So, Beta's been running for a bit now. How's everyone feel about the stuff available for purchase using Pizza Slices? The full list of items/services, as far as I can tell... Treasure Hunt adventures Starter Packs for multiplayer Magnificent Chests Figurines Party Revives I'll start. I like the Treasure Hunt adventures a lot. After playing through a handful of adventures with random rewards, it was nice to be able to beat my head against a challenge with a reward that I knew right off the bat would be interesting. I also like the recent change of showing all the Treasure Hunts at once and selling them as a pack. It makes them seem less nickel-and-dime-y, and more like bonus content/DLC; indeed, when the game launches, I'll almost certainly buy the Treasure Hunt pack first thing. I like the figurines, but probably won't buy them unless I have an odd amount of Pizza left over from another purchase. My first in-game purchases were actually figurines, as I didn't really like the look of my default Warrior and Wizard, but I wasn't bothered enough that I would break out my wallet solely to change them up. That equation might change if I was playing a lot of multiplayer. There's probably a lesson there. Also, I should probably play more multiplayer. Magnificent Chests and Starter Packs both serve an important purpose, but given that a large portion of the enjoyment I get out of the game revolves around beating adventures to get items as loot, I will likely pass over buying the Chests and Packs after launch. I would be much more interested in buying something that affects my loot drops, I think: a "Bag of Holding" that gives me an extra drop every time I normally earn an item, an "Everflowing Chest" that gives a free Treasure item drop every win, an "Alchemy Pot" that lets me throw items inside and have them randomly become other ones, and so on. That said, I admit that I have opened a Magnificent Chest, and it definitely had that "booster pack" excitement to it (I got an Epic!), but I imagine I'd really only want to be doing that once I hit the elder game and am looking for one or two specific items to tinker around in the Deck Builder with. I haven't bought a single Party Revive, and likely won't. I'm not bothered by their existence, but since part of the fun for me is beating an adventure "legitimately", I don't reckon I'd ever buy some extra lives to get through a module. I will also give some thought to other stuff I'd like to buy post-launch, but I think I covered the big ones above already.
Will buy: - Figurines. When the game launches, I'm going to check the range of available figurines and buy the ones I'll most enjoy looking at. And probably other ones for doing the same class challenges. - Treasure Hunts. More adventures to play, sounds good to me. Might buy: - Magnificient Chests. The temptation is there but I'll probably mostly refrain from buying them. - Starter Packs. I haven't even tried multiplayer yet and probably won't for a while either. Plus it sounds a lot more fun gathering the cards through adventuring anyway. Might still buy one at some point. Won't buy: - Party Revives. Pretty much what Roshirai said.
I will buy a metric ton of adventures and if i like a avatar more then the standard one for my party i will buy at least one each if prices stay as they are. I will consider buying premade party packs but i cant say for sure until i see how they and the rest of the game looks at launch. While i dislike saying never in case something changes i cant imagine me buying chests for pizza. If I'm 6 maps in on a adventure and get pounded by bad luck i will most definetly buy a retry but as i don't plan to do this every time i wipe i don't see my self having to spend pizza on it. I'm still not completely comfortable with the pizza chests being in the game. But once my brain connected them to booster packs as long as no items are exclusive it is a mild annoyance rather than a full on unhappines.
Will Buy: Cuthbert's Costumes - I'm such a sad person that I spend more time tweaking my LOTRO / D&DO characters through cosmetics etc., than actually running about killing things. I'm sure I'll be a sucker for this in Card Hunter too. Treasure Hunts - What's not to like about Treasure Hunts? Magnificent Chests - Will certainly buy a couple to boost the chances of my Party at the start and to get some Rare / Legendaries throughout. Probably Buy: PvP Starters - But not right away as I enjoy the playing the PvE modules. The Starter packs will affect your PvP build significantly, I think. Won't Buy Party Revives - I don't see the point unless there's going to be some really long adventure chains.
Treasure Hunt - A must. A known reward, more XP, fresh new challenges for mere 20 pizzas/unit! Starter Packs - I prefer to play "the hard way". First the "campaign", then, after leveled up my characters, playing on MP with my items and my characters! Magnificent Chests - Maybe. Some extra loot (with a guaranteed Rare or above) after all the quests just to try to improve my PvP building. Figurines - Almost for sure the Dwarves (I said that i LOVE Dwarves?). Party Revives - Nope.
