Eirias

Yep! I'll just make these (rn aiming for 2x a month, but might do more/less depending on participation) and I'll record who submits the correct answer and how quickly. I'm trying to make the puzzles pretty hard though, so the number of winners might be low. This first one, for instance, is devious. It's really cool, but super hard--I've never seen anyone (besides myself) solve it irl, although of course you guys will have access to the internet and at least a week Still figuring out how I want to keep score, but it will basically be cumulative for all the challenges, and I'm going to try to make them super diverse...so if I give y'all a math one and you don't have the math background to solve it, make an attempt (participation points!) but don't give up, because next time I might have you hunt something on the internet, or write submit "10 things to buy at Walmart to mess with the cashier" (which would be subjective and based on quality of answer, not time submitted) or something like that.

Sorry, I know, I'm terrible. What am I, 6 months late? I know the first challenge (it's a logic riddle). I'm working on making a video for it. Posting here so I can't go back and bail. Also making the post before I make the video, because videoediting is hard and I want to make sure there's still interest in this.

What do those stats mean?

Yeah. Tome decks are always U2, and they can be added to any other deck. After the time period (2 weeks) it's removed any you get another random set of cards.

As I see it: the pros of your system are the you can customize your deck, with the con of sometimes not being able to play at all. In my system: con of not being able to customize (which I think is a good thing, because it makes you get your own cards) with the pro of always being 100% competitive. I have no idea what you mean. Are you suggesting that players with tome decks will play those with normal decks? There's not a faster way to kill tome (well, if it wasn't dead anyway). I don't think tome was ever competitive, or ever CAN be competitive, but it's a nice game mode to mess around in, and you can use the tome decks to supplement your normal cards.

Ah, I see where I wasn't clear. No the deck would be random. So everyone will have a different faction and a different iteration of that faction at any given time. There will be equal odds of getting every faction (although maybe it might be a good idea to tweak those ratios . . . maybe to have smaller odds of getting the popular 3 and bandits?). You might get the same faction twice in a row, you might go 3 months without ever getting pure frost, etc. Perhaps we can make it so you get a single free, locked deck, and if you don't like it you can pay bfp to randomly get another one? That might be a good compromise.

