Sudden increase in forum viewers

There aren't any extra shops listed in the overworld manifest. What does it mean???!?!?!?!? :O

 

I think they have to actually make the build for them to show up (the set tags aren't showing either).

 

My guess would be that there will be more adventures, but the levels will not increase. Ergo, no 18th level shop.

 

I think they need to actually make the build for them to appear (can't see the set tags either).

The new adventures are level 7,8,9 and 3x level 18 (those may be treasure hunts).

Back to the original subject...

The large number of guests may mean people are still being logged out.

 

There were always many more guests than members shown in the figures. The ratio hasn't changed. Probably many active players don't bother to log in or even to create an account to read the forums. I don't see it as indicative of the recent logging out problem.

 

I disagree. For a game like this one, I think that new content is hands down the most important thing that will keep the majority players interested. And if new content was pushed out each month (like one card, a few items and one adventure) I'm pretty sure that people would stick around for much longer. PvP balance is a close second, but no amount of balance will help if the game lacks depth and no new content is being implemented. And lets not forget that PvE players make up for the majority of player base, and in PvE balance is more or less meaningless.

Also I don't think BM should necessarily be more visible. Sure it would be nice but I'd much rather have them focus on developing the game than focus on explaining us what's happening at all times. I would be perfectly happy if I never heard a single word from BM as long as new content kept coming in. But if nothing is happening and things like nerf requests are being ignored, then yes, more visibility would definitely help.

 

I think the Blue Manchu visibility in this context means doing more PR for the general public, not visibility on the forum or among the game's pre-existing community. Card Hunter and Blue Manchu would fare better if they were more in the public eye. The hard part, of course, is getting there now that the excitement around the game launch has abated.

 

Honestly, I recently spend much less time on this game ...
I like this game very much, but it becomes dull for me to keep farming for the extra (rare but useless) loot.
I am not keen on climbing the ladder neither ... (the purple chest is just not worth the time, even when I had the club membership ...)

A small daily gift or new content is really important to keep people STAYING in this game.
I have high expectation on the new big patch, but if it is not interesting to me, likely I will not leave this game for a long time ...

By the way, I also tried to convince my friends(some of them are gamers) to play this game.
But it lacks the addictive feature to keep them in this game after a few quests ... (comparing to those Japanese android games ...)

 

Marketing is probably a better word for it then.

While getting exposure and getting more people to try the game would be cool, I think the most important thing right now is to focus on making the game as good as possible, because that will attract the masses eventually. Even if BM used tons of marketing and somehow got a million new players today, it wouldn't help much if all of them quit after a few weeks. BM should somehow get people to stick around for 3 years, not 3 months. I think that the best way to achieve that is to have frequent patches with balancing and new content. Players having to wait for one whole year for a big patch, and then pay money to access all of it, is not the way to go imo.

Yep. Daily/Weekly/Monthly content is what makes people stick around. Currently if you go back and look at forum topics from 6-9 months ago, it's almost like reading some other forum because almost all users are people you've never even seen before. Card Hunter as it is now offers entertainment for few months, after which players start to focus on other things like posting suggestions or making their own content, and finally quitting because they have basically done it all. But frequent patches with new content would help this problem because we would get new toys to play with.

Lets hope that the big patch is worth it. But I'm worried that with all this hype we've been seeing, it's going to be very difficult for BM to deliver something that everyone would be happy about. We'll see.

 

I'll say this, thanks for helping put things in perspective. I know I personally can be negative sometimes about some aspects of the game, but this is literally the only game I even play these days, or skyrim. I think the approach of some folks, again, I'm pointing a finger at myself first and a few others, may be one that isn't as appropriate as it could be. We just want the game to succeed. A lot of people consistently post constructively, seriously thinking out ways to improve the game in various ways, and never hear anything back. I completely understand that devs are busy, and the team is small. One thing I'd suggest, for whatever its worth, is to have some kind of player liason, even if its a volunteer position, who takes the ideas from the players and presents them to the devs, if that doesn't already occur. That would be a fantastic way to hopefully spur more player interaction on forums, and revitalize interest in the game.

