PvE droprates are too low

I'm guessing quests.

 

I feel that Blue Manchu has taken steps to reduce this, personally. The guranteed items such as the Golem Cleaver, Trogsbane, and the quite frankly amazingHand Of Melvelous should help boost spirits as they oftentimes won't know that everyone has one, and the free Trog Melter can also reward a player though there may need to be some kind of warning at the start of the level that it's not going to be a walk in the park.

 

Didn't BM just increase the drops for SP and people wanted to have a reset to gain the better rewards or were those just for the quests (which last I tried the rewards were NOT WORTH the effort)?

 

I think the SP rewards should be better for first run only.The final chest in each module should be as good as a Loot Fairy drop... but only for the first completion. This should help new players but not encourage endless farming which I don't think adds much to the game.

Of course I think N00Bs have it too easy right now. However, I am loving the higher level of competition in MP, so I won't complain. I haven't played Cardotron more than once in a week in like 2 months and while I miss Ol' Cardy (probably have like a 75% win rate vs my 50% win rate overall) I prefer real human competition.

 

The central issue - and why I started this thread - is incredibly simple.

Your first PvP victory in a day: Gold Chest (minimum 2 rares)
Any replay of a normal PvE campaign (all maps) in a day, even the first one: Not even a single guaranteed rare

This is not at all reasonable for a PvE player.

 

You forgot about the Loot Fairy...

I didn't realize that there were PvE only players... Is there a special sign-up or something? If you choose to only play one part of a 2 part game and then complain that the 1 part you play is inferior to the one you don't doesn't make sense to me.
Do you really like playing mindless mobs again and again and again and again? I don't think the 2nd play through should be as rewarding as the first.

The incredibly simple solution is to either play PvP or accept the lower drop rates.

 

I didn't forget about the Loot Fairy. I am not talking about the Loot Fairy. The Loot Fairy is a once-per-day PvE level you can't choose.

• Nobody is asking for the second play through to be as rewarding as the first. The only thing that's being asked for is PvE to have good drops, like PvP already does. It is a matter of fairness to the type of player.
• Nobody is talking about playing mindless mobs again and again and again. Casual PvE playing is not the same thing as gold farming.

PvP rewards can be re-gotten every single day so why is it so complicated for you to accept the concept that PvE rewards should also be obtainable every day?

 

Well you ARE talking about PVE and the Loot Fairy IS part of PVE.
I said you can do A or B if you don't like A then you can go B.

But all of that aside can you explain what you mean by "There is a lot of PvE enjoyable content that is not replayable for a meaningful reward." If it is enjoyable why do you need a "meaningful" reward? Either you want to do the same adventures over again or you don't. It's like saying I really want to be a social worker, but the pay is too low so they should pay me more because I want to be a social worker.

 

What on earth are you talking about? Do you think it's an argument to say that if it's enjoyable there should be no reward?

PvP has rewards that are better than the PvE rewards. People who prefer to play PvE should be able to do so with similar rewards. That is a very basic, obvious concept, and it is the one I am putting forth. "Just play PvP" is not an answer. It is an evasion of the whole point.

Edit to add: I apologize if my tone was a bit aggressive in writing the above; it's hard to make the point any clearer than I have.

 

You're kind of repeating yourself a lot. I think the people who are going to get your point have done so. No need to argue with the folks who don't. We're listening to all the perspectives, and you don't need to convince other players. (Note that a particular forum user, who shall remain unnamed, became a complete joke in this community because he tried to win every argument possible, becoming less and less coherent every time he restated his arguments and never convincing anyone of anything. Just a cautionary tale.)

 

.... Sure, you can opt out of my interest in your community if you want. I'll stop posting. Cheers.

 

Personally I find your suggestions interesting. You just don't have to convince everyone, dude.

 

Most of the recent changes (better items in MP chests, new shops, MP games raising renown) were done because of all the MP-only players complaining about having to play the campaign first.

I'm another SP-only player. And while I'd like SP rewards to be closer to MP rewards, I recognize that it doesn't directly affect me because I am choosing to ignore what MP players are doing. I am, by definition, not competing against MP players.

 

A lot of people (including me) are at least partially agreeing with you.

But I don't think you are fully acknowledging that currently MP can be much more difficult and stressful to play. I recently lost a nearly 40 minute match. In SP I can easily farm levels at very high speed with virtually no chance of losing. That kind of thing would definitely push me to farming SP, even though I've already played every adventure so often, if rewards were similar. So it really isn't as easy as just a blanket reward improvement making repeatable SP rewards similar to MP rewards (rewards for first time players are irrelevant to the comparison and can be improved with no effect).

That's why some of us are bringing up the idea of new endgame content, challenges, etc, which would improve SP rewards but also increase the difficulty and guard against the repetition of farming the same level over and over. It's just that making new thing for SP is an undertaking.

