Hello, I was bored this weekend and decided to check how things were going on with this game and community.
You see, I quit a while back, for many of the reasons expressed in this thread and many others. I thought I would give the game another chance; but, here I can tell my story and see if any lessons can come of it.
A while back, before there was an arena, I started playing this game. My first thoughts were, 'wow, this is pretty cool', a lot of potential here. I created an account, messed around for a bit, got a feel for the game. I was a little sad at how the PVP was not immediately accessible, and find myself having to grind AI3; got bored and left for a bit. But it created an itch, I came back a few weeks later, I left that account for dead and created another. I decided that really, what I needed was to get enough of the cards, the grind would be just practice, and then I could play for real in the PVP. So, I selected the darkness deck, and built my first deck, 10 pillars, 4 dragons, 4 devourers, 4 steals, 4 drains, 2 nightfalls, a shield, and vampire dagger. At the time, I ran AI3 for a couple hundred games with a 100% win rate off that. I thought I was some kind of genius. (The deck only gets about a 95% win rate now with the AI improvements). So I got nearly every unupped card, and I found only a few usable combinations, about 20 capable winning decks, and that was it. I was sad. I tried to take those unupped cards and I tried a FG, I lost very quickly, so I went to the Top 50, and lost very quickly, I tried AI4, and lost very quickly. Now, how was I to figure out how to get all these upped cards. I didn't want to 'cheat' I didn't want to look at other people's decks. Was I to grind AI3 this whole time??? I was pissed, I reset my account and walked away for what I thought was forever.
And then something interesting happened, thanks to cookies, google figured out I played this little game called elements, and when I went to youtube a few weeks later, I saw a video on a partial upgraded deck knocking out FG left and right. All of a sudden it dawned on me, I didn't need to upgrade all these expensive cards to necessarily get to all of them. So I go back, fire up the account again, pick my shadow deck, grind another couple hundred times, built that deck and tried against the false gods, and lost, and lost, and lost. It dawned on me, it must be outdated. That the game had changed. But it turned into a great AI4 grinder. So I played AI4, over and over and over again. Finally, I got sick of it, but being my third time at this game, and also having borrowed someones deck, I decided to go ahead and check the forums for other decks.
I found the forums to be fun, I contributed to various sections, ran some experiments, got some good deck ideas, started to play around a bit. Arena came out, and I found it to be much better than the top 50 thing, along with some new shards. I was really into the game, playing every day for the 10 to 15 games I could. I started getting upgraded cards at an ok pace. I found the upgraded cards made a very different game with hundreds of deck combinations that worked. But I found a few things bothersome. First, what first seemed like a good idea, earning rares in arena, turned bad. I couldn't play as much as others, and I found myself quickly outpaced with what were originally extremely over powering shards. How was I to play in the arena except for bronze and silver without the shards, but I can't get the shards because I don't have the shards. What a vicious cycle that is. I also found the rate of new cards and updates to be very slow. I inquired about it and found that this is Zanz's project and there are no other developers.
So, being a developer, dba administrator, a once AI specialist, and a musician. I thought at least one of these skills could be used. I thought, hey, maybe they could use me. I went to the chat. There I was treated as an out cast. Any comments or questions I posted were largely ignored. After a 5th time I finally got Xeno to reply, although kindly, that my skills are not wanted because Zanz is using this as a portfolio project. I hunted down Zanz anyways waiting everyday in chat. Once in a while I would try to join in the conversation, only to be treated rudely, so I figured, eh just a bunch of kids, I really don't care. Finally, I got Zanz to reply, and he told me to get lost. I continued to play though, thinking there was something of an end here, at least, the forum community is nice. But the game just drug on, I made a few decks that won very consistently in PVP2 and found not many people played it. I thought I might join one of those tournaments, at least week how much commitment it took. Then after a significant forum crash, I never could log in. It said my username didn't exist, even though I clearly could go to the fields where it did. If I tried to re-register though, it would say may email was already in use. Without the community, there was no point to this game anymore. So, I left.
I came back this weekend, just to see, mainly because I was bored and stuck inside. I found that although I still can't get my original user name registered 'Keeper', I at least, could get a new name registered. So I did. I played today away, and browsed the forums, where I came across this. I didn't reply though right away.
But here you have it, the truth is, the game has become inaccessible to new players.
1.) The unupped cards lend to very limited game play. Because of this, the main reason why someone new might want to play this game, the PVP, it's pretty lame.
2.) The grind is horrible, a lot of the more experienced users might not think so, but a lot have not had to grind like a new person would, instead, it's micro grinding whenever new cards come out, or just very quickly purchase them if they are in the shop since some have a lot of money just laying around. It is only worse with 'improving the game' because AI improvements and balance tweaks make it even hard to grind. I am certain everyone who was around the first couple days SoSas came out, it was not hard to grab six in the arena, then grind the FG to death with easy kills, until Zanz balanced that out. It even adds insult to injury to have a bunch of rares you can only get by beating a bunch of other people with rares or painfully grind bronze for a month or two, then grind FGs to get them upgraded.
3.) Even upgraded, the deck variations are limited, in other words not enough cards in general.
4.) Even once you get a bunch of upgraded cards, no one plays PVP2 much, which defeats the main point of any online game, to play with or against other players.
5.) Instead, you have to do tournaments, which, BTW, is found only in the forums and not part of the main game.
6.) The chat community which is part of this community is rude at best.
7.) Any help outside of Art for this game is rebuffed.
So there you have it, we have it, the game is inaccessible to newer players, to reset the game to something that is;would alienate the community that is keeping it alive and is more than zanz can handle in short order, any attempts to help are rebuffed. The main focus of the game is not what is should be, the answer is to eliminate upped cards and instead have 1000s per element, eliminate the concept of rainbow as we know it, and then you have a game people can PVP, offer tournaments in the game, keep the arena but the 4 leagues, should match a players score, the PvE element should be AI3 and FG only outside the Arena. Then you will have a living game, but as it is, the only way to excel at this game, is to go to the forums, find the best decks currently available for certain objectives (which btw, defeats the creative element of a ccg) and click through a whole bunch of times till you are sick and leave.
I really had hopes for this game, you can tell because of the number of times I came back, I never wanted to give up on this. However, I played today, I tried to get a few upgraded shards, I'm missing some wisdoms and freedoms still. I got crushed in Plat and Gold. Decided to PVP2, got bored sitting around. Grineded Bronze for a while, got a couple unupped shards. Grinded FG, got a couple upgraded cards, and here I am. In the same spot, going to leave again, and check to see if some miracle happens to this game.
/rant
