[Feedback] Why I'm stopping playing Card Hunter

Hello,
While I've enjoyed most of my initial experience with Card Hunter, chances are I won't be playing anymore. While most of the game is solid, there is a number of problems, in my humble opinion, that range from "quite annoying" to "I won't put up with this". I'm a game developer myself and I know I'd like to know why people are stopping playing my game so I can fix it, so here are my reasons:

1. I'm bored because every single level 7 battle -- where I'm stuck -- has the exact same pattern: tough enemies with high armor (way better than anything I have available) with ranged melee attacks defeat me over long, boring fights. The late missions of "Beneath the Frozen Earth", "The Throne of Stench" and "Forest of Souls" all end with my characters bashing ineffectively against armored enemies who block 3/4 or 8/9 of my attacks (because they have 2 armor cards in hand). It's long, it's tedious and it lacks variety.
2. The game punishes you severely for pressing the wrong button. Clicked the wrong card by mistake? Tough. In many cases, you must play that card, there is no undo even if you haven't selected a target to attack or where to move. Forgot to change the equipment of your characters at the same time you were picking the loot? Tough. You can't go back in the menus nor is there any way to change your equipped gear anywhere. If you had the wrong equipment for the quest you'll have to fail the level before you can correct your mistake, which eats one of your retries.
3. Talking of limited retries, whose idea was this? If there is one reason why I'm frustrated with Card Hunter, it's the stupid decision to make me redo levels I've already completed because I failed at a later level because of bad luck, bad interface (see above) or even a genuine mistake I made. I have zero tolerance for games that waste my time. This feature doesn't make me feel like spending money on the game, it makes me feel like stopping playing and warning my friends about this poor feature.
4. Talking of waste of time, I can already feel the necessity to grind to get better gear and experience to progress in any significant way. I realize you see this as a way to drive monetization (I know all the tricks ), but instead it drives me to leave the game before it becomes a chore rather than fun.
5. Frankly, I don't think this game is a good candidate for the F2P model. This is a game that targets hardcore gamers, the type who's been playing games for decades. I don't believe this demographic likes F2P mechanics -- in fact, I can't think of a worse demographic for it. What's more, this business model forces designers to make the game's pacing and balance less fun in order to force players to spend money to return to the fun. I would have gladly paid $15-20 for the whole, not F2P game, but there's no way I will pay a cent to a game that creates artificial frustration then asks me to pay to remove that frustration.
6. Especially not with the price you've set on this game. $25 for a limited number of adventures, then you're supposed to pay $10 per month on top of that, and then pay even more on top of that to get everything! Are you nuts? I can go on Steam and get a bunch of AAA games for that kind of money during sales.

Anyway, that's just one opinion, but in my experience for every disgruntled player who voices his opinion, there are at least 10 who stay silent. I'm sure your fans will disagree with all my points, but I don't care. I will just stop playing Card Hunter without spending a cent and go on with other, less expensive games that respect my time. As I said, I enjoyed a large part of the game, it has the potential for greatness, but it has flaws that I can't look past.

 

Well. I personally am greatly enjoying the game .

Bye. Don't forget to drop in now and again to see us.

 

A few suggestions if you ever do decide to come back.

1. Armor is a pain but you can use it also so make sure you actively use it when you can.

As for the enemies using it make sure you have equipment that can remove them such as my wizard has a great item called: Akon's Amulet and I absolutely love it and the only drawback is it requires a minor power token but worth using it 90% of the time it seems.

There are lower level cards that have other types I have found but can have drawbacks but probably the easiest you can do is simply don't use a divine item for your cleric and you will get 3 Wavering Faith, http://wiki.cardhuntria.com/wiki/Cards/Wavering_Faith item link doesn't seem to work for that for me, by default and usually the armor will be the oldest cards the player has and you can remove them that way.

And remember that removing it from one guy will hit all of those same guys in a campaign and can help a ton.

2. Changing your gear during a battle is not something you can usually do while in combat but something that has to be planned ahead of time and you can store your load outs for certain ones you find hard to make swapping quicker. There is a post talking about being able to cancel your movement card as most other cards usually have this option unless there is only one target available then it does it automatically.

3. You can pay some gold do redo, it's cheap enough I find, where if you don't want to do the earlier missions it can be worth it but there needs to be a limit otherwise you can simply do it over and over and keep bashing at it until you get lucky enough to finish it if you don't take to time to regear for the mission and after failing once or so you should know what you are facing and equip for it.

Otherwise you may need to do some other quests to get better gear for a bit as I had to do that once or twice so far.

