A high gold price is an incentive for people to choose to pay pizza for it. Social psychology studies showed that people are more generous/kind/helpful when they have the feeling that they choose to be generous/kind/helpful themselves. A hobo will make less cash by soliciting walkers then by making people feeling sorry about him. Not saying that BM is a hobo, they are high class programmers and people but they really deserve cash incomes. And people should spend pizza more easily if they feel that it's by choice, not because they have no other choice then spending money to enjoy the new contents. That being said, money is even less a problem since one can find the fairy twice a day. Fairy often bless the player with epic/legendary treasures (and even more often rare ones). Now of course that's not enough for someone who want to run a 500 gold league every 4 hours. And I said 500 gold based on the current prize structure. One epic at Randimar = 500 gold. Yes you choose the epic but not really. Randimar is well know for selling only crap you don't need. One epic chest = 2 random epics + like 20% chances of an upgrade for a Legendary item. Yes one can finish 4th or 5th and get "only" 4 or 3 Magnificent Chests. But don't forget that people also get MP chests by playing a league, that's some more added value. So I gave random numbers but yes I will be happy to pay 500 gold for a league with this prizes structure.
500 gold is out of reach for all but the most active players. It would be the same as charging Pizza in practise. The value might be OK, but it's too much to comfortably pay. Volume of players is more important.
500 g for just entry would be unrealistic. I considered it as the "high end of the spectrum" but since Jon wants people to be able to enter multiple leagues in a week I'd say 500 g is outside the range of a HUGE majority of the population. I'm surprised he didn't go with 100 g or 200/250 g. That seems more reasonable considering the chests. Either way, should we be complaining about how cheap it is? Just cheer and be happy! :-P
As stated earlier, not complaining. Just giving my personal opinion about the subject as a feedback. Sure I will enjoy those free leagues as much as possible, but those won't be eternal. And the future needs to be prepared. For those who also enjoy that kind of stuff, another psychological study that has been made. Someone asked people if they were ok to go to the cinema with an ex prisoner. Over 90% of the asked people refused. The same guy then asked people if they were ok to have an ex inmate sleeping at their place for one night caus he had nowhere to go. Of course about everyone said no. Then he asked them something like "can you at least agree to go to the cinema with him to watch a movie?". Positive replies jumped to something like 40%. So basicly puting first in people minds the idea of something they really can't accept soften the idea of something more acceptable. Of course having free leagues was a good idea in order to have people try this new fun type of content. But on a commercial base, that's a happy idea followed by 50 pizza leagues that people found overpriced. Now with those new free leagues it's gonna be hard to sell again the paying leagues.
Regarding the price in gp: Don't forget the players who didn't beat all maps several times yet and have full sets of farming gear. 50 gp is a bargain for pros, but not for casual players. I doubt those would be paying e.g. 100 gp on a regular basis as that would be four chosen uncommons in the shops. As Jarmo noted earlier, BM can easily check this in the database and (future) league statistics.
Hence my suggestion of having different payment methods for the same league. The beginner get 150 free pizza slices kindly offered by BM. What is the best deal in your opinion for 40 of those pizza slices (if we keep the random numbers I suggested): one treasure hunt with a guaranted (most of the time crappy) epic item or 4 leagues with at least 12 Magnificent chests as rewards if he can't do better then 5th the 4 times? Yes one has to win at least one game to be qualified for any prize but maybe that should be changed to "win at least one game or play at least 4 games during the league".
Opening post: the prize pools will feature Epic and Magnificent chests for every entrant (even if you place last or win no battles).
Four leagues are better, but (a) the new player probably won't know it, (b) might not dare to play MP at all before having spent the pizza for treasure hunts and (c) will still be more or less a newbie after playing four leagues with unusual content. Don't get me wrong, I like the leagues and I'm not against dual prices but I don't think they'd help much if league entry prizes in gold were too high.
I commend this effort to bring the fun of league play to all levels of players from the "top" all the way to the guy who just started and is exploring MP play with a pretty low gold budget. This is the way to bring in players and keep the competitive playing field fresh and not stagnant. Kudos!
I'd like to remind BM's design goal with CH was exactly to create an enjoyable experience without forcing people into spending tons of money if they didn't feel like it. I applaud to that intent, and seriously, CH probably is the best/fairest f2p CCG I've ever seen. Regarding the low entry fee, I'm very positive about it. I'm pretty sure Jon and the others know their stuff, no need to teach 'hem lessons guys! I'd trust their decisions every day, blindfolded. They probably want to give newer and more casual players an easy way to get some sweet loot, all the while promoting Leagues. Also to be noted, I know for certain newer players are really frustrated/intimidated by the idea of playing MP regularly because of the huge gap in items collection between them and long-time Card Hunters. Luckily enough, the low entry fee for the gold leagues will help the newbies become a bit more competitive and hence give them a much needed morale-boost, possibly helping the MP community with becoming larger, healthier.
I'd wish there was a pizza entry option where you could win pizza + more chests + figure. Maybe 50 pizza is too much, but I could totally see 25 pizza or 50 gold as entry options.
Ugh. Some are arguing that the entry fee isn't expensive enough? Really? For players who hate to farm, 50g is not cheap.
No, I don't think people are saying the 50 g entry is too cheap - rather than the prizes are very, very (perhaps overly so) generous for that amount. First place is worth 210 pizza, second 180, 3rd 150, 4th 120 and 5th 90. Even the last place are more than 10x the value of the gold entry. Rewarding everyone is great, having the leagues being cheap is great - but if BM are so generous with the prizes, people might expect them to always be - as was the case with the free league event.
Erring on the side of too generous while not also causing imbalance to the game economy is exactly why I feel this is a winning combination. The barrier to entry on gold entry leagues is low which means more people able to play. The rewards system for gold leagues is generous and favors those with lesser item sets since the rewards are geared for obtaining a broader spectrum of good items via the magnificent chests. And if you had a terrible showing? You don't end up empty handed.
I think they intentionally provide normal chest here because they are cheaper than the artifact epic chest (pizza wise). There doesnt seems to be any easy way to code selection of chests yet. I'm sure they will provide different league with different type of chests in the future. But for now, each league will has the same rewards throughout.
I assume that was on the test server? There could be some manipulating if costs are only 50 gold with multiple accounts joining a pod just to give wins.
