A heartfelt letter to the Devs (State of the game)

Hello Devs,

First of all, I would like to say thank you for the great game. To support you, I bought the basic edition pack a month ago. Now with 5 days left on my membership, I'm wondering if I should buy another membership.

My dilemma is that I feel that the game has barely any momentum in terms of population growth. Nobody is talking about your game and I fear that a lot of people won't renew their first subscription, which will then cut your funds to continue development and keep the servers up. I don't want to buy a 6 months membership to lose everything because you're bankrupt. It's like MMOs that become ghost towns and slowly die a few months later. I've tried to get my friends to play, but they are currently drinking the Hearthstone Kool Aid.

There's barely any Dev presence on the forums aside from the few posts in the Test Forum, it feels like a ghost town. No PR on websites (I've seen a small article on Kotaku and a small one on IGN). While I want to encourage you and pay for the membership, I don't want to throw my money out the window.

Your game is brilliant and deserve to be crowded with thousands of players on a daily basis.

Now for the suggestions :

- Need a key in the inventory to remove all items at once from a character.
- The 1 HP quests have to go... I like a challenging quest (like the drawbacks), but this is just frustrating.
- I can understand you don't want to kill strategies in MP, but the card draw spam on a mage with firestorms is ******ed. You need to put a limit on the number of cards on 1 character or deal damage for any extra card above the maximum number of cards a character should be able to hold. Doing so would make draw spam a risky, but viable strategy.

I'm sorry for the long post, I rarely post on a game's forum, but I believe I felt I had ask you all this.

Thanks again for the game.

Have a nice day.

Ferox

P.S. Sorry if my English is not perfect, not my main language.

 

... and bundles, always more bundles

 

More developer diaries. "dear diaries... I meet a dreamy guy today....."

Sprinkle in-development goodies in a blog is a good and somewhat cheap way to generate some hype.

Also... more contest.

 

There's been talk of a tournament format in an interview right before release. Not sure how that is going now.

 

If there were a Dev diaries, then we might know how it is going

 

Is there a population problem with this game? Whenever I go on MP, I'm quickly matched with an opponent, and I can't ever recall being matched with the same player twice. Is there any stat that shows the game is not popular enough to be sustained or is this just a feeling?

 

You were prevented from matching with the same opponent again for a certain amount of time.

 

Totally optional. Don't do them if you don't want. Some people enjoy the challenge. Why remove them?

I believe the limit is 3 cards attached to a character. After that the oldest attached card will fall off. Or do you mean a limit to the number of cards drawn? Firestorm isn't too bad with Arrogant Armor or Resistant Hide. I like to use one or two Firestorm, but usually just to speed up the game.

 

Don't forget purge to wipe off cards attached to your player.

 

I'll post my feedback about the website here, since it's somewhat relevant. This might be a bit long and extensive, and probably most of this stuff has been suggested already, but I hope it helps.

As you surely know, making a good first impression is of top importance to hook new players up and to help improving users retention. This is also key in gaining the more press attention.

Generally speaking, the website feels a bit lackluster, especially for a game which only recently launched. While the webdesign is actually pretty good (I love the header by the way), the info within is generally poor and/or out-of-date. It's not like you can't dramatically improve on this by only making a few adjustments.

• Homepage and other general tips
  A simple registration form and a twitter feed is a bit... too minimalist and depressing.
  You should really try and pack as much info as you can there (without cramming things too much either), as the homepage is the first page most visitors see, and also the one most often viewed.
  Add basic info there, the best big splash image you can come up with, a brief list for the main features/sales-points, a couple PR lines (maybe a bunch of the many positive Press Quotes and testimonial CH got).
  Definitely add at least a few actual in-game screenshots and feature those prominently on the homepage. The boardgame-themed vibe is great and all, but a distracted visitor might erroneously think the website was about an actual tabletop game rather than a videogame, which could lose you a few customers.
  Definitely try and feature more of the game art on the site. Seriously, Ben's work is awesome and deserves it. Use art to break up text blocks in various parts of the website, release game art as wallpapers for visitors to download, anything goes.
  Add more content to the right sidebar there, as that's a great place to show lots of content in a compact way.
  You could show screenshots' thumbnails in rotation for instance (more on this later).
  A list for latest blog posts, latest blog comments and latest posts from the forums are great for the right sidebar too.
  Show how active the website and the community are, and make those your most effective testimonials.
  
• Overhaul the Game Info page
  While I get the vein in which that page was created back in the days, you should make showing and explaining what the game is all about one of your top priorities.
  Add screenshots and in game art. Add flavor text.
  Definitely go into more detail on what the game is all about. Give a comprehensive overview of the game design, the selling points and features.
  Go into sufficient details about the main systems in the game, and briefly touch on how those work. The Game Info page shall double as a sort of mini-guide to teach new players the very basics of the game.
  Put lots of eye-catching and very informative pictures in here. The game looks great, this shall be showcased in the Game Info page most than anywhere else on the site.
  If you deem it necessary, considering breaking up all the info in several sub-pages (Overview / Gameplay / Systems / Classes / Campaign / Multi Player / FAQ).
  
• Media Gallery
  There's absolutely no reason why you shouldn't post tons of great and up-to-date screenshots in here.
  Maybe create different galleries for different kinds of media (Campaign / Multi Player / Art).
  Definitely add a video gallery (and release a new trailer!) .
  Host an ongoing community contest for the Screenshots of the Week. People post their own screenshots on the forums, you select the best one and feature those on the homepage/sidebar/gallery, winners get a few Pizza Slices in return and everyone's happy.
  You could do something similar to crowdsource a fan-made trailer for the game too. I'm pretty sure more than a few very talented or aspiring video-makers can be found in the community.
  
• PressAdd an up-to-date press kit. Also a facts sheet about the game, this is very, very important.
  
  
• Team
  Not much to say here, as you guys are awesome. Maybe add links to personal websites?
  
• Add a link to the wikiAnd feature it prominently. Even if it's an unofficial resource. Seriously.

 

You need to stop making so many posts that I want to like Bandreus.
It's going to look like I'm stalking you if I liked every one I wanted to just from today. XD

 

Gimme them likes! GIMMEEEE



obviously just kidding

 

When you're famous, Bandreus, remember me, I beat you once in ranked and I was the first person to follow you on the forums.

 

He's also the first to follow me This thread should now be about Bandreus (man this forum is going slow recently, which is a good thing though, so that devs can actually follow it)

 

Yeah, let's stop this already, or my ego might just explode and obliterate both the forums and the game into utter nothingness.

 

Hahha

Anyway I support basically everything said in this thread!

 

As far as the game gaining population, they gained so much population right off the bat that they had to somewhat painfully increase server capacity drastically after leaving beta. I saw the game mentioned (extremely positively) in Penny Arcade and a few other major outlets while it was in beta and around the time it launched.

On the Bandreus side-note, he was super helpful to me with some advice in the MP lobby as well.