Random Loot is a Horrible Motivator

i think a disenchant feature would work well for all, its not like people are spending lots of cash opening purple chests and there are a lot of junk legendaries.

 

Yeah, it sounds fair. New players can get a nice deck if they grind a lot. Payers can get a nice deck if they buy a lot epic chests and old players get a even nicer deck because they have tons of useless legendaries.

 

I thought with MODO you can request to get physical copies of the digital cards at anytime making them tangible assets.

 

You have to have the entire set (either regular, or foil) AND it has to be one the sets the last 3 or 4 sets they released.

 

Even still, you can convert digital into physical in theory. That's a large draw for a lot of people.

 

You are trading a potentially tangible asset. I am sure the value ges down quite a bit when the new sets come out... BTW that reminds me anyone interested in an unlimited edition Shivan Dragon? I spent $25 on it 18 years ago, I don't think I made a good investment.

 

the most expensive cards in MODO are from modern and legacy.

anyhow, you are right, trading might not be optimal for card hunter. but something that can make grinding/paying a bit more viable. and you are wrong for both heartstone and magic, I can be pretty competitive and have everything in about the time it takes me to get to my dealer friend since i am kind a rich. now technically for the kind of money i can do that here but chicken and an egg, the game needs to be bigger and more popular for me to invest sizable amount of money.

anyhow, there are options to get a lot of free marketing such as sticking a browser control in a net forms app and putting this on steam and making it f2p. with the great reviews this game gets and considering it is actually really good it can become quite the hit.

 

I don't think you can be pretty competitive in Hearthstone or MtG easily. The thing about Card Hunter is that the Elo and ranking is so easy to view. Are you playing with the top 100 players in the world at HS or MtG? Even the top 1%? You can see those players easily in Card Hunter because it is super transparent and high level players are online frequently, but I'd say it is hard to just stumble upon the top 1% in MODO or HS.

And yes, there are a lot of options for marketing strategies. I've gone over a lot of them with Jon, but he isn't a very marketing-centric person and only has so much time to invest in the game, which is primarily development focused. They've been working on a Steam version for a while, but I assume Jon wants to polish the game up more with balance changes, friend lists, and possibly co-op levels before he finalizes a Steam build.

I can only hope that a Steam release pushes it into huge popularity so that Jon can grow his team again to better polish the game and reach a larger audience. Although I'm also curious to see what DropForge will do with the tablet version of the game.

 

There was a tweet saying "shop balance" few days ago. We don't know what this is about but if I had to guess it would be an improvment of Randimar the bastard.

I think I am more excited by this balance update then I was for AotA.

 

Possibly Randimar, possibly chest shops, preferably both.

 

it does tell you the exact rank of who you are playing in hearthstone if that is what you mean

 

In heartstone with a 200-300$ you can immediately get full set x 3. i am not talking about skill competitivness but rather have the items. here you can't and i frankly care about card hunter infinetely more than heartstone (since i don't care about hs at all.) In any event I hope something is done about it. I think I will stick around and just farm for an hour-two every day but I really really really don't like it as I love playing multiplayer - sp is cool and all but not my cup of tea.

 

From what I've read about Hearthstone it is in many ways the inverse of Card Hunter. Lots of shiny, but mediocre gameplay. Once you get to an advanced level of gameplay it can become a matter of who gets the draw they want first with lots of overlapping in builds, with the main variation between players being the class. I have not played only read and I am not looking to add another compulsive game to my life.
MtG on the otherhand no matter what people think it IS a pay to win game, but you still have to know what you are doing to win at a high level. Just because a card is expensive doesn't mean it is good and now that there is a library of cards that is overwhelming. The ability to build a good deck by itself can be a full-time job. I haven't played in over 5 years (still have my favorite decks and another 1,000 or so cards in my basement) and haven't collected since Mirage, but even then the level of complexity possible was considerable. I still miss playing with my Red-Blue flyer deck (with the above referenced Shivan Dragon) that gets destroyed by anything quick or with land destruction, but once I had 4 lands down (as long as I had 2 islands) it could handle anything... well anything in play at the time.

But as for Steam and DropForge... I think Steam would be key, there is a built in comunity and it seems like it is only growing, although it has become a bit more of a free-for-all. But that is secondary to what will happen with the mobile releases.
DropForge probably stands to cash-in nicely if they can keep the primary gameplay in tact and can get the touch controls to work smoothly on a tablet. I dont think this will be Candy Crush (or the like) popular as I don't see it translating well to a phone and takes a certain level of prior experience with tactical roleplaying to really appreciate how good of a game it is. I think the real question is if they can get the SP to be playable off-line. If they can I think it would warrant being a $5+ app, if they choose to change the revenue model. BUT I think more likely it will need to be on-line play still and then the key is speed. I have played the current iteration on my tablet using Puffin and it is laggy on WiFi (the same WiFi I use for my computer) and all but broken on 4G. Obviously it will be re-engineered for use on tablets and I expect a quicker experience, but that will be the key NO ONE has the attention span to play a game that is lagging (granted Puffin and my tablet might be part of the lag as well).
I hope Blue Manchu is getting some cut of the revenue for the mobile version as the market is just so much larger than PC games right now although the business model for most mobile games is put it out and move on to the next shovelware. So while the numbers are there, the death of the PC and console game has been exaggerated. There is a lot of improvement possible in CH and I feel like the small iterative changes will leave a polished product in the end... but will it be done in time???