First impressions thread

I've been really looking forward to getting a chance to play the game and so far, it's given a great first impression... lots of polish and, for the most part, the mechanics are laid out clearly. The things that aren't clear are okay, though, because you want to have some sense of "I wonder what will happen when I do this..." And things going wrong is always just an opportunity for fun in RPGs.

My only negative overall impression is that the sense of adventure isn't as strong as I expected... but I don't know what, exactly, is missing. Maybe some kind of small cut-scene before each battle? (I can imagine Gary holding up the monster cut-outs, talking out of the side of his mouth and shaking them while he talks out their dialog). I feel like there's no relationship between my heroes... what are their personalities? Why are they even fighting together? There are huge opportunities within the game framework to add incredible amounts of variety to each hero... yet the only variety among each class is the race and race only changes HP and the guaranteed movement card. Cards for personality, age, political status, wealth, background, education, family ties, physical build, etc, would go a long ways to making each hero unique.

Keep up the great work! Loving it so far!

 

I really enjoy the game mechanics and visual style. The item management could use a lot of polish, but it sounds like y'all realize this. (A list of item ponies is included at the bottom anyways, though. )

I did have one major concern entirely unrelated to gameplay, which I realized during the "Rescue from Shieldhaven" campaign. At one point, the screen depicts the awkward juxtaposition of a chained and abused woman in the campaign file, while Gary makes a comment that Karen must feel similarly trapped by her job. It comes across as a crude and jarring statement, and caused me to reinterpret the entire Gary-is-obsessed-with-the-pizza-girl plot. While humorous in a sophomoric and trite fashion, I don't think a wider audience will appreciate it, and it leaves open the potential for such weird undertones by blurring the "real people" with fantasy tropes.

I guess what I want to say is that, although I very much enjoy the classic fantasy tropes within the flavor of the adventure campaigns, the player stereotypes feel more and more disconcerting as I continue to play. If I actually met Gary in real life, I probably wouldn't stay around long enough to play a campaign with him.

--- Item Management Ponies ---
- sell items from multiplayer land (to clean out unneeded loot after a bunch of multiplayer matches)
- warn before selling an equipped item (especially if equipped on a multiplayer character, which isn't visible in campaign land)
- dynamically reflow items as they are removed or added through purchase/selling
- constrain item layout to a grid in the item container space; essentially, get rid of arbitrary item rearrangement by dragging, which makes it easy to lose track of items. (I accidentally dragged a sword over into the character equipment layout but not quite into a slot, and then couldn't figure out where it went)

 

I've been following the game development since late 2011, therefore I'm very excited to be able to play these days!
CH totally met my expectations at the moment: I've already had many hours of fun and I'm looking forward to the launch.
The Beta is surprisingly polished, easy to understand (but not easy to win) and much much fun. I love the style and the art as well.
Now to the (few) negative things:

- Tool tips give very useful information, but the game often loads too quickly and I can't read them! It's very frustrating for a novice.

- The jump from PvE to PvP was extremely confusing to me: I didn't like to build a new *generic* party to play PvP. It was totally anti-climactic.
I would really like to test out my own campaign party and the heroes I grew attached with, and see how they compete vs other players' parties. I understand the need of fixed-levels-battles, but there should be a way to play with your campaign party vs other players of similar levels.

- I was surprised by the lack of a co-op team option, or maybe I just missed it? It was a terrible let down. My personal example: I brought 2 friends to subscribe to CH... going through the campaign, PvP or just playing some PvE adventures with them would be an amazing experience (like controlling 1 character each). Please make my dream come true!

- Replaying old adventures feels very strange and confusing with the forced levels regression, also: no xp gain at all? I'm confident this system (or part of it) will be revised before the final launch!

Thanks for this great game and keep up the good work!

 

So I've only played the campaign to about level 8 so far but here are my impressions.

- The game is very fun and difficulty seems about right, although some scenarios require certain abilities to really be beatable without a ton of luck.

- Its hard to see your hero's health if they are behind another character. It should appear at the bottom of the screen as well.

- Its very hard to see what cards your opponent has; they are just too dark and small. I find myself having to right click all of them to be able to tell what they are.

