Card hunter has several wait gaming elements, most notably the daily reseting adventures and the MP reward track. I can't figure out why. Why is it less fun to be able to re-run adventures whenever you like? How does it help new players who get stuck on a particular adventure to have to wait until tomorrow to level up? How does it support MP to have a population that only plays 1-3 times per day? I'm just not sure why it's in there. In lots of f2p casual games wait gaming is the monetization, so many hours of free play per day, and then charge to play more. CH (thankfully, IMO), doesn't do this. So I don't know why it's there. What is the design goal it serves? How does it make CH a more enjoyable game?
The timer is to stop players finding the optimum dungeon to farm, then farming that one indefinitely.
What design goal does that serve? Why do we care if someone farms the same dungeon over and over again? If we take away the timer people are still free to farm different dungeons if they get bored. Also, and more importantly, why is there an "optimal dungeon to farm?" Why not spread rewards across the dungeons, possibly by attaching some kind of challenging quest or quests to each with bonus rewards? The habituation/content restriction discussion is more powerful, but a bit at odds with the current system. People working their way through the campaign get stuck on a mission. With the current system, they have to play that mission over and over or wait until tomorrow. Without the timer they'd be able to revisit the previous mission they've just completed to get a boost to xp and loot. Is it a design goal to get people to quit playing when they get stuck for 24 hours? That seems like a bad way to intend people play the game. Encouraging people to take a break right at the most frustrating moment seems like it might lead to permanent break taking. This is a [question] not a [feedback] post. I'd just like to hear something specific such as "we'd like people to play for ~20 minutes, do one mp match and the best dungeon and then come back tomorrow," or "we'll ease up on the timers when we add more campaign, give us a break jerky jerk!" Or something. Those are great answers! I'm a fan of subtractive design though, and I think every system should be there for a reason. Right now the timer seems to be there mostly because lots of other games have done it this way.
There will always be optimal dungeons to farm due to the nature of item levels and token restrictions. For example, if you want a Blazing Shortsword or some other rare zero-token item to put in one of your high-level character's 'off' slots, your best bet is to find the weakest dungeon that carries level 6 items, and farm it repeatedly. (IIRC, it's Ruby Demon Portal according to Sir Knight.) If you could just farm Ruby Demon Portal endlessly, you could maximize your chances of getting that item as safely yet efficiently as possible. For any given token amount you care to build for, there is, in theory, one dungeon that has the best risk/reward/time matrix, and offers the chance at rare items of a particular level. The timer (along with the limited number of dungeons at each level) prevent you from being able to 'seek out' one particular item with any degree of efficiency.
People don't work that way. They'll farm one dungeon for a day or week, get bored and stop playing... Waiting helps to keep people interested, and even get them more interested. There's the unfortunate side effect that if someone gets truly stuck in first few missions, consequences might be bad (from publisher standpoint). But that seems unlikely, first ten or so mission are quite easy and after that there's decent amount of grinding available.
My guess is that this is the core reason. Balancing the dungeons so that they all have the same ratio of reward / time spent would be very difficult, and so there will always be some particular dungeons that are more rewarding than others. And generally speaking it is unfun to do the same thing over and over again. So my guess is that the dungeon timers are there so that the game's reward system is not encouraging players to do something that is unfun.
I don't yet feel like my question is answered. I feel that most of these answers are "whats" not "whys." I understand what the timer does. I'm less certain of why it does so, and less certain still that the game without the timer is worse. I'm going to react very unfavorable to arguments such as "people don't work that way" or "it's not fun to do the same thing over and over," because those are opinion statements that certainly don't apply to everyone. Some people do enjoy doing the same thing over and over, fun is subjective. "People" work in many different ways. It is usually possible to find some bland and inoffensive gruel that no one will complain about, but that doesn't mean that gruel is delicious. If it helps, imagine I hate the current system (not exactly true), and thus will assign 0 value to any statement that assures me that everyone likes the system because I, personally do not. That's why I'm asking about what the design goal is. It's easy to say "everyone likes this!" without support. It's more challenging to say "this is why we chose to do something that not everyone will like." So far, answers have just assured me that this is "for the best" because "waiting helps keep people interested." At a time where I am personally losing interest in the game because I'm tired of waiting. See the problem? Discussions about not wanting people to farm the same thing over and over again might have more teeth, but stop before they make a value judgement. Who cares if people farm the same thing over and over again? Who cares if different dungeons aren't balanced? Why not give out a few more burning shortswords? Also, this argument seems a little overly binary. The debate is whether to give out dungeon X's reward once per hour or once per day. So long as it's kept in abstract terms like "waiting v. immediate" or "balanced rewards," it seems like grand wisdom. I'm not debating that there's some optimal rate to give out the rewards. I'm suggesting that the current rate is not the best one. If you personally like the current rate, then say "I like the current rate," not "everyone likes the current rate" unless you are everyone. My view is informed by MP, which tends to work best when everyone more or less has access to the stuff they want to run. I think that the best way to solve that is probably with a secondary market where people can trade items they don't need. I think that this market should not tend to price people out, which means items ought to be relatively obtainable. For an example of how not to do it, the current top Pox Nora decks would cost multiple thousands of dollars to buy on the trading market, pricing out any new player who wishes to play competitively. This is because they use lots of "limited edition" cards that are out of print, yet still legal in matches. These cards are substantially better than everything else in the game. That's a bad system and why I and many of the core community quit playing. A better system is LOL's where you could theoretically spend 10,000 to unlock everything, but much of that would be cosmetic or redundant (there are 5 ranged carries with an escape, do you really need them all?) This may be in tension with a single player view, though with the "stuck on campaign" issue I'm not sure it is. Is wait gaming just there to force people to pay more and play longer? If so, I think it's maybe not a system I want to defend.
Did you watch the video? It gives decent answer to the "Why?" also "How not to do it?" There could be softer ways to get almost the same result. For example cut out half of rewards after "daily first win" of each adventure (well, actually, cut campaign rewards in half and give double rewards for the first win). Then again "daily win" has very ominous ring, atleast for me. Edit: Oh, and f2p games rely on masses of people playing, longer the better. So broad statements have their value. "people don't work that way" means that large portion (not even necesserily a majority) will act that way and hence diminish the playerbase and income. Might not be best way to say it
Its simple as people have stated before it removes the option of grinding you might think that in it self is not a design goal but it is. If you want something deeper and more long winded the long term goal is that people will be forced to play different maps giving them more enjoyment long term. This will then keep more players happy for longer increasing the chances of a purchase. I still think the money making aspect is just a bi product of the keeping people happy objective but i could be wrong.
What's wrong with a dude playing the same dungeon 100 times in a day in order to farm it? Does it break the game? Does it ruin for other players? If anything, the time restrictions just make this game less accessible to players who can only game in short bursts, such as on the weekends.
While I agree with this to a point, it wouldn't be "a dude playing the same dungeon 100 times" it would be nearly everyone playing that same dungeon almost exclusively. It doesn't matter what changes you make to the adventures, there will always be a most optional selection. I do think a shorter cooldown is appropriate and I'd also be interested to hear what the designers intended for this. I would assume to stop 'abuse' through quickly grinding (perhaps even botting) adventures over and over in order to obtain a high volume of random items thus a higher chance for more powerful items per day.
