macabi

The problem we have right now is that some cards are very restrictive (e.g. Lost Warlord) while other cards are not restrictive at all (e.g. Lost Spirit Ship). That makes the game unbalanced. So the right approach is either make restrictive cards less restrictive or make them more powerful while leaving them restrictive. Another approach is to add another version of the same restrictive card making the new card less restrictive while making it less powerful (e.g. remove its affinity).

I agree there are powerful as well as flexible cards such as Lost Spirit Ship and that some restrictions is appropriate for such cards. That is the other side of the argument. I agree with both approaches. Make very strict cards such as Lost Warlord more flexible while making other powerful cards such as Lost Spirit Ship more restrictive. The objective is to close the gap as much as possible and give player more good options. Also, there is nothing wrong with having both of these units in the same deck. Air units are very useful but we also need normal units in order to spawn more units. Besides, lost Warlord is more powerful than Lost Spirit Ship from the aspect of live points and damage.

We should all care about how players feel about game changes. Angry players move on to other games and we want our fan game base to grow not shrink. By making unused cards better we make them more popular. That will increase the number of often used cards which is the objective. Is that too hard to understand?

@Cocofang, The problem you are describing is already present. Some cards are used by most players and some other cards are not used at all. My suggested approach is simple, don't nurf popular cards because that will anger some players who like their powerful cards. Instead, improve unused cards such as Lost Warlord (which you never see) by making one of his orbs Neutral. This will encourage platers to switched to cards that were not used before.

Any decision regarding this proposal? Implementing it should be very easy.

It's a PvP style PvE. In PvE the AI just have units in place defending an areas and buildings that spawn more units, that's it. In PvP it's about capturing power wells and monuments and attacking the player's monument and power well. PvP has more dynamic game play and therefore more rewarding. For that reason every RTS games have a Skirmish game mode where the AI plays a PvP game style mode. Yes, but there are ways to get around the complex portion of PvP gameplay. For example, no retreating. When attacking, summon several units and attack all together. No special abilities initially, so no micro. The AI can manage with some resource cheating. AI units should all be fully upgraded. HP and damage is handled automatically just like in PvE games. Many years ago I wrote custom scenarios Skirmish style for Age of Empire 3 via their Map Editor. http://aoe3.heavengames.com/downloads/lister.php?search=Moshe+Levi The scripts for Map Editing are vast, and their are numerous way to know to handle he situation on the ground, and base on that how to react. Battleforge/Skylords has even more complex map editing scripts than Age of Empire 3. I would love to look into it myself but this is more appropriate for a team effort.

Don't underestimate the ability of the developers. The scenario scripting for Battleforge is vast. Of course, we can never expect the AI to play as good as human players. However, that can be resolved by allowing the AI to cheat with resources. The higher the difficulty level, the more the AI cheats. This will allow every player to find the difficulty level that is right for him. I challenge the developers to look into that. They can start with something basic and then improve it over time.

Unfortunately PvP is declining every day. Only the best players play PvP now days and new players who try to play PvP just get crashed so they never go back to PvP. Skylords is missing an essential game mode that exists in other RTS game. That game mode is "Skirmish" against the AI. We have a PvE for that, but PvP is entirely different play style. In other RTS games many players like to play "Computer Stomp" via Skirmish. We don't have such option with Skylords. That could be done via scenario design where the AI captures and builds power wells and monuments. We just need a good team of scenario designers to work on that. This will help players to get better in PvP and PvP will become more popular.

There are several cards such as Lost Dragon and Lost Warlord that are hardly being used. That is the case not because they are not good cards but because of the orbs restriction. The entire idea is to make unused cards to be more accessible.

That is also a good idea. Many cards have 2 affinities where one is better than the other and therefore being used much more. So how about this idea: Make one affinity more powerful and leave the color requirements as it is now, while easing color restriction for the other affinity where that card is less powerful and therefore less popular. Such change will make both affinities popular. Just a reminder - we are talking only about 4 tier cards where all 4 monuments require a certain color.

I agree with you that there may be an exception for some overpowered cards such as Batariel (Fire Affinity). However, most of these cards are not overpowered such as Lost Warlord and Lost Dragon. For these cards easing the color requirements makes sense.

It doesn't necessarily mean that every deck will have Nature. Players can choose Fire instead. My point is that it doesn't make sense for some cards to require 1 or 2 monuments to have certain colors while other cards require all 4 monuments to have certain colors. It is a restriction with no meaning. My suggestion is that for tier 4 at least one monument should be Neutral so the player can fit such card with more decks.

I would like to suggest easing color restrictions across the board for tier 4 units where all 4 monuments require a certain color. Example - Lost dragon require 2 frost and 2 shadow while lost Spirit Ship requires only 1 frost and 1 shadow. This is a major restriction because healing (Nature monument) is crucial for rPVE and even for some campaign maps. As a result, we see Lost Spirit Ship in many rPvE games but no Lost Dragon. There is really no good reason for such restriction for some cards while other cards don't have much of a restriction. So my suggestion is to reduce ALL tier 4 color restrictions to maximum of 3 colors with at least 1 neutral color.

The Collection PvP mode was added after players express their desire to collect all cards and not just PvE cards. We all know that acquiring new cards is a lot of fun, so by eliminating the need to acquire PvP cards we eliminate an important feature of the game. Adding a few achievements for Collection PvP will help preserve the fun of collecting PvP cards. I cannot see anything wrong with that. It's not like everyone will drop all the other game modes and play only Collection PvP. We are talking about a balanced incentive, that's all.

First of all, there is no danger of uneven player deck level in Collection PvP because the host usually kick out players with low deck level. The same thing is done when a low deck level player joins rPvE level 9. He gets kicked out. So, we can trust the host to ensure the game has players with similar deck levels. Also, very important, players who play Unlimited PvP have no need to buy important PvP cards because they can get them free from the free decks. However, if they are encourage (via achievements) to play Collection PvP instead of Unlimited PvP, then they would need these "free cards" which they cannot use with collection. Let us not forget, that was what players complained about, and why the developers introduce the "Collection PvP".