- The club seems extremely expensive at $85 a year (really $99 for the first year). I feel like half that would make it a lot more enticing. The game gives me a very bad P2W feeling the way it is right now since earning gold from playing is very slow.

 

After playing through the tutorial, here are my thoughts:

Things I love:

-- The flavor and art of the game.

-- The stories included in the modules. I know the focus of the game is the combat, but I'd love it if the stories and setting were fleshed out a little more.

-- The tutorial is just right. I like the dungeon master, and the fun of being thrown into the first adventure with higher level characters. Whets the appetite.

Things I didn't love:

-- The interface is TOO SMALL. My eyes are not as they used to be. Even right-clicking on a card shows a view that is simply too small.
-- All text that appears in mouseover popups is too small. It's not legible, even if I squint. This includes game features on cards that I do need to be able to see-- such as "Penetrating." I can see the keyword on the card, but mousing over it yields text that I can't read.
-- Right-clicking on an item yields a large box with much larger cards and text. This size needs to be available for all right-clicks on cards.
-- Continuing with this theme, the modules are... you guessed it...too small. When the module appears, most of my screen is taken up by brown table. It feels as though I am looking through the wrong end of binoculars. The module takes up too little room and there is too much table space. Ditto with the actual board and playing pieces. Is there no way to zoom in?
-- I have to be able to make the interface elements larger, and the card text larger... did I mention that?
-- Grammar mistakes on cards. The one I saw the most was using "it's" when it should have been "its" for the possessive form.

 

I love this game right out of the gate. I've only been playing games the beta for a few days, and I've gotten quite in to it. I didn't really find any of it to be very confusing, however, it is rather difficult to see the "visible" cards on the GMs side... at first I didn't know what the game was talking about. But so far, I'm thrilled about the game, and I'm having tons of fun.

 

Having played the campaigns through to level 11, the story does work out much better, and Gary has stopped being annoying. Maybe just change Gary's comment during the Shieldhaven quest?

 

I almost couldn't believe when I got the e-mail yesterday. I GOT A KEY!!!
Well, not much time to play, but I did manage to get some quests done.
First impressions: love it. Everything.
It's amazing that a browser game can look and feels as polished as this one.
The battles are quick enough to be addictive and are loads of fun - I caught myself cheering loudly when the wizard, the last surviving party member in the trog's caves, beat up the final HP of the boss with a clumsy bash of his staff.
I've said it once, and I'll say it again (always): the art is amazing! And everything comes together perfectly, more than I thought it would. They look so beautiful that, if I could add something, it would be the ability to zoom in on the game pieces (zoom out doesn't seem necessary if all maps remain as large as the first quests'). More than that, I think adding the option to re-scale the HUD would make play a little better when you switch computers with different sized monitors, while also help us forget our "we are getting old and diminishing sight" issues...
Assuming any of these options are not yet available, of course!
Anyway, I didn't really dive in, but thank you for the great game. I'm sure we'll spend a lot of time together, social life be damned!

 

First impressions of the game are overall really great. I love the stylistic choice to make it feel like you are at a friends house playing a game of DnD. The aesthetic is fun and humorous. At first I was annoyed by the dialogue at the beginning of a match because I did not realize I could click through it and it would cover my players, but once I figured out I could dismiss it I had no issues.
This game is a unique blend of turned based strategy, role playing, and TCG and I am really enjoying it so far.

 

I've had a few days to play and got through the first 7 levels of the campaign and one PVP match (plus several "PVP" matches against the AI). It's been a tale of the good, bad, and ugly. Some of this will probably be worked out before they officially launch, since we're still in beta.

Good:
-- I absolutely love the concept. Finding loot and generating a deck based on it is a great idea.
-- The way the game is presented, in old-school D&D nerd form, is a lot of fun. The graphical style fits perfectly.
-- Generally the maps seem to be well designed, and fit the descriptions of the battles nicely.
-- The AI is pretty good. It makes some odd choices about which of your characters to attack sometimes, but that may be intentional at low levels.
-- I like that everyone is level 20 in PVP and starts with the same set of items, although I'm sure it won't take long before there's people with insanely powerful PVP decks.
-- Letting the AI fill in when there's no one else playing PVP at the same ranking level seems to work well. I've played the AI 5 or 6 times, and a human only once, but that's likely because my play hours tend to be non-US-prime-time.