As long as boosters (treasure chests) exist my wallet stays closed. I switched from booster packs to LCG, preconstructed, one time purchases and other non-ptw models years ago and I won't go back. If they chests didn't exist I would buy all treasure hunts and probably a figurine or two. Personally I'm curious on how Card Hunter's ftp model is going to bring in enough revenue.
Now this is interesting. I've commented before that reviving my party is my single biggest gold sink. All you folks who say you don't want to pay pizza: would you instead pay gold or just plain not buy resurrection? Anyway. Treasure Hunts - If I had money to spare, then heck yes I'd want to get more of the game. I want to play the game! Where's the question? The only issue is that, in a perfect world, I'd rather that other things were for-pay instead and all actual adventures were open for free: I want to play the game! What doesn't matter to me as much is the special item you get for winning: the gameplay, the maps, and the visuals are my reward. Plus, oh, you get some good loot, but you can get that elsewhere. Starter Packs - It takes a lot of adventuring and loot-collecting before you're good in multiplayer, so I can see people buying these. Magnificent Chests - Also viable, but I prefer the for-gold chests: those ones are for specific level ranges and as such allow more strategy. Figurines - I've come to realize that, with money sitting around, I'd definitely want to put some into figurines. These are my adventurers: I get attached to them like any RPG characters trained from the ground up. And if the default image doesn't fit with my vision for my RPG character, I want a more personal one. Party Revives - You have to win the entire adventure to get any XP. I dumped gold into party revives up until I went on the PayPal Sandbox spending spree, and now I throw around fake pizza. Real pizza? I dunno. But wow, XP is more valuable than gold.
This is a neat opinion poll. Please don't think I'm giving answers here. Treasure Hunts: I wish I wanted to buy these. I like having more modules, but the rewards on most of them honk. So I'd rather re-play anything else and roll the loot dice. How about unlocked adventures give you a choice of reward? Have each of them offer a pick of a Warrior or Cleric or Wizard item at the end. Or just change them to have "Guaranteed Rare or better" as the prize. Starter Packs: Nope. I'm a single player guy, so I don't want free levels, and I don't like the eq. Magnificent chests: The very first thing I'm going to do is buy like ten of these. I want to give the devs the money they deserve, and I'd like more options from the beginning. I'm counting on the talent system keeping the game from becoming easy. Figures: I think they are more confusing than cool. I like my Red Dwarf and Blue Dwarf. I can tell who is who easily, and I know red deck is on the left and blue deck is on the right. I would buy them if the defaults looked like gnomes or something though. Revives: If you have to pay to revive to win, ya didn't win. Go back to the start. You get loot/gold so you don't walk away empty handed. There are only so many mods, so I don't want to rush through them by making sure I always win on the first try.
Oh, here's the opinion part though. I find it fascinating that this logic comes up in so many games. So "If there was less to buy, I'd buy more" really makes sense to you? Are you trying to punish the game makers for trying to feed their families and earn money on the project they've put years of work in to? Are they being mean to specifically you by giving the option to other people to play differently than you like to? If you don't want chests, then yay. Don't get chests. But throwing a snit and withholding your five dollars just because someone else spent ten is absurd. The game is fun or not for you. Don't pin your happiness on what other people do.
I can't understand why people who say they wont buy the premade packs will buy chests can someone please explain it to me
A counterpoint... The purchase of Magnificent Chests is totally not required to enjoy Card Hunter's single-player campaign, or to be competitive in PvP. In most other games with booster packs, this is not the case. While you absolutely shouldn't buy Chests if you don't like them, isn't it worth supporting a company that clearly cares about not screwing us players over for the sake of a couple of bucks? While I can't speak for everyone, to me it comes down to the choice between spending my money on... A) A reasonably powerful pre-built deck that encapsulates a single theme or strategy. B) An assortment of options that I can use to build a variety of decks of my own. Given that a lot of my enjoyment of the game comes from deck building, I'll take option B) every time.
Fair point and i completely agree with your first point as long as there is no exclusive items in the pizza chest i see no reason to overreact about it. But obviously people will spend money on what they feel like and i have no right to tell them otherwise i just hope the motivations are others then because they sell boosters. As a side note/chest beating i won just as many games ( basically all of them ^^) before using chests as i did after my strategy stayed the same and overall not much changed. On the pve side i do agree that it makes a big change but honestly if people want to pay to make the game easier early in pve i think that is a shame but it doesn't affect me.
