Ranked Game Matchmaking - AIs or Humans?

I've just finished playing the SP campaign w/o having done any MP except the game that Gary introduces you to it. I'm reluctant to try it honestly. After being exposed to communities in WoW, LoL, and Dota, I'm very 20 times bitten 100 times shy when it comes to PvP. I understand that there are no more gold chests in SP, but what about the challenges? Do those have gold chests? At some point I'll try to get a single win in MP to see if I like it and get a reward, but at this point, what do I need more for as a SP? I've beaten the game. Do the challenges give you the gear to help you finish the challenges? If so, that's probably enough for me.

 

The challenges do have a gold chest reward the first time they're completed. I found that SP sets you up equipment-wise enough to start tackling challenges, but you really seem to need additional team members for many missions and raising them up can be a pain if you don't want to. Imo it's not too bad though.

 

Thanks, Andrew! That's good to know.

I have a second party that is level 8 or 9. I leveled them when I hit my wall at level 13/14. I also have another lower level one. I actually enjoy doing the quests again with my second and third parties. My third party is an elf warrior/human wizard/dwarf wizard. I call it my "Crazy" party since there's no healing and the tank has low HP.

 

I suggest you do give MP a chance. The community surrounding it is, generally speaking, very nice and welcoming.

You will meet the occasional staller. Also, every once in a while you might have to deal with those who put too much ego in the game.

Not stating this cause I want to discourage you. CH's competitive community is much, much better than those for LoL, Dota etc. But jerks can be found everywhere in the world I suppose.

Hope to see you and everybody else in the MP lobby soon

 

I pretty much routed my first 5 human opponents with the starter adventurer kit (maybe I'm just that awesome), so I wouldn't be too worried about getting started. I've just been doing a few matches to get the golden loot chest, so it may become an irritating exercise in, "OMG, U KILLED MY 2 GUYZ TURN 1", if I get ranked high enough to start playing people with uber gear. But until then, it's fun to play a few rounds and get the golden loot.

It would actually be a lot more fun if it weren't just a 3v3 party fight though... it looks like you might be able to do other stuff with the scenarios, but you don't get the golden loots .

As for the poll, I haven't played enough to cast a vote, but I'd obviously rather play vs the AI than get cruelly and routinely stomped by players with vastly superior cards. I would probably feel like those poor noobs I've been stomping with my starter kit.

 

Luckily enough, it's not always the player with the best cards who wins PvP matches. Actually, I can't tell you how many times I trashed opponents whose decks were chock full of powerful rares, while in comparison mine were pretty average.

This isn't to brag about how awesome I am (insider secret: I'm not). I genuinely want people to stop thinking they have no chance at PvP cause they don't have l33t decks or other similar and nonsensical assumptions.

Card Hunter's PvP is incredibly fair.

Also, for the ones who can't stand the idea of their rank going down via losing MP matches: remember that, as your rank goes down, you will fight less skilled opponents with worse decks, so your winrate will be impacted positively.

 

I'm not afraid of losing to people. I can enjoy a good loss if it's fun. It's the nature of competition. What I don't like are poor winners and poor losers. They suck the fun out of things.

 

After doing a couple more games... I would suggest reducing the game start timer a bit. I don't really want to wait 1:30.

 

The game start timer doesn't indicate the amount of time you need to wait for the game to start. Most of the times your match will begin right along.

 

There should be an "AI Only" button, no rank change and a series of random AI teams. That way both people who like playing people and people who don't can shoot for the epic chest reward. Right now 20 wins takes ~6 hours on a good day, which is fairly crazy.

 

I'd be happy with a single adventure like CardStock II that mimicked MP but used the MP maps and was somewhat random. You could only do it once a day, but got to play 3 matches for some level appropriate loot and XP if of appropriate level. At this point I do CardStock II daily since it gives me XP and a good chance at the higher level loot. But honestly, it's getting a bit boring, except for that one time I actually lost on the bridge fight. It took their priest and wizard 22 rounds to kill my priest.

 

Honestly don't know if the devs are still monitoring this post but I'll give my 2cents anyway.

Players should be able to choose to match with AI as a limited event per day (say 3-6 matches, enough for 2-3 gold chests). This will encourage new players to continue playing, even after the campaign is beaten. It will also give new players incentives to play everyday, and thus makes player retention easier. Many players are threatened/stressed or simply lack the time to play games against real players everyday (bot games are much faster). Making a system like this would also alleviate certain issues, like the immediate leavers (since they're trying to find an AI anyways), stallers, and those that simply don't want to play but hassle legitimate player because they want their daily chests, and also the lack of prizes for losing (which a lot of new players experience against more intermediate players).

