WAR - Suggestions and Feedback

[coinich]

May I make a suggestion?  Howsabout we keep more cards after losing and/or salvaging more after winning?  Death was the only team the first round besides Earth to have more cards than they started; it takes 5 wins to balance out 1 loss, which is exactly what happened.  I think as a result, teams that got off to a poor start were immediately at a disadvantage.

[Jangoo]

Is an "imbalance" due to more experienced players really all that much of a problem?
I would think that teams feature some "champions" and have a generally different (=better/worse) starting position is sort of the salt in the soup no?

In fact, I would like to suggest making the role of owned upped cards stronger to add more profile to the team-members:
Having a, e.g.,  PuppyChow who can play any card in the vault as an upped card should be like fielding that "Auratic-golden-armoured-will-defeat-whole-divisions-of-lowly-minions-by-himself-champion" which you will find in any awesome cheesy fantasy game. 

[Scaredgirl]

Is an "imbalance" due to more experienced players really all that much of a problem?

14-0

[Flare]

Maybe we could do something like a Free-for-all.

Like a max of 64 players and each player can bring 90 or 120 cards. And if they win a match they take their opponents deck and if they lose then they lose their deck.

And every man is for them selves. So you vs all 63 other people.

So maybe have each person choose a "primary" element that they would like to use. then all of their decks have to have 50%~75% of those cards. SO THAT MEANS NO MONO DECKS!. And maybe have a secondary element?

Also i realize this could be near impossible to win so maybe after half of the players are eliminated have it be... Winner gets losers deck. Loser loses his deck and an extra 30 cards.

Thoughts?

[Malduk]

Is an "imbalance" due to more experienced players really all that much of a problem?

14-0

How's doing again? 

[Jangoo]

Is an "imbalance" due to more experienced players really all that much of a problem?

14-0

How's doing again? 

Exactly ... Rasta, Jmizz and Perv don't exactly have reputation for being total newbies here.

If anything, Earth is doing so well because:
Earth is doing well in any tourney-design that limits decks/vaults along the lines of elemental composition.
I couldn't find any link to view the initial vaults (or any vault for that matter) but I suppose team earth set up something like 18 grabs, 18 shriekers, 18 golems, 12 antlions (upped), 18 earthquakes, 18 Pulverizers, 6 destroyers, 6 rewinds ... ?? - The well proven "total smack down" - strategy that plays towards the few most efficient pvp-decks known to elements-players.
From what I understand, you can re-use the cards deployed in battle as long as you don't lose a battle ... so where does that take a strategy that opts towards playing every battle with a 80% win-rate-shrieker-rush and simply keeping and reusing those cards throughout the whole war?

The problem here is not at all that certain teams have players with a 150k+ score or a 400+ post-count. (Even if that were really the case, shouldn't the masters be smart enough to do all in their power to recruit those "invincible heroes" for the next war and thus bring balance to the forces?)

The real problem is, once again, elemental imbalance as such.

---

Suggestions:

- Decrease the impact of elementally oriented composition:
-> Limiting the vault composition further will increase the risk of focusing on specialized decks like a 18/6/6 shrieker rush. One unlucky battle and the shrieker-reserve is down to nothing ...
* max. 12 copies of each card of "your element" (6 cards for "other elements")
* max. (and min.?) 50% vault composition of "your element" (and not just min. 50%)

- Introduce a "wear-off" effect:
-> Even a hardy shrieker should get tired of having to fight every battle all the time while the rest of the army stands by idly.
* make it e.g. something like "the same cards/decks may only be used every other game"
* or: "after being used 5 times a specific card `wears off´and has to be taken out of the vault"

- Strengthen an alliance-system (is there anything like his yet?)
-> Top-teams will face a rougher opposition during the war as weaker elements combine their forces in their struggle for survival.
* Elemental armies may trade a certain number of cards for certain battles as a result of an allied negotiation
* Elemental armies may send reinforcements to another army to fight (and win) a certain battle

- Strengthen upped cards/ upped players
-> Certain elements only start to shine when being allowed to use upped cards. A shrieker rush/ destroyer-rush works perfectly unupped, an entropy mutation deck or a water-deck doesn't.
* Erase (or decrease) the difference between unupped and upped cards.
* A strong player brings 500 upped cards to his team? -> upped he will play!

