Get More Stuff: Changes are Coming to the Card Hunter Economy

I think Card Hunter is giving too many loot. Legendary = common now

 

Do you realize that nobody has come even close to a complete collection yet? How is the game giving out too much loot??

Stexe just posted about how he finally got every epic in the game. As far as we know he's the only player who has achieved this to date. The game needs faster loot acquisition. It won't survive as a competitive multiplayer game otherwise.

 

10 legendaries at Randy + 7 per week (daily deal) lot of leagues, loot fairy x2, more loot for MP, CD birthday, etc. After the daily deal and the other changes, loot speed incremented around 20x

 

I think the loot balance is good now, especially with the upcoming changes. If it was sparser, new players would feel like they'd never catch up with old school cardhunters, decked out in legendaries. If there was more loot, you'd lose the sense of accomplishment from finally having a great item drop.

2 x loot fairy plus 2 x league a day (maybe 1.5-3 hours of playtime?) = a lot of good drops.

There are certain commons, uncommons and rares which nearly rival the epics and legendaries with careful building: Twisting Shield, Double-edged Sword, Spiked Tlahuiztli etc. Plus, half the leagues run with premade decks anyway.

 

Many of the legendaries aren't worth dropping 2,500g on. They're nice when they drop but largely unnecessary otherwise.

I ground hardcore over the birthday weekend (had a perfect storm with nothing on those two days + terrible weather), and found a couple of items I use regularly, a couple of largely useless epics and legendaries (like Relic Of St. Darqar), and walked out with enough gold to buy three legendaries from Randy's. At about six hours playtime per legendary, I'm not going to be spending that money in a hurry.

 

Most of the changes look good. I would like to see the option for SP farming to be semi-viable though. If someone really does want to spend tons of hours playing SP to get gold -- why not let them? Those people would most likely not be spending money for pizza to turn into gold anyway.

The current drop rate in SP is pretty bad after the recent nerfs (specifically Firestorm). Missions take approximately 50% to 100% longer. Would be nice to see some love to compensate for that.

Besides that all the changes look good (I'd hope so since I suggested most of them 5+ months ago). :-P

Hopefully it will encourage more people to play. =)

 

I'm looking forward to the SP love that Flax has hinted at coming.

I have a friend who just started playing. (Finally!) He really likes the game and was excited to hear about the changes to first time completion as he's only around level 7 on adventures.

Personally, I've been holding off selling extra items and doing the rest of my quests in the hopes that one of the two would see some change. I'm glad to see that quests are getting a boost. I'll still be playing SP for a while. Hopefully that SP love will happen before I'm finished with the quests. (Who am I kidding, I'll never do the 1HP quests for the level 18 adventures. )

 

On the hidden bandit, it seems like a neat idea but kind of underwhelming to me.

Would it be simple enough to put both a boosted treasure rate and the classic loot fairy boost on it at the same time? I see differentiating the fairy and bandit as a good thing, especially with the bandit being harder to get. And treasure would certainly be thematically appropriate.



As to the changes at large, I think boosting plain PVP rewards is good and needed, and I'll throw out that I think leagues having high rewards is a good thing for the game. Also, i've found myself doing much less singleplayer since the balance patch. It's not the time difference so much, but more the energy invested difference between firestorm and not. And I'm not sure that removing the ability to just do some low energy casual farming in singleplayer is really a good thing.

 

I believe that being able to sit at a computer and blindly mash the win button (AKA the old Firestorm) was really ruining the game for me.

After all this time, the adventures are starting to get a little stale, and it would be nice to have some more varied content (even something as simple as having different enemy spawn points). I wish this game had a "Hard Mode" with more/stronger enemies. But anyways...

You can still put a minimal amount of energy into completing some adventures, just not MOST of them anymore.

I'm really looking forward to playing more PVP. And hopefully some co-op!!

 

Generally, this change is good.
SP farming is not attractive to players that has farmed million times anyway. No matter what kind of changes is made, they will remain not interesting.

