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Restructure free PvP


qudekRa

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First off:

I played Skylords Reborn for almost a month and want to humbly thank everyone in the project for investing so much time to bring back a wonderful game that was ought to be put to rest almost a decade ago :rogan: thx.

 

Suggestions:

  1. Remove the free pvp decks
  2. Replace with every common, uncommon & rare card of the twilight edition, upgraded and charged, (and maybe a few keycards of the other editions) for PvP

Reasoning:

  • Lots of new players starting right now who don't know all the cards yet
  • There's rarely any deeper thought in building your deck when one can pick state of the art meta decks
  • We see lots of orb variety (which is nice) but barely any playstyle variety
  • Building a deck on your own lets new players get a better feel for their cards
  • Base edition still strong enough to build good decks (most free pvp decks consist of 17/20 twilight edition cards)
  • Incentivizes building around your own collection
  • Doesn't bind players to the one week rotation

Benefits:

  • Revitalizes the collecting aspect of the game
  • Giving low ELO players more room for trying out
  • Doesn't really affect high level ELO players who know what to play
  • Opens up the option to bring back edition based booster packs
  • Economic stimulation
  • Bringing back some magic & personal flavour to deck building & the pvp experience
  • Still giving experienced players the opportunity to get quickly into high level pvp

I think free pvp cards are vital and I probably wouldn't be playing without them. However, I don't think giving 2 meta decks per week is the best way to go about it. My suggestion for a smarter approach would be to remove the neatly built decks and instead give the players access to a card pool (either all or a core set) - One could argue that it wouldn't make any difference as players would still just build the meta decks, and it would thereby be benefical to keep the system or at least keep the prebuilt decks in the game interface for cloning, but I think this would be a great opportunity to subliminally promote deck variances. I don't think we are neccessarily doing the noobs a favour by just putting the best cards into their decks for them. I'd argue new players should come to the conclusion which cards are good for what reasons on their own. If a player starts getting serious enough about pvp they can still seek out Hirooo's and RadicalX's PvP Guide or any of the other many resources available.

What do you think?

Big thanks to all the players as well, especially those contributing to the community. Cheers :gem:

Edited by qudekRa
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If you have read any of the way too many threads suggesting the removal of free PvP decks, you should know, why this is still a bad idea. It will take away a lot of key cards and give you a lot of useless trash instead. Thus grinding will be mandatory again.

If you don't want to play against free PvP decks, just play collection mode. (Btw, guess why almost noone wants to play that mode lol)

Edited by Metagross31
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28 minutes ago, Metagross31 said:

If you have read any of the way too many threads suggesting the removal of free PvP decks, you should know, why this is still a bad idea.

great meme. I have read this

and this

which don't really touch on restructuring current pvp in a way of still giving players free upgraded pvp cards to stay competitve, but removing the easy template and incentivizing building and collecting (a bit at least) on their own.

28 minutes ago, Metagross31 said:

It will take away a lot of key cards and give you a lot of useless trash instead. Thus grinding will be mandatory again.

Have you actually checked the current PvP decks? Most of the decks only have around 3 non twilight cards

28 minutes ago, Metagross31 said:

If you don't want to play against free PvP decks, just play collection mode. (Btw, guess why almost noone wants to play that mode lol)

you completely missed the point

 

 

 

Edited by qudekRa
typos
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16 hours ago, qudekRa said:

Have you actually checked the current PvP decks? Most of the decks only have around 3 non twilight cards

There are still also ultra rare cards like Mounti, FireDancer and Harvester, which are excluded by your idea.

Also, the deck lists for the free PvP decks are still around, so it will only take you a few clicks to find decklists for competitive decks, which completely invalidates the point about incentivising creative deckbuilding, when people can just go for the current decks again.

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I sorta get where you are coming from, but I think it is rather the other way around. With the free decks, you have all the tools you need for a viable deck from the start, of course you would still need to put in the effort to get to know the individual cards and what they do, but that is a much gentler transition than getting to have to know every single card in the game to build your deck, and perhaps missing key counter components, or using wrong affinity cards for example and then proceed to perhaps blame the balance of the game.

