Nymph rarity discussion

[Shinki12345]

So, as many of you already know, nymphs are currently not very rare. They are a little pricey, but honestly they are not that hard to get since you can simply buy the exact one you want for what amounts to 4-5 wins against champions.

Now, this has some up sides to it and some down sides. The up sides are that they allow nymphs to be part of the meta game, and they allow people to build many new decks and play them against each other when they normally wouldn't be able to.

However, with nymphs being so easy to acquire, there is an essential part of game design that is missing from this version compared to the original game. All games have goals to complete, the original had several of these goals that were very difficult to complete(such as upgrading cards). This game doesn't have that level of difficulty and redundancy, but I like that quality about it(nobody likes spending 500 hours grinding FG's to get trainer edition). However, it also doesn't have anything to strive for beyond just getting cash.

Nymphs in the original game were elegantly used as a means of rewarding players for commitment through winning tournaments and checking in every day, and that was a huge motivator for players to put forth all the effort into being successful in tournaments. When I play the original game, the level of joy I feel whenever I got a nymph was fantastic, I was so happy that I couldn't believe it! It was something I expected to be replicated in this game and was greatly disappointed when I realized it was non-existent.

Supposedly, marks are meant to fill this void, but they don't even come close. Nymphs were exclusive tools that limited players were allowed to use, this restriction lead to far more interesting deck building and lead to far more interesting game play then being able to easily acquire 6 of a kind in a matter of 2 hours.

Summary: Nymphs being ultra rare leads to more interesting gameplay and maintains a permanent goal for players to strive for since they will never have 6 of each. Without this goal, we are losing out on an essential piece of the original game that made it so enjoyable for so many people.


Here is what I suggest:

• Remove nymph packs and replace every non-shiny nymph owned by players with 250 gold.
• Change the odds of getting a nymph in a platinum pack to 1/250~
• Host more tournaments allowing players to acquire them via pvp.

This way, gold will always have value since you can always spend that extra 25,000 to get a decent chance at getting a nymph, but they will still be sacred. Additionally, opening a nymph from a pack will have the same feeling as spinning one from oracle. This maintains the motivation while still not making them impossible to get otherwise.

[serprex]

Relevant past discussion

My own opinion: nymphs not being shard rarity is already a compromise. End game content shouldn't be cards, even Marks annoy me with their EQ resistance

[Shinki12345]

Relevant past discussion

My own opinion: nymphs not being shard rarity is already a compromise. End game content shouldn't be cards, even Marks annoy me with their EQ resistance

Then what should be?

[serprex]

Since we discussed in chat, I'll record it here

Spoiler for long chat:

