Daily Free Card/Chest

This is not my original idea. It's something that many online games use, and people seem to like it.


Card Hunter should have a daily free card/chest system. This is how I would do it:

1. You login
2. "Free Daily Card" window opens
3. You see 3 cards, all face down. One is common, one is uncommon, and the last one is rare (or better?).
4. You click one of the cards and win it.

The fun part would be to try to pick the rare card. There could also be 5 cards if one in third odds for a rare card is considered too good. Or you could do something similar but with chests. Or you could do a slot machine thing with the cards. Doesn't really matter, as long as there would be this fun little "free card" minigame.

The obvious upside of this would be to get people login every day. From players' perspective it's also good because people like free stuff and it would be a nice way to start your gaming session, without giving any huge advantage card-wise.

EDIT: And when I talk about a "card" I actually mean an item.

 

The thing is, playing a MP match can be time-consuming and mentally demanding. Sometimes you don't feel like that - you just want to unwind and play a video game.

Having the daily reward tied to MP matches means that on days where you don't really feel like playing MP, you really have no impetus to log in and play CH.

What OP is suggesting is something that many F2P and browser games have implemented because it gives players a reason to log in, regardless of how involved of a play experience they're looking for that day.

Having said that, I feel like tying a reward to something as basic as simply logging in feels a bit...cheap. I feel like a better solution would be to tie the reward to something that's simply less demanding than a MP match. It's been suggested before, but having a different adventure chosen randomly each day that gives out bonus loot for completion (for instance, 2 additional pieces of loot with 1 guaranteed rare) would fit the bill, as SP is much less demanding than MP.

Or, y'know, do both.

 

YES

 

Yes, it definitely has a similar effect, but it also requires that one MP win, and poor SP players get nothing.

What I suggested would be like a gift for being active. If the item/chest was totally free, it would be like you guys saying "Good to see you again, here's something for you for being awesome, have fun playing!". Players respond well to things like that, and it might get them to login even when they don't have time to play, making the MP lobby a kind of social hub where people login to get their daily reward and have a little chat. It's a good thing for the community.

Then again giving something for free might be seen as "wrong" by some people, and I can totally get that. But based on what I've seen with other games, I think that the majority wouldn't have a problem with.


This goes off-topic a bit, but you mentioned those MP reward chests.. I wouldn't mind seeing a change with those as well.

I get the logic behind diminishing rewards as you get more and more wins because that shortens the gap between casuals and hardcore players. But I also know lots of players (like me) who often stop playing MP after the 6th win because the rewards get so bad. After those initial 6 wins, you need a total of 14 wins to get two good chests, which is hours and hours of gaming. It's just not worth it if you are looking for items only, and not rating. The current system actually discourages playing instead of doing the opposite like it should.

A better system imo would be where you would first get more gold chests (like it is now), after which it would stabilise to something like a gold chest after every 3rd or 4th win. Something like this:

1. Gold
2. Regular
3. Gold
4. Regular
5. Regular
6. Gold
7. Regular
8. Regular
9. Gold
10. Regular
11. Regular
12. Gold
13. Regular
14. Regular
15. Regular
16. Gold
17. Regular
18. Regular
19. Regular
20. Purple

Something like this would give MP players more motivation to go for that 20th chest because you wouldn't have that lame 8 regular chest streak.

It could work, but it could also discourage playing after that first win because the rewards diminish too much. Many would get the one awesome chest and logout. I think that the gold chest is a pretty good reward for the first win.

EDIT: Ok, Neofalcon already mentioned some of the things I said. I need to type faster.

 

I would rather see the MP reward system completely overhauled to take into account either the total playing time (because harder games take more time), or at least, the elo rating of the opponents played (same reason as before). That would give an incentive to play the game instead of encouraging people to get as many cheap wins as quickly as possible. The added benefit would be that there would be no need to punish players for resigning early anymore.

