[Feedback] Avoiding Pay 2 Win

(I'm talking about multiplayer here - the campaign is fine.)

Since it seems like we're getting to the end of beta here i decided to blow my remaining pizza on purple chests. I was floored by the amount and quality of the items - epics, obviously, but quite a few high-level legendaries too.

On the one hand you can take this as positive feedback - buying chests really felt like a good value for the money. On the other hand, the speed with which you can get the really good items really felt like Pay 2 Win. Better items are an undeniable advantage in multiplayer and this is a guaranteed way to get better items very quickly.

I have some recommendations to fix this:

1. Improve the drops. For both multiplayer and in the campaign, slightly (very slightly) increase the drop rate of epics and legendaries.
2. Make the treasure hunts guarantee one random epic item if you run them again after you get the guaranteed item.
3. In Multi, make the progression a little better. At the very least, make the last chest as good as the bought chest (2 epics). I suggest the following progression:
   • rare+3 random
   • rare+uncommon+2 random
   • rare + 2 uncommon+random
   • epic+3 random
   • 2 epic+2 random.
4. Implement a crafting system. See Team Fortress 2 for how to do this well. Let us turn treasures and lesser items into better gear with both random combines and specific recipes. Include costumes in the stuff we can craft.

I'd be very curious to see some data comparing multiplayer rank to money spent on the game, but I suspect Blue Manchu would not want to release that info. If they're not already looking at it, they should.

 

I like that you're thinking about this, so much so that I think we should delve into your suggestions!

1.) Improvement on Drops can go either way, by holistically increasing the occurrence of better items you depreciate the value of rares and epics. While that may make the player feel good in the short term due to better loot, this has a potentially troubling effect of numbing the player to the joy of actually receiving an Rare/Epic/Legendary, while making Pizza purchases less desirable, which is bad for our friends with the azure mustache.

2.) This is not a good idea. Epics are worth 500 gold in the Rare store, and 20 wins in a day multiplayer takes a good chunk of time to get this same value. Having the best route for players to earn epic items be grinding completed single player adventures is counter-productive to having a thriving multiplayer community, in my opinion.

3.) I feel like I understand where you’re coming from with this, but I don’t think more epic (specifically) handouts is the way to go. I did some math on the proposed chest upgrades and your suggestion breaks down like this:

• Guaranteed values are Gold equivalents from the rares shop.
• Disclaimer: I understand Guaranteed items are Minimum rarity, so the "Total Guaranteed" should be taken as a lowest-estimate when applying reward totals.

(for those of you who're more visual than numerical )


I think this change is interesting in that people who don't play much will see no difference, as the lower tier chests have been unaltered, but those who grind out multiplayer will be adding an additional guaranteed 2 Epics per day, up to an additional 3. That's a pretty generous upgrade and would probably entice the determined multiplayer population to at least get to the first epic chest in a day.

Not to mention this new upgrade rewards the player with an additional $5 worth of pizza in chest value in trade for time spent playing enjoying multiplayer anyway.

I think the current structure is a pretty good system, it rewards those who put forth the effort to win at least 20, and it controls the potential guaranteed influx of epic+ items on a daily basis. If you're looking for an upgrade I suggest a more subtle touch, maybe something like:

Visual:


While I don't like that the club upgrade doesn't receive the same level as free members, and the fact that significantly more guaranteed rares exist in this model, it would be an upgrade to the problem of getting newer people a better level of gear at a faster rate without significant improvements to a more elite level of gear.

4.) I agree with the combines. Right now, we have the ability to sell back everything for a minimal value, which isn’t a bad game model, but it is tedious. Combines are fun as it adds another randomization mini-game to acquiring loot. It makes all of those common/uncommon items return an alternate payoff, rather than a pittance of gold.

I disagree with the Costumes. Having some way earn pizza-valued items with crafting seems wrong to me. You’re looking to curb the “Pay-2-Win” model, but costumes have nothing to do with victory; they should stay Pizza only.

(for the record, I love visual upgrades so very much that I fight every single day about buying pizza just to make my team look different, I would love this feature, but it means less money for Blue Manchu).

Phew!

(I'm also interested on Multiplayer Rank to Pizza Purchased, but I think we can make this logical conclusion based on the free to play model that exists for many games: Short Term, money wins, long term it's all equalized based on skill).

 

Since there is no player economy in the game, i don't think devaluing epics is a real concern. The joy of finding good gear is not in the labelled quality of the gear itself, but in finding a piece of gear that makes your team better or gives you a new team idea, which is just as random as before. By the same token, the real value of the rare shop is the certainty of knowing what you're getting and you also have to take into account the fact that some of your epic loot will be treasure that is only good as a gold substitute, so in comparing the value of the chests, you should go with the selling price, not the buying price. Legendary 100, Epic 20, Rare 5, Uncommon 2, Common 1. I don't think it changes the ratio much, but it's a better way to look at the value of the chests.

You might be right about the treasure hunts, giving guaranteed epics, but at least rares would be nice. Maybe give guaranteed epics for some of the harder quests?

