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ctuchik

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State of the game https://elementscommunity.org/forum/index.php?topic=443.msg4026#msg4026
« on: December 15, 2009, 10:09:51 pm »

First of all, I'm guessing this is the official community forum for Elements, but I have no idea if the dev(s?) read this or reply to topics here. Posting it here anyway for people to read at least.

I love card games, and I've spent some time with elements over the last few weeks. It's a nice game, I like the card designs and the game rules. You've got a lot of really good art assets and the game engine is solid. There is definitely room on the market for a free to play CCG, as the large userbase shows. I do think the game needs he a few changes to keep people's interest and remain relevant though.

1. The way you keep people playing now is through "the grind". A CCG shouldn't need this. The draw of a CCG should always be deck construction. I understand wanting to limit players choice of cards some way, but having people grind for it is not a good way, simply because it's really boring. I would suggest giving people a more fun way of winning rare and upgraded cards, based around deck construction. Introduce "challenges", where a player faces 1 or more pre-constructed AI decks after one another. The challenge is in building a deck that can take on all the decks in the challenge. For example, you might have a "Beginners Challenge" where you face 3 fairly easy AI decks. Defeating all three in a row with the same deck nets you a card. Another challenge could be "Venomous Challenge", where you meet 3 different decks using poison as their main damage. The player has to take this into account, and build a deck that can handle this. The harder challenges would be more challenging. Can you construct a deck that can reliably beat Seism, Miracle and Morte? Each challenge would have different cards as rewards, forcing players to try to defeat all of them if they want access to everything. If you want to limit player growth even more, you can set a limit to the number of cards a player can earn per day. You could also offer different rewards to players completing a challenge in an exceptional way, winning in under 10 turns or with full health or whatever.

2. Keep a baseline for card balance. I see the attraction in having an upgrade system, and some of the upgraded cards add a lot of new strategies, but having 2 different levels of card balance is a huge headache. Rework the upgraded cards to have the same power as regular cards, only give different strategies. Elite Phase dragons can be more powerful than regular ones, but they should also cost more. Elite fireflies can give another color of quantum, but they should have the same power as a regular one. This gives plenty of new strategies, but makes the game much easier to balance. Upgraded pillars could be given unique effects based on the element they belong to. Time's could cost one quantum to play, but you can sacrifice them to draw a card, and so on.

3. Sort out the interface. Saving decks is obvious. Need to be able to see all creatures on the board clearly. PvP ranking system, with proper matchmaking. I'm sure these are all things you already know about.

ctuchik

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State of the game https://elementscommunity.org/forum/index.php?topic=443.msg4027#msg4027
« Reply #1 on: December 15, 2009, 10:09:51 pm »

I think I need to play Guild Wars. Sounds like I missed something.

I just hope sundials get the nerfbat asap so we can see some different strategies in the top 50.  :D

ctuchik

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State of the game https://elementscommunity.org/forum/index.php?topic=443.msg4028#msg4028
« Reply #2 on: December 15, 2009, 10:09:51 pm »

If you want to try the game, I have an extra account that needs someone to play it.  Really I'd prefer some buffs for other elements before any nerfs to sundial.  Its not that I don't think the card is overpowered, its that theres no valid replacements outside of aether.
There are plenty of deck builds that would stomp all over the cookie cutter rainbows in the current top50 if it wasn't for sundial. It doesn't have to be removed, just have a decreased effect or get a higher cost so it becomes less viable to run 6 in every deck. 

ElementalGod

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State of the game https://elementscommunity.org/forum/index.php?topic=443.msg4029#msg4029
« Reply #3 on: December 15, 2009, 10:09:51 pm »

