Elements 1.4

[Chapuz]

I think the description is buggy yet, it doesn't let me write the description besides the name.

[Blacksmith]

Thank you for doing this so soon after last update ( not sarcastic ). I higly respect your skill in new ideas and balancing. There are still many qestions to be answered

Spoiler for Hidden:

Ok, some questions:

900 hp seems a little too much, but if you want to keep it like that, do you plan to increase the max hp for player's HP and/or max attack/hp for creatures?
Will there be a variety of NPCs for each level or just one for each?
Will we know the deck in advance or it will be like arena?
Seems like as NPC you can put less than 30 cards in the deck, will this also be available for us, players?
You put a level for each deck we can play with? You plan to give players certain advantages while playing against NPCs for reaching a higher level as well?

but I like the ideas so far, nice work. There is just 1 thing I would like to add to this patch, please make nymphs and marks un sell able. I don't know how many people who has sold nymphs/marks and later regret it.

O and I like your choice of immo rush!

http://elementscommunity.org/forum/game-suggestions-and-feedback/elements-the-game-v2-0-majofa's-changes/

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@zanzarino:
Making the players choose to play against 1 specific deck is a bad idea, in my whole opinion. there will be a perfect counter for each one and they will become much more farmable than the current levels.
It would be fine if NPCs give you a random opponent between several different decks, like the current AIs.

If you enter a zone and kill all of the antlions because you want to farm them, they will all be dead and then you'll have to wait for them to respawn. In the while an angry 900hp elite Antlion will run after you trying to get revenge for your massacre.

Official answer: the map will have an AI attached to the mob spawning. Sitting in an area for farming will do no good.

The reward is going to be based on the NPC level, I'll have to refine the number of spins etc. later.

The electrum reward is probably going to be
Reward = 1 + NPClevel*2
Triple the reward if elite, double if EM. Master an elite to get X6.
This is pretty much what the arena settled upon: level 10 will give 21  , level 50 101 

The money you lose if defeated should be reward/2 (lose to a level 10 = get poached for 10  )
Hardcore mode could be something to experiment with: if you lose, you lose one of the cards in your deck. (Please refrain from freaking about about nypmhs yet; there are solutions and we will get there if this is something worth exploring. E.g. your card turns into a broken card if rare, and can be fixed by paying an adequate (read expensive) amount of  )



The spin reward will probably be something like
level 0-10: 1 spin
level 10-20: 2 spins
level 20-30: 3 spins (as in current level 3)
level 30-40: 5 spins
level 40-50: 1 upped spin
level 50-60: 2 upped spins
level 60-70: 3 upped spins (as in current FG)
level 70-80: 4 upped spins
level 80-90: 5 upped spins
level 90 and above: 5 upped spins + 1 special spin for rares

All of the above to be reviewed, balanced, reviewed again, then fine tuned, polished and released in the game.

Decks with bad rating gets removed

Zanz also said don't pay attention to level right now, that will come, right now the levels are totally off, as you can make a level 0 and have it show up as level 80 and i've fought some level 20s that were harder than some level 70s... 

Added rating to the stats displayed in the trainer. If you want to resubmit a deck with improved description etc. resubmit the same deck adding a v2 after the name.

Can someone explain me the rating system of the NPC?

If my deck has 4 Wins and 0 Losses and 50% positive rating, does that mean that 2 of 4 didn't vote and 2 thumbed me up?
Because if two of them did downvote I would be at 0%, right?

......the latter is correct. You had 3 upvotes and 1 downvote. 2 upvotes, 2 no-votes would be 100%.

Arena will remain unchanged.

Note: you get one vote per area, killing 20 times the same mob and giving it 20 thumbs up still counts as 1 thumb up.

quote from Zanz "More cards will come, have faith."

Marks will be upgradable several times when you have the required reputation with an element (Mark I to Mark X).
Each upgrade at the moment gives 5 extra HP's (to be balanced).
Upgraded marks can not be used in pvp.

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SUMMARIZE OF THE FIRST 56 PAGES


I have not added bugs into this. Please people think before you make post it took me (145minutes) to make this and I hope it won't be wasted.

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Special message to Zanz.

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Card ideas and art section (CIA
The Cia section is renewing itself so you know which cards to pick. I believe that a few new cards could be just as important as the whole new patch!.

