Done with Card Hunter for now -- Here's some feedback

Are you actually trying to say that you believe 90% of the people who've tried this game have quit... because of the match throwing policy? That's completely ludicrous. And if you're suggesting that percentage of potential players are avoiding playing the game because of that policy, I also think that is ludicrous. I actually can't figure out any way to interpret what you've said that doesn't sound, well, ridiculous. I am fairly certain that most gamers have probably never even noticed that policy, much less had it become a sticking point in their experience. It's a sticking point in your experience, which apparently has you projecting that feeling onto others who in reality do not share it and probably aren't even aware of the policy's existence.

Actually, this is exactly what League of Legends does. Familiar with the term "surrender at 20?" You can't surrender a game of LoL until 20 minutes is up. Seriously, you can't even call the vote to attempt it. No one seems to complain about that restriction, and I highly doubt it keeps anyone from playing League of Legends - certainly it's not restricting their player base.

 

I think it's reasonable to say that on the whole online gamers find PvP intimidating. Converting PvE players to PvP is an extremely common goal of game devs and a lot of energy and thought has gone into how to do it. Here at CH they've had the exact same concern and have addressed it with PvP rewards that outstrip PvE rewards, hoping to incentivize more PvP play. Amongst other methods too, of course.

The issue that I think will make players less interested in PvP in this game is broader than just resigning, but that is the most important point -- the tip of the iceberg if you will. The issue is the underlying attitude / culture here. It seems to be a culture that only recognizes one mode of play, and that mode of play does not include resigning early. It does include believing that PvP is "better" than PvE in ways that justify it being more rewarding per time spent. You can make that argument; and I agree that PvP is more challenging.

Here is a basic premise to follow what I'm saying. A player starts a PvP game of CH. On his first turn, he moves his three characters into a certain position, with a certain tactic in mind. His opponent does something that makes him realize he made a mistake (maybe the opponent waited for him to commit his moves and then threw a Volcano or something). In this scenario, my impression of this community is that you would say there is no valid reason that player 1 should resign. In fact you want to punish him for doing so, over and above the ranking points deduction. Well, in my experience most online gamers want to be able to rage quit at that point. Moreover I think it's completely reasonable for someone to do that. And I think most gamers think it's completely reasonable for someone to do that. It may be difficult to understand why, because you are a mature or patient or deep-thinking gamer compared to most, but I'm telling you the vast majority of gamers would want to at least have the right to quit right there (and many would). Some still wouldn't because they wouldn't want the ranking points penalty. But to be stuck in a 20-minute game where your first move gets you all pissed off is not an enjoyable experience for most people (who again, are probably not as patient, mature or deep-thinking as many here are).

This thread is about PvP meaning player versus player and not PPPvPPP or team versus team. The two are so completely different you just can't compare them. The reason resigning is disallowed in team versus team is because it's unfair to your teammates and has nothing to do with being fair to the opponents. So it's a false comparison. PvP doesn't have that problem -- it's only a question of what's fair to your opponent.

Any online game with one-versus-one online play allows immediate resignation. By all means provide a counter-example if you think one exists. I doubt you can find more than 1 per thousand games with one-versus-one online play though.

 

Actually, we HAVE the right to resign if we are pretty sure we are going to lose. What you CAN'T do is resign FOR NO REASONS at the start of a battle. I remember a battle not too long ago where I moved my priest forward,still expecting to be safe but the enemy warriors had an unexpected number of moves and killed him turn 1 and I knew I could not win 2v3 so I said gg and conceded.

 

Well that's good to hear, honestly. Although I would say you should be able to resign just because you don't feel like dealing with a game where you're behind from the start, whether or not you expect to lose.

 

True. On the surface, it might seem very similar to allow a team to vote on resigning and to allow a single player to resign (essentially a "vote" by one person). So you might naively think "hey, if they can't even vote to resign immediately if every player on the team agrees to it, isn't that a whole lot like..."

But no. The difference is PPP is 2 more Ps than P. And PPPvPPP is 4 more Ps than PvP. 3 times the amount. And what word starts with P? Persistence. Therefore those games should have 3 times as much persistence. If they can't quit until 20 minutes, then we shouldn't be able to quit until 6 minutes and 40 seconds.

Another difference is Card Hunter is way less strict. Most people wouldn't even know about the policy, and people quit early all the time. If I understand correctly, it would only become an issue if you were constantly quitting over and over before any semblance of hopeless situation (and being reported for it).

 

This thread seems to go on and on,
forgive me for intervening, as someone
with my standing in ranked MP commenting might be seen
as the equivalent of the pot calling the kettle black, but i
feel the need to comment here.