Some costumes could be pizza-only, some could be crafting only, some could be quest rewards, or multiplayer rank rewards. There should almost always be multiple routes to every goal. Not everything has to be available through every path, but options are good - they make players happy.

I also want to say that i thought everything was fine until i started opening epic chests - it was a real eye-opener. If you haven't done it, you might think the free/pay distribution is ok too.

 

I disagree...to an extent. Flooding the game with epic items can have the effect of having a incorrectly shaped item diversity curve when it comes to builds. Some of the beauty of this game's multiplayer comes from the creativity that is born from a lack of clearly superior items.

You have a point that there still a random factor to the item find, but the item's ability to alter your team's composition based on it's power level is directly proportional to its rarity. It sounds ludicrous that I'm arguing against something that would ultimately help me find better gear as well, but I'm thinking about the game having staying power.

Partially correct. There would need to be an adjustment based on % of items as treasure, the % chance to roll higher than minimal rarity, and the ever-moving factor of how much treasure you have versus what you as a player finds "useful" (a useful epic item is 500 gold to you, as it's something you would have purchased, an epic you do not value being the 20 you're referring to).

I would still go with my model with some probability based value degradation, because Gold is only good for purchasing items and continuing quests. If you're a Multiplayer focused player, we leave out the quests, and focus on what it can get you from the shops.

Although on second thought, I should have compared it to Pizza cost for chests, not item value since we are discussing Pay to Win.

I hope our Mustache overlords agree, I like those suggestions.

perhaps a more branching structure?

1. Pizza buys all costumes
2. Other options give you specific choices

I like the brainstorming though.

 

The "incorrect" diversity curve will happen. It's just a matter of how long it takes. Chest buyers will achieve it faster than straight players. I'm more interested in a level playing field than in some idealized form of the game.

 

Treasure hunts are part of the premium content; F2P players won't unlock any (except maybe the first).

What if completing a quest gave you 1 quest point, which could be spent on costumes or unlocking treasure hunts. Maybe 10QP per costume (can't buy beta-only costumes), and treasure hunts cost the level of the dungeon, so 6QP for Woodhome. Pizza gets you these faster and earlier, and without limits; there's only so many quests in the game, they can't be repeated, some are probably insanely hard, and you won't get any points until you complete the campaign.

Another option: costumes cost 100 gold and you have to trade in a specific epic item that matches something the figure is using.

Or trading items for pizza: epic items are worth pizza equal to their level, legendary items give 10 pizza plus level.

Right now the only premium content I really want is the ability to play custom maps. I can get into the board editor, but I can't test the result, only save it. And it may not be the same board editor the club members use.

 

I'd been waiting for this day. The day I would be summoned to a thread. My dark powers shall be loosed upon the world.

But anyway, I wasn't posting because we've had tons of conflicting opinions on the matter, and I didn't want to get bogged down in others' debates. Those who want to see statistics (from users, not the original formulae) can go here:

http://www.cardhunter.com/forum/threads/my-attempts-to-pay-to-win-before-any-data-wipe.823

I post a few rarity totals, and then other people post way more starting on the second page.

I also point out what's been said a million times, namely that "getting rare items doesn't necessarily mean you can do anything with them": you still have to get ones within your power token limits, your party setup, and your personal needs for your build. My attempt to "pay to win" ended with me using 3 out of 100 for-pizza items because the remaining 97 wouldn't help my "winning build," and I bought the rest I needed using gold from free play.

Of course, you DO get things within your power token limits with the pizza chests, and they CAN go toward your other builds, hence the concern of this thread. And here I'd just say one thing:

The opening suggestion was to raise everything else to match the (perceived) value of pizza chests. That's a lot of changes. Why not, instead, suggest lowering the value of pizza chests? I'm on record (repeatedly, including in the linked thread) as protesting that "rare" items are too common, so I'd rather see things go lower. (If rarities above "Common" are more common than "Common," then "Common" isn't common!)

P.S.: Seriously, I'd been waiting to be summoned. The first time I saw someone do that, the forum spontaneously adopted a sort of "answering machine" metaphor. It was surreal

 

My first thought was a nerf to the chests too, but i wanted to avoid that for 2 reasons:
1: Having the chests be a good deal is good for Blue Manchu and i do want to see them succeed.
2: Nerfing the chests only delays the power imbalance, in some ways making the divide between haves and have-nots worse. Giving everyone more access to the best stuff does a better job leveling the field.

 

If you find 3 usable items in 100 with pizza chests... how long will it take a non paying player to achieve the items they want for the build they want to play? Please note that MP chests only give one epic and are limited once a day (18hrs to be more exact).

The rarity shop is random and only resets once per week and I haven't found anything I'd like to buy from it so far from the 3 or 4 resets I've had. I spent about 500 gold on regular chests and found them to be utterly useless. Now I have all this excess gold that will probably not get spent as I wait for cards I want to show up, if they show up.

