Good Win/Loss ratio for a balanced game

[ANIMEniac]

I get the point about the "generic" first turn plays, but that may only last for 3-4 turns. Every deck has an ideal open they want to set-up. Some will vary depending on deck. However, it's not like the whole game is decided upon those first few turns. The big turning point will be the SS and it's timing. HARDLY any deck will have the same line-up. It's not like YGO where you will expect to see a number of the same power cards in every deck. The first SS can completely ruin an open strat. Sergis ruins Undead. Wiesser slows rush. Fierte kills big. Dryad Soldier sets up Gowen for all it's powerhouse cards.

Just like how some decks have poor match-ups strategy-wise, a few select SS can turn the tables.
EN would get screwed over by Wiesser back in early sets. I still think a few good row damage or multi damage can handle them well. Sergis is super effective (drain SP and kill).

The other big factor is knowing how to play against certain decks. If you understand how other decks play/work, you can predict certain moves. I played an EN type file (not pure lycan) and a huge problem for me was the Balls of Lame. Guess what, all i had to do was watch their SP and predict when it would come. I play Succi on the turn they play Balls and I win out.

You really need to understand that in Alteil, some decks will just be at that much at an advantage over certain ones. Your SS are meant to either help improve your strat, or to help you with your weakness.

Oh man, if you are complaining about EN cheese...
Please, everyone save us the headache and don't play him with Primclone XD

[Nehless]

Porky is the man who created EN. By the way, EN is by no means easy at all to play. I've played EN and it's not easy, just ask anyone in the chat room when they see me play it.

Porky makes a good point about entertainment. There are a lot of people accustom to downloading free things all the time and never realize there is a fixed cost behind all the production. They have to meet their status quo or you'll never see a movie/game/some sort of entertainment function like it again.

Stop being dirt cheap and buy some cards. If you can't, then just wait till you can buy some or just move on with life.

[Demongod]

Have you grown so accustomed to downloading your movies and games that you think everything should be free?

You ask that sarcastically. I answer that seriously. Yes. I do. And so do many others. In fact, considering that alteil is advertised as a free game, it seems that you're trying to attract free players.

So now, you have them. And at least one who actually wants to play for free, not just run into well-known, hard-counter matchups and then get told "you're in experienced".

Heck, I played against a command doll deck today, lost as was inevitable, and simply wondered how well I did (decently enough). But it wasn't as fun as when I felt that I had a standing chance to win. I also lost vs. a Gowen rush mod starter today as well. But that game was far more fun. Why? Because I knew there was a 50/50 chance for me to win, and that the player who won was the one who'd make the least mistakes. I made a few bad plays, so I lost, and didn't feel bad about it (aside from my mistakes). But when you lose to cards simply you haven't ever faced before and suddenly are facing, that's not fun. That's not "learning from mistakes". That's just "oh, too bad, so sad, better luck of the draw next time".

I mean honestly, is this how Alteil is going to be further down in development? Consider a tournament--is the winner literally going to be decided just from the initial deck matchups that you could literally say "player A is running deck a...player Z is running deck z, so assuming that all of the underdogs lose, our winner should be player i".

I mean honestly, are you telling me that as a Gowen player, that I should just give up when I see Lycans or Guardian/Star Dragon, without even bothering to play out the rest of the game?

Is this what we want to tell the rest of the potential community?

[Romdeau]

I suggest you try either Lawtia or Falkow starters and I bet you the files you struggle against with your Gowen files won't be nearly as difficult. This is just a fact about Alteil, Gowen rush is gowen rush. It is mindless, play the units in the right order and smack your opponents units. That's how you play it, and I'm not just biased-I've played it quite a bit, enough to write a article on it. Take a look at what you're losing to and factor it into your file designing. If you don't have the cards to counter them yet, then yes it will be an auto-loss. As a free player, you can only expect to do so well against people who have a larger card pool than you. Again, I sympathize with you to some degree because I think certain files just flat out do outrageously much better than the starters (Endless Night, Primclone, Endless Morning, etc.) but that doesn't mean we should punish the players with larger card pools. We just need to make access to new cards easier for free players.

[DWildstar]

But when you lose to cards simply you haven't ever faced before and suddenly are facing, that's not fun. That's not "learning from mistakes". That's just "oh, too bad, so sad, better luck of the draw next time".

I mean honestly, are you telling me that as a Gowen player, that I should just give up when I see Lycans or Guardian/Star Dragon, without even bothering to play out the rest of the game?

Is this what we want to tell the rest of the potential community?

No one is telling you to give up any of your games, that's your choice. Playing a losing game in itself isn't learning from your mistakes. Learning from your mistakes is picking yourself back up, changing your file around, experimenting with new soul skills that might give you a better chance. Nobody expects you to give up when you see a file you have trouble against because they know that you don't learn that way.

