Improvements

[Malduk]

Yeah, I get the reasoning, I just disagree with them. Not the first time or the last time, just giving alternative opinion that can and doesnt have to be taken into consideration.
Making those skills in "other" skill tree means they are also skills you need to learn.
The way I see it, it wasnt Life element that gave Lava Golems to Fire, and Water didnt give them Rage potions. All elements weapons, shields etc etc were always part of that element, made within the element itself.

Looking from a playing point of view, it makes it increasingly harder to make stuff from your own element, for your own element. That being good or bad thing is a subjective I guess.

As for pricelist, there isnt any, I think I read somewhere (from you), that building improvements would be expensive, which makes sense too. Maybe I'm just imagining things.

[Scaredgirl]

Making those skills in "other" skill tree means they are also skills you need to learn.
The way I see it, it wasnt Life element that gave Lava Golems to Fire, and Water didnt give them Rage potions. All elements weapons, shields etc etc were always part of that element, made within the element itself.

Idea is to make all elements special by giving them totally different skills. If we gave them same or similar skills, there would be less point in traveling around the map and learning new things. Everyone would just stay home and grind resources.

It's like this. Back in the day, when you wanted to make silk, you didn't go to Sweden and ask Lars to teach you the secrets of silk making, you went to China to talk to Zhou. These improvements are the same way. If you want to learn a skill, you need to travel to a place where they know this skill. You cannot just as your village teacher to teach you "other" skill.

Remember that these improvements are supposed to be special. All hexes will have these (invisible) basic improvements that all elements can build,  but if you want a special improvement to increase the number of resources produces, you need a know how to build and operate that special improvement.

I do agree that having an "other" skill tree with less powerful "basic" skills could be useful. In fact, that's where all the skills like trading, resource gathering etc. were originally supposed to be. I had planned on having a system where you gained two kinds of skill points: ones that game you "other" skills, and once that gave you more powerful "elemental" skill. However I got rid of it because I thought that it would make things too complex.

As for pricelist, there isnt any, I think I read somewhere (from you), that building improvements would be expensive, which makes sense too. Maybe I'm just imagining things.

Time is money, and building improvements cost time. While you are building that shiny new windmill, others are running around earning cash. And when you are done, they will probably come and destroy it. That is the "price" of improvements.

If you read me saying something about improvements costing money, that was probably long time ago before we had skill trees. All the topics that were started before skill trees came to be, are probably full of bad information. WoE rules sticky is the best place to get up-to-date information.

[Malduk]

For the sake of argumenting my point of view, yeah, if you wanted Katana, you go to Japan, if you wanted Longsword, you go to europeans. However, those are both swords. Some have rice fields, some have cotton fields, both are taking advantage of their land.
In elements, you go to water to learn Congeals, but you dont go to water to learn Rage pots. You should go to Fire for that. Zhou will just give you silk, he wont give you fur, cotton cloth etc.

Idea is to make all elements special by giving them totally different skills. If we gave them same or similar skills, there would be less point in traveling around the map and learning new things. Everyone would just stay home and grind resources.

This is probably the reason why we disagree. IMO elements already are different, and I see no need to further emphasize that.
Your village teacher definitely wont be able to teach you how to build/use all creatures, spells, permanents etc in the game, but why wouldnt he be able to teach you how to use your OWN elemental spells?

Anyway, that is why the whole elemental based skills were weird to me. I dont really have anything against things being setup that way, I just find it actually more complex than having the "other" tree. Players will likely have to travel around to get off-element cards. But with this skill tree, they will also have to travel around to make their own element cards. Its a lot of traveling just to be able to start building a deck
And the fact that you NEED to constantly travel (cards, quests, tournaments etc) makes war something you really do not want to do. Like ever.

I'm sure Alpha/Beta will give lots of answers to how things will actually develop, but skill system could be a pain to rework if it happens to be detrimental to progress of the event.

As for pricelist, there isnt any, I think I read somewhere (from you), that building improvements would be expensive, which makes sense too. Maybe I'm just imagining things.

Time is money, and building improvements cost time. While you are building that shiny new windmill, others are running around earning cash. And when you are done, they will probably come and destroy it. That is the "price" of improvements.

If you read me saying something about improvements costing money, that was probably long time ago before we had skill trees. All the topics that were started before skill trees came to be, are probably full of bad information. WoE rules sticky is the best place to get up-to-date information.

Yeah, I was under the impression that improvements will cost loads of electrum. Skill and time system would probably work well.

