For multiplayer, it is impossible to even attempt some deck types unless you can get certain rares, epics and even legendaries. Ice spells (especially Freeze), Mass Frenzy, Firestorm, Nimble Strike, Short Perplexing Ray, Obliterating Bludgeon and so forth- if the right cards don't show up, you can't play the deck. And if you can play a long time, including two months as a club member, completing the entire single player campaign, getting up into the 1500 rating bracket, doing some extra farming of single player missions etc, and checking Randimar's every week and still be stuck saying "well, I'd like to try out X instead of playing Winds of Warrior (tm) yet again but I can't because the right card has never shown up" there's a problem. Random drops are fine, but Randimar's is really needed to allow people to pick up a small amount of cards to fill in the holes of bad random luck. Unless you play an inordinate number of hours to farm gold (in which case you deserve it), you're going to be restricted in how much stuff you can afford from Randimar's a month. The trouble comes when, as is currently the case, you can go literally months without seeing very much you truly need (exacerbated by how many useless-for-multiplayer epics and legendaries there are). I really feel like Randimar's should either have more stuff or should be rotated a couple of times a week- which has the bonus of getting players to log in to check it, increasing activity. Might well help more people play more deck types, and make the game more fun for everyone.
I would love for randimar's to be rotated a little more quickly (maybe twice per week) or to have a gold/pizza option to restock it. Maybe something like 10 pizza or 50 gold to restock the current randimar's?
Restocking at such low prices would just mean everyone would soon have every meaningful item = the end of the loot chase = the end of the game.
While I don't think a paid restock is the answer, why would that be the end? Why even get the loot, if not to use it to play and win? Magic doesn't die because people get all the cards they need for their decks- quite the opposite. Card Hunter needs a better secondary market by the time it introduces tournaments and other competitive play.
The loot chase is one of the most important elements of the appeal of action RPGs. Once you have everything you possibly could want, the motivation to keep at it diminishes a very great deal. This applies mostly to single player but the motivation to play MP is for many if not most players to get more loot. If you no longer want any new loot, why play? The loot game is over, you've scratched that itch in your animal brain and it's easy to forget the game and move on to the next new shiny thing. Like we always do, it's just a question of time. The MP enthusiasts (who are always relatively overrepresented on forums, by the way) will play regardless, but the common wisdom is they're maximum 10% of any SP-capable game population. If the mostly SP crowd goes, the MP lobby will soon be so empty as to easily lead to a not-enough-opponents-no variety-long-wait-times-death spiral for everyone. Card Hunter would live, but in a very much shrunk way, in my non-expert opinion. Magic the Gathering is not directly comparable because people still have the physical cards they have invested a lot of money in, lying around, reminding the player of this. They are more motivated to keep using them. Magic has also had time to gather a large playing population, enough to be self-sustaining. And don't they publish new cards constantly? It hardly seems that the loot chase has ever been near its end there. You might have gotten the deck you want but the lure of the new is always there. If Card Hunter made it possible to get all reasonable items pretty fast and did not start releasing new stuff in the same time frame, it would lead to the above consequences, thinks I.
I concur with Jarmo. As much as I like the idea of getting 4 Vibrant Pains right now to go rip up the MP ladder, I prefer the slow grind of SP farming more. As I've alluded to in a previous post, I think CH is primarily a CCG, with twin foci on collecting and playing/dueling. Although it is always great to have access to all cards to turn it into something akin to Chess (where all the pieces are unlocked from the start), I think a huge draw of CCGs is the chase of the loot. A lot of longevity comes from this loot chase too, if the underlying mechanics are sound. For example, Diablo 2. The same (pretty much the same) loot ever since 2003, and people are still playing SP today. PS. Join the D2 SPF community today if you still play!
I concur with Jarmo as well. After finishing the campaign, playing some MP and doing a number of the quests, I tend to play much less frequently. Currently I look forward to check the rotated Randimar stock every sunday, but if it is rotated more often, it would kill off most of my motivation for going dungeon running at all. I'd just check Randimar's a few times a week instead... and then stop playing all together I'd imagine. I do not have any Vibrant Pain or Reapers, or whatnot, but I'm still around the 1450 mark with mostly commons and uncommons. I don't feel the issue is very problematic at all. Sure it would be nice having a couple of Vibrant Pains, but that's the reason I still hunt chests - hence, the reason I still play the game. And I still feel I have numereous build options.
My only suggestion for Randimar's is to include a guaranteed Legendary for sale. If I see nothing but epic quality items when I wake up Sunday morning, it does make me a little sad.
I always thought Randimar's had a fixed ratio of L:E:R, until I woke up one Sunday morning and found no Legendaries.
I think Randimar's restock every week is often enough. I even think it should have a fixed maximum amount of legendaries, I saw players with 6 legends in randimar's which I think is a little too many (It's supposed to be "legendary"). I often get no legendaries at all there - which I don't mind. Imo if everyone could make any build they want it would destroy the game, the fun about the game is that every1 has a different (even if slightly) build which interacts in various ways with other builds.