 

I don't think that total playing time is directly related to how hard the match is. With certain builds you need more time to think, and some people need more time than others. That has nothing to do with match difficulty. Also it would be weird if you were actually rewarded for playing slow. You could exploit it by simply stalling. If something playing time related was implemented, it should be the exact opposite where you get rewarded for playing fast. But I personally think we should keep playing time out of this.

Rewards based on ELO rating make much more sense. For example opponents with a 1600+ rating would give you slightly better loot than opponents with a 1500+ rating. So when that icon next to your name changes, so does the loot.

How about this. You would get your basic loot like how it is now, but you would also get a bonus item/chest based on the rating of your opponent. A perfect solution.

 

I did not mean to reward victories acording to the time spent, just to award chests acording to this. Something like 1 chest every hour played. Playing slowly or quickly would have no influence on the result, and people could play normally. Stalling would just make you play less games in the same amount of time, without giving any extra reward compared to playing quiclky (playing 10 games an hour or 3 would give the same reward. The problem would be that it would reward AFKing, though, which would be very bad too, so awarding rewards depending on the elo rating of the opponent would work better indeed.

 

I still really like the idea of mp rewards based on vp's earned in game (with a "bonus" vp or two earned for winning). Whenever you pass a vp milestone, you'd get a bonus chest.

With one bonus vp for a victory, it might look like:

7 vp gold chest
14 common chest
21 gold chest
...
140 epic chest

The potential problem would be with influencing player strategy ("I'd rather guarantee I get a few vp than try something risky to win" or "dude you're going to win just let me have some vp").

 

I agree. I can only speak for myself, but I would be more motivated to play MP and try to get a good rating if there were some rewards to it. Right now, I don't care much, and I still have a quite a bit of SP to clear.

Some ideas:

- Extra daily MP chests for high ELO ranking. For example, at 1500+ another 5 chests unlock, of which #25 is legendary. (At that level, most players will have quite a good selection of legendaries anyway)

- A small amount of pizza if you defeat top-ranking opponents. (Top 20: 1 slice. Top 5: 2 slices)

 

Since every first match of the day is versus mom at the 1500+ ratings (Also an issue to consider by the way), I haven't had any problems lately, but I remember days where I had to play several matches before I got my first win. Sometimes luck just seems to have run out and it would be preferable to just log off and do something else. I can imagine it can be frustrating to have won nothing at all on such a day, despite the first gold chest being seemingly easy to obtain.

 

Anytime I play a game that just hands me a free prize the moment I log in, I feel the experience was cheapened a little, and now the developers just need to augment the difficulty of the entire rest of the game to compensate for the fact that I've got this new sort of income. Twice now I've played a game where the players whined for this sort of thing, and the developer's response was to just keep throwing larger and larger stacks of healing potions at us for free on a daily basis. Healing potions didn't seem terribly valuable, being a consumable and all, and nobody was particularly ever grateful that they got them when they really wanted something more valuable, but I tell you, hardly anyone ever died anymore after that. We were all rolling in the heals... and frankly we didn't deserve to be. It broke the game's difficulty level.

The times I like this sort of system is when today's reward isn't free, but for something I did all the setup for the last time I played. Then it doesn't feel like it's just random treasure being thrown at me for showing up, but a reward for something that I've done that just took time to set up, so I feel compelled to check back in regularly to see if I've "caught" anything yet. It's got the same patience vs reward feel as fishing has, when done right. Also, if it didn't work, I feel compelled to change my tactics around (play the game more) to ensure it works as efficiently as possible the next time around.

One way this could work right off the bat would be to do something like what Neverwinter does with it's custom dungeons, or the Mighty Quest for Epic Loot does with it's player-created housing. If I own a dungeon that I created that someone found fun enough to play, then reward me for the attempt that they made, and perhaps give me a reward based on whether or not their attempt was successful. This could behave like a broader scale version of the Mauve Manticore, for instance. Players who want to just chill and play a game could enjoy some relaxing content creation, players who want a bit more stress could challenge that content, and players who want the extreme could attempt something more PvP oriented on it.
Then when the content creators (in this example) log in, they get a little bit of income right from the get-go for something they enjoyed doing the last time they played. This would hopefully be something that would encourage them to remember the game and check it out periodically on rainy days, when normally they wouldn't even feel in the mood to log back in again.