Allowing players to do some dailies with the AI will enable them to gain valuable knowledge and strategy (for certain maps) and also give them a chance to outfit their decks in preparation for real MP play. An example of a game that allows this is Solforge (very similar type of dailies, but they allow AI matchups for 3 chests a day), therefore it just creates more motivated newbies and gives them a chance to not simply get wiped most rounds (because let's face it, the starter adventurer deck is simply that, it is quite lacking against more veteran players).

Simply put, as shown by the poll (57% as of this post), players want to be able to match up against AI. Even if it is just to test their decks, or simply have a game that goes quickly. And taking my suggestion into account would alleviate a lot of current problems. I think this gives the best of both worlds, veteran players will still want to do more than 3 rare chests, AND newbie players will at least be able to get 3 rare chests (per day). I have some more suggestions, but I would like to see if the devs are actually paying attention to this thread first.

Thanks guys.

 

That's a great idea vici. As for myself, I voted for matchups against AI too, but I think it would be good for the long term health of the community to cap it to one AI match per day, or until you get your first chest. The ability to win up to three chests seems like a lot compared to how easy it is to beat the AI.

 

Glad to see someone supporting the idea, but to be honest, 1 chest really isn't anything. Most of time time 1 chest = 2 worthless treasures + 2 maybe useful items anyways. AND I thought of the idea in order to retain the maximum amount of players without actually just giving away items for free. When people are able to farm a couple rares a day, they'll be able to make a viable MP deck sooner, and thus will be able to join the rest of the MP population sooner.

Considering this game boils down to a trading card game, it'll inevitably mean that all you're trying to do is hunt (obviously, since its part of the game's name), and getting 1 rare chest a day is simply too low of an incentive, because honestly, i'm certain most people are able to get the first chest after multiple tries anyways, so the only REAL thing you're doing is making the first chest easier, and not enticing the players to spend more time and build up their decks. The more items players get, the more attached they'll become to the game.

ALSO as stated in my post, the game solforge, which is a really popular up and coming game, allows players to get 3 chests a day which gives really awesome loot (Legendaries, whole booster packs, silver, everything you can possibly get by paying), AND that game is just a TCG, and yet they're still incredibly successful for giving away what they're selling. All in all, I don't think the longevity of the game will be in any kind of danger by giving 1-3 chests a day, and the more players that play, with better decks, will benefit everyone and create a more competitive and level playing field.

Sorry for the long winded response, and I totally understand what you're saying, but after playing solforge since they came out, I'm still a part of their playing base because I was able to freely build up my decks daily and thus able to compete with more veteran players. The point of the dailies is to help players build up their decks, but it just seems that at the moment, only the more veteran players are able to build quickly while the newer players have a tough time getting loot.

 

I would say let them do 2 "guaranteed instant start AI opponent" matches per day.

This gets you the first gold chest, which means items begin to flesh out your MP deck and make you confident.

And it puts you ONE lousy human opponent win away from another gold chest. Which should still be incentive for people to line up for a human enemy.


However, I would add to this that either these 2 AI auto-matches a day are the ONLY AI opponents you ever see, or that the timer to wait for a human is extended to at least double what it is now. This to remove the "I am waiting for my third AI" people from the Human Queue.

 

No matter how many chests you give people, they'll always want more, so there will always be the guys that abandon for AI. But the reason why its so prevalent right now is because getting chests are rather difficult for new players. If 2-3 chests are guaranteed, a lot of players will be less likely to waste their time abandoning, since they can just get 2-3 a day, and play if they like. Because honestly, 2-3 isn't hurting anyone, and since everyone is allowed it, it'll be fair. Either way, I think AI matches should be allowed, at least a limited amount

 

I see what you're saying, and it does make sense that new players would like to build up their collection through AI matches. It would also be a good way to familarise yourself with the maps on rotation. I remember practicing Q2DM1 and Q2DM3 for Quake 2 as singleplayer maps, over and over again, until I was comfortable with the level geometry. I imagine it will be similar for new players who want to know how the maps look like, where the bottlenecks are, etc.

 

I am saying that ONE is just as good as 2-3. Most people who are afraid of human opponents are casual players. They don't put in tons of time. And you will eventually get a strong deck even with just one chest being "freebie" per day. Allowing the second AI opponent for a basic chest gets you back to the "Come on, just ONE lousy win against a human..." lure of another gold, without having to re-do the reward layout.

One auto-AI per day is lenient on the people afraid of Humans who still want to grow. More than that is just supplying gear to people for the SP campaign who will NEVER join the ranks of Human opponents in PvP.