PvE droprates are too low

It's also higly misleading. That's only if you never complete any adventures and never get Looty, participate in Leagues etc. That figure is for brown chests only. In reality the high-rarity item drop rates are significantly better. We don't have exact data on that as no one's done the work of figuring out the drop rates of Gold chests but here's the data we have: http://wiki.cardhuntria.com/wiki/File:Upgrade_Rates.png (from here).

That still begs the question is the rate high enough. That's a tough question. How rare should the rare stuff be? There are currently about 1,763 items in the game, 278 of which are Legendary. The most active collectors are currently at 99% of items (at least one copy) after playing almost daily for 1 year and 4 months. Is that fast? Slow? I don't know. How soon does one get all items in other loot chase games with non-random items?

If it was possible to get everything in two months, it would probably decrease the longevity of the game for many players. Would it attract and retain so many players more with the increased drop rate that the loss was overtaken and turned into a total gain? I have no idea.

A 10x drop rate would lead to 100% of items for dedicated players in about two months. Of course it would be much less for more casual players. It's difficult to say what the total effect would be on the player population. My gut feeling is that there would be far less long-time players. It seems getting everything fast would lead to a strong drop in motivation for SP/collection oriented players. By the way, they are the vast majority of players.

Another takeout from the linked interview: "most people who play the game don’t finish it". It seems an increased or decreased drop rate would have no effect whatsoever on most players.

 

With a basic FS farming build I've averaged about 2 mins per map. The lower level ones are much faster, higher level much slower. 500 maps would give 1,000 minutes or about 16.7 hours per legendary plus gold (I'd estimate 7,500 gold, based on my own gold/hour). So 4 legendaries in 16.7 hours or about 1 per 4 hours if you include gold chests. This is inline with my own experience much better than I can do in MP.

SP also has the following advantages for me:

• I can pause or walk away at any time. This is huge for those of us who need to attend to things in real life.
• There's almost no waiting.
• Guaranteed I'll get something for my time, even if it's a few hundred gold from selling dupes. I've played MP for an hour and lost every match
• The gold is much, much more valuable than a dropped Legendary as I can pick one I want instead of a random drop.
• I can try to farm specific items by re-playing adventures of the right level.
• I can try different strategies and get immediate feedback on their effectiveness as the opponent's deck doesn't change. MP the effectiveness is very dependent on the opponent's deck.

That said, there's no correct way to play games. MP needs to be higher reward per time than SP to keep a pool of active MP players. Barring the first few chests and leagues I get much better loot per time in SP and the rewards match my expectations. Clearly, the SP rewards do not match your expectations. What do you think a reasonable time investment is per Legendary (4 hours, 2 hours, 12 hours)?

 

He suggested upping the droprate to 1 legenday per 100 preliminary-battle chests. I think?

That would mean: 1 legendary x 100 maps = 1 legendary per 200 mins.

Ofc such a drastic increase in the droprate would also mean your average gold/hour would be buffed as well.

Not gonna do the math, but assuming you would also get more rares/epics on top of the legendaries, that might mean a much higher gold/hour gain.

 

An average player will take much more than 2 minutes per map. Most of you are basing your view on your own personal experience as 1 year + players. The issue is clearly not for you. It is for new players, who will come and quickly go. The way I see it the conversion rate must be way low for this great game because campaigns are not replayable for the average, normal, not-playing-50-maps-a-day-in-2-minutes-each player.

Yes, the vast majority of card players are SP oriented, which is why this is so important. Further, there is no logic in saying an increased or decreased drop rate would have no effect on players who leave -- the whole point I'm making is it's the drop rate that is encouraging SP-oriented players to leave in the first place.

The presumption that getting things quickly makes the game boring for people is flat wrong out of context. I started this thread because as compared to the many other games in this genre, this one strikes me as having a significantly bad campaign drop rate that discourages single-player play. The response that more drops will discourage single players when the whole argument is that single players are discouraged by the fewer drops doesn't make any sense.

 

BTW this should be moved to the Feedback & Suggestions sub-forum

 

I've been a perma-casual SP player for forever, popping in now and then. I've never farmed and I rarely put in more than an hour at a time. This means a much higher % of my loot is higher-quality (loot fairy, treasure hunts, quests). Also, since my item collection is fairly small, I'm happy to discover new rares (plenty of which are better than many legends). Even new uncommons and commons often find a place if I've got a weird low-level party, or a quest-focused build (this is why I love the all-drawback quests). I'm currently playing through the Treasure Hunts with a dwarf priest, elf priest, and human priest, all 3 levels below the treasure hunt level. Why? Because it's sweet and I get to try out weird items I never would otherwise!

