Eredan's World

Alright, so this is just an idea. Comment as you will.
Sorry if this has been suggested before, I've taken a quick look and don't think its come up before. So here we go.

Something I've been considering a lot is the dead end cards you end up with, one being [card]fog snake[/card], that sparked the idea in the first place.

So basically we have cards like [card]fog snake[/card], that don't end up anywhere, and no-one ever buys. We also end up with cards like [card]Fight![/card] which are useless very quickly. You already get untradeable versions since you get them out of starter decks, and they just take up room forever. As you open more packs, you get more.
But they all get experience. Technically you can say they've 'levelled'. They just don't turn into anything, and get a pretty red bar to taunt you with.

So this is the suggestion.

Allow for cards to be 'upgraded' into experience cards.

Cards that have full experience (for the level they're at) can be exchanged out for experience. So lets say you have a [card]Weapon Dance[/card] with full experience, you'd be able to exchange it for an experience card to be used on other things.

For higher level cards, you'd be able to get more experience. This is merely theoretical though. I doubt that a lot of the cards that you would actually level would be something you'd want to exchange at all, but it gives that option. This also allows for scaling of characters that you'd like to get rid of (maybe)

Let's say [card]Weapon Dance[/card] at full experience, can be exchanged for say, 10 xp. It's not very much, sure, but its worth a 2 games of experience, sometimes more.
So for a sort of scale:
Level 1 and '-' level cards: 10 xp (takes 160 experience)
level 2: 40 xp (takes 480 experience)
level 3: 100 xp (takes &*^$&** 1120 experience)
This is just an idea, and of course, the next level has to be worthwhile since its harder to do, so that's where these figures have come from. Anything higher then this isn't really worth considering, since you most likely do not want to exchange them for experience if you get them that far. Useless cards don't go that far.

Now, the cards I've named so far are mainly worthless ones that you'd want to get rid of. It gives you that option.
Now with that in mind, most likely you'd look at the cards and go 'I'd never play it in a deck, how is it supposed to get experience?' Well yeh, most probably not.

How about if you could do that with [card]Than The Sword[/card]?
It's not a very expensive card, copies come from starters, and it's usable.

Mage decks run it, so it'd be pretty well known, and most likely many people will have seen it. But even though it can upgrade(merge) it'll stay in its form with full experience being used in the deck.

This gives you an extra means of making experience per game, as the card slowly levels up as you play, it'll eventually be worth 10 xp for some other card or character. When it reaches that stage, you can cash it in for 10xp, get a new copy (or even use the one from the starter) and repeat the process. Your deck is still as powerful as before, and its making extra on the side.

There's only a few cards that can fit this category, since most top tier decks run very expensive cards, but there are some.

Also, the potential for this in the training room could be a positive change. Many new players spend their 5 games in agony in the training rooms because they get stomped all the way up the line. This sort of thing could encourage decks with less powerful cards (aka [card]Fight![/card] and [card]Weapon Dance[/card]) and weaker characters ([card]fog snake[/card]) that are clumping in collections of higher end players, that want to turn them into something useful while training up whatever characters they have.

You get a higher return of experience if even 10 of your cards are subpar but exchangeable. It means someone high levelled can run something like a newbie deck, for fun, play against newer players, get the experience bonus of the room, while earning much needed experience for whatever competitive deck they are making.
Each character is still getting experience, and these other cards that they are running on the side as filler will soon be worth 10xp each that can go into those same characters that they are painstakingly and slowly levelling up.

Now for the issues I think might turn up: (yes I've tried to go into these too)
price markups:
Since cards will start being bought out for this purpose, some things like 'TTS' would become more expensive, since its easy to cycle. Overall though, cheap cards should stay cheap, and expensive cards that don't cycle shouldn't move very much. Helps to keep the flood of the marketplace down a bit also. No-one wants to see 40+ 'Fight!' on sale every day that will never sell.

price drops in the marketplace for characters:
People tend to sell characters because the markup is good and this could influence the prices, but probably not. The experience exchange is limited by how many cards you can turnover, but a card that need 1120 xp still needs frigging 1120 xp... the process might have gotten easier, but its still a long time. The curve will probably change, though, with lower level characters, who are fast to make, being slightly cheaper, and the higher end characters being about the same, since it still takes a lot of patience to make them

and thus ends my rant. Thank you for taking the time to read (if you did)