Bad:
--The D&D nerd jokes get old fast, especially the rules-lawyer older brother bits.
--They still have some quirks to work out in the interface. Sometimes the card I play stays right in the middle of the screen and I can't see to select targets. You can't cancel a move card once you click it (though you can cancel others). That sort of stuff.
--There's quite a bit of gameplay gated behind pizza (the real money currency). So far I've found special treasure dungeons, additional PVP parties, and of course the extra-free-item-with-every-chest subscription. (Also costumes but those are cosmetic.) I understand they need to make money, and they'll most likely get some of mine eventually. I still put this in the Bad column, though, because it's constantly in my face everywhere except during the actual battles, and it feels like pay to win (or technically pay-to-get-better-loot-which-helps-you-win).
--It takes forever to get items with cards that have some synergy. Maybe this is something you just have to play longer to see, but I'd have thought by 1/3 of the way through (level 7 of 20) I'd be seeing neat little combos. So far all I've seen is the little skill "items" which give you traits that boost other cards, but those only put one of those traits into your deck, so you're lucky if you see them in 1/3 of your battles.

Ugly:
--RANDOMNESS. You absolutely cannot overcome bad draws in battle with skill (mediocre draws yes, bad draws no). I've had battles where my warrior drew exactly one damage card in 5 turns, and those are almost 1/2 of his deck. I've had battles where he drew no move cards (beyond the one freebie per turn) and thus was totally unable to contribute to the fight until my other guys had already been wiped out or the opponent controlled the victory squares for too long. Generally when one of your characters gets a bad draw, you're going to lose to a human player or the AI on the non-trivial maps, since you're fighting short-handed. I've played a lot of CCGs in my day, so I get the idea of a bad draw, but I had hoped for better mechanics. The combination of cards and map give you plenty of options to improve this: draw extra cards if you had to discard after the prior turn, special map tiles to draw/search for extra cards, map tiles that boost movement or damage, weaker move/damage cards that can optionally search your deck for damage/move...etc, etc. The only concession I see to this is the one free movement card per turn, and one two-square walk doesn't go far...especially if your bad draw is lack of damage.
-- You get nothing for a loss in PVP. It can take 20 minutes or more to play a match, and getting nothing is a major turn-off. Especially given the inability to overcome a bad draw.

I like the game. I'll most likely play through the campaign all the way, and maybe drop a few bucks so I can see some of those bonus dungeons. But I won't be doing much PVP as it's currently implemented, and once the campaign is done I can't see a replay being worthwhile.

 

I'm finally in the beta, WEEEEE! Every so often a game comes around that has that special something that makes me want to stay logged in for one more battle, or I look forward to logging back in as soon as I can. After my first night of play, Card Hunter has the magic I have been looking for!

Ok, my very first impression was that I love the mix of nostalgic tabletop gaming with some very enjoyable CCG elements. I really like deck-building, and the use of equipment with various potential cards is very well implemented. The simulated dice rolling for armor cards, blocks, etc had me laughing out loud. Love it! I usually stay clear of freemium games because they end up costing way more than a big release, or they are pay-to-win. I don't have that impression from CH so far. I am actually going to buy in for at least 50 bucks and I'll tell you why. The Apex Workshop battle was SO much fun! My all dwarf party fought to the apex valiantly, but as the fight raged on, my party fell one by one until it was just my Wizard with 6 health left facing the mightiest golem. I did not find my mobility seriously challenging as a dwarf. I was able to stay just out reach until I drew a couple penetrating bolts to finish him off. It was a solidly enjoyable battle! I would have called it a win for the fun factor even if the golem had clobbered me. I think you guys have a winner here. Any fan of tabletop, CCG, or D&D is going to be delighted when they start playing this one.

Also, I think I read in the terms that if I buy beta pizza and spend it, it will be returned for the release, correct?

 

I've been playing for a couple of weeks - I've played numerous PvP matches, finished the campaign and made a start on the quests.

General Thoughts

Having played a lot of other CCGs and RPGs, I'm pleased to see the two genre's melded together successfully. One of my bugbears with RPGs tends to be the loot system - collecting and sorting through randomized equipment gets pretty old after a while . With equipment being so integral to the game system, the central mechanic of the card suite feels like a fresh approach. Also, you're not overwhelmed with crap loot to filter out, two to four items per game feels about right.

