Guest posts by chriskang

61

Card Ideas and Art / Balance suggestions

« on: December 15, 2009, 10:10:28 pm »

THERE'S A DIFFERENCE BETWEEN DIFFICULT AND "LOL YOU LOSE AUTOMATICALLY BECAUSE THE COMPUTER IS TWO PLAYERS AT ONCE"

Sure, there is.
"Lose Automatically" is 0% win rate.
"Difficult" is 20% win rate.

80% win rate is what we call "easy".

62

Card Ideas and Art / Balance suggestions

« on: December 15, 2009, 10:10:28 pm »

Nova/Supernova
I think you nerfed them too much. Having to pay 2 quantum to get 10 random quantum is pretty bad. I liked the old Nova better and I see no point in changing it because I don't consider it to be overpowered at all.

Same thing with Supernova. If you make it random AND make it give less quantum, that's a pretty big nerf.

If I were Zanz I would make Supernova cost 3 quantum and that's it. Maybe even 4.

I've got 2 concerns here:
1. IMO, you should never have to ask yourself whether the upgraded version of a card is better than the normal one. If the unupgraded version is sometimes preferred, then there's a problem. Currently with cards like Nova, Lava Golem or Sundial, the decision to upgrade or not is not obvious.
With Nova, what can make you hesitate is the card cost that goes from 0 to 2 (or even more if we follow your suggestion SG). Increasing the cost of Nova to the one of Supernova makes sense to me.
2. Second argument is more spiritual. In my view, Entropy is meant to be all about randomness and the current Nova/Supernova doesn't fit at all in this definition because it's fully predictable. The change I suggest makes the card more "in par" with its element's theme without changing its behavior too much.
Of course it's a serious nerf, but even after this change Supernova still has the potential to instantly generate 13 quantums, which is (nearly) equivalent to the upgrade of 4 quantum pillars into quantum towers. 4 card upgrades packed into a single Supernova is not really what I call underpowered.

Pulverizer
I'd like to see the ability cost 3 quantum. 1 permanent destruction per turn should cost a lot imo.

As I told, this is the first batch of changes I would do. If after a while we realize that Pulv isn't nerfed enough, we can still nerf more.

Heal
I like the card but the name should change if it functioned like that. I don't see "heal" removing poison. If it only healed 30 and nothing more, it would make more sense.

Miracle
Ok, I'm totally against this. The coolest part of Miracle is when you play it when you have only 1 HP left. "It's a Miracle!!!". This new card would heal 1 HP in that situation. I would probably make it heal 60 and remove all poison.

Here, I was looking for some ways to add more counters to poison. The best solution would probably be to create new cards with this ability but creating new cards takes time whereas balancing is very quick (all the changes I suggested probably require less than 3 hours of work from Zanzarino). That's pretty much why this thread is all about the second solution.
Now if you consider that we're only talking about card changes and no content creation, the first obvious change appears to be Heal cause for now it's seriously underpowered.
Adding a "cure poison" effect to Miracle made sense too but I had to do something to nerf the healing part on the other hand. Right now, I find the card very close to be OP, mainly because of its synergy with Shard of Divinity (6 x Shard + 6 x Miracle = potentially more than 1000 HP healed). The suggestion might not be the best idea of my life but I found it fun when I wrote it:
* the synergy with Shard of Divinity remains
* the effect is similar to the old Miracle, as soon as you cast the spell when you have 50% health (instead of waiting for 1 HP left)
Also, notice that I'm aware that this is a serious nerf here. That's why I lowered the cost of the card.

Jade Staff
Hmm.. I personally wouldn't do anything to Jade Staff. Healing 8 HP per round sounds a bit high for a card that costs 2 quantum.

Vampire Dagger
Yeah, that looks pretty good.

Let's talk about Vampire Dagger first: it currently deals 4 damage and heals for 4. If your compare it to Jade Staff, that deals 4 damage and heals for 5, there's a problem.
Either Vampire Dagger needs a buff, or Jade Staff needs a nerf. If there are people out there that think Jade Staff is OP, I'd be happy to discuss with them. Otherwise I'll consider that boosting Vampire Dagger is a good move. After the buff though, we'll get the reverse situation: Dagger damages and heals 5/5, Staff 4/5.
So what should we do? Buff Jade Staff too, to make it a carbon copy of Vampire Dagger (5/5)? Or, as the Life theme suggests, make it more "healing" oriented?
I chose the second solution: nerfing damage to 2 and buffing heal to 8 seems quite balanced compared to the new 5/5 Vampire Dagger.
You might be right on the card cost though. Increasing it to 3 or even 4 might be needed.

Hourglass
I don't think Hourglass needs a nerf. It's not that powerful really. That nerf would weaken Time decks a lot.

