Patch 3.263.0 Eastpass Conspiracy update!

Discussion in 'Announcements' started by Sir Civil, Jul 12, 2021.

  1. Sir Civil

    Sir Civil Administrator Staff Member

    Salutations Card Hunters!

    Before you go to Eastpass, you need to gather your team. Why? Lord Stafford II has a job for you! At his request, it will be necessary to investigate the disappearance of the townsfolk. You will be able to see for yourself what happened to them TODAY!

    Patch notes:
    • “Eastpass Conspiracy” adventure pack:
      • 7 new adventures,
      • the level range of new adventures 9-21 (9, 11, 13, 15, 17, 19, 21),
      • 20 new monsters,
      • the first adventure “Twilight in Eastpass” will unlock after completing “Lord Stafford’s Treasure”,
      • special rewards are waiting for brave adventurers after finishing the last adventure.
    • Card Hunter is now available for Mac 64 bit.

    • Bug fixes:
      • The Daily Deal shop double-dip has been fixed
      • price on the pizza purchase receipt will now show correctly
     
  2. Blizzrd33

    Blizzrd33 Orc Soldier

    What was 'wrong' with the previous situation exactly?

    Excited about new content but this is a major let down.
     
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  3. Sir Civil

    Sir Civil Administrator Staff Member

    It was straight forward a server side bug that was left unfixed. It was a "feature" for only these players that either live in timezone where they could abuse double dip or were able to stay online 24/7.
     
    Maniafig likes this.
  4. Blizzrd33

    Blizzrd33 Orc Soldier

    If you stayed logged in regularly, you actually didn't need to be in any specific timezone to be able to double dip. I think I did it four or five times total in last 2.5 years, but was the only way I was getting as many of certain Arcane Item legendaries that I currently have.

    Does Loot Fairy / Hidden Bandit inhabit the new maps?
     
  5. Sir Civil

    Sir Civil Administrator Staff Member

    Yes and yes :D
     
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  6. Sir Veza

    Sir Veza Farming Deity

    Aha. I was hunting when I realized I hadn't checked that in the new files.
    Then I realized that if it was in a new adventure, someone would be bound to mention it.
    Perhaps @Flaxative will update the Tracker page for us.
     
  7. battlezoby

    battlezoby Ogre

    Note: Updated "Disclaimer" since posting
    Not only was it a feature for players (somewhat regardless of timezone), but it was arguably a feature for the developers/owners too (meaning you, Sir Civil.)

    As I've posted many times, I'm worried about the day when CH will die due to compounded-disinterest, when lack of other players to play against decreases the interest in the game further...

    Although it's a bit "shady" to encourage people to populate the Multiplayer screen when AFK for the sake of the Double Dips (both Daily Deal and LF) but it also meant that there were
    people showing up there. In fact, it wasn't entirely pointless/deceptive in that it meant that things you said would go into their World Chat buffers and might be replied to later.
    It also helps "remind" the people who leave it open that it exists. I know of at least one person who would play less often if not for the game being listed as a background process
    while being left AFK.

    By encouraging people to leave the game open AFK (which clearly no more than about 60-100 people do World Wide on average after watching the /who stats over the years as I have), it brings Cardhunter
    that much closer to the day when the Mulitplayer screen looks so pathetic (due to slow day(s)) that seeing no-one on encourages people logging in and looking for a Ranked or League game
    to quit sooner than otherwise, compounding the problem and potentially "killing" the game. Many old games are "dead " because people think and say "you can't get a PvP match anymore."

    As I've said many times, I think I'm one of the few people who actually thinks about how certain game aspects affect the owners/developers and not just a simple knee-jerk "what do I think of the
    feature." Btw... along that line, I was actually hoping the new adventures were going to be paid adventures, so that they'd hopefully be bought and give Knights more of an incentive (and resources)
    toward keeping the game alive.

    Separately, the adventures have further diluted the LF and Loot Bandit across even more adventures. It would be really nice if there were doubles by now (or bigger returns.) The loot fairy was and
    Loot Bandit has been continuously diluted with each new set. So many players rely on the few players (and Flaxative's Tracker(*)) to track the LF. If people lose interest in that, that too could lead to partial
    meltdown of the game.

    I hope that you, meaning Sir Civil and Knights in general, can appreciate constructive criticism. I'm hoping you'd like to keep this game alive for a long time as I do, but who knows. Again, since I'm
    able to think as a developer, I suppose you might already be planning a followup game to "upsell" to existing Cardhunters and therefore are at least planning this version's eventual death.