4. Gear is important in any game yet this game lets you get them very fast, getting epic / legendary items from repeat missions always makes me feel happy, so you can redo some of the earlier ones quick if you need more and seems very balanced and fair to me and there is usually a ton to do each day.

5. So far from what I have experienced, my 3 main characters are almost level 10, is the opposite.

Sure pvp matches can get nasty at times but the campaign so far has been fun, one of the compass of xorr quests where you have to rush to a victory point room has been the worst I have had to experiance. I had little extra movement cards for awhile but was finally able to complete it after getting some equipment to deal with it and it was very close even then.

6. As for the prices you get 150 free pizza and a free deck of equipment while playing the campaign and that pizza alone helps you get a few of those treasure quests, or half way almost if you want to unlock all of them at once.

Also you get a month with that option and some extra avatars but even then the $10 a month this is not something that is absolutely required as it offers you extra loot to help speed up your collection so may not be something everyone wants even if it does help a bit.

 

I guess not every game is for everyone. Different people like different things, etc. And I think it's good that you've given your feedback for why you aren't enjoying the game.

I do have a few things to say about some of the points you raised though:

1. Throughout the campaign, different adventures have different challenges for the player to overcome. You've described some levels where the main challenge is that the enemy has strong armour. There are other challenges where the enemies have lots of moves and long range attacks; and where the enemies have lots of very powerful block cards; and where the enemies simply have a far superior starting position - and so on. The game generally gets harder throughout the campaign, but it certainly doesn't lack variety in terms of the type of challenges the player must overcome and different people struggle with different challenges. The trick is not to just keep trying to same failed strategy over and over again in the hope that you'll get lucky and beat it, but rather you should try to adjust your equipment and techniques in a way that negates the strength of your enemies, and exploits their weaknesses. For example, if armoured melee attackers are giving you trouble, you might want to consider using cards to remove their armour, such as Dissolve Armor, Wavering Faith, Memory Loss, Perplexing Ray, etc. Or use penetrating attacks to simply bypass their armour. Or use your wizard's long range attacks and lava terrain and stuff like that to hurt them without letting them get close enough to hit you with their melee attacks.
2. The fact that move cards cannot be canceled is a common complaint. There are some game-mechanics reasons why moves cannot be canceled, but that definitely is a source of frustration for many players.
3. Limited retries add some tension / pressure / adrenaline to the challenge. At least, that's my guess for why there is a limit. It is possible to lose due to bad luck, but the fact that you give a few attempts is enough to deal with that. If you're losing due to 'luck' three times in a row, then I suggest that luck isn't really the reason you're losing. You should consider changing your strategy.
4. Getting more equipment does make things easier, but the game most certainly definitely unreservedly gives players everything they need to beat every challenge without having to grind or pay money. Heaps of players have managed to get through the campaign without replaying any mission and without paying any money. It really isn't as bad as you're making it out to be.
5. I have no comment for the business advice you're giving here.
6. Same.

(Unsurprisingly, I was ninjaed while writing this long post.)

 

Since you took all the time to write out these elaborate points, I'll take a stab at addressing them.

1: Yes, the single player campaign becomes progressively more difficult. However, any fan of tactics / CCG will absolutely relish this challenge, and to be honest, those armor stacking enemies can be easily countered with 1 or 2 mage items.

2: The lack of an "undo" feature adds gravity and realism to combat, this is a good thing.

3: If there were unlimited retries to every battle, there would be no implied penalty to failure. This way, you stay invested and excited about the outcome of your heroes during their adventures.

4: What you call "grinding" I call playing card hunter, and it's positively delightful.

5: I have been playing games for 15 years (SNES at eight), and consider myself a "hardcore" gamer as you describe. What does this have to do with the free-to-play business model? Nobody's being forced to pay anything here (especially to progress), though those of us who enjoy the game obviously do.

6: You don't have to pay $25; you could pay $100 or as little as $10. Or nothing at all! I don't understand how you can complain about the price when there is no price

Anyways, as the others mentioned, come back eventually to give it another try, as things are only going to improve from here.

 

Good points have been made in response to all of these, but I'll take a stab at 5 & 6:

5) What do you mean by "hardcore"? I've been playing games since pong, even before Atari came out. Since then, almost every edition of D&D, AD&D, lots of table-tops, and just about every popular mmo out there. And I support new mmo's by playing in alphas/betas and subbing if they're good. That's how I came across this one & was glued to it because Card Hunter was made with collaboration by Gary F****ing Gygax! The CREATOR of Dungeons & Dragons!! No one is more hardcore than him! The concept for Card Hunter is great, and I could see owning a table top version of this game. Dungeons & Dragons Online is another example of a f2p game that appeals to "hardcore" AD&D gamers as well as mmo fans or casual gamers, and is based on Gary Gygax's work. But Card Hunter is a lot easier to bring a new gamer in with. No long rulebooks to follow. Its an easy to follow concept that works.

