PvE droprates are too low

Well, I dunno...But if I were a botter, I'd script to take advantage of all the once-daily rewards for first time adv replays, go to MP, auto-queue/resign leagues, get loot, buff account, sell it, rinse repeat. Without the predictable once-daily rewards, it take a tad longer to make saleworthy accounts. Shrugs...you can't beat botters but you sure can take pre-emptive measures.

http://forums.cardhunter.com/threads/game-informers-red-flags.1488/#post-18009

Perhaps, this might help...Jon's opinion of what the game should be ....erm, 2013 (sorry, I'm a bit of an statue ...). Granted its an old statement and since then things have moved on but it might help shed light on how the devs think and why they do the things they do. Again, casual pve players are not forgotten...its just a 'fresh toilet roll long WIP'. Hope it helps.

 

Sorry if I am aggravating you... I just want to understand why you believe that the rewards should be the same or similar?
If you just wanna play PvE go for it. There is a system in place, you think it should be changed I just don't know WHY?

 

For the record just because you choose to only play SP doesn't mean you are an SP only player... Your account still works for MP.

 

Come on .. is this trolling or what?
Guys say they ONLY play SP, so they are SP-only players, what's there not to understand.

Vegetarians don't have a physical barrier to eat meat .. but they don't eat it.. bla bla..

 

Many vegetarians do have a physical repulsion to eating meat... not exactly a barrier but at a certain point it becomes something different that makes eating meat not an option. But most vegetarians don't complain there are more restaurants for omnivores and when they do it is just as annoying...
That reminds me of the old saying, How do you know if someone is a vegan? Don't worry they'll tell you.

But on a more serious note if you choose to be an SP only player why complain that it is different from MP, when you choose to do so because it is different from MP?

 

1) Some players have "something" that makes MP not an option.
2) They don't complain but they'll tell .. ok, didn't get that.

3) As Tuvok would said, your logic is flawed.

 

So...if one of the goals is to discourage farming the same adventures repeatedly, it certainly makes sense that the devs wouldn't want to adopt an MP-style system of increasing rewards at certain milestones based simply on the number of SP adventures played per day: farmers would tend to gravitate toward the low-level adventures, because it's simply more efficient to burn (literally) through adventures that take two minutes to clear than through those that might take ten or more.

Then again, especially now that the Hidden Bandit is making the rounds, this is already the case. Have I gotten a bit bored with the adventures at levels 10 and below, and especially 6 and below? Sure...but if I want that gold to spend at Randi's or DD (and I really do), those adventures are still where I'm going to start looking. By the time I get through most of those, I might tack on a few favorites from the upper levels, then double-dip the Fairy if I haven't already, but that's typically about all the time I have to play for the day.

Here's an idea that occurred to me: how about increasing the rewards for a level range of adventures based on the day of the week? Something like this:

Sunday: levels 2-5
Monday: levels 6-7
Tuesday: levels 8-9
Wednesday: levels 10-11
Thursday: levels 12-13
Friday: levels 14-16
Saturday: levels 17-18

Kinda like the Sudoku in your morning paper gets harder as the week goes on. This could be as simple as restricting the Bandit to those levels on those days—which alone would serve to increase the rewards for playing SP, simply because players would be able to find him more often. Or, it could be more like the MP model of "play a certain number of adventures in this range for improved rewards."

Right now, the levels don't divide up all that well by seven—the breakdown above (with 6-9 adventures per day) was the best I could do—but that could be addressed gradually as expansions are introduced. I also realize that it might make more sense to base this on the 25-hour clock, whether or not the Bandit is involved, which would be harder to remember than days of the week but clearly more fair across time zones. (Maybe the eligible adventures for each period could have a special highlight?)

Not sure how desirable something like this would be, or how practical to implement, but I thought I'd toss it out there.

Edit: Maybe make the above list more like 2-6/7-8/9-10/11-12/13-14/15-16/17-18. Wider range of adventure count per day, but easier to remember, and closer to requiring a comparable amount of time to get through. (Of course, it would need to change anyway as higher levels are introduced.)

 

Interesting and boring are different for different people. If grinding wasn't available, I doubt I'd have finished out the first week.

 

Please explain the flaw? I asked a question which I have yet to get an answer to... because the answer is obvious, self interest and no one wants to admit to being selfish.

 

Players usually choose to play only SP because for example they don't like the "stress of playing against human opponent.", they don't choose SP because they want different (lower) rewards .. what logic is that..

 

As a matter of principle (game-wise) I believe the rewards for both should be roughly equivalent for the effort expended in either. This was the entire premise behind increasing the MP rewards. Sir Valimont believes the balance significantly favors MP.
If they don't need to be equivalent, we should put MP rewards back to the way they were, I guess.

 

Yes, except it's not a question of whether they need to be equivalent. It's a question of what needs to be equivalent. I think it's obvious that casual PvE is what needs to be equivalent to PvP.

The problem is the balance hinges on gold farming and not on casual PvE. In other words, the theory used to decide drop rates is that PvP should be equivalent to grinding campaign maps at the fastest possible rate, selling all the junk one finds, and finding a good item extremely rarely. Jon is on record as saying that BlueManchu does not like this model of play and wants to discourage it. I tend to agree.