    Addressing the "obvious bug" from another perspective, it most likely started out as a simple server/client problem as you implied, but the fact the Blue Manchu allowed it to exist for so many
    years while the Daily Deal webpage so very overtly tracked it for the overt reason of double dipping heavily implies that they saw it as a useful feature and left it in intentionally.

    Note: I had an old "programmer's dictionary" that defined "bug" as "see feature" and "feature" as "see bug." It defined "recursive" as "see recursive."

    That being said, I'm super glad that the web client is still working and was successfully updated. Nonetheless, I probably should post somewhere about the extent to which Flash's "death"
    and the alleged inability to update the flash version of the game was mis-implied and/or misreported.

    * - Actually, if Flaxative doesn't update the tracker, I might post my own version, so people should consider "bugging me" to do so if it becomes appropriate, although there
    would be a lag-time for me and my assistant to get around to it, and I'm not sure how dedicated we'd be timewise to manually distributing passwords and watching for abuse, obviously getting
    Flaxative's user/password list would help jump start that, but if Flaxative doesn't want to get around to updating the page, I'm guessing he wouldn't be up to sharing the passwords either.

    Disclaimer: I have an unrelated illogical reason to have a negative emotional
    reaction to too many adventures in CCG's that doesn't really apply here. I may or may not explain later, but either
    way, sorry if that illogical/emotional sentiment is bleeding through into my "tone" here. I'm sure some people are excited about the new Adventures, and I, personally, am glad the new content is
    adventures rather than something that might mess up the existing content.
     
    Last edited: Jul 13, 2021
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  8. Mr. Magnifico

    Mr. Magnifico Thaumaturge

    I installed the update on Steam but it's still saying it's a 32 bit application and hence won't run on my Mac. Are the patch notes wrong or is something messed up on my end?
     
  9. Sir Civil

    Sir Civil Administrator Staff Member

    It's the 2nd report we've received and we are investigating the problem currently. We also know that there are people playing CH via Mac right now without any problems, so it should not be the case. Have you tried to reinstall the game (+ you can remove it from your steam account -> right click on Card Hunter then Manage then Remove from account, after all of this you can add Card Hunter again)?
     
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  10. Mr. Magnifico

    Mr. Magnifico Thaumaturge

    I tried uninstalling and reinstalling and also removing it from my account entirely and reinstalling and in both cases it says "32 bit applications are no longer supported by macOS 10.15".
     
  11. Kalin

    Kalin Begat G'zok

    I, too, was a little disappointed there weren't a couple paid modules included. As much as I love free games, I also liked the bundles a lot. They gave me a good price on things I wanted (treasure hunts) and a big discount on things I normally wouldn't spend real money on (figures), which meant I felt like I was getting a good deal while supporting the devs. Just buying pizza makes it feel P2W, even though that's not what I'm spending the pizza on.
     
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  12. battlezoby

    battlezoby Ogre

    Attempting some Constructive Critisism regarding P.R. (Public Relations)

    I'm disappointed that this update wasn't surrounded by better PR. I, personally, wasn't expecting or hoping to be too excited or disappointed by new adventures, but I think it was a mistake to mix in the negative-PR of the Daily Deal Feature-Remove/Bug-fix along with it... So here's some suggestions (But see my "Note" as a "Disclaimer" below.)

    1. If I had known or suspected, I'd have suggested that Daily-Deal-Double-Dip change be kept separate from the new Content. Why mix in bad news to ruin such an exciting new announcement? My suggestion after the fact would be either:

    A) If the "fix/feature removal" was accidental, and you're prone to honesty, admit it. Then tell people you'll think about recreating it later. (*)

    B) If the "fix/feature removal" was intentional, and you're not too hung up on honesty, pretend "A)" above is true.

    C) If the "fix/feature removal" was intentional and you're prone to honesty, admit that it might have been a mistake to change it at this time, and that you'll THINK ABOUT reinstalling it when you can.

    2. You previously said or implied you'd consider a Double Loot-Fairy and/or Double-Loot Bandit update. Seriously, how many places do they have to hide since they were first introduced? I'm guessing it's close to double. I'd suggest updating the announcement and say that you'll think about implementing that, or better yet, come right out and say that the added adventures are probably "bringing Cardhunter Closer" to that. I know a double LF is a bit extreme, because the double adventures only affect the searchers and others are only affected by the delay until it's found. But I honestly think there is a zero downside to a double or even triple Loot Bandit now. Seriously, it's rarely ever found by most players, and could be buffed a lot before it's "overpowered" rather than "very obscure for most."