Payment models effect game design and directly change how much I enjoy a game. I'm part of a two income family without kids so the amount I spend on games is disturbingly high. It's not a question of less to buy but the type of product. I have literally every card for every race of Summoner Wars sitting two feet away from me and every card for every expansion of Sentinels of the Universe sitting on top of it (except for Unity which is sold out and arriving in March). Those are just the closest items my den looks like the wall in the dice tower reviews. If it's not money why do I hate boosters so much. I originally took the no booster stance back when I was playing Magic Online. I realized that I still enjoyed drafting but had stopped enjoying constructed. The disparities in card collections resulting from boosters meant I found most constructed matches tedious. I was happy to play either a good or bad deck but unless my opponents deck matched the game was boring. I was having to do a ridiculous dance trying to find opponents which failed most of the time so I had stopped playing constructed. Quitting magic online all together was a harder choice since my drafting was good enough I was playing for free but I went ahead and decided the right thing to do so as to vote with my wallet. I still play magic I just play preconstructed decks (40+ over the years) and duels of the planeswalker. Same game but different distribution methods means I enjoy one form but not the other. My enjoyment from playing comes from strategy ie outplaying my opponent or being outplayed by them. Winning because I spent more bores me. I've literally begged people to let me know what cards they wanted in their deck so I could make them proxies and we could have decent games. Losing because I spent less bores me. Basically having money spent be a factor means I enjoy the game less. I don't care about the game's overall cost but disparities in amount spent is an issue. I want an even playing field. I don't want and advantage. I don't want a disadvantage. Charge for a full unlock (pvp only) with a way to only fight others who are fully unlocked and you can have my money. The designers of the single player campaign have to deal with the same disparities. When designing an adventure you have to take into account the PCs capabilities. Those capabilities differ depending on how much you've spent. Even in the best intentioned developers the presence of boosters warps the game design as by its very nature it creates different customer groups. In D&D terms how do you make an adventure that works for both a group partying with 1+1 sword and another with full +5 gear? Well you don't they need different adventures. It's not that there is less to buy but the manner in which it is sold. For example LCG which I support stands for living card game. Instead of random packs they put out a fixed set of cards (usually every month). So there is more then enough to buy, in fact the amount you spend directly effects your overall card pool and many find buying a full set too expensive, but keeping any individual match not dependent on card pool is much easier. If my opponent was new and had only bought the basic box then I could pull out a deck that only uses the basic box. If my opponent had access to all the expansions I could pull out a deck with all of them. "How many core sets" was the first question I asked when sitting down to a Warhammer Invasion to determine what type of deck I should pull out so I could enjoy the game. Playing a LCG with a 4xcore, 4xfull expansion deck against a 1xcore deck is just as boring as having a disparity in amount of boosters bought but the non-randomized distribution gives me enough control to ensure I can avoid that situation and keep the card access equal. With boosters I can't control the playing field enough to enjoy the game. While the difference between "good decks only" in people's mind is psychologically fascinating it's not something I ever want to go through again. Being a responsible consumer means supporting design decisions you like and not supporting design decisions you don't. I find boosters harm my enjoyment of a game so I don't spend money on games that uses them. I find non-randomized distributions creates play environments I enjoy so I'll spend my money there. I don't think the developers are evil and in fact they seem well intentioned. The basic game idea is something I very much like, I'm one of probably three people who actively plays Dungeon Command. I have every expansion for Summoner Wars (and if you know any other card/board mixes speak up). I'm mainly curious about their financial model due to the well intentioned stance. They have very few of the psychological tricks which land whales in standard ftp games and without whales I'm just not sure where they are planning on getting their money from. As a side not whether the collector type will transfer from cards to items is something I'm also interested in. Does getting a new item with cards you've already seen hit the same collector high as getting a new card in say magic? My OCD says no but everyones OCD is different.
I have a slightly uneasy feeling from the "boosters" so i wont buy them. But the fact that the game is awesome and the true ftp feel of having every item as a drop from adventures is enough for me to come to the conclusion that i will vote with my wallet and not buy the "boosters" But i will still get the other awesome stuff because i think it is fair and awesomely made. But like i said before people spend their money how ever they want i just think you should take a glance at how i do it and consider it. But after that i have no further intent to try and push you in either direction as it is a hard one and i have been burnt before.
