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« 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.
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