Event Cards (removed from the event)

[QuantumT]

I guess the best thing we could do now is to either design ~24 event card ideas that are not biased, or (if we want to keep event cards secret) at least organize a group of people who would design them. If I'm right, these event cards were designed by only Scaredgirl and the warmasters... I guess a bigger group would be necessary to spot and discuss fairness and balance.

The problem with this is that you don't see these people who are vocal here, stepping up when I asked for ideas for Event Cards. You don't see them stepping up when we looked for new Warmasters. Why? Because they don't want to spend their time doing volunteer work, they only want the fruit of other peoples labor because they feel they are somehow entitled to it.

It's very easy to just do your own thing and get a ready-made event handed to you on a silver platter, then deciding to sabotage it because you don't like the rules. But doing something productive by actually spending those countless hours in building these events as a volunteer, that's the hard part. The latter is something you won't see our resident complainers do. Ever.

I apologize for not contributing to the event cards, I didn't see when this was taking place and so I didn't contribute.

For me personally, yesterday was the saddest day in the history of this community. Not because people didn't like the new Event Card, because those can always be fixed, but because of the highly disrespectful and wrong way many players decided to act on it. It was quite an eye-opener to me actually. In a matter of hours, I went from being very excited about War #2, to not even caring anymore, which is pretty sad.

I'm sorry but I still can't see what's so wrong with deciding as a group not to use the Age cards.

I only hope that at some point, players would realize that having these kinds of Event Cards, while not particularly balanced because there is a luck element involved, would have made the event more fun by completely changing deckbuilding strategies for that round. The "Age" card of your element didn't get drawn? So what? It's the same principle of what happens when you lose because of a bad opening hand. Should we also change War rules so that if one person wins two coin tosses in a row, the latter match gets restarted? After all, that would be more fair, right?

There's some amount of luck that's acceptable and some that is excessive. For example consider this event card:

Will of the Gods- This round the victor of all matches is determined by a coin flip.

In theory, it's fair because it applies to everyone equally. But it's obviously far too luck driven.

On a side note- Air did lose a match in round one because of the initial coin toss. We won all three coin tosses, and both lost games were by deckout with both players using 31 card decks. Nobody complained because sometimes luck is unavoidable, and if we had seen it coming, we could have avoided it.

People take games seriously and concentrate way too much on winning rather than the event being fun. Winning is of course important, but I don't think it means all events have to be like chess just to make sure that some players don't lose sleep over the event being "unfair". I think random events add spice to the event and help to turn the tides.

I don't think it's unreasonable that people want the event they've committed to for the next several months to be fair.

There seems to always be a lot of drama involved in these big events, which is why I'm starting to think that we should just get rid of them all, and only do tournaments and league. For example, WoE is another big project I'm currently working on, and I don't really want to waste hundreds on hours on it, only to just new see boycotts because players feel some rule is "unfair" in this luck based card game of ours.

I would like to point out again that nobody was going to drop out of the war. It sucks to lose the time that you put into the event cards, but nobody was going to quit.

However, I'd be happy to do what I can to contribute to the next event. Honestly, I don't have the time to be an organizer (and I'm glad that you guys are willing to put in the time), but I'll do what I can.

To sum up, let me stress one thing. Thanks for all the time you put into events like this.

[the dictator]

I guess the best thing we could do now is to either design ~24 event card ideas that are not biased, or (if we want to keep event cards secret) at least organize a group of people who would design them. If I'm right, these event cards were designed by only Scaredgirl and the warmasters... I guess a bigger group would be necessary to spot and discuss fairness and balance.

The problem with this is that you don't see these people who are vocal here, stepping up when I asked for ideas for Event Cards. You don't see them stepping up when we looked for new Warmasters. Why? Because they don't want to spend their time doing volunteer work, they only want the fruit of other peoples labor because they feel they are somehow entitled to it.