I'm with Wozarg and Roshirai in that I don't quite grasp your rationale, even after the long posting I have extracted the quite from. As I understand it, you're saying you want to be able to perfectly match your opponent's deck so there's not a "boring" disparity in levels. Magic Boosters, for example, randomly change this and as players are allowed to have as many boosters as they like - "With boosters I can't control the playing field enough to enjoy the game." - you're knocking the whole game back? The PvP boosters are designed to level the early PvP playing field, it seems to me, and as such play a different role to traditional boosters. Lots of the stuff you get from them you can't use in the early PvE game due to talent costs and it's this talent cost that you should look for to achieve your "balanced deck" approach. If we have a PvP match, the levels are locked and therefore we both have a finite number of talents to spend. I can't load my Character with Two Bronze Talent Legendaries, even if I had a huge pile of them, as I couldn't pay the talent cost. The PvP deckbuilding skill is to match your strategy with the items to hand and how you equip them, which sounds to me like what you think is a good idea.
I would buy figurines and new adventures. I dont think I would chests as I want to develop my collection and characters without buying it straight up.
If I can't enjoy the game why wouldn't I throw the whole game back. I get me joy from the competition/challenge and specifically using strategy to meet said challenge. When I play at the local store there are certain players I seek to play against because I know they will provide a challenge and other players I avoid because I know I will beat them 9 times out of 10. I'm not rude about it but given the choice there are certain players I find more enjoyable to play against. If we are playing magic and my opponent gets mana screwed or has to mulligan multiple times I would much rather start over then continue with said game, an easy win because my opponent got unlucky isn't fun for me. In MMO's many people look to get dungeon walk-throughs so they can get free loot. (A high level character comes and solo's the dungeon with you in the party so you get the loot at no risk). I leave those parties because I find the reward of the loot not worth the tedium of the easy dungeon run. People play games for lots of reasons some like to collect them all, some like the loot, and some like the rush of winning. I like the competition and the one thing I've found that ensures I will spend a lot of time being bored is boosters packs. Talents costs are a pretty straight foward deck building rules not balancing factors. They are more generous then most level based games. Not as generous as old school D&D where you could equip anything but much more generous then modern MMO's where everything is level restricted. Boots for example are level divided 1-8 none, 9-17 clear, 18-19 bronze at least for the 191 items on the wiki. That is not the same as saying all none talent boots are equal. Item level is determined by card quality an easy place to see this is movement boots Plain Old Boots - lv 3/starting 3xWalk Pathwork Boots - lv 5 Run, 2xWalk Polished Leather Boots - lv 7, 2xRun, Walk Crafted Boots - lv 9 3xRun Run is better than walk and each replacement of walk with a run increases item level by 2. Whether or not this increase in card quality is reflected in talents completely depends on if it pushes the item past the level limit. Talents do give an interesting deckbuilding challenge in that you have to find the best item at a given talent cost but someone who is running polished leather boots has a straight numerical advantage to someone who has patchwork boots and most likely anyone running either of those boots is going to in trouble against someone who is running the best boots for their deck. The better deck is going to be the one that makes the most use out of each talent point taking into account scaling, synergy, under and overcosted cards, overall deck design etc and to do that you have to have the item available to you. That said I don't enjoy winning because I have the better deck but because I played the deck better which gets back to boosters. Not having boosters doesn't insure that a match will be competitive but having them gives a marked increase in the number of non-competitive matches.
For the sake of corrections so don't take this as me trying to invalidating your argument I'm just providing facts based on my collection. no talent 1-8 one white 7-16 two white 9-13 one brown 13-21 two brown 18-21 note that doubles are only for weapons as of this time. Also i think you are confusing us with the fact that you are saying that a game that uses boosters is as good as completely unenjoyable to you but in your first post you made it sound like you where going to play the game but not spend a cent because of the boosters which seem like twisted logic to me. I very much stand behind your right to chose what ever game you play and to not waste time if you don't enjoy it. But especially since you have work and a partner why would you waste time with a game you don't enjoy but be stingy with the cash because you don't enjoy it or am i misunderstanding you and you are willing to give the game a shot and if you find it enjoyable you will start buying things?