 

You're saying you would farm PvE if the rewards were better. I'm saying the rewards need to better for non-farming PvE. That is to say, the first time or two that you play PvE daily, or similar (there are many solutions). But something not farmable by definition. Farming is not broken in the first place -- its drops don't need to be buffed. When you farm (replay a PvE level over and over) the drops should stay exactly the same as they are now.

So, I fully understand what you are saying, but it is not relevant to my point.

We all know PvP is harder than PvE. And we all know that you can speed farm PvE.

Here is my point:

The PvE content in this game is great. Actually I think it's the best part of the game and I really enjoy it. I think a perfectly reasonable, enjoyable way to spend time in this game is by replaying one or two campaigns daily. Consider it the stress-free non-hardcore way of playing. It's really not that hard to imagine: I don't want the stress or time commitment of PvP and I am not interested in the mindless fast-clicking of gold farming. I am just enjoying the game. I would think this is how most casual gamers would like to play actually. Of course I welcome new PvE content but what exists now is already great.

That said, winning 1 PvP battle is really not that hard and extremely rarely takes more than 30-40 minutes (it usually takes much less time). You get a guaranteed 2-rare drop chest for that. Then you get another one for winning two more times (etc.)

For PvE, you get no guarantee of a rare drop no matter how many campaigns you replay. Try to understand that there is a difference between grinding and casual PvE. I don't care if on average the drop rate would even out over time because PvE is faster or whatever. The point is the non-guarantee of a rare. It results in a simple dilemma for a PvE player. Do I play a couple levels and hope to get lucky with drops, or do I play the more stressful PvP that I enjoy less and guarantee myself some account improvement through 2 rares?

You don't need to scale up rewards across all PvE to reward (for example) the first re-played PvE campaign daily. It's just the first one (or three or five, or a system like PvP's chest rewards). So what if some PvP players would then be interested in playing one more PvE level per day to get that reward. Isn't that also a good thing?

This problem came about because PvP got boosted drops in order to encourage PvP play. That's fine ... but now it is a much better option for improving your account than PvE. I have no problem with encouraging people to play PvP but I have a problem with making PvP the only reasonable option for advancing your account by comparison to casual PvE (not by comparison to gold farming). This situation gives the game a you-can't-play-PvE, you-can-only-grind-it feel. I'm just reporting that as a fact. Take it as a data point -- some feedback from a new player with a lot of experience in card games telling you how this game feels. Because that is how this feels. Maybe you think it's not a big deal ... personally I don't think it's great (and I think most aspects of Card Hunter are great).

I am not asking for a blanket improvement of all PvE drops -- just an option to play PvE that doesn't require gold farming. Card Hunter should not offer "PvP or gold farming" as its two play modes. There should also be casual PvE. As long as casual PvE gives no drops it's not a real option. The way it exists now, you can easily play 4 entire levels (all the maps) without getting a single rare. Have that happen once as a new player, and it will help turn you off to PvE entirely ... which is too bad.

 

I get the basic sentiment and the goal sounds like it has merit. Unfortunately, it might prove hard to implement in a balanced way. Any system giving daily SP drops equivalent to the first three MP chests would mean that MP players now have a much faster way than MP of getting good loot. They might again feel compelled to grind SP to be as efficient as possible, thus starting the reward adjustment cycle again.

Making casual, leisurely SP play (I'll call it slow SP but this is not meant as disparaging) as rewarding as MP (fast SP playing already is) is problematic in the way that the same adventures that give good loot in slow SP play can also be played as fast as possible. Thus just playing SP slowly will never reach parity with MP as MP players can just play the SP adventures fast (using little extra daily time) on top of their preferred MP play. This way playing a mix of MP and some fast SP is still a lot more profitable than slow SP.

Such a situation might still be preferable to the current one. It would certainly make getting high-rarity items faster than it currently is for every type of player (which might be something we want in any case, certainly few would probably oppose it).

SP farmers would hit the daily good SP rewards first (playing them as fast as possible) and then farm as usual. MP players would probably be compelled to add them to their MP play (and complain about it), also playing them as fast as possible. Slow SP players would get better rewards than now but would still be getting less than all but 100% pure MP players (which might not even exist in meaningful numbers) who would not add the good daily SP adventures to their routine.

I don't say these things to shoot down your suggestions or to lessen their value, it just seems to me that the matter is complicated. I'm glad the continued conversation has brought the issues into clear light as I think we were probably earlier talking across each other and not at each other as there seemed to be an unwitting misunderstanding on a basic level about what each of the arguments actually was and it's great that we have gotten over that hump, "we" meaning all those taking part in the conversation.

 

I also (partially) agree with @Sir Valimont, at least on a general level, with the feeling PvE players might help some better rewards.

What I do find frustrating though (and made me leave the discussion, in the long run), is the fact he doesn't seem to get (or is not willing to acknowledge) you can't boost SP droprates to any sensible degree without taking a serious of opening up very exploitable scenarios or otherwise ruining the in-game economy altogether. Carelessness is something you really can't afford when altering the in-game-economy, so it goes without saying a wide array of topics and arguments will need to be brought up any time a suggestion like his own is being proposed.