I don't think that is true, I think the majority of people wanted to fight in the war, which means they can't be a warmaster, as you have to chose: you are either a warmaster, or you can participate, not both. And, about the event cards, there are people who have made some of the cards, but weren't warmasters: in chat Azumi asked for more event cards, because he was out of inspiration, and I came up with the reinforcements card. I don't know about the others, because they were to be PM'd, but that is at least one card. Also, when taking a look in the original topic (http://elementscommunity.org/forum/index.php/topic,8467.0.html) you will find some more event card suggestions by me, and there have been more in that topic.

It's very easy to just do your own thing and get a ready-made event handed to you on a silver platter, then deciding to sabotage it because you don't like the rules. But doing something productive by actually spending those countless hours in building these events as a volunteer, that's the hard part. The latter is something you won't see our resident complainers do. Ever.

Won't you think deciding to boycot a card isn't something productive, done by the complainers.

It's very For me personally, yesterday was the saddest day in the history of this community. Not because people didn't like the new Event Card, because those can always be fixed, but because of the highly disrespectful and wrong way many players decided to act on it. It was quite an eye-opener to me actually. In a matter of hours, I went from being very excited about War #2, to not even caring anymore, which is pretty sad.

I actually do agree on that. I even admit I probably overreacted as well, so my apologies for that.

It's very I only hope that at some point, players would realize that having these kinds of Event Cards, while not particularly balanced because there is a luck element involved, would have made the event more fun by completely changing deckbuilding strategies for that round. The "Age" card of your element didn't get drawn? So what? It's the same principle of what happens when you lose because of a bad opening hand. Should we also change War rules so that if one person wins two coin tosses in a row, the latter match gets restarted? After all, that would be more fair, right?

Well, I think the majority of people agree with me that there is already enough luck involved, as the war is already like rock-paper scissors, to quote Essences Signature:

"Water is one of the most versatile elements out there, no two decks are the same.  Do I take jade shield and stop lances, or would that be pointless because he'll use speed poison?"

Also, I don't mind about more challenging deckbuilding, as that is only more fun, but because the event cards were secret, deckbuilding on this was pretty hard, because most of the vaults were not made to be able to use all elements.

People take games seriously and concentrate way too much on winning rather than the event being fun. Winning is of course important, but I don't think it means all events have to be like chess just to make sure that some players don't lose sleep over the event being "unfair". I think random events add spice to the event and help to turn the tides.

Of course, random events can be fun, but a game is more fun if it is fair. Nobody wants to participate in a tourney were half of the people, randomly selected at the start of the tournament, is allowed to use upgraded cards while the other half isn't.

There seems to always be a lot of drama involved in these big events, which is why I'm starting to think that we should just get rid of them all, and only do tournaments and league. For example, WoE is another big project I'm currently working on, and I don't really want to waste hundreds on hours on it, only to just new see boycotts because players feel some rule is "unfair" in this luck based card game of ours.

Drama is something normal, but a lot of it can be solved by doing some good old beta testing, because that makes clear if there are some major flaws in the rules, so they can be solved before it all starts.

[Malduk]

I apologize for not contributing to the event cards, I didn't see when this was taking place and so I didn't contribute.

Here's the thread:
http://elementscommunity.org/forum/index.php/topic,8467.0.html

And here's one quote from the thread:

I support this idea, but you have to remember to make sure that these cards apply to EVERY element possible.
...
So as long as these Event Cards don't indirectly favor certain elements (like the one you have in your post SG), then I'd say it's a fantastic concept.

While its always the organizer that sets up the event, I dont understand the need to force something that majority strongly dislikes. Especially when the event is played only for fun, ie there are no prizes involved.
Before the event, other than that thread, there wasnt much talk about those Event cards really, as ideas were kept secret/private.
Before the whole drama started, practically everyone who was in the chat said the card should be changed/removed.

After that, there were practically 3 options:
1) Spend next months playing something you dont enjoy.
2) Quit
3) Voice your opinion trying to get it changed before the duels start.