Again, nothing is being removed. This is just an additional option that new players can use if they don't have the cards to play their own deck. Also, I think the current leaning is that the cards will be slightly randomized, so people don't know what exactly is in the deck--just like normal. For instance, if I see a stonekin player, then I don't know if he's going to play t3 or not. Some composed decks will be the MaranV style of no t3, others will have varying t3. And again, if you don't like this deck, build your own. But it's at least an option for when you CAN"T build your own. Well, same as in the normal game. "Better" or "worse" are pretty subjective, because factions themselves are better and worse at certain things. Obviously every bandit deck will be worse than every lost souls deck (otherwise we're not trying to be 100% competitive with the lost souls deck) but bandits are still playable at a much higher level than a beginner will get to, before that beginner can afford to buy his own cards and upgrade them. I actually think these decks will broaden the metagame. BF has historically been dominated by lost souls, pure fire, and fire nature--those decks are both strong, and relatively easy to play. So most players play one of those 3 decks, and then they probably won't play something like pure nature, because it's a "waste" of bfp and upgrades that could be spent on a more "competitive" deck. BY giving players a random deck, each player now has something that's probably not one of those 3 decks, and thus broadens the metagame. Again, the composed decks will not all be the same (in my vision). For instance, every Pure Fire deck has very few options if it wants to be competitive. However, there are a few t1 and t3 cards that can be interchanged, and so there should be several versions of the pure fire deck--one with wrecker, one with scorched earth, etc. But I think it's impossible to make top 20 without maybe 15 of the "standard" pure fire cards--and if someone does it, then we can add his deck to the composed decks. Yes, it definitely lowers the barrier to PvP--at least as much as the ideas of removing upgrades/charges from cards. Battleforge is not RPS, and even the worst matchup (if I remember @RadicalX saying this) is pure fire vs pure frost, which is still only 40:60. Especially at lower ELO levels, deck levels hardly matter, as long as you have tools to deal with stuff. For instance, common noob-stomping strategies were to spam nomads and frost mages, because the P4F deck had no M units. I want to totally eliminate strategies such as that, because even if you just start for the first time, you'll have a complete and balanced t1 that at least has the tools to deal with those shenanigans. And assuming I get my way, at no point would I "know" what's in someone's composed deck any more than I would if they made one themselves. Obviously a pure fire player has fire dancers. Obviously stonekin has stone shards. But does the stonekin deck have crystal fiend, like MaranV, or does it have a larger t3? These are questions I would ask against composed decks and organic decks. In fact, I'm less likely to know what's in a particular opponent's composed deck, because he doesn't get to choose. For instance, anyone who's watched me play knows that I love my mortars. But maybe I want to play some pure fire, and can't afford the cards, but my random deck for the week is pure fire and it doesn't have mortar. I'll still play it because that's my only option to play pure fire (until I can afford my own cards), but my opponent would have no idea if mortar is in my deck. Hopefully I've clearly stated why I don't believe this system will infringe on either, and will actually help both of those. Well, the goal is NOT to have a static player base, but one which is constantly bringing in new players. Lowering the PvP entry barrier will go a long way toward keeping new players, imo. Not only do they get to compete with a fully competitive deck from the start, there's also the thrill of gambling (I wonder what deck I'll get this week!) and an easy way to coax players into trying multiple play styles before investing in the one they want. If we do get a static player base, players will still continue to use these locked decks because they can try out new factions. As opposed to just not having the cards, and trying to beat a lvl 120 deck with a lvl 40 deck with no essential rares or charges, and a t1 that gets stomped instantly by someone with U3? I exaggerate, because there's more to it than that, but I fear that new players might see it that way. The composed deck is just another option, which has no cost. I'm not sure you understand what I mean by "multiple iterations of the same faction." Otherwise I'm not sure why people keep bringing this up. If you'd like me to provide some examples, I'd be more than happy to do so (running low on time atm though). Yeah I read that. Still thinking about how I feel about it. I'm leaning toward that being a bad idea, because it makes diversifying much harder. Most players just have their single PvP deck, because they are best with that deck and PvE is a huge upgrade sink. I think anything that encourages players to play more diverse decks, especially non-meta ones, is a good thing. PvE requires a lot of different cards (if you want to speedrun at least) and I think an increasing upgrade system would really hurt that area of the game. Not a PvE player though, so I don't really know. In regard to your 60 card U3 "pool," I still feel like it's both too much and not enough at the same time. For instance, it's really impossible to play a deck at a competitive level without the proper t1. So if your 60 card pool is fire and frost, and you're missing scavenger and war eagle, then it's basically useless unless you already have those cards, in which case the pool is probably not helping you a ton anyway. But it's also really strong for PvE. But if you want to prove the viability of your rotation card pool, just run a simulation. Plug in all the viable PvP fire cards and randomly draw 30. See what percentage of the time you get eruption, scavenger, sunstrider, firesworn, and sunderer? IMO mortar is also needed, and thugs are pretty standard as well, but I think we can go with a 5 card absolute minimum. If you're missing any of those 5 cards (and we have the assumption that you don't have this deck already, so you can't replace them with your own cards), tell me what percentage of the time are you missing one of those? That's what percentage of the time the pool is useless for fully competitive play.

