Lemme start this thread by prefacing that I'm aware of the "Passing The Baton" thread, but, that I honestly think that this is a problem that needs its own thread, since the people who post in the "Baton" thread post more about MP rebalancing and additions than anything else [to my knowledge, I'm the only one who's posted anything even referencing Campaign in the entirety of that thread]. I'm also aware that Multiplayer is, metaphorical pound for metaphorical pound, WAAAY more popular than Campaign, but, the reason this is so is because Campaign--the MAIN campaign, especially--hasn't gotten any actual attention at all FOR YEARS. While Jon was still running things, there were a BUNCH of infuriatingly ridiculous Mauve Manticores, and there's the Expedition To The Sky Citadel, Acquisitions, Incorporated and Castle Mitternacht expansions, as well. ETTSC was, unfortunately, REALLY let down by the lack of an actually challenging final boss, and both AI had the final boss, but, was only 9 battles long, and CM was only 10 battles long AND lacked a proper final boss. Oh, and Caverns of Chaos ALSO lacked a proper final boss. The final Boss there is chosen at random, meaning it doesn't have an actual one all its own; it was disappointing when I found out, the hard way, that the last of a chain of 10 increasingly difficult battles has the possibility of ending with GREENFANG as the final boss. I'm not kidding: A Troll Warrior would've been a better fit than using a tutorial boss. Jon, for some reason I still can't understand, wouldn't update the main campaign for anything. When I say "main campaign", I mean the Campaign levels that AREN'T part of an expansion, and AREN'T a Mauve Manticore or something with "chaos" in the name. Remember those? The reason you and me and everyone else who still plays this game started developing CH skills in the first place? For those that don't know why the massive swathe of nothing on the Campaign map exists, the main Campaign, minus all the expansions, was originally slated to go all the way to Level 50. On top of the Minor [] and Major [] Power Tokens, there were also supposed to be Greater [] Power Tokens, starting at Level 25 [This is why there's no Campaign levels past Level 21, hint, hint] and Ultimate [] Power Tokens starting at Level 33. And lastly, and in my personal opinion, most importantly, there's the storyline. As I stated in "Passing The Baton", there are loose ends in the main storyline campaign, such as unlocking the ACTUAL Greenfang's Challenge, what human was helping Zaius and the War Monkeys, what the Abysm is, where the other Demon Portals are, and the REAL Cardstock 2 [the current one is a "Secret Preview", whatever that is or means]. Campaign is STILL, after more than 5 years, my favorite part of CH, and I'll ALWAYS play Campaign more than MP. That said, the main campaign is criminally neglected, and needs updating. Please, Knights, give Campaign the attention it so desperately needs. Thank you.
There's been some other people talking about the campaign here and there in the Baton thread. I know because I'm one of them. The nice thing about CH being on Steam is being able to see global stats on how many people earn certain badges, 64% of people beat the tutorial modules, 14% of people beat Melvelous, 4% of people beat CardStock and just 3% of people have won 10 ranked games and 2% make it to an Elo of 1000. Honestly, I was expecting the numbers to be more in favour of SP than they are, but it's still tiled somewhat in favour of the single player content. MP is what keeps the CH veterans coming back once they are reeled in, but the single player content is the expertly crafted bait that lures people in to begin with! I think you are overvaluing the concept of adding level 21+ content to the main campaign and undervaluing the expansions we've had so far. While it is true EttSC lacks a proper boss battle to finish things off, I'd still say it is by far the best expansion we've had in terms of single-player modules and flavour. If anything holds it back, it is the fact that none of the new items are useful to new players due to their high levels. It's not for nothing that buying the bundle gives new players a direct shortcut to level 18, Blue Manchu knew full well that catering to people regardless of their progress in the single-player campaign is a good idea. This is also reflected in AotA, which opens up around level 7, right when some of the trickier SP modules open up. AI is iffier in this regard, it unlocks much later than EttSC and AotA, but CM takes the cake with its high unlock level and its prohibitive difficulty. As an SP expansion CM is the most inaccessible CH has been so far, and I hope to never have to deal with CM levels of difficulty and tedium again. That's what Quests and CoC are for! (To CM's credit, its additions of great Common and Uncommon to the item pool at all levels is a significant upgrade from EttSC.) And in that paragraph lies the entire problem with expanding the main campaign, it is nice for those 4% of people who beat CardStock, but it does nothing for the 10% of people who fall off before than and after beating Melvelous, or the 50% of people who beat the tutorial but don't reach Melvelous! The main campaign already lasts long enough as it does, Gary finally proves himself as a GM to Melvin and has plans to attend a con with Karen, that's basically the trio's whole set of character arcs resolved, with the expansions serving more as