At this point I would like to refer back to @MrXLink's original post which received criticism, as not all player groups were considered and present my closely related proposal. The current BFP reward and progress system clearly shows the limits of its longevity and therefore needs to be revised after the reset.
Player groups
For my proposal, I have therefore divided the community into different types of players, who should all benefit from the new system:
Beginners: These players are new to the game or start the game again after a very long break with little knowledge. Due to the enormously small community, such players are of special value.
Midfield: All-round players, no excessive playing, interested in all game modes, but mainly PvE. This group currently makes up a large part of the community.
PvP: From beginner to expert, only interested in battle against other players.
PvE: From beginner to expert, only interested in battle with others against the computer. Some also focus primarily on RPVE.
Player goal
Casual / Fun: Players have no declared goal to be the best or to achieve any other ranking. Largest part of the community
Speedrunner: Players have as a goal to occupy top positions in the PvE / RPvE rankings
PvP Veterans: Players who want to climb the PvP ladder
Grinder: Players with the highest online time, who want to reach as many collectible cards as possible and/or complete all quests and achievements
It is noticeable that the respective players have different needs and expectations.
Player expectations of a fair system
Time: Those who invest more time should also be rewarded more
Success: Those who achieve set goals should also be rewarded more
Rookie bonus: If you are new to the game you should be motivated to stay
Real-life: The system should take into account the needs of the players because not everyone has the same amount of free time
Economic expectations of a fair system
Lower barriers to market entry
Countermeasures to price inflation
Information transparency
Current situation/problems of the BFP system
The current system ...
... is not fully transparent as far as the conditions for fulfilling the quests are concerned.
... adds constantly more financial resources (cards and BFP) to the economic cycle without any permanent outflow. This inevitably leads to price inflation, which puts new players at a disadvantage, as their purchasing power is much lower than the purchasing power of those who have been playing for some time.
... is designed for a daily earning activity of about 30 - 60 minutes, and after completion of all quests there is no incentive for further play.
The daily income is currently one booster (~420 BFP) and 2 quests worth 75 BFP each, this could vary slightly due to not fulfilling and/or rerolling the quests, but with constant play, it amounts to about 570 BFP /1 Booster + 150 BFP per day.
On the market, cards have a kind of benchmark price that was determined by the new income levels and by the sellers. Based on this, players have begun to develop an understanding of what prices are appropriate, also with reference to the prices back in the old days.
It is important to remember that players rely on their old intuition, are somewhat avaricious, and do not necessarily lower prices linearly with less income. Furthermore, the community has expressed the wish for the booster to remain in place.
My suggestions/improvements for the new system
All these changes are to be seen as one big proposal that only works if all these steps are taken together, as everything is interrelated.
The currently available Daily Booster Pack for 30 minutes playing time is removed, but it can still be purchased for 450 BFP in the Market.
Currently, the market becomes extremely flooded with cards, as every active player can earn automatically 8 cards a day. Players are a lot more willing to open the booster if they have it already, compared to actively spending their earned BFP on buying it. Hence this measure in combination with average less income should slow down the total growth of available cards.
The current 3 initial Boosters Quest and the Achievement System remain in place and many of those suggestions in the Forum (https://forum.skylords.eu/index.php?/topic/4166-quest-achievement-suggestions-megathread/) will be added to reward players with Boosters and Gold for completing them.
These Achievements should be designed to be a skill-based incentive for players that have already reached a higher level.
Introduction of the first victory of the day: Receive 20 BFP for winning a game of any mode, for Campaign Standard difficulty / RPVE < 5 / PVP, the gold awarded is quintupled.
This is a small incentive besides the quests for players to return every day. The first victory of the day is especially designed towards beginners, that yet cannot beat higher difficulties.
Time played per day is directly rewarding players in the form of BFP (Reset of time played per day with the quest reset)
For minute 0- 30: 3 BFP/min,
For minute 31-90: 1,5 BFP/min,
For minute 91-180: 1 BFP/min,
Afterwards 0,5 BFP/min
As the current BFP system had been tuned to accelerate BFP gains this is a decrease in total possible BFP gains per day if the same amount of time is played, but allows now playing past 30 minutes or even all day long to remain time being rewarded and excessive Grinding to even exceed the old reward system. The numbers are kept simple and immediately graspable for everyone.
