Cocofang

Does that count as a birthday? It's more like a two year pregnancy anniversary.

Composed decks are a not a good idea because it completely removes an entire aspect of the game: Customizing your own deck to suite your playstyle and strategy. Especially if the cards in these decks are not randomized but predetermined by a bunch of "pro PvP players", then you get a scenario where these guys already have the deck figured out, because they built it, while the rest still has to adapt. Horrible if you want to have some sort of integrity in your PvP scene. Having active competitors decide the terms for the entire field is a nightmare to justify. Worst case scenario is if one (or a few) composed deck turns out to be way stronger than others. So not only do you have the balance of single cards and their interactions, you are just begging for another balance issue. It also opens up the option to build specific counters to composed decks, if you have the cards available yourself. PvP strives on a naturally developing and vivid meta game. Where one strategy turns out to be dominant, so people search for counters and eventually overwhelm the previously dominant strategy, so this counter now becomes the dominant strategy, so people search for counters to that once again. Strategies can come back, be niche or vanish entirely if the scene develops far enough. Different strategies can be viable for different levels of skill. It is just a giant, organic mess and cracking the ever changing code is what a lot of competitors strive for. This is the meta-game. It all happens naturally, provided something isn't completely, overwhelmingly overpowered. It survives on the premise of "If there are enough options, people will figure problems out themselves". If you introduce known quantities in composed decks, you hamper this development and instead force your own vision of how PvP should look like. It makes it feel stale and artificial. Does this truly lower the entrance barrier to PvP? People starting out would most likely pick a composed deck and because they get matched against other beginners, would fight against other composed decks. There might develop a predictable Rock, Paper, Scissors scenario, where you see "Ah, he has that other composed deck which is strong against my composed deck, so the odds are in his favor already". They also learn a different skill altogether: Adapting to the known decks you and your opponent are given instead of creating your own. Once they start playing against people that make their own decks, this won't help them. Giving beginners something to kickstart their PvP experience is good, but it shouldn't be at the cost of so many different aspects. Most importantly deck building and the meta game. No matter the solution, it should never take away from these two aspects.

Yes, there are models that allow to trade money in order to safe time. Those commonly involve unnecessary, forced grinds in order to manipulate people into spending. Either way you don't think the other way around, that there are people that spend time AND money and these pull ahead by a fucking landslide, which can be especially problematic in a game that involves an economy.

You work really fast. I am looking forward to what will become of the site. Another suggestion would be to mark the difference between affinities in color, so you see it at a glace. Provided all the info text for the cards are correct, I could help you with that and summarize all differences so you just have to mark them without looking for them yourself.

Wow, that was fast! But for showing a single card it is pretty slow because it has to load the entire thing instead of just the one card. With the way the website currently works, would it be possible to click a card with the middle mouse button to open a new tab only with info on the specific card?

I like this a lot. Has so many filter options. It's great! Would it be possible to make it so you can open single cards with a full description in a new window/tab to show them to other people?

See title. Never got that. You always pay more than straight up summoning the card.

Roots were so counter-intuitive. Only units that were idle actually counted as support. So it could mess up your entire network if some random unit that was just supposed to connect the supports to the main-unit hogged up the boost by attacking. Root Nexus made that much more reliable and easier to set up. Pretty powerful card that made it possible to clog up enemy spawns on some maps indefinitely.

Enlighten. It was the most powerful spell at one point and a standard in almost any hight tier deck. It dropped in value after some expansions and it got nerfed too if I remember correctly. But it was an absolute chase-card.

Can you add the option to open cards in a new tab (through clicking middle mouse button)? Would make it much easier to navigate through multiple ones. Right now you can only click on a card, it opens in he same window and when going back you have to sort through the entire list again.

It doesn't matter who is behind it from the customer-viewpoint as the product is almost identical. It's irrelevant on my front and on everyone elses who just sees the result. Having to spend on it again after you already payed in the original and possibly had everything that you wanted would leave a sour taste in the mouth. This is a pretty unique situation and something they have to be mindful of. And honestly, who wouldn't enjoy a game more if it didn't constantly try to manipulate you into spending money? Free2Play games mostly work with psychological warfare against their own customers. A bit of unnecessary grind there, a bit of a tease here, a bit of a wasted minute somewhere else or a casual reminder that a paying player has it better. It all adds up to constant pressure in an attempt to get you to just dump money and be done with it. This is how the F2P model operates. Now, the perfect, ideal situation would be if free and paying members were completely even from any gameplay/convenience/functionality/access perspective and support would either be given because of an honest interest in the project or to get superficial goodies that give no advantage. And, yes, people LOVE superficial goodies, these definitely sell. If this can/will be realized with Skylords Reborn? Who knows. But what consumer in their right mind would be against consumer convenience.