6) F2P works because you can pay for what you can, but if all you have is time (but no money), you can still have fun. The loot is very generous for a free to play game. I just wish there was a way to buy pizzas for gold. Since there's no gold spamming possible (something that kills a lot of mmo's), the economy is "safe" so I can see an option being implemented in-game. 100 Gold to 1 pizza maybe? It would cost 8,000 gold to get a paper avatar. That's a lot of work for us to earn it! And as a supplemental income for the devs, maybe if we don't have an active membership we see advertisements. Its the advertisers that are basically paying for this alternate form of currency. We play the game more by giving ourselves goals like buying a new adventure, we see more advertisements, the game devs make money on them, and its a win-win. Pagnarok's complaint would be nullified if the game had this "zero-pay way"...

 

Yes, this is a F2P game; but it seems unlike other F2Ps it provides you pretty much the whole game. Which is a big plus IMO.
I guess you don't have to subscribe for months, you can collect your loot during subscription and use those items later without a subscription. Most other F2P games punish you direly for not paying (limited level, character slots, inventory slots, raid dungeons you name it).

I also got frustrated not being able to cancel my move card. It is explained on "How to play" page that it is because of triggered effects. I don't know maybe they'll be able to fix that somehow. Until that time I guess we players are gonna have to learn to think more before clicking.

I just started this game; so these are my initial opinions. They might change over time playing the game. I don't mind having to grind a little. When it comes to "Wasting time", maybe the whole point of playing games is about that.

 

Small interruption: Wavering Faith (the item doesn't exist!) vs Wavering Faith (the card) matters !

 

You are right. The game is not Candy Crush. One actually has to react to new conditions and need to come up with new strategies. You know, problem solving. Good luck finding a game that fits you better! If you follow the suggestions above, you'll be more successful with the game.

 

The game is free. You can remove armors by forcing discards, playing one of the several low level wizard spells that do just that, use armor penetrating melee, use acid terrain, or play for time since the enemy will usually end up discarding the cards giving you trouble if you make it a few more rounds.

You can continue a level if you just pay the minimal 15g fee. this extends into the quests that open up after you finish the campaign. a limited number of tries, with a nominal price for repeated failure, is reasonable. it's also there to encourage you to try changing something instead of losing 20 times in a row

You don't need to grind. ever. there's no time sink to force you to play for gear before progressing. progression IS gear. you're at roughly the same stage of the game as anyone else who plays (or, at least anyone without club membership).

The game is completely beatable without paying a cent. The game is F2P, but you get nearly all the content for free. You can unlock extra dungeons, but they're not part of the plot. The gear they give is rarely very helpful (in my experience). This is basically a free game. You can pay $10 to unlock all extra content, or $20 for all dungeons AND club membership. This game has more than enough content and replayability to merit a one time $20 fee. If you want to continue playing, or do multiplayer, club membership essentially becomes a $10 subscription fee, which is about as low as you'd see, and again, is completely unrequired.


You're entitled to your opinion(s). Saying it's too hard, too expensive, etc, may all be valid from your perspective. But I think you're in the minority. On the grand scale, relative to other games and simply compared to the product you get, this game is an amazing bargain. Free if you want, $10/20 for full content/extra loot. Fully supported versus multiplayer, on release (many games release it later on). Knowing what I know about the game, if it came in a box and cost $50, I'd gladly purchase it.

 

Card Hunter Crush? Candy Card Hunter? Hmmmm....

 

You know what, I want that minigame inbetween my inventory management sessions. Maybe use the actual interface of the Keep too. Matches duplicate items to sell for gold.

 

Blue Manchu collaborated on this with Gary Gygax??? The guy has been dead for over 5 years, how long has this game been in development? Or are you saying Blue Manchu are a bunch of necromancers!?!

 

Lol, That was what first popped into my head when I read the OP. AI will never give a good challenge to a human player. Multiplayer (MP) is where is at. Single player is just trying to teach you the skills you need to survive in (MP), all wrapped in a cute storyline.

I believe they used a DM screen as a makeshift ouija bord

 

Gygax is actually still alive and Joe has him chained up in his basement.