But casual PvE is completely different from gold farming, should be encouraged, and needs to be treated as a viable option just like PvP. You can do that by giving PvE a couple minor boosts that don't affect gold farming -- so we're not talking about a blanket buff to PvE -- but which improve the experience drastically.

 

Actually, the boosts you have suggested affect also all other play modes/habits/routines (including gold farming) a great deal. When you're ready to engage with the issues, please see here and here.

By the way, we don't know what the decisions of Blue Manchu about the drop rates are based on, they haven't made that public (as far as I remember). To claim they are based on SP grinding rates is speculation, not fact.

EDIT: Ah, I see I was wrong in the second paragraph (the first one is still completely valid). I was browsing the thread and found this:

(part in brackets added by me based on Flaxative's other posts, it's a very important distinction)

Sorry about that, I had forgotten that bit.

 

This is simply not true.
The change in MP was (supposedly) based upon an average player running adventures from start to finish. At the time it was set, exhausted adventures were not replayable. I used to run 30+ adventures daily. This took several hours. I consider it casual play, because I did not grind levels, ran at what I considered a moderate pace, and toyed with different builds.
The rewards for playing an adventure should be the same regardless of the speed at which you play it, and should be based upon the average time of the average player. (Note: These "averages" can only be a guess, but I would base them on an experienced player replaying the campaign. First run play already receives bonuses.)
I don't think grinding was a consideration. It certainly shouldn't have been. The "End Chests" are considerably more lucrative than the commons. "Gold Farming" went away with the old kobold loot tables. There is still "Item Farming", which is grinding specific levels in hope of finding an item you want in a common chest. The overwhelming majority result is 2 common items per chest. The monetary return per time spent is almost always less than running the entire adventure for the first time that day.
The only form of gold farming remaining is to speed farm the easiest low level adventures. This produces poorer results than the first run (unless you get a lucky drop in a common chest), but produces sellable items much faster than running a high level adventure.

 

Many things about the direction of this thread are ridiculous. (Not specifically what you're saying Sir Veza but it is the latest comment).

First of all what's ridiculous is the only argument brought against increasing PvE drop rates is a set of loose claims that if you speed-farm PvE your drop rates will add up to something comparable to PvP (see the first 6 pages of this thread). Now you're saying that PvP drop rates are supposedly set to match casual PvE drop rates. That's fine but then that's even more ridiculous because it is so outrageously obvious that casual PvE's drop rates are horrendous compared to PvP. You get ONE SINGLE PvP win and you have about a 50-50 chance at an epic. To get about a 50-50 chance at an epic you would need to play let's say 10 campaign levels all the way through. You are welcome to calculate the exact number, but since end-of-level campaign rewards are not-even-a-rare guaranteed chests, the number to get a 50-50 epic chance is going to be at least 5 entire campaigns and probably many more.

I find it mind-boggling that this unbelievably simple premise is so complicated for various elements in this thread to understand. It could not be more obvious that playing a few PvE levels per day is a bad way to get items compared to playing for one single PvP victory per day. I only started the thread because the observation is so plain and the data so stark.

There is intellectual hypocrisy of the nth degree here when people want to talk about PvE drop rates based on how fast you can grind PvE and then turn around and say that casual PvE is somehow considered equal to PvP. Quite frankly BlueManchu is just not that stupid. The math is not that complicated.

Luckily for me I am leaving for the extended weekend, will be away from internet, and won't have to follow this nonsensical argument any further for a few days.

 

Specifically to your points Sir Veza, if what you're saying is accurate then BlueManchu made a perplexingly large error. As you say, you could run through all the PvE levels at a reasonable pace in several hours. Let's say 3 hours. In that same 3 hours anybody can easily win 4 or 5 PvP matches. Probably more, frankly. Well, the loot that drops for 4 or 5 PvP matches is unbelievably much better than the loot you will get for completing the entire set of campaign levels. That's at least part of the issue.

More salient is the fact that 3 hours is more time than most casual players have to spend. If I have just one hour to spend on Card Hunter (which is a pretty reasonable estimate), I could either get a PvP victory (easy to do) or I could run a few levels -- say 3 or 4 -- in PvE. I prefer to run a few levels in PvE but the drops are absolutely terrible compared to the PvP. That is the biggest issue.

If what you say is true, and BlueManchu changed PvP "based on an average player running adventures from start to finish" then they have made a big mistake in their calculation. Personally, having read Jon's comments on gold farming and having heard Flaxative and others talk about the fact that they wanted to get more people into PvP, I do not believe that their intention was ever to make things equal. I think they wanted PvP to give better rewards per time so they could get more PvP players. That is fine with me in principle, but I just think the balance is tipped way too far towards PvP right now.

 

Yeah, I've probably been lying this whole time.

 

Can we get loot for posting on the forums? Presumably since there are no rewards, no one will ever stick around and the forums will die.

 

Actually there are rewards, they're called likes and post counts. The little numbers going up feel so good.

But the forum is unfortunately massively unfair to SP posting, the MP posters get a lot more posts and especially likes! I think casual write-only posting to yourself should get free 10 likes a day to keep things in balance.