DarcReaver

Nature isn't much interesting either ... S units are hurricaned and melee units ensnared, most of the time that's about it because Nature rarely destroys wells in t1. And later on you get perma healed deep ones or (even worse) stonekin cancer.. 
I'd rather play against Shadow mages with nether warp or shadow frost.

Well i think this topic is  a bit mislleading in fact i think amii monument is only the tip of the mountain.....
The Problem when trying to balance Competetive pve eg speedruns and record hunting is obvious. There will always be 1 best strategy resulting in it beeing "op" compared to everything else. This does hit pve way harder than pvp since there is no "metagame" its jsut 1 best way = low variance.
Also i think there is a significant diffrence between something beeing overpowerd and something beeing "broken". For me i would consider stuff like lss or buffed up batariel "overpowered" since it does clear faster than prob every other strategy while there are still other ways to get the same result just way slower. I however would consider amii monument broken it opens up new tactics which are impossible to repicate in any other way.
however i feel like there are some more equaly broken mechanics for pve.
First of all there is the funneling strategy which saves insane amounts of time just by evolving  3 persons t1 energy into t4 energy with only the 4. person to actually spend power on monuments
enlightment is another candidate...
tbh almost all speedruns do abuse some if not  all of those problematic mechanics not even mentioning various ways of void manipulation and i thik this is fine i dont think there is a actual way to balacne cards like amii monument either its op or useless. Im case it would get nerfed i guess the palyers would need some time to figure out if its still playable. If nnot screw it and the next card to nerf would be enlightment or decomposer or whatever.
From a non speedrunenr perspective i think the best way to break up the "boring" and "1 sided" pve meta would be monthly card restrictions or smtng. i would be intrested in the speedrunranking ladders if there was a monthly card restriction on lets say decomposer, shadow phoenix, sow, amii monument or some other crucial cards. I think this would actually require some new strats, creativety and would generate variance. Just starting to nerf card after card can not be the solution!

Where did i or anyone in this thread ever state that this has to happen now?
I simply stated that Amii-Monument is the most broken card, at least from an PvE perspective. I agree that balancing things out will take a lot of time and should not be done before finishing the game. That does not mean that possible changes can not be discussed within the community. To add onto that when starting to balance things out you should most definetly start with the most glaring problems which Amii-Monument is definetly one of. This does not mean that i even think it should be the first card to be tackled. PvP should get that honor as its the main competitive game mode.

The argument that everyone has the choice to play it is utter nonsense imo. Might as well add a card that instantly ends the game when hitting t3 and 500 power (as mentioned before) as you have the choice not to use it or find a way to beat the game even faster. After all creativity can beat anything right? Just find a better strategy and get good.

Matter of fact however is that Amii-Monument is necassary for at least 80-90% of speedruns and speeds up the time considerably compared to playing without it. That in itself would have been fine if using the card took any skill at all, as in you have to fullfill certain requirements to use the card as is the case with many speedrun glitches in other games which often require crazy amounts of precise inputs, training etcetera. That is not the case while building Amiii-Monument.  Just plop it down and your instantly t4.
You can argue that thats just how it is and deal with it, well then why bother with balancing at all -> just deal with it .
I am aware that this change will impact how maps are played and there are other problematic cards that are blatantly way too good compared to other cards in the game. You might say that is because all the other cards are to weak and we should buff those (or just say deal with it), but you should quickly realize that there is a couple of really strong cards and a lot of really weak cards with a decent amount somewhere around viable. I merely suggest that those cards that are way too good get turned down a notch and buff the weaker cards so that the spread of useability gets a lot smaller.

I don't really mind if there is cards that are generally stronger than others - that's just how it is, but the ones that are just so far ahead of anything else should be pushed down a bit to a reasonable level.


Also would you be kind enough to explain to me this bigger picture that you seem to be so knowledgable about? Seemingly fixing a card that circumvents map design by its own design and therefor forces players to play the map the way it was originally intended seems to not be everything. You can not possibly mean deck building because those maps were created with a lot less (and often) weaker cards in mind and were still beaten by people so it doesnt make the game unplayable either. While Amii opens up interesting deck builds such as playing t5 you could still do that with most of the changes proposed. So you can't mean those either. So please enlighten me as you seem to be very knowledgable about this bigger pciture you're talking about
Also which card do you propose should be up for balancing first if not Amii? Or is it all perfect as is and we should just work with it instead of trying to better the game?
 

Enlightment requires quite a lot of upfront power though and is very limited. I personally think the card is pretty cool, because it fits the nature theme very well and requires planning to use correctly.
Monument is a whole other story though. Monument should be much cheaper and a t4 card, allowing more than 4 orb colors. I.e. pure shadow x4 + nature, or pure fire x4 + shadow etc. With a cheap cost this would make deck building more flexible.

