Re: [Nutaku] Angelic Saga
The problem there is card levels. That, to me, is the MAIN problem with the game. Individual super ultra omgwtfbbq rare cards can be played around, nullified, not drawn, etc. That the cards all have levels.. and HUGE level ranges to boot... that require many resources is anathema to CCG fundamentals. Part of the fun of deckbuilding is swapping out cards to try new things, change styles, etc. Needing to level individual cards first puts a major damper on that.
..but since that's pretty much core to AS, no point complaining about it.. that won't/can't change. Most of my other complaints are also core gameplay elements that I wouldn't expect to be changed, (some of which are just things I don't personally -like-, not things I think are poor design) so I'm not even going to go into them.
What COULD be done is perhaps make the cards easier to level and tie matchmaking strictly to RP, not to rank. I'd also like to see less severe penalties for conceding, especially since the pace of the game is so slow (such as lowering the "safe" concede from turn 5 to turn 4, since that is pretty much always the turn where I know if the match is going nowhere or not).
Uh, no. I'm not sure why you would want to remove levels, given the very nature of these kinds of games. LoV and Aigis would have MUCH shorter lifespans if someone could just roll the rarest card/unit, godstomp any Mega Boss/PVP opponent or instantly three-star any map, and call it a day.
The alternative you're suggesting here is to have everyone go all-in with their high-end cards and every magic/trap they can hold, and anyone who was lucky enough to get the best cards for their stats:mana cost will wreck any opponent... So, basically YGO.
Sure, there'll come a point when everyone has maxed-out decks, and the current situation is basically filler. But for now, there's a pretty steady balance between the low-rarity cards being easy to max out, high-rarity cards needing a lot of time and resources (or just lots of RL money), and everyone in between that's struggling to get the in-game money, the upgrade materials, and/or the fodder to feed them all. Right now, few people have maxed-out decks, or the ones that do either went all-in on the low-end and have few, if any, maxed-out high-end cards to compensate, or they cashed their ass off, in which case, it's not much different compared to facing the guy who bought 5109418092830912 booster packs IRL just for that slight edge.
To me, the more prevalent issue I think you want to address seems to be unbalanced decks, rather than underleveled decks (unless you're one of the lucky bastards that got Cost Shackles or Millenarian Power). The people who focused on low-end cards have little to answer with in late-game. The people who focused on high-end cards have trouble drawing those cards. And the people who went middle-of-the-road don't excel in either early-game or late-game right now. So it's only natural that the whales who bought XP cards and don't have these issues are a problem for most people.
With all that said, this entire argument is rendered pointless by the fact that we're getting a Saturday XP dungeon. Even before that, we were getting a pretty steady flow of XP cards from events.
Though I must say that I do not like that there is a functionally hidden cost to enhancing cards via level up now. I do not recall earlier there being a cost at all, and now all the sudden I see my amount of gold changing after I dump a batch of 5 commons from 153,200 to 151,750. Not exactly the biggest of hits to the bank account, but I can certainly see it adding up for those who are not as well off with money as I currently am. Then again I lack any fodder to feed my cards right now, so what good is the money since I cannot actually use it either.
I don't see how this is a surprise either, if you've been playing Nutaku's other games. Both LoV and Aigis ramp up their leveling costs when you get to the higher levels. Following that train of thought, I made it a point to only level using 10 fodder cards or XP cards to avoid any money issues.