Secondly, the new first win of the day and the updated quest distribution system make up a lot for players that can only play fewer times. Also playing less than the old 30 minutes is now always worth something.
First Hour of Uninterrupted Ranked PVP queue time is paid at 1 BFP/5min waiting time completed.
This is a small compensation for firstly the lower PvP player base and secondly PvP veterans with especially long queue times. capped to prevent abuse.
The conditions for PvE quests (RPVE and PVP quest are not affected) are changed to require either 10 minutes of play per game to be counted OR 10 accumulated minutes of shorter game time victories.
This is a change targeted for the Speedrunners, to make too fast victories as much worth as in total equally long time play resulting in defeat.
The currently repeating random pool of 6 quests remains worth 75 BFP per quest, however, the description is changed to provide full transparency of all the conditions and information about all other income possibilities is given in the same tab. Ideally, upon first Login, this information is also displayed on a popup window.
This is to ensure that new players can find all information ingame and no one is at an information disadvantage on how to make BFP.
The amount of new quests out of this pool is increased to 3 (from 2). The Reroll penalty of 25 BFP remains, can now be used once per quest per day. The first time a player uses the reroll function a confirmation popup should inform again about the quest’s value deduction.
This is part of the compensation effort for not receiving a booster pack anymore. Secondly, players should be allowed to sacrifice income (permanently drain BFP from the system) in return of getting a higher chance of the quests they like.
Up to 3 Carry Forward Quests instead of 1
Right now players can carry 1 unfinished quest out of this random quest pool forward to the next day and still receive 2 new quests. Now this change should allow players to stack quests for up to 3 days of absence. Hence on the first day of absence, the player carries one quest forward, on the second day he can carry 2 quests forward and on the third day finally 3 quests. This results in players that cannot play that frequently to be able to earn at least one out of the 3 potential new quests per day for each of the first 3 days of absence. Players that play constantly/ every day are still at a big advantage regarding the total number of quests, but someone who for instance can only play once a week has at least on that day 6 quests instead of 3 as of right now.
New players receive for the first 7 days (not necessarily consecutive) of completing the new ‘first victory of the day’ quest, also a lower value booster for free that contains 5 Common and 3 Uncommon Cards.
This is a further incentive for new players as they can thus focus on spending their earned BFP on the more exiting big cards and do not have to worry too much about getting the trivial small stuff.
BFP can be converted into Gold at a rate of 1 BFP à 100 Gold, only in this direction
The overall goal is to more connect both currencies. With Gold becoming more needed overall this is a feature that players can use to prioritize. For instance, a player that already has one deck and want to get this upgraded as fast as possible could transform his BFP. This can also be utilized by PvP players as their Gold income is lower.
Current base gold auctioning costs are increased tenfold for players with PVE rank 9 and above, and a hundredfold for players with PVE rank 13 and above. The gold payable will only be permanently deducted once the auction is actually sold. Otherwise, the Gold will be refunded.
Currently, PVE players with a higher level tend to swim in Gold, that they cannot use. This, on the one hand, feels bad and is also lost potential to lower the total BFP in the market. As players will now face significantly higher Gold prices in later stages of the game, they might (have to) opt for permanently removing BFP out of the System by converting BFP into Gold. There should be no issue that players try to avoid getting past level 9 as some cards require level 10 to purchase the last upgrade.
Trading incurs the same gold costs per successfully traded card. This is a personal trading fee that will always only be based on what cards you have put in.
This is necessary to prevent players from circumventing the increased auctioning gold prices by direct trading.
Every card except Promo cards can be used to “forge” new ones.
3 cards of the same rarity create a new card of the same rarity
3 cards of mixed rarity create a new card of the lowest rarity invested
5 cards of the same rarity create 1 card of greater rarity (not available for Ultra Rares)
This is a new feature that again helps to reduce inflation as cards will be permanently removed from the system. As currently, the correlation of rarity and price is not necessarily high, outliers like Shaman should have changed/swapped their rarity with cards like Oracle Mask, to prevent abuse of the system.
Final remarks
These measures are designed for implementation after reset. Required development time is therefore available.
This is my opinion and what I believe might be a good start and beginner-friendly approach (remember after the reset we all start as new players), just like MrxLink's proposal this is only a theoretical concept which does require testing to remove potential flaws
I may adjust this proposal in response to criticism.
