What were the design flaws you found?

RULE BOOK:
General Card Design:
Minor Thing: I believe that 1000x Powers are huge numbers that you are not
working with enough. You have no Monster nor card effect that utilizes 500
Power or even lower. So all you Powers are 1000 – 15000, in 1000x steps.
Makes the game seem unnecessary overloaded. You could go down to 10x
Steps. So from 10 – 150, and still have half steps like 15 or 25, if you like to add
them. Also saves some space on the cards and effect text.

Meat Costs: For me and my friend it was very confusing that the Meat Costs for
calling Monsters is not always equal to their Monster Rank. For example Jhen
Mohran. If you want it to be 10 Cost you should just make it an Apex Monster.
Otherwise let him just cost 9, the difference is not much and makes the game
easier to understand and overall more consistent.

Effects: Besides the Stickers (CONT; AUTO etc.) many of the effects are weirdly
formulated and are hard to understand. Sometimes the grammar on how the
effects are written makes it difficult to get behind the concept of the card. The
text in comparison to the rest of the card is very small and hard to read also. In
my version I formulated all texts in the same way as LoR (Legends of Runeterra)
does it. But again, I am not an artist, so I didn't add Stickers. And the concept of
the [...] and (...) brackets didn't make it easier. You could have used a
way better system to write the effects down.

Weaknesses: Preys absolutly NEED weakness elements. Or it is
impossible to get rid of them. For example give Barnos a Thunder
Weakness so you have at least one good way to get rid of it. Otherwise
power creep is happening way to often.

Rule Design:
In general most things are pretty well designed. I would have just
limited the Preys to 6 as in my games we usually ended up with 10+ Preys and
steam rolled through our deck.

I would have also liked it to have the ability to flip over stalked Monsters
by yourself. And have Ambush effects activate not only on attack but on ANY
flip. You should have also made it, that the Weakness Element works both ways.
As attacker and defender. This brings a general card game design to live, which
is needed in this game. For example if my Lagiacrus attacks a Yian Garuga, my
opponent should get my +2000 Power bonus, as he is Fire and my Lagiacrus is
weak to it.

Last but not least, I completly changed what Blood Rage does. You should
entirely get rid of the game mechanic of flipping damaged cards up and down
and just make them all flipped up. And in terms of Keywords, Hide is also one
that is badly designed. Because with that you can ALWAYS save your preys.
Because non of the preys have Weakness Elements this pushes the power
creep and steamrolling I talked earlier about.
Comrade, Free Meal and Essence are Keywords I would not recommend to use
at all. Just make the cards weaker and remove comrade overall. Free Meal is
unbalanced if used correctly, as playing 2 Predators of high rank in the same
round is basically an instant win. And Essence is a weak Keyword, as you never
want your Monsters to die in this game. Even consuming is bad for the most
times.

And last in the rule book exhaust is one of the most overpowered
keywords I have ever seen period. The whole idea of being useless for 2 rounds
is so damaging to the flow of the game. You only have 4 slots for Predators and
all of stronger ones cost a lot of meat. Losing a monster for 2 rounds is an
instant lose most of the time. Exhaust should just get removed at Round End,
and the monster can un-rest at the next gather phase as usual.

Deck Building:
50 Cards is too much for this game design. With a ratio of 20 Preys and 30
Predators the chances of bricking your hand are super high. Either you have no
preys or no predators and basically cannot counter whatever your opponent
does. With 40 cards in the deck a ratio of 20/20 you have a 50% chance to draw
a card that you need and not maybe a 40% or 60% chance, balancing the game
overall for both players.
Again you should remove comrade as a whole.
Also only 3 copies of Predators breaks the deck building as I noticed. Just make
everything limited to 4 and thats it. I like the design of only Elder Dragons 1 and
only 1 Apex, but the rest can be limited to 4.

CARD DESIGN:
I see a lack of archtypes and overall themes to play around. I don't say there are non,
but there are not enough. You should focus each Monster Class on at least one
Archtype. For example let the Pelagus/Fanged Beasts focus on Blood Rage. Or let
Piscine Wyverns focus on exhaust. With that cards get an identity and are not
completly random.

Card Balance: I don't know how much you played this game yourself, but the range of
good to bad from cards in the same Rank is very unbalanced. Cards like Alatreon and
Fatalis overshadow all other Apex Monsters for example. Or Cards like Kirin and
Yama Tsukami are stronger than others of their Rank. Of course those are Elder
Dragons, but even with those the game needs some balance changes. Even if I take
a look at lower ranks, cards like Queen Vespoid and Volvidon are super strong and
can break games. Because effects like Meat cost reductions are super important in
this game. In the last 3 weeks when I created my now 146 cards I made 8 balance
changes already.

Remove Lagiacrus. You have a super opportunity here to use Monster Classes as
new updates for card releases. My version started with Elder Dragons, Carapaceons,
Neopteron, Flying Wyvern, Fanged Beasts/Pelagus, Piscine Wyverns and Bird
Wyverns. In the last 3 weeks I added Fanged Wyverns, then Leviathans and then
Brute Wyverns as seperate card expansions of around 20 cards each.
Remove Lagiacrus and add it with more Leviathans as an expansion later.