Pizza

I spent some of my free pizza on a couple of chests in my very first session, which I now regret (I blame Gary, that noodlehead) - if I'd just explored the game a while longer, I'd have discovered the multiplayer starter packs, which just seem to be a much better deal overall. I did have enough left to buy the Fierce Dwarf pack - the inclusion of Perfect Ferocity meant that it won out over Holy Healer.
The magnificent chest is not very enticing for 30 Pizza, one rare doesn't seem worth it when I can win a couple of PvP matches against the AI for almost the same reward. The epic chest seems the better option - if I had money to burn, I'd rather go for the two guaranteed epics. If I were intending to play a lot, a month's club membership would be the most cost effective way of gearing up.
I like the idea of treasure hunts but I didn't have enough pizza left to buy any. I managed to acquire a couple of the very powerful treasure hunt epics through my regular card hunting activities, so I don't really miss them.

Deck Design

I've probably spent the majority of my time in-game designing decks. The drag-and-drop interface is intuitive and does the job. I would like a little bit more room in the "you can drag items here while planning your deck" box - it gets quite full at times. One annoyance - if I leave items on characters who I've dropped from the party, it would be nice to have a button to put all of their items in the vault in one go, rather than dragging and dropping them one by one.
I'm still afraid that one day I will accidentally sell a crucial item after clicking on the armoury rather than keep on the hinterlands - a buy-back option would go some way to assuaging this fear.

PvP

When I started out, I would lose games on time quite regularly - an additional challenge for the newcomer to PvP is the necessity to familiarize yourself with a bunch of new cards all at once. A nice feature could be to add 5 seconds to both clocks whenever someone encounters a new card - though this is probably too much hassle to implement for such a faint improvement.
The two least fun cards to come up against would be whirlwind and whirlwind enemies (the first turn Freeze/Frost Jolt is also incredibly unpleasant). I suppose they exist to provide some counterplay eg. against the formerly OP wall of illusions, but in a victory point game it's going to get used, over and over again just to save VPs and prolong the game. Perhaps the VP squares could offer immunity to these kinds of obnoxious global repositioners?

Campaign/Quests

I finished the campaign last week, it was a bit of a blur. Once the scenarios started getting tricky around the Kobolds and Trogs, I got heavily into the PvP, the kit I got there helped me through. Viscous Tombs was the toughest one of the lot, but I refused to use armour removal cards - the "correct", intuitive way to play seemed to be to bring a mix of damage types to funnel toward the appropriate enemies. Armour removers just seemed like cheating..
Quests should either give you exp, or they should act like PvP and "level-up" the participants to the necessary degree. That said, I've bitten the bullet and started levelling up the quest-required mono-class parties: dwarf priests, elf wizards and human warriors (for viscous tombs, gnomes etc.). The 1HP challenge is very tricky, new found respect for the wizard's workshop ornithopters.

Beta Feedback

I've been keeping a notepad file with my observations - just a total mish-mash of potential bugs, balance concerns, unintuitive mechanics and so forth. The question is how best to use this - I was thinking of starting a "general observations" thread where people could dash off these sorts of things - the idea being, rather than filtering our reactions to the game, and potentially losing some valuable insights, we post our unexpurgated stream-of-consciousness there, and the forum does the rest - in theory the useful stuff will rise to the surface. What's stopping me posting much of the time is the thought of just duplicating a bunch of stuff that's already known about.

 

Alrighty... Been in for a week and would like to comment. I am up to the Melvin campagin at level 8.

Overall I love the game. And honestly I am hesitant to invest any more time into it as there is a wipe before release? (true right?)

So I bought pizza. The $50 pizza level, mostly for the extra skins. With it I bought:
* 1 Month Club Membership (this is great for time poor players. There is no way I am going to backtrack and grind items)
* All 11 of the special dungeons. I haven't found them all yet, but I am comfortable spending this. Also stacks beautifully with Club Membership
* Skins for all my dudes
* 2 Multiplayer packs

I have heaps of Pizza left over and dont really know what to spend it on. Gambling on chests seems like a waste, so I suppose it would go towards more club memberships.

