Flashpocalypse

[serprex]

By the way, why aren't we discussing that in General Discussion? I do not see the benifit of restricting it to staff members.

Reality is that elementsthegame.com could go down any day. What sort of pvp events do you want to organize at that point? Or are we going to become a full blown Mafia forum?

Should we port War to MTGA? That certainly solves the can't-get-enough-players-for-12-teams problem

Where do people stand on openEtG? I'm currently working to improve the UI, so if anyone wants to get their hands wet with React give me a shout

Fragments has potential as a nice free-to-win card game we can rally on

I'll copy a post I made about this on the Council board, which includes what the Flashpocalypse is and what it means for Elements for those that aren't sure. Feel free to correct me on some part if I am wrong. It's a response to another post so some wordings might appear odd out of context.

So let's clarify some things:

Once the "Death of Flash" happens, Flash games will no longer be playable on any of the major browsers. The only way to keep playing Flash games after that is to either use an old version of the browsers, or someone will likely make a browser where you can still play Flash. However doing that will not be recommended due to security risks.

Basically no new players will find the game anymore unless they are specifically looking for Elements, and it's possible that Kong shuts down all their Flash games. Of course by downloading the raw swf file you can play it locally on your computer too, but all of this still assumes that zanz keeps the game server up. I have no idea if he will, since his possible (low?) income from ads will probably drop to 0 once it happens, and he might not be interested in hosting a server for a dead platform, who knows.

With vanilla etg I assume you mean oetg-vanilla (I'll call it "vanilla" from now on). vanilla is not really a complete game, since it has no card collection or accounts whatsoever, it's just a "trainer edition" which you can use for PvP. It has AI opponents, but they give no rewards and are only meant for deck-testing. If no one wants to move to another game, then oetg-vanilla will make it possible to play PvP after the death of flash. I'm not 100% sure everything works exactly as Elements, things like SoI and rare/niche interactions might be slightly different, but shouldn't too hard to fix if they are different. Of course, if we do decide to move on this for PvP events, no ingame rewards for anything will be possible anymore, since everyone will "own" all the cards in this.

Also zanz's game servers has nothing to do with the community server. They are completely separate.

Regarding OEtG I think it's definitely an alternative. Still need graphic design work, yes, but gameplay-wise it's larger than Elements. serp is still working on it, and I know anti is looking into it too, although it's not happening much on the graphical side.

There has also been talk about widening the community at some point to focus on more games than Elements, but that's not much more than a vague idea at this point. Perhaps OEtG could be featured and oetg-vanilla used for PvP events in the future? Many possibilities, but if we want an Elements that is still playable and also being developed on, OEtG is pretty much out best bet. Of course, it's open source, so if someone wants to make a version more similar to the original Elements that is absolutely possible (like extending vanilla into more of a game with accounts and stuff, or taking oetg and removing some cards and taking back some buffs/nerfs), but that has been possible for years and no one seems willing to work on it anyway.

[ddevans96]

My proposal is to replace ETG with oETG after the death of Flash, and then build around oETG.

Continue the plan to graphically overhaul oETG. Make the game more aesthetically pleasing, more user friendly, and more marketable. Begin using oETG in its current form for PvP Events here, including War.

Additionally, I propose the following steps as means to that goal, some of which may be controversial:

Rebrand oETG as Elements: [subtitle]. Market it as a spiritual successor to Elements. A rebirth, a defiance against obsolescence, a new era. Publicize the game in appropriate places.

Create a team to facilitate future development (balance, design direction, worldbuilding, programming, etc). The game can still be open source, there's no inherent issue with that, and it would allow for a modding community, but it would be essential that there's a central version of the game that's being supported and actively developed (and also - anti-cheat measures may need to be considered, for events with significant prize pools).

I think doing this properly would result in the steady growth of the community.

[InsignificantWeeaboo]

Of course, we'd have to see if Zanz would be ok with us taking over and rebranding oETG as a sequel...

He might be ok with it if we're persuasive enough...

[serprex]

Talking with Fippe94, he seems to agree openEtG is the direction. antiaverage has mentioned that I should consider rebranding, since "openEtG" is pretty opaque

Create a team to facilitate future development (balance, design direction, worldbuilding, programming, etc). The game can still be open source, there's no inherent issue with that, and it would allow for a modding community, but it would be essential that there's a central version of the game that's being supported and actively developed (and also - anti-cheat measures may need to be considered, for events with significant prize pools).

I have a pretty clear plan to implement server-side pvp, so that client only receives a description of what should be rendered on their screen

ColorlessGreen & I have been in discussion about how to offload me from being the ultimate decision maker. Unfortunately at this point the only other person I trust to make consistently correct calls on the design is ColorlessGreen (honestly, I trust him more than myself when it comes to oetg's design). Once players get use to openEtG that'll change. It's important that players evaluate the game at its current point, since at this point openEtG has been in development for longer than the original Elements was

Long term I'd like decision making process to be maintained by a small team by unanimous vote. Have 1-3 members be elected like Council, then include commit access developers & ColorlessGreen. Ideal process would be for community to have some kind of CIA which allows the team to know what people want, but the team needs final say on what's best for the game long term. Essentially you end up with the community generating ideas, developers implementing proposals they believe are good, & the team having the ability to say "No". I've been in talks with antiaverage about having a testing server so that we can avoid live bugs & play around with ideas

[ddevans96]

Of course, we'd have to see if Zanz would be ok with us taking over and rebranding oETG as a sequel...