Once you learned the basic meta decks, you can then suit the decks to your playstyle, by switching/removing/adding cards.

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As I had this already suggested in my thread:

 

A good way would be to offer 2 colours each week for free fully upgraded. One of the colours would change every or every other week, and you are able to use it again once you had every colour.

 

Of course noone wants to play with perfect pvp decks except the ones who had already played enough battlfroge pvp. Everyone want to have their own ideas, make mistakes, try stuff out. Then you have incentive to try pvp out.

 

Additionally it still would have been good to offer one colour in pve not upgraded. But this is another story and does not fit to this thread.

 

Generally the people are focused to much on what they think is fun and not what would be fun for most people. Usually this leads to lot of not too useful threads but here the community implements the stuff themselves. But all in all the goal of everyone is the same, that everyone wants the game to succed and to be played by more players, so in the long run it will probably work out.

 

 

 

 

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1 hour ago, Buddelmuddel said:

Of course noone wants to play with perfect pvp decks except the ones who had already played enough battlfroge pvp. Everyone want to have their own ideas, make mistakes, try stuff out. Then you have incentive to try pvp out.

That's just wrong. I want to play with competitve decks right away and not get kicked in the butt for the first few months by people who grinded more. And I still think that the majority of people think that way considering how little the collection mode is played.

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9 hours ago, Metagross31 said:

There are still also ultra rare cards like Mounti, FireDancer and Harvester, which are excluded by your idea.

There is just a single other ultra rare card out of the 20 twilight ones in the decks (which is parasite swarm), however i agree that those should be included in a provided pool.

9 hours ago, Metagross31 said:

Also, the deck lists for the free PvP decks are still around, so it will only take you a few clicks to find decklists for competitive decks, which completely invalidates the point about incentivising creative deckbuilding, when people can just go for the current decks again.

Yesterday i edited the op so you might have missed this:

On 1/27/2021 at 5:25 PM, qudekRa said:

One could argue that it wouldn't make any difference as players would still just build the meta decks, and it would thereby be benefical to keep the system or at least keep the prebuilt decks in the game interface for cloning, but I think this would be a great opportunity to subliminally promote deck variances. I don't think we are neccessarily doing the noobs a favour by just putting the best cards into their decks for them. I'd argue new players should come to the conclusion which cards are good for what reasons on their own. If a player starts getting serious enough about pvp they can still seek out Hirooo's and RadicalX's PvP Guide or any of the other many resources available.

to elaborate: I think it would "subliminally increase deck variances" simply by having players go through the process of adding 20 individual cards to the deck and additionally providing some different options. I'm sure cards like wrecker or wrathblades which actually are viable would see more play than they are getting, even by good players. And yeah, everyone is free to just rebuild the meta decks. My suggestion wasn't meant to take anything away from the seasoned pvp players, but make it easier for new players to partake in the deck building and experimenting (which was half the fun for me when i originally played Battleforge), but also making your own collection at least a teeny tiny part of the pvp eco system (though i guess it would be better to simply give all cards upgraded). I think providing this aspect of the original experience to new players should somewhat be part of our responsibility as a community.

 

8 hours ago, Ultrakool said:

With the free decks, you have all the tools you need for a viable deck from the start, of course you would still need to put in the effort to get to know the individual cards and what they do, but that is a much gentler transition than getting to have to know every single card in the game to build your deck, and perhaps missing key counter components, or using wrong affinity cards for example and then proceed to perhaps blame the balance of the game.

