Elements. Fantasy cards game

[Rubber Rodger]

What/who are the fake gods?

I haven't seen those yet.

[gambrinous]

Do the quests til you get the option to upgrade cards / fight fake gods. They have decks with every card upgraded; get 200 life and draw 2 cards / turn. It's mental basically

[ooThe Eternaloo]

They also have huge decks, 100 or more cards if I remember, so no way to just wait it out

[r3h0ld3r]

Is it just me or did the computer get extremely harder? I just got annihilated by a level 1. With the same deck I would always guarantee a win with level 2 and most of the time level 3, but now I can't even beat a level one.

Sucks because I was in the process of buying new cards to build a better, more exciting deck, but I log on today and I'm stuck below 10 electrum because I can't win a match.

[TICio]

The upgrades ****ed up low lvls of farming gold. And the rewards are still so bad that it makes no sence..
Only players that already have lots of gold can still farm them with upgraded decks.

[marauder68]

My prediction- upgraded earthquake will show up in every single deck. The best card in the game got even better.

Is it just me or are half the decks in the top 50 earthquake already?

[ggabriel]

Is phase dragon really that big of a deal? It's a nightmare for decks that revolve around killing creatures for control, sure, but the fact that a strong counter exists to creature killing strategies is generally a good thing balancewise, and mono-aether has plenty of vulnerabilities that other strategies can exploit.



On another note, though, the grind in this game is really getting to be excessive. The cash penalties for losing are really crippling; if you don't already have a decent deck it's very hard to earn money to get a decent deck. Want to try out a new deck? Not only do you have to sink out an even more ungodly sum of cash to buy it, but if it turns out your strategy is weak or needs tuning it costs you even more money to take it into battle and experiment! Worse, even if you wanted to go back and spend hours farming the mid-level AIs at 10 or 15 gold a pop, fighting the AI efficiently calls for a different deck orientation than fighting other players competitively--which means more cards and more money that you have to grind for in order to be able to grind effectively.

Top 50 used to be a decent way to get money to shore up your deck if it wasn't quite up to par for PvP, but now that many top 50 decks are full of upgrades it's punishingly difficult. Upgrades in general seem to really hurt newer players; not only are they ridiculously expensive to get in quantity, but from what I can tell it doesn't seem like you actually can get upgraded cards from top 50 or player battles, only false gods. If this is true that's insane--running up against an upgraded deck in top 50 or PvP means you're facing much higher risk than before without any corresponding increase in reward. Please tell me if I'm wrong, as it's getting really frustrating trying to build new decks and I'd love to see a silver lining in all this.

[Midge8000]

I managed to beat a fake god with a time/earth deck but I was extremely lucky because I managed to get eternity out early, which really helped because it was gravity and had those fire eater things(which have ablaze) and the otyughs with 4 hp couldn't eat my elite shriekers. I won an upgraded momentum which was worth 868 electrum, so if you can consistantly beat fake gods you could get loads of electrum from selling the cards you win.

[ggabriel]

I managed to beat a fake god with a time/earth deck but I was extremely lucky because I managed to get eternity out early, which really helped because it was gravity and had those fire eater things(which have ablaze) and the otyughs with 4 hp couldn't eat my elite shriekers. I won an upgraded momentum which was worth 868 electrum, so if you can consistantly beat fake gods you could get loads of electrum from selling the cards you win.

The upgrade cards are hardly guaranteed; I've won 4 or 5 times now and only won a single upgraded card, so even after selling it I've got less money now than when I started out. I've had several victories but still only one won upgraded card, so I've made maybe 1000 gold total off of the false gods from selling that card + a couple of piddly cash prizes--but I've ended up spending a bit more than that just paying the ante to fight them.

It's still awesome if you're lucky, sure, but you'd need to be able to win with a pretty high rate of consistency and that's easier said than done--you can't choose which one you fight and they're a fairly diverse bunch, so might have to cough up a bit of cash before you get one that your deck works well against. They're also extremely unforgiving even if you have a deck fairly well suited to facing them, so if your draw is even a little unlucky you probably lose anyhow.

[marauder68]

This game has just gotten more and more frustrating. I think I'm going to take a break for a while. If the computer has darkness in its deck and 40-50 card deck by turn 5 it has 4-5 devourers out EVERY SINGLE GAME. NO EXCEPTIONS. I have 6 of a certain card in a 30 card deck and I NEVER have more than 2 of them by turn 6.

