How would you like to pay for Card Hunter?

I promised I'd post something other than speculation at some point, so here we go!

It's a little early to be making any broad sweeping assumptions about the game's business model, but I wanted to toss a couple questions out into the ether to gauge everyone's opinion on how they'd like to pay for Card Hunter when it's released.

1) How do you feel about certain card suites being kept behind a "pay wall"?

To be more specific, how would you feel about not being able to access certain cards unless you've paid real-life money?

Jon made it pretty clear in his RPS interview that they're disinclined to do the traditional "booster pack" thing, but there's plenty of other ways cards could be made to only be available to paying players: certain equipment that only drops from an adventure that you have to buy, for example.

Personally, I think I like the way Team Fortress 2 has handled things. As a general rule, you can eventually earn damn near every item they release just by playing the game, but they frequently release new stuff and make it so that it can only be obtained at first by making a purchase. Those items open up to everyone to be earned normally after a week or two, but I expect they do a fairly brisk business in players dropping $X to be one of the first people to be able to play with the new toys.

I'm pretty OK with that. If other players want to lord their new item over me for a few days, that's cool: I can earn it myself eventually. To be honest, Valve has released cool stuff before that I've been tempted to pay for right away, so clearly the model has something going for it.

2) How would you like purchases to be handled: cash for stuff, or a microcurrency?

This is a pretty straightforward question. Would you prefer to purchase stuff directly, or would you be OK with buying a microcurrency and then spending it in bits and pieces on stuff you want?

Personally, I'm OK with microcurrencies, but I'm a lot more inclined to make a purchase if there's some kind of "retail box"-like pack I can buy. Sure, you can make various adventures and "game boosts" available for small microcurrency fees, but if I can spend $20 or something and unlock most/all of the pay-to-play adventures and some other stuff in one swoop, I'd probably rather just do that.

As an aside to Blue Manchu: would you ever consider adding a Currency Exchange to the game that allows players to seamlessly swap in-game soft currency (gold?) and hard microcurrency between themselves? Puzzle Pirates does this, and it makes things a lot easier on free players while giving paying players an extra thing to do with their microcurrency (buying gold).

 

The only thing I DON'T REALLY WANT to see is the "energy points" solution I see on many Facebook Games. Please, every other model is ok, but not energy points to play...

 

I'd prefer the paid content remains largely as vanity/customization items. Just about every FTP game I've ever tried has been ruined by making high level content a paid luxury, and it turns the free players into a groveling lower class, and that's not good for either group. I've never given money to a FTP game like that, because I never got into them because I didn't enjoy being a second class citizen, and deeply resented the "Our game is free to play!...But it's $5 a week to enjoy." business model. The TF2 solution would be acceptable though.
And no micro-currency, ever. It's just an awful idea designed to nickel and dime people and nothing else.

 

Okay, lots to say.

In the first place, I'd rather approach "paying" here just like I pay for anything. The internet has done a lot of weird things to how we handle money: once upon a time, you bought a game, and it was good. Maybe you would rent things from time to time. Now developers can do anything: if they want, they could pop up a window asking for "donations" every five minutes, and/or charge you a penny for each step a character takes, and/or run a taxi meter to total up charges based on play time. Anything.

Honestly, I'd be okay with buying "starter decks" and "booster packs." I'd be okay with buying a "boxed set" that contains "the board," all adventure modules, and sample decks. I'd like to live in a world where objects exist and purchases mean something.

But since that's not happening here, I don't have too many ideas what else to suggest. Just that however "micro" the "micro"-transactions get, I don't want to see them become absurd: when I look at my credit card statement, I don't want 100 entries for $0.25. This isn't an arcade machine. I'm buying content, not putting quarters into the internet.

Speaking of content . . .

There was the idea of certain modules being available for pay, and one can get the idea that adventures have themed loot. I'd totally be okay with Tendril Wand of the Apocalypse coming only from the for-pay Green Tentacle Adventure. There's just one caution:

It had better not be high level content only in that for-pay adventure. Simply different content. The same range of quality in the cards, from high to low, just wearing different "hats."

Other than that, I've already expressed my attitude about "Our game is free to play!...But it's $5 a week to enjoy." Making a game that is deliberately bad, then allowing you to pay money to take away the badness, is not acceptable. I will (write negative reviews and) leave a site in a heartbeat if and when I see that happen.