[Ekki]

ScaredGirl has already said that the elements will try to be balanced in general, but unbalanced in some specific stuff (such as the map, the decks, etc). I think making this somehow unbalanced won't hurt too much... The fact that you can learn this with any element already balances it a bit, so I don't worry.

I'm in favour of big differences between the elements, so I like this the way it is

[Xinef]

The way I see it, if you are let's say a Fire elemental, and you want Rage Potions and a Fire Buckler for your deck, you can do a number of things:

- find a player in your neighborhood who is willing to sell those
- find a player who is willing to craft those for a price
- buy it in an auction
- go to that element's territory and learn the skill
- look for a quest that might reward you with these
- look for a player you might loot these from

If you want a windmill, you can:

-find a player from your team who can build it
-find a player from an allied team who can build it
-find a player neutral to you, who... can build it!
-learn the skill
-capture some random windmill you encountered on your path (just defeat that Don Kichote knight who defends it with an Entropy/Time/Earth deck)

Generally, if one out of 5 or even one out of 10 players in your team knows how to craft these items, the second option is probably one of the most cost efficient. Assuming that 1 out of 10 Fire elementals plans on developing some Water skills, while some other chooses Earth skills as secondary isn't a bad assumption in my opinion. People have different preferences. Some people might even take all the crafting skills, since they are Tier 1, and these people might work as suppliers for other team members, you bring them gold and cards, they give you crafted items in return.

One thing I like about this whole system though is that in case your element is at war with eg. Earth, you can't buy shields from Earth and thus the prices rise, especially while during the war some shields are lost. Other elements might sell you those for an increased price for example.

On the other hand, someone might make an alliance with let's say Gravity, simply to ensure an easy access to siege weapons. You might want alliance with Earth to make mines or with Air to make windmills. This encourages making important strategic decisions like "We can do without weapons for a while, we attack Fire, we have a big supply of alchemy cards, we attack Water, we can't afford to lose our access to Pendulums, we don't attack Time, we need to strengthen our economy, we make an alliance with Air, but after building some windmills we betray them...

If every element had equal access to every skill and every game mechanic, it would be a boring "We attack team A since we don't like them, we attack team B, since they are wealthy, we don't attack team C since they are well armed". The problem is that elements become too similar, and there is little economic and strategic difference between fighting different elements. Of course, the PvP part is still different, but I'd say it is great when elements differ in economy too.

[TimerClock14]

*eyetwitch* .....so....much....text.....

Also, We should be able to pay a little to upgrade the efficiency of our improvements. Just an idea...

[Ekki]

The way I see it, if you are let's say a Fire elemental, and you want Rage Potions and a Fire Buckler for your deck, you can do a number of things:

- find a player in your neighborhood who is willing to sell those
- find a player who is willing to craft those for a price
- buy it in an auction
- go to that element's territory and learn the skill
- look for a quest that might reward you with these
- look for a player you might loot these from

If you want a windmill, you can:

-find a player from your team who can build it
-find a player from an allied team who can build it
-find a player neutral to you, who... can build it!
-learn the skill
-capture some random windmill you encountered on your path (just defeat that Don Kichote knight who defends it with an Entropy/Time/Earth deck)

Generally, if one out of 5 or even one out of 10 players in your team knows how to craft these items, the second option is probably one of the most cost efficient. Assuming that 1 out of 10 Fire elementals plans on developing some Water skills, while some other chooses Earth skills as secondary isn't a bad assumption in my opinion. People have different preferences. Some people might even take all the crafting skills, since they are Tier 1, and these people might work as suppliers for other team members, you bring them gold and cards, they give you crafted items in return.

One thing I like about this whole system though is that in case your element is at war with eg. Earth, you can't buy shields from Earth and thus the prices rise, especially while during the war some shields are lost. Other elements might sell you those for an increased price for example.

On the other hand, someone might make an alliance with let's say Gravity, simply to ensure an easy access to siege weapons. You might want alliance with Earth to make mines or with Air to make windmills. This encourages making important strategic decisions like "We can do without weapons for a while, we attack Fire, we have a big supply of alchemy cards, we attack Water, we can't afford to lose our access to Pendulums, we don't attack Time, we need to strengthen our economy, we make an alliance with Air, but after building some windmills we betray them...

If every element had equal access to every skill and every game mechanic, it would be a boring "We attack team A since we don't like them, we attack team B, since they are wealthy, we don't attack team C since they are well armed". The problem is that elements become too similar, and there is little economic and strategic difference between fighting different elements. Of course, the PvP part is still different, but I'd say it is great when elements differ in economy too.

^^This