Okay, so, we have some ideas for multiplayer. How about we formalize 'em? There's the "earning money for Blue Manchu" side. One way is Magic Online-style "event tickets" for use in entering multiplayer tournaments with prizes. There's the "earning prizes for the players" side. Our discussion on earning cards in general goes into this. Then there's the "scheduling" side, i.e., how often and for how long tournaments run. . . . Well, I've never been in a tournament, so I'm sure anything I'd say would sound naïve (ooh, I had fun adding the dots on that letter). But I was thinking about regularly-scheduled tournaments where you could jump in every few days, and you won a new treasure chest for every victory. People who lose right at the start might or might not get prizes; if players must spend real money for a ticket to get in, then I'd say for sure everyone deserves a prize for participating. Folks? Edit: Folks said the following. Wozarg: Predictable daily events, so you can plan for them. Ones that launch as soon as a certain amount of players join. Infinite: Basic 1v1 matchmaking as a placeholder (until a full tournament system is developed) is okay. With such, the community can organize tournaments, with possible support from Devs to hand out prizes. People need easy access, and most importantly an easy way to return to matches to finish them. A yearly championship. Other large scale events, daily and weekly, or whenever the players decide to join a queue. Formats include League and the Knock-Out Tournament. Phaselock: A sandbox area for players to test decks out with no penalty on win/loss ratios. For timing, note that activity spikes near weekends and drops off steeply on Mondays. Long running leagues require stat trackers. Guilds/clans and guild wars. Michael: People need server stability and the ability to re-connect to a dropped game (see: Infinite's post). "Free but no/minor prizes" and "Paid but chock full of prizes" tournaments. Jesus669: Keeping track of matches not with big brackets, but with a game-world-style map with tiles, where people go from one tile to another based on victory. Also, both Wozarg and Ystin mentioned paying for a tournament ticket (see: this post right here and the link in it).
I personally love tournaments i can plan for like daily events in magic online. But I'm sure some people enjoy ones that launch as soon as a certain amount of players join.
Good organization and a good community is a must to make any tourneys work, assuming that the game will be released with no in-built Tournament system, with just a basic 1v1 matchmaking as a placeholder for more to come, when that finally reaches #1 of their list of things to develop. Even games like LoL have been around a couple of years now, have a million dollar championship, but yet still don't have an automated tourney matchmaking system built into their game. Guild Wars 2, brand new with a large emphasis on PvP doesn't have anything other than the basic PvP features at the moment. Unless I've missed something, we'll be organizing our own tourneys for some time. With this, it'll be down to the organization from the community to make these tourneys happen, with possible support from Devs to hand out prizes. So simplicity and ease of access to encourage people to play, and most importantly return to finish the matches they were drawn into, is incredibly important. As this was the biggest issue in other player made tourneys I've helped to organize. I can talk a lot more about my experiences and what happened, what findings I came upon, and if it's relevant to the Card Hunter Tourney situation. I think without a doubt, there needs to be a yearly championship, as is the norm for modern competitive games. Plus this gives us all the dream of participating in it, and something for us to work towards. Other large scale events could be scheduled throughout the year, breaking up the basic tourneys going on daily and weekly, or whenever the players decide to join a tourney matchmaking queue. Two basic structures of competitive play would be the League and the Knock-Out Tournament. League system would require devoted players, as if a few people drop off the face of the internet, the league would be crippled and fall apart. KOs can progress quickly, though can stall if strict rules aren't put in place to direct players to play within a tight timescale. Here lies the problem of getting players devoted to making player made tourneys work. How do we make, or encourage those who sign up, to continue to participate?
GW2 actually does have a team tournament system implemented that you need to buy or find a tournament entry ticket to join and you are given more and more awesome loot the further you get in the tournament
Of course it does , what am I talking about? lol my bad. (I might just pop on it now and give it a whirl) Maybe I got carried away with most things that come out these days with lackluster PvP options, or maybe my irritation with the mess that was D3.
Just two issues that kinda popped right up.... a) I believe we'll need a sandbox type of area for players to test decks out with no penalty on win/loss ratios. Perhaps with some standards maps which they can pick out. b) Scheduling usually is dependent on playerbase location. In general, afaik, activity spikes near weekends and drops off steeply on Mondays. This seems to be a global trend. As to tournaments, no reason to restrict to any single type. Long running leagues require stat trackers and are useful for devs to trawl meta data for balancing. Knockouts can be event based, heck...pretty soon, there might even be a need to set up guilds/clans...and have guild wars.
This. This a lot. I know that you could in theory do this through the single player modules, but I have always enjoyed gold fishing my Magic decks. It's a quick way to work out problems that don't appear obvious while building, but make themselves known while testing. I like this idea, although I don't think it's completely necessary. I'm also all sorts of down for paying for spots in a tournament. I think that sounds like a good way to have an organized multi-player community and have BM make money!
As a person who (very briefly) enjoyed the Magic: the Gathering: Tactics beta, I find that what makes tournaments most enjoyable is server stability and the ability to re-connect to a dropped game. Once those are in place is when I suspect we should work on building a proper tournament scene, of which I am all for the "Free but no/minor prizes" and "Paid but chock full of prizes" variety.