 

It was my understanding that the only thing that would be charged would be new modules and maybe special buffs that increase leveling and loot drops and whatnot. This is the sort of thing I am completely okay with. I also like Sir Knight's idea that the paid-for campaigns can offer unique loot, as long as it's not over-powered. Like your Mystical Sword of Rainbows gives unique cards, or maybe a unique assortment of cards, but they're not the BEST/MOST BROKEN CARDS IN THE GAME. Maybe the Mystical Sword of Rainbows gives the best cards to compliment the cards your other equipment gives. Perhaps it's not as good as the "acquired in the general campaign" Sword of Ticklish Goblins when combined with your favorite equipment, even if the cards are in general better.

As for how I'd prefer to pay... assign $ amounts to stuff and allow payment via credit card, I guess.

 

A level/loot drop buff would be ok with me. It's not providing a real advantage when PvPing someone at your level, it's making you pass them over faster. It's good for people who have disposable income but not a huge amount of free time, or who want help catching up to the friend who introduced them to the game.
A lot of the problems with FTP games comes because of predatory practices, like those seen in most FB games. This is because either A)It's a company like the one that rhymes with Pinga and they don't give a **** about their customers, or B) They're a small fish struggling to keep their head above water and don't have much choice.
Blue Manchu is neither of those, and have some leeway when deciding their model, it'll be interesting to see what they come up with.

 

the main thing i don't like about free games with a cash shop is when paying players gain an unattainable advantage over non paying players. I think the most fair way would be to offer paying as a way to quickly get Items or other bonuses that would require an otherwise large investment of time, perhaps as well as making certain adventures only playable by purchasing expansions.

 

There is a indie action RPG (Path of Exile) well into development which is going to try to do a purely cosmetic-based microtransaction system. I am curious how it will work out for them .

I think cosmetic and convenience is a great way to start of microtransactions. If modules are also going to be for sale, it would be nice if the items/cards from said module could still circulate to players who don't own the module by trading or as spoils of pvp. Additionally, if co-op gets added, it would be nice if only one of the involved players necessarily needed to own the module, and other's could tag along. It would definitely make it easier for a player more willing to spend money (like me) to get friends involved.

Also, would a kickstarter program be a good option for the game (maybe not yet, but somewhere down the line)? It is a great way to do pre-orders, especially for things like actual board games (kickstarter seems huge for indie board games, this is a sample of a great and successful kickstart). It could work great for this game, especially since you could include print actual cards as a bonus.

 

If you want to know whether a purely cosmetic money-making system can make money, look at NeoPets. They have a currency which people buy for real money and use for nothing other than playing dress-up. It's a completely different website from an RPG or whatever, but it's still worth mentioning.

 

I have tried a few games implementing this kind of currency system, and I would have to say that I would prefer anything to this. In these games every action you take consumes a point. They slowly refill, like one every 10 minutes, and totally destroys the flow of the game; oh great, only 26 more minutes and I can buy this potted plant! This of course can be bypassed by buying large bulks of points in advance. This would also totally destroy any attempt at including any multiplayer into cardhunter. "Player 2 will move in 42 minutes".

Please Blue Manchu... anything but this!

 

I think I could also like to pay a fixed monthly fee, if this allows the currency or any other way to buy cards remains in-game (cards as rewards for finishing missions, or cards bought only with ingame "gold", if I have some manner to earn it in-game). But I don't know if I am a "typical" gamer under this aspect...

 

If I understand you correctly, you are just describing a subscription system: pay each month for access, and then absolutely everything else happens through in-game mechanisms. Sounds fine.

It also sounds like, no surprise, everyone's priority so far is to enjoy the game. The only issue is making sure that the payment system--which could take on so, so many forms--maintains this. Would the developers be willing to change the system after release if it turns out to have been a bad idea? Perhaps keeping a log of the total money spent on one system, doing an overhaul, and then letting players loose in a new system with that amount of "credit"?

 

There are, from what I understand, legal implications with these things too. For example, selling packs of cards is not considered gambling and is therefore legal even in states that prohibit gambling, but it becomes gambling as soon as you allow players to put any kind of price on a specific card (which converting hard and soft currency will do).

(I am not a lawyer, just what I've heard.)

And then there is stuff like if you offer free hard currency for joining along with trading of that currency in ANY way, then there will be people who open dozens of accounts. Same with free cards that are tradeable when you join if there is any way to convert them to any currency (hard or soft).

Anyway, many considerations as I am sure you are finding

 

Whoa, lots of posts.

I agree that an "energy" system doesn't fit here and should likely remain the domain of Facebook games.

It's a nice thought, but I don't know that there's a ton of room for vanity items here. There's another thread going right now about how it's probably impractical to have the appearance of a character change with what they have equipped, and I can't imagine we'll have much in the way of a personal avatar that will be satisfying to spend a lot of money to trick out.