BTW, I think nobody brought up a very important point: as of right now, the most popular reason to purchase/spend pizza is acquiring legendary items by purchasing gold to be spent at randi's, unlocking the club slot via club membership, purchasing chests etc.

If you make acquiring rare items easier via more and better rewards, you also probably make it so that people will purchase less pizza, on average. Something worth thinking about.

As for the general topic, I'll reiterate and expand on my opinion about the matter (at risk of being accused of "missing the point" or being unreasonable or too wildly opinionated again. sigh!).

TL;DR: while I think SP rewards could help a very minor tweak, I think simply upping droprates across the table would be a huge mistake, potentially breaking the game economy to a very severe extent. This is mainly (but not only) because SP and MP are not separate experiences, hence a player can play one mode in order to gain an advantage (acquiring more items, at a faster rate) in the other.

Spoiler: bla bla bla

As a matter of fact, I have very little time to play CH at all due to my work, but I can still get some sweet loot and a decent amount of gold every day just by doing my usual routine: 2x Looty/day, 1-to-6 MP wins, join every league. This alone nets me about 2-6 epics and maybe a legendary item or two each single day (or more, sometimes sensibly more, if the RNG really loves me). I made almost 10k gold (enough for purchasing 4 legendaries from randi) in less than 2 weeks by repeating my daily routine, no SP-farming required whatsoever.

Getting a hold of lots and lots of rare items was made way easier than it used to be already, by upping the rewards themselves, introducing the Fairy and making Randi/Daily Deal bring tons of legendaries each week.

I know I know, the suggestion is intended to appeal to SP players only. The fact is, PvP players would benefit from anything you added to SP too. I.e. suppose you awarded a golden chest for every SP module you replay, up to a max of 3 modules per day. Players, SPers and MPers alike, would simply add "complete 3 SP modules" each day to their routines, and that'd be a huge difference. It would be almost like being able to farm the Fairy up to 5 times per day, only you choose its location.

Even worse, if you simply made droprates much, much better across the table (i.e. upping the chance of dropping a legendary item from a regular chest to something ridiculous like 1%), then I guarantee you tons of people would farm the hell out of this game. As things currently stand, SP farmers aren't really an issue to the health of the CH economy, and that's exactly because of how relatively unrewarding SP-farming is.

Because all of that, I think Blue Manchu should refrain from promoting SP-replayability by simply upping the droprates.

In my mind, CH's design is brilliant exactly because the devs didn't opt to take the easy route out of non-trivial game-design dilemmas. CH is widely recongnized and often brought up as a prime example of how to get f2p right. You don't achieve something like that by luring more players with shiny rewards and the promise of a constant stream of valuables in your chests alone.

I think the game is well worth being played for months and years, even by PvE-only players, despite the allegedly poor SP droprates. You don't keep playing a game simply because of how many rewards you can take out of it each day, you first and foremost keep playing it because it is an enjoyable game-play experience, reward-schedules are (at best) a secondary and relatively unimportant factor. Maybe, this might be slightly untrue as long as the more casual player is concerned, which is not really an issue since CH is designed with a very nichey target-audience in mind.

I don't think Blue Manchu put CH up on Kong because they thought (or hoped, even) every single dude on the platform would love it and immediately stick to it. The effort required to bring a flash game to the Kong platform is relatively negligible, so the whole point was giving CH more exposure and hence more easily reaching additional members of that very specific target-audience. Luring the right people in, not any kind of people, is the right way to make a game successful.

 

There is no suggestion anywhere of boosting SP drop rates. None whatsoever. You should read what I'm actually saying.

There is only the suggestion of once-daily rewards for first-time replays of SP maps, with a fixed upper limit, never suggested at more than one or two total times per day. Unless you think the Loot Fairy has caused "very exploitable scenarios" you are off-base.

So, to make this very very clear, I am saying: Once per day, after you replay an entire campaign that is not exhausted, the final chest is a Gold Chest instead of the normal one. Maybe it happens again once per day after you replay your third entire campaign (just like in PvP you get a Gold Chest for your first and third victories). Once per day. Not farmable. Not grindable. Not exploitable. It is exactly like the Loot Fairy but it's not some random level. It's a general reward for playing a bit of PvE.

 

Actually, your suggestion isn't new... I don't recall the exact thread, its just that the devs opted to go with the Fairy and Bandit instead of adding in codes to track playing history. Also, its easier to bot once-daily rewards. The casual pve player demographic isn't forgotten, its just taking much longer to work on those content and give out good participation rewards. The aussie devs have a fondness for low hanging fruits! hehe...

 

If there is an issue with bots / macros I'm not sure I understand why increased daily prizes would make any difference ... a bot can surely just grind a level forever anyway?

Interesting if the devs have been considering what I'm talking about for a while. Good to know.