I tried a new strategy, it wasnt working. After a few games I got sick of being screwed at the start so I tossed in 6 of extra pillars- for a total of 20 in a 36 card deck. 5 games out of 7 I only had 2 in my starting hand and the other 2 games- I had 6 pillars and drew pillars the first 4 turns.

And that's not to mention the fact of losing gold at a sickening pace since the update. I have had to sell off tons of cards in order to just keep playing- hoping to upgrade any cards isnt going to happen for a long time.

[Kaythal]

How much is the Metamorphosis cost now? It says 100 but I have 130e and I can't shift: it says "Pick up your new element first"

Edit: I reached 155 and was able to shift with 55coins remaining, seems there's a bug in the check

[r3h0ld3r]

How much is the Metamorphosis cost now? It says 100 but I have 130e and I can't shift: it says "Pick up your new element first"

Edit: I reached 155 and was able to shift with 55coins remaining, seems there's a bug in the check

I was just about to post this. I have 100 and I was planning on changing but I couldn't.

[TICio]

Well i stoped playing..hoping for an update to balance the game again.
Beated 3times more that fakegods crap, +0 cards,bb money, top 50 its hard has hell with upgraded decks cant farm again gold to try the gods, and not gona sell cards again, i lose more that i win in Fgods/top50.

My sugestions.
-imaterial can be aftected by non direct efects, like area dmg/efects, shield efects/dmg, like in magic.
-more rewards/gold.
-new lvl below top50 with no upgraded cards, but with nice gold rewards.
-fakegods reward like 6spins/1500gold/1 upgraded card at least.
-let players experience more decks/strategies/pve/pvp with cheeper prices, new players have no chance in here.

[Blue Ray]

I

Top 50 used to be a decent way to get money to shore up your deck if it wasn't quite up to par for PvP, but now that many top 50 decks are full of upgrades it's punishingly difficult. Upgrades in general seem to really hurt newer players; not only are they ridiculously expensive to get in quantity, but from what I can tell it doesn't seem like you actually can get upgraded cards from top 50 or player battles, only false gods. If this is true that's insane--running up against an upgraded deck in top 50 or PvP means you're facing much higher risk than before without any corresponding increase in reward. Please tell me if I'm wrong, as it's getting really frustrating trying to build new decks and I'd love to see a silver lining in all this.

Yes, I did notice that. I fought against a lvl 4 with a completely updated darkness deck...and I mean everything, dragons, pests, vampire, darkness tower, steal.

When I won, I won 2 spins 1 black dragon and the other darkness pillar. Yet both were non-updated. What the hell is up with that?

[DarkGate]

You can't win upgraded cards from T50 and such. You can only win the nonupgraded version of it. It is only possible to win upped cards from the false gods.

[marauder68]

You can't win upgraded cards from T50 and such. You can only win the nonupgraded version of it. It is only possible to win upped cards from the false gods.

Exactly. Wouldn't want to make it possible for non-upgraded decks to have an opportunity to compete against all-upgraded decks by being able to improve on those rare chances the non-upgraded deck might win.

[Ragorak2]

hey zanzarino, i think there is some sort of bug with the game getting updated, .cause appearently the upgraded aether deck i was testing in beta got carried over into the main game, along with the mark of aether, with it draining my cash for some of the upgrades appearently. so now im stuck with a half upgraded aether deck that you appearently nerfed, and no cash to upgrade the fire deck that i desperately wanted to upgrade -.-, so is there anyway you could un-upgrade the cards and refund the coins, or at least do a rollback even though that means i probably wont get everything refunded plz

[NeverBee]

Nice to see "my" idea with the beginning player only drawing 7 cards was implemented. I still like to a surrender button for pvp. Its frustrating to see players always leave the game when they are beat next turn and know it and you have to sit there and wait till they time out.
Additionaly i have to say the game looses much of its motivation to me because the upgrades are so damn expensiv. To upgrade a single deck, lets say it has 45 cards, you need nearly 70k coins. Cmon, thats sick, i dont think people like to play weeks and weeks to get their deck upgraded, and than finally loose motivation for it and try sometihng else. When i reached that point in World of Warcraft, where it wasn't the fun i layed for but just the "farming" i quit the game and i think with that upgrades its the same. I see lots of people not playing for fun anymore but just to get the coins to upgrade their cards. Maybe you should include new cards for every element every few weeks to keep people play the game, not just the "farming" coins part.And dont tell me i can win with an unupgrade deck, too. Sure you can with a good counter or luck but a deck is so much more powerful with upgraded cards.
I played the game for about 20+ hours now and i dont nearly have the rares i'd like to have. I think thats more than enough motivation to keep playing. But 1500 coins for an upgrade, cmon, thats far to much. Maybe you should lower that price. I know thats not fair for all those people who invested the coins in the last days, but i think there will be more than enough players who just dont have any motivation to "grind" that much coins and dont want to play with an deck that has not nearly the potential it would have with upgraded cards when they come up with a new deck idea. My suggestion is an upgraded pillar costssomething around 100-200 and another upgraded card costs about 300-400. Thats a lot of hours to play when you want to upgrade your deck but its not weeks or month. So there is a chance you complete your deck in days, and still try something else after it.