Once you learned the basic meta decks, you can then suit the decks to your playstyle, by switching/removing/adding cards.

fair point, but i wonder: when you played battleforge for the very first time, did you need to know every single card to build a deck? Did you immidately blame game balance when your deck wasn't working out? The following is of course anecdotal, but i had a few friends try out the game for the first time this month and they were very interested in pvp - naturally they all got quite overwhelmed by the deck selection at first, but it only took about a day for all of them to regret their deck picks and to get frustrated that they were locked for a week, while simoultaneously only actively using half the cards in their decks when playing matches. I guess noobs will be noobs in some way, but I still think this can't be the best way to handle free pvp.

4 hours ago, Buddelmuddel said:

As I had this already suggested in my thread:

 

A good way would be to offer 2 colours each week for free fully upgraded. One of the colours would change every or every other week, and you are able to use it again once you had every colour.

sorry i missed your thread but interesting approach as well. I would prefer at least 3 of 4 colours being available at a given time though.

2 hours ago, Metagross31 said:

That's just wrong. I want to play with competitve decks right away and not get kicked in the butt for the first few months by people who grinded more. And I still think that the majority of people think that way considering how little the collection mode is played.

As you said yourself you wouldn't take the ability from new players to just build the meta decks, its just about the extra gameplay process of actually creating your deck. And "few months of grinds" is shamelessly exaggerated, especially for the current skylords economy and any suggestion that was made so far

Edited by qudekRa
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2 hours ago, qudekRa said:

As you said yourself you wouldn't take the ability from new players to just build the meta decks, its just about the extra gameplay process of actually creating your deck. And "few months of grinds" is shamelessly exaggerated, especially for the current skylords economy and any suggestion that was made so far

Depends on how much you get to play. If you can play everyday for a few hours it surely takes way less time. But if you can't play that much, for example some people can only play on maybe 2-3 days a week for maybe 1-2 hours, and since I have a similar amount of time at my hand right now I can assure you, that it does indeed take a long ass time. Eventhough I played a lot right after the release, I could probably not yet afford to finish up a semi-complete deck. The only way for me to do this would be to not build a PvE deck at all, but then, who should I get the gold/BfP? Grinding PvE with an unupgraded free deck is super tedious and not fun imo. The alternative would be to play PvP with an unviable deck and getting my ass beaten because I start the game with a disadvantage against people with more time to grind - also not fun.
So the choice would be:
1. Get (not only but more than it should be) default losses in your first several PvP matches because of a weaker deck until you can compete.
2. Grind PvE with a (viable but) weak deck until you get a PvP deck.
3. Grind for a very long time to get PvE and PvP decks.

Imo the system we are having right now is fine in terms of deckbuilding, since there are still a lot of tweaks you can apply to the decks to make them fit your playstyle. Obviously, beginners will take some time to figure out which cards fit their playstyle most, but slight deviations from the free decks can be benefitial and thus still incentivise creativity and deck building.

The thing is I just dont want to feel like playing a game of chess, but in order to unlock your second knight, you have to play 100 games against opponents with two knights first.
Not giving access to competitively viable decks thus will discourage newcomers to play PvP. The only compromise I can see here would be to give people the cards they need without giving them the decklist, but then again, they can just look in the forums.

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18 hours ago, Metagross31 said:

Depends on how much you get to play. If you can play everyday for a few hours it surely takes way less time. But if you can't play that much, for example some people can only play on maybe 2-3 days a week for maybe 1-2 hours, and since I have a similar amount of time at my hand right now I can assure you, that it does indeed take a long ass time.

It does "indeed take a long ass time" to what? Get all the cards? Sure, but not one was proposing that.. Even with the least generous approach of just twilight edition: it would literally cost just ~120 BFP to build i.e. the pure frost meta deck! You already get 250 BFP for 45 minutes on a single day, EXCLUDING daily quests. The most expensive cards that could be a hurdle right now would be disenchant or nether warp (which still would be just 4 days of 45 minute play time doing the quests), but i would agree those should be part of a core pool anyways. Also I already conceded that I think it would be better to give all the cards (all // all of faction picked) upgraded and just remove the decks.