But it seems to be that this race has been run.
Clearly Sir Valimont has said his piece,
and i tend to agree with some of it, though not all.

I don't believe there is a real problem with resigning
when you cant foresee victory being a possibility, and
sometimes this can be very early in the piece, that's just the reality.

Similarly i don't believe it is an unsportsmanlike act. In some ways,
i actually view it as the opposite as it puts an end to a fruitless endeavour
for both players involved.

I understand the chivalry in fighting to the end and so forth, but most of the
time leaving the match when it is effectively over, does not detract from the
victors experience. It works well for both parties.

So many games i could have dragged it out and run around, but to what end?
Disconnecting or tanking rating is a separate issue alltogether and clearly has no place.

But now to the main course, if this continues to be an issue for both players and devs alike,
perhaps we simply remove the resign option till after 3 rounds or something?
remove it after a certain time has elapsed? If people disconnect at the start, more than once,
automatic victory to the opponent.

The other suggestion of a simple chest reward might be an option. A spoils of war if you will.
Stick it out to the end and maybe get 2 items for your trouble, seems a fair motivation.

Also there is the unfortunateness of a few people for God only knows what reason, perhaps
the desire to make the other person resign early, disconnect at the very start of a game, and
then press 'still thinking'. This is fine if there is a genuine connection issue, but sometimes
there are players who just seem to do this, sit and wait, very sad indeed.

 

Haha Valimont, very funny.

Arggh this thread has been going on in circles for so long it's not even fun anymore. >.<

Okay Valimont, let's get it down in terms real simple.

Your main point here is that PVP should allow insta-resigning, whenever?

Also that 90% of the community agrees with you here, they just aren't speaking up?

I could go on forever - but several people here, @Scarponi @Foz @Flaxative have already made the point more eloquently than I ever could.

 

This is false. The MP rewards are not better than SP rewards. They have been designed so that based on the average SP adventure completion time they are about equal. If you choose to always play SP much slower than average, MP can more rewarding -- but certainly not if you keep resigning a lot.

The concern of "not being allowed to resign early" is only academical. In practise, we've even had players who resigned at match start a lot to tank their rating and they continue to play the game to this day with no repercussions (they tend to stop doing that with more experience at the game). There are even habitual rage disconnecters who keep on playing month in, month out. So, much ado about nothing.

I don't think anyone minds the occasional early quitter. Hey, free win, sweet! It doesn't seem like a super beneficial design basis, though. If it was just accepted with "sure, go ahead, no harm no foul", taken to an extreme the logical end state of the game would be everyone resigning if they did not get the perfect starting hand and no matches would ever get actually played except in the extremely rare case both players got the perfect starting hand. Of course this is not what would happen in practise but if it happened a lot it would degrade the overall MP experience for everyone and allowing it without comment would certainly not make it a rarer occurrence.

There are probably very few MP players who play it just to get chests (getting them in SP is so much easier it's ridiculous). The great majority play it to experience the thrill of competing with another human being in the art and science of Card Hunter. Early resigns are not thrilling in the least.

Based on what I've seen actually happening in MP over the life of the game people play or resign as they see fit with none the wiser. One sees in the lobby occasional questions of "Why did you quit so early?" and that's the extent of it. The quitters and the non-quitters keep playing as is their wont. There is no early quit police. You'll get reported occasionally by an annoyed opponent but probably not enough to make any practical difference unless that's all you do. The system and the community is lenient enough unless you go out of your way to disrupt the fun of other players. The number of actual bans over the history of the game is exceedingly small compared to the number of people playing.

I'm sorry you encountered a very rare zealot at the start of your MP play, Valimont, which seems to have coloured your impression of it so thoroughly. It is not the average experience of the Card Hunter MP player.

 

Valimont is talking like CH physically slapped the resigning player, which is hardly the case. The "penalty" for resigning early is actually very negligible, unless you do it over and over and over (i.e. you're abusing the system, in a way or the other).

Furthermore, resigning being discouraged has very little to do with making PvP more scary to newer players. Now, if we want to offer a less stressful experience to people who is new to competitive gaming, we can implement non-ranked MP, which would be much smarter and more welcome an addition.

But alas, I have to state I'm pretty much with Flax on this. This is not the first time Valimont brings a point to (allegedly) be "discussed", only to minimize (if not openly dismiss) anybody's else opinion. The fact he always brags about knowing exactly what the vast majority of players think/want only subtracts from his own points, rather than anything else, but he probably doesn't even realizes that.

I mean that in a very constructive way, mind you. Forums are for discussing things, i.e. you should be ready to accept the fact people might not share your own view on whatever (rather than acting like you were the only one entitled to bring the indisputable truth among your peers). Otherwise, you might as well just state your opinion and leave it at that. Beating the same horse over and over, especially when all you keep bringing onto the table are assumptions and the pretense you're talking for everybody else who is not posting? I mean, it does sounds ridiculous as soon as you type it, you have to admit that.