I'm sure you would get lots of good art for free if you just asked for it! Say yes to this and I'll start a thread.

More foil card would be fun but not high priority.  http://elementscommunity.org/forum/card-art/new-foil-card(s)/

Buffs and nerfs.
I know that it's often a bad thing to nerf something after it's been realsed , that it's better to post something and then buff it. Either way Dim shields needs a nerf now.
A card is allowed to change meta for a while but dim has changed meta from the very beginning forcing most decks to include extra cards. Dim shield is not highly overpowered but the way is function is incredibly boring unlike for example Super nova. After 56 pages in the nerf section more than this whole thread the conclusion is that dim needs to be nerfed to last 2 turns and no other change! no cost decrease nothing. This is a must!!!
http://elementscommunity.org/forum/nerf-this-card!/dimensional-shield/

Please make nymphs and marks un sell able. I don't know how many people who has sold nymphs/marks and later regret it.

I got some contacts on kongregate eventually I'll be able to change the new badges and also add new patch on the front page like this:

Spoiler for Hidden:

just say so and I'll try to fix these things for you.

Changes regarding Map and game
You should decrease the lv of all npc's with 10 lv's right away. This way things will balanced our quicker. As it is now I can beat lv 40 decks with a normal un upped bow.

Original idea Marsu "I'd wish to go a step further though: Would it be possible to have an area where those random NPC's would be 'hidden' until you start the game? For example, you go there and only see a '???' as NPC name. I am bringing this topic of randomness up because I really think most advanced player would wish for such an option from time to time."

Adding a button for facing a random npc. Of experience I know these buttons are highly addictive.

Make the start decks just a little bit better. I've seen hundreds of post saying. It takes forever to reach 500 score with my ai2 deck. If the deck wore just a bit better that would be great for the noobs. I with help of community could arrange this. This is less important.

Idea originally from colorless green. A leader board for highest rated npc decks would be cool. Not important.

Changes regarding you
I just want you to know that 1 simply silly post like. I'm working on a thing right now I won't be able to do much for a year. can mean so extremely much to community. Humans has an ability to expect the worst scenarios when nothing else is said and many here including myself has or do believe that you don't care about this game at all. Even if you got a so called "bad reason" it's still better to say it than not to say it. At least it shows that you care a little. I'd like to add that I still have fate in you.

To discuss.

Spoiler for Hidden:

• If chroma is a good name to
• I've been having this idea that perhaps a story set of NPCs should exist.  Like a quest where you have to defeat a certain set of NPC in a certain order in a given day to get the whole story.  This would be like a later, mid level quest on something like 13 decks in increasing difficulty until you need to fight a FG level creature.Original idea keeps. I liked this idea. Can we continue to work on it?

Spoiler for nerd1 post. Worth thinking of.

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Possibly some vanilla cards get abilities, but you only get that ability randomly- for example, cockatrice gets a 1/10 chance to gain "petrification" whenever it's played, and there are "levels" of upgrades to increase the chances of the creature getting that ability, but paid for with something other than electrum.

For example, for every 25 levels an AI has rounded down, you gain a 50% chance to gain a "token" when you defeat it (so a level 25 AI would give you a 50% chance to get a token, a level 50 AI would give you a token automatically, and a level 75 AI would give you a token and a 50% chance to get a token.) Tokens can be spent giving minor upgrades to individual cards with a level system (1, 2, or 3 tokens to raise a level, depending on the card and level) and the higher the level of a card, the higher the chance of that creature getting an additional effect (for example, paying one electrum to raise cockatrice one level adds a 10% chance for it to gain the petrification ability, for a 1/5 chance of gaining petrification when the card is played.)

Additional effects could be stuff that doesn't take a lot of time to program (like simple attack buffs or chances to evade targeting) but it would give people another reason to keep playing, and if additional effects are restricted to un-activatable effects, the time investment for zanzarino (hopefully) wouldn't be as big a deal.

Spoiler for post by keeps. I think it's something that is relevant to discuss.

