Elements 1.21

[Terroking]

Stone Skin is still a useful card, just not as much so as steal. It is probably still going to be the least-used earth card, but lets face it, there will always be a most and least-used card, for every element. The problem with Stone Skin is how long it takes you to get the 50 quanta, the buff only helps you once you are there.

And don't be dissing on diamond shield. If your opponent has a field full of fireflies, would you rather let6 half of them it you, be safe for the next 3 turns and then die, or make all of them deal a measly one damage? I'd much prefer to have Diemond out in that situation, although it pales in comparison to Permafrost, which I consider is the most OP shield in the game.

[Xinef]

The main problem with stone skin is that it is not a card that improves your chances of winning a game - it's a card that improves your reward when you do win. There are other cards that eg. increase the chances of EM, while not helping you to win, but stone skin is unlucky, because it needs so much to be more profitable than EM, and mono-earth is not good at stalling, unless you are lucky to fight FFQ or skeleton decks.
A duo stalling deck with a lot of earth generation might see stone skin as a viable card, but I guess nothing else.

(As a side note, I tested a 6 stone skin 6 SoD deck in trainer and it seems to have a nice reward of 290 ec against AI5 when you EM ... after a half an hour game)
Oh wait... I've just checked and it seems this idea had already been discussed in stone skin thread and people have feared stone skin is OP xD

[Marvaddin]

Im not really discussing stone skin, or trying to compare it to steal. Im trying to dicuss the buff/nerf policy.

Of course if a good card cost 1000 electrum, people would still get it. But hey, people already gets even the rare cards, like pulverizer or shards or squid... without too much problem. If the effect is good enough for the cost, it will still be used, even when you need to save a good amount of electrum coins. At least, this way is more challenging.

Well, the reason to buff and nerf cards is "balance". But is the game becoming more balanced? Are the changes necessary to really balance the game?

1 - more expensive cards are more expensive to all decks. But, the FG really dont have a problem about this, because they have a triple mark and just towers. At other hand, the rainbow decks are suffering with the changes. This makes FG harder than they were. Is this balance?

2 - why are rainbow decks so used? Because usually people doesnt spend too much time defeating AI3 once they get a decent deck. And unless when you know by the oracle the next FG, and can design a deck for that fight, its the most reliable deck, also very helpfull against AI5, too.

3 - what if rainbow decks are the most used? These decks are used against the villains FG. The PvP feature is not that important for most people, and when the leagues grow in importance, I suppose that some speed decks will defeat them most time. So, are the changes really adding "balance"?

So, why are the most used cards being nerfed all the time? For what? And just because they are popular? And the others are being buffed for no reason too. Will a card with a not good effect become used just because its cheap?

I think we should show to zanz an option, so the cards we use wont become worse and worse all the time. I have suggested let them harder to get. Do you have other ideas about that?

[qazox]

My Main deck is a Life/Chaos (Works pretty well fr me, I win about 90% vs. AI3, and 60% vs. Top 5 (I've yet to try it vs. False Gods/Gods, as I haven't finshed upgrading everything yet)) the Thorn Carapace Is a great Control, provided I can get a Quintenece (sic) on it fast enough. It hits very frequently even on burrowed and Immaterial creatures.
I put adreadaline on one enenmy creature it got 4 infections. Finally Life has a good creature control.

[Xinef]

The best way to balance the usage of cards would be to:
- fix PvP desync, add a system matching players of equal score, make PvP more profitable
- add more cards that work well in mono decks
- add some more pillar types that support duo/trio decks
- (eventually) nerf false gods advantages while AI gets improved, because their advantages are there only to make up for their stupidity, if AI was playing with more skill and intelligence, their advantages would be unnecessary (though they are not elementals, they are false gods, so some advantage could be left... I guess making each FG have an advantage specific to him would make more sense then)

This way rainbows would be no longer the only fast way to earn electrum to upgrade your deck, mono/duo/trio decks would be more popular due to PvP, you could even totally avoid PvE and play PvP only, and still earn good money that way to upgrade your deck, etc...