Balance was poor I am not sure why you refuse to concede this point. Ensign from iQ was making tons of suggestions each month on what could be changed and Izzy continually ignored it. I know it is hard to balance a game like GW but they hardly attempted it and almost none of the team had much experience playing the PvP except for LuLu the Monk. Please do not talk to me so condenscendingly again because I can assure that this board requires less hubris and arrogance not more. I do not need to have done or studied much game design to talk about the balance of the game because I know people that do it better like David Sirlin. He is far more competant than Izzy ever will be and thus I can conclude that balance in Guild Wars was bad if games Sirlin made are not as "unbalanced". If one class or skill setup is dominating I do not have to have studied game design to make the astute observation that this is so. Your response seems to allude to the "Well why don't you do it better?" attitude that one can observe quite frequently among children, although this ignorant and naive attitude is maintained by some into adulthood.
I can guarantee you that I do not need to to engage in the practice of game design to tell you if game is unbalanced or not. Just like I do not need to build a car from scratch to tell you that I think that a car is good or bad. Similarly I do not need to own my own vineyard and grow my own grapes to pass judgment at a wine tasting. Sorry but your rebuttal in the form of a rhetorical question sounds hollow to me.

No I have not done game design and neither have the majority of top GW Pvpers. Your argument seems to imply or indicate that this is some kind of prerequisite for commenting on balance. If the GW designers are so ambitious to include a two class combination system with so many classes then they need to on top of their game and be able to balance and maintain their product. Sorry that is the simple truth. It was released in 2005 and there have been few phases where it saw a state of good balance. Our patches were late and often ignored certain issues or fixed them in a poor manner. There were many boards from the QQ forum to GW Guru, where good suggestions were being made that were ignored consistently despite coming from high ranking members of the pvp communtiy. Telling me that is balanced now (which I do not believe for a moment) rings hollows. The majority of the top tier players left before Nightfall even hit the shelves and almost none of them play the game anymore. The fact that you mention that balance today is good (I do not know if this is true because I no longer play GW) is completely irrelevant. During the tournaments balance sucked and the majority of players left in disgust before the year 2009. Great if the game has balance now, but nobody cares anymore. Activity rates among Pvpers have been dropping consistently since mid 2007 and even before that. Izzy even admitted failure, so please stop pretending it has had good balance before "now". I was never talking about "now" anyways and now does not matter in the slightest to what I was saying. But to state that these builds were shortlived is dishonest. I remember we played ParaSpike for ages and the same goes for Necro spike.

ElementalGod

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State of the game https://elementscommunity.org/forum/index.php?topic=443.msg4030#msg4030
« Reply #4 on: December 15, 2009, 10:09:51 pm »

I played GW at top GVG level and I can assure you that balance sucked hard. We played Thumpway, multiple forms of Necro Spike, the tons of different Ele Spikes (Earthquake and Obs Flame were funny), IWAY, SpiritSpam, Paragon Spike/Pressure, Derv Pressure and hundreds of other broken builds. The game was balanced pretty well shortly before Factions was released and then it all went to hell and any semblance of balance was lost. This problem was increased a hundred fold when the add-on Nightfall came out and I refused to even buy GW:EN. If GW 2 is ever released and it seems unlikely looking at the massive losses NCSoft is managing to run up, I think it will suck if the same scrubs are doing the balance. Guild Wars is a good example of reducing grind to a point, although certain imba req 8 or 7 items only dropped in PvE, but it did not do much better than any of the others. Izzy should probably kill himself! So I would be very careful when attempting to hold GW up as a paragon for how balancing should be done. The current split of PVE only skills and PVP versions just shows how badly balance fell apart.

Kumlekar

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State of the game https://elementscommunity.org/forum/index.php?topic=443.msg4031#msg4031
« Reply #5 on: December 15, 2009, 10:09:51 pm »

If you want to try the game, I have an extra account that needs someone to play it.  Really I'd prefer some buffs for other elements before any nerfs to sundial.  Its not that I don't think the card is overpowered, its that theres no valid replacements outside of aether.

Kumlekar

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State of the game https://elementscommunity.org/forum/index.php?topic=443.msg4032#msg4032
« Reply #6 on: December 15, 2009, 10:09:51 pm »

Spoken like a true GW player.  I find it interesting that I've seen so many GW players on this game, but the grind is so completely different.  What might be nice is if elements introduced a pve/pvp split like gw has.  Pvp would require you to unlock a card, and once you had done that you could create that card for a pvp deck at any time.  PVE we could keep the same slow boring grind we have right now (perhaps with more enemies? *hint hint*)
.
The thing is, I really want to like this game, but not having all the tactical options open to me without 30-50+ hours of gameplay is really annoying.  If i'm playing a game with a balanced pvp system, I want to have the same potential as a top player within 5 hours of gameplay.  The difference would be that I don't know stragety or deck building, which would put me on a much lower level until I have hundreds of hours of expierence under my belt.

