Thank you so much for this thread.
I was hoping that your post would discuss more about determining the actual power level of an undeveloped card, because the word "overpowered" is constantly thrown around in the Card Ideas section, and I'm pretty sure that in ~75% of cases, it's unwarranted.
Your hope is my command...or something like that. Let me start off by saying I can't pretend to be inside Zanzarino's head. He may very well have hard and fast rules regarding play balance that I'm unaware. These rules might include things like, "No creature can have more than X attack for Y quanta" etc. If these rules exist anywhere publicly, I am unaware of them. So I will try to talk a bit about general concepts of play balance, while less about Elements specifically.
Let's take a look at the metagame (yes, I will bring this up an annoying amount in this thread). How do we gauge the success or failure of a card? It's simple really, it's measured in the enjoyment players gain by it existing. Why is that the only thing that matters in the grand scheme of things? Because there are exactly 2 reasons to be making a game like this. 1 of them is far more common than the other.
The first, you're out to make money. The more enjoyable cards in your game, the more players play it, the more money you make. Simple. Well, not so simple actually. Not all of your players are going to enjoy your cards the same. So we have to look at the "Net Enjoyment" of each card. If more players enjoy it than don't, it's a well made card. If the majority don't enjoy it, but the minority that does enjoys it so much that the amount of money they spend because of it outweighs the money the majority stops spending because of it, it's a successful card. Yes, money really does make the world go round.
The other reason is probably going to be far less common, although it may be the original reason a lot of games are designed. It was a labor of love. The designers view the success of their game by how much they and others enjoy playing it. You may place far more emphasis on the majority slightly disliking a card and a vocal minority really loving it at this point.
From what I can gather, Elements is falling somewhere between these two extremes. Zanz uses ad space to make money doing something he enjoys. While he won't likely create cards that drive away most of the players, because he'd lose ad revenue, he probably places some emphasis on how much he and others are enjoying his game. These two goals largely coincide, because the more I enjoy his game, the more I come to play it, and the more I see that Pop Tarts Toaster Pastries jingle that I can never get out of my head. Only he knows how much he focuses on one aspect over the other.
So let's look at some of the nitty gritty of game design. At the start of it all you have to determine the general conventions that your game will follow. These include things like, Players will have a starting and maximum HP, there will be cards that Poison, you can summon creatures that remain turn after turn, you can cast spells that only stay for one turn, there will be ways to heal your HP or increase your maximum HP, players will have a starting hand, players will draw cards at the start of each round. These are some (though certainly not all) of the conventions that Elements the Game has. Take a look for a moment and realize that none of these are necessary to have a CCG.
None of them? I hear you asking. Nope, not a one. Don't want to have HP? Fine. I've seen games with such diverse mechanics as using your deck to signify your life total, (when you take damage you discard a corresponding number of cards, when you have no more cards, you die) to being hit a single time causes you to lose (you have numerous ways to defend yourself from attacks and generally play games in a best 2 out 3 format). Everything is optional, and designing a game means designing it from the ground up, even if you assume that some conventions of the CCG are set in stone (they're not).
So once you've set all the aspects of your game, you're going to need to scale them to one another. You've decided there are poison counters? You can't make them hands down
better than creature damage, or creature damage won't get used. You're generally going to set limits, some of which will evolve naturally as you design the system, on what cards can and cannot do. You'll decide that spending 1
is worth a 2/1 creature, and spending 1
is worth a 1/2 creature. If you're coming in after some of these conventions are already in place, wanting to design a new card for Elements for instance, you should look at and try to follow them. Don't suggest a card design for a 5/1 for
or a 5/1 for 5:fire because neither of these fit the balance proposed by other cards. A 5/1 for 1 Quanta is clearly too powerful, while 5/1 for 5 is too weak. What these limits are in Elements I can't say. I've quickly looked over the cards just now, and am at a loss. It has everything to do with the small sample of cards though. I remember a time in my life when I could tell you precisely what 2 Dark Mana in M:tG was worth in a creature though. There were hard and fast rules to go by, and creatures that exceeded or failed to exceed these expectations were good and bad respectively. Since Elements has only a handful of creatures from each element, none with the same Attack and Health and almost all with some special ability, I can't say.
What I can guess is a general power level, and a flavor for each of the cards though. Fire has flimsy but highly damaging cards while Earth has sturdy but slower cards. Shriekers just confuse me. I think it has everything to do with the Tremors movies really. Now, notice I said Shriekers, not Graboids. The Graboid matches a general slowness found in Earth, with a terrifying thing leaping out of the ground a moment later. If anything is to be gained from comparing the different creatures in Elements, it's from the Dragons, since all elements have Dragons. They usually cost 10. They usually are 10/5. Variations on this speak to the element they're in. Aether costs more because of Immaterial. We might just infer that the ability costs 3. When we look at the Immortal, we see a 4/3 for 3 and 3 more for the ability. Well, death has a 3/3 for 3. So perhaps Immaterial is worth 2.5 or at least 2.x.
OK, you say to yourself. So if I want an immaterial fire creature all I've got to do is add 2.x to its cost and I'm good...well, not so fast. Let's look at the Pegasus for a moment. He can dive for
. OK, so dive costs
? Not if you look at the Wyrm, his costs
. They both have 3 attack. It makes no sense. Until you realize that the Pegasus is
and presumably has a much harder time getting Air Quanta. It's the same reason Anubis is handing out Immaterial for
instead of 2.x. Abilities will actually be cheaper in another element, but it's balanced by the difficulty of producing it.
Makes sense? OK good, because I think I've talked enough in this reply. And yes, xdude, one of these days I will figure out how to make short posts to get my post count up...that day just isn't today.