The original BF had promo cards with an alternate model/skin and were fully upgraded. If you have capable artists and modelers on board, you could always sell these but without the advantage of having it fully upgraded of course. Basically a skin that you can buy and then attach to the respective card. If you want to be extra ethical about it, you could make these skins unlockable through in-game currency (but with appropriate time investment). People often pay a metric fuckton of money for their stuff to look cool. And the promo cards did look really sick compared to the regular ones. I see three problems with this: The skins can be immersion breaking. Like a Batariel with a candy cone as a weapon or something ridiculous like that. This should probably be avoided since you will have the units of other players around you most of the time and it can get annoying if there are total freakshows running around. Second problem is that popular units/cards will see more play and are therefore more attractive targets for a skin as sales are more likely. This will lead to a disparity between when it comes to skin-choices with go-to cards having a lot of optional skins, while bad cards having none. This can be frustrating for players that use niche decks with unpopular cards but still want a cool looking army. And last, probably the most important problem, when BF started going downhill and more and more budget decisions were made, they re-used enemies as cards and a lot of them, especially units, were simply reskinned, existing models. If you add skins to that mix of already existing reskins, it could lead to a real mess. The last point probably rules out skins altogether but cosmetics are generally the most fair microtransaction you can have. Unfortunately its hard to apply that to BF after they went the "re-using models with different skins and selling them as new units"-route. I would love to see the game go a route that doesn't drive a wedge between paying and free players while keeping the feel of a collectible trading card game (unlocking new cards, opening boosters, trading cards). Personally, I feel like everyone should have the same shot at unlocking cards and upgrading them. It is a re-release after all and a lot of people, including myself, already paid their fair share in the original. And if I don't feel like the game is constantly extending slimy, black tentacles towards my wallet, I would be more willing to support it simply to show my approval.

If they actively lock content/functionality behind a paywall or want reoccurring payments, I would be fucking out. Forcing grinds onto people to manipulate them into coughing up money was basically what the original BF did and it was tedious as hell. If they absolutely want to have microtransactions in this reboot, the most ethical way to go about it would be cosmetics that you can ALSO unlock by playing (albeit associated with a lot of playtime because they are in no way essential). For example the Harvester had a promo version that was fully upgraded and had a different skin. You could sell these different skins (without the upgraded part) that you could attach to the respective card. The problem is that BF was built from the ground up to support a payment model that is based on collectible trading cards. Get randomized stuff from boosters (mostly just trash) or buy it directly from the AH. Either way, you needed BFP. What I would love to see is that you start with a basic set of cards, maybe even the ones you got from the original BF. Then, after you finish a certain map you have the choice between one predetermined card of your choosing or a randomized (maybe map-specific) booster. That would retain the "collectible trading cards" feeling without contaminating it with a sleazy crash grab. Or something like that. Basically, what would maybe even incentivize me to pay a couple bucks is, if I could see that they don't actively impede people in order to get them to pay money. No forced grinds or restrictions. A 100% leveled playing field between paying and non-paying players. But without something that inspires my honest support, I really don't feel like paying for something again that I already had.

The craziest news about this whole thing is EA is fine with it with some obvious restrictions. Normally big publishers just sit on their IPs and let the rot, even if they don't even want them anymore. In the past people wanted to buy IPs from various publishers to revive some of them, yet were denied. So this is pretty huge actually. However: THIS made me instantly wary. Back then BF was pretty much the game that taught me to monitor my spending habits when it comes to endless money dump-games. I didn't break the bank but definitely spent more than I want to know. Now, with that in mind, and also the general fact that a lot of people already paid for this exact thing in the past, I really can't see myself spending money once again. There was this thing going around that it would be completely free and only fueled by donations and that would have been fine by me. But now with the prospect that there might be things coming that you have to pay for? The old BF wasn't P2W either and the grind for new cards was still tedious as hell. I paid my share for BF back in the day and I won't do it again. For me, as the consumer, it doesn't matter if the people behind it are different. It's still the same thing (or supposed to be). I also know that servers and maintenance can't be paid with by love and passion. But with this I am kinda on the fence again. If mechanics get designed for the sake of pushing some sales onto people (like grinds for points to unlock content instead of using the shortcut and spend money), it would be a huge bummer.