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There have been many debates on the quantity and effects of cards for a while....
Honestly, I would like to see more cards in general, by more as in double or triple the current count. 
1.) I personally think each element needs it own personal spin on each core area of the game that many still have missing areas:
1x perm defense (salvanger, protect artifact)
1x perm control (steal, defrag, etc)
1x alternative damage (poison, spell, SoV, etc)
1x counter to alternative damage (purify, reflect, etc)
1x creature quanta gain (pests, flies, ray of light, etc)
1x spell quanta gain (nova)
1x spell damage source (explosive gas, fire bolt, etc)
1x AOE creature control (thunderstorm, pandora, etc)
1x target creature control (chaos seed, reverse time, etc)
1x heal form (heal, divinity, purify, etc)
2x shield types (life, light, death element examples)
1x multi-use spell (purify, acceleration, reverse time)
1x cross cross synergy card for each element combination, be it active ability or obvious synergy (Sundial, GoP + Nightmare, leaf dragon)

Until this is addressed, a big part of random encounters is simply what elements were selected, especially in mono or dual combos.  I've posted in past accounts, many examples of mono decks that were simply unable to be beat (except by rng) by any mono deck of a specific element.  Until then this game remains completely unbalanced.  These core areas need addressed.

The examples above don't have to individual cards, for example, purify meets the heal, multiuse, and the counter to poison. 

Each element's card respective cards should stay true to the element.  Life, should remain the master of heal, no one should have any question the best element for healing is life.  No one should have bigger damaging cards out of the gate than Fire.  A good spell for fire, might be fuel, in which sacrificing a creature to a fire might offer some healing effect, similar to cremation.   Respect to certain cards by ability should remain, for example, protect artifact is in effect the ultimate protection for perms, however lots of creative and less effective perm control can exist for example, time might do a time seal where the perm card has no effect but can't be targeted or removed from play for 2 turns.

The natural meta game radically shifts, and I know some people in the forums would threaten to quit but many, many more have already quit over this issues.

Quote from mathematistic. Interesting

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It would be much better if the reputation is spent as a currency to unlock otherwise inaccessible rewards (random shard/new super-rares, along with the HP upgrades). That way the use of the reputation is more diverse, and the players feel like they have control over the elemental they manifest into in the game, much like a real RPG, where you grow you character to the path you wish to. Small perks like attack bonus/hp bonus (like +1 for the atk or hp for cards of that element if nonzero) much like HD Xyth's campaign mode might work too. If you know about Tyrant, you know the reasons that the raid revamp worked because raid reputation can be spent and grinding got greatly improved. Elements is different from other CCGs, but it's always good to learn from the good things about others.

As for the balancing issue, I would recommend that you make small perks for different stats (10% chance to generate 1 extra quanta/+20HP/+1 atk/hp for nonzero creatres/15% to regain 1 qaunta when playing cards of that element) etc etc. Buffing 1 stat (health) to 150% sounds ridiculous and game-breaking, although the pvp enthusiasts would probably have already thought of pvp1 and 2 banning extra perks and adding pvp3 that allows them, which is also a quick and cost-effective solution.

Allow pvp playing with benefits in the map

Spoiler for odin's post. Can we make more ideas alike. I was mainly thinking about quests.

Spoiler for Hidden:

I just had an awesome idea for how to make use of the 900 hp cap for a cool rare NPC encounter... and a Kong badge to go with it:

NPC name: Overloaded Phase Dragons
Stats:
hp = 900
mark multiplier = 1
draw multiplier = x2

Spoiler for Deck:

Hover over cards for details, click for permalink

Deck import code : [Select]

4vj 74f 7do 7n1 7n7 808 808 808 80a 80f 8pi

Spoiler for Story:

You spot two phase dragons off in the distance heading your way. They are known for their wisdom . Perhaps you can reason with them... As the close, you realize something is wrong, chaotic energies crackle along their skin. They speak in a paniced voice: "Run mortal, we can't hold the rift any..." Their appearance suddenly turns feral, the arcing lightening building stronger.The energy is too strong to contain...You must either run or ride out the storm... They're gonna blow!

Kong Badge: "Riders on the Storm"
(for those who don't know the song reference: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Riders_on_the_Storm)
To earn the badge, you have to: "Find and take down the 'Overloaded Phase Dragons' before the deck runs out."

Its deck size is 10 cards, which bumps to 20 after the multiplier, so to beat the NPC you only have to survive for about (20-7)/2 = 6 turns... Having tested it out, thats not really too hard as long as you put out some creatures to absorb all the damage spells.
Taking down that many hp before its deck runs out, however, should be a fun challenge (likely requiring some clever deck building).

Idea from keeps. Should things like this be added?