15:46:04 Shinki12345: I am open to suggestions, but if there is no powerful endgame content that motivates people to join tournaments, then there is a problem imo.
15:47:10 Guest_Fippe94: shiny cards
15:47:13 Guest_Fippe94: shiny nymphs
15:47:15 Guest_Fippe94: marks
15:47:22 Shinki12345: Key word "Powerful"
15:48:10 Shinki12345: Shiny's are an awesome idea, but end game content needs to have more substance to it or the motivation won't be consistent
15:48:23 Guest_Fippe94: if being succesful in tourneys means you get even stronger, then it gets harder for new players to even have a chance to win in tourneys
15:48:40 Shinki12345: Nymphs aren't so powerful that you can't beat people with them.
15:48:48 Guest_Fippe94: trust me, we have discuessed this a *lot* of times
15:48:56 Shinki12345: Besides, tournaments often don't even allow nymphs.
15:49:28 Shinki12345: Additionally, allowing them to be baught from packs on a rare occasion allows for people to get them outside of winning tourney's(albiet more difficultly)
15:49:46 Shinki12345: Hmm
15:50:00 Guest_Fippe94: ??
15:50:11 Guest_Fippe94: "often" means "only the last tournament"?
15:50:43 Shinki12345: If a nymph is OP, you can always ban it from tournaments.
15:50:46 Guest_Fippe94: and "banned" means "restricted"?
15:50:53 Guest_Fippe94: no
15:51:01 Guest_Fippe94: cards should not be op
15:51:13 Shinki12345: In the context of a tournament they can be.
15:51:20 Fippe94: well yeah
15:51:31 Shinki12345: In an all quantum pillar tournament, of course black hole will be banned. =P
15:51:34 Fippe94: but cards should be OP so that they are almost always banned from tournaments
15:51:43 Fippe94: should not be*
15:51:46 Shinki12345: Thats understandable.
15:52:39 Fippe94: cg already persuaded me of this, I'll just wait until he posts in topic
15:52:49 Shinki12345: There really does need to be a certain level of end game motivation like in the original game and its nymphs or else the game will get stale. You must at least agree with me on that?
15:52:53 Guest_serprex: Sadly cg is indefinitely afk
15:53:10 Guest_serprex: @Shinki I believe the only real end game is pvp
15:53:35 Guest_serprex: I originally made oetg as sandbox only
15:53:41 Guest_serprex: Was intending it to be like oetg-v
15:54:40 Shinki12345: Hmm, I guess maybe there is something here that I am missing.
15:55:29 Shinki12345: All good multiplayer games are meant to have rare endgame content. World of Warcraft, Diablo 2, the original Elements, AI;TG.
15:55:47 serprex: ARPGs are different
15:55:54 Shinki12345: Why not this one?
15:56:05 serprex: If elements was an ARPG then Photon wouldn't need to be balanced with every other card
15:56:23 serprex: It'd be ilvl 1, & other cards would be ilvl 10 etc
15:56:29 serprex: Power level can be different without being a problem
15:56:37 serprex: End game becomes optimization of high ilvl content
15:57:09 serprex: Other CCGs drive on having power cards
15:57:15 serprex: But our intent is that rarity != power
15:57:46 serprex: & having a pvp where one player has the option of playing blue nymphs while the other does not is inherently a power difference
15:57:56 Shinki12345: In WoW, the power level varied between max levels characters almost as much as it did between different leveled characters.
15:58:02 serprex: The goal is that player skill should be the determining factor
15:58:20 serprex: @Shinki I'm talking ilvl
15:58:28 Shinki12345: ilvl?
15:58:31 serprex: Haven't played WoW, but I'd assume they have something of that content
15:58:42 serprex: http://diablo2.diablowiki.net/Item_level
15:58:59 timpa: aka having epic gear
15:59:05 serprex: That page lists WoW as using ilvl stuff too, but it being hidden
15:59:19 Shinki12345: Ahh
15:59:28 serprex: Chess has no end game piece that you only unlock when you play tournaments
15:59:39 serprex: Seems pretty successful
15:59:51 Shinki12345: Thats an absurd comparison.
15:59:53 serprex: Star Craft doesn't have strong units that you only unlock when you win tournaments
16:00:26 serprex: MtG has power differences because p2w
16:00:45 Shinki12345: p2w? I play competitive MTG and I still don't know what that means.
16:00:51 serprex: pay to win
16:01:05 serprex: They get around it a bit by phasing stuff out etc
16:01:25 serprex: But MtG concept of card power is a bit divergent from ours
16:01:53 Shinki12345: I still don't understand how this game has motivation to pvp beyond just the hell of it.
16:02:04 Fippe94: that's the thing
16:02:06 serprex: That's the motivation behind living..
16:02:16 Fippe94: pvp is motivation itself
16:02:20 serprex: You play pvp events & stuff because you find pvp fun
16:02:33 serprex: If you don't find pvp fun in itself, then you should find out what you do find fun
16:03:24 serprex: Why did you join War?
16:03:43 Shinki12345: Many people play because they like to pvp, but won't be motivated unless they are rewarded for their efforts.
16:03:58 Fippe94: bu we have rewards
16:04:00 Fippe94: but*
16:04:29 Fippe94: note that lots of people choose "mostly useless" marks in vanilla as reward
16:04:48 Fippe94: and most pvp events have no rewards except reward icons
16:05:05 serprex: /me is someone who always chooses Mark over Nymph
16:05:25 Shinki12345: Truthfully, I choose marks over nymphs too.
16:05:29 Fippe94: see
16:05:48 Fippe94: you dont play tourneys because you want to get stronger cards
16:06:05 Shinki12345: You have me convinced on that point.
16:06:06 serprex: Except Odii
16:06:20 serprex: Blue Nymph OP
16:06:35 Shinki12345: However, you still don't have me convinced that its good to have nymphs be buyable from the shop for such a small price.
16:06:57 Fippe94: tell me how it is bad?
16:07:04 timpa: If you want to up them it's not such little amount
16:07:38 timpa: what is needed and we are still working on is balancing the meta over nymphs being common place
16:07:54 Fippe94: there are a total of 2 people that has a full set of nymphs I believe
16:08:14 Shinki12345: Because nymphs are VERY powerful cards, I don't feel rewarded for buying a nymph at all, I just feel like I ripped someone off.
16:08:15 timpa: unupped + upped? Or just unupped?
16:08:40 Fippe94: unupped+upped
16:08:42 Shinki12345: I feel rewarded for acquiring them randomly from packs, but buying them is meaningless to be.
16:08:53 Shinki12345: *to me.
16:09:21 serprex: @timpa ever library people at top of WT50?
16:09:31 serprex: 500k goes a long way
16:10:24 serprex: Shinki's ignoring that if you remove nymph pack, one has to grind tons of plat packs
16:10:26 timpa: I'm 80k away from getting a full set
16:10:34 serprex: Which means never buy non-plat
16:10:37 timpa: You can do it with 250k
16:10:44 Guest_Shinki12345: What do you mean serp?
16:10:49 serprex: & also means "Get a nymph while picking up tons of trash shards"
16:11:04 serprex: Thus making an incentive to sell tons of shards for other players' nymphs
16:11:13 Guest_Shinki12345: I would never buy non-platinum packs anyway, unless I wanted to get shinies of all the commons that is.
16:11:19 serprex: @Shinki I mean if you want to get TE with nymphs you only buy plat pack
16:11:26 Fippe94: also means "get full set of nymphs while getting like 4 full sets of everything else" or whatever cg calculated
16:11:45 Guest_Shinki12345: I don't see whats wrong with that.
16:11:49 serprex: Optimal TE route involves quite a bit of gold packs
16:12:11 Fippe94: same thing that is wrong with vanilla
16:12:26 Fippe94: extreme grinding to get collection turns a lot of players away
-snip-
16:27:39 Shinki12345: I guess my problem with the nymph thing is that when I think of the list of things that need to be fixed in elements, nymphs are not one of them. Why fix something that's not broken?
16:28:02 serprex: oetg isn't a pure fix-it project
16:28:14 serprex: It's also experimenting. Bazaar isn't broken in vanilla either
16:28:25 Shinki12345: I think it is.
16:28:58 Shinki12345: The bazaar is more less a bad idea in the original game, it worked, but it wasn't as fun as the pack system.
16:30:10 Fippe94: I see oetg more like a different game than "fix what's broken with vanilla"
16:30:26 serprex: Not being able to play Silence is Golden in vanilla felt wrong to me
16:31:38 serprex: Also tourneys like namegame
16:31:52 serprex: Where Calindu vs Antiaverage was in antiaverage's favor if you had red nymphs
16:38:11 serprex: Having to have 4+ blue nymphs to join Team Air successfully in war