The price point on this game is great. Free if you want in with a couple of nice to haves if you want to pay. Doesn't appear that it gives you anything that couldn't be found by playing stacks. Since I get 1-2 battles/day, this is great for me. The battles are fun and I like the board/ccg mix.

Is there a release date yet/

 

I got sucked in rather badly, so my first impressions are a couple of days old.

The short version - great fun and wickedly addictive, with just a few snags along the way.

I recall thinking that the tutorial was both a cruel trick and a fiendishly clever sales tactic. You get to try out all these cool cards and shiny items and then get dumped back at level 1. The despair! ...but also the incentive to work back up to that level.

I do wish it had been explained that slots would appear on characters as we leveled up. I couldn't figure out why my wizard couldn't equip the robe I found, especially because I'd just seen a wizard wearing a robe in the tutorial.

Unlocking new slots on characters seems both good and bad. The default cards that fill them usually make your deck worse. Since my usual approach in a deckbuilding game like Dominion is to try to weed out inferior cards, this made leveling up feel sort of counterproductive. I understand that we can replace the bad cards with better cards by buying/equipping items, but early on I found I couldn't afford the better items, or they added some cards that were even worse. I often wished I could trim the size of my deck back down. Unlocking the ability to hold a third weapon does give a wider range of available options, but it also means I'd added the third-best weapon cards to my deck, thereby reducing the chances of drawing my best weapon's cards even more. I don't think there's much to be done about this, but I do find it frustrating.

 

First of all, I really like the concept behind the game, and it's been implemented very well by you guys. The game is very easy to understand, which is a definite plus; this seems like it would be a good "gateway" game to introduce to non-gamers.

I didn't really find anything confusing, but I have experience with games like this already, so I can't offer an objective view on that. As far as what needs more work, I'd suggest a slightly wider selection of items in the beginner shop, just a little bit more to choose from. Not too much, you don't want to overwhelm true beginners with options, but just a few more cheap items that offer a little more diversity.

All in all a very fun game; I enjoy the D&D type gameplay without the complexity that game has. Looking forward to future updates, and thank you for letting me into the beta!

 

I joined the beta last night. My first go at the game had me run through the initial "fight the viridian dragon" quest with a buffed-up party, and then play tutorial missions until I was prompted to pick up my Cleric from the Inn.

Fun stuff.

First impression out of the gate was, "the game is actively trying to develop nerd-chic". The younger brother/narrator character is a set of thick glasses and a case of acne away from being Aristotle's perfect nerd form, and the more worldly older-brother charater who's party we steal is named Melvin (a nod to Troma films?). I couldn't tell if this was being played for comedic effect (thanks to the endless association of nerds and AD&D, which Card Hunter harkens back to) or if it was a sincere way to put nerd archetypes out in public without actively attacking them. Felt odd either way. I know that's probably a strange impression to come away with and has little to no bearing on the game it all, but this is a first impressions thread - let's run with it.

The game itself played well. Load times felt a touch long (and have no progress indictator), but there's a lot happening on the back end (and I've no yardstick to judge by, of course).

Cards worked as advertised. I think I ran into one or two that weren't giving me a mouseover description of what an ability did (perhaps Hard to Block 1?), but beyond that all was easy to understand. The game was fun and I wanted to play more of adventures (I'd just opened several).

So far the tutorial hasn't gone on to explain what pizza is or why I might buy some, but as someone involved in several f2p games it's obvious that's our local real-money currency that we exchange for gold, goods, and services.


... now to start keeping notes on any hiccups, like a good beta tester.. ^^
- w

 

This game gave me the worst 30 minute introductory experience that I've ever had with any game, ever. No tutorial. No beginner mode. No explanation of any game mechanics or systems. "Right-click to read the card" was about as informative as I got, but when the game system makes the cards do something that I don't expect, how do I know, just by reading the cards, why they didn't behave as I expected?

I wanted to actually provide in-depth feedback and criticism after such a disappointing and confusing experience, but guess what? After accidentally, somehow, managing to pass the first adventure I'm prevented from going backwards! I remember hating the experience. Since I can't re-play the adventure and figure out what specifically I hated, this is the extent of the feedback that I'm going to provide.