 

i dont think adding a bonus vs players rating is viable as it open the door for loot collusion at the top. i think a better option is to have a random campaign map give a bonus guarenteed rare or better on completion of the module.

this also puts incentive on membership

 

I like the idea of user-driven content providing extra rewards. Pretty simple. Beat one user-generated map, get a bonus chest. Obviously the devs would have to decide which scenarios are challenging enough but if it's one and only one, it won't be so out of whack, and then you can come up with rewards for the creators of the maps that are most popular/challenging/etc.

 

I'm against the free daily chest. We already get a gold chest from MP and a new randimar every week.
The game is build around dungeon exploring, finding loot and having fun playing the game.
A daily quest (random dungeon?) is a fine idea, so you get to visit dungeons that you do not play anymore.

 

I love the daily bonus-quest idea. Sometimes the dice gods just frown on MP, and it's nice to go thwack some kobolds instead.

 

I have to disagree with the idea of opponent rating adding extra bonuses to chests. It seems like it would foster rating-camping, and give players that already have high amounts of loot, even more. I think a great system would be to have a multiplayer pre-made alternate queue system, where you select from several characters that have pre-determined items, in any class composition you like, and you face another opponent who does the same. Loot could be based on how many games you could win against other opponents in a row, with each consecutive win adding an additional chance to get a higher quality item/chest.

This kind of system has the dual advantage of making your rewards be all about skill and time investment, it doesn't allow those who already have great items to have an overpowering advantage which is further enhanced by the benefit of playing higher-rated opponents, and it also just sounds fun to me.

To take it even further, devs could decide to only allow items/comps that are purchasable as starter packs if they so chose, and allow a player to pick their starter pack composition before each queue.

 

I agree, last 9 chests is too long way for this epic treasure.
There should be 1-2 golden chests on the way, otherwise even if I really prefer pvp its much more rewarding to go SP.

I like this idea. It would for sure stop some ppl from tanking down their ranks to play new play players only.

 

Should it be the first chest, the second or the third?

All would potentially improve interest in MP. My concern would be that if it was the first chest that got the boost, people would just drop into MP for that single chest which is only 1 or 2 games most of the time. Putting a bigger reward at chest 3 is a more obtainable option, but would likely still require more of a time commitment to get 4-6 MP games in. Essentially how many games would you like to see people play each day for a "vibrant" MP experience? Take that number divide by 2 and put a big reward at that MP chest.

Generally I'm not a huge fan of log-in bonuses, unless your game runs more like a play-by-email type game where you want people checking back daily for their next move. That doesn't seem a perfect fit for Card Hunter.

I have advocated for some type of weekly SP quest that would encourage more frequent logins. Essentially what I propose is to take an adventure like Lord Batford's Manor (with 6 levels). Make it so you can only beat one level every 24 hours and the quest is only active for 1 week. It would take a player most of the week to beat the quest, than give a bigger bonus at the last chest. It functions similarly to a login bonus, but it rewards gameplay rather than a passive login. Much in the same way that the MP chests reward MP play.

You could do a similar thing with an adventure like the Muave Manticore, put a special quest on it so that beating it repeatedly X times earns you a big chest. Assuming the quest resets every time Muave Manticore does, it should keep people playing the user generated content a bit longer.

 

I thought about a free chest for logging in as well, but then I realized it can literally take less than a few clicks to complete some of the first adventures (admittedly with a couple firestorms) and then I get a chest. And yes, I've gotten good Rare and Epic Items on those first chests. My point is, I don't think they need to lower the bar from that.