 

Yeah SLG I was talking about marketing/PR, which I think was pretty obvious in my first post here. And Pengw1n kind of just explained why it is so crucial: BM is so tiny, there is basically no way they CAN do all the things you want. They need more employees, and for that they need more money, and reaching out to more potential customers is probably easier than churning out content at an impossible pace in the hopes that existing customers will decide to spend more money... Obviously I want the same things you and pilgrim want. But a larger player base is a Necessity, and PR is almost certainly a surer bet for that than anything else mentioned in this thread.

 

I do appreciate hearing back from you, and love this game. I will continue to support the game financially, on twitter, word of mouth, and on these forums. Hopefully, constructive fixes do happen and player feedback is used to make this happen. Its a great game with huge potential.

 

First of all, I'm not asking for more work. I'm simply suggesting that patches would be smaller but they would happen more frequently. Secondly, monthly patches are not impossible with a 2-man team. I've seen those happen with games that have only one developer who is working part-time. It's all about how you allocate your resources. They could save time for example by reducing holiday item clutter and costumes, and focusing on real content like adventures and new cards.

Huh? Long-term survival and business decisions is exactly what I'm talking about. I never said anything about any "cool stuff" that I want to see "right now". My opinion is that having yearly big "DLC" patches as opposed to more frequent patches is a bad business decision for a game like Card Hunter because Card Hunter in its current form does not have enough entertainment to keep players interested between patches.

I'm actually still a bit confused about what you are talking about because you are using the term PR but in a way that sounds more like marketing. I see PR in this context as communication between BM and existing players. Marketing on the other hand is what they do to get new players.

And yes, I know the importance of marketing. I actually have an MBA in marketing. But the thing is that with online games you often get only one chance with a customer. If they try the game and do not like it, it's going to be really difficult, if not impossible, to get them back. This is the same exact reason why many MMO releases get delayed: publishers do not want to release an unfinished product because they know they only have one shot. This is why it's a better strategy for Card Hunter to start small and slowly build the game into something that everyone wants to play for the next 2 years and then start the marketing campaign to attract the masses.

What you suggest is a big mistake that many new businesses make. You are suggesting that they spend time and money to advertise their game, although the content is currently not enough to keep those players interested for longer than a few months. While that strategy might generate some short-term revenue and temporarily increase the size of the player base, club membership is where the big bucks are, and that requires a longer developer-customer relationship.

The smart move here would be to use minimal resources on marketing and rely on social media and word-of-mouth, which is what they are doing. Then use that saved time and money to build content like PvP tournament system or new adventures. They are doing that as well, but the gap between patches is way too long imo. For example I have been playing this game for about 6 months now, and during that time there hasn't been any new cards or adventures. I think this is the #1 reason why people are quitting the game, and I also think that more frequent patches would at least partly fix the issue, even if those patches were really simple like one new card. By decreasing the number of people who quit, and at the same time slowly attracting more players, the player base would slowly increase and so would the revenue.

I think that your idea of concentrating on "PR" and neglecting adding new content regularly, would be the worst possible move for Card Hunter. It's a short-sighted strategy that never works in the long run.

 

This is a testground for one of the next phases of the game.
We PC users are part of the original target group of this game, which is imo older players with a p&p/rp background.
The money is in the Mobile/Tablet market, and that is where it will go but not until things like balancing, loot, more adventures, skins, tournament mode, social interaction, mainstreaming and other things are correctly implemented.

 

I think it's a bit disingenuous to claim that Card Hunter, as it currently stands, is merely a test-ground for another platform. If that were the case, they wouldn't have sunk so many years into its development - least of all as an on-line only Flash game (which can't be converted easily to a mobile format).

As far as a player liaison, Farbs is correct in that we do discuss a lot of what people are currently talking about (and I keep them abreast of what seems to be hot-button topics as best I can) - well, mostly they discuss and I just sort of ask questions - but Jon, Farbs, J-Wiz, Tess, and company are wary of making any kind of sweeping statements about things and then spending time away from development to follow up.

It's an unfortunate reality that development oftentimes takes far longer than you want or expect it to - especially with a small team. Regular content updates + game balancing and fixes are pretty big tasks. It's not an excuse, but it's what BM has to deal with. We definitely thank everyone for continuing to support us, though!