By the way, though I don't think nerfing popular cards is good, I think buffing less used cards makes more sense. Otherwise it would be just a waste of coding and artists work, if no one used these cards. And this way they are at least a bit more useful to mono decks, which have a little choice of cards anyway, and also it makes a few more combos possible. There is no card in this game without synergy with other cards. Even creatures without skills have synergy with luciferine. It is possible to build a combo around EVERY card in elements, even if some of these combos are much less powerful than other... but still you can surprise your opponent with something he did not think was possible ;P

[yaladilae]

Thanks zanz for a great 1.21, and always fixing bugs and listening to the communities opinion 

The best way to balance the usage of cards would be to:
- (eventually) nerf false gods advantages while AI gets improved, because their advantages are there only to make up for their stupidity, if AI was playing with more skill and intelligence, their advantages would be unnecessary (though they are not elementals, they are false gods, so some advantage could be left... I guess making each FG have an advantage specific to him would make more sense then)

You are asking alot from a free game with 1 developer   

I totally agree with your point, thats why the whole world is trying to develope better AI, more intellengent and efficent robots, machinery....

Nerfing the FG to have no advantages what so ever will means this game has no elements of challenge.
To be honest, pvp is fun because it takes people's mind to think and adapt.
False god with 0 advantage is just playing pvp against the same strategy all the time, what fun is that?

I love the way the game it is now, with zanz listening to the community and making new powerful but balanced card.
Monitoring and balancing cards as needed is also essential to any (card) game really. I have yet to play an online game that doesnt patch anything...

With new cards generates new challenges at all level. We already have people saying the new earth/time level 3 is tough. When the new FG comes with the new card, then people will think and refiine their strategy.

Building on this path, this game will grow and become more and more fun, which is what i foresee in this game and love so much about in this game

Thanks zanz !!!

[Xinef]

You are asking alot from a free game with 1 developer   

Well, I don't say it has to be done right now, I don't even ask for it, I just suggest if he is going to balance the game further, these steps are in my opinion better than nerfing good cards.

In fact I am a beginning indie open source game developer myself, so I understand how much work it is to make such an awesome game. If I were to make such a game though, I would start with PvP (making a good AI is hard, and takes a lot of time to do and, as we all know, poor AI causes problems with balancing ;P ). Then, when the game works well with PvP I would make AI with 3 levels of difficulty
-easy - behaves randomly
-medium - a single step mini-max
-hard - a multiple step mini-max
And I know it would be extremely hard to do, and would probably take many months/years to do correctly, but it is the only way to make a challenging AI... ok, maybe some evolving artificial neural networks, or similar AI techniques could also be used, but it needs to work fast enough to be playable in a browser game ;P
If you don't know, mini-max is an algorithm in AI decision-making that tries to make a decision that maximizes it's advantage while minimizing the advantage opponent has (most famous for being used in chess), and a decision is not a simple 'whether to play that card, or what target to chose?', it's more like 'calculate all the possible moves I can do this turn (including order of cards being played, targeting, random events), then evaluate each one and choose the best'... as you can guess hard to do, especially the evaluating part.

And yes, I know it seems very slow to calculate and if done incorrectly each AI move would take half a minute or more to make a decision, but that's another hard thing to do, optimization... in chess games you can see computer playing really well even without much time spent thinking, that's because it is highly optimized. The same could be done in a card game, though I guess much more complex (random events, but also in chess you know the whole situation on the board, in card games you don't know eg. your opponents hand, but a good AI should be able to guess a little bit based on your mark and cards you played so far, eg. if you have a deck, AI should expect a deflag and play accordingly.)

Now you see, why I would start with coding PvP, and leave AI for later I guess making it work at all would take a few months, and reaching a level when it plays as good as an average player and is optimized enough would probably take a few years

Nerfing the FG to have no advantages what so ever will means this game has no elements of challenge.
To be honest, pvp is fun because it takes people's mind to think and adapt.
False god with 0 advantage is just playing pvp against the same strategy all the time, what fun is that?

I don't say they should have no advantage, generally in most games 'final bosses' have some unfair advantages and sometimes can even break the rules of the game... but imagine how powerful would FG be if AI was improved to a level resembling a player intelligence. If they could play with enough skill, would not make stupid mistakes and would make it hard to abuse their weaknesses... then add 200 hp, double draw and 3xmark to make bad starts almost impossible... my conclusion is, that they should be either stupid with a high advantage, or intelligent with a smaller advantage (preferably the latter), not both, because that would not be a challenge, that would be suicide... unless you always know what FG you are about to fight, then you would need a counter deck against each FG, and it would make some sense, but no deck would be able to beat all FG if they were more intelligent.

[yaladilae]

You are asking alot from a free game with 1 developer   

Well, I don't say it has to be done right now, I don't even ask for it, I just suggest if he is going to balance the game further, these steps are in my opinion better than nerfing good cards.