The one thing i'm liking about elements in comparison to other TGC's is theres no "bad cards".  All cards have their uses, unlike in magic where there is a three tiered system of power.  I hope that elements continues to use this system, and that zan considers rebalancing cards on a regular basis to change the meta.

Scaredgirl

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State of the game https://elementscommunity.org/forum/index.php?topic=443.msg4033#msg4033
« Reply #7 on: December 15, 2009, 10:09:51 pm »

Very good post. I agree with most of the things you say.

1. The way you keep people playing now is through "the grind". A CCG shouldn't need this. The draw of a CCG should always be deck construction. I understand wanting to limit players choice of cards some way, but having people grind for it is not a good way, simply because it's really boring. I would suggest giving people a more fun way of winning rare and upgraded cards, based around deck construction. Introduce "challenges", where a player faces 1 or more pre-constructed AI decks after one another. The challenge is in building a deck that can take on all the decks in the challenge. For example, you might have a "Beginners Challenge" where you face 3 fairly easy AI decks. Defeating all three in a row with the same deck nets you a card. Another challenge could be "Venomous Challenge", where you meet 3 different decks using poison as their main damage. The player has to take this into account, and build a deck that can handle this. The harder challenges would be more challenging. Can you construct a deck that can reliably beat Seism, Miracle and Morte? Each challenge would have different cards as rewards, forcing players to try to defeat all of them if they want access to everything. If you want to limit player growth even more, you can set a limit to the number of cards a player can earn per day. You could also offer different rewards to players completing a challenge in an exceptional way, winning in under 10 turns or with full health or whatever.
Yeah, I hate grind with a passion. When MMO's became popular, players were introduced to the concept of grind. MMO's needed some kind of timesink and because developers didn't have the resources to give them thousands of hours of quests, there had to be grind.

Unfortunately today many developers think there HAS TO BE grind. Why do we need grind? Nobody likes it so why do we have it? Grind is an old PvE system that is not relevant today.

That's why I love MMO's like Guild Wars - THERE IS NO GRIND. Actually I think Elements should use the EXACT same method that Guild Wars uses.

In Guild Wars..
1. You start the game with a bunch of basic skills.
2. When you win PvP battles, you get points (faction)
3. With these points you can unlock new skills
4. With enough wins, you will unlock new areas and new PvP content (4vs4, 8vs8, 12vs12..)

So basically the more you play, the more skills you get, and the more skills you have, the more combinations you can build (you can only have 8 skills in your skillbar).

This is what Elements should do. Just give us tons of cards and try to balance them. With many different cards available, we can then start to build all kinds of different decks. When one card turns out to be overpowered, you just make small changes to it, like lower the cost to play etc. This will CHANGE the metagame and players can start building new kinds of decks. This keeps things fresh and we slowly go towards PERFECT card balance.

I like this idea of Challenges you have. It's basically the same think I talk about here http://elementstheforum.smfforfree3.com/index.php/topic,444.0.html (http://elementstheforum.smfforfree3.com/index.php/topic,444.0.html) only I'm talking about Quests.

Having these Challenges/Quests would be perfect. Like you said first there would be these "Beginner Challenges" where you have to win 3 matches in a row to win some basic cards. Then Later there would be "Hero/Legend Challenges" where you have to win 5 in a row to win a powerful (but expensive to use) Hero/Legend card.

I disagree on limiting the number of cards you can win in a day. I don't think games should have restrictions like that. If the guy wants to dump his girlfriend and play 14 hours a day, that's his choice. To keep the game interesting for all the "pro-gamers" all you need to do is make the endgame REALLY difficult and build a functioning PvP system.

