PvE droprates are too low

Oh, you got that stuck on that misleading number. In reality it's much higher as that was for brown chests only. The actual quality of the Legendaries are the same for both SP and MP so have no meaning for the balancing.

Oh, and if we're comparing anecdotes, I got a Legendary today from a league in 0 minutes for 50 gold. Then I got 4 Epics and 4 rares in SP in about the same time as you played the league. It seems to me SP is the more lucrative of the two. Based on the anecdotes.

 

You can read for yourself how things were. By reading the same posts we knew it at the time, we had no special other knowledge.

It was never that, as you'd learn from the linked threads. That was never even mentioned at the time, IIRC.

The gold was and is needed for getting the good items from shops. When Epic and Legendary item availability in shops suddenly multiplied gold became much more in demand. It was common to have 10,000+ excess gold. Not so today. When grinding the diamond mines was the fastest way to gold, that was what people did. Almost exclusively -- and that was the problem.

My calculations and anecdotes say it isn't. Your conjecture is unproven.

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In all this, I have no interest whatsoever which one pays out better, SP or MP. I have no interest in who has what and if someone has more or less than I have. I would personally be fine if tomorrow the "giveallitems" dev code was activated on the live server for everyone.

What I have great interest in is what actually, provably is happening with the loot drops and other systems of Card Hunter. I love the game and I'd like to see it continue for a long time. For that any future development decisions need to be based on actual statistical data, not anecdotes and the personal feelings of a small number of players. Otherwise they will not move the game into a healthy, sustainable direction.

 

On what campaign maps can one get non-brown chests every day? Are you suggesting the non-brown chests you can get on the campaign map are the exact same chests as the gold chest you receive for your first PvP victory daily? Please elaborate.

 

I'm not stuck I know its gray chests only. There is no need to play with numbers.. and I'm not kid nor new player -> if you want Legendary drops then there is no point to play SP.. they are that rare, if you want to play for 15-20g, Rares or occasional Epic then OK .. but Legendaries don't drop.

About that anecdote -> according to calculations you cited, 1 Epic drops 10x more than 1 Legendary so, translated to Epics I got 13Units/30minutes (and it was less than 30 but ok) .. and you got 4Units/30min .. that favours PVP then.

Looks like you all like to play with numbers/words .. I dont really understand why, arent we on the same side .. you all agreed that most of players are PVE .. PVP got what they asked, now they dont have to "play PVE to get money" .. so leave them out of this..

The problem is still -> after some time - SP gets repetitive and unrewarding .. if that's ok, then ok .. but BM lost 1 montly Club Member (me) because even with Club you dont get items .. I'm not angry nor anything .. for someone this could be valuable insight, as I have money and I'm (still) willing to pay for Club and play .. etc .. I've spent far too much energy into this discussion so I'm out.

 

I think you're misunderstanding him. He said Blue Manchu doesn't like SP farming and I know from many, many previous discussions that what it means in more detail is that they'd prefer it if people didn't feel the need to keep repetition farming but had instead less boring ways of enjoying the content. They've been working and keep working towards creating those options and have also discouraged mindless one-map grinding by making it not the most lucrative option any more. This is quite different from them trying to prevent farming altogether or saying those doing it are bad and wrong. They don't favour MP over SP, they favour both SP and MP being as enjoyable as possible for all who enjoy each or even both. (granted, the statement is very easy to misinterpret)

Wrong. The issue is with people boring themselves. They want to provide better SP and MP options.

Wrong. The players should be having fun and not being bored. They should be playing SP and/or MP and enjoying themselves.

Wrong. It's what certain players were saying themselves. How thin can their unsolicited statements of their own feelings even be?

Utter claptrap, paranoia and defamation. Conspiracy nut stuff. Really?

Wrong. They don't think it's a good way to spend their time compared to more enjoyable SP or MP activities.

Wrong. It doesn't. Such claims remain unproven, hearsay and conjecture.

 

No, I got 1 Legendary + 4 Epics so 14 units. I consider entering leagues and not playing a part of SP. After all, you're not playing MP. It's a chest shop with limited opening hours.

I'm not trying to play with numbers and words. I'm trying to present as realistic a picture of the loot drops as I possibly can. It's a complex subject with some unknowns. It takes a lot of numbers and words, very carefully used and defined to do that. Sorry if it seems like an effort to mislead or obfuscate. It's the nature of the beast, unfortunately.