First, I'm not talking about a tome deck. It bears some similarities, but this is completely different (and I believe there is a separate place for tome decks, and IMO nothing about the old tome system needs to change). 1. This is also NOT intended to be the the deck that most players use. The idea is that this deck gives you a nice option to try something that you don't otherwise have resources to play, and it allows new players to be immediately competitive until they can make their own deck (which should take <1 month to do, after which they have enough bfp and upgrades to build their own deck however they want). The locked aspect (hotkeys, and missing your "pet" card) combined with unreliability of getting the faction you're best at should be enough that most players will still build a main deck with their own cards, and just use this as a refresher. By no means does this diminish the deck building aspect of the game, except to give new players an idea of what a "standard" deck of a particular faction looks like. And I've never met anyone who likes to exactly copy something else without at least a minor modification. 2. I'm not sure what you mean by "meta-game." You seem to have the impression that players are forced to use these decks, or at least that they would rather use these decks than something they've made themselves. I hope players will instead view these decks as an optional crutch, but something that must be outgrown and used for novelty. While there are definitely "alternative" strategies that go against the meta, if players want to play those, they should build their own decks. Those decks usually have high downsides, which is why they aren't meta, and shouldn't be given as part of the "locked deck" system. 3. Yep, I agree with you on this one. As you see in the proposal, I made some efforts to try to mitigate this. But I think at the end of the day, multiaccounting won't be seriously exacerbated by this: To reliably get the deck a player wants to play would take a LOT of accounts--probably 10 or so, which is a lot of maintenance. If you have 10 accounts, most of them will probably have a lower PvP level than your actual skill. Who wants to consistently play worse players? The effort of creating all these accounts and getting them to a decent PvP level is much more work than simply staying on one account until you get enough to permanently buy the cards you need. Especially since you can't trade across your multiaccounts (or @fiki574 and @Lord NullPointer will catch you ), you'll basically be dividing your rewards by 10 and seriously hindering your progress toward creating the deck you actually want to play. Remember, even if all the cards in the meta deck (that you happened to get only this week) are exactly what you want in your deck, an organic deck at least has the advantage of choosing hotkeys. If you can afford to make an organic deck, there's no reason to use a composed deck of the same faction. 4. Removing charges....I recall a conversation we had a year or so ago. Basically, the idea was that the longer we delayed a player from 100%ing the game, the longer they would continue to play. Once someone has fulfilled all their goals (assuming they don't stay for PvP), the theory was that the player would leave. I think there's some weight to that, but that's another discussion. The point is simply that having charges allows players to play the game at a certain level (low charges) such that it tempts them to want to full charges, thus increasing the time it takes to collect everything. The compromises would be to have the cards be so that 4 copies of the card are essentially "automatically" given for less than the current price of 4 copies, which theoretically decreases the average time players will spend on BF, or the now "single, full" charge cost the same as the current 4 copies of the card, which makes the barrier to entry high, because it's all or nothing. Additionally, having uses for multiple versions of the same card means that players won't be disappointed when they get 2 of a kind, and it creates a greater demand for those cards, increasing trades. In regards do your version of tome: I'm not sure what niche that fills. Personally I'm happy with the tome system as it is: it's weird, not really competitive, and fun. And you can use those cards in other decks if you feel like it.

@RadicalX if you want, we can do some challenge matches (I'm sure you'll win all of them, but maybe we can do some interesting things).

Do you want to be added to the community channel?

Yeah, I said ward of the north....and yeah, the point of the spell would be to reduce damage taken by buildings (maybe spells too? That way could could protect against something like nasty surprise, or eruption shotting wells, and it's more than just a 1-card counter). I didn't get the "not structures" part. Are there any effects that deal bonus damage to buildings but not orbs/wells? I.e. is that codable? Phase tower port has a cooldown. I think 25% more damage is OP. Is the main phase tower problem that it's OP in offense, or defense? A simple offense solution would be to increase the port vulnerability. Maybe if it took something like 500% damage after porting, it could still be useful in defense and have SOME use in offense, but you couldn't mindlessly spam them. Even after porting, it would be like a 900 attack, 240 ranged hp unit, which is still not terrible for 60 power and t1. Off topic, everyone talks about how you can't nerf phase tower to death because otherwise shadow loses to nature t1. How does the fire vs nature t1 go?

Nope. I notice that every time I cilck the option menu, it lags a little bit--like it's checking something with the server and being slow. My guess is that sometimes it checks with the server and take too long, causing it to hang.

I was actually talking to @RadicalX about this earlier today. What do you think about a nature spell that works like ward of the north, except it only stops damage done by buildings? Or that might be too strong against defensive mortars/phase towers. What if the spell was something you cast on your own building, and it creates a radius around the structure where units take 1/2 damage against structures? (maybe need to specify as a well or orb, otherwise 2v2 abuse with ice barrier?) Giving nature siege might be overkill....

NAME: Occassional problems when clicking the Options Menu SEVERITY: 2 LOCATION: Anywhere I can access the options menu REPRODUCIBILITY: I've had varying problems with this bug. Sometimes it causes me to time out and d/c, this time it froze for like 5 mins but then let me back in. Once I had the problem and it let me back in, I continued to have the problem DESCRIPTION: When cilcking the options menu, Battleforge freezes and sometimes disconnects me

Yes. IMO those are the hardest people to deal with as fire nature, esp in 2v2s. Also in 2v2s, you can be losing in high power scenarios (or you enter t3 winning, and then start losing), but this card can clutch the game out (the premise being that you only enter t3 winning and then lose if the power levels are too high). But for instance, going to a generated map against someone like @Hirooo becomes nearly impossible without earthshaker.