I know I play certain decks based on the cards I have and not the decks I want to play. It feels very restricting right now. There's no way for me to get the cards I want, or feel like I'm working my way to it. There's little sense of progression. It's random everywhere.

 

@Sir Knight Just read the other thread. The chests in your previous test - those were the 5 items, 1 rare chest, yes?
The 2 epic chest is a whole different beast. I wish i had kept track, but out of 12 chests i got at least 6 Legendaries, 18-ish Epics, a few Rares and Uncommons, and mostly commons for the other items.
Several of the items went directly into either my PVP or single-player teams. I'm running war war priest in pvp and war war wiz in single (level 9) - if i had more well-rounded teams i would have used even more.

 

Eh, I seem to be "getting involved" here. Really, you people can post without me. Honest. Pay no attention to the post count behind the curtain.

But to answer:

penda, you make a point, but I think you're missing some details. First, we're talking about the for-pizza treasure chests: not that "one epic a day" sequence of victory rewards (which I've never attained and don't terribly expect to see). Second, there's something funny here: people DO get the items for the build they want somehow. That implies all this "randomness" serves people in the end, and my point in posting the "3 of 100" deal was that for-pizza chests didn't make it any better on me. For one thing, the for-pizza chests are terribly inefficient, because they have a huge level range; if you play single-player adventures or buy the for-gold chests, you can select the level range you want. (Currently I'm playing the level 8 adventures over and over because I've learned Lunging Bash is on Weapons in that vicinity. Thank you, wiki item search!)

(Edit: and remember the part where "I bought the rest I needed using gold from free play," meaning I completed my build by using item shops.)

Mutak, the "2 Epic chest" is in fact a different beast. Someone will have to remind me, though, how chests used to look: the "2 Epic" one didn't exist before the beta reset! If you'll check this post, you'll see the first test, where I bought 20 chests and somehow only got 12 Rares . . . which suggests that there was no minimum rarity at all. This alone explains a lot, doesn't it? Not to mention a tie-in to the commonality/rarity topic.

 

I'd like to play this game a long time, so increasing the speed at which you attain epics/legendaries is not something I want. Especially not at the high end of the daily curve which promotes grinding/burnout. if at all, the increase should be more even.

Fairness in multiplayer in the current model based on random loot isnt a big factor. Once live, if the playerbase is large enough you could create tiers based on equipment so people without rares dont go up against full legendaries. In the limited beta thats not an option I suppose.

 

I haven't found two people on the internet yet whose definition of what constitutes Pay2Win is was the same.

I do not consider Card Hunter to be Pay2Win because buying chests (or playing the game for chests) has diminishing returns. Playing much more or paying much more gives you an advantage, but that advantage quickly disappears, as you are getting more and more items you already have in sufficient numbers in your collection. Early in the campaign, or early after a reset in multiplayer when everybody only has preconstructed decks, buying 12 epic chests for $50 is an incredible boost to power. A few months later the epics are collecting dust in your inventory. You go from not being able to afford the items in the rare item shop to having no use for them any more. You get to the point where another epic chest doesn't make any difference to your win probability any more. A "whale" buying chests for thousands of dollars would regret that purchase very quickly.

 

I disagree. Having good cards early accelerates your win process which makes you accrue items quicker. 2x or 3x of a same class party setups require multiples of the same card. There are some cards that you want multiple copies of. Trust me, there are items that completely change how your deck can be made and played. Epic/Legendaries that require no power token really open up your options and versatility of your decks.

If and when you do "complete" a collection with multiple sets of it, there will be new cards. The cycle will repeat again.

 

This touches on an interesting topic: What are the long term plans or goals for the game? Is it a primarily PVP or PVE game? I mean I know it has both but where will the attention be focused? More maps and PVP features? Or more PVE Modules with new items using existing cards? Whole campaigns with new cards?

I like the game as is but I'm not sure if the PVE is intended as a "play through once or twice, try out different party setups and then quit" ... which is fine, describes most games really. Or do they want to keep people engaged in the game for much longer with updates like TCGs or MMOs try to do?

 

While there are a handful of different multiplayer maps, every single multiplayer game is against 3 characters of level 18, with only 3 possible classes. I can't speak whether it is intended that way, but I find the campaign which has a much wider variety of maps and opponents far more interesting than the multiplayer part.

 

The idea of Pay 2 Win is totally irrelevant to the single-player campaign. When you're doing single-player, it's your world. What you're doing has no effect whatsoever on my game - i would not care even if you had the ability to literally pay some money and have the game tell you that you won. (Except in so far as the rewards from that win might get used in multi, but that "in so far as" is really not very far at all - it could probably be measured in micrometers.)
Any claim that someone else buying their way to a win in single-player makes your hard-earned win less meaningful is utter ego-stroking bull****.

 

Some of those rewards are specific epic and legendary items purchased through treasure hunts; I might agree with you if we didn't have treasure hunts. I'd agree completely if campaign and multiplayer were entirely separate (no transferring items or chars between them), but I doubt that'll happen.