Guest posts by BluePaladin25

1

Crucible Archive / Re: Philosopher's Stone | Alchemist's Stone

« on: May 29, 2011, 06:16:58 pm »

I think it should give about 22.5 hp/5 and 10 mp/5.

Don't forget 5 g/10. (And what the heck, I discover a game and suddenly everybody starts referencing it?)

Alright, maybe I'm stupid, but I don't see any real practical uses for the unupped version.

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Cygnia / Re: Upgrade | Downgrade

« on: May 02, 2011, 12:58:55 am »

I meant beneficial when you use it on yourself...

That's kind of situational, but I could see Downgrading an Antimattered creature so it stops healing and starts doing damage again, or a low health Elite Armagio to essentially revive it.

I just thought of something: what would happen if you Downgraded/Upgraded a Chimera? Instant kill, since Chimera's base stats are 0/0? Or would the new Chimera be re-played, absorbing all creatures on its side (minus its previous self)?

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Crucible Archive / Re: Memory | Vision

« on: April 27, 2011, 01:29:42 am »

I meant that it doesn't have many quanta outputs for  to go to, giving a surplus of quanta.

That's true, aether doesn't have lots of abilities that require . But aether does NOT have "more than enough quanta".

You know where all that quanta goes to? The expensive initial costs. Unlike life, it's cards are too expensive to play quickly just from normal quanta sources, and unlike fire, it doesn't have supplementary sources (like Immo) to speed up its expensive cards. "More than enough quanta"? Nope.

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Buff This Card! / Re: Graviton Mercenary l Graviton Guard

« on: April 25, 2011, 06:55:24 pm »

Graviton Mercenary could really just use any buff, direct or indirect.

I'd personally favor an indirect buff or a stat buff, if only to keep Graviton vanilla.

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Crucible Archive / Re: Memory | Vision

« on: April 25, 2011, 06:51:11 pm »

This would work nicely in RoL/Hope... Since abilities carry over, this essentially lets RoLs die 3 turns after hitting a Fire Shield instead of immediately. And a lot can happen in 3 turns.

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Music / Re: What are you listening to on repeat?

« on: April 18, 2011, 07:12:17 am »

OK, since I like discovering new music, I clicked on this, figured it would have something I wasn't familiar with, which was true, but... it just went to the Buck Bumble theme (N64).  THAT takes me back... oh gosh, well over a decade!!  Shame my copy of that game is so glitchy and broken.  Thanks for the trip down memory lane. 

But it doesn't have any Imperishable Night, that's an oversight in my opinion.

Actually it does, only one track though. TH08: Touhou Eiyashou ~ Imperishable Night - Dark PHOENiX - Plain Asia

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Buff This Card! / Re: Ulitharid

« on: April 17, 2011, 05:11:04 am »

I agree with TII here.  A boost to 4 health makes it survive a heck of a lot more, and it is not played for its attack power, but for the ability.  Attack remaining the same is fine, though I'd say a boost to 5 health might work - it can survive Elite Otyugh that way.

Every time I look at a buff thread, you get in here and say EXACTLY what I wanted to say. At least you say it better than I would have.

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Game Suggestions and Feedback / Re: Halfblood spinning: Autoupgrade

« on: April 08, 2011, 07:32:11 pm »

Since there's no poll yet, put in my vote for "2 upped 1 unupped".

This would also be useful in that spinning 1 upped 2 unupped would give you an unupped card instead of nothing. Cue AI5 being the most played difficulty.

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General Discussion / Re: A little frustrated - Is Elements too metagame driven?

« on: March 15, 2011, 12:13:44 am »

When I played MtG, I never felt screwed by luck.

Man, you are lucky. When I used to play MtG, like 5-6 years ago, I lost a lot of games due to not drawing lands, or the opposing situation, known as "mana flood". And the times I had 4 of a card in my deck, was needing them, and none comes until Im dead? 4 cards in 60 is usually more luck dependant to get good draws then 6 cards in 30. And of course experienced already same things here, but MtG has also a lot of luck involved.