This wouldn't work at all in MP, unless you're willing to take an absurd amount of losses. The items you get in MP are going to be relevant for your MP builds a much lower percentage of the time. This is even true for new players due to the starting MP gear.

I don't know what all these hypothetical new players think or how many items they have when they quit, but personally I get a ton of enjoyment out of loot drops in a SP context.

EDIT: I tracked down neoncat's tool for context. Ignoring treasure, which I sell, I have 37% total items: 75% of commons, 52% of uncommons, 29% of rares, 10% of epics (31 items), 2% of legendaries (7 items, probably some of these are guaranteed story drops too). If your goal is to get all the loot in the game, this is disheartening. If your goal is to keep having fun when you discover loot, awesome, there are dozens of uncommons out there that are probably best-in-slot for some of my builds.

 

In my experience, there is no way you get 1 Legendary per 4h of play ..
Anyway, you need to load maps, change decks, tune some decks (add armor removal etc..)

You cannot really farm specific item .. I have tried it for 6 months, have you? .. hunted for Raging Battler and some other lvl6 .. you can only play ~6-7 dungeons .. that's like 18maps .. 500/18 = 27- in drop rate as is, it would take you a month to drop a Legendary at all.
That isn't even funny now as I remember it..

SP also has a major disadvantage - its repetitive, PVP is much more dynamic - I never played PVP for gold/items .. but for other reasons.

Before FS nerf ok, you could go over that repetitivenes as it was much faster, but now you actually have to play..

And you cannot really say -> SP is more rewarding - go play map 1 of some Dungeon for 500 times today and you'll get bunch of gold, that doesnt count, that's not fun, that's not even .. I probably should stop here

How much do You play SP, PDXTai? Do YOU find it rewarding enough? To play 10 dungeons and get 200g ..

Jarmo said it took 1 year 4 months of daily farming for best farmers to get to 99% (I took me 9 months to get to 95%, but you don't know how much pizza we all bought). And those best farmers had full-range FS and Kobolds most of the time.
(and you should not take best and worst into consideration ... )
But nobody said that time should be reduced to 2 months .. surely there can be a compromise..

Ok I'm out .. looks like only 2 players think its unrewarding playing 5 hours without proper reward.

 

An interesting take. My personal experience was that I sometimes simply didn't have the items you needed in order to beat a given challenge. You might not find armor removal items, for instance, and get completely jacked up by a heavily-armored adventure. You can sometimes find appropriate answers in the shops, but other times the shops don't cooperate for many days on end. I did end up beating SP pretty quickly, but I have a natural aptitude for this sort of positional/tactical game. I could definitely see the weak SP rewards being a major concern for farmers and first-timers alike.

Actually that's not a bad idea. Why DO leagues cost gp to play? Are we really worried, with the DD and RR shops offering expensive goods and vast amounts of them, that the game doesn't have enough gold sinks? If the 50 gp caused the "MP doesn't reward enough gp to play league" problem that I think Flax mentioned earlier, wouldn't it have been simpler to just remove the gp cost?

What the hell bandit do you farm, and how do I get to know him? I don't think I've dropped better than UURR for weeks on end now, and there's no way in hell I believe the average bandit drop is 400 gp.

Ouch. Seriously, those numbers. Now I feel even less like SP is worth farming. 0.1% legendary is god damn awful.

As a relatively new player to the game, I didn't experience the time when MP was apparently unrewarding compared to SP. What I have experienced, however, is complete frustration with seemingly-pathetic SP drops. I feel like dozens of hours spent playing SP each week yield fairly tiny amounts of gold and even smaller numbers of useful items... and my collection isn't even that big yet. I know a few SP super-farmers feel it is worth it... but I would argue that is because degenerate replaying, over and over, of single maps is allowed. Farmers will go and literally play the same map every 30 seconds, indefinitely, because it is easy to win with a given team. If that sort of behavior is why we can't have better SP drops, then why do we not fix the problem with a two-fold solution? I am advocating the removal of this degenerate farming behavior. Each module, and each map in each module, should be able to be completed once each day. If you go back to an adventure where you beat a map, you start on the next map (the first one you haven't beaten in that adventure). This would limit the overall number of drops you could possibly receive from farming SP each day. The trade-off would be, the drop rate would be higher so you no longer would have to 30-second farm for 15 hours a day to receive a decent number of okay items. I feel we should be trying to encourage play of different modules anyway, so perhaps a focus on completing missions instead of farming what's easy is the direction to push things. You can give better rewards, making both old players and first-timers have a more rewarding experience, without upsetting the overall item balance like you must currently consider due to the extreme degree farming can go to. That's not to say farming those items would be easy - even with great gear, completing all adventures once isn't trivial by any means, so you still have a lot of upward room for heavy farming each day, it would just be done in a different way that doesn't devolve the farmer into a mindless one-level robot.