The longer the game is up, the more cards will be there. This will lead to a price drop of unwanted cards. To keep its (minimal) worth, a sell/destruction for those cards - with refund - would be nice.
Anyhow, my initial thought was based on the wish to keep my inventory clean and sorted. A feature to sell X Destruction (for lets say 1 bfp each) would be cool!

Guess what? Age of Mythology EE and Age of Empires DE both went this way, the community left after roughly 1 year is less than 10% of the original player base, with only a couple of hardcore gamers left. In AoM I could easily find quickmatches within a few seconds. Nowadays I can search for half an hour and still get no game.
https://steamcharts.com/app/266840#All
AoE DE unfortunately has no player tracking, but the amount of lobbies open during 20:00 GMT (when I use to play) was originally at ~ 30 lobbies.
Right now you have 2-5. Your statement is nonsense.
Most ppl will play some pvp matches, get stomped by players with more upgrades/OP meta cards and notice that their units/decks/upgrades are not enough. Some will try to get better/try out other decks etc. But over time most of then leave and play something else.
If the meta and game itself is stale and not enhanced over time this allows players to abuse weaknesses in the game mechanics that are unintended by the devs (like bugs in Crusade map for example) and this alienates most new players. Nobody likes to loose to bug or engine abusing or OP/broken card combinations. There needs to be a clear path:
1) time played <-> reward balance for 24/7 players and casual gamers : the rewards need to be big enough for players with limited time to enjoy the game and feel like they've achieved something. Also they need to be small enough that hardcore grinders do not get a huge lead over others just by being ingame all day. There are lots of ways to do that. For example quest stacking - someone who was not online for 3 days can play the 30min daily quest 2 times, giving him 2 boosters. This way he's only 1 booster behind someone who had spent 3 days ingame and grabbed the daily rewards.

2) card balance : The game needs to feel "fair". That means that a newer player needs to have the feeling that he could have won the game if he had played better or had a more optimised deck. If he feels that he got stomped because his enemy had more card charges, an OP unit card or more upgrades this will lower the motivation to contiinue playing. And the more this happens the higher the chance becomes that he'll leave the game. Which is the worst that can happen.
In general there are too many useless/niche cards, especially for rare/ultra rare. Opening boosters is crap when you get a rare/ultra rare card that you cannot use in your decks at all (because it's too weak or has a useless effect in general) and that isn't even worth something because nobody wants to buy or trade it. I personally think this is the most important issue that needs to be fixed for BF to be successful in the long run.
3) Grinding mechanic for card upgrades: depending on the daily rewards allow card upgrades "faster", i.e. quest lines like "play 2 campaign missions and get a random fire card upgrade"

4) booster/market system : more different options to get cards, different types of boosters for example (i.e. "small booster", or "buy a single uncommen card for 50 bfp" etc.)
These are just some quick thoughts and in no way relate to a finished concept. But for sure you need to have short time and long time motivation for the game.
 

That comes down to people not understanding HOW to break maps with that card.
There is a reason why Amii Monument is used for basically every single speedrun record except 2 and 4 player rPvE 10 and Siege of Hope
There is literally ways to abuse the card to allow for some insane strategy that speeds up the game by so much. The card is not only broken in solo play but allows you to play around a massive shortcut on all of those maps. And sure some are more obvious and insane than others - Soultree <-> Encounters with Twilight. On most of those maps Amii Monument is the card that even allows you to play that strategy: Convoy, Slavemaster, PtD, Nightmares Shard, Nightmares End, King of the Giants, Bad Harvest, Soultree, Oracle, Ocean, Insane God, Dwarven Riddle, Mo, Crusade Treasure Fleet, Behind Enemy Lines. Probably missed a couple as well.
In Nightmares Shard one player even gives up his last monument just so the other guy can use Amii Monument. Now tell me that doesn't change the way you play the game. Amii Monument is the single most used card across all speedrun strategies with maybe the exception of regrowth and that is because it is so often a massive shortcut if you know how to abuse it. Just because most players don't know how to abuse it, doesn't mean its not worth fixing. If there is a bug in your game but 99% of players dont know how to abuse it, doesn't mean you just leave it be. And Amii Monument basically is just that.
Otherwise we probably just leave all PvE cards as is and only balance PvP relevant cards.

it's not like we even argue Amii Monument is the only stupid card there is - because there is a couple more - just none to the insane level, that they literally change how you can play most maps.
LSS; Shadow Phoenix, Shrine of War, Furnace of Flesh + CM -the list goes on. This thread however was about Amii Monument.