Sudden increase in forum viewers

There are currently 186 users online on this forum. I don't recall ever seeing such numbers. What happened? Was a prominent Card Hunter tattoo on Lady Gaga's derrière just shown on U.S. television or something?

 

Oh yeah, that's very probably the explanation, thanks! More's the pity. An influx of new people interested in the game would be a very good thing.

 

Any idea when that is?

 

"Two weeks"

 

"January"

 

According to Google Trends, interest in Card Hunter has been on a steady decline ever since launch. Some decline after launch is of course understandable, but it would be good if it stabilized as soon as possible. Google Trends is of course not the best tool for this, but it should be pretty accurate.

We can easily see this decline here on the forums as less and less posts are written each week. And when we see new posts, they are usually mostly technical issues or community members desperately trying to make their own content in form of events or whatever. Things like deckbuilding discussions have really died down. I haven't done any statistics on the subject but that's how it seems to me at least.

I really think that Blue Manchu should have chosen then "monthly small patches" approach instead of the "big patch every 9-6 months" approach. I think that adding 1 card and maybe 10-12 items with that card per month would have helped a lot and keep players interested. It would also probably have helped with club memberships because then you kind of pay for monthly new content as well and not just that one extra item.

We'll see what happens when the big patch finally arrives. After all this hype, if the patch is lackluster, it could be really bad for the game. I'm also interested to see whether or not we have to pay pizza to access the new content. I hope not.

But I'm getting seriously off-topic here.

 

Having active and continuous PR is probably more important than their patch schedule.

 

Counterargument: adding new content and addressing community concerns would generate more PR than... whatever else was happening?

 

I would imagine that any new content would be the same scheme as the current content. So if you have to pay pizza for something, it will be something optional like treasure hunts or figurines. They hit the freeVSpay option right on the head in my opinion. With the exception that pizza is too freaking expensive.

I too would like to see a dependable, monthly update schedule. Not just new map rotations and superfluous figurines every.... however often that happens.

 

The increase in forum views may also mean we've been active enough to attract more bots.
The bots aren't good, but the activity is.

 

I mean, yes and no. A lot of people have never heard of the game. Telling them about it is possible without releasing new material.

 

A lot of people will be reluctant to play a game that has a beatable singleplayer, and a rating based multiplayer that doesn't get routinely balanced.

 

Not everyone joins the game a jaded veteran. The facts that it's free and provides a LOT of content would get a lot of players if they knew about it. Your gripes are more about retention.

 

That's great to get players here, but multiplayer games require a growing or stable community to be successful. The best multiplayer games attract new players to the multiplayer by having an MP that retains players.

 

I'm just saying, I think there are two problems here. And the things you're pointing out don't invalidate that BM needs to be more visible. Balancing PvP is more important for retention than introducing new content, I think. Those two things are more necessary than a monthly cycle of adding stuff to the game.

 

I think if the goal is to increase the amount of players both on the forums and in-game, balancing the pvp as part of a monthly? cycle of addressing concerns is very important, not 1-2 times per year.