 

Tell that to FireFall:

http://www.firefallthegame.com/news/an-important-letter-about-pvp


I don't deny that MP is where players who want a significant challenge by pitting themselves against other players should go, but it takes a lot of commitment to be competitive at that, plus putting up with all the problems typically associated with playing games against random online people. But since they set up the game with a significant, if not dominant single player component they now have certain expectations they have to meet. Only Blue Manchu could answer what percentage of single player campaign users convert to regular MP players, but I'm sure they're anxious to chase dollars from both audiences. If they wanted to go only cater to MP, they'd have been better off designing a purely MP game from the ground up, rather than attracting a SP audience who will continue to want new content.

 

Thanks. Another game I have to check out. Haven't played an mmo shooter since Tabula Rasa.

All good points. I thought OP was calling for SP nerf, which I think is bad for the game. They already nerfed war monkeys and Yellow dragon, which I am none too happy about.

 

OP here. Some interesting answers, so let me add some more details to what I was saying.

I understand that the way the game is setup is to encourage you to change strategy to overcome challenges. Problem is, the game makes it really annoying to do just that. When you encounter a challenging mission, you first have to try it to see what cards you need, die, lose a "life" and try again. This is poor level design -- you shouldn't have to fail once to know what equipment you should have equipped in the first place. Good level design makes it so a brilliant player could succeed every level on his first try, otherwise it becomes trial and error.

But, you know, that's not a huge problem. Except that by trying, you've just lost 1 life. If you run out of lives on the last level, you're going to have to replay 2 other levels, losing a good 30-40 minutes replaying levels you've already completed. I don't want to do that. Maybe you find it fun to be punished by your entertainment and it makes you care more about playing well -- good for you -- but it just makes me want to quit and play another game that doesn't have a progress system dating from last century. Yeah, I could spend gold -- more gold than I get from completing the mission -- but that's just a cheap ploy to get me to purchase more gold. I don't like feeling being manipulated, and that's exactly what's happening.

There is already a cost with failing a mission: an emotional cost with failure and a time cost with having to play the mission again. There's no reason to add a larger time cost and a gold cost on top of that.

Of course, I should just adapt my gear to better complete the level. Except the game does its best to make that as hard as possible. The only way to change equipped gear between levels is strangely unintuitive: you can change it while picking the loot, but god forbid you forget to change something because you can't return to the gear menu after you quit it. Also, a few times I figured I would need to buy some new gear to complete a level. Except I can't. Not without leaving the whole dungeon and having to restart it from scratch. So the choice becomes: do I cut my losses and go to the shop now but waste time by replaying the entire dungeon, or do I try to push my luck even though I'm probably screwed? I have the choice between two losing propositions -- how fun! And don't tell me it's for realism. This is a game where your warrior doesn't wear an armor until he happens to randomly draw an armor card. Realism is not part of this game (and that's fine).

And my other points still stand:

• 9 levels in a row about fighting dudes with the same type of challenge (high armor, ranged melee attacks) is just poor pacing and kills variety. Add to that having to replay some levels a few times and the game becomes very repetitive.
• Replaying previous levels to get better loot or gold is grinding. Some players don't mind it (otherwise WoW wouldn't be a hit...) but I can't stand it. Personal tastes.
• The purchase tiers are just too high. I have to pay the price of another full indie game ($10) to get the bare minimum available, which is a tiny part of the game. It feels like a rip-off. Of course, I could play for free, but from the developer's point of view it's not a good thing at all when players defend your game by saying "you can easily complete the whole campaign for free!". I don't think this game will monetize very well. Of course, as players you really don't have to care.

Also, to clarify, I'm certainly not saying it's a bad thing that this game is for hardcore gamers. That's perfectly fine, I fit that demographic myself. What I'm saying is that old school hardcore PC gamers aren't the type of people who likes F2P games in general. Heck, on most sites I go this type of player downright despises F2P. I think the game would do better as a stand-alone regular game.

Why do some people think I said I would rather play Candy Crush? I'm saying this game shouldn't be F2P and the answer I get is that I should return to playing casual F2P games? That doesn't even make sense. Is it this forum's stock defensive position, that everybody who critics the game must be a casual gamer?

 

You can do both, actually. You can drag the screen when the adventure module is showing to reveal the paper dolls. To buy stuff while in an adventure, go to multiplayer, visit the shops there and come back to campaign. The new stuff is there. I don't know if both of these are bugs and not officially supported, but they do work at the moment. It's not the same as being easily accessible features but if you currently want to keep playing Card Hunter with more convenience, there it is.