I suggest dropping the club membership payment model to help attract and keep players. The club membership model is too much like a subscription fee, something that I have developed a strong antipathy for after playing WoW. I really enjoy this game so far, but the Club Membership aspect is making me think I should just quit while I'm ahead. I don't mind microtransactions in games--I've spent plenty in League of Legends and an embarrassing amount in Guild Wars 2. But the "dangle loot in front of your nose every single time you play until you pay us a monthly fee" is really turning me off the game. I'd be fine with buying pizza to pay for chests from the chest shop--eager to, in fact. But the club thing makes me just flat out not want to play. My friend who told me about the beta in the first place has already stopped playing due to this same concern. And I honestly think the membership fee model is going to be less effective than one-time purchases. In less than a year of playing Guild Wars 2, I've already spent more in their gem shop than I did on WoW's subscription fees in years of playing. I like the game and I'm ready to buy pizza-- except for this nauseating club business. Please take it out of the game before I lose my appetite completely.
The only thing that bugs me about the Club Membership is the fact that I've seen not one, but two Legendary drops in the club loot section. It seems as if you're not just getting more loot, but better loot. Often times it seems as if club loot is of higher quality than the stuff you'd get normally. If you'd get grays, club loot is green. If you get greens, club loot is blue. If this isn't just my imagination, then I greatly disagree with it. Paying a fee to get an extra item is fine. Paying a fee to get an extra better item isn't, in my opinion.
The better loot in the club is pure RNG, but that's how we as human react to these things. However, that being said - not really a fan of the club myself, and would have preferred a one time purchase.
It is specifically related to the most rare item the chest guarantees. So if the chest is a "rare or better" then so is the club item's rarity has the same chance, "rare or better" Sometimes it's more rare, sometimes it's less rare than the top item that appears in the chest. It is always more rare than the lower items in the chest.
I like the club membership. It's pretty cheap and despite your perceptions, it doesn't really give you any better loot. I also think the whole, dangling carrot, is just good marketing. I think buying "booster packs" model will have a greater negative affect than subscriptions. How many Magic the gathering players stop playing because of how expensive it is? I personally have completely sworn off constructed deck play because of cost. A subscription model is a upper bound on how much I have to spend on something. Whereas buying chest is endless money sink.
I think you are confusing mandatory subscription fee with optional subscription fee. A mandatory subscription fee is a big barrier to entry, some people don't play WoW because of it, but I don't see why an optional subscription fee would keep you from playing Card Hunter. As long as you play the campaign, there is no difference between "I don't pay the optional subscription fee" and "Blue Manchu removed the optional subscription fee from the game", the effect on you is exactly the same. Note that there is no negative effect if you just buy the Card Hunter Club membership for a month or three and then stop paying. And at least in the first month I agree with agent8261 that it is pretty cheap: You can easily finish the campaign up to the current end in a month, and there are a LOT of adventures which give guaranteed rares or even epics the first time you finish, thus giving you an extra rare or epic from the Club membership. At the pace I'm playing, I'm getting a lot more items from 1 month of Club membership than I would get from 300 pizza worth of chests.
Thanks for your reply, but I'm not actually confused at all-- my point was more that the club membership *feels* like a subscription fee, not that it is one. The aspect of subscription fees that makes me nauseous isn't the mandatory nature, nor the amount of money spent. If you read my post, you'll see that I actually argue against subscription fees on the grounds that they will cause me to spend LESS money on the game, not more. I object to the *feeling* of the club membership. If I pay for a month of membership, I'm committing to playing a ton during that month or feel like I'm wasting money. I prefer games I can put down and pick up at will. It should be a hobby, not a job. I've spent a lot of money on League of Legends, but I was able to take a break as soon as I felt like playing something else. And the loot dangling aspect is just obnoxious. I'd object far less if there weren't constant reminders of what I'm missing out on. It makes me feel like I'm playing some pay-to-win mobile game where the game's purpose is to empty my wallet, not entertain me. If I wanted to play Farmville or whatever I would. Asking for money non-stop is just tacky. The games I enjoy and give my dollars to have shops that you can always turn to if you want, but they don't stop every couple of minutes and encourage you to whip out your credit card. I think a discreet shopping element is fine and respectful of the customer. The constant pressure to buy a membership is not. It feels icky and makes me want to go do something else.
I don't mind the membership as much as Persephone, but totally understand where s/he is coming from. I don't do subscription services for the same reason - I don't want to feel like I'm obligated to play the game, because I'd rather not play than play out of obligation. I think LoL is the benchmark for how to do free-to-play correctly, and lord knows they're rolling in money. In my estimation, that's because they adhere to a few principles: 1) You cannot buy anything that gives you a competitive advantage, which means you cannot pay to win. 2) Anything you can buy that has a non-cosmetic effect on the game (e.g. characters) you can also buy with currency earned in game. 3) The only things you have to spend real money on are basically cosmetic / time related (skins and experience boosts). 4) The game is horribly fun, addictive, and multiplayer focused, which makes (3) inexplicably appealing. When you're playing LoL, you never feel like you're getting the shake down for cash, you never feel like you're paying to win, and you never feel like you really need to spend any money at all... and yet somehow I've blown tons of cash on it.
LoL is a mp only game, where people really want to show they're different. This is partly a sp game (with 3 classes and a limited amount of skins), so that analogy is a bit hard to make. Som people won't even plat the mp - and the game wasn't even designed with it from the start. Don't think this game would survive on purely cosmetical sales for a tbs mp setting tbh.
I keep track of every item I see in the game, so I can provide some numbers: I've seen 6 legendaries: 0 in chests 3 in the rare shop 3 in club rewards I've seen 28 epics: 7 in chests 5 in treasure hunts (still locked) 15 in the rare shop 1 in club rewards Huh, that's not at all the result I was expecting. (Because I'm not specifically tracking this information, anything that showed up in more than one category is counted towards the category I listed first.)
Considering the type of game I don't consider it a subscription fee as it implies that you are required to pay it. I prefer subscription service as its another thing they can provide for you. Just like with cable you don't have to buy a subscription service to HBO or Showtime, but you will miss out on some cool shows.
Also see this thread: http://www.cardhunter.com/forum/posts/25444/ A few of the better suggestions include paying pizza per "club reward" you receive and paying pizza to be able to replay missions.
League of Legends currently has 5 million players online at the same time every day, out of 32.5 million players signed up, so they don't need to sell much per player to be profitable. No offense, but I doubt that Card Hunter is going to reach those numbers. We'd be lucky if we get 5,000 peak concurrent players. The economic reality is that niche products have to be more expensive than mass market products.
I am telling about 1,000 people per day via my blog. The problem is that turn-based tactical games do inherently not attract as many people as shooters or MOBAs.
As far as I know the wait time is random. There is no "first in, first out" list, they just draw people from the list of everybody who signed up. You can get in the day after you signed up, or you could be waiting for months.
