Cocofang

Another thing you aren't taking into account is the extremely powerful FOMO. Say it's implemented, then just the fact that you CAN buy three additional boosters with gold and trash cards per week would make people feel both incentivized to grind for gold, which could become an off-putting, mind numbing grind for people that they still feel like they have to do to get the most tangible benefit, and it would feel bad for the people that can't do that in the first place because they are leaving boosters on the table that others can get. That's something you have to be careful with. The balance between making it feel like an okay-ish gold sink but also making it just bad enough so it's merely a last resort if you have nothing else to do with your gold is important.

While I do think some sort of gold-sink would be nice eventually, I don't like this. Even 50k for a single booster would mean speedrunning generates a booster every 10 minutes on average. That is insane. Even if you double it, an additional booster would be added to the total pool of cards in the game every 20 minutes. Still crazy. And at this price point people would either only speedrun like crazy for it or be outraged about the unobtainable cost. It also does not consider people that focus on only a few cards. Say someone plays and cares for only 50 cards. He would stop needing gold like ten times sooner than someone that likes to diversify and upgrades most of them. And with nothing else to do such a player would dump his gold on boosters to fuel charge upgrades. But I do like the idea of raising the value-floor while simultaneously lowering the value-ceiling for cards by giving them all some inherent value and use. It would also help taking cards OUT of the game again, which is currently impossible, aside from naturally quitting players.

Great work, appreciate it!

No, that's backwards. It's a fixed loot table that incentivizes playing different maps. Because you only need each upgrade once, you wouldn't hunt after them when they switch maps.

So from what I have seen now, the amount of struggle you experience is very dependent on your luck. People that get lucky pulls can build up a big pool of BFP in a short time. Which enables them to open even more booster, forcing a good pull eventually, recouping their BFP and so on. It also depends on how much cards you want to collect. If you don't care for certain, valuable cards it means you will build up much more BFP through sales. Another common approach is to sell the daily booster for a profit. But I think that only becomes viable after you have a solid card inventory. In the beginning you just need so much stuff that it's probably better to just go with boosters for a solid foundation and lucky pulls. An exception are probably people that only want one deck or two and play nothing else. For them selling their daily booster is a viable strategy. Overall, I think you can progress steadily and even if you keep most cards to yourself, rather quickly. HOWEVER, it is important to note that boosters are 100 BFP cheaper by default now. Even if you keep your booster, you are left with 150 excess BFP. That's a very solid amount. Will be a different story once boosters leave you with only 50 BFP extra. Add to that whatever extra BFP you drain from your reserve. Then the decision to sell or open a booster will be much more important. It might also influence BFP prices for cards across the board. That's when the current progression system will truly be put to the test.

The "value" of boosters would also have to consider the distribution of rarity, right? A shaman for example makes a booster much more valuable because it is just an uncommon than an equally expensive ultra rare. Or is that not the case because the uncommon pool is bigger than the ultra rare pool? Would cards need to have to have a "weight" depending on their rarity and possibly by the pool of cards they share their rarity with? Don't know, I am not a statistician

Please do Kobold Engineers next! They drive me fucking nuts when they run off to fight. I would love it you could disable their ability to fight so they only repair, no matter what. Wouldn't even mind if you removed their damage entirely.

Sounds great! Really appreciate the site. Looking forward to more improvements.

Site just died.

Ah, interesting. Never considered that patreons have an economical advantage.

Skylords first, official Patchnotes Hopefully the changes to PvP queues will be a good compromise for people that rely on the 120 decks to compete and those that wish to collect and build their own decks. Speaking of patchnotes, when can we expect the first balancing patchnotes? The ETA for the balance patch was 01.01.21, right?

It's a fan project. Non-profit. No contract. Allowed by the verbal go-ahead of EA because they obviously don't care for the IP. But they still own it. Don't know what kind of advertisement, aside from word-to-mouth, is even possible with an IP that you don't own. Or if anyone should be willing to take the risk to find out.

Charges have been frontloaded so that upgrades become less mandatory. 24 charges: 6+6+6+6 -> 12+4+4+4 20 charges: 5+5+5+5 -> 10+4+3+3 16 charges: 4+4+4+4 -> 8+3+3+2 12 charges: 3+3+3+3 -> 6+2+2+2 8 charges: 2+2+2+2 -> 4+2+1+1 4 charges: 1+1+1+1 -> 1+1+1+1

I think the opportunity cost is fine. One shadow orb and two deck slots to have vastly increased T4 charges if you need them.

