Before the talented healer nerf, I was having fun with MP, but things had gotten stagnant. I was at 1500+, virtually never found an item that improved my build, and didn't have much motivation to mix things up. Since then, I've had to totally rethink my build, am using wizards for the first time in ages, and my rating has dropped about 100 points. And it's been fun! I'm curious whether others feel the same way, and what suggestions people have for keeping the game fresh. Rotating sets of maps helps, but I'm not sure it does enough. Releasing expansions will obviously do the trick, but I doubt that will happen particularly frequently. Anyone have other thoughts? Or do you disagree with my premise?
I covered some methods for this in: http://forums.cardhunter.com/threads/feedback-on-longterm-player-retention.3283/ Basically something like week long tournaments that require specific team makeups to compete. Enough people shift their team make ups and the meta get's shaken up for the length of that tournament. There's enough unique team rules to go for months without repeating.
We're working on something at the moment that should go some way to addressing this. It won't be done pre-launch though, of course.
I'm not sure what you're working on, but I'd suggest week-long tourneys similar in style to starter pack tourneys. Each person gets, say, 50 regular chests worth of items from which to create builds. You then have a separate tourney MP arena for the week, starting everyone at rating 1000. Prizes could be you get to keep some number of items you used in the tourney, based on your end-of-week rating: 900+: keep 1 item, uncommon or common 1100+: keep an additional item, rare or lower 1200+: keep another additional item, epic or lower 1400+: keep another additional item, any rarity
Player retention, events, tournaments, single knockout, thg, special boss fights, draft, co-op, single character challenges, super intelligent AI etc have been proposed to death by virtually every game-savvy forum member for the past 2 yrs. Its more a matter of them making the right decision and implementing it in a manner that is economically sustainable for BM in the long run AND fun to the customer base for years to come, while keeping an eye on the next title with like...what 5-6 guys ?