amusing side-stories. And by the time you reach CardStock you've slain a dragon and had a AI-driven taste of what MP matches feel like. The power level at that stage is already far enough relative to the start of the campaign to feel like you're a powerful band of heroes, on-par and capable of surpassing Melvin's party in the tutorial, the campaign doesn't need to go to higher levels than this to deliver on that power fantasy. Level 22+ adventures were likely left on the cutting room floor for a good reason, much like the Rogue was. If it were up to me, I think the game most needs interesting new modules at the very lowest levels. Yes, I'm talking level 3~6 modules, which is where so many of the players lose interest! This could very well use the same concept as the AotA modules and the Demon Portal modules do, with a combination of both low-level and high-level modules. In their current form these modules are pretty devoid of the curveballs that some of the later expansions have added, having some low level modules that really flex all the lessons that the developers have learned over the years would be interesting. Most YT playthroughs of CH strand in these low level modules because there's just not much exciting action going on in the low level modules as-is. CH only really got big YT coverage once with the Yogscast and that drew in an influx of new players, it's a shame that the earlygame lends itself so poorly to drawing in more content creators to do the same because much of the first levels is just a slapfight with Weak Strikes and Zaps flying across the battlefield all limp-like, much as it does pay off in the end when you return to those modules with three Strongarms... All that said, a high-level Greenfang module to serve as a bookends would be appreciated! And now for some miscellaneous comments... -CM does have a boss battle, Yurik and Jovana are clearly the boss of CM. Not every boss needs to be a 2x2 figure and not every singular 2x2 figure is an epic boss, the Temple of Scales Hydra isn't even that module's final battle! The real problem with Yurik and Jovana is that their fun, gimmicky boss battle is upstaged by the utter brutality of the surrounding maps. They are a lonesome fair and balanced boss battle stuck in a sea of tryhard difficulty inflation! -CoC does have its own version of the Werecake if that counts as a unique boss. And don't discount Greenfang so easily, he draws a whopping 6 cards per turn! The real duds in the final floor are Melvelous and the Troll King! The poor Hydra doesn't even get to appear on the final floor. -I can only hope my MMs weren't of the irritating ilk. Perhaps when CH gets moving again, I might try my hand at designing maps again, or updating my submissions that didn't make the cut to be better so they can get added. I swear on all that is sacred that MM shall have Chef Ramses tossing Heal 30 cards at Death Elementals and Shades as penance for the suffering they inflicted in AI and CM. -I've said it before and I'll say it again: MORE SINGLE-PLAYER QUICK DRAW CONTENT! This is a golden goose that keeps on giving, the sort of replayability that the Caverns of Chaos has wet dreams about!
Just because you plan for something doesn't make it a good idea. Adding higher level modules forces you to add the next power token, and then you probably need another dozen modules just to make that token useful. Note that the main campaign was completely released by the time of the limited beta (and maybe since alpha). It was never a case of the campaign expanding until it stopped. And what happens to MP? Do you keep things as they are and have a whole bunch of items that can't be used? Do you raise the MP level, which makes tokenless items worthless? Do you have multiple MP tracks for different levels? That would require a much larger player base. Quick Draw is allowed in Mauve Manticore. I asked years ago, but never got around to making those maps. How about we make a pact: you do your Chef vs Death battle, and I make my Quick Draw Dragon Quest.
@Maniafig: Your post was even longer than mine's was; there's so much to unpack, that I'll have to take it one paragraph at a time, if you don't mind. 1st paragraph: SP content is ALSO what remains should CH MP ever truly die. Sure, you need MP for the possibility of being able to battle your friend in casuals, or to make your own maps, but, SP is still more important that both just for the fact that SP is how people learn how the game works on the most basic of levels. Also for making sure your Ranked MP deck doesn't completely suck. 2nd paragraph: ETTSC hyped up this whole notion of Darius having to go down if you were to ever truly escape the Sky Citadel, but, you never fight him, directly. AI had 3 levels that could literally be precisely described as "Mauve Manticore Easy Mode". CM's difficulty, in my opinion, is STILL not as bad as The Troll Tyrant, Black Plume Mountain, AI Hard Mode and DEFINITELY holds no candle to Caverns of Chaos. I found CM to be RIGHT on the fine line between Black Plume Mountain and AI's Hard Mode: Difficult enough to make you plan ahead if you wanna get anywhere, but, not so difficult has to seem completely impossible even if you DO plan ahead. All that said, Countess Jovana is a joke compared to most of the 9 battles that came before her. Not kidding. I blame Walpurgis Night. Maybe she'd be less of a joke if it weren't for that. Caverns of Chaos? No actual being named "Chaos" to fight. Just overwhelming disappointment, usually. I think you're UNDERvaluing the importance of Lv22+ SP content. The reason you hate that level of difficulty is because that's literally the only place you can consistently find it outside of Troll Tyrant, Black Plume Mountain, AI Hard Mode, most Mauve Manticores and Caverns of Chaos. Don't FEAR challenge. Embrace it; it won't kill you, it'll make you better and stronger. 