That's my take, and I honestly think it would put the SP experience in a far better place for new and old players alike.

 

My point in that was that if they're not going to even finish the campaign anyway, what difference does it make if they get a few more Legendaries during their incomplete run? I for one don't know if they stop because they feel the items are not good enough. That can be argued, sure. It's surely a part of it but personally I don't feel it's the major one. Most people don't finish > 10 hour campaigns in any game as far as I know.

Yeah, I asked earlier how Card Hunter compares to other loot chase games in time-to-all-items. If it's much worse then maybe a change is in order to be competitive. I wonder if data on that is available somewhere on a couple of popular titles? I don't think more drops would discourage SP players but I do think it would probably lead to less long-time players. Whether less long-timers would have any meaning to the success of the game I don't know.

 

Foz, I don't think any players repetition farm any more after the diamond mines dried up. It's already more profitable to do adventures. Your wish has already been granted.

I also don't think Blue Manchu has ever decided anything on the basis of a few extreme outliers like the most proficient farmers. That's not a problem that needs fixing. The game is not tuned to keep super farmers in check.

The related numbers have only been floated around to give an idea of the available income range, not to suggest everyone should or could do like a few enthusiasts do.

All that said, if many players are unhappy with the current drop rates, Blue Manchu would do well to up it. I'm always happy to get more and better items myself.

 

The Legendary / 4 hours includes the expected gold you'd harvest as well. I came up with 1 Legendary / 16 hours but with another 3 you could buy with the gold. Since I'm an avid farmer I have pre-loaded builds for all the SP adventures and load time isn't significant for me. I also use the "animspeed 9999" console command and click madly after each firestorm to speed up the animations.

I was missing an Orc painting as my last level 1 item so I did the level 1-4 adventures almost daily for about 9 months. Got one last December, then another a day later. The RNG is a cruel mistress. I could see how this would seem like an unreasonable amount of time to get a single Legendary. I saw it as a ridiculous goal and was very surprised I got one. This is less time than it took me to acquire some top items in the MMORPGs I've played.

I play SP about 2 hours per day and find it highly rewarding. I should play less, but the attraction of "one more adventure" is hard to overcome. I never re-play a single map, I just pick out a few adventures and run through those to completion. Sometimes I do a quest if I'm in the mood.

If you are saying it's not rewarding enough for you I completely understand. SP can be very repetitive and some people find it very boring. I enjoy the reward/time optimization problem but I'm a freak. I'd find it rewarding even if the drop rates were cut in half, maybe more so, as the items are even harder to get. Early after release there was a lot more variety in MP builds as collections were smaller so most people couldn't build optimized decks. Now, there MP builds are much more similar as most players have the important cards. Hopefully we can agree that individual tastes vary.

Given that, what's the right way to balance the game for the population? I don't think that every game should have similar time to completion. Part of the satisfaction in arriving at a goal is the difficulty in getting there. If you increase SP rewards too much the MP game dies, however, SP will always have players as there's a lower time commitment and guaranteed rewards. It seems you'd want to lean towards making SP less rewarding.

 

There are always some players who want to try the game .. and they stop playing .. there could be tons of reasons for that .. as you said that can be argues but I think better drops would not make thins worse.
There is one thing that I remember -> my first thought wat that this is real pay-to-win game .. as you get few golds from dungeon and items in Randi cost 25.000g .. I was like - "who can ever give that much gold for an Item??!"
Ok, later with renown up that settles and you realize that it was not like my first impression.
Actually I had that luck to get 2 Legendary Treasure drops (maybe even 3) in first month.. Then I realized that you can actually buy some of those items..

I think, having bad drop rates in order to get long-time-players is wrong strategy .. they should be long-time-players because they have fun .. in PVP there is fun .. at least in play dynamic .. even if drops were lower
In SP, after you finish Campaign, you have Quests .. that are ok, some are quite hard, ALL are quite-non-rewarding.. and after that, a dedicated SP player can only collect items.. that IS fun for most of players..
But it is not fun if you play for hours and only get commons/uncommons/rares (even with Club ON)..
That's the reason I stopped paying Club and farming SP ..
Its ok in first few months .. but eventually you get all the C/U/R and realize that there are far more interesting items ..

 

I agree with all the other things you said .. only

Why do some of you say that? I'm here for quite long time, did I miss something?

Is it possible that players decide on PVP/PVE based on that minor reward differences? Like - 8h of PVP gives lower rewards than 8h of playing map1 of Dungeon of the Swamp King, so I'll go and only hunt slimes?
I'm sorry but that really has no sense .. maybe for few players but I could bet that can not be a general rule?

