I find it very odd that you have taken away the ability to trade cards between players and I don't understand the reason given for it above. Lots of us (as Ata mentions) have other accounts than our mains. We have used those accounts for various reasons (e.g., trading accounts, Domain accounts), but the cards on those accounts are more or less gone now. Also, Ska_Baron borrowed about 15 cards from me some time ago. Does that mean that I can kiss those cards goodbye? I am certain that other players have lent cards to their friends and guildies.

Furthermore, isn't it a vital, indeed, essential, part of a game like TFW that you should be able to trade cards? Isn't it a collectible card game? Surely, it has been up until now.

Now, don't get me wrong. I am all in favour of TFW coming back. I really hope that you guys will make it proper again. Still, when you annouce changes such as these without any prior notification or discussion, my instinct is certainly to think twice before I invest any time, let alone money, into TFW again.

My hope is for an open discussion of any changes prior to implementation. I think many other players hope so as well.

When we moved to a new server I updated interface and accidentally committed that change - I forgot that we changed it already. We wasn't going to disable trade so early. And since I'm still trying to set up everything it's not easy to make updates for me, so I decided to revert it a bit later with next update, since it doesn't looks so urgent.

And when we will finally remove trade again it still will be possible to transfer cards between players, but only in cases like you and Atahualpa had or something similar. I or someone else will do this manually for each case.

And what about removing trade in general - we are planning to give real cards to new players and may be some gold for battles, and in this case trade makes it's way to easy to abuse system. The point of giving real cards is that any player will be able to trade them from the very beginning, and also permanent phantom cards are very confusing for new players.

Actually... Having no trades in a TCG is acceptable, so long as there's still a way to exchange cards. In this case, the store. Disabling trades will just make the store more robust.

Altren has mentioned to me that he might return the store for a short period or time or maybe just initiate trades from his end manually. I guess we'll just need a window for this to be allowed since he can't be expected to do this forever.

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Looking for: Crumbling Alone (2)
Also looking for: Revenant Bishop, Osin Faith Healer, Pilgrim's Cairn, Avenging Angel (2)

Will the domains be rebalanced? I've always felt that DL has all the power skewed towards it making it far superior to all the other domains.

It can be argued that CI can ramp up to 3 domains quickly (DL does it only a little slower).
S has a lot of cheap strong creatures (so does DL).
MF has large creatures (DL has better ones).
Elem has effective creature control (DL has the best, though).
HoC... I don't remember O.O

Not to mention DL has flux acceleration, the ability to control opponent's resources, the ability to draw massive cards, the ability to recycle it's creatures, the ability to heal, a building with massive vision...

The only thing I can think of that DL can't do on it's own is manipulate flux wells. (Enchantment removal it can handle with the help of that unaligned card).

The power balance leaning heavily towards DL has always been a deterrent for me in TFW and I'm pretty sure others feel/have felt this way. If you're to make this game a success, you're going to have to spread the wealth a bit.

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Looking for: Crumbling Alone (2)
Also looking for: Revenant Bishop, Osin Faith Healer, Pilgrim's Cairn, Avenging Angel (2)

I think one of the problems is that a well developed DL deck is so strong at creature control that it becomes pointless to use creatures, even though the game mechanics works best when they revolve around creatures. The way to counter this is to build trick decks like the water decks I play, and they're just not that fun to play against.

The current balance leans towards benefiting extreme decks that win by making your opponents deck completely pointless (like floods, overwhelming creature control, weird glory victories or other heavy enchantments). These decks are part of the fun, but it'd be nice if versatility rather than extreme specialization dominated.

Here's an idea: get the decision about disenchant priority into the match rather than being decided in deck creation. Let a player disenchant any enchantment by playing a flux cost written on the card. That would stop a few matches from being decided through simple deck matchup, or "will he draw a disenchant in time?".

What about allowing players to trade CARDS between each other.. but NOT gold?

This would make all purchases of gold go through the market, but would still allow players to trade cards that they have more than 3 of for ones they need. Otherwise, the value of cards will become worthless.

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Altren wrote:

I agree with Keyser, and that's what I'm planning to implement actually.

|| The Rise of the DCC | Plasmatium Netherious | Tastes Like Chicken | The Astridian Conspiracy ||

Guild -> | Platypus Rising|

I find the no trade system acceptable. I would just like that if I were to buy gold I could sell some of it and get some money back. That's pretty much my only disagreement. Even then that's really just greed talking. It's illogical to think we should be able to take the gold we've won and sell it and still have the game survive. That's the game directly creating it's own competition.

In other words, I'm glad to see tfw being ran like a buisiness.

But I still propose that trades being an option for supporter accounts could also be made into a viable option. Mainly because it's indirectly a tax on player to player selling and could be used with other incentives to draw money into the game. But it's just a little more complex and for now complex isn't viable.

With all that in mind, my final opinion is that I'm looking forward to the new teams vision for the game.

What does everybody think about emptying out the store (both buying and selling)?

On the downside, it may become more difficult to obtain specific cards (rares/uncommons/odd). On the upside, players don't pour their gold into dead accounts (black holes) and buy offers become more realistic (no low bids from accounts that are no longer active).

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Looking for: Crumbling Alone (2)
Also looking for: Revenant Bishop, Osin Faith Healer, Pilgrim's Cairn, Avenging Angel (2)

You'd have to set some starting price on cards afterwards imo, which I have no idea how it could be done - because otherwise everything will be starting really high priced and it'll be going down really slowly..

Right now market have some, at least partially, stabilised prices. Also it have most cards available. If we will reset it then we need few months to fill it again, until it will be mostly empty and useful. Also after this time period we might end with too high prices as Zurken said.

What about advantages:
Many players who bought gold might return. Also what's the problem of giving gold to currently inactive players?
buy offers become completely broken first, and then maybe they will become more realistic. Also if there are too cheap prices somewhere this card will be bought pretty fast when game will be more active and there won't be such problem.

The only advantage that I see now is removing invalid sell/buy offers, but this also can be done without wiping all offers (of course it is not so easy as delete everything, but it is still possible).