    3. While I'm very excited that the new content was updated into the browser, although it's not great that it's been said and/or implied doing so would be impossible. Mix the announcement that the Browser has been updated in, or make a new announcement with some of this stuff here separately soon.

    4. I said I was disappointed that there's no direct money generation from the release. Maybe consider another 33% off Pizza or other sale? For some people including myself, the browser update is big thing and I know we are more open to stocking up on Pizza now than we were while claims that it couldn't be updated were more credible.

    5. I previously mentioned it should be easy to restore Paypal functionality to the website, by making a link to a non-Flash HTML store. Maybe do it? (But not for the Steam version; that's very likely to make Steam annoyed at you, but would otherwise be great.)

    6. Regarding SSL problems with the web-client... I feel really dumb for not thinking of it sooner... I assume that the Flash server works over HTTP... so simply install a "standard" Web Proxy on the same "machine" (VPS server(s) I assume) that does whatever SSL you think is appropriate. Then have it connect to the local HTTP (or "obsolete" HTTPS protocol) version of the Flash process. Voila! Modern SSL on the same build! (If you're adverse to letting people use an unsecure connection, you can then firewall off the Flash process to all external traffic, so the proxy is the only public way in for a "security should not optional" approach.)

    Note: I'm only really at my peak concentration a few times a month, and I haven't had one of those since the update, so maybe I can comment "better" then, but... I had asked and suggested that new content be new adventures, so I feel bad my "constructive criticism" above wasn't better after the Knights did what I asked. So, trying to be a bit more constructive, here's some suggestions on PR, and again, hopefully I can give better advice later. I'm also busy during that time so I need to prioritize. My first priority is things that help me financially and some court-related concerns. After that, Flaxative's offer is probably/"unfortunately" more attractive than giving advice when there's no big hint it'll be acted upon. ( I said I might take over the LF tracker... from what my assistant said about a response from Flaxative, it's sounding more like "when we'll take it over" rather than "if.") xD

    * - And if you say you'll think about something, at least be honest enough to later actually THINK about it.
     
    Last edited: Jul 14, 2021
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  13. battlezoby

    battlezoby Ogre

    Interesting... starting to wonder if Knights has paid attention to some of what I posted.
    I've said that the only real pay-to-avoid-a-grind is the hole between level 19 and 21
    because you can only get level 20's via paid content. On one hand, this adventure once
    again skips from 19 to 21, so it's a repeat of the way the game makes the 19 to 21 gap
    a "pay-to-not-grind" by jumping from level 19 to 21. It also start at a low level to try
    to "suck in" newer players.

    One the other hand...

    Knights added a second a level 19 adventure, making the grind-gap
    between 19 and 21 a little easier without the paid content, with two
    level 19's per day to do, rather than just one! :)
     
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  14. Blizzrd33

    Blizzrd33 Orc Soldier

    I don't think this is correct. I understood it that on a Level 19 map, the items can be +/- 2 levels i.e. 17-21.
     
    boopn likes this.
  15. Bliz is mostly right. From the FAQ:

    "In the Campaign items will drop as loot for an adventure only if the item's level is equal to the adventure level +/- 3 (treasures will drop at +/- 4). Additionally the closer the item level is to the adventure level the more likely it is that it will drop as loot."
     
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  16. Flaxative

    Flaxative Party Leader

    I think battlezoby means that all Level 20 adventures are paid, but I'm not sure how important this is.
     
  17. Kalin

    Kalin Begat G'zok

    Also that the level cap was 21 without paid content. But now you can get to 23 with the last Eastpass module.
     
  18. Sir Veza

    Sir Veza Farming Deity

    I think Spreading Blight fixed this.
    (I still use Cyber Tyrant.)
     
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  19. battlezoby

    battlezoby Ogre

    BTW... although the Wiki doesn't seem to have any info on the new adventures,
    you can see at least the opening page and the first map of the adventures
    by clicking to them at http://ln.to/lfg

    Someone implied the opening page would be a unacceptable spoiler, but all the other maps
    on the Wiki show it, so I assume it's not and posted copies of them there.
     
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  20. Blizzrd33

    Blizzrd33 Orc Soldier

    24 actually.
     

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