What the game mechanics should be

[Daxx]

I'm still in favour of Bone Walls not being stackable. As they stand they're pretty powerful - personally I consider them one of the best shields in the game. Making them stackable would make them much better, perhaps too much so.

Reflective Shields should at least be consistent. If you make them reflect Poison they should also reflect Miracle and Purify. Personally I like that they only reflect spells targeted on the opponent, but I wouldn't be opposed to the change (except I would be worried about how that would affect poison decks in the metagame).

[Essence]

I think it's a good thing that we have one shield that is resistant to permanent destruction. It makes the game more interesting and permanent removal less "must-have".

We have two shields that are resistant to permanent desruction: Jade Shield and Mirror Shield. 

Personally I think all design decisions should be made according to what makes sense. Game balance is easy to fix afterwards by upping card costs etc.

I have to assume because of this statement that you've never designed a game.  Balance is not that easy, not by a long shot.  I've only ever had one game sold, but I've been on the design team for a few others, and I've seen my fair share of colossal game-balance screwups.  There are some concepts that are simply unbalancable. 

As an example: There is no cost high enough to make a "turn all of your Quanta into Fire Quanta" card balanced without also making it so expensive or limited that it's useless.  You'd end up with 5% of the decks that use it becoming runaway crushing successes that you have to play to be competitive, and the other 95% would either never use the card because the cost was too high, or paying the cost would kill them.  The concept itself is unbalancable, even though it could easily 'make sense' within the narrative structure of the game.

As a side note, you're talking about an imagingary world where magical sundials stop time for fantastic creatures but not objects (weapons still attack) or humans (players still draw and cast), and you want to talk about what "makes sense"?  That just lolful.

[Pilchard123]

Canceling a creature's skill should give you quantums back
Also, creature cant resue ability should stay as a punishment.

Kinda like yawning. If you stop yourself its hard to yawn again for a time. At least I find that.

BTW -



How many of you just yawned?

[rawr]

I think that no matter what, if bonewall becomes more effected by permanent removal, the cost should be decreased.  I would think 5 for the unupped, 3 for the upped would do nicely.

[Scaredgirl]

That's NOT the whole point of the card. The point of the card is to use up its count to block attacking creatures. I don't know how intentional it was to have the Bonewall absorb permanent destruction spells/abilities. Unless you've talked with Zanzarino himself about his intentions with Bonewall? Permanent destruction is supposed to kill a permanent. I don't believe it was ever intended to remove one counter from a Bonewall instead of completely destroying it.

So you are saying that Bone Wall is bugged? Very unlikely.

Bone Walls work exactly like Pillars. They are a pile of permanents that have to be destroyed one by one. Only thing that is bugged is the fact that when you steal a Bone Wall from your opponent, it replaces your current Bone Wall.

I think it's a good thing that we have one shield that is resistant to permanent destruction. It makes the game more interesting and permanent removal less "must-have".

Also ,the fact that the AI (not talking about PvP right now) targets the most expensive permanent when attempting to destroy them makes the Bonewall overpowered. The AI will waste whatever it has on trying to kill your bone wall instead of more important things like your Eternity, Sun Dials, etc.

That's not a problem with Bone Walls. That's a problem with AI. And we don't nerf cards based on the fact that AI doesn't know how to use them.

[Scaredgirl]

One problem with that is that a stack of pillars/towers is exactly that number of cards. 10 pillars/tower is ten different cards. Where as say a 50 stack of Bonewall is 1 card. And one card puts out a 7 count.

Yes, one cards basically creates 7 permanents but that's the specialty of Bone Wall. You cannot really make the card so that in only creates one.

Although looking at it from a pillars/towers perspective makes it seem to function as intended, the fact that it's one spell for a stack of 7 goes towards my argument.

I'm no coder but I think that Zanz did something in the code that made Bone Wall behave the way it does. If he hadn't done anything, I'm pretty sure one Explosion would remove all the Bone Walls. And if he did do something with the code, that itself is a proof that Bone Wall isn't bugged.

Whatever the truth is, I think these two steps should be done to Bone Wall:
1. Make Bone Walls stack (because it makes sense).
2. Nerf (pick one of these)

• death of a creature only builds one extra Bone Wall
• amount of Bone Walls goes from 7 to 5
• up the cost (not that great because it's so expensive already)

[Scaredgirl]

I'm still in favour of Bone Walls not being stackable. As they stand they're pretty powerful - personally I consider them one of the best shields in the game. Making them stackable would make them much better, perhaps too much so.