I used to play both, SP and MP .. I played SP for grinding (as what else) and MP for challenge, for testing my skills, for getting up the ladder.
SP only has grinding, if reward/time is better in MP then in your logic SP has nothing..

I stopped playing MP as it is too stressful for me.. I come here to relax after work .. and MP needs concentration .. etc ..
And when I played MP I was driven out of it for some other reasons - for example, after 4-5 months of play (and pay) I did not have Bleneth's Skull, Firebrandt .. so I played with 3 warriors pre-nerf .. as my priest couldnt reliably buff..
I wanted to play with Hearripper but I couldnt find any .. nowhere .. luckily I had 1 Vibrant Pain prenerf ..
So getting items in order to be competitive was really slow, even with Membership and pizza.. as I am quite a perfectionist that really annoyed me .. (and that's after few months of daily playing/farming etc..)

How I see it - when a new player gets to know the game in SP .. and gets some gear, he will try his luck in MP .. you cannot however force him to play MP by making it give 5x better rewards and SP gives nothing.. he will either like it or not..
and the more players we have, more will find MP interesting..

 

As a general point, this may be the crux of the issue. If PvP rewards were more in line with PvE rewards, the system would return (more) to balance and it would be a game with a tough drop rate throughout. As it is, the PvP rewards outstrip the PvE rewards in an unbelievable way. I'm not sure I've ever not gotten a rare in a PvP chest, I've gotten plenty of epics and legendaries daily in those chests, and I've played days of entire-map-clearing singleplayer without so much as sniffing an epic. It does make sense to incentivize PvP ... but to repeat an earlier sentiment I think the drop rate difference right now is too extreme. Reward content that is unique to PvP seems a better way to go -- whether that's items or something purely aesthetic like character models.

 

I would say instead of increasing the chance of legendaries, epics, and rares, instead we slightly raise the value of common and uncommon items. After all, rare and above items are supposed to be RARE.

I think that's a terrible idea.

All in all, I hope that BlueManchu can develop an "infinite arena" option and more sp maps!

 

Ofc, proper end-game content for SP would be far more preferable to an across-the-board increase to droprates.

Upping the rewards can promote replaying SP content, assuming it's really needed (which is not a given). But that doesn't change the fact replaying the same old content tens/hundreds of times still is a very boring activity.

 

How about a semi-random map mode with semi-random monsters where you push your luck? The farther you get the bigger your reward but if you lose before voluntarily quitting and cashing in your wins you lose everything. I bet the community could be roped in to create a hundred maps for this.

 

To be completely honest, I was thinking exactly about something along those lines just a few hours ago. This would also tie into existing D&D/RPG lore quite nicely, as every setting has its fair share of gigantic (or literally infinite) dungeons, always waiting to kill welcome more adventurers. Thinking about it, Undermountain comes to mind, but there are plenty other examples.

Ideally, having more hand-crafted content (adventures, challenges, etc) would be much better than a randomly generated set of battles. But obviously Blue Manchu can only count on limited resources. Hopefully the new expansion is announced soon *hint*hint*

 

I'd be concerned about players with large collections being able to get a lot farther than those with small ones. How about a more roguelike dungeon where you start with basic equipment, but get to keep everything you find (proposed before)? Of course, you could only use what you find with those chars until you die. I'd vote for this except that I think I might just lose my life to a roguelike CH.

You can simulate something similar with a nudie run, though managing the inventory is tricky.

Some sort of randomly generated SP content would be cool. There's one map (lvl 9, forget which one) with random starting positions, maybe it wouldn't be that hard to have an adventure with random opponents and maps as well.

 

Rare is a relative term in collectible games. In Magic: The Gathering, for instance, a pack contains something like 10 commons, 3 uncommons, and 1 rare, making a rare drop about 1 in 14. There are additionally mythic rares in MTG, which come about 1 in 8 packs, replacing the regular rare. That makes those 1:112. If the drop structure in CH is as observed earlier in this thread, then Legendary items go far past the highest rarities of things in other games, which is probably why I feel so punished in trying to get them. 0.1% is 1:1000, for comparison, and my experience bears out that really good items in CH are far more difficult to acquire than chase rares in most collectible games, even accounting for DD and RR availability.

Truth. Real end-game content would be preferable... but that is probably far away at this point, even if earnest development begins right now. I think raising drop rates is a more realistic goal to patch the problem right now, and represents a fix that could be applied in a far shorter amount of time. That said, I do think @Jarmo 's "push your luck" mode sounds promising - open ended content without the static elements present in the normal maps would probably do enough to make a much more engaging SP mode to follow up (or supplement) the campaign.