I don't think he's really doing it intentionally though, but his posting-behavior is considered very much trollish by all internet standards. At the very least, that's a behavior very prone to start flame wars, something which is in and of itself usually being actively discouraged (if not firmly punished) in any forum with half-decent moderation policies.

Anyway, I feel like reminding CH is not a game being designed to cater to the vast majority of "gamers". If that was the case, then the game would be very different (and we wouldn't even need a Sir Valimont explaining us how you grow your customers-base). In fact, the game is designed with an actually pretty specific niche of individuals in mind (what you would call a target audience). Because the game is not designed with several hundred-thousands active players in mind, it's paramount you offer your loyal customers the best possible experience (i.e. not having to deal with people who early-quits 9 games out of 10, for instance), even if that means very lightly pissing off a very small fraction of players (And I assure you this point is very rarely brought up, not only on the forums, but in the game chat too. If ever)

Ofc, that doesn't mean members of the community shouldn't offer their feedback and opinions. In fact, nobody is preventing a relatively new member of the community from doing so (despite the fact he often pretends his opinion is far more legitimate than those coming from players who've been playing the game for far longer than him).

All I'm really saying is, this hasn't been an interesting discussion (again, if it could be called a discussion at all). You only stated an opinion, over and over, pretending you're speaking for 90% of gamers on hearth. Never a source remotely backing whatever your point is. Never a time when you didn't dismiss (openly or not-so-openly) what other people were trying to say. Never an instance where you realized that maybe you're suggesting the right solution to the wrong problem. Nope, all you do is state "I think X, so do 90% of players. You say Y, but Y is wrong, because I say X. That's only my opinion. But also that of 90% of gamers. I don't intend to dismiss your opinion but... I dismiss your opinion. Also I say X because I say X".

Yeah, keep doing that man, that's an extremely good way to depict yourself as someone you can have a pleasant discussion with.

And please, for the Nth time, move this to the feedback sub-forum where it belongs.

 

OP is right in many respects. The resigning issue is a microcosm of a broader approach by whoever is making decisions. There seems to be an absolute obsession with an unattainable nirvana of fairness where no one is ever inconvenienced in any way lest the judgement of the community be upon them despite the fact that targets of this are either oblivious or apathetic. Meanwhile questionable balance changes are made to give the appearance of reacting to the community's feedback. In reality this is just goal-post shifting. The game is no more balanced now than 6 months ago when I last played. I came back in the hope that things had changed for the better. If anything they have got worse. In terms of PvP this is borne out in the ever-dwindling numbers. I'll check back in another 6 months and hope for the best.

 

The lady doth protest too much, methinks

 

Jarmo makes some good points, Bandreus makes some good points. doog37... lol

I'll just note here that there have been a few players who've gotten warnings for match-throwing, but they've all kept playing and for the most part seem to have revised their ways. So even the people who do throw matches to the point where it's a problem (they're reported enough times) keep playing, not feeling restricted by the policy.

We've had ... two permabans. Both were for abusive behavior. No one has managed to get themselves permabanned for this stuff.

And fine I'll move this thread to the feedback forum even though Bandreus's characterization of the OP's arguments should by all rights land this in the off-topic forum.

 

As I've been saying, I do think there are some people that perceive this is an issue. I would hope that the result of this type of thread is that members of the community at least consider the possibility -- which I believe is a probability -- that a lot of people are going to react similarly to scorpion here. The broader approach he describes is certainly paved with good intentions, but the end result is a narrow application of preferences with a false belief that the application is actually broad.

 

I feel I've adequately considered the possibility and also adequately riddled that possibility with holes. Unless you can represent in some meaningful and authoritative way that the claimed 90% of players actually do find this to be a problem, I see little point in continuing to discuss baseless speculation supported by what by all accounts could only be called a tiny fraction of the player base participating in these discussions. You could well be right, but no one here is going to accept that on faith when the number of players vocalizing it as a problem, both here and in general chat or various other forms of feedback, is so tiny.

In short, I am not prepared to accept your assertions as truth - you will have to actually prove them better than "I think this is what's going on." No meaningful progress can be made on this issue unless you do so, and I think I speak for many more than myself when I say there's been more than enough defending game policy against this speculated unfairness. If these hordes of disenfranchised players do exist, by all means find them and show them to us. If you cannot do so, then I consider the matter closed.

 

The fun fact is, CH didn't always feature a penalty for early resigning.

Maybe the devs had, you know, actual reasons to introduce a (frankly very light) punishment to doing that repeatedly. Ever thought about that?