I feel like if you're devoting an entire deck slot to a card to break ultra defensive decks, you might as well take t4? (aka earthshaker). So on to the next controversial opinion: I think earthshaker is one of the BEST "t3" cards for fire-nature in a 2v2, and possibly has a use in 1v1 (if you can't break through church lamers, curse well bleeders, northstar defenders, etc.) Reasons why it's good in 2v2: As a fire nature player, nothing I have in t3 scales up well. Perhaps fathom lords do, maybe I can play brannoc if none of the other 3 players have him, but basically once we reach a late t3 stage, I'm useless. This puts lots of pressure on me to win t2, or at least be winning t2 and enter t3 before my opponents. Now with earthshaker, I have a new plan. Be aggressive, but stall out the game to really high powers (strangely enough mortar and roots is possibly approaching similar defenses to other t2 or t3 towers). Usually, a shadow frost opponent is happy to let the game go to super high power, and then I surprise them with t4. True, earthshaker isn't an insta win, but it really helps and for 1 deck slot, I can play a completely different strategy than normal fire-nature (or I can keep my same strategy, with 1 less card in t3, which doesn't really matter. Usually in fire nature if you enter t3 and need more than giant slayers, you're not going to win).

Careful....you might lose rep with that statement

Sun reaver is garbage. It's useless since the nerf, never use it again If Bandit lancer is meant as an L counter (i.e. defensive) why do you need more defensive options? I feel like ashbone might be better for that slot, or maybe silverwind lancers (so lancers run to each base and bomb them with sandstorm).

Ahh...wrong, actually. t1 should have max charges at U3. T2 should can get away with U2 on some cards (but not on others, like oink, I've learned the hard way). On t3, the charges are more important than the upgrade itself, especially depending on the deck. In t3, you usually only devote a few deck slots--let's say you have brannoc, giant slayer, and virtuoso in t3. If each has 1 extra card, you can play 6+2+4=12 total units in t3. In other words, no matter what happens before t3, if my opponent lasts until I run out of charges, I lose. Actually, even with max charges, some decks revolve around a "defensive" t3 (looking at you lost souls and pure frost) where they stall out the game until their opponent runs out of charges, and then wins simply because of that. Almost no decks carry 4. Well, the idea is that you should make your own deck. There's nothing stopping you from doing that. IMO this whole system IS just a temptation, not forced. I don't like the idea of choosing your own deck if it's free (otherwise you choose the same one over and over). But I think perhaps the best solution is to give each player a random, free composed rental, and they can rent extras (not random) if they want.

Pure fire, fire nature, fire shadow, fire frost, Pure nature, nature shadow, nature frost, Pure Shadow, Shadow Frost, Pure Frost. Of course This is in addition to everything possible atm. This rates will vary depending on how the devs scale it. However, 1 month is WAAY too long to have playable PvP. What counts as "playable" is obviously player-dependent, but the strongest PvP players probably won't be satisfied with less than lvl 100, and with options of Ultra Rare cards. I don't see this being accomplishable in under 1 month, and that might be too long for some players who are only interested in playing PvP. Imagine if there was some rule, like you have limited access to the market depending on your PvE rank (say, you can't sell/buy rares until PvE rank 8, and ultra rares until you've beaten every map on expert). If the market is your biggest reason to play BF, that would be dumb. Many PvP players feel that a dependence on cards and upgrades is a similarly dumb limitation.