Lastly the colour schemes: I don't know with which idea you went on to make colours
for the Ranks, but here is my version. In Monster Hunter World we have 12 Ranks of
rarities. Grey, White, Yellow, Green, Teal, Blue, Purple, Orange, Red, "Saphire",
"Silver" and "Gold". Removing the last three ends up with 9 Ranks, 2 of which are
"colourless", that I use for Preys. So my preys are only Rank 1 or 2. Rank 3 and
higher are Predators, and Rank 9 are the Apex Monster. So I used this colour
scheme, which works a bit better in my opinion.

CONCLUSION:
This card game has so much potential, thats why I made my own version of it. I really
like it, so as you can see, I definitly know what I am doing and saying. Maybe you
have some explantions for the choices you made, that I willing to hear. Though I
would ask you again, that I would like to show you my version, and/or share it here in
the workshop, if that is okay with you.

P.S. please don't take all of this as all as negative, I am just excited to help.

Hi, thanks for taking the time to write to me. I'll address any criticisms that are actionable since the end result changing is what matters most.

PREY WEAKNESS
Good find. I was looking for feedback on this. In my games, it hadn't been a problem. But I wasn't for sure, so this helps. Note: prey aren't intended to be something a player can guarantee getting rid of any time they want. Giving prey weaknesses in general (which will require extensive testing in the particulars) should lessen some of the problems you had with <HIDE>. With a weakness, a rested Prey misses its <HIDE> when attacked and the attacker can choose to continue the attack after.
-Contradictions:
The general of that sounds good, but the particulars of each prey having a weakness could cause problems where the best method of playing is to spam cheap monsters and deny resources using weakness until a player runs out, then call everything and push the win button. In this game, resources are not intended to be easily deprived from a player long-term, only short-term. So "land destruction" and similar is not the primary goal.
One more thing that keeps me from adding weaknesses to prey; <HIDE> protects them from on-hit effects like Kirin, but weakness would make them have absolute vulnerability to on-hit effects.
This type of flow means predators can deal damage through prey in an absolute sense, which is strictly better than direct damage because it also denies the long-term resources. That's a combination of both contradictions we want to avoid. Prey weaknesses have to develop that down a correct path to its dialectical resolution; thus they won't have a fix implemented until then.

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STALKING / AMBUSH
This is another one I'm glad to hear about. We originally tested Ambush with the ability to appear at any time its owner wanted. This caused some problems so we limited it to getting attacked. Just a simple negation, but not further developed which was a mistake. The final result was only effects and being attacked could make a stalking monster appear which we also weren't completely satisfied with, since it can get "stuck" for a while face-down. It sounds like that might be what you're experiencing too. Recently, we've been testing with a change to this rule:

"You can make a monster appear from stalk, (Ambush) you control, that started the turn in play face-down and treat it like a normal call."

-Contradictions
This causes a triviality with choosing to attack stalking monsters. If they don't get attacked, they can simply flip the card anyway, so bluffing might be weaker. So far, no antagonisms appeared with card effects and this rule.

-Other possibility
There's a possibility already hidden in the game's rules. When attacking, you only need to choose a Stand monster and stalking happens as Stand. The only reason it doesn't already make Ambush valid is because the game's rules aren't explicit about flipping the attacker face-up if necessary, and are implicitly against resolving Ambush unless attacked or flipped by an effect. We would simply change this to "...by an effect or battle". So far, this is the most reasonable grounding instead of allowing arbitrary ambush effect activation. Because then ambush is a "promise" (Game Theory) not a potential "threat" (Game Theory).

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EXHAUST
There are currently 6 monsters in the game that use the very powerful Exhaust effect on an opponent. These are the ones we have considered changing:
* Desert Seltas: Requires ambush and revealing a specific card to achieve Exhaust. With a change to make ambush easier, we must compensate with a decrease of the range of targets for this.
* Brantodoth: Can only exhaust what it battles and requires destroying its own deck. I can look into increasing the cost beyond Blast.
* Green Plesioth: Only Rank 4 at the cost of its own rest. To remove the rank limitation, you have to rest an additional. I can look into making the additional rest a Rank 4+ which negates the possibility of targeting a Rank 9 by only resting an additional Prey. (Reminder: Apex can never be target if the only comparison is numerical rank.)
* Giaprey: Can only exhaust if it becomes damaged. The most I can do to make this less severe is make it a <COMRADE> with extra effects, so a player cannot have both this and powerful on-damage effects like a heal.

An early version of Exhaust only worked on monsters that were already Rest but it was too conditional to activate. So we broadened the effectiveness of it and simply reduced the strength of its implementation.

-Contradictions
With this, Exhaust is still very powerful, but of course the outcome achieved is dependent on the particulars of the effect limitations. To control Exhaust at the root level, we would have to change the rules qualitatively, otherwise a quantitative change only makes it like other effects. This is what we considered in response to your criticism and are set to test soon:

"Rest the monster if it's Stand. Until that End Phase, it can't Stand for any reason. Then until its controller's next Prep, it can't Stand except by effects. Note: because this skips that player's Gather, the exhausted monster will not automatically Stand during Prep."

