Long Term Itemization Problems

As already stated by multiple people, you can grind for normal chests via SP, without any limitation (you just don't complete the adventure) and with a better efficiency too. Not only SP games are, on average, shorter, but you can also roughly control what items you want to get while mp chest loot is picked randomly from the entire pool. A lot of people is doing this every day to grind for good items they want.

Which goes to show why this discussion has gotten to a ridiculous point for a long time now.

 

Really think a moment on why this is again just a plainly illogical statement:

If one person has 300 great items and the other guy had 60... they are *NOT* on the same level gear wise. This is on par with the other quote I pulled saying that you're just talking nonsense. You really aren't making any valid points at all, you're just rambling.

This is 100% a straw man. Where in my post or anywhere else did I write that? This game is a combination of skill and items. Indeed if one person is as skilled as the other, due to natural talent or whatever, but has way less items... then he will lose (in the long run). By not giving him an opportunity to catch up in a reasonable time frame is a problem. This is because this guy will likely just quit the game in frustration.

Actually I responded to your idiotic comment that I know nothing about strategy games. Defending myself from a personal attack is not bragging. And yeah, I am damn good at strategy games. I'd happily play you in this game for money but I already know you're a coward and would not do it.

Anyway bro I really think you're not the brightest. I am going to block you on this forum and likely in game too. So if you respond to me again please realize that I will not receive it.

Edit: The offer to play you for money in this game is genuine. If you actually want to do it and set up an escrow we can. I'll even give you slight odds in your favor. If indeed you do want to do this just have someone else message me or w/e and I will unblock you and we can sort that out.

 

It's fine Pengw1n. I probably pushed my alternative view on things in a passionate way myself. I can see how different people behave differently when dealing with hotly debated matters, so I don't take any offense.

I think discussing things further would help no one, regardless, as I pretty much said all I wanted to. So yeah, the thing ends here as long as I'm concerned.

 

Sorry for being dense, but I don't understand what you mean by power token item tiers becoming obsolete. You won't be able to equip the item? Or do you mean it wouldn't be worth it to equip an item of lower power token cost? Couldn't you equip an item of lower power token requirements using a higher token? I'm probably missing something quite obvious, but I'm just not seeing it. Thanks in advance for the response.

 

Being obsolete means item with that token requirement is no longer relevant in the game. If you got them( 0 tokens item), you have 0 chance of using them in that, say lvl 50 characters (simply because there must be similarly better item with higher token costs, which might not be the case). So they are useless. Of course if (and a big if at that) lvl 50 gear is in effect. There is probably some tiers of pvp that make uses of all items anyway. I doubt it will ever go to 50 those. These data that we all know come from a long time ago in early beta.

If there is a new lvl cap however, I'd like a new distribution to utilize any kind of tokens item available, which probably means 2 no tokens, 4 minor, 2 major, 2 great, 2 ultimate for a total of 12 tokens

 

They could also just add new slots as well to distribute the items to avoid redundancy.

Example:
Levels 20-40 you get ring, cape, relic, neck, etc which require 3rd tier tokens
Levels 40-50 same idea, but they require tier 4 tokens.

This keeps items relevant that already exist. May be too complex, but its an option.

 

Pilgrim, I like the idea. The only thing I would be concerned with, is that the decks size would need to grow accordingly.

I'm not entirely against that, but I grew to love the fact decks are 36 cards only, as it makes deck building less of an involved process (which is thanks to the equipment system too I guess). Also, with smaller decks, you can build your decks while being relatively sure you will draw any given card at some point in the game (unless the game lasts only a bunch of rounds ofc).

Not sure how BM is going to achieve that, but I would be very surprised if they just made 1000+ items currently in the game utterly useless as the level cap is raised. And, as already said, the token distribution might change quite substantially as BM expands the game further.

As an another alternative idea (and assuming you do have 12 tokens to spend at lvl 50) they might as well simply use higher tokens costs for higher level, more powerful items.

We kind immediately think "you will have all the tokens you need at level 50", just because the most expensive items cost 2 tokens. But what if more powerful weapons costed 3 assorted tokens instead? What if you got, say, class items costing 2 tokens?