In all my games I've never given up no matter how badly I could see I might lose. Maybe I could see one more soul skill of my opponent's or see one more unit I didn't know that they had which either I could prepare for or get some ideas from. This is what we expect players to do because it'll make them a better more experienced player and hopefully continue to enjoy the game.

I saw another of your games, try out more damage soul cards. Also I think you might have more LP than you need. Usually the way I calculate LP is by seeing how many unique cards I have and balance the LP accordingly. If you have too many unique units you might lose your LP too fast, conversely if you have too much LP then you might run out of units before you run out of LP.

In Gowen rush it's usually better to have 1 LP soul skills up front because they're easier to time and purposefully activate by sacrificing units. I would also read the Modifying Card Files articles. Even if you don't have all the cards in the articles they still have good insight into how to modify a file well. Also if you only have one Estoma and he probably won't get a chance to attack he's just guaranteed LP loss and not worth as much as a card you have more copies of.

[Zanador]

"Learn from your mistakes" isnt exactly the correct term.. its more like "learn from your matches". In folrart you have a fair chance of facing 200-300 different cards in a week. There is no way to see them coming while you are still new and its by no means a mistake to lose to the unknown. And even if you know whats coming, you need time and experience (oh, yeah, we are back to this again...) to know how to deal with it. And yes, this will mean lots of lost maches untill you saw nearly all the popular files in Folrart.

What i do usually is building more decks at once (if i have the time to come up with more, which i dont now..), designed against different kind of decks. When im making plans against rushes i use multi attack skills and relatively cheap units, and when im up against big decks, i use returns, engagers and SP generator units (definitely a must have. if your opponent start building up SP and has a lot of LP to tank you early on, summon an sp generator as soon as possible). Against specific meta decks i use the informations i got from observing and try to counter them. Naturally the point is allways to have the least amount if bad matchups for me, but thats not allways achievable. Armed with 2-3 decks at the same time i can pick the one that has the most good matches in Folrart.

For example a few weeks ago, before EX5, about 60% of my games were against smoke-open-mid-lawtia decks, about 10% were against other mid-big decks (athira shin, stardragon), and the other 30% were SK and modded starters. So i picked a deck that destroys mid lawtia and big decks, and accepted to lose against SK and modded starters.
Due to the low number of games i played, all this ended up in about 10 won games and 6 losses, which i consider a fine result for 1-2 weeks of playing (and since the decks i beat mostly belonged to lvl50+ people, that 10 wins meant 4 lvlups).
Then EX5 came, low lvl Refess became popular, smoke-mid-lawtia rate went down to 30%, maybe less, so its time for me to change my decks again.
I wont create a new meta with this philosophy, and yes, it took me a lot of time to get big enough cardpools to do this, but i like to build new files anyway so it suits me.
PS: dont think that my decks are allways so different from eachother. Sometimes i just change 2-3 SS and a unit or two when i adapt to, say rushes from big decks (replacing battle mage with mermaid sorceress, and sylphes with undines and such).

[Peralisc2]

This is just a friendly advice for you and i hope you listen and try to do as i say. You simply waste too much time and energy with this game, i see it causes you a lot of stress and consuming you from deep inside. Why do you want to force something like this on yourself? If it just dosn't work well for you as a very active free player (and want to stay free out of ambition) then why not just wait it out? Either by grinding it and spending as little time as possible with alteil.
Or just simply quit the game and free yourself from this burden.

I don't even try to say you should have patience and try to learn the game a bit more. Maybe you just don't feel like it. Fine, but do something else then. You keep giving these "i want to have fun" texts, how by torturing yourself? In the end, this is just another game and that's it.

[ANIMEniac]

In tournaments, there is always the big news about top meta Deck A. Players either conform to building the better Deck A, or build the counter Deck B. Deck A players mod to fight off Deck B counters.

When the tournament starts, people have an idea of what to expect from the top players, Deck A or Deck B. Then at some point they can run into bad luck and hit random rogue Deck C they weren't prep'd for because they were tweaked for Deck A.

Most of the time, i think Gowen will have it pretty tough because many players have grown accustomed to the influx of Gowen. So you are in a bad position, even if the deck is one of the strongest starters. It's just going to take a bit of time to build up your pool and get experience playing the types of decks people run in Folrart. Instead of the "i give up" approach, take the time to look at how your opponent plays. There are matches I hate seeing with my decks. Unless I am in a very unpleasant mood, I will fight till the bitter end. Try to play differently or use different methods. If you are going to lose, might as well experiment with different plays. Maybe it'll be more beneficial than you think.

I got countered hard today with one of my decks that opened Shade>Smoke. Opponent played knight>Folrart Monk. At that point it was a big hit for me and i knew it. But i stuck to it and played much differently. I played shade again to take his SP and offered the extra loss of LP to stop him. I slowed his deck and prevented Guardian till late game and got the units i needed out. i was standing at 5 LP to his 9 LP by the time i was able to flip the game around.