Massive map, multiple tile sets connected together. If you win you get placed in a new tile with another winner. Winners of each map fight each other again on the same map set in a random location as per the beginning and it keeps moving like this until the last match finishes between the two winners of every match before it. The only reason to have a bunch of tiles sets in one big map is for the random placement because you would be fighting A LOT of matches to win. Kind of a meh idea but oh well. Hey OP, how about you update your first post with all summery of the ideas.
...OP? Sir Knight is very strong, to be sure, but I would not call him overpowered. He's adequately balanced.
Thank you for your vote of confidence. But to be fair, you haven't seen how I stack up against more traditional strategies and equipment. Oh? I hadn't thought of that. Hmm. Do we need it? I thought of this as more of a "let's get everyone talking" deal.
I thought having the ideas out there would be a nice touch for those that don't read a lot. Just a few words per idea wouldn't be to hard to write. ^^
What kind of madness do you speak? People seeing cardhunter information/thoughts and not wanting to read it all over and over?
Okay, you wacky people. I've edited my original post. Which broke the links in it, by the way, thus requiring me to fiddle with the editing. And on that subject: I hereby submit the bug report that "url=" code is broken when you edit a post.
How about "singleplayer" tournaments? They would run a little bit like the challenges idea SurgeonFish proposed, though without requiring specific cards/items. Everybody who signs up for the tournament gets access to a special adventure module and characters are auto-promoted (demoted?) to the standard multiplayer level. Then it's a contest to see who has the "best" run through the battles. Scoring and prizes could be awarded overall and for individual categories: fastest time (fewest rounds/turns), highest average health % remaining, most victory points for special conditions, or add your own idea. I think the big advantage is scheduling: contestants don't have to coordinate with another player from an incompatible time zone. Like the ordinary singleplayer game, you could even compete over several sessions so long as you finish before the deadline (I'm thinking two weeks). A big leaderboard would keep people interested and trying to improve their score as required. And Blue Manchu could hold new contests as quickly as they can make new maps. An entry fee, as discussed, could be steady revenue for BM. Entry tickets awarded as low-level prizes in these or other kinds of tournaments (or maybe even in regular loot chests) would give players something to work for even if they aren't atop the rankings and tempt new players into taking up the battle cry. Truthfully, I like Card Hunter because of the design and the feel that I've seen from the singleplayer campaign side. It will be great to learn CH has equally good multiplayer challenges, but with so little previewed that expectaion feels a bit airy at this point. And with the SP mode being so integral a part of the game, I would really like to see it extended. This format could potentially appeal both to hardened competitors and those who aren't very interested in versus play. Edit: Found this quote: Providing new adventures in a tournament format could help both. And if the new content is perhaps a little rushed, the contest may expose balancing issues so BM can tweak it and release it to the general map after the contest ends. P.S. I'm not saying my idea replaces true multiplayer tournaments, but I do think it takes what I've seen unique to CH over other CCGs and leverages it for further player rewards.
I would like to see a Play By Email style multiplayer, where by each person takes their move and it is sent and saved to the next player for their turn. You can have tons of games going, or just a few with close friends. This type of multiplayer is vary common in the IOS market where not everyone has time to play a full session but are able to take small one minute breaks often.
It occurs to me that Blue Manchu could use anything for such competitions, rushed or not. In the course of development, surely they get "junk maps" that they can't use otherwise. So . . . "Yes, we know the maps for this week are broken. Your challenge, if you choose to accept it, is to come up with the most efficient way to break them." It would be another "puzzle" style competition, or at least "mental challenge," testing whether the players understand the game well enough to find weak spots. All in a controlled environment where they cannot use these "bad maps" and "exploits" to harm other players.
It would have to be possible to spectate games, or at least for player managed tournaments. Draft and sealed would be neat too, but might need some special rules or tweaks (I don't know what goes into a "booster pack" for this game)
Using a "play by email" system (which just alerts the player it is their turn, while saving the game turn by turn) could easily be rigged to save every play and let others watch them. The amount of games saved would be dictated by how much memory they want stored on the servers for it. It would be a good feature to make players purchase if they want to save replays of their games. I would not force people to pay to watch replays, however.
I would say you shouldnt play for saving replays, but for saving them permanently. Replays are really important for tournaments especially community-hosted ones, since communities often apply rules that most often forbid the usage of some broken tactics and other things. So Replays are mandatory to prohibit cheating. I also think in a community-hosted tournament prizes are a real issue. Maybe there will be a community tournament that is supported with prizes by the devs, but they won´t be as often, as i think the devs will plan tournaments of their own and there is no real reason to support every community tournament. Something that would help to distribute prizes would be a trade system. Do you guys know if there is anything regarding this on the forum?? I am quite new here and as far as i can tell there are some people here who know the forums real good. Since Cardhunter is a collectible card game and not a trading card game the chances of there being a trading option are pretty slim. So how do you hand out prizes at a community hosted tournament? EDIT: Oh and tournaments should be accessible for most of the time zones. I once played a game which tournaments where planned solely with americans in mind. That led to me having to play a tournament at 3 am.... on a monday. They fixed it later on but why make mistakes that you can prevent from the beginning
