvp1, this week I have been mostly seeing  fire fly queen + ruslter decks, bull frog + green adrenal spam, a lot of mono aethers, steam machines, phase spider rush, and recently its evil twin psion spam. A lot of darkness devourer minor vampire decks. Cats + boneshield decks, there are a few really nice flying weapons decks out there, my personal favourite lava golem rush, scarb/pharoah spam, light dragon + miracle decks. the rainbows lots and lots of rainbows favouring pop-up critters like werewolves, forest sprits. It all so seems to be a test bed for players seeing if decks are practical, I keep seeing one guy with a new deck every time.

At the moment Shard of Focus is definately an 'in' card as is Ghost / nightmare combo. Going out of style earthquake + pulvy decks, and 60 card time rainbows.

In conclusion use Mono-aether or mono-fire for best results