- Allow shards
-> E.g. a water-stall works best when beefed up with a couple SoGs. (Ask the master  ) A shrieker-/ destroyer-rush would only suffer from it.

[$$$man]

Is an "imbalance" due to more experienced players really all that much of a problem?

14-0

How's doing again? 

Exactly ... Rasta, Jmizz and Perv don't exactly have reputation for being total newbies here.

If anything, Earth is doing so well because:
Earth is doing well in any tourney-design that limits decks/vaults along the lines of elemental composition.
I couldn't find any link to view the initial vaults (or any vault for that matter) but I suppose team earth set up something like 18 grabs, 18 shriekers, 18 golems, 12 antlions (upped), 18 earthquakes, 18 Pulverizers, 6 destroyers, 6 rewinds ... ?? - The well proven "total smack down" - strategy that plays towards the few most efficient pvp-decks known to elements-players.
From what I understand, you can re-use the cards deployed in battle as long as you don't lose a battle ... so where does that take a strategy that opts towards playing every battle with a 80% win-rate-shrieker-rush and simply keeping and reusing those cards throughout the whole war?

The problem here is not at all that certain teams have players with a 150k+ score or a 400+ post-count. (Even if that were really the case, shouldn't the masters be smart enough to do all in their power to recruit those "invincible heroes" for the next war and thus bring balance to the forces?)

The real problem is, once again, elemental imbalance as such.

---

Suggestions:

- Decrease the impact of elementally oriented composition:
-> Limiting the vault composition further will increase the risk of focusing on specialized decks like a 18/6/6 shrieker rush. One unlucky battle and the shrieker-reserve is down to nothing ...
* max. 12 copies of each card of "your element" (6 cards for "other elements")
* max. (and min.?) 50% vault composition of "your element" (and not just min. 50%)

- Introduce a "wear-off" effect:
-> Even a hardy shrieker should get tired of having to fight every battle all the time while the rest of the army stands by idly.
* make it e.g. something like "the same cards/decks may only be used every other game"
* or: "after being used 5 times a specific card `wears off´and has to be taken out of the vault"

- Strengthen an alliance-system (is there anything like his yet?)
-> Top-teams will face a rougher opposition during the war as weaker elements combine their forces in their struggle for survival.
* Elemental armies may trade a certain number of cards for certain battles as a result of an allied negotiation
* Elemental armies may send reinforcements to another army to fight (and win) a certain battle

- Strengthen upped cards/ upped players
-> Certain elements only start to shine when being allowed to use upped cards. A shrieker rush/ destroyer-rush works perfectly unupped, an entropy mutation deck or a water-deck doesn't.
* Erase (or decrease) the difference between unupped and upped cards.
* A strong player brings 500 upped cards to his team? -> upped he will play!

- Allow shards
-> E.g. a water-stall works best when beefed up with a couple SoGs. (Ask the master  ) A shrieker-/ destroyer-rush would only suffer from it.

again, im tired of everyone saying all we use is the fricken shrieker rush, first of all jangoo and no offense but look at the rules(no upped cards) and second go look at the battle thread and the decks we used. Essentially all you are trying to do is nerf shrieker and other rushes(which we hardly use) and buff other elements.

[Jangoo]

again, im tired of everyone saying all we use is the fricken shrieker rush, first of all jangoo and no offense but look at the rules(no upped cards) and second go look at the battle thread and the decks we used.

