Passing the Baton

Several Short comments:

0) [The Biggie] I just looked at KnightofUNITY's webpage. From it, it looks like the main thing to expect is a port to Unity and/or other platforms and not much more.
Could be a good thing or bad thing, but things seem to point in that direction. See the page. https://www.theknightsofunity.com/

1) The Cardhunter community is very small, spreading comments across Steam, here, Discord, World Chat (left open AFK for scrollback) and other places means you're not seeing that much said in each.
2) As much as I like this board, it doesn't let people like me start a new top-level discussion. Pretty limited and/or elite depending on your perspective.

 

You can't start a top level discussion? I'm a forum mod, but my first (erroneous) post was allowed. Have you tried? If you can't, PM me and I'll get an answer.
I expect a port to unity. Flash is dead, and the memory bloat in Air is so bad that the game usually crashes in the campaign within 30 minutes. I'm not particularly happy, but I love this game and the brothers and sisters I've come to know here. If Unity wants to screw that up, it's a very bad business model. I hope we will be able to run at least 2 accounts at the same time (it made it so easy to build and adjust saved co-op teams). [Shameless Request.]
In short, I don't think they bought out BM in order to screw everything up and go broke.

 

Try other subforums. This announcement subforum is only for admin threads.

 

Different Question: What's the story with the whole "flash is dead" b.s.? (Big Stink?)

I'm running windows 8.1 with an a copy of Firefox I intentionally haven't updated around a year or so....
game.Cardhunter.com runs fine. Comparable to the Steam version. No worse than before 2021.

I was really suspicious of the whole "flash is dead thing" which seemed to be more words than facts.
Now that we're squarely into 2021, and it's still working, suspicions that Adobe themselves would
mess up web-browsers that wanted to support is obviously nothing more. It didn't happen.

So what have other people observed about Flash? If some a-hole browsers shut it off, can you still
download a new copy of Firefox and let it run just fine?

Ok... I just visited Kongregate... here's what I found: A lot more pointless fear-mongering and a completely functional Flash.

First... going to Balloons Tower Defense 5, a pretty popular and heavily featured game, it gives me a screen asking me to go to getsupernova.com to install some new something-or-other "because Chrome and other browsers no longer support flash." I skipped that and clicked "More Options"

Under More Options... it has something offering to try to run Flash in my browser with a big warning that it probably won't work in my browser.... I clicked to try it.

Then, Firefix brings up a big circle with a line-through it, as is Flash was dead. I've figured this one out a long time ago, click the Circle, and a box opens telling me Flash is out of date, but do I want to run it anyways.

I click "ALLOW".... The Game Runs Fine! Maybe I'll give Cardhunter a try too, but as I said, from my point of view, Flash runs fine except for arguably insane amounts of FALSE warnings that it's dead and won't work. Then again... maybe that's just until I accidently update Firefox instead of the "Update Later" I've clicked about 70 times now. Too bad "Go away and don't update" isn't an option.

So again, what's other people's observation? I there really any problem continuing to use Flash?

And coming back to whatever Kongregate asked to me try... does that work for Cardhunter there if you try to use?

Anything with some real facts instead of mass-hyteria would be appreciated... hold on... let me rephrase that....

Has anyone seriously tried to run Flash with an open mind toward whatever-browser-works and failed?

And does Getsupernova.com run flash for people who can't get a "normal browser" to do so?

 

Not upgrading your browser leaves you open to many security risks, many coming from Flash itself. That's why Adobe killed one of its most popular products (and why Steve Jobs banned it from Apple products).

This article was interesting:
https://www.rcreative.marketing/tech-talks/flash-dead/

This is the first I've heard of SuperNova, and their website doesn't have much info.

Flashpoint has made a safe Flash player and is trying to archive all the games it can, but in this case "safe" means "cannot connect to the internet," so it's useless for multiplayer games. I haven't tried it yet, but I intend to.

 

If the plan was just to port it there is no reason to buy it out. They’ve gotta have future content planned.

 

> If the plan was just to port it there is no reason to buy it out. They’ve gotta have future content planned.
Can someone even confirm that they actually bought it?

I, as a sole-proprietory, once took over full developement and maintainence of a online service.
I haven't noticed anything that was obviously official to me that said CH was SOLD, and I had, and
largely still am, assuming that a similar arrangement exists for CH. In my case, it was somewhat complicated
arrangement whereby we all hoped my company would increase the popularity of the service, but I
was still being paid effectively from the existing revenue just for maintaining it. Furthermore, since
the service was already in decline, we (my sole-proprietorship and people working for it) we could
at least hypothetically earn our worth by merely keeping it alive and slowing or stopping the decline.

I sort of want to keep the details of my arangement semi-private, but my point here is that something
like that could exist here and I'm guessing that it does until told otherwise by someone very closely
tied to Blue Manchu or KnightsofUnity. (Nothing is more official than something coming from Jon,
and I just described my impression of what Jon said.)