tl;dr PvP

[timpa]

As someone who has always had horrible luck with the oracle in vanilla I can tell you how NOT fun it is to be at a constant disadvantage in every single tourney where nymphs are allowed.

I like the idea of not leaving them to pure luck, but a "richer get richer" situation is also not good imo. I prefer the current system.

[OdinVanguard]

As far as I can recall, the ending of the long discussion(s) about this ended in a relative consensus that having the nymph pack was just the simplest (not necessarily best) solution to dispersing nymph cards.

There were a lot of other suggestions / ideas as well. It lead to a few questlines that end in nymph rewards to starting players their first few nymphs after a proper introduction.
It also resulted in the colloseum completion award as means of nymph collection.

If I recall right, however, one of CG's main points was that nymphs were very powerful relative to other cards and this gave a huge advantage to any player that had them, which was deemed to be a deterrent for new players.

The existence and handling of nymphs in the trading system also made this tricky for a number of reasons.

Personally, I would like to see nymph packs taken out and just give a slight buff to getting nymphs from packs (Shinki's idea), but with the caveat that additional sources are available to allow new players and players transfering in from vanilla to collect them at a reasonable rate... at least initially.

At the moment, however, I think there is still balancing in progress so I don't mind having packs present to allow players to try out different decks and strategies until nymphs can get properly balanced.
The issue is that while nymphs are powerful in general, I think some are probably a lot more potent than others. Even if it were agreed to have them restored to vanilla levels or rarity, I think they should be balanced relative to each other first. This is particularly important if they are to have any chance of being tradable, even if only for other nymphs.

[timpa]

I'm pretty okay with only being able to receive nymphs from the coliseum. Not so insanely hard as Shinki's suggestion, still depends only on skill and limits the speed you can acquire them.

[serprex]

If you want to remove Nymph pack & have them be pack rarity bumps, then they should be able to drop from any pack. Not saying I lean towards that solution, only that that's the way to do it

[OdinVanguard]

If you want to remove Nymph pack & have them be pack rarity bumps, then they should be able to drop from any pack. Not saying I lean towards that solution, only that that's the way to do it

I seem to remember that being suggested before.

One other point here, is that one thing in favor of the current pack system is that it lets new players easily become competitive in tournaments where nymphs are allowed.

...Which gives me an idea. What if there were a way to "transmute" one or two nymphs per day? Then you could allow nymphs into tournaments within reasonable restrictions (e.g. like no more than 2 nymphs per deck or something).