First, so what did you use?
An equally devastating (and proven) Pulverizer + Quicksand denial strat? Another well-known combination of gravity and earth? Or maybe a devourer + quicksand-denial strat? Or maybe just a plain old shrieker + golems (fire/earth, no grabs) offense-strat? (where e.g. entropy doesn't even have decent straight attackers).

Of course team-earth has probably played skillfully and is made up of very good players! This still doesn't entirely take the edge of the fact that EARTH IS ONE HELL OF A STRONG ELEMENT EITHER WAY. I don't think anybody can deny that.
My point here is not to focus on that single shrieker-rush ... I simply used the shrieker rush to make it really clear for everyone how good Earth is. You could go on with anything else really such as:
"Water has congeal which is really awesome - Earth has BBlood which is even a bit better.",
"Life has E.bonds, staffs and heals which keeps them alive - Earth has StoneSkin which beats them to it.",
"Light, Water, Time has that awesome shield - Earth has an awesome shield too."
"Fire has the best straight attackers - Earth doesn't lag behind much."
"Entropy has those twisted mutations - So? Why would an earth deck really care?"
"..."

Second, "no upped cards" is exactly part of my point why certain elements are stronger than others ... please don't nail me down on "destroyers" being an upped cards where you could just as well read it as "lava-golem" ... Also, from what I read at least the masters themselves are allowed to play upped, right?

Third, would the "battle thread" be "Battle results" where you will have to sort out the matches by skipping through 36 topics and sorting them by the names of the earth-team members?

[$$$man]

again, im tired of everyone saying all we use is the fricken shrieker rush, first of all jangoo and no offense but look at the rules(no upped cards) and second go look at the battle thread and the decks we used.

First, so what did you use?
An equally devastating (and proven) Pulverizer + Quicksand denial strat? Another well-known combination of gravity and earth? Or maybe a devourer + quicksand-denial strat? Or maybe just a plain old shrieker + golems (fire/earth, no grabs) offense-strat? (where e.g. entropy doesn't even have decent straight attackers).
My point here is not to focus on that single shrieker-rush but simply: EARTH IS ONE HELL OF A STRONG ELEMENT EITHER WAY. I don't think anybody can deny that. I simply used the shrieker rush to make it really clear for everyone ...

Second, "no upped cards" is exactly part of my point why certain elements are stronger than others ... please don't nail me down on "destroyers" being an upped cards where you could just as well read it as "lava-golem" ... Also, from what I read at least the masters themselves are allowed to play upped, right?

Third, would the "battle thread" be "Battle results" where you will have to sort out the matches by skipping through 36 topics and sorting them by the names of the earth-team members?

im srry if that came off hostile but the thing is you said shrieker rush which simply put me over the top because almost all our opponents tried to counter shrieker rush it's like wtf? we have other stuff i agree with you on the upped card thing i guess.

[Jangoo]

Oops, edited my post in the meantime to elaborate a little more ... doesn't change much though.

[Jumbalumba]

I still feel we need something to more explicitly go to disadvantaging teams that win and boosting teams that lose. Of course this would not be necessary if everything is nicely balanced and there are very few restrictions.

Again it is necessary to point out that the constituency of (the people in) teams is hardly a factor, in my opinion anyway. Elements is not a deep enough game for there to really be a difference between people who have played for over a year and people who have played a couple of months.

[$$$man]

I still feel we need something to more explicitly go to disadvantaging teams that win and boosting teams that lose. Of course this would not be necessary if everything is nicely balanced and there are very few restrictions.

Again it is necessary to point out that the constituency of (the people in) teams is hardly a factor, in my opinion anyway. Elements is not a deep enough game for there to really be a difference between people who have played for over a year and people who have played a couple of months.

i think the winners are off fine here but the problem is the losers imo are overly penalized i mean 30 or even 24 cards any team that even screws up a little has a low chance of making it to round 3 i don't know what happened to life but water lost because of bad deckbuilding i suggest some sort of thing that allows 2 off-element cards to be swapped for one on element card