Since two other threads have begun to get a bit derailed due to this suggestion, I thought I'd consolidate the proposal here, give pros and cons (and a poll) and discuss whether this should actually happen or not. For those of you interested in the origins of this conversation, read the threads "Starting Cards" and "Removing Upgrade System from PvP" (and I won't tell you where it happens, because those threads have some important conversations in them otherwise). A brief summary of the problem (for arguments regarding the problem see those threads): 1. PvP is not viable with the normal F2P starter cards (don't even have t1 units for shadow and fire, for instance) 2. PvP is not viable without upgrades 3. For players primarily interested in PvP (such as old BF players, or players coming from other competitive RTS games like Starcraft), an inability to acquire cards and/or upgrades in a TIMELY MANNER will cause them to stop playing BattleForge before they ever get the "real" experience, i. e. playing lvl 120 decks with all the right cards. (4). Simply giving all players good cards and upgrades would destroy vital, non-PvP aspects of BattleForge. Now, on to my proposal: Each player gets a free, random, temporary, LOCKED, COMPOSED, fully upgraded deck every two weeks. After two weeks, another random one is given out. These decks will have the following properties: COMPOSED for PvP. Decks will be modeled after top players. They will be fully, 100% competitive. I may not like the faction I have during a particular cycle, but the best player in the world at that faction would have no complaints. This may encourage me to try new decks. Since the decks are made for PvP, they will not have t4 (except, possibly, in certain decks if top players call for it). These decks will be near useless for PvE, although of course there's nothing to stop someone from using them anywhere. Locked. Cards may not be added or removed from this deck. If I want to change cards so that F1 hotkeys to scavenger instead of eruption, too bad. I can't use these cards in any other deck, and I can't add any cards to this deck. They are not modifiable at all. Random cyclic. They will cycle out (like a tome deck) every two weeks (or other determined time). Each player gets one deck, and the odds of getting all factions are equal. This encourages player to try new decks, and possibly broaden the metagame. Fully upgraded. These decks will be lvl 120. A player using one of these decks can have no complaints about losing except that he's worse than his opponent (or possibly has a bad matchup). This will allow players to immediately have fully competitive access to PvP, without affecting the market (if you want to fine-tune your deck, or be able to reliably play it, you'll need to buy and upgrade the cards yourself. In the meantime, you're exposed to a wide variety of decks, so you can see which one suits your playstyle and get a feel for how things work at U3). Possible Cons: If the decks are stale (for instance, if the composed fire-nature deck always contains mauler and I know this) an artificial metagame might develop. In that example, if I think the composed deck will mean a greater than "natural" number of maulers for me to fight, statistically, I might arrange my own deck so that it doesn't have mountaineer/ashbone, but might have Lost Reaver/Tremor instead. This con might actually be a "pro" though, if we can affect the metagame to make "lame" strategies less viable. Some players might multiaccount if they don't have access to the deck they want. This would require a lot of multiaccounting though, and I don't think it will really be a problem compared to other reasons to multiaccount. Variations All players get access to all (10?) locked, composed decks. This might be dangerous, because it may remove the need for PvP players to participate in the market at all Locked, composed decks are rentable (still 2 weeks) for a comparable price to a booster. Thus buying your own cards is a more permanent solution, but you can have good access to a faction "on demand" if you want it. Individual cards within factions are slightly randomized each time. There would still be an equal chance to get each faction, but--say within a fire-nature deck--variations exist. One might start nature, while the others start fire. Some might have sunderer, some might have mauler instead. One might have earthshaker. One might have no t3 at all. Etc. These variations of course would be subject to some "board of top PvP players" and the reason for variance would simply be so that a player doesn't know what EXACT cards he'll be facing, if he suspects he's facing a composed deck. What do you think? Should this be done? Should it be done in a different way? Comment below! (and vote!)

I agree that it's not useful in t1 against good players. I mean in 2v2s where you can--for instance--play rallying banner+rageclaws, or maybe in combination with some other t1 when rushing, or when you're playing t2 shadow frost and you have darkelf asassins.

Probably depends on the deck. I don't thinks shadow has great L counters (nor nature), so it might be useful in a shadow nature or pure shadow deck. I think it's crazy strong if micro'd well (they're basically like t3 burrowers) but gl to any but top players managing enough of them at a time. I tried them in a couple of my "for fun" decks that didn't have fire, and I used them like a giant slayer replacement. Only problem is gs only need managing like every 8 seconds, so you can check on them in multiple places. Shadow insects need managing constantly, which makes using many of them very difficult, especially in the type of high-powered t3 that shadow often gets into (maybe not shadow nature, so that's probably the best deck for it). Here's one: Why don't we see wintertide more? For instance, there are players who like to attack with DA spam, ice barrier, and homesoil. Why not add in wintertide?

Yeah, but I'm just asking about stereotypes These are useful (for instance in my case) when you want to write a story with a character with a certain trait/personality, and if you can find a name that fits, you're halfway there UPDATE: I finished my story, and it seems that 68% of you think Kevin is a name for dumb people