18 hours ago, Metagross31 said:

Eventhough I played a lot right after the release, I could probably not yet afford to finish up a semi-complete deck. The only way for me to do this would be to not build a PvE deck at all, but then, who should I get the gold/BfP? Grinding PvE with an unupgraded free deck is super tedious and not fun imo. The alternative would be to play PvP with an unviable deck and getting my ass beaten because I start the game with a disadvantage against people with more time to grind - also not fun.
So the choice would be:
1. Get (not only but more than it should be) default losses in your first several PvP matches because of a weaker deck until you can compete.
2. Grind PvE with a (viable but) weak deck until you get a PvP deck.
3. Grind for a very long time to get PvE and PvP decks.

Honestly I don't really follow.

I mean if you gave players non free pvp card whatsoever i can see that, but your 3 choices stand in no context to any suggestion that was made?!

18 hours ago, Metagross31 said:

Obviously, beginners will take some time to figure out which cards fit their playstyle most, but slight deviations from the free decks can be benefitial and thus still incentivise creativity and deck building.

 

that's the exact point i was making AGAINST offering the deck templates and instead giving the cards non-prearranged. I'm really disappointed my english could not get that across.

18 hours ago, Metagross31 said:

The thing is I just dont want to feel like playing a game of chess, but in order to unlock your second knight, you have to play 100 games against opponents with two knights first.
Not giving access to competitively viable decks thus will discourage newcomers to play PvP.

???

I mean i agree, but what kind of posts have you been reading?

18 hours ago, Metagross31 said:

The only compromise I can see here would be to give people the cards they need without giving them the decklist, but then again, they can just look in the forums.

"Ah shit, here we go again."

Edited by qudekRa
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On 1/28/2021 at 6:35 PM, Metagross31 said:

That's just wrong. I want to play with competitve decks right away and not get kicked in the butt for the first few months by people who grinded more. And I still think that the majority of people think that way considering how little the collection mode is played.

My writting does seem to be hard to understand, maybe I should start to explain more. You could build the same meta decks, you could just use more cards and have every card in these 2 colours available. They are fully upgraded. Not sure what was there not to understand.

On 1/28/2021 at 8:34 PM, qudekRa said:

sorry i missed your thread but interesting approach as well. I would prefer at least 3 of 4 colours being available at a given time though.

The advantage when there are only 2 colours available, is that there is still the incentive to collect the cards. You can play with fully upgraded cards in 2 colours, and you wont have an unfair disadvantage because someone else grinded more. But you will have to adapt your playstyle every one or 2 weeks, which is kind of fun becuase then you can try out new cards, but in the long run you will probably want to collect your own favourite deck, so that you can play it all the time, and not just every 4th week for free.

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here we go again : so many user want a change on free pvp deck or even BETTER complete remove them,but admins with their 5-6 pvp friends will ignore AGAIN the suggestion.

How about a vote on the topic to see what people prefer ?

PS

excuses from pvp players : i dont have time to "grind" .is no more valid after playing the game from almost the start ,nowyoiu is super easy to have a fully upgraded deck ,even if its fire or shadow ,its so easy that i am afraid people will bored with the game very soon,but thats another topic for discussion.

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10 hours ago, werty said:

here we go again : so many user want a change on free pvp deck or even BETTER complete remove them,but admins with their 5-6 pvp friends will ignore AGAIN the suggestion.

Keep calm, there are a lot of players that loves the free decks like they are, of course they dont come here to complain. Just look at the rankings and count the players with PVErank 0. You know 10 people complaining on the forum aren't the majority? I personally don't know what the majority thinks but i hate your way of making aggressive assumptions and accusations.

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11 hours ago, werty said:

here we go again : so many user want a change on free pvp deck or even BETTER complete remove them,but admins with their 5-6 pvp friends will ignore AGAIN the suggestion.

How about a vote on the topic to see what people prefer ?

PS

excuses from pvp players : i dont have time to "grind" .is no more valid after playing the game from almost the start ,nowyoiu is super easy to have a fully upgraded deck ,even if its fire or shadow ,its so easy that i am afraid people will bored with the game very soon,but thats another topic for discussion.

