Pay to Win? Please tread carefully, this game can be amazing

If the campaign and MP were isolated from each other, it wouldn't matter. But they're not, so now the devs have to try to balance things (modules, items, cards, AI) to keep the game fun and challenging for both of us, which gets increasingly harder the further apart our power levels are. A big part of the problem is that there are two entire rarity levels that are very hard for f2p players to get but ridiculously easy to buy.

 

Maybe I'm taking this wrong but are you suggesting that my ability to buy items and make the single player game easier on myself influences your single player game? The devs care about making a fun game, some people enjoy the challenge others don't. They won't care if you want to pay money to make the single player easier for you (and it was likely designed to slightly encourage this without forcing it).

I can understand the concern of a correlation between the design of a 'balanced' game and the expectations for someone who buys gear and ones who do not, however, the game adventures are designed based on increasingly difficult and varied mechanics, likely focused on the free to play effort. There is an incentive for people who want to make the game easier for them, to buy cards, but it is not necessary to do so. If someone wants to dump a bunch of money into the game to make the campaign trivial to them, first, there are mechanics to *somewhat* avoid that in the power tokens. Secondly, it's a good thing for the company (and thus the rest of it's players who benefit from support and additional development) and there is no way they would mind someone being able to breeze through the campaign if they were willing to pay to do so.

The only issue with P2W, in my opinion, is with multiplayer and as I have stated I feel that is pretty much taken care of by the ranking mechanics.

 

For what it's worth, I haven't spent a penny* but don't feel disadvantaged in multiplayer. My ranking has been hovering around 1100-1150 and I win roughly half the games I play (which is exactly how it should be with ranked matchmaking). Most of the games I do lose I can usually point out a few tactical errors I've made. Sometimes I feel like a game might come down to a bad draw or unlucky dice, but I rarely (if ever) think "Damn I lost because all his cards are way better than mine!"

*I bought three Starter Packs with the 150 Pizza from the tutorial.

 

That is at best a VERY short-live advantage. A player with mediocre skill and mediocre MP ranking could in theory buy a bunch of epic chests and then increase his win chance for the next couple of matches. But by doing so his ranking goes up. A while later he is paired against higher ranked people, who either have as many epics as he has, or just more skill. In a good-working ladder ranking system your chance to win a game is always 50:50.

 

Thinking that having random items for sale will give people with money to spend a big advantage is just so faulty. You have to spend absolutely insane amounts of money to get anything interesting compared to just playing through the campaign. Do you really think people with that kind of money woulnd't just be buying full accounts with premade pvp setups instead if that option wasn't there? Don't fool your self people with money and no real will to work hard for success will always find a way to get ahead. Beat them on skill or don't its not a p2w problem that can be fixed by devs.

That is of course only my opinion but as one of the strongest pvpers both before and after pizza was added to the beta my opinion should be at least as valued as yours.

 

But there are tons of modules! If you run out of them in a day, you could clean your room or something - it probably needs it!

Seriously, I know there are only a few at your level, but you could always start a second party with different class/race choices and work on that. Or do a bit of multiplayer.

 

Okay, wanted to add my 2 roubles.
Cardhunter is a masterpiece of a game - even in it's beta state it's immensely fun in both SP and MP.
I haven't bought any pizza yet (but I am concidering buying some as soon as the game is finished)
Right now my MP rating is in top 20.
So, assuming I want to be №1, do I need to pay? I don't really know, actually. I definitely need to PLAY more, to practice, to test builds. I make an awful lot of stupid mistakes
I haven't checked all the treasure-hunt rewards - are there any must-have MP items there? Because other than that, you can't really buy items that you need for MP. All you can get for real money is more random items.
So it boils down to classic "spend more time playing or pay money - your choice".

Yeah, there's that option of paying 1000$ and spend it all on chests. The person who does it will definitely have an advantage. Well, kudos to them, they are actually paying developers so hundreds of us poor guys can enjoy the game

 

Just a lowly level 6 here migrating over from the first impressions thread.

I can't tell yet if there's an actual balance/fairness problem with CardHunter and "P2W".
But there is DEFINITELY a perception problem.

As a new player:

• The fact that pizza is in my face right away in the tutorial makes me think that Campaign is balanced around pizza, and thus playing without pizza will involve a lot of tedious daily replaying of the low-level encounters
• The fact that pizza can get you a better deck makes me not want to play Multiplayer at all, knowing that I could be up against people who've tricked out their decks using pizza
  • Now, it may be true that the matchmaking system should prevent this... but I can't TELL that. All I'm told is that the two parties will be the same level in multiplayer.
• I have absolutely no indication whether it is possible to get all the loot with gold, or if pizza is required
  • Also the rate at which I earn gold is ridiculously slow so it's not even clear how long it would take if possible

Some of these can be answered at least somewhat in the forums - but if you want to capture an audience by going free-to-play in the first place, you'd better not be relying on them looking up complicated answers to these questions in the forums.
It FEELS like I'm not going to be able to play campaign and enjoy myself without hitting a wall where my cards aren't good enough without using pizza.
It FEELS like I'm going to be nagged to buy pizza over and over, ala a Zynga/Candy Crush ripoff.
If FEELS like I'm going to get the crap kicked out of me in multiplayer by bored rich teenagers with ridiculous decks.
None of that may be true, but I can't tell. So even though I LOVE the gameplay and theming of Card Hunter I'm really on the fence about continuing to play it, because it just leaves a bad taste of trying to get its fingers into my wallet.