Like I said earlier, we should first think about what makes sense and then think about game balance.

If Bone Wall was stackable, it would be easy to balance for example by changing the amount of Walls from 7 to 5. Of course I'm just throwing out numbers, and it should be tested first.

Along with making them stackable, I feel they should be able to be destroyed with one permanent destroy spell or ability. That would certainly balance them, lol.

No, way. That's the whole point of the card.

[Scaredgirl]

I think it's a good thing that we have one shield that is resistant to permanent destruction. It makes the game more interesting and permanent removal less "must-have".

We have two shields that are resistant to permanent desruction: Jade Shield and Mirror Shield. 

I'm pretty sure you are well aware that those two shields only block a fraction of damage, so it's a totally different thing.

Bone Wall is a shield of choice for decks that have bunch of creatures and/or creature control, something the Element of death does pretty well.

I have to assume because of this statement that you've never designed a game.  Balance is not that easy, not by a long shot.  I've only ever had one game sold, but I've been on the design team for a few others, and I've seen my fair share of colossal game-balance screwups.  There are some concepts that are simply unbalancable. 

How on earth would making Bone Walls stackable be "unbalancable"? That's what we are talking about there so lets not make it about something else. While gaming balance is very important and difficult process in off-line games, regular CCG's, etc., it's different in this game because in this game we could potentially have updates every day.

Buffing a card, any card, won't instantly kill the game and set the servers on fire. If a card is buffed and it becomes too powerful, all you need to do is nerf it a little bit new week or next day. It's not a big deal.

This kind of balancing is done in Guild Wars and it's a perfect system. Not only are you constantly moving towards a perfect balance, also metagame changes as cards do, keeping it interesting for the players. We don't have to be afraid of change because we can at any point change it again, or even go back to what it was before.

As a side note, you're talking about an imagingary world where magical sundials stop time for fantastic creatures but not objects (weapons still attack) or humans (players still draw and cast), and you want to talk about what "makes sense"?  That just lolful.

This is an argument that I've heard many many times.

Lets take Lords of the Rings for example. It has goblins, trolls (not forum) and magic, so you could say that it "doesn't make sense". But imagine the movie if it didn't have any gravity. Everyone were flying around the Middle Earth. You think the audience or readers would accept that?

This is what I mean by "making sense". There are some things that do not "make sense" that are totally acceptable because this is fantasy genre. But that does not mean you can go crazy and do anything you come up with and call it fantasy. People won't accept it because it doesn't "make sense".

Also, we can't really assume that what makes sense to you, makes sense to me.  I guess I'm the only one that hasn't played a bone wall on top of my existing bone wall because it made sense to me that the shield I was getting ready to play was going to replace the shield I had.  And if you look at the poll results so far most of the pairs of questions are split nearly 50-50.

Now that is a good point. Although if we talk about this Bone Wall situation, I think most people who think they shouldn't be stackable, are mainly worried about game balance, not how they think it should be. And like I said earlier, game balance is easy to fix with trial and error.

[bobcamel]

a spell that doesn't target the creature specifically,

RoF does not target one creature specifically, I admit.

INSTEAD, IT FLOCKING TARGETS EVERY SINGLE ONE, BUT STILL TARGETS THEM.

Why won't you understand this!!!!!!1111111111111111

[chriskang]

That was back in July. I hope we get the real-time PvP in the update before the end of this year!

You must be mistaken mate. The PvP system that Zanzarino describes is nothing else than what we have now.
It went live on July 21st. See this:
http://board.flashkit.com/board/showthread.php?p=4189241#post4189241

AFAIK, no change is planned for the PvP system right now.

[chriskang]

He mentioned "real time PvP" system. It's not really "real time" since the turns get sent when they're done. Unless he misspoke when using the term "real time"?

You should really read the post that I pointed in my last reply...

[chriskang]

I did. Still isn't "real time".

This might no be the right definition but the current PvP system IS what Zanzarino calls "real time":

The new version has realtime pvp available (random and versus a friend).
The pvp scripts are new and a few glitches are to be expected, also, being multiplayer and realtime, some glitches are just unavoidable due to server/internet connections etc.