3rd paragraph: See my response to the 1st paragraph. I don't mean Gary, Melvin, Karen and Mom. I mean IN-GAME, in-game, if that makes any sense. Seriously, go through the main campaign on your own time without diverting into any of the expansions, and read ALL the storyline related texts before and after each battle. Note for yourself, as I have, how many loose ends there STILL are [the in-game, in-game storyline is way more entertaining than those 4, anyway]. 4th Paragraph: Trogs AND Lizardmen can stab at you from Range 2 for 6 damage. Kobold Lungers can Shambling Bash you for 8 damage at any moment. That Goblin Hulk that can Meaty Goblin Fist you for 7 damage, and then FOLLOW UP with a Powerful Bludgeon for an extra ELEVEN damage, almost guaranteeing a KO, and that's assuming he doesn't follow THAT up. These are all REGULAR enemies found at Level 6 and under. In what way are there just Weak Strikes and Zaps? See, now, I have to REALLY suggest that you play the main campaign again. From the start. No expansions. Enemies don't really do Weak Strikes any more starting at Level 5. Not REALLY [Goblin Grunts will be Goblin Grunts, tho]. Misc. Comment Lightning Round: CM: They are, but, they're jokes compared to the 9 battles before them. They're just as much of a boss as Ig-Gabig was. If you don't know who Ig-Gabig is, Watch a YT video of someone playing the Level 1 battles for the first time. You'll remember....I certainly did. CoC: All Greenfang can do is MAYBE trap your movements with Acid, and that only matters if you have Wizards or if you have Armor. The most damage he can do with a single attack, under normal circumstances, is 8, and THAT only matters if he's hitting you continuously without you healing. MM's: MOST MM's are of the irritating ilk. I'd have to research which ones yours was, but, I'm sure if I play the entirety of the MM's your battles were included in, I'll hate the battles of the ones that were included WITH yours just as much as I'll hate yours. It's just the fact of how luck-based they have a tendency to be, most times, especially since I can't make my own decks. Quick Draw: NO! NO, NO, NO! We already have Mauve Manticores and the Caverns Of Chaos choosing decks FOR us. That's a Mauve Manticore thing, and needs to stay IN Mauve Manticore.
Pardon the double post, but, I didn't wanna chance the character limit. [I don't even know if there is one, but, just to be safe....] @Kalin: We ALMOST agree on the Rogue part. I would LOVE a 4th class just for MP balancing purposes, but, I'd rather it not be a card-stealing Rogue. Hopefully, if there ever IS a 4th class, it's NOT that. As for MP? An excellent question, and I think I have an answer that's just as good: Alongside the NORMAL Ranked MP, open up an Abysm-themed Ranked MP where anything goes. Heck, you could call it, "Anything Goes". Instead of automatically adjusting to Level 18, it can automatically adjust to a level equal to whatever your Renown is. Beginners are supposed to have a deck that doesn't completely suck before they step into MP, anyway, considering how viciously overcompetitive it now is. Also, don't know about you, but, I'd LOVE to see 2 teams of Level 24 characters piloted by the likes of those in the 1700's or 1800's duke it out. Also, we have to, at least for the moment, assume that the Knights will eventually get around to increasing the player base. Hope it goes more smoothly than when CH released on Steam, though. That 35 minute queue time JUST TO LOG IN is still etched into my memory.
I can't speak to what the Knights of Unity are planning, but I can say most of you are at least a little right about why Blue Manchu made some of the decisions it did. I've talked about this before, but the MP and SP games are basically completely different games whose balancing mechanisms are entangled with each other. That means that a change that would be good for one can, theoretically, hamstring the other. An example of something that might sound simple but has deep ramifications is the power token thing. Introducing higher-level power tokens is something that would be really cool for campaign players but, as folks have pointed out in this thread already, they'd either A. be unusable entirely in ranked, rendering all your cool new loot much less appealing for PvP players, B. require the (single) ranked environment to be leveled up, which would make it even harder for new players to afford to buy appropriately-leveled commons and jump in, or C. split the ranked ladder into two "environments" at different levels, dividing an (already back then) dwindling player base. Some of these consequences are more or less dire, and some of them can be mitigated with other changes (like modifying the renown system or just getting way more players) but it's worth pointing out that all these great ideas were considered, and were decided against, for reasons—hopefully, reasons that will be less relevant under the new leadership! I think it's entirely possible that TKOU will find ways to invest in the game, grow the player base, and expand systems