As it works currently, to get the most out of your club membership you need to buy it at the same time you do the treasure hunts (as well as Melvin's adventure). If you do the treasure hunts first, and then get a club membership, you've already used up your guaranteed chests so your club rewards won't be nearly as good. I'd like to see this changed. I don't currently have a club membership but I keep thinking that I might get one later, and I'm somewhat discouraged from doing so since I know that I won't get as much out of it. The easy solution is to make the first-time club reward independent of the chest. So a new club member who has already done the treasure hunts can just replay them to get the reward. This is exploitable however, if you (as currently) allow the players to join the club once they've already seen the club reward - they could just keep redoing the adventure until they get the reward they're after. One way to address this would be to make them join the club before you show them what they'll receive, but this might not be desirable for marketing reasons. Another option would be to remember their first-time rewards for those adventures, so the reward that they get is fixed and can't be scummed.
Though it means getting less awesome loot, I'm still in favor of the simpler solution: ditch the convoluted "minimum rarity is the same as the highest guaranteed minimum rarity" thing. It takes forever for someone to understand it, and I STILL haven't heard a logical explanation for the current setup. Okay, here, let me just repost:
I think the motivation for the minimum rarity thing is that the bonus item should be relatively attractive, without making it too good for small chests. If it was just a random item with no rarity guarantee, it would usually end up being a pretty poor item. If it was always guaranteed to be 'rare', then those small and easy 2-item chests would become a powerful source rare items for club members. I'm not really sure what the best solution is; but I do dislike the synergy between one-time rewards and the club. The obvious solution for me is to make it so that the guaranteed rarity from the club doesn't include the effect of these one-time rewards. But that would make the system even harder to understand. (Actually, I think it was implemented like that for awhile and some people complained that it wasn't consistent with the stated rules for the club's minimum rarity.)
Another solution would be to make it conform to the common player misinterpretation: that the rarity equals whatever rarity comes out from the random loot generator. Just match the max. But this makes the Club even more valuable, which would further annoy folks who dislike it in the first place. Alternately, the special Treasure Hunt reward could be separate from the chest entirely. So you complete the adventure, get your 4-6 items in the chest (of whatever rarity), then see a special part of the screen for the Treasure Hunt reward. Maybe off to the side from the Club cushion. But this wouldn't handle the White Star Diamond and Hand Of Melvelous. Yay, tricky situations.
I think the simplest solution would be that the first time a player does a particular treasure hunt and also happens to be a club member, an epic item is guaranteed on the club cushion. The standard epic reward comes in the chest the first time you do a particular treasure hunt, whether you are a club member or not.
I have been against this for a long time and still am honestly club reward doesn't need to be better than random. If the object of it is to seed out loot rather than give it in bunches just give people the random rolls and x free 30 pizza chests each week preferably like 2.
Agreed, make it a completely random item. Maybe an uncommon or better random item if it's from one of the gold chests at the end of an adventure or in multiplayer and never have it get better than that. Of course that change would make the club much less appealing...
I am going to say that the VIP Program is the best monetization I have seen for a F2P game. You are trying yo change a really good system for 95% of the cases to suit your wants which would then make the VIP program problematic for all the other 95%. Therefore, I don't see the devs changing the program. Good luck to you!
Ugh. Now that I'm on the quests, they're the same way. All of them. This is terrible, I don't think my solution would work any more - the prospect of playing all the quests and then replaying them for the guaranteed bonus rare is just too daunting. The completely random quest reward does seem like the best choice - reward the players for playing more, rather than for when and under what circumstances they finagle the reward system.
I don't see why this wouldn't work for non-TH drops (all nine of them); the game seems to handle them the same. (I've got a copy of the official Adventures.csv showing the guaranteed drops for everything.) No wait, there may be a problem with modules that drop two guaranteed items: Tunnels into Darkness and White Skull Canyon.
"Adds an extra item of equal or greater rarity to the highest guaranteed reward" seems like it'd describe the club reward pretty clearly.
That's the only problem? Sweet! Because it isn't a problem! Go back and replay those two adventures. They're the level 1 ones, right? The Card Hunter Club does not work on level 1 adventures. Period. That is what it currently says. And this text is still misinterpreted by players, because players glance at these words and expect them to mean the more common line "guaranteed to be equal or greater to the highest reward."
I do agree that the club membership bonus becomes "off-balanced" when doing the treasure hunt missions for the first time (which gives a feeling of being "left out" if playing them without club membership, regardless of the fixed rewards). My fix would be to provide club reward to everyone, including non-club-members, on the very first playthrough of the treasure hunt -- since the treasure hunt was already premium content, that doesn't seem unreasonable, and no one loses out on items. Simple and clean fix, I think.
I like the suggestion about guaranteed items being shown somewhere outside the chest and thus being except from the club's minimum rarity rule. That would be functionality the same as what I said was the 'obvious solution', except that it also would present the information to the player in a way that I think would be more easily understood. The only bad side that I can think of at the moment is that some guaranteed items are kind of minor things that are just slipped into the game so that players are less likely to get stuck on upcoming levels, such as Golem Cleaver and Trogsbane (I think both of those item are guaranteed, but I'm not sure.). I think it would seem weird if those relatively minor items were being presented as some kind of special reward outside of the main chest.
Here's a list of all guaranteed items outside the treasure hunts: Raid on Ommlet: Amber Shards Kobold Encampment: Kobold Killer Tunnels into Darkness: Orzo's Excellent Wand, Golem Cleaver White Skull Canyon: Blessed Demon Claw, Amber Shards Dungeon of the Lizard Priest: Lizard Fryer Diamonds of the Kobolds: Trogsbane The White Star: White Star Diamond Beneath the Frozen Earth: Spellthwart Shield Melvelous the Magnificent: Hand Of Melvelous
Whoa. Spellthwart Shield is guaranteed? I didn't have that item in the beta, and I wanted it! I guess it was added as a guaranteed item after I already passed that module. Anyway, I reckon that White Star Diamond and Hand Of Melvelous would look completely fine if they were presented separately from the chest items; possibly Lizard Fryer as well. But many of the others would make me think "why am I being given this thing as a special reward?" -- And that's the only issue that I can currently think of with that the suggestion about presenting the guaranteed items separately.
...I'm kind of really disappointed to see this list. Here I had been congratulating myself for my good fortune in getting the Trogsbane and the Lizard Fryer and the shield. I'd actually like them to be presented separately just to keep things unambiguous.
What, Trogsbane is guaranteed and it's an Epic? Okay, then I'll say this yet again: I think the White Star Diamond should go back to being an Epic. Lowering its rarity clearly has little impact on keeping Club rewards from going bonkers. ANYWAY, that's enough of a derail. Let's get back to the ORIGINAL derail. I do in general think this list is a good thing. I noticed the Golem Cleaver had been guaranteed just by watching early play. I presumed this was to help players handle anti-Golem strategy: as in, to satisfy people going either "It never occurred to me that these enemies might have had Armor before I went into battle; how was I supposed to know X meant Y without massive trial-and-error?" or "I can try to deckbuild to handle each enemy, but I have no items that would work!" (Notice how many active conversations we have going on these topics . . . plus "random loot is bad" topics . . . ) But Trogsbane before facing Troglodytes, and Spellthwart Shield immediately after facing some Troglodyte magicians (and you know more are coming) is pretty awesome. Once again, these devs come up with clever solutions in response to player feedback.