 

Maybe this can be interpreted as [development and maintenance of] Card Hunter, but I find that less than reasonable.

Obviously, we players can't confirm anything until it's actually there and playable, but I don't see any beneficial reason for either of them to lie, either. That leads me to an assumption that CH was sold, or otherwise transferred.

Flash EOL was Big Stinkundeserved one, done for a mix of political reasons. I'm pretty sure just about any indie game developer would have stopped it happening, if they had the power. But they don't, and it's better for them to get over it and port than to gripe and procrastinate.

Also,

This seem to state that they're going to do at least bit more than porting. Whether they're living up to their statement, we'll see in a month.

 

I mean, I have faith in the new team, as demonstrated last night when I went off on two people for talking badly about them. I love this game, and I am willing to give them the benefit of time to learn the games code. I hope the knights are able to live up to my expectations and I will always love this game. As long as they stay true to the spirit of cardhunter and keep the game going, they are good folks. Lets give them a chance before we go all doom and gloom, alright folks?

 

I can say that the Knights are lovely to work with so far!
And I'm pleased Sir Civil has confirmed that 'content updates' are coming. I can't discuss my work currently but I hope we can announce some stuff Soon™

 

If it's more worthless legendaries in AA, I might have to hunt you down!
And give you a good talking to.
Then buy you a beer or six.
(Shots don't count, for me.)
I have 2 accounts to full collection on usable items, and I'm going for max usable on my main.
I hope to complete it before the Earth crashes into the Sun.
Please don't make this any harder.
Just sayin', bro.

 

Flashpoint is great, just don't accidentally download the Ultimate version that comes with half a terabyte of games ... both for your monthly data cap and your sanity.

 

Thanks for a clarification.

Oh... here's an idea that could implemented in figuratively "in no time flat..."

Years ago, Jon posted a policy saying that throwing games was bannable offense.
At the time, the guild system (before the last guild change) really promoted
abuse related to that, so it makes sense that the would do it.

But sometimes I get a game against someone who has very low rating, has
the Meta server telling me that they've only played a few games, and that
they're not in guild (I'm not in a guild either) and I notice that they're
playing like they're new to the game.

I played Hearthstone for years and frequently let new-looking players win. In
Cardhunter, I cared about trying to keep the game alive, but it was against the
rules to throw the game for the sake of making the new player feel better about
themselves and the game, so I just crushed them instead of figured "well, at least
it's an easy chest."

So.... as a suggestion, how about posting a new policy which says that it's ok to
intentionally lose to someone if the other player has low ranking and
neither or you are in a guild? It don't get as many opponents that seem new
as I used to, but if and when I do, it might be nice to make the game a bit
more enjoyable for them. (And I don't mean lose by resigning, I mean lose
by pretending I got a bad draws or play badly and putting on a bit of show
first as I'm trying to win, but lose anyways.)

 

When I was a new player in PvP, I wanted opponents to neither resign nor fake-play me. I wanted to learn what my opponents did to defeat me. I wanted to learn what things I did were mistakes. I asked questions of my opponents and of World Chat. The advice I got was invaluable. New or not, I can't stand seeing a battle as a climax/pinnacle of something (like a new rating threshold, or the next win holds a great chest,) and getting a thrown match; as much as I generally try to fight it, my (clinical) OCD kicks in, and I can strive for several battles to somehow "balance" the "mess" that caused; disorder aside, I just prefer to earn a win, and it's clearly more important in leagues where a fake win ruins the proper placement of my podmates; it's not fair to them, let alone me. Jon's rule affects more than just guilds. As he said in that thread, it's about the overall player experience.

Fwiw, these days, I try to pay forward the early learning favors to new players—not by fake-playing them, but—by offering advice after matches. Not just opponents, either. I'll also jump in to spectate low-ranked matches, whether both are players or one's a GM. Food for thought, I hope.

 

I haven't been in this discussion much (or any of them, really) but I just thought to jump in to say I agree with @ParodyKnaveBob on this one entirely.

A related little story, as I was growing up we played chess with my father every now and then. He beat me stupid every single time for a pretty long while. I learned from him, I adapted, and I grew. And when I managed to defeat him for the first time, I was borderline euphoric. It meant something. I'd earned it. It felt like a colossal achievement at the time. My father is no international champion, I suppose, but still. I'm happy he didn't let me win. I'm happy he's chosen to promote my growth instead of providing me short-term comfort.

There are multiple facets to this. I can see where the suggestion is coming from. I'll tell you this much, winning is no fun at all for me when it's against someone obviously new who didn't stand much of a chance simply by virtue of the sheer difference in experience and item quality. It does feel like being a bully. It does feel pretty terrible. But there are other things to consider.