2. Keep a baseline for card balance. I see the attraction in having an upgrade system, and some of the upgraded cards add a lot of new strategies, but having 2 different levels of card balance is a huge headache. Rework the upgraded cards to have the same power as regular cards, only give different strategies. Elite Phase dragons can be more powerful than regular ones, but they should also cost more. Elite fireflies can give another color of quantum, but they should have the same power as a regular one. This gives plenty of new strategies, but makes the game much easier to balance. Upgraded pillars could be given unique effects based on the element they belong to. Time's could cost one quantum to play, but you can sacrifice them to draw a card, and so on.
Best part of Guild Wars is that: NO SKILL IS "BETTER" THAN ANOTHER. This is something Elements should have also.

In GW there is a very good balance between skills. If a skill is not so powerful, it's cheap to use. If the skill is powerful, it's expensive to use. This is the basic idea of balancing skills (or cards).

However in Elements some cards are clearly better than others. For example Shard of Divinity is MUCH better than Heal. There are no possible situations where Heal would be better, Shard is ALWAYS better. Also most upgraded cards are much better than non-upgraded ones. Either they are less expensive and do the same thing, or they cost the same but the effect is stronger. This limits deck building because you don't have to think about which card to take, you just take the better one.


Scaredgirl

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State of the game https://elementscommunity.org/forum/index.php?topic=443.msg4034#msg4034
« Reply #8 on: December 15, 2009, 10:09:51 pm »

I think I need to play Guild Wars. Sounds like I missed something.

Only problem with GW is that it's getting pretty old. Unless you absolutely need to find a good MMO to play right now, I suggest you wait until 2010 when GW2 (hopefully) launches. That game is going to be amazing.

Scaredgirl

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State of the game https://elementscommunity.org/forum/index.php?topic=443.msg4035#msg4035
« Reply #9 on: December 15, 2009, 10:09:51 pm »

I played GW at top GVG level and I can assure you that balance sucked hard. We played Thumpway, multiple forms of Necro Spike, the tons of different Ele Spikes (Earthquake and Obs Flame were funny), IWAY, SpiritSpam, Paragon Spike/Pressure, Derv Pressure and hundreds of other broken builds. The game was balanced pretty well shortly before Factions was released and then it all went to hell and any semblance of balance was lost. This problem was increased a hundred fold when the addon Nightfall came out and I refused to even buy GW:EN. If GW 2 is ever released and it seems unlikely looking at the massive losses NCSoft is managing to run up, I think it will suck if the same scrubs are doing the balance. Guild Wars is a good example of taking ground out to a point, although certain imba req 8 or 7 items only dropped in PvE, but it did not do much better than any of the others. Izzy should probably kill himself! So I would be very careful when attempting to hold GW up as a paragon for how balancing should be done. The current split of PVE only skills and PVP versions just shows how badly balance fell apart.
I'm guessing you haven't done much game development? :)

Guildwars has DOZENS of character combinations (main and secondary class), HUNDREDS of skills and HUNDREDS OF THOUSANDS of players trying to come up with new builds every day. Do you have ANY idea how difficult it is to balance that?

I have played all those broken builds you talk about (actually I've even designed a couple myself) and majority of them were fixed relatively fast (RIP Hex Drill), with the exception of IWAY which stayed a long time probably due to the fact that developers were worried that people would quit if they nerfed it.

When I say GW is in balance, I'm talking about balance TODAY. Who cares how balanced it was 6 months after launch? The fact is that today it is remarkably balanced. You know how many of those builds you talked about are overpowered today? None of them. In fact if you go play GW today, there are no overpowered builds that everyone plays.

The reason why they made PvE and PvP versions of the same skill, is that PvE and PvP are TOTALLY DIFFERENT. They had to buff up a couple of skills so that those skills would be useful in PvE also, and vice versa.

There is not one single complex PvP MMO out there that has as good balance as GW. I know because I have played them all.

Uzra

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State of the game https://elementscommunity.org/forum/index.php?topic=443.msg4036#msg4036
« Reply #10 on: December 15, 2009, 10:09:51 pm »

Good post.

Evil Hamster

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State of the game https://elementscommunity.org/forum/index.php?topic=443.msg4283#msg4283
« Reply #11 on: December 15, 2009, 10:09:52 pm »

Why dont you start a GW thread under Off-Topic and leave this for ETG? :)

 

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