He might be ok with it if we're persuasive enough...

His permission isn't necessary. I may have mispoke - while 'Elements II' is sort of the goal, I wouldn't suggest it be marketed as such, as a sequel, but instead marketed as a spiritual successor, which is what it would be. The word 'Elements' can't really be trademarked - it's not unique to the game in any way. Mechanics also can't really be trademarked. These forums don't necessarily need to be tied directly to his game. We just can't use any of his artwork or graphic creations, and probably not the word 'Elements' in Evanescence font, but that's fine. We'd have to do some rebranding, but we'd be doing that anyways.

Is it morally ambiguous? I don't really think so - I would think he wouldn't have an issue with us continuing the legacy of his game, after six years of no development and extremely little community contact. And if we really do think using the name is a moral issue, I'm sure we could come up with a new name that's visibly inspired by the original game.

ColorlessGreen & I have been in discussion about how to offload me from being the ultimate decision maker. Unfortunately at this point the only other person I trust to make consistently correct calls on the design is ColorlessGreen (honestly, I trust him more than myself when it comes to oetg's design). Once players get use to openEtG that'll change. It's important that players evaluate the game at its current point, since at this point openEtG has been in development for longer than the original Elements was

Long term I'd like decision making process to be maintained by a small team by unanimous vote. Have 1-3 members be elected like Council, then include commit access developers & ColorlessGreen. Ideal process would be for community to have some kind of CIA which allows the team to know what people want, but the team needs final say on what's best for the game long term. Essentially you end up with the community generating ideas, developers implementing proposals they believe are good, & the team having the ability to say "No". I've been in talks with antiaverage about having a testing server so that we can avoid live bugs & play around with ideas

I'm in agreement that ColorlessGreen is the only person (besides yourself) who can be trusted with balance right now. That will change in the future, as people get accustomed to the new game, but even then, it's very okay to have one person call the shots when it comes to balance and just solicit ideas from the community - IceFrog is legendary in the gaming community for how effective he is at balancing DotA, for example.

I think your long-term plan is solid - development team including yourself and any other programmers, CG as head of balance and game direction, and others selected by the community to fill in gaps, then reorganized CIA and game suggestions sections for the community to filter good ideas to the team for review.

I do think a development server would be essential.

[Mobian]

While it's unlikely, if we could get his permission to use the existing art in oEtG, would that expedite the process?

[dawn to dusk]

The main problem is UI, card art is already present, even if some cards have better art than others. The main problem comes from UI, and copying UI from EtG to OEtG is a lot more difficult due to the extra options available in OEtG

[iancudorinmarian]

I agree with continuing with oEtG as the main game. Would also be interesting to see how trials/war meta would shape up in oEtG.

[Zso_Zso]

@serprex I would like to take a stab at learning the coding side of OpenETG. I was a software developer most of my life, although I am currently semi-retired and have not been actively coding for a few years, so I maybe a bit rusty, but I think I can learn and refresh.

So, please give me pointers, where can I get the source and if you have any documentation on it I'd love to read that too.
Of course, I do not expect to have any kind of privilege to make changes on my own, I would submit to you and ColorlessGreen for review anything before committing to any repository. But even long before it comes to that, I need to learn the code.

[moehrpi]

I, too, am a big fan of vanilla oEtG. But don't think I have ever tried oEtG.

Things that are different in oEtG: Scramble, mark cards, Chroma Mark and I seem to remember there was another thing. Maybe FE, Diss Shield or Mutations..

One thing that is a big motivation for me is collecting nymphs and marks so I am very much in favour of keeping those mechanics and a way to import your collection. At least for marks and those codes used on nymphs.

I don't have programming or drawing skills but would love to put my game knowledge to use to discuss balancing if that's what oEtG aims to do in the future.

[PlayerOa]

One thing that is a big motivation for me is collecting nymphs and marks so I am very much in favour of keeping those mechanics and a way to import your collection. At least for marks and those codes used on nymphs.

Want to put emphasis on this. Some way of documenting nymph/mark collection for importing would be needed.

Also, if we are to make the transition to the «full version» of oetg, I think we should phase in the new cards some by some, rather than adding 50+ new cards in a single bulk.

[TheonlyrealBeef]

I have remained mostly silent on this subject for a few reasons. The first, is that I have no intention to stop the community from moving forward from a game that will cease to function. Honestly, just looking at pvp desynchs, arena and declining player base (along with the impact it has on pvp), the quality has already been reducing. Still, these points:

The main problem is UI, card art is already present, even if some cards have better art than others. The main problem comes from UI, and copying UI from EtG to OEtG is a lot more difficult due to the extra options available in OEtG

One thing that is a big motivation for me is collecting nymphs and marks so I am very much in favour of keeping those mechanics and a way to import your collection. At least for marks and those codes used on nymphs.

Want to put emphasis on this. Some way of documenting nymph/mark collection for importing would be needed.

Also, if we are to make the transition to the «full version» of oetg, I think we should phase in the new cards some by some, rather than adding 50+ new cards in a single bulk.

Feel very important to me.

There have also been more than enough ideas over time to improve elements, ideas that have been neglected over the past few years. If all of these could be incorporated into a new version, essentially providing an improvement over the current elements in most if not all aspects, I expect none of the players would have any large objections. This, in turn, might even motivate me to help with:

developers implementing proposals they believe are good

As is, I'd rather let go of elements altogether.