Game informer recently published their latest magazine (issue 241) and it had an article titled "The Red Flags of Modern Gaming" Witch lists things that "Freemium" games might have, and that if they have them, you should avoid at all costs. the items on this list are: 1. Your progress is Time-Gated. (Card Hunter sort of dose this with the day-long cool down on the dungeons) 2. You need friends to be competitive. 3. The game has more then one currency. (Witch Card Hunter is guilty of) 4. The in-game shop is its own separate entity. 5. one-use items cost real money. 6. Help costs money. 7. The game rewards you for promoting it. 8. The game is on a top grossing list. With Card Hunter utilizing one (maybe two) of the eight tactics on this list, do you think that this article might scare some potential players away from this game? (even though it was Game Informer that first brought some of us here in the first place.)
To be fair the only one they have from that is number 3 and without the others number 3 is actually pointless as any freemium game will have that or be stupidly grindy and spew currency over you if you pay real money, that it is even worse. Your progress is not time gated in cardhunter, your grinding is. which to me is a big difference. If you could only do 10 adventures per day and then they all got a timer that would be time gated progress or if you only have a certain amount of energy and actions cost energy that refills with time. That said I'm sure a few players will be scared away but i think those are players we didn't really want in the first place and that it will be a small number.
The reason these cool-downs are there is to stop you from grinding the same adventure over and over again. And the reason we want to stop players from doing that is that we think it's boring. I'd much rather have you grind multiplayer (which is constantly challenging) or go do quests or just play a selection of different adventures. I guess it could put some players off that they can't infinitely replay the same adventure within one day, but it doesn't seem like a great feature to me.
At first I wasn't really wild about the idea of time locked content, but I can see Jon's point and I think I agree with it. It's not like there aren't a couple of options once you lock out certain content. It's fine by me as long as there are a couple o' adventures for you to try in each level range. I have never been a fan of multiple currency, but it's not so bad if you keep things nice and rounded so that your money is not wasted. I hate having an account with a portion that I can never conveniently use without buying another booster infusion of money. In fact, it would be best if it is just a money value listed as far as I am concerned. I don't know why people insist on special coins/diamonds/whatever scratch that, they just want people to feel that if they spend just a little more, they get a better return on investment and so the do spend a little more than they would like.
There's another big reason to have an in-game currency and that is that PayPal or credit card processing has a fixed cost associated with it. If you paid real money for every in-game purchase, we couldn't include any small ticket items (anything less than a few dollars) as the processing costs would equal or outweigh the total cost. By selling our currency in bulk we cut down on the processing overheads.
I don't find more than one currency to be a big deal. It's not like I see items with a pizza tag on them. Yeah there is a pizza chest, but it's random. When multiple currencies becomes a problem is when they are interchangeable in all things and can be exchanged both ways. While this can work(Eve is a good example) it tends to fail if done wrong as there is a fine line.
Personally i find it good when it works this way as it makes the premium currency feel less exclusive and i would have loved for there to be a trade option with pizza. But now that there is a trade pizza for gold option my hopes for that is fading and i simply keep hopes up about gold and item trading instead.
Its hard to argue with Free. Hopefully it doesnt delve too much into the pay to win model. And hopefully it doesnt restrict your game play too much with the cool down timers.
I agree with trading for Pizza. Star Trek Online give players the ability to trade Dilithium (the super free currency) for ZEN (the paid currency) It allows those with lots of time but no money to get the ZEN, and give those with lots of money but no time to buy the free currency in bulk without grinding.
Time gating doesn't seem that bad, although I like grinding to be honest, what makes it difficult would be low level when the options are more limited. That being said I will reserve judgement for when I get a chance to play. For now I certainly won't let a little article scare me off.
League of Legends does free-to-play the right way, and there's no trading in that game. If CardHunters is aspiring to the LoL model, it'll work out just fine for both players who can't/won't pay and player who do.
Yes but league of legends does things a little different. You cant use money to earn items like in card hunter.
The items in League are champions and runes. The champs can be purchased with money. The runes can be purchased with an in-game currency that is earned faster via spending real world dollars. I'm not in the beta, I have no idea if Cardhunters is defensible, other than developer statements that all items can be earned via play. But if the main pain point is a lack of trading, consider that trading causes all sorts of problems in games like this -- rewarding second accounts, further rewarding automated farming, third party money-for-gold operations. Removing trading or grossly limiting trading is to the benefit of the average player, imo.
LoL has almost all those problems and it doesn't have trading so i don't see your point. Besides that the lol way of doing it is actually horendrous as it costs imense amounts of money or time to unlock only every hero not even speaking of runes.
It's important to note that for a lot of people in the world, grinding is gameplay. Look at all the people still playing Everquest. That game is nothing but grind, and they love it. Just because the cooldowns don't restrict what you want to with your gaming time doesn't even remotely mean they don't for others. There is absolutely a time-gate on gameplay in Card Hunter. I personally agree that it's not that bad, as I will be doing loads of multi. Doesn't really affect me. But, don't discount that it will affect lots of people. The fact that they aren't you is utterly irrelevant.
I hope you are confused about what they like and that what they really like is the end reward or i feel very sorry for those people. That said obviously grinding is still a small part of game play not letting you grind the same map endlessly solves so many more problems than it creates making it worth it. Besides I'm a power gamer so it does restrict me but the way it restricts me also pushes me to play the game properly instead, creating a better experience for everyone except the most hardcore of grinders. I also find it to be faulty of you to jump on me for presuming none likes to grind and then you impose the notion of me not wanting to grind because of that making the exact same mistake of assuming far too much. See you in the arena! - Your friendly neighborhood demon
