Before I start, I want to explain that I feel as though I've come with a "outsider looking in" experience with this game, as roughly a year ago my friend and I decided to try the game out, mostly as a joke, while they had already played the game before, I had only seen things about it during my childhood, and never had gotten to seriously play it.
Fast forward until now, and I've played the game on and off in short bursts, managing only to get to Mooshu on a level 47 Ice School character so far, and during this time I've felt as though I've noticed a few issues with the game that could be handled better in my opinion, especially after playing different games and seeing how those developers handled their problems, however, I'm no expert.
With that being said, I've made a couple posts already on some other issues, but for this I'd like to focus on "Spellelements."
Spellelements in concept is and incredibly fun idea that has so much potential that it is honestly tragic to see how little it has been used, instead being used as another gimmick to produce small amounts of income for KingsIsle.
Spellelements are currently a form of resource you can get out of spell packs, which must be bought in the store mind you and only have a chance of giving a spellelement, that can be used to "advance" a particular spell, with some of these spell advancements leading to a choice you are able to make on whether it should do more damage, produce an additional effect, etc. For example, say you and your friend both got enough spellelements to "advance" your "Fire Cat" spell, you may choose to make yours to deal an exact amount of damage each time due to the spellelement "advancement tree" choice, while his now has a wider range of higher damage than normal.
Spellelements, in concept, could add a huge amount of personalization to the game, where instead of just personally choosing which school and which additional spells from other schools you want to choose, and then how to build your deck (which, thanks to player metas can cause your decks and spells to be very similar to other competitive players), you could also choose how each of your spells actually play compared to someone else's same spell. This, in my opinion, would certainly further make your deck feel like it's yours and truly help you to make your own strategy.
Unfortunately, KingsIsle seems to have seen this as another opportunity to make money in a quick, gimmicky way, rather than allowing it to be a full-on mechanic that could revolutionize the game as a whole. With only the players willing to spend hundreds of dollars on spellelements being the only ones to really use the mechanic.
What I believe should happen with spellelements, it that the idea of having to "collect" these spellelements should be thrown away, and instead, each time you use a spell, you can "experience" using that specific spell, once you reach certain levels of "experience" using that spell, you would be able to make upgrades to it in the same fashion that you are now using the spellelements mechanic.
Personally, I believe this would be such a overhaul to the game in terms of personalization of each players deck, that it might make the game feel like "Wizard102," and I believe it would be such a fun mechanic, assuming it worked in the way I mentioned, that it would bring in far more players, which, assuming they paid for membership, could earn KingsIsle much more money than whatever pitiful amount they're making of the gimmick so far, thus, I believe adding the spellelements as more of a "personal upgrading of spells" would be more profitable for KingsIsle, hopefully giving them incentive to change it.
Hopefully this can be done, instead of wasting the amazing potential of the idea presented by what is currently the spellelements mechanic, which could drastically change the game into what I believe would be a much more fun, personalized experience that would pair very well with the choice of which "School" you subscribe to and would really fit the idea of "becoming your own wizard, with your own spells."
I agree with this most out of all of your (very impressive and detailed) posts.
I am a longtime player of Kingsisle's MMO's, and when I first saw Spellements introduced, they were presented as a revolutionary way to customize your Wizard's approach to combat. Starting with the Daybreaker and Nightbringer spells, Kingsisle promices to build off this system to make things more interesting.
That was a year and a half ago. Since then, things have panned out pretty much like you described. Spellements have since then mainly featured in Packs (The "Loot Boxes" of Wizard101) or other methods to encourage players to pay a good portion of money.
I am beginning to feel that Spellements have been abused as a method to obtain more money, at the expense of what could potentially be a really nice system if treated properly.