I get your feelings about the subject and respect them. I agree (as I think do almost or even all here) that the SP endgame needs sprucing up. It does get boring no matter what you do after 100 repetitions of the same adventures.

 

Well, if that's your logic, you could then buy 10 Epic chests for pizza and say its "SP" because you "dont play MP".

What I want to say is -> even Loot Fairy is not SP.. everyone do Loot Fairy and it takes 10/15.. SP is what you can do when you login and that is not PVP, Loot Fairy or entering leagues.. If a SP player wants to play, wants to raise his collection.. what can he do?
Play 10 dungeons for 200g.. or hunt 1 Bandit over 80 dungeons (that usually gives UURR)

Ok I can always buy Pizza .. but if possible I'd also like to play ..

I know you do.. I read all your posts (in this topic ) and you seem like OK person ..

 

I know a lot of game developers. None of them have ever designed levels with the intent of players mindlessly speed-grinding them. That's not what game content is for; that is an outcome of emergent gameplay inherent to any of these sorts of systems.

When you design, you recognize there will be emergent gameplay. You want to avoid gameplay that is destructive to other gamers' enjoyment, but you don't want ever want to alter your design just to counteract the potential mis-uses or unintended uses of your game.

Here's an example for you. Jagex is the British company that created RuneScape, at one time the largest MMORPG in the world. Towards the end of 2009, with millions of active players, they had a problem of gold farmers in remote countries (so no legal recourse) using false payment information to create high-status accounts, accumulate in-game wealth, and then sell that wealth for real-world currency, all before the system could discover that the payment info was false. This had a penurious effect on the economics of the game, where people would farm resources, and upset game balance as a result.

There were a lot of ways to address this problem: Change how payment was accepted, change the delay on new accounts being able to trade, etc etc. Instead, and for reasons I can discuss if you're interested, Jagex made game design history by their (outrageously bad) choice: they actually chose to remove trading between accounts altogether from the game. So instead of addressing the problem, they removed the possibility of the problem. Not only did they destroy their product, but they made a blunder somewhat universally considered the stupidest design move of the last 10 years in a large-scale game. They've admitted to it since.

Another example: If you want people to stop speeding on the highway, you don't change the design of every car in America so it can only physically go a max of 55 miles per hour. Just as you don't remove trade so that people won't be able to sell items to each other within your game.

This is in a nutshell why you shouldn't render your PvE content rewardless simply because there is a such thing as grinding for gold. If you want to fix the grinding for gold problem, address the problem -- not the ability for the problem to happen.

Ways to stop grinding without stopping normal PvE:

Example: Make it only possible to play a limited amount of PvE daily.
Example: Make chests you get in PvE get worse and worse within a day.
Example: Give fixed rewards for every few wins in PvE up to a certain point each day.

There are different ways to go about incentivizing players into one or more game modes.

In particular when you make a statement like this:

Me -> Obviously you don't think speed farming is as good a way for players to spend their time compared to PvP.
You -> Wrong. They don't think it's a good way to spend their time compared to more enjoyable SP or MP activities.

You are not seeing the forest for the trees. Your correction is literally just to say that other activities are "more enjoyable" and that that's the justification for removing one of them. Sorry, but that's dead wrong. The only explanation for calling something a better way for players to use game content than another is to have a personal belief that one gameplay choice is better than another. That is incorrect. Players decide what is more enjoyable by what they choose to do. Some players enjoy PvE more than PvP. This game has wonderful PvE -- the quests are interesting, the challenges are fun. It is a perfectly valid playstyle to want to play 2 or 3 quests a day and never play PvP. Those people currently are unable to advance their collections in a meaningful way. There is absolutely no reason whatsoever you can't fix it so that those people can advance their collections, without creating a problem where gold farmers somehow ruin the entire game for everyone.

In the end, most developers are extremely biased. Me too. I think gold farming is horrible. I would do everything I could to discourage it. But I wouldn't alter my design to disable it, at the loss of my PvE content's playability.

 

Gold farming is not bad. In-game trading is bad.

 

Ah, I see what the issue is now. Well spotted! Sorry about being misleading earlier. I had to complete an SP adventure just now to see what the adventure completion chest is like. Darn, it's coloured brown. I thought it was gold. I've played the game so much I don't see the graphics any more at all.