Shiny or not, it's like they say: Can't polish a turd. The colors are just atrocious.

I suggest to "fix" Ironclad. On the card artwork it looks amazing. Silver, nice shades of blue, a slightly violet hue. A really strong thematic and harmonious coloring. Now, in-game on the other hand ... Garbage. Ugly bronze on the clogs. Disgusting dark green and blue cannons. Dark brown with a blue shine on helmet and shoulder plate. Castle has such drastically different colors. The colors clash heavily and don't fit together at all. Just how gross it looks makes me not want to play it. So my suggestion is to make the card artwork as ugly as the in-game model. Wait ...

Really looking forward to a detailed price history. If you are looking for a bit of inspiration, you can check out the PoE version: https://poe.ninja/

Yeah, makes sense as long as the community isn't getting split. Grats on the smooth launch btw.

Hm, well. Guess you just have to deal with the fact that this is not a Pay2Win game to whale it out anymore. The "slowly building up a collection" part isn't going anywhere, that's for sure. I am actually surprised the test server is even freely accessible anymore.

Because collecting is a fundamental and integral part of this collectible card game. How did you even get into this game back then in the first place if you don't like slowly building up your collection? Did you just drop a 1000 bucks to buy everything?

Yeah, so the 120 decks could be pushed back a month to give the people that held off on playing until now for that reason a nice welcome and still enable the help long-term. Are you saying that playing exclusively PvP and unlocking everything you want that way is impossible or unfeasible without this iteration of the free PvP decks? Why is PvE constantly getting brought up? What am I missing here? Isn't the current progression system agnostic to PvP and PvE? I am assuming you mean a new player would have to lose his way into the PvP mode, which would be a bad experience and turn people off. That is true but is the current iteration the best solution? Is this extent of the "crutch" necessary? I too am of the opinion that a more accessible entry level to PvP is good for the long term health of the mode. But I am questioning whether this exact iteration is ideal and if the game needs it right now when everyone just started from scratch anyway.

Please try to put yourself into a perspective where reward and grind are connected. Understanding the opposing point of an argument is essential for a healthy discussion and resolution. Precisely what you are wondering here is a good portion of what this is about.

Don't argue with the other extreme. I am not arguing against free PvP decks. I am saying that the current implementation completely ignores people that enjoy the "collecting and slowly building up a PvP deck" part of the game. There is barely any compromise, the free 120 decks swing very heavily away from their position while a compromise and adjustment is very much possible. I am a pure PvE player but I understand where the PvP players that are against the current free 120 PvP deck implementation are coming from. Do you? They are not getting a good deal and something they were looking forward to is diminished heavily while better compromises would be possible. You are mostly arguing from a "no free decks at all VS the current implementation" point of view. Why? Adjustments can be made. The current system shouldn't be set in stone. It would be hubris to assume that the things right now, on day 1 of exposing the project to a bigger player base, are as good as they can be. Maybe U3 is not necessary? Maybe full charges are too much? Maybe the amount of decks is too big? Maybe there are too many different cards? Maybe access to the decks needs some sort of boundary like a fee? Maybe the decks should be implemented at a later date, like a month from now? Maybe the free decks should be exclusive to certain PvP modes? There are plenty of ways to tweak it. It seems that the misunderstanding and disconnect here is that the "just skip directly" part is what people take issue with.

That's a disingenuous point. Yeah, you CAN still grind. But the 120 decks are free and people use them. So if you decide against is, you are massively behind. Every time you face someone with the free U3 cards you must fight an uphill battle that the opponent didn't earn. That argument also ignores the psychological aspect. How bad it feels to work towards something when it's essentially worthless because it's already provided for free. It distorts the sense of value. Which is obviously something that drew some people towards this game. An advantage is not necessary when everyone starts from 0. It just removes the start-up phase entirely. Now, when the game has already been running for a month or two it's a different story. Someone joining at that point or later would need a bit of a helping hand to get into PvP. Also, how big does the advantage have to be? The current implementation goes for straight up perfect U3 cards. Is that necessary? If the cards were U2 then U3 versions that you own and can use in PvP would hold more value as they can only be accessed by investing resources.

I mean, collecting cards is the entire point of the game. The difference is you can't throw money at progression anymore. They have to dissect the pay2win aspect somehow and replace it with progression. It's literally the first day, I don't think any arguments about slow progression hold much weight right now. Give it a week or two, you can buy a booster a day and safe BFP on the side too.