The reason we farm SP because we can farm will doing other things like watching TV on second screen etc. A low intensity (mindless) playing of this game is good for the game overall. Hope developer still give us reason to farm SP.

The hidden bandit is not exciting enough for me to hunt for it. But it does give one nice surprise from time to time. I think it is ok.

 

I like the idea to improve the MP rewards tough.

 

What if we rename the "Hidden Bandit" to "Hidden Treasure" and have the final chest be all treasures, minimum rarity UURR(R)?

Instead of manually resetting people's quests, what if we were allowed to replay quests (with full rewards) once a week? Just have the exhaustion wear off when Randimar resets. That way players can hunt for specific items, instead of just farming gold. This would also serve as a "Hard Mode" that some players keep asking for.

For SP love, I really, really want to see some figures that can only be obtained in SP. We've already had some discussion of figures you win by using certain items (maybe in a specific module). Later this week I plan on looking at every item in the game and try to assign it to a specific figure.

Another option would be to give out figures for completing all the quests in certain modules. I thought of this when I noticed that we have three demon figures and three demon portals.

 

Great idea!!

 

I like the idea of a personalized 'Loot Fairy' for each player that is separate from the Loot Fairy community activity that everyone enjoys but I think making him functionally the same as the Loot Fairy is wasting an opportunity. We have 40+ adventures right now so finding the Loot Bandit should actually be rewarding, not just another Loot Fairy. I like the idea Kalin suggested about having all of the items in the chest be treasures, although I think this guy should be a special drop in and of himself. Maybe instead of the usual loot drop, he'll simply drop a single treasure worth 500 Gold or something equivalent.

The point is, while I like the second Loot Fairy, I would discourage you from making this guy 'just' another loot fairy because I think you could have some fun with these types of characters and maybe even add more as time goes on. Sprinkle them throughout the adventures as little bonus perks to the SP farmers. Hell, I'd encourage a different 'character' for every ten adventures currently in the game that gives specialized loot drops and/or rewards. That would definitely keep SP viable, but also unpredictable.

 

I agree, why nerf SP further if MP gets a huge boost. I like doing repetetive things while listening to Audiobooks or Podcasts. So i still finish the low level adventures which can be played with a FS build and if i want to listen to another chapter or cast i just grind The White Star.
If the loot tables won´t have a higher chance of Treasures anymore i and i am sure others will switch to grinding other adventures even if it is not as profitable anymore.

 

I would love this, but it seems that it would devalue the purchasable figures quite a lot, similarly to the pizza inflation during the opening week of AotA (not to say I didn't enjoy that free pizza, or wouldn't enjoy the free figures).

 

Yeah im always worried they sabotage their sources of income. I'm still totally ok to sell the item names and graphics to coorporations. As long as the CocaCola-Shield has decent cards....

 

Single player grinding had to be nerfed. In terms of gold per hour, nothing in the entire game was more profitable than grinding kobolds. Because of the daily deal and expanded randimars, many players who would normally play multiplayer were instead just grinding kobolds for hours on end so they could afford those legendary items in the shops.

Even with the new multiplayer rewards, your gold per hour playing multiplayer is still lower than what you'd get farming kobolds.

That's why the kobold rewards had to be nerfed. Single player should under no circumstances give more gold than multiplayer. There is no reason a multiplayer enthusiast should feel compelled to grind single player because it gives the most gold. It was bad for the health of the game and I am very happy that it is being changed.

 

Thank you for telling me exactly how I'm supposed to enjoy Card Hunter. ^_^

I do wonder if it's good for the finances of the game. The benefit from purchasing club only accrues through grinding.

 

I think it's funny that people assume that everyone who farms the kobolds or SP makes the highest possible output that the fastest best players make. I make maybe half, if not less, than the reported numbers even though I'm going as fast as I can.

And to be perfectly blunt, I'm tired of the statements that SP needs to be sacrificed for the good of MP. I've yet to see anyone prove that catering to MP is better for the health of the game.