This removes the limiter that even effects cannot Stand the monster for an entire round and keeps it where we wanted it at only the same turn it was exhausted. Before, the very commonplace effects that Stand a monster couldn't affect exhaust for a long time. Since stand effects will continue to be released and they are significantly easier than the difficulty of achieving an Exhaust already, changing the exhaust turn limit is most likely the best course of action. The last alternative for players who don't use Stand effects is consume, which is possible under the current rule. We will continue to heavily restrict the targets, circumstance, and timing valid for Exhaust.

Hi, thanks for the answer! Before I start to answer all your points, I justed wanted to say that I uploaded my version to the TTS Workshop if you want to have a look at it.
Here is the link to it: https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2858075979&searchtext=Monster+Hunter%3A+Arena

PREY WEAKNESS
You can easily limit how preys can get killed in another way. For example, make it so preys can always be attacked if they are rested, and change <<HIDE>> to: "If I am standing and get attacked, rest me to stop the attack." That would mean your opponent needs 2 attacks for 1 prey, which could be balanced. I don't know, would need some tests.
Another way is, simply have them all Dragon weakness. This doesn't make much sense with the monster lore but there are not a lot of Dragon monsters in the game, only the more high costs.
Or you could just make a keyword that allows to attack rested monster anyway, which could be strong or not I don't know.
Also giving Apex the ability to attack rested preys could be something.

Another thing I was thinking about in my version was to limit the number of preys that can be played per turn to 1. Which would slow down early game and only after turn 6 you could have a strong lineup of preys. In this case, you can keep <<HIDE>> and everything as it is. Though I need to test that as well.
The main problem that the current rules have is that, if you draw 5 good preys and an Apex Monster, you can summon that in the first turn, which is super unbalanced.

Anyway giving Preys weaknesses is basically a 1 in 5 chance to kill it with an element you have. Which could also build up some cool work arounds. Because long term resource destroying seems like an interesting control kinda archtype.

EDIT: So I tested around with a deck that focuses around killing prey and I have to say, that if the opponent gets at least 1 or 2 strong monsters out, there is no way to win like this. Because you keep the Meat and not lose it at the end of the turn, it feels like a prey is consumed instead of produced, if you know what I mean. So I don't think its a big problem. At least in my version.



STALKING / AMBUSH
I would restrict the flip-up by yourself to be only in your own turn, and not in the turn, the monster was stalked. Because some monsters have ambush effects that only work when attacked, which is already a promise, because you wouldn't flip it up by yourself anyway. Maybe some ambush effects are a bit stronger this way, but ambush isn't really the archtype that you should be worried about.
The bluffing was not really the main aspect of stalking anyway. In most card games, playing cards face down, is not to bluff, but to force the enemy to attack it without knowing what it is. There is a slight difference in it.


EXHAUST
Just to start this: Brantodoth (or its actual name Beotodus) is the most overpowered card in the whole roaster you have at the moment. I am coming back to this later.

First of all, you should never make a keyword strong and then viable through making the conditions of it hard to achieve or having a high cost. For most players this just feels like bad game design (I know what I am talking about, I got that feedback twice already xD). What you should do instead is, make the keyword weaker, and set it up for more monsters.

I do like the idea of: When you exhaust a standing monster, it gets rested, and if you exhaust a resting monster it will not be unrested in the next gather phase. Feels like a stronger exhaust, if your opponent plays into that. Then it feels less like bad game design, but just a matter of choice, what to attack and produce with etc.

Now back to Beotodus, here are the reasons why this monster is so OP, and the main reason, why I developed my own version of this game:
--- 6 Meat means easy 1st turn play for 50% of cases
--- 8000 strength instead of 6000 (which should by typical for Rank 6, but isn't)
--- only +2000 Bonus on weakness (but weakness doesn't matter here)
--- MAIN PROBLEMS
--- It is not once per turn! And burning through your deck is way better than taking damage in this game
--- Its AUTO, which means, the owner can't even decide to NOT use the effect
--- This card alone can tank through 4 predator attacks like its nothing (-12 cards in the deck do not matter at all)

The reason by blasting through your deck does not matter is simple. In Yugioh there is a card that lets you banish 10 cards from your deck to draw 2. Nobody cared about the 10 cards EVER. So blasting here, is not a difficult condition.
In the current state Beotodus needs to be either nerfed or a Rank 7 <<COMRADE>> in my opinion. My friend and I decided to ban this card from our games, because it was so toxic to play against <~<


P.S.: If it is okay with you I would like to invite to either my steam friendslist or if you have discord, the server I made for my version. As I would really like to show you what I did, and maybe talk about your version in voice chat. If you don't want that, thats fine, just asking.

I'll address more of this some other time if I can, but I wanted to say real quick: Exhaust cannot stop an attacking monster from following through with its attack. Brantodoth (ブラントドスーBurantodosuーin the original Japanese) is not meant to prevent damage at the cost of 3 cards from deck; that cost just allows you to disable the opposing monster for a time after the attack. That should follow from the rule book, but if there's something in there that poses a contradiction to that, let us know.