Universal Shadow Era - Trading Card Game (by Wulven Game Studios)

I absolutely love Shadow Era, and I'll continue to support it fervently (where's the front page review, TA? ), but I think I'm gonna take a break from playing it until the update drops.

Why? Because the benefits of having a large userbase and crossplatform support for multiplayer are completely lost on the fact that something like 90% of people I play against use the exact same deck -- Eladwen. It's so predictable and boring that it literally sucks all the fun out of the game.

I have a anti-Eladwen deck that destroys it (and I guess at this point, so does everybody), but what's the point of a TCG if you essentially only going to see two decks while playing online? You either play Eladwen, or anti-Eladwen. That's it. There's no variety really.

I don't blame you, Kyle. It's a first version of the game and some balance issues are to be expected. And since Eladwen is going to be nerfed soon, we can expect its popularity to drop and for new stuff to start coming up.

I just can't stand seeing that stupid deck anymore. I swear, 8 out of 10 matches I play are against Eladwen. That ruins the entire premise that is the variety offered by a TCG.

It happens in Magic, too -- there's always those 4-5 decks that dominate the metagame. When I stopped playing, those were Polymorph, WB Control, Jund, and a few others I can't remember. In Shadow Era, right now, it's like all of those decks are one.

I think I'll give it a shot, and start quitting the game immediately if I see Eladwen. Maybe then people will get the hint.

 

This is exactly why it needs to have 'RANDOM STARTER DECK MATCHES' in multiplayer. That will put the fun back in when people have to make do with what they get. I'd love to be able to get a random starter deck/hero everytime I played online.

 

I disagree. I think it's a terrible idea. How are you supposed to play properly without even knowing what cards your decks has? Winning would just be dumb luck, no skill at all.

Or are you proposing studying the deck everytime you play a new match? 'Cause that'll take forever and suck all the fun from it.

What could work, however, is having tournaments when you get a random set of cards to make a deck with and play with it for the entire tournament, like other TCGs have. Though I'm not shure it would work so well in SE since cards are tied to specifi heroes, so you wouldn't really have much choices.

Also I find that Eladwen is not the only deck out there. I face it maybe only half the time. The rest are Nishavens and Majiya (all Portal decks though). Sometimes I see a Boris deck, but the poor things are just so easy to beat I almost feel bad.

Also there's quite a lot of variety between Eladwen decks and they can play quite differently.

Out of curiosity though, what's your Eladwen killer deck?

 

Yeah it is. It would have been nice if the game had all the cards to start (or else removed the heroes/decks that relied on the armor/weapons), and that would probably have diminished the complaining. Hopefully once those cards are released, everyone will be happier.

 

Rumour has it that Eli told everyone to not support this game because it is not MtG. So no reviews will ever be published on it.

That rumour was started by me =P

But seriously, Eli did tweet, to summerize, that Magic should just use the engine that runs this game and put Magic cards instead. Lame.

 

Play properly? If this game is to pull in the NON HARDCORE, it's going to need more even level playing opportunities that use ALL the cards and let even the newbies win. What's wrong with random deck play? You'd get a chance to play all the classes and not have to think about that 600 gold you need to save to buy the next card that EVERYONE else is already using.

I'm high on the ranking now, but I couldn't care less about that. It means nothing, as I just built an easy win deck. Where's the fun/challenge in that? I want variety, I want random, I don't even want to know what exactly is in my deck. That's FUN. Deal with what you get, and try to make it work. As it is now, 75% of the cards are not even being seen in a game, EVER, because everyone needs to win. And what do they win? Nothing. I'd play this game even more if 'winning' or gaining exp let me play a 'random starter' game, just to get some much needed variety. My wife is never going to play this game unless it offers a chance to play 'starter to starter' where the field is even. Not everyone cares about deck building or gaining ranks, or spending all day playing to gain 50 crystals.

Is it so difficult to implement a 'random deck' category online? Keep the competitive deck matchup but also add the 'starter deck' matchup. As it is now, multiplayer is about as exciting as playing the same 5 decks in AI, but at least against the AI, you see FIVE DIFFERENT decks, which is a lot more variety than PVP. Plus, you're guaranteed to make exp and gold in AI, where it's a crapshoot if you'll gain anything in PVP except a disconnect/stall.

As for skill applying to 'deck building', where's the skill in seeing who's the first to pull a portal? That's what most of my games amount to. It's who gets the best opening hand. That's luck. Nothing to do with skill. And that's why half the time people drop out when they see their opening hand or go second. This is MTG at its worst, and I'm hoping this game carves a slightly better niche for itself.

 

Found a hacker, I think.

His name was uSURPER, a Darkclaw user.
After turn 1, he cast a deathbone, even though the card costs 4. I left the game to avoid to waste any time.

 

I feel there's some variety at the lower levels. Since I'm rated like 270 for the reasons I stated above I see a lot of different decks.

Your wife would too if she played. Beginners play against beginners, so it's basically starter deck vs starter deck.

When I say play properly I mean play what you have the best you can. What kind of strategy can you formulate when you don't even know the cards available in your deck and how many of each. I like to put some thought into what I play, it's what makes it fun for me. Just playing whatever you draw next is what's really boring to me.

The whole point of the game is to continually tweak your deck(s) and coming up with new strategies as you get better. Just giving people random decks to balance the field seems really counter productive. If you don't want to improve, your rating will stay low and you'll keep playing against starter decks. Nothing wrong with that either.

Also how many decks did you expect to be there, since a lot of the heroes can't even be used yet? Let's wait until we have the complete set

 

@pottersmash Chat, playing with friends, and a long list of features are upcoming in an update about two weeks out. Android development was planned but I'm not sure at what the current progress is.

@Martin JF The reason why you likely saw that in your game was because of synchronization issues. I've had many games that had many weird things like that happen. If it's a frequent enough or consistent issue, it's worth reporting though, so they can get to the bottom of it.

 

gotta admit a lot of this is making me happy that i stick to the AI.

 

Even with all the glitches, playing against other people is what it's all about IMO. The AI is pretty braindead and it's just there to learn the ropes. It's so much more satisfying to narrowly beat a thinking human being IMO.

 

Agreed. I really don't plan on any multiplayer games any time soon as well(never did to be honest).

 

I kind of think a draft tourny would be fun when a few more cards are released. Those are always fun.

 

i can certainly understand that sentiment. i just appreciate the simplicity of playing the AI. multiplayer comes with so much competitive baggage.

such as with gran turismo 5. i can have perfectly reasonable races with the AI without having to worry about people cutting corners or abusing collision detection glitches or anything like that.

 

Braindead? Worse than that. I've played at least 15 duels against AI and haven't come close to losing and honestly, I don't think the decks I'm using are all that good. It's hard to even know if the deck is any good when you see the AI cast a remove item spell when there are none on the board. Good grief.

 

Is this true? Are similarly ranked players matched together?

 

Any update on the ETA of the patch?

 

Yes, it's true. It matches players who are close in rating to try to keep the games evenly matches with regard to skill level. Kyle has said it's similar to the way XBox matching works and is based on similar principals.

 

Update submitted yet?