I know I know. Imagination does have it's limits too, not gonna blame anybody because of that.

 

You have a PvP ranking system. You have PvP rewards.

Both can get screwed up by resigning too much. Players can trade losses to get free rewards. Players can tank their rankings to fight easier opponents and get rewards easier that way.

Saying you can't resign early stops both of these problems. Players in this community look around and say "we don't have an issue of early resigns in the first place." So they think that means people don't do this a lot anyway. It's not a big deal. Why are we wasting energy on something such not a big deal?

The reason you don't have a lot of people resigning early and abusing the system is that those people are not in your community in the first place. They would take one look at this system and leave. It's a small community with a judgmental attitude about proper game ethics and that's not a good environment for an abusive player to thrive in.

It's also, however, an atypical community which will always remain small. You are selecting for the small group of mature card players -- probably many of whom are physical card players, interestingly -- at the exclusion of the very large online gamer community in general. How many players from Kongregate have stuck and are playing now seriously? Are you aware there are about 15-20,000 dedicated card players on Kongregate. When I say dedicated I mean they do nothing else. Most of them are keenly aware of Card Hunter. They watch the CCG tag and this game has been mentioned on the forums of just about every other major card game there (I frequent these regularly).

I'm not here to criticize you in any way. This is a great game. It's hands-down better than 90% of what's on Kongregate, to take that as an example.

What I'm trying to enlighten you about is that you have a very elitist community backed by a systemically judgmental and restrictive PvP design. I am not actually saying it's bad either. I'm just saying as a completely friendly point of advice that if your goal is to quadruple the size of your player base (for example), that type of thing is going to be an issue. If instead you say "we only want people like us" and you don't mind remaining small ... then there's no problem at all. My sense from the advertising, expansion to other networks and movement to mobile, however, was that the devs wanted to grow their playerbase. I could be wrong about that.

 

The solution that you are suggesting is to remove the resigning-early penalty to grow the playerbase with 'abusive players'?

You think the main reason why people would not play the game is because of some extremely trivial "resign penalty"? That in itself is quite a ludicrous assumption. Ever heard of LOL? They have a resign penalty, and they are freakin huge! So forgive me if your argument that people will just 'leave' because of this one simple rule seems a bit flawed.

In the world chat, you never see players complain about a resign penalty, but if you see any complaining at all, it's about cards, monsters, builds, items, maps, ect.

Getting rid of the penalty, like you very clearly state, would result in tons of abuse. In your opinion, it's worth it in order to grow the playerbase?

The thing is, I'm pretty sure it wouldn't grow the playerbase. More people will be pissed off at the frequent resigning with no penalization. Under our current system, it's perfect. You can still tank your rating, but it's time consuming and generally not worth it.

 

As a player, in a game that has one of the most friendly, helpful, non-trolling, non-abusive communities I've seen, why would I want the game to change to an environment that encourages bringing in abusive players? Why would I want to tank the community of a game that is great partially due to this very community?!

Now if you're speaking specifically and only to the devs from a business standpoint, that's fine (though it's up to them to accept or reject your argument). But if that's the case I would think an email or PM to one of them would be more appropriate. Though you're free to state your opinion, why would any existing player base (which is who you're addressing in these forums) of a non-abusive community openly welcome a suggestion to change the game to get more abusive-type personality players to join?

Just my two cents.

 

We could just skip the next few iterations and resolve to a match where-by the opponents shake hands, pay one another a compliment and then the winner is decided via coin toss. You can pay to win the coin toss 51% of the time.

 

1. Please stop comparing this game to team-versus-team setups like LoL. It's not a reasonable comparison. Team-versus-team games have penalties for resign related to fairness to your teammates and that is completely and utterly different from what we're talking about here. Here you don't have teammates.

2. You don't have abusive players, and that's a good thing. The point I was making is it's a circular argument to say "look, nobody abuses this" with a closed policy. That's like saying that in a police state, nobody steals. Guess what, in Saudi Arabia almost no one steals. Is that an argument for Saudi Arabia having the correct policy for dealing with thieves? No, it's an argument for the reality that thieves don't thrive in a society that is so systematically aggressive about removing them. There is of course a collateral effect of a reduction in personal freedom broadly across the society.

3. The problem I am pointing out is not with resigning early. That is symptomatic of the problem. The problem I am pointing out is not that you don't have abusive players. Of course that's not a problem! It's good. But my point is you've created an unfriendly environment for a heck of a lot more than just abusive players.

As I've said repeatedly there's nothing "wrong" with this in absolute terms. It's just a matter of preference. If your goal is to grow the community, then this is the wrong approach. Otherwise, it's not and it's irrelevant.