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Gaining alternative marks with repetition.
Examples
Mark of Shadow -> Your opponent loses 1 quanta at the end of their turn all darkness creatures get +0/+1 absorbs 
Mark of Plague -> At the end of a player's turn, All creatures lose 1 health, to a maximum of 50% of their max health rounded up. absorbs   
Mark of Dawn -> Your opponent loses 1  quanta at the end of their turn all light creatures get +0/+1 aborbs 
Mark of Chaos -> One random spell effect occurs to one random target at the end of your turn, if the effect can not target the target choosen nothing happens absorbs 
Mark of Grounding -> The next X creature attacking with flying loses flying where X is the number of Marks of Grounding in play.  absorbs
Mark of Consumption -> each creature gets +1/-1 when attacking. absorbs
Mark of Roots -> Each  permanent has a 15% chance of coming back into play if destroyed. absorbs
Mark of Flight -> The next X creature attacking without flying gains flying where X is the number of Marks of Flightin play.  absorbs :
Mark of Hardness-> You gain 3 max HP at the end of your turn. absorbs 
Mark of Leaking -> Draw 1 additional card if you can during your draw phases, discard a card if you have a card in your hand at the end of your turn. 
Mark of Stopping -> Both players can hold 1 less card in their hands.  absorbs 

(this one made by fabian) Mark of Electricity: The next X creature loses random HP from 1 to 5 where X is the number of Marks of Electricity in play. Every 2 Marks of Electricity max random damage increases by 1.Example: Creature #7 got the hit. 3 Marks of Electricity in play: Next creature to get hit is creature #10. If there were only 9 creatures, then the next one is #1. And it continues like that.  absorbs 

Quote from jaydos99. I like it.

Spoiler for Hidden:

I was thinking that perhaps the NPC's could be hidden in the field. Such that if you want to travel to a certain spot in game, randomly you would be attacked by an NPC with a level in line with the area level. One-off mini boss NPC's could guard the exits of an area with a level in line with the level of the adjacent area. This gives the new player a goal to "break out" of each beginner area and explore, on top of the quests to keep things interesting.

The exact mechanics would have to be worked out, but effectively this would alter the way that a new player can travel the map. Forcing them to buy better cards and create stronger strategies in order to move further around the map. Just an idea but it would lead very nicely into an RPG/storyline based version of Elements.

For players.

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Submit npc decks!!! we can't have to many.

[Atico]

It would be nice to pick for example 800hp in other method than clicking over 100 times "+".
The same problem is in Arena.

[BloodlinE]

I cant really wait for this update

will this replace fgs as well? do you increase the FGs hp by 1000 as well? why is the HP cap 1000?

[moehrpi]

Can't wait to submit NPCs. I'm really looking forward to this.
Good job as always!

[kvothe1990]

Great!

[dragonsdemesne]

Just as an idea, as another way to gather decks for AI characters, perhaps whenever somebody gets to #1 rank in the arena, their deck code could be saved and used as a basis for an NPC.  This wouldn't have to be automatic, since the NPC needs a proper name, and the deck would have to be checked by a human being for obvious reasons (not an upvoted farm, not a deck already ingame, possibly change upgrades/cards slightly to fit a theme better, etc) but it could provide another way of gathering deck codes that are proven to be strong against players, as well as give players another motivation to build strong arena decks; they might get immortalized in the game.

[Belligerence]

Well this is an interesting surprise to wake up to. Thanks Zanz!

[ColorlessGreen]

This sounds like a whole lot of fun and I'm looking forward to it.

I hope all the previous AIs (and arena) still remain in the game, though (in one form or another). There's value in all of them, and having a colosseum on the map (or something) where you can just pick one of the old AIs seems like it'd fit just fine.

Thanks, zanz. This sounds like the kind of update we've been needing.

[Blacksmith]

It would be nice to pick for example 800hp in other method than clicking over 100 times "+".
The same problem is in Arena.

For everyone who thinks it's boring to click 100 times try to use the tab button; it's 2 steps above the shift button, then arrows and enter. It still take time but it is a lot faster.

[Chapuz]

The min level is 5, not 1 

[nireus]

Fantastic news!!! I really can't wait to see the new patch released!! I think this will provide a whole new perspective to grinding  Oh, should I also add that I'd love to see a card addition too?  Well done zanz, great job!!