Isnt #3 the only real option here? Quits WOULD ruin the event, and not having fun in something designed only to have fun is... absurd.

Issue is, everyone started to take all this personally, and both sides over reacted, which just means we're humans and care about this thingy enough to spend whole day on forum arguing about it.

[QuantumT]

I apologize for not contributing to the event cards, I didn't see when this was taking place and so I didn't contribute.

Here's the thread:
http://elementscommunity.org/forum/index.php/topic,8467.0.html

I guess that explains why I didn't see it. It occurred when I was on my Elements hiatus.

And here's one quote from the thread:

I support this idea, but you have to remember to make sure that these cards apply to EVERY element possible.
...
So as long as these Event Cards don't indirectly favor certain elements (like the one you have in your post SG), then I'd say it's a fantastic concept.

While its always the organizer that sets up the event, I dont understand the need to force something that majority strongly dislikes. Especially when the event is played only for fun, ie there are no prizes involved.
Before the event, other than that thread, there wasnt much talk about those Event cards really, as ideas were kept secret/private.
Before the whole drama started, practically everyone who was in the chat said the card should be changed/removed.

After that, there were practically 3 options:
1) Spend next months playing something you dont enjoy.
2) Quit
3) Voice your opinion trying to get it changed before the duels start.

Isnt #3 the only real option here? Quits WOULD ruin the event, and not having fun in something designed only to have fun is... absurd.

Issue is, everyone started to take all this personally, and both sides over reacted, which just means we're humans and care about this thingy enough to spend whole day on forum arguing about it.

Well said.

[Xinef]

The problem with this is that you don't see these people who are vocal here, stepping up when I asked for ideas for Event Cards. You don't see them stepping up when we looked for new Warmasters. Why? Because they don't want to spend their time doing volunteer work, they only want the fruit of other peoples labor because they feel they are somehow entitled to it.

If I lose the next Trials, I'll apply for a Warmaster if that helps anyhow. For me it's not a simple matter of 'not wanting to spend time doing volunteer work' but rather 'I'm responsible for a number of things and I'm not going to devote my time to one more thing, or I'd have to spend less time on other things I'm responsible for'. I guess the amount of work involved in leading a team, and amount of work involved in organizing events exclude each other, so I couldn't be good at both at the same time. And if I'm not good at something, I prefer not to do it at all and let it be done by experienced and skilled people who have time to do so. Only when there are no such people and something needs to be done, I'll do it, but don't expect me to guess everything that needs to be done, and know who's going to do it and who's  not.

I guess it's similar with many other people, though experience tells me every case is different, and generalization is the source of all evil ;]



As I said before, some people perceive the war as one event that should be as fair and balanced as possible, so that skills and strategy play a greater role than luck.
It's got nothing to do with other events. If you declare a Fractal Fate Egg tournament, or a Mutation Tournament, no one (or almost no one ) is going to expect skill and strategy to play greater role than luck, so adding surprise events in such a tournament wouldn't cause so much drama. Adding more luck factor to a luck based event only meets peoples expectations.

On the other hand it seems from the reactions that a lot of people expect luck to play less role in war and the rules seemed to strengthen that view (a lot of rounds, a lot of players in each team, best of 3 instead of best of 1, the amount of time and strategy involved, etc.) so I guess a lot of people who joined the war expected it to be an event with rules decreasing the importance of luck. It's obvious then, that unraveling a secret 'rule' that increases luck factor will cause distress and disagreement between those people.

So, if you wanted to avoid such a turn of events, you'd have to warn all people joining the war that luck is going to play a bigger factor than it seems from the rules (ie. you could warn people that event cards will be unbalanced before they joined the war), instead of strengthening the view that 'the best team is going to win the war'... probably. Ok, I don't remember well what you've written about it, so I'm not going any deeper on this topic.

I'm just trying to form constructive criticism, and I could be wrong on any of these theses, but I hope there's nothing wrong with me expressing my view.

I apologize for not contributing to the event cards, I didn't see when this was taking place and so I didn't contribute.