I know that this is just a game, and I may be getting a little too philosophical here, but my personal opinion is that in general giving people the illusion that they've earned something that they in fact have not just to make them feel better about themselves is an idea that feels good at first glance but is in fact horrible. It's a short-term solution that will almost certainly cause bigger harm on the long run, or shall I say that it is Bad Medicine? One thing is the aforementioned growth. Letting people win to make them feel better stunts improvement, since if it's done right it'll instill the belief that there's no need for it (or not as much as there may be in reality).

Another thing is that, ironically enough, doing so can in fact undermine their confidence. Imagine that people are letting you win every now and then, with varying degrees of subtlety. Then you win a game, feel good about yourself for a moment, but then the doubt comes creeping in — did I win on my own merit, did I deserve to win, or was my opponent letting me win because I'm so obviously bad at the game that they pitied me? Sure, I can ask them, and they may say that they weren't letting me win, but perhaps they're just saying that because they want me to feel good about myself.

I'm perhaps going a little too far with the example, but it just serves to demonstrate my point. I'm not sure that whatever I said warrants this being a strictly enforced rule. But there are other aspects of this, such as those mentioned in the post above, fairness, player experience. Possibly many more I'm overlooking. I think it's important, as always, to examine all sides of a question.

 

@battlezoby - All this being said, I doubt you'll get reported and banned.

 

Note: I'm currently taking a break from editing this... there will be less typos when I remove this note.

True. But human choices are often the result of conflicted emotions balenced by real-life situations. Having the rule that says that I'm technically not allowed
to throw the match makes it's easy to be greedy and grab an easy chest and even beat the crap out of a noob. "It's not my fault." Offically changing the policy would
remove that excuse, and as I know from experience, without that excuse my atruistic side wins and I tend to try to make them happy; I assume that the game means more to them than it does to
me. I also like letting them win to promote the game, but having had the "excuse" to grab the
easy chest for so long now, an offical policy change would probably make it a easier break that
"bad habit" more quickly than otherwise.

@ParodyKnaveBob: I wanted point out that one of my criteria was "notice that they're playing like they're new to the game," so it's just when they haven't learned much yet.
It sound like you learned pretty quickly, so I would probably have noticed that and this wouldn't apply before long.

Also, although I didn't go into detail, I did say my goal was to encourage people to play. So I'd often go into details afterwards and tell them about the game and
discuss details and the like if they were receptive. You don't need to read too many of my posts here to see how verbose and talkative I can be. But I really prefer
talking to people after I lose, rather than after I win(*), because people who lose are much more likely to be in a non-receptive frame of mind and often annoyed that
I even tried to talk to them. By comparison, winning players typically don't seem to mind much of anything you say to them short of all-out flame.

I think if I were to (hypothetically, especially since PKB been playing longer than myself I think) have played a game vs. PKB and lost to him, I would have said "gg"
afterwards and maybe even a comment or two. If he we receptive, and it sounds like he would be, I would likely been open to long conversation and told him
much of what I know about strategy in this game. I've done it before, but normally only when the other player really opens up to the conversation after losing,
which doesn't happen all that often. So in the PKB scenerio, it wouldn't make a big difference. In fact, if he told me what he posted above, I might (depending
mostly on my mood, concentration, and immediate-priorities at the time) offer to play Casual against him to learn and discuss some aspects of the game.

* - I once made some short not-impolite comment to a high ranked player after I got lucky and beat him (hurting his rating badly) and he went in some huge tyrade with some analogy of how if he was drowning to death, I'd rather take $1 to let him die than make an effort to save him. Clearly trying to be friendly and talkative after my win wasn't be the best way to promote the game in that instance (for example.)

 

One thing I hope they improve on is cracking down on people who think its funny to give their characters inapropriate names and pick inapropriate usernames. That kind of behaviour should never be tolerated in cardhunter and should result in a permanent ban.

 

Alright, we've highlighted some unfortunate facts here. It's true that not everyone is receptive at all times. While it's easy to dismiss those "not suited to the game", we can do better. It's also true that some people are plain outclassed by their opponent's item collection.

As for possible ways to mitigate these problems:

• Simply having bigger playerbase might improve the situation through better equal ranked matching, though that's not something we can act on.
• Well designed SP adventures could subtly teach people tactics. In some cases, we might need to improve our Game Masters. This can be tricky for devs and it has potential to affect difficulty of existing adventures, but it's not implausible.
  
• More competitive common items could make the game more beginner friendly. We already have some good peasant builds, but they're not really competitive, and they're not diverse enough. For one, the way tutorial works encourages 1-1-1. Wizards in particular have poor common items, and we should fix that. Telling players to go melee is not an adequate solution.
• As mediocre as it is, we could have in-game tips in loading screen or where else like every other mobile games, and it works. It could be as simple as "pass more and save your moves", "traits draw a card" or "flank your opponent to disable their blocks".