 

Well, it's not true in my experience - I played each campaign just once and only failed a campaign once until the monkey campaigns at level 15+ (and since that's nearly the end of the campaign it ought to be hard). So you can definitely win without pizza. (I did pay for the treasure hunt missions, but that only means a few extra items and none of them are game-breaking.)

Admittedly some people find it easier than others, but you definitely don't need to pay to win the campaign, though it mightn't hurt to repeat a few missions to get extra gear.

Anyway my advice is, why worry about a wall that you don't know is there? If you hit a wall, THEN decide if you want to stop.

 

I'm not necessarily *worried* about a wall - I'm saying that it gives new users a bad impression that will result in them leaving the game. I have friends who stopped playing the beta because of exactly this perceived wall and perceived impression that unless they spend real money they won't be able to "keep playing".

 

What if the "in your face" pillow for Club only treasure had to be clicked to reveal what you are missing?

Then you have a subtle reminder you could have more, but don't have to watch a Legendary "go down the drain"

Or the first time you do have a Legendary (non-treasure) show, they could give you a pop-up when you hit "Collect All" which states:
You have a Legendary item awaiting you! All you need is to activate Club Membership!

Sign Me Up (XXX Pizza) -------------------------------- Please stop showing me Club Rewards


Because really, if you pass up a Legendary without turning on Membership, you are quite likely not ever going to.

 

This is ridiculous you are pree judging them game because of your previous experiences and not looking at it objectively at all. If anything you see reminds you of your worst game experience how do you even play games at all?

 

Wow. Just wow. I totally disagree. As a systems (and game) designer myself I think what lilserf is saying is not only completely valid, but also correct.

As I have said in other threads (and perhaps this one?) the problem is one of perception and expectations. Even if the system is not one that is P2W at all, what he is shown exhibits the traits of a P2W system. He's not PRE judging, like every human being he is taking in the inputs that he is getting and attempting to see a pattern. What is shown to him, what he sees, is a system that looks very P2W. If it looks like a duck, and quacks like a duck... people are going to think it's a duck, even if it's a wooden decoy with a hydro jet engine propelling it through the water.

The P2W impression holds true not only through the comparisons of other games he has encountered in his experience but also the expectations those other games have built within him. Is he biased? Perhaps, but that doesn't make how he feels about something invalid or incorrect. He is stating only that he gets the impression that it is P2W and is suggesting that this is a bad thing if you don't want to drive people away. It doesn't matter if it is ACTUALLY P2W or not, if it FEELS like one people are going to react accordingly.

 

I'm with blindsight. We had a short discussion about Card Hunter on the Dungeons of Dredmor forums, and the basic feedback was "That stupid Adventure Club cushion pissed me off so bad that I quit."

This came from at least three people. It's totally a matter of perception -- and modern Americans are so acclimated to people trying to get into their wallet that they literally just shut down when it's too overt. The game has to be really, really great if you expect people to pay a monthly fee at all (keep in mind, for Dredmor, my favorite game of all time, I spent a grand total of $7.50, on the game and all of it's DLC.) Now, Card Hunter is, in fact, really, really great -- but when you debase yourself by being overt about asking for more money, it puts a huge black stain on the game's quality level. People are used to have two basic kinds of non-mainstream games now -- the "freemium"/app model which basically sucks and simply tries to drive you into the skinner box so that you'll pay cash for more progress, and the kind more like Dredmor, which have moderate-at-best production values but huge entertainment factor. They play the second kind because they're awesome, but they play the first kind despite themselves, because they're addicted, and they don't like the fact that they're addicted.

Card Hunter rides the line on that one pretty hard -- not because it's actually 'pay for progress', but because it acts like a pay-for-progress game. It makes people feel bad on an out-of-game level, either by taunting them for being poor or because they feel like suckers when they pay up and then end up unable to play for a week because life happens, and they just wasted the cost of a good app ($2.50) on absolutely nothing.

That said, only you guys know if it's been a successful model in terms of revenue. We can only speak of whether or not it's successful in making us as individuals feel like we should support the game or not.

 

Its a free to play game they have to make money somehow. The pillow pisses me off real bad too i have voted many times for cowering it somehow. But what he is saying is because the tutorial shows you pizza it screams P2W and that is just not correct and where his pree judgement based on previous experience comes in. I was probably a bit too harsh but that's life you don't always catch people in the best mood and all i can do is apologize. I'm not saying his feedback is useless just that he is very wrong in my opinion on what he bases his judgement on and how early he judges.

 

Perception is as important as reality - maybe even more important when it comes to getting players to give a game a chance. If he's perceiving it that way so will a lot of other people.

 

I just suggested this in another thread, but it was intended as a possible way of alleviating the perceptions alluded to in this thread. Here's my suggestion: make the 'club' item always the same rarity as the best 'normal' item. If the normal item is uncommon, so is the club item. If the normal item is epic, being in the club nets you an extra epic.

Now players can see clearly that the club gives you less than twice as much as free play. Which should remove the perception of P2W because obviously you would get more items by just doing the mission twice without being in the club.

 

And there are plenty that do it unobtrusively, and many more than try to wrench things out of your pocket...

By your definition this would be Prejudging...

The issue is how early the P2W aspect rears it's head. If you haven't gotten enough time with the game and you're being shown how to do things better/faster already that's going to turn a lot of people off. Of course you're going to judge the game on where and when it presents these things to you. This is not prejudgement, it's judgement based on the data presented -- making the best determination you can make with the data provided. CH provides a lot of dubious information up front. He has pointed out that this may turn away a lot of people.