Here's the thread:
http://elementscommunity.org/forum/index.php/topic,8467.0.html

And here's one quote from the thread:

I support this idea, but you have to remember to make sure that these cards apply to EVERY element possible.
...
So as long as these Event Cards don't indirectly favor certain elements (like the one you have in your post SG), then I'd say it's a fantastic concept.

While its always the organizer that sets up the event, I dont understand the need to force something that majority strongly dislikes. Especially when the event is played only for fun, ie there are no prizes involved.
Before the event, other than that thread, there wasnt much talk about those Event cards really, as ideas were kept secret/private.
Before the whole drama started, practically everyone who was in the chat said the card should be changed/removed.

After that, there were practically 3 options:
1) Spend next months playing something you dont enjoy.
2) Quit
3) Voice your opinion trying to get it changed before the duels start.

Isnt #3 the only real option here? Quits WOULD ruin the event, and not having fun in something designed only to have fun is... absurd.

Issue is, everyone started to take all this personally, and both sides over reacted, which just means we're humans and care about this thingy enough to spend whole day on forum arguing about it.

One more reason why I didn't post my own ideas of Event Cards. I believed that people like Kuroaitou, who are active, understand people well, and have the skill and experience to predict peoples reactions, would take care of Event Cards. It seems I was right that there would be people expressing their concern about balance, and cards giving advantage to certain teams. I'm just surprised their voice didn't affect the final result.

Anyway, I guess Malduk described the situation, exactly the way a lot of people felt. They were surprised by the unbalanced event card, didn't enjoy it, and had a choice to either keep playing without joy, or try to change something. There is no reason to blame these people for their decision, and to be honest boycott was one of the best possible solutions, as it wasn't too aggressive, but wasn't weak and unnoticeable either. If people only started a discussion or a poll, it probably wouldn't solve the situation as quickly as it did. Of course a quick solution still has it's disadvantages, one of them being the sadness of organizers, so we have to find a solution for those problems. Any ideas what to do about it?


And to make it clear, I don't blame ANYONE. It's not peoples fault that they joined an event that turned out to be different from what they thought at first. It's not organizers fault that they didn't make everything clear from the beginning. It's impossible to make everything clear, and they did their best to do so.
If anyone is to blame, it's luck and the complexity of the event.

[TimerClock14]

okay so all of you can bash me on my next comment all you want, but just hear me out:

Even though we belong to different elements, why is it so impossible for us to just get along? I mean, is that really too much to ask?

[Xinef]

okay so all of you can bash me on my next comment all you want, but just hear me out:

Even though we belong to different elements, why is it so impossible for us to just get along? I mean, is that really too much to ask?

I think I'm getting along with my 'opposition' quite well.

Of course, in the War subforum we are 'acting in a warish* manner', bashing other Elements and promoting our own, but without personal attacks.
Of course, some people go emotional and at some point there was some aggression, but right now everything looks under control.
Of course, nothing is obvious.



*credit for the word comes to Wardead

[PhantomFox]

ScaredGirl, we love you and respect all the work that you put into this community.  But please try and see things from our point of view, and I'll do my best to see it from yours.  So you understand where we're coming from, even if you don[t agree with us.

From your view, you put a lot of work into this.  And you wouldn't intentionally make a card you think would hurt the event.  And I see that you believe that if a set of event cards are fair, they are all right.  Which is true, to an extent.  And I see that you fall on the more 'casual' end of the "casual vs. pro" spectrum of game seriousness.  To you, winning is not as important as having fun along the way.  I can respect that. 

However, from our (and by 'our', I mean the objectors) point of view, if an event is majorly unbalanced (even fair, but unbalanced), that spoils any potential fun that could be had.  While not requiring as much effort as you put into it, playing in the War does require a good amount of effort too.  You become emotionally invested.  Having that effort being wasted because of not only random chance, but also something you couldn't plan for is a kick in the gut.  Sure, it's FAIR, since any event card could be drawn, but it partially invalidates the work put into building a vault.   If we had known about the types of event cards, we could prepare our vaults in such a way that no matter when and what a certain Age card came around, we could take advantage of it. 