Just my 2 Cent

[ggabriel]

Exactly. Wouldn't want to make it possible for non-upgraded decks to have an opportunity to compete against all-upgraded decks by being able to improve on those rare chances the non-upgraded deck might win.

Agreed. It's ridiculous that you can end up fighting decks with 50%+ upgraded cards and all you get if you win is 20-60 coins and a small chance to win a non-upgraded card--but getting curb-stomped by their uber deck still costs you 15 or 20 coins and wastes your time. I can maybe, maybe understand not wanting to give out upgraded cards that frequently (even though I personally disagree; I don't think there's ever a good reason to have more than a token amount of grinding), but c'mon, at least give players something for beating players with upgraded decks.

Just tossing out some ideas to make the upgrade system more bearable:

-If you're not going to give a chance to get upgraded cards by beating upgraded decks, at least put in some kind of monetary reward. Such as, say, if you spin and get a card that the other player has upgrades of, you might only get the regular card but you get a gold bonus. Like 100 gold x the number of upgraded copies of that card.

-Or make it so you get a number of extra copies of that card equal to the number of upgrades the other player had of that card. Giving out extra cards means there's still a financial incentive there, but has the added bonus that you can take the cards and use them yourself, making it even easier to build new decks. If you want to make it really wild, have it give out bonus spins instead of duplicate cards (except on pillars I guess, otherwise all-pillar decks could create an infinite loop); random rewards tend to be more attractive psychologically than fixed ones.

-Alternately, cut out randomness altogether and just give a flat gold premium for beating heavily upgraded decks. Like say you get a bonus of 150 gold x whatever percentage of the deck is upgraded (beating a fully upgraded deck is +150 gold, beating a deck that's half upgraded is +75, etc.)

-Reduce the disparity in cards by increasing rewards across the board, or decreasing upgrade costs. I think increasing money flow is more important though; decreasing upgrade costs alone would simply increase the number of upgraded decks which makes it even harder for newbies to get into the game and get a decent deck set up.

-Implement a limit on the number of upgraded cards players can have in their deck. Such as say a flat limit of 1-3 upgraded cards per deck or a fixed percentage of about 5-10%. That way players with upgrades don't have such a huge advantage over players without them, and it's much more reasonable to get a "fully upgraded" deck. As an added bonus, having to pick and choose your upgrades may help add depth to deck building--you have to make a choice instead of just upgrading everything you're willing to spend the time grinding for. Alternately, instead of limiting number of cards you could limit upgrades to a single type of upgraded card but allow duplicates--this helps limit the impact of luck of the draw, and would also work a lot better for upgraded cards that are functionally different from their base card (like elite firefly queen, etc.)

-If you really absolutely want players to suffer and won't give them any rewards for fighting challenging player decks or make it substantially easier in any way to compete, then at the very least have enough mercy to waive the gold loss. It's bad that a new player taking their deck into higher level matches gets penalized for losing, it is downright sadistic that they get penalized for losing against a deck full of upgrades. I think the gold loss is a bad idea period, but if nothing else I think if a PvP/top 50 opponent has upgraded cards and you don't then there should be no gold loss for losing.

[CB!]

I don't really think it's that hard for a newbie to get an established deck. Everyone seems to forget about what they hated about the PVP reward system. There's a huge incentive for newbies to play PVP battles (although I still think this needs to be a separate scoring/ranking system). I started up a new account with an aether deck just to see how 'hard' it was going to be, and after 11 matches, my score is 174, and currently gold is at 320. Most of that I got from PVP battles. I figure in another hour or so I can have 500 points, get a lobotomizer and really start to focus on a solid deck. Progress on my main account is pretty slow going, though. I just don't think it's as hard as some people think for a newbie to get started. Just my thoughts.