Sundial
I like it BUT I would put the hasten ability back (2 quantum in both versions). I don't think cards should be nrfed by taking abilities away when you do it in others ways as well.

IMO, what makes Sundial so imbalanced right now is more the hasten ability than the stasis effect. I know the AI uses it stupidly but in the hands of a human player hasten is extremely powerful. My suggestion for Hourglasses isn't that much an issue for Time decks cause those should be able to find quantums quite easily. It might be more disturbing for rainbow though and I think it's a good point. Rainbows need to draw a lot to be efficient and this process shouldn't be as easy as it is now.
I agree with you to say that removing an ability from a card isn't a good way to balance it, but IMO if you let hasten on Sundial you'll have to increase the cost even more to make it correctly balanced.

Phase Shield
I like the effect but I'm not sure about the cost. Nerf might be too big. Maybe lower the cost by one?

Does it look so imbalanced if you compare it to my new Sundial?
* Stasis blocks creatures from both side for 2 turns at the cost of 3 Time
* Phase Shield blocks your opponent's creatures AND weapon AND lets you attack meanwhile. No matter what, this is much stronger than Sundial. I think it deserves a high cost.

63

False Gods / Championship

« on: December 15, 2009, 10:10:28 pm »

No problem Forfeit.
I was actually waiting for replies from people who aren't in the thread yet.
I don't feel like organizing an event for 5 people only.

64

Trio & Quartet / CRUSHING BALLS OF LIGHT

« on: December 15, 2009, 10:10:28 pm »

that wouldn't work, Scaredgirl, it would not. mutate/improved mutation cost too much, seeing as the only entropy generation come froms your mark, it would take 3 turns just to be able to mutate once

That and how would you use the mutant ability without rainbow?

65

In-game Troubleshooting / My game/data came back many hours!!!

« on: December 15, 2009, 10:10:28 pm »

It might also happen when you open the game in 2 different browser windows on when you play on 2 different computer.

Open instance 1
Open instance 2
Play with instance 1 as much as you want
Save instance 1
Close instance 1
Open instance 1 again (you'll get your last save correctly)
Play again instance 1
Close instance 1
Go to instance 2 (that was opened the whole time)
If instance 2 saves at this point, it overwrites instance 1 with outdated data from the beginning

66

General Discussion / What the game mechanics should be

« on: December 15, 2009, 10:10:28 pm »

Looks like a huge buff for decks that don't rely on creatures (like speed fire or poison)

67

General Discussion / What the game mechanics should be

« on: December 15, 2009, 10:10:28 pm »

M:TG is a turn-based real time game.

Man.
This is your first post here and I already love you.

68

Off-Topic Discussions / MMORPG's

« on: December 15, 2009, 10:10:28 pm »

Hopefully they will have some kind of beta access competition

IIRC, the betas for Factions, Nightfall & Eye of the North were all open. No need to compete in anything.
Wasn't it like that for Prophecies?

69

Card Ideas and Art / Balance suggestions

« on: December 15, 2009, 10:10:27 pm »

Why you have unbuffed all cards? I like the new Sunidal except for the cost but i dont like that heal remove poison... it sonds strange...

Sundial is widely considered the most overpowered card right now. See this poll for example:
http://elementstheforum.smfforfree3.com/index.php/topic,1214.0.html
A serious nerf is needed to balance it against Phase Shield or Electrum Hourglass.

The change with heal is more personal. IMO, many players find poison OP because the game lacks of ways to counter it. For now, the only option is Purify which is godly against a poison deck and useless against all the others. My suggestion is to keep Purify as it is now (i.e. a complete poison destroyer) and to add some other ways to partially counter poison: Heal & Miracle.

70

Card Ideas and Art / Balance suggestions

« on: December 15, 2009, 10:10:27 pm »

Here are the first changes that I would probably do if I was the game creator:
http://elementsthegame.wikia.com/wiki/User:Chriskang/Sandbox/2

Nothing really new there, except maybe Miracle and Heal.
The page is mostly a sum up of all the long-time-suggested ideas that I support personally.

71

Card Ideas and Art / Recycle

« on: December 15, 2009, 10:10:27 pm »

Unless I'm forgetting something.

Ice Bolt, Ice Shield, Dissipation Field, Devourer, Discord, Chaos Seed, Chaos Power, Fog Shield, Dusk Mantle, Fate Egg
And also coin toss, AI decisions, card spinning

It's not much. And I feel perfectly happy with this situation.

72

False Gods / Championship

« on: December 15, 2009, 10:10:27 pm »

Frankly I don't know how you managed to find the motivation after the first challenge

Don't worry about my motivation. Even if the championship is canceled, it'll be replaced by something else (I'm not saying JJF 3 right now because I've got another idea that I want to test in the next few days. I'll keep you posted)