In fact, cards here are much less versatile. Most cards have just 1 use, with a few exceptions like Holy Light. The lack of attacking and blocking (attacks are automatic, and there is no blocking, except shields) surely makes the game a lot simpler and skill related than MtG. Of course there are game decisions, like "should put in play my Destroyer without a quint?", but especially playing rushes, no decisions to make, draw cards and use immediatly.

But there are fun decks to use. The old timebow, for example, with some additions like Mind Gate, the nymphs you have, etc, can be fun to play. Want a good challenge, with variety, and no metagame? Go play AI5. They also have some bad and useless cards, so not that spanking show FG do. They usually start slowly, so you can set a deck designed for fun. And you are not obligated to play a rainbow. Some elements, mainly Fire and Darkness, can be strong even mono / duo. Darkness, for example, has PC (steal), CC (drain life, liquid shadow), healing (vampires, drain life, dagger), quanta denial (steal, devourer)... Im sure it could be fun.

In fact, I think most people use rushes because of the grind aspect of this game. The upgrades are expensive, so people need win a lot in the shorter time. So, people use rush decks, because winning or losing, they do it fast.

OOH I really want to pick this one apart.

Thing is, when you lose a game in MtG due to luck, it's usually over quick. But when both people are really able to get their decks working, the games tend to last longer, and you spend more time PLAYING. If I lose a huge drawn-out game, it's cool. Quick victories and defeats are boring. It's like when you get a volley going in a tennis match between a pair of skilled players - even when it looks like someone's about to win, the other manages to hit a ball he totally should have missed, and we're right back to the game. The tension, the constant attempts to one-up the other player: THAT'S what I enjoy about CCGs. (By which I mean MtG.  See end of post.)

As for 4/60 being more luck-dependant than 6/30: You ALMOST have a point there. But as you said, cards in Elements are less versatile. If I'm in a situation in MtG where 3 different cards in my deck will help me, you've got 12/60, the exact same odds. But I'd often find that different cards could help me in different ways. Not just that, but MtG had more options for drawing more cards, or even searching your deck for specific cards. There's a reason Rebel decks were so popular in certain cycles; if you need a SPECIFIC card, you can just look for it and luck doesn't mean a thing.

Finally, there's the ability to act during your opponent's turn through instants and creature abilities. Without that, the game would have severely lacked depth and strategy. Can you imagine MtG without cards such as Counterspell or Boomerang?

@DrunkDestroyer: Ah yes, what duos and trios could be given the opportunity. I'm going to talk about MtG some more, but whatever: there, duos and trios were the MAJORITY, with monos and rainbows in short supply.

I've considered making a  deck that could fill the myriad roles of a mono-blue MtG deck, but I'm having trouble figuring it out. If you can find a working trio I can use as a reference for balancing quanta between 3 elements, I'd be grateful for a link.

----- ----- ----- ----- -----
Hmm, the longer this thread goes, the more I'm realizing I'm looking for a substitute for MtG, and it's unlikely I'll ever find that.

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General Discussion / Re: A little frustrated - Is Elements too metagame driven?

« on: March 13, 2011, 06:33:31 am »

Lots of great responses here. I'll use Krathos' post as a framework, since you laid it out so nicely.

1.

... Well, I guess I've just been spoiled by MtG. I'm used to having a deck and saying "Alright, I can do this if I'm playing against a Blue/Black Denial, but if I'm playing against Ponza I'll want to do this instead, etc." I'm used to playing a game where your cards can be used in a variety of situations against a variety of opposing decks. Just to give you some idea of what I meant by my complaint about the metagame.

Of course MtG had a metagame, where certain decks were worse off against others. But there were always ways to pull off a win against your deck's weaknesses (in my experience anyway), and you still had to be on guard against decks your deck is good against. With Elements, a Momentum deck can outrush lots of stuff, but then it's got nothing against a deck with Lobo or heavy CC. (Again, kinda inexperienced here so most likely wrong )

2, and 3 later.

Yes, all CCGs have luck. Again, I guess I'm spoiled by MtG. Bad luck in Elements can kill you much easier than bad luck in MtG. Likewise, a good hand in Elements can nearly guarantee you the game, whereas a good hand in MtG would still need some great draws behind it to have a shot at a quick victory, and even then your opponent would often have time to prevent an easy win. With MtG, I never felt that an upset was the result of luck; in my experience, what mattered more was skill and planning.