In fact I am a beginning indie open source game developer myself, so I understand how much work it is to make such an awesome game. If I were to make such a game though, I would start with PvP (making a good AI is hard, and takes a lot of time to do and, as we all know, poor AI causes problems with balancing ;P ). Then, when the game works well with PvP I would make AI with 3 levels of difficulty
-easy - behaves randomly
-medium - a single step mini-max
-hard - a multiple step mini-max
And I know it would be extremely hard to do, and would probably take many months/years to do correctly, but it is the only way to make a challenging AI... ok, maybe some evolving artificial neural networks, or similar AI techniques could also be used, but it needs to work fast enough to be playable in a browser game ;P
If you don't know, mini-max is an algorithm in AI decision-making that tries to make a decision that maximizes it's advantage while minimizing the advantage opponent has (most famous for being used in chess), and a decision is not a simple 'whether to play that card, or what target to chose?', it's more like 'calculate all the possible moves I can do this turn (including order of cards being played, targeting, random events), then evaluate each one and choose the best'... as you can guess hard to do, especially the evaluating part.

And yes, I know it seems very slow to calculate and if done incorrectly each AI move would take half a minute or more to make a decision, but that's another hard thing to do, optimization... in chess games you can see computer playing really well even without much time spent thinking, that's because it is highly optimized. The same could be done in a card game, though I guess much more complex (random events, but also in chess you know the whole situation on the board, in card games you don't know eg. your opponents hand, but a good AI should be able to guess a little bit based on your mark and cards you played so far, eg. if you have a deck, AI should expect a deflag and play accordingly.)

Now you see, why I would start with coding PvP, and leave AI for later I guess making it work at all would take a few months, and reaching a level when it plays as good as an average player and is optimized enough would probably take a few years

Nerfing the FG to have no advantages what so ever will means this game has no elements of challenge.
To be honest, pvp is fun because it takes people's mind to think and adapt.
False god with 0 advantage is just playing pvp against the same strategy all the time, what fun is that?

I don't say they should have no advantage, generally in most games 'final bosses' have some unfair advantages and sometimes can even break the rules of the game... but imagine how powerful would FG be if AI was improved to a level resembling a player intelligence. If they could play with enough skill, would not make stupid mistakes and would make it hard to abuse their weaknesses... then add 200 hp, double draw and 3xmark to make bad starts almost impossible... my conclusion is, that they should be either stupid with a high advantage, or intelligent with a smaller advantage (preferably the latter), not both, because that would not be a challenge, that would be suicide... unless you always know what FG you are about to fight, then you would need a counter deck against each FG, and it would make some sense, but no deck would be able to beat all FG if they were more intelligent.

I like your idea of final boss, if we can play aginst a boss, for example paying 100 electum and then it uses cards we cant use, has like 500hp and we can spin nymph from it if we win it, this would be fun (bare it mind he will be super hard)

I like AI the way it is now, for AI 0-6, so i dont see there is any change to decrease FG advantage and make AI very intellegent (but some minor improvements should be implemented)

Nerfing is very important aspect of the game. For this prevents 1 thing, if say mono-fire is so speedy and the only win strat, everyone wil just use the same deck... boring huh?
If you improve weak cards, but people alrdy all use the same strong deck, will they go buy the improved cards, farm the cash to upgrade them again? I doubt

Right now the game is having so little nerf, but this is a very good thing because generally it is extremly balanced.

Thanks zanz, awesome job in making the game

[Reefa]

- A small green/red light appeared close to the cards in the hand. Players can not play more cards while the light is red, this will prevent several overlapping effects and bugs. When this happened in pvp it also caused desync.
Side effect: players have to wait for all the effects to be resolved.

Seems the red light should last longer. There are some bugs involving quintessence, card draw and creature abilities (or should I've posted this to the bug section ...?)

Regards, Reefa

[elfreth]

Congratulations on replacing fun-factor of the game w/ more frustration in v1.21.

I think I'm done, after reaching 106k+ score....it's now lost it's appeal.  Time to reset and leave.  It's been a fun 6 months, but the consistent increase in difficulty just doesn't make sense.  We were already losing to FG's regularly...why increase the cost of so many cards that even gave us a chance? 

Sorry, rhetorical questions I don't want or expect an answer.

Goodbye

-E

[Bloodshadow]

Someone lock this thread please. The newest version of Elements is v1.22, so there should be no more discussion in threads for previous versions.

[elfreth]

Someone lock this thread please. The newest version of Elements is v1.22, so there should be no more discussion in threads for previous versions.

Have to disagree, until the game is updated this thread is still valid.  The trainer may be running the new version but that's not the release that we all play our decks in and gain our scores from.  (or used to...)