Like most things, I think it's really easy to do a microcurrency wrong. There are definite benefits for everyone to forcing transactions to use a "hard" in-game currency, however...

• Forcing most/all purchases to be for packages of micro-currency keeps the number of transactions low. From a practical standpoint, this cuts down on processing fees for Blue Manchu, and keeps Sir Knight's credit card bill concise. From a more "corporate" perspective, if a player has to confirm a credit card charge every time they want to purchase something, that's a lot of opportunities for a customer to say "no, I actually don't want to buy that new module". Bundling all these decision points into a single purchase that you can then figure out stress-free later on streamlines this, and probably encourages purchasing.
• Putting a dollar value on the game's purchasable items is an unfortunate constraint on pricing them. What if, for example, it made perfect sense for a piece of equipment to cost $0.25? Would you then have to charge $0.25 to a credit card to buy it? This isn't ideal. In a world with microcurrency, however, that piece of equipment could cost 1 Ticket, or 1 Booster, or whatever, and you could just buy it with your "change purse" of microcurrency.
• You could trade microcurrency between players. This is great for inducing your friends to play the game with you ("hey, come play Card Hunter! I'll give you a bunch of tokens!), and can also be used for promotional purposes ("here, take this code for $5 in Blue Manchu Yuan!").
• Possibly both a positive and negative point, but money feels like money, whereas a microcurrency can be themed to mesh well with a game's narrative, or be "fun". If I have to make individual item purchases, rather than just buy the game, I'd rather just make a purchase once and then forget about it. Having a dollar amount in my "game wallet" or whatever makes that hard to do, as opposed to having a pocket full of, um... "booster packs"? I'm blanking on an appropriately thematic microcurrency name here.

Basically, I think microcurrency systems are only as evil as you design them to be. If you avoid the obvious pitfalls (that is, deceptively numbering your microcurrency and its packages, like Microsoft Points, and structuring price points as to purposely stick you with small amounts of leftover microcurrency that you cannot use), I think there's a lot of benefits to such a system.

Yeah. I was pondering how to do something like that in the context of TF2's "pay to get the new content right now"system...

Say Blue Manchu comes up with a new series of three adventure modules and several new pieces of equipment to go along with them. For argument's sake, let's say it's "elemental" themed: there's four elemental swords, four sets of elemental armor, elemental necklaces, whatever. When the update goes out, the following adventures become available...

• Curse of the Mages' Guild - Artigua was a bustling trade city until the Mages' Guild opened. Now, travel the catacombs beneath the city streets to discover what turned Artigua into a ghost town! (Open to any player of appropriate level)
• Into the Breach - Where did all these elementals come from? And who (or what) is summoning them? Venture into the elemental fissure underneath the Artigua Mages' Guild to find answers... and even more questions! (Available for purchase for some amount of in-game gold; may require you beat the preceding adventure first)
• Corrupted Shrine of the Elements - The flow of powerful elementals into our world won't stop so long as that dark cult controls the Shrine of the Elements. Stop them once and for all! (Available for purchase in the Friendly Local Adventure Store)

Here's the kicker: all three adventures would be part of a related arc, but the new treasures would only drop in certain adventures according to a schedule set by the developers. Examples...

• The new elemental items might only ever drop in the Corrupted Shrine of the Elements.
• The new items might drop only in the Corrupted Shrine for the first couple weeks, but then could also be found (to a lesser extent) in the Breach.
• As above, only after a month or so, maybe the new items even find their way into the Mages' Guild as rare drops.

Just a thought. Clearly I've been overthinking this.

I hear that. Having given it a little thought, I'm having trouble envisioning what the major soft currency sink in the game would be. I mean, it could be equipment purchases, but you certainly still want to drop awesome loot as battle rewards. Maybe it's adventure modules, but that's not exactly a "renewable" sink. Hrmm.

 

I don't recall anything like this, and the logic is missing something. "It becomes gambling . . . " but which "it" do you mean? Buying an individual card is gambling? Or buying a pack of cards wherein all these valuable cards are randomized? I presume you mean the second.

And in that case, every "grab-bag" purchase anywhere on capitalist Earth is gambling, because capitalists always put a price on things. I'd be a "gambler" for buying randomized collectible stamps (not-for-mailing and therefore useless) themed after Terry Pratchett's Discworld. Crossing international lines to do so, even.

In short, either I am an international man of mystery, or we don't need to be concerned about gambling.

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