When I played MtG, I never felt screwed by luck. If I couldn't draw a card I needed, I just needed more of that card in my deck. I felt in control of what my hands and draws would look like while deck building. I suppose it's the same with Elements, but this spills over into the third part of your post. You either have a 30-card deck that can fulfill its single purpose ASAP, or a 60-card deck that can handle multiple scenarios but is likely to get rushed or shut down. If you want to make a deck that can handle most deck types, you'll need to get consistently good hands and draws just to stand a chance of winning regularly.

Also, I'm just miffed by the potential power of RNG-based cards in Elements. (Yes, mainly Dusk Mantle.)

4.

This one is obvious. You CAN make a fast deck that can handle most other decks and pack CC, PC, and enough offensive and defensive tools for almost any situation. But it's gonna be a rainbow. And as you know, the forum community doesn't really like rainbows. As it stands, however, they're the closest you'll ever get to a deck as versatile as MtG decks were.

----- ----- ----- ----- -----

@Krathos: Maybe you're right, maybe I should quit. It's just I had so much fun back when I had the money to play MtG that I'm looking for another CCG that can fill that void. My experiences:

Pokemon TCG: Never really played the card game, but played the GBC game. Enjoyed it, as even THAT let a deck stand a good chance against it's weakness.

Yu-Gi-Oh!: A pile of manure dominated by overpowered cards and deck types. Hard to believe I own 3 yugioh GBA games. 

Alteil: If I could figure out why I lose all the time, it might be fun.  ??? As it is, I think the whole game is engineered in such a way to force players to spend money on it before they can achieve a decent variety of cards. At least Elements doesn't force you to be stuck with your starter deck for MONTHS if you suck.

Note to self... make shorter posts.

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General Discussion / A little frustrated - Is Elements too metagame driven?

« on: March 13, 2011, 01:09:00 am »

I'm getting kind of frustrated with Elements, but instead of going all RAGE and QQ I decided to start a topic to address what frustrates me.

Here's the question: Does Elements have a broken metagame? Are there too many situations where Deck Type A almost always beats Deck Type B? Do things depend more on what cards are in your deck and less on how you respond to your opponent's deck?

I say the answer to all of these is YES. As long as any given deck has decks it cannot beat without extreme luck, the metagame will always be more important to victory than the actual game.

On the flip side, there are match-ups where the win/loss ratio is 50/50. Which brings up another question: Is a lot of the game too reliant on luck? If I have an ImmoRush deck, playing against a Mindgate deck, and we each win half the time... Can anybody say that it depended more on how we played than it did on luck? If I lose 10 matches in a row to somebody using Dusk Mantle, where is the flaw? In my deck, or in the game itself? Or is it just the metagame taking over again? After all, decks with Momentum or PC won't have trouble with Dusk Mantle.

But every card you dedicate to PC is one less card that does damage. Every card you dedicate to CC is one less card that does damage. If you try to account for every possibility, you either wind up with a new weakness, OR your deck can't beat ANYTHING reliably. It is possible to make a deck that can beat nearly any deck. But people already complain about the prevalence of Rainbows.


TL;DR
  Too much of "Deck A almost always beats Deck B"?
  Card choice before match matters more than decisions during match?
  Luck matters more than decisions during match?
  Inability to make balanced decks?
  Rainbows > All?

Wow this is long. Disclaimer: I haven't PvP'd much, so some of this may just be my inexperience. However, I've been lurking the forums for a loooong time, so I think I know what I'm talking about. I will freely admit that I am wrong about each point if sufficient evidence is brought against it.

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Water / Re: Flooding / Inundation

« on: February 09, 2011, 02:07:05 am »

Except that both instant-kill effects have some fairly stringent requirements on them, while the freeze can literally stop any non-immaterial/non-Adrenalined creature in it's tracks...cold.

 8)



I dunno, I think the squid needs either a cheaper skill (though that may be OP) or a slight stat buff. I don't know which, but IMO it definitely needs one or the other.