That's why I
hate the Plus rule; I often loose good stuff to it. In FFVIII, it's often combined with Random which makes things worse. Some really hardcore FFVIII players actually like the damn thing though. Best thing to do is try not to play cards which will allow the opponent to setup a nasty combo. Easier said than done though.
Anyway, here's some information on how the game was set up in FFVIII for whoever ends up taking over this thing. It might give some insight into how the orginal was balanced (note: Combo is always possible with Same and Plus).
Rule sets in order of appearance:
Region 1: Open
Region 2: Sudden Death, Elemental
Region 3: Same
Region 4: Random, Elemental
Region 5: Random, Plus
Region 6: Random, Same/Plus
Region 7: Elemental, Same Wall
Region 8: Open, Random, Same/Plus/Same Wall, Sudden Death, Elemental (yeah all of them at once).
As I said before, the cards from the Monsters and Villains set have the exact same stats as the original game (some aren't even renamed), not counting magic items. Also, cards from levels 8-10 are considered rare, there's only one copy of the card in the world at a single time which means only one of each of the cards can ever be played by any player. The Pupu card (one of the unrenamed cards here btw), though level 5, is also a very rare card and is obtained through a sidequest near the end of the game. This natually affects the game's overall balance, one thing about Prismatic Wars is that I don't think the higher cards levels have any limits which throws some of the balance out of whack.
Here's how the rules and cards are distributed throughout the game:
Disc 1:
Your starting area uses Region 1, and opponents only have card levels 1-5 There's a single opponent with Region 2 rules. After a bit, you leave this area and don't return until the next disc. The rest of disc one has 4 areas with card players. Three of these areas use Region 3 rules, the fourth uses Region 4 rules. Nearly all players only have level 1-4 cards. There's a very small number of players with level 5 cards, and two players with level 6 cards.
Disc 2:
Most of the world opens up here, so you get access to more players. You can also start to freely travel around by the middle of the disk. Areas with Region 2, 5, and 6 rules are accessible. Your home base, which uses Region 1 rules, gets players with level 1-6 and level 1-7 cards. Regions 2 and 5 also have players that go up to levels 6 and 7. Don't know exactly how high Region 6 goes, I haven't seen anything higher than level 4 from most players, and since it's Random, Same/Plus I never play there at all.
Disc 3:
This is where Region 7 and 8 rules finally show up.
From this card distribution, the highest number at the start is 7. A little laters, 8s start appearing. Only rare cards have 9 and A.
Rare cards are obtained in three ways: beating game bosses who drop cards, winning them from an opponent or sidequests. There are a few named NPCs throughout the game who start with 1 rare card by default, by playing these NPCs, the player can obtain the rare card. However, if a player loses a match to an opponent, the player could lose a rare card, which the opponent will be able to use. It's possible for an opponent to have multiple rare cards to use against the player this way, but they will only have one copy of each card.
Trading rules are a bit different. There's an NPC called the Card Queen that moves around the world. Playing her can set the trade rule to whatever the player wants, but the rule can also shift around depending on which trade rule you're using. I don't understand how it works fully, but I suspect that most of the opponents around here will have One or possibly Direct for game balance, since a player can very quickly amass cards from the Diff and All rules.
Now there are some other nuances to the orginal game, like changing a region's rules, but I don't think that's going to apply here.