That would make the kind of choices you make regarding picking your items even more complex and interesting. Do I equip items with lower tokens costs, allowing me to have decent equipment in all slots, or do I pick this really awesome piece of gear at the expanse of having to cope with a low level item in another slot?

I actually love the items/tokens system, as it's a very clever way into forcing you to make those kind of choices while still leaving lots of leeway in the way you build your decks. I can't see the devs just throwing all of that out of the window in the future.

 

Bandreus you could just have an alternate pool for the newer items too if we went with what you and I are talking about.

Let's say the 20-50 pool is whatever the current pool is (36 I think). You then have 1 pool of 36 for 1-20, and 1 pool of 36 for 20-50. Continuing hypothetically, they could make it so that you automatically draw 1 card from 1-20 pool, and 1 card from 20-50 pool, and if there are excess drawn cards that turn, make it be random which pool they are drawn from. The same could work for item draws as well.

 

Thanks for clarifying that for me my fellow forum dwellers!

 

Sorry but I don't think I got what you're saying? (not a native English speaker after all)
By different pools you mean having two distinct decks per character, sort of? That would be very inconvenient, imho. An unnecessary measure complicating the game to achieve a simple result (avoiding making lower level gear useless).

To put what I'm saying more clearly instead: suppose a lvl 50 character has 12 Ultimate tokens to spend (as listed in the wiki). Let's take a warrior, for instance.

Under the current system, 12 tokens means you could equip whatever items fancy your imagination. Now imagine if:

a level 18 weapon costed 2 major tokens (as it's the case right now)
a level 24 (and onward) costed 3 assorted tokens (depending on level of the item)

This would mean, if you wanted to equip 3x lvl 24+ weapons, that would translate to 9 assorted tokens. A level 50 character equipping 3 lvl 24+ items would find himself with only 3 spare tokens to spend on other gear.

Don't mind the numbers I'm using in my example, but I only wanted to show that BM can simply up the tokens cost for items of higher levels as the cap is increased. This also comes with the great advantage that you're not altering any of the mechanics already in place. Tokens costs for items already scale up with the item's level (one minor token for lvl 7 weapon, 2 tokens for lvl 13 weapon, etc.)

In short, I don't think any game-altering change would be needed to keep lower level items from becoming completely irrelevant. (though people will naturally lean towards higher level equipment anyways, which is fine with me).

And anyways, I can't see BM raising the level cap to 50 anytime soon. Chances are this is going to be a very, very slow process.

 

I hope this is true. But I hope content comes out faster than the level cap goes up.

 

No matter the way you put it, nobody can produce high quality content as quickly as users can consume it I guess

 

Very true, but one can dream.

 

Thanks for letting us know. We were mainly speculating about random stuff at this point I guess, but that was very appreciated.

 

Very interesting, I always thought that there will be an option for let's say the top 500 players to be in something like a "diamond league" where they will play with a party of the high level characters (level 35 sounds about right) as the high level content would seem too sweet to just be confined to SP.
Just a thought though

 

what if items had a value, and a match is set to a specific value cap. so say the cap is 500, you can only use equipment whos value is = 500 or less? This would make it so it doesn't matter how many items you have, you have to choose them more based on strategy and less on "equip all the best stuff I have!"

Of course, people can do custom "unlimited" games still

 

The tokens systems is very similar in scope and functionality to a points-buy mechanic already. An additional layer of limitations and constraints would be unnecessary and impractical, imo.

Believe it or not, but having a couple better items than your opponent is not that huge of a difference in the grand scheme of things. And anyways, Card Hunter is a game about Hunting (only you hunt for items really). The fact you need to get yourself good items to turn a "good build" into a "really good build" is an integral part of the game's design, no use neglecting this.

When it comes to items which are simply too good for the respective token cost (like "very very good", to the point of being OP), that's just an issue of recognizing an imbalance and then applying the necessary changes (upping the lvl/rarity/tokens-cost for the item accordingly should be enough most of the times. Nerfing specific cards is another useful, but more extreme option which is used only sparingly for good reasons).

Just as much, when a build which simply breaks the game gets identified, you simply change that. No need to change the game systems as a whole (unless said build is clearly pointing at something wrong in the design, I guess).

Otherwise the system as is brilliant as-is and just works wonders. You only need to fix the little cogs which at times fall out of their place, rather than adding whole new (unnecessary) mechanisms.