Guest posts by YourConcern

1

Card Ideas and Art / Legendary Dragons

« on: December 15, 2009, 10:10:17 pm »

i think dragons are strong enough as they are... no further upgrade neccessary...

2

Card Ideas and Art / Cards, balancing, colors, ....

« on: December 15, 2009, 10:10:17 pm »

i've now played a few dozen top 50 games and the amount of totally simmilar decks is truly annoying.....

we need something fast.....

3

Card Ideas and Art / Cards, balancing, colors, ....

« on: December 15, 2009, 10:10:17 pm »

I don't think Elements needs any huge changes. What we need is really simple actually.

We need more cards.

That will solve all our problems.

- Rainbow decks are not overpowered anymore
- Mono-decks can be effective in PvP
- You will start to see many different kinds of decks
etc.

p.s. this game is developed by only one guy (called Zanzarino) which is why we don't get updates that often.

thanks.the last bit is very useful....

realizing an improovement will be difficult with just new cards....
the problem is, as i said, that there are already a bunch of very powerful cards. additional cards will be difficult to come up with if you don't want even more powerful cards or cards that nobody will use.

4

Card Ideas and Art / Cards, balancing, colors, ....

« on: December 15, 2009, 10:10:17 pm »

started playing 2 weeks ago, and immediatly noticed that the game might have some problems.

... and i was right. sadly ...

there are some things i don't know. for example how old this game is. therefore some of my adressed problems may have a contributing factor in those areas.

fyi: i am also one of those ppl who played MTG (magic the gathering) years and years ago, so i at least think that i know one thing or another about TCGs (trading card games) ... (although elements strictly speaking isn't a tcg (yet...hopefully))...

the devs definetely broke their own legs by deciding to implement 12 different colors. that was the first thing i noticed.

i know that balancing is a seriously difficult issue with 12 colors.
and having the card-request section doesn't help much.

the main problem i see right now is, that there are too many ppl playing the same old combos over and over.
... and i'm sorry to say that it gets quite boring after a while....

sure, there are a lot of different decks. many that don't even use the common combos, but the deficit of different

cards is quite hindering the process of making this an excellent game.
this game has a massive potential. the fact that you can upgrade your cards and the game mechanics themselves are

really nice.

i just wish there were a bit more options.
i saw in the mono-deck forum, that there really are quite some mono decks around. but many look so simmilar, that i

wouldn't even call them different.

the final suggestions i'm offering are quite radical (that's how i am ^^), but i think, that it would greatly improove

the game.


- condense the amount of colors to 6-8. that is quite a thing considering the quantum pillars, but i'm not saying to leave the cards alone. and it is not really necessary to do that. but it will make future modifications much easier...

- greatly increase the number of cards. there are many good and sometimes even overpowered cards already existing. (like earthquake)
there is no difficulty in turning the good cards into rares, increase the "roll-luck", implement card trading, and replace the missing spots with slightly worse cards, but many of them.
balancing is just a matter of time and experience. there is no problem with throwing out a bunch of cards an later change them if they're overpowered.
there is also not a problem with learning from other ppls mistakes, or imitating their successful ideas.

to give some examples:
- having 3 stages of rarity. common uncommon and rare... (or even more, to include upgraded cards.)
- having the cards strength decide it's rarity.
- having many, even rule-changing cards.

some ppl may argue, that i'm just trying to make another mtg out of this game, but that isn't the case. theese two games are fundamentally different, and there is no way, to bring them even closer together (i wouldn't even want that.... buddy and me are trying to program mtg for personal use and it would be annoying to finish the work and find that there is a replacement )

but one thing is clear. some of the balancing ideas of mtg are quite useful for this game.
for example having equivalent cards in different colors.
and restricting cards is the ultimate balancing tool.

building in weaknesses for opposite elements is also possible.
light and dark, water and fire, air and earth... i'll leave the other 6 elements to your fantasy.^^

so please DEVs, do something in that area....

5

In-game Troubleshooting / top 50 questions.

« on: December 15, 2009, 10:10:17 pm »

i somehow got, that the weekly top 50s are remade from saturday to sunday (at least where i live)...

but how is it possible, that i (with my puny 4k points) am part of it (right now at least ^^). do players only get into the top 50 if they played a game in that week or how is it done?

6

Issue Archive / burrow doesn't halve attack-value

« on: December 15, 2009, 10:10:17 pm »

yes... is it supposed to be like that?

7

Issue Archive / burrow doesn't halve attack-value

« on: December 15, 2009, 10:10:17 pm »

thanks.... didn't notice at first, since all other modes directly take your g off....

8

Issue Archive / burrow doesn't halve attack-value

« on: December 15, 2009, 10:10:17 pm »

ok.... don't want to open new topic for this....

but one question....

trying to play against top 50 and getting a "can't find opponent" ....

wth is that???

don't wanna tell me that's desync.....

and i dont want to lose 15g every time this happens.... and it happens quite a few times....

9

Issue Archive / burrow doesn't halve attack-value

« on: December 15, 2009, 10:10:17 pm »

maybe i overlooked something, but i noticed on several occations that shriekers to full dmg even when burrowed...

that's somewhat annoying.

10

Issue Archive / burrow doesn't halve attack-value

« on: December 15, 2009, 10:10:17 pm »

desync really sucks if i can't target the cratures and they still make full dmg....
let's hope it will be fixed soon....

11

In-game Troubleshooting / Which one should upgrade from Shard???

« on: December 15, 2009, 10:10:17 pm »

yes, it's predetermined....

12

General Discussion / Overpowered Cards etc.

« on: December 15, 2009, 10:10:17 pm »

the problem of overpowered cards always manifests itself in the same way: more and more ppl are playing them.

i noticed, that in the late top 50 where i'd guess at least 20% were playing that rainbow-sundial.
and i know, that my mono aether would've killed 10 times as often were it not for sundial (10x isn't exaggerated, i have a bad statistic against that deck....)

but i personally don't think that this is only caused by sundial.
what would be useful is to strengthen mono and few-color decks (would result in more firefly queens right now, but: http://elementstheforum.smfforfree3.com/index.php/topic,1179.msg11806.html#new)
i'd do that by removing quanum-pillar from the game entirely (or keep it and let it do 2 dmg per round to caster... or something) and replacing it with pillars that do 2 Q of a SPECIFIC color.
that would result in over 60 new cards. but we need new cards anyway^^ and they don't need new pics, just take the old an fill the 2 specific colors in
the reason for doing that is simple. many cards are too expensive for their power, but are needed for balancing reasons. "steal" for example. darkness needs steal, otherwise it would stand even less chance against me (sry, but personal experience...)
with the way rainbow gathers quantum it can play all cheap powerful cards.
maybe i'm just overestimating rainbow.
but having already seen the queens played with pillars in combination with steal or earthquake is just not right. imo.....