That was part of the problem.  The other part, is as stated, FAIR is not the only prerequisite for FUN.  BALANCED is also a big factor.  For example, look at the item debate in Super Smash Bros. tournaments.  While they are fair (anyone can potentially get any item), they are disabled because they are not balanced in a competitive environment.  This is one example, but look at almost any competitive game.  While the core game is fair, there are usally extra rules and restrictions in the name of balance.

Chance in a card game is a known factor, and can be taken into account.  Surprises are not.  Honestly, you do not plan on using every single card in your deck, but you include redundant copies so you can reduce the effect chance has on you.  You plan and compensate for the effect that chance has.  A surprise can't be planned for, if unfair OR unbalanced, will lead to feelings of being cheated.  If a team had directly lost because they lost on an Age Of X round because either they faced multiple team Xs, or had not chosen a lot of X element, they would have felt cheated.

And while I'm a bit sorry for my actions in suggesting the boycott in the first place, to a degree, it was somewhat necessary.  We love 'ya and really appreciate all the work you do, but sometimes you can be a bit.... stubborn.  (No hard feelings, everyone has their own unique faults)  Once you set your mind on something, it's firm and set.  Which is a good thing when you're right.  Indeed, you shouldn't waffle to every half-thought out opinion.  But when something DOES need changing it takes a rather ... emphatic statement to get you to change your mind.  Please keep an open mind when hearing criticism.  Yes, most of the time they're just "whiners" and can be safely ignored, but once in a blue moon, the whiners are RIGHT.

[Sir Valimont]

And while I'm a bit sorry for my actions in suggesting the boycott in the first place, to a degree, it was somewhat necessary.

To no degree whatsoever was this "necessary" or appropriate.

You continue to talk about the card, as if whether or not the card was balanced is the issue. It is not the issue. The issue is that you took actions which are unacceptable.

Being a member of a community does not entitle you to break the community's rules if you feel necessary. Being a participant in an event does not entitle you to break the rules of the event if you feel necessary. In most cases in real life when you take actions like you did, you forfeit your right to participate in the community at all. You should realize that.

[Kuross]

Playing devil's advocate for the sake of the community and future situations like this....

Given the teams had a limited amount of time to deck build, and how many felt the event card was OP, how else would the community have gone about affecting a change? If a system were to be in place, then future misunderstandings might be entirely avoided.

[MrBlonde]

In most cases in real life when you take actions like you did, you forfeit your right to participate in the community at all. You should realize that.

So are you saying i should forfeit my right to participate in this community? What are you trying to say and fight for at this point?

[Sir Valimont]

Playing devil's advocate for the sake of the community and future situations like this....

Given the teams had a limited amount of time to deck build, and how many felt the event card was OP, how else would the community have gone about affecting a change? If a system were to be in place, then future misunderstandings might be entirely avoided.

That's a very good and valid question.

The unfortunate but true answer is that the community would have to realize, first of all, that they may not be able to effect a change in time. Feeling entitled to one is part of the problem; everyone needed to realize that the first reaction would normally be "I hate this but I have to deal with it."

Then after realizing that there are appropriate channels. Probably the best would be to have the generals of each team talk to each other and then talk to the warmasters. If those who reacted so brashly had actually discussed it with other senior members of War they would have found that actually a number of people disagreed with them, and a discussion would have resulted. Whether the cards would have been changed is unknown -- the community was never given that chance.

There is a strong possibility that the cards would not have changed and the event would have proceeded as intended. Maybe the cards would be changed for next War.

Anyone who would call that outcome "unacceptable" needs to get some perspective. There is nothing whatsoever that is unacceptable about the "Age of Light" card. It might be unbalanced. It is not unfair or unacceptable or against the rules or representative of foul play on the part of the organizers.