I've yet to see a reason in this topic why the system is actually a good idea.
So far I see:
"I spent a week upgrading my deck, so everyone else should have to"
"Grinding keeps people busy" -- So does having a fun, competitive game, it's just now you have to grind to get there first. Eventually I assume you might be able to grind for rare balanced but extremely helpful cards instead of this.
"You don't need upgrades to beat the upgrades, just a specific hard counter to (one or two deck types/the AI) that totally destroys any freedom with making your deck and is worthless if you don't have the luck to face that deck type"
"PvP is flawed anyway, why fix the rest of the game?"
I see nothing about promoting deck variety any more than making one set of cards the only set. I see nothing about giving the game more appeal in the long run, only adding another week of grinding before reaching essentially the same point. I certainly don't see how it promotes deck variety or original strategies other than making half the stuff in the game come with almost no cost to play, and most importantly I don't see how it's attractive to new players.
Perhaps upgrades could be a cool idea, but if so they'd need to completely split people with them off from people who want to actually deal with things like balanced quantum costs, since upgraded decks generally make it so easy to fund anything you want to do unless you face earthquake it's kind of dumb. Or perhaps things just cost too much unupgraded; hard to tell. But I've seen fire dragons enter play before my first turn came, fire tower + photon + cremation got him 10 quanta, so I automatically took 24 damage from that alone with no serious way to counter without upgrades. You see tons of first-turn creatures in general.
I mean, the upgraded pillars alone are so much better it's stupid. Almost all the upgrades are at least two of these: more cost-efficient, faster to play, hit harder, harder to kill. Less than a third actually have a downside. There's potential with Sundials having a different essential function when upgraded, with dragons costing more, with Mind Flayers gaining HP but at a higher cost. There isn't anything positive if you think of this as what it is, a multiplayer CARD GAME, not an MMO or God Killer Grindfest 2010, about suddenly making every Skeleton you generate have 4/4 with no downside, or your Fire Bolts cost 1/3 as much. I don't quite get the point of absolutely forcing players to build a deck that abuses Sundials and shields, fighting the fake gods over and over until they get a lucky draw against an easy one and then win that small chance of a card, just to be able to have cards that are considered standard.
Don't say there's any real strategy involved in beating the gods without upgrades, because there isn't. It's Sundials/Phase Shields/Bone Walls/Gravity Shields or you automatically lose, and you just have to be lucky from there. Forget any kind of denial. Forget dragons other than the broken Phase Dragons, forget clever use of spells besides Parallel Universe and Steal. You play Sundials and shields and either PU, FFQ, or buffs + Consume (which is just AI abuse anyway) and you hope for good draws.