Feel free to make your own topic and poll in this forum. Although looking at how unpopular the Collection Mode in the Sparring Grounds is, I feel like a poll is not necessary.

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12 hours ago, SunWu said:

Just look at the rankings and count the players with PVErank 0.

it would be interesting to find out how many users are behind those PVErank 0 accounts and how many multiaccount users we have.......

Edited by werty
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My case was not to take the free pvp cards away from players though, for me it's about the precrafted decks.

On 1/27/2021 at 5:25 PM, qudekRa said:

[...]

I think free pvp cards are vital and I probably wouldn't be playing without them. [...]

remove the neatly built decks and instead give the players access to a card pool (either all or a core set) - One could argue that it wouldn't make any difference as players would still just build the meta decks, and it would thereby be benefical to keep the system or at least keep the prebuilt decks in the game interface for cloning, but I think this would be a great opportunity to subliminally promote deck variances. I don't think we are neccessarily doing the noobs a favour by just putting the best cards into their decks for them. I'd argue new players should come to the conclusion which cards are good for what reasons on their own. If a player starts getting serious enough about pvp they can still seek out Hirooo's and RadicalX's PvP Guide or any of the other many resources available.

 

 

On 1/28/2021 at 8:34 PM, qudekRa said:

to elaborate: I think it would "subliminally increase deck variances" simply by having players go through the process of adding 20 individual cards to the deck and additionally providing some different options. [...]

And yeah, everyone is free to just rebuild the meta decks. My suggestion wasn't meant to take anything away from the seasoned pvp players, but make it easier for new players to partake in the deck building and experimenting (which was half the fun for me when i originally played Battleforge), but also making your own collection at least a teeny tiny part of the pvp eco system (though i guess it would be better to simply give all cards upgraded). I think providing this aspect of the original experience to new players should somewhat be part of our responsibility as a community.

[...]

As you said yourself you wouldn't take the ability from new players to just build the meta decks, its just about the extra gameplay process of actually creating your deck. 

 

and regarding this:

20 hours ago, Zyna said:

Feel free to make your own topic and poll in this forum. Although looking at how unpopular the Collection Mode in the Sparring Grounds is, I feel like a poll is not necessary.

To be fair, the way collection mode is implemented with no rankings its obvious and no surprise that it's unpopular, even if I personally like it. I am not in favour of splitting the pvp base further though

Edited by qudekRa
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On 1/31/2021 at 7:36 AM, werty said:

How about a vote on the topic to see what people prefer ?

Oh, so you want 87k PvE players to vote against 2k PvP* and see what happens? Interesting, but far from being healthy approach.

Want PvP players only to vote? They voted themselfs by playing relevant modes. Yes, if collection was more popular, more people would consider playing it, because waiting time is awful. The same waiting time that was already awful because of no free PvP decks. Thanks to free decks PvP is a thing, not just empty gamemode on the map.

 

How would you suggest distinguishing players who play 2 hours of PvP on Saturday, from those who play every day PvE and PvP once a week, and from those who play PvP only?

*Estimation based on observation of popularity trends. More correct information can be assumed from available sources, or GMs should have detailed information on popularity.

Edited by Dallarian
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you want to help "new" players in pvp ok ,there was another topic few weeks ago suggesting keep free deck only for XX weeks.

my suggestion : you can have all free pvp decks each color for just 1 week.so after 16 weeks you run out of decks.

if you want to play 2 hours pvp on weekend only ,play unranked ,rank games should be like it was in the original game.

free pvp is an ok solution .i am using it as well, but it should not be forever.

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I like the free PvP decks, it lets people jump straight into PvP.

I think it would be reasonable to explore having every card unlocked for PvP, this could then also allow for PvP specific balancing. And/or PvP rewards should be increased, so that its somewhat viable to actually unlock all the cards and upgrade them yourself through only playing PvP.

 

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