Game should be fast so that players spent least time possible waiting for their turn. This means reducing the impact of “forgetting to flip” and “wait revenge”.
Suggestion #1: Reduce mulligans to once. This will speed up starting the game, and reduce the reliability of cheap-combo decks.
Suggestion #2: Reduce time to choose god powers. Players do not need more than 6 seconds to choose a power.
Suggestion #3: Reduce turn 1 time to 15 seconds.
Suggestion #4: After a turn is complete, the player retains the remaining time in in their previous turn’s timer bank plus 15 or 20 seconds added to that players timer bank.
Suggestion #5: After a player’s timer runs out, they get 1 strike and a refreshed time bank with 20 seconds. Then proceed as normal. If the player runs out again in the same game, the player loses.
Suggestion #6: Allow turning off “flash” animations. Having things flash as they are summon or destroyed ties up ½ second each time. Sometimes longer. This can delay the game by several seconds on someone’s timer during effects that impact much of the field. These animations should be removed or optional. (i.e. player can turn off the option and when they do, both that player and their opponent will not see the animations during that player’s turn.)
Suggestion #7: Disconnection warning should be reduced from 60 seconds to 10 seconds. In mobile you may need to purposefully disconnect to refresh your hand/screen, but that should only take a few seconds. Most of the time players are just rage quitting and getting “wait revenge”.
Game Play Changes:
These are ideas to improve game play. They are most controversial but I sincerely think they need to be made to improve game play overall.
Overall, game play is too focused on field control, so much so that if you leave a single creature alive, no matter the field state, you will regret it. At the same time, there is so much field destruction that most creatures don’t matter in the game. When a card with less cost can destroy a creature with higher cost, it slows down the game. If you have too many of those in the game’s library, it will force players to use combo decks, or wait till turn 8 to win the game. Instead the game should reduce as many field destruction as possible giving more power to high cost creatures.
Suggestion #1: Starshard Bolt needs to change to “Remove Protection and Ward from target creature then deal 1 damage.”
Suggestion #2: Blight Bomb needs to change to “Destroy target creature with heal 2 or less.”
Suggestion #3: All “deal damage” cards in core that deal more than 2 damage should reduce their damage dealt to creatures by 1. This may result in changing mana cost of certain cards.
Suggestion #4: Start with 1 more card in hand. Maybe 2 more if Suggestion #7 is implemented.
Suggestion #5: Sealed mode – no more duplicates. This ruins the game by making it too luck based. Spread it out so players have more to play with, and players know that even though their opponent just played a really powerful card, they must only have 1 copy.
Suggestion #6: Remove starting god powers. God powers cannot be balanced, and it incentivizes players to rely too much on them instead of on the deck build and cards themselves. Many cards are made useless due to god powers, most noticeably creatures with 1 health. It also makes gods unbalanced as some god powers are clearly better than others. I understand that the idea of god powers is to combo with other cards (i.e. Death’s deal damage to self), new players do not understand this, and professional players know its too unreliable. By removing starting god powers, you make getting god powers more special. It also reduces field destruction, and forces players to play cards from hands. Lastly, it removes one more element of the game that distracts and stalls. This will speed up the game and make it more strategic while balancing the gods will be more fair and so more cards will be playable.
Suggestion #7: New Mana System. Mana Gems still unlock slowly, telling players what is the highest costing card they may play in their turn; however, there is a new system called “Mana Power” or something, this tells you how many mana worth of cards you can play in a turn. Each turn you get Mana Power equal to the number of mana gem’s unlocked. This gets added to any Mana Power you didn’t use in your previous turn. Bags of Tricks still unlock Mana Gems, but also adds +1 to your Mana Power.
For example: Player A goes first, 1 Mana Gem unlocked, 1 Mana Power is added to their Mana Power supply for total of 1 mana to spend. They play nothing. During their second turn, now 2 Mana Gem unlocked, 2 Mana Power is added to their Mana Power supply for a total of 3 mana to spend. They can only play cards costing up to 2 Mana, but can play up to 3 mana worth of cards.
This new system would allow playing cards faster for more intense moments as opposed to being locked into playing 1 card a turn until late game (not to mention combo well with the new Raid ability).
I would also like to see tested about adding more Mana Power faster, such as another +1 every turn, or maybe double of what the Mana Gems unlocked (i.e. with 4 mana gems unlocked you get 8 Mana Power so you can play 2 cards that each cost 4 mana, or 4 cards that cost 2 mana, etc.)
Suggestion #8: Starting deck size of 40. This would be a big undertaking. With how integrated the API is, I’m not sure if this is even possible at this time. I’m suggesting it because by upping deck size, players will need more cards. This will reduce the reliability of combo decks, while increasing demand for cards overall.
Suggestion #9: Rank system. Get rid of the shields. You already have a point system once you reach Mythic, just have that be the system the entire time. If you win, you go up, if you lose, you go down. When in queue, you pair to whomever else in queue that is closest to your current Rank point value. The coding might be a lot, but it is awful going from Diamond to Gold because of a change in meta. There is also a huge skill gap between Gold and Gold +. By removing shields you improve the psychology of the player so it is less demotivating to play the game after a short series of defeats. It also removes the feeling of powerlessness and helplessness when your shield is about to crack and still too far from the next level.
Economics
The GU token cannot seem to climb up in value again. I believe this is largely in due to the crypto market, but also its utility. Also, the value of singles are so low, they are basically free. There have been many good attempts to fix this, but here are some suggestions:
Suggestion #1: Pack discounts when buying with GODS. Give a 15% discount when buying with GODS. This will motivate people to buy GODS in the market to then buy the packs.
Suggestion #2: No more free packs in sealed. By giving free packs via sealed, there is little to no motivation to buy the packs themselves. Instead of playing with formulas to get the sealed packs to balance vs buying packs, just stop. You are cannibalizing your own pack sales while watering down the secondary market value of cards. Worst part is that each time someone buys a pack and opens it with value less than what they could have spent on the secondary market is another customer who will never buy your packs again. This will drive players away which hurts remaining players and investors.
The only pack I would suggest giving away is if you win all 7 games in sealed, and even then, it is a special pack that guarantees at most a Shiny Rare, some commons, and a extremely low chance of variant art of a legendary.
Suggestion #3: Increase payout of GODS in sealed. Payout at 5 wins and higher should be increased further. Besides fun, it should be the primary driver for people wanting to play sealed
Suggestion #4: Increase the daily and stacked GODS rates, but also increase the cost to play Sealed. The price of GODS has fallen too much, to keep motivating players the reward of GODS should increase, but sealed should cost more too, especially with the increase in GODS payout.
Suggestion #5: Be able to buy multiple Sealed passes at once instead of 1 at a time. This saves player’s clicks and motivates them to play more, while also getting you more passes sold. Could you set up a X5 and X10 option?
Suggestion #6: Burn the bought back cards. The team bought back cards a lot time ago, and as soon as they gave just a handful away, the secondary market value of those cards crashed. Just burn the wallet and don’t let that happen again. It chases away players. Nothing is worst than finally deciding to buy that rare card for $200 just to see it crash to $50 the next day because of news that suddenly came out.