To correct any and all of my earlier statements about brown chests: By a "brown chest", I meant a common chest with only two item slots (and the Club pillow), and only that chest. The adventure completion chest has four or five item slots (and the Club pillow). The 4-slot chest pays out better items than the common 2-slot chest. The stats mentioned above only apply to the 2-slot chests. That's why it's not really 1:1000 Legendaries as 1/3 - 1/4 of adventure chests are 4-slot chests which have a better payout (and there are other complications which make the actual Legendary frequency higher).

I don't remember the exact current 4-slot chest payout, I'd need to look it up. In any case it's not as good as the first MP victory chest. That's on purpose as it's a lot easier to get wins in SP than it is in MP so the MP wins need to pay out more to give about equivalent time/item ratios for both SP and MP. The MP chests were adjusted upwards to bring them to the same ballpark. Earlier SP was in the lead as analyzed in the linked threads.

 

Valimont, you are currently so fixated on your ideas of what recently happened in Card Hunter with the SP/MP reward ratio adjustment and the reasons for it you are not receiving the message of what actually happened. Your whole premise is flawed and thus your otherwise well-intentioned and industrious answers careen astray. Unfortunately, I don't have time to address it right now but (to many onlooker's regret, I'm sure) I feel compelled to inform you that I inevitably will when I next get the chance. Stay tuned, Batmanor-friends.

 

@Flaxative - I must say I'm a bit disappointed .. you always seem to build a guard towards user insight. It was more times that you said "ok if you dont like the game, then you dont need to play it".
If you were a regular user ok, but as a BM personel you need to remember the old "Customer is always right".

And as you apparently cant read between lines, here is simplified what BM needs find answer to in order to keep its customers:
As I said "customer" I wont speak of regular content, so

- what can a PVE player do after 4 months (and 90+% items collected .. so all the C/U/R/E and hunting for few multiple Epics and rest of Legendary)?

- where can a PVE player SPEND MONEY on? - ok, chests did get cheaper.. its great when you start, but when you're over 90% its unreliable and expensive (I've bought a lot I know what I'm talking about)
We cannot only buy chests, buy gold and wait for Randy.. we want to play..
More realistic approach is that a customer pays for Club Membership monthly -> but why should a Customer do it? Even with Club PVE drop is terrible .. what do I need to do? Pay and farm for 2 years?

Ok, there are some who will still farm .. but dont you want more customers, even those who dont have that much time to play 4h a day in order to get some gold ..


It's OK, you dont need to do anything .. You can say "if you dont like the game, then you can play PVE or leave" (like I dont know that myself)

I just say that because I actually like the game and I'd like a option to play ..

 

This is from Lord Feleran's thread on Final Chests in Adventures:

And

I thought there was a final summation, but I can't find one.

 

This will make you sad because after a certain point, if you want to keep playing Card Hunter, you will literally be forced to play PvP.

This will make you sad because PvP players are rewarded for continuing to play while PvE players are punished for continuing to play (within a day).

This will make you sad because when you hit that 'certain point' ... well, won't things be exactly as they are now?

We're always open to suggestions. These suggestions all contradict your supposed goals. Cheers.

 

Honest question, but isn't this:

Example: Make chests you get in PvE get worse and worse within a day
This will make you sad because PvP players are rewarded for continuing to play while PvE players are punished for continuing to play (within a day).

Already what happens?

 

You have expressed your suggestions very clearly and pleasantly and I'm listening to them.

I'm also listening to everyone else. But the customer isn't always right, as in, literally, no human being is actually ever always correct.

When the customer's premise is false, you have two options: explain why they're wrong, or don't engage. If you think it'd be wiser for me to not tell people that they're wrong when they say things like "PvP only needed better rewards because of league entry fees," I can stop disseminating information about the game to confused customers. But I was under the impression from my many months in this community that the vast majority of our users like learning our rationale, and how our systems work.

So why are you suggesting it as a change/solution?

 

I'm just trying to understand how the system works now. I had the impression that the first set of chests daily from a given campaign has better drop rates than any other chests you get for repeating that quest within the same day. Is that true?

 

The first Final chest has a guaranteed 2x common and 2x uncommon. In subsequent runs, all chests are 2x common. (And all items have a chance to upgrade.)

 

True. (You can also endlessly replay the first map of a mission to always get the full reward for the map. On some missions, this is a very effective quick gold grind.)

 

Also worth noting that uncommons have a much higher chance (6x) of upgrading to legendary than commons do.