I think upgrade prices are too...

[Celidion]

low. People complain about them being too high, I think they're too low. You're only suppose to have 2 decks, or one if it's good at gods and pvp. So yeah, I think prices should be raised, anyone support me here?

[Evil Hamster]

I always felt the upgrade should be 10-15x the regular purchase price. But I'm not the designer...

[Evil Hamster]

I've played that, but it didn't have much replayability...

[Evil Hamster]

Or you can just get 12 of every card- 6 upgraded and 6 not

[Evil Hamster]

That sounds awesome!

You should create a game, SG

[Forfeit]

agreed, it needs a price change, but in relation to the card price. Also, pilliars and other way low cost cards should have an extra fee added on.

[jmizzle7]

The concept of the grind is mainly a business strategy to keep players involved, but is absolutely unnecessary. This is why almost every RPG that came out before MMO games, especially RPGs on the Super Nintendo, were so fun to play, because they were fun to play from the minute you start until the end.

[jmizzle7]

There's a flash card game out there along the lines of part of Scaredgirl's idea, called Armor Wars. There are four different types of resources, each of which has an inherent characteristic on what kinds of spells and creatures it generates. You earn points after winning matches, and the more points earns you higher levels and unlocks more cards for you to buy. In addition, you have a "hero" who has an effect on your card draw, your creatures, or even provides a chance to evade incoming damage. The problem in that game is that the card base is quite small and after a couple of hours, you can pretty much build whatever you want. Other than that, it is a really good card game.

[jmizzle7]

Yep, that's why I moved on to Elements... lol

[PuppyChow]

Alright. I guess I misunderstood your idea.

But if you've ever played Fire Emblem: DS, you'd know the grind is horribly long. It basically consists of resetting your DS hundereds, sometimes thousands, of times to just get the set of stat ups you want for one level up.

And it makes you feel like you've accomplished something much better when you're done. Sure, you could hack the game to get the same stats you would get by rng abusing, thus eliminating the grind, but where would be the sense of accomplishment in that? I dunno, from your idea it seems that I wouldn't feel like I'd accomplished much. I felt proud the first time I finished upgrading a deck, and winning all the "quests" just wouldn't feel the same.

But if you really hate the grind THAT much, go ahead and hack your deck full of upgraded cards .

[PuppyChow]

It's really not too much grinding. I can get about 4-6 upgrades an hour if I really try. I agree with other posters that the price should be based on the card.

[PuppyChow]

It's really not too much grinding. I can get about 4-6 upgrades an hour if I really try. I agree with other posters that the price should be based on the card.

So if you want to try a new upgraded 30 card deck with new cards, you need to grind for 5-6 hours non-stop? You don't think that is too much?

This card collecting and rare hunting is a big part of CCG's like MtG, but the difference is that they are in it for the MONEY. Elements however is a FREE game so there shouldn't be any grinding. This whole grinding crap was invented in MMO's because developers couldn't design enough content and they had to force players to grind. Somehow this mentality of "it's ok to grind" has been adopted by the gaming community.

If I had my way, there would be no money, no rare cards, or no grinding. We could have a system where you would "unlock" cards, and once you've unlocked one of them, you can use as many as you like in your deck.

This game should be about building different decks, not grinding money to buy cards.

Yes, I actually DO think the grind should be 4-5 hours. Heck, maybe even longer. I play A LOT of Fire Emblem: DS online, and let me tell you, to make a competitive team, you have to spend hours upon hours of clock abusing or rng abusing to get max stats. Not to mention the hours of arena abuse for money to forge good weapons, and the weeks you have to wait to get brave weapons from the online store (each brave is only available for one weekend a month). I would say that I have 3 competitive teams online, and each of them probably took upwards of 70 hours to make. So no, a 4-5 hour grind is NOT too much.

Though in my system, if upgrades were based on the card, it wouldn't take 4-5 hours. Some cards, such as pillars, should only cost 1000 to upgrade, but others, like Pulverizor (which has an amazing upgrade), should cost 2000. So the grind would depend on which cards you were using.

A problem with your idea (I saw your post farther down, too) is that many noobs would quit early because they wouldn't be able to unlock the first card, as the starter decks generally suck. Unless you had a list or something of which cards were harder to unlock and such.

Also, using as many as you want would be REALLY cheap. Here's what I would do:
-Get starter poison
-Unlock the card "Poison" if needed
-Deck: 20x poison, 10x bone pillar

Obviously, no card limit would make the game even MORE unvaried, and if you HAD a card limit with your system getting started would be VERY slow. There would also be very little replayability once you unlocked all the cards.