Guest posts by Hodari

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General Discussion / Re: Starting Decks

« on: August 10, 2011, 06:49:02 am »

http://elementscommunity.org/wiki/basics/building-your-first-deck/#darkness (http://elementscommunity.org/wiki/basics/building-your-first-deck/#darkness) might be worth a look also

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General Discussion / Re: Starting Decks

« on: August 10, 2011, 06:22:17 am »

I don't think any of the starter decks are really good as they are.  You'd have to modify all of them a fair amount to be usable.  With that in mind, I wouldn't worry as much about the deck itself but either go for whichever one sells for the most electrum(darkness if I remember right) or just decide which element(not just the specific deck) you might like to play most.  And keep in mind that in the long run, you will want a number of different decks anyway so you won't be stuck with that choice for too long

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Patch Notes and Development News / Re: Elements 1.28x

« on: August 10, 2011, 04:31:08 am »

The arena screen should show the highest rating and league position that a deck has attained since it was created.

e.g. "Current position: 16; Highest position: 2"

I would like to emphasise (wanted to use a fancy word!) this once more. I'd absolutely love this addition since determining my highest rating is all Arena is about for me. (apart from fun deck building)

It'd be lovely if someone could tell me if this is even remotely possible or if it's to much of a hassle to install/code/whatever.

Should be very easy to code..would just have to check after each time the current rank is updated (if current_rank < best_rank) and update it accordingly.  Given that there are probably only around 1-3 games being finished per second, it shouldn't be much of an added load to calculate either(certainly much less than calculating the updated current_rank in the first place) and would only be one extra integer to store for each of the 2000 decks, so that would be no issue at all either.
Overall, I see no technical reason why it couldn't be done at least and it would certainly be nice to be able to see this.

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Design Theory / Re: Steal My Idea!

« on: August 07, 2011, 11:03:35 pm »

Artemisium/Thermopylae  Permanent(shield?)  - No more than 5/4 creatures may attack you each turn

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Forge Archive / Re: Electrum Boost | Score Boost

« on: August 06, 2011, 12:44:13 pm »

You play that, I'll play a mindgate/eternity deck...

If you went through the trouble of fighting in PvP until you found someone using this and beat them, then you've definitely earned that several hundred extra electrum/score.

Yeah, you'd need to at least have a cap on the maximum bonus you could get from this per game though to prevent this combo from being basically infinite score/electrum.

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Forge Archive / Re: Electrum Boost | Score Boost

« on: August 06, 2011, 12:36:07 pm »

You play that, I'll play a mindgate/eternity deck...

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Forge Archive / Re: Cell | Cell

« on: August 06, 2011, 12:31:15 pm »

Interesting concept at least.  I'm guessing these would be useless in most decks but could be very powerful actually if used correctly.  Could probably make a very good swarm deck with a bunch of these, feral bonds, some permanent destruction to take out shields.  I'd hesitate to call a 1/1 creature OP but it is worth noting that playing just one of these on the first turn, you could have your field full of creatures by turn 6(a few quantum towers would easily pay for this) and with 3-4 feral bonds out, it would take a one turn kill.  Of course Firestorm or any protected shield would be bad for you .  At least the cells have an ability though and thus couldn't be affected by luciferase

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False Gods / Re: Nerf or Buff? Featured FG: Graviton

« on: August 06, 2011, 02:52:10 am »

Seems like all of the fire based FG's are very hard(and this is even more true in arena).  Fire overall might need to be nerfed a little bit, especially explosion.  Doesn't need to be a huge nerf(even just adding more counters to it would be fine) but something needs to be done I think.

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Game Suggestions and Feedback / Re: Game now too difficult for new players?

« on: August 06, 2011, 01:39:47 am »

A lot of tricks that are obvious to us may not be so for that player. There is nothing in the game itself that tells you explicitly that rainbows are a possibility -- you have to either find that in the forums/wiki (which our hypothetical newb doesn't), or find that out through experience against decks in the Arena. A lot of times the initial frustration can be too much for the player, and this more often than not weeds out the casual players and leaves only the hardcore ones who are willing to grind, look up the guides, and learn the details of deckbuilding. But then again, Elements isn't really for the casual player, so change might not be necessary. No reason to fix what's broken.

Actually I would have to say there IS something in the game that tells you it is possible, namely the fact that there are at least 2 cards which produce quanta of all types...why would these exist if you weren't intended to be able to use all of them?  And yes, there are a lot of other things that a casual player might not discover without looking up guides or checking the forums but...how is that different from a lot of other online games?   There is only so much that can be explained directly in the game itself and at some point it comes down to being a matter of getting out of the game what you are willing to put into it.  If you want to be competitive against the higher levels of Arena or even the AI, you need to put a bit of effort into learning as much as you can about the game first.  And it's not like the forums are THAT hard to find since there's a link to them right on the main page for the game

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Deck Help / Re: Fractal Lava Golem

« on: August 04, 2011, 07:09:53 am »

Change all of the pillars into pendulums not including Aether. That way, you can incorporate pillars, and get good output.

Might be a bit low on fire quanta that way though.  Another option though would be in addition to replacing some of the pillars with pendulums, also replace the fractals with parallel universe.  This way, not only do you not have to pay the cost for the new golems, you also get the increased stats from however many times it has used its ability before, so you don't have to pay for that twice either.

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Crucible Archive / Re: Unladen Swallow | Unladen Swallow

« on: August 03, 2011, 02:11:34 am »

Exactly, and it's not like Vultures aren't substantial enough, either.  A swallow, though...just not feeling it, unladen or not.  It's an obscure enough reference that I had to look it up, and anyone else is just going to be confused about why a bird is doing *that* much damage.

That's no ordinary swallow..that's the most foul, cruel, bad-tempered fowl you ever set eyes on.

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Card Ideas and Art / Re: Shard of Restoration | Shard of Restoration

« on: July 30, 2011, 05:30:06 pm »

This would be overpowered in my rainbow deck with 6 hourglasses :p 

Probably not better than SoG is now, this would obviously be better later in the game but usually what matters most is the early game and there SoG still heals more.

Thanks for pointing out the typo, not sure why I took the French spelling here...

I'd say healing matters much more mid to late game.  Early on, you're not going to be taking much damage most of the time anyway and by the time you do start taking large amounts of damage  against anything but a pure rush deck, you'd probably have had time to get several hourglasses out.  With 6 of these shards and 6 hourglasses, you could keep healing yourself to full every turn as long as you had enough cards left in your deck(which of course would be the hard part, but maybe a flying eternity deck with a few other creatures could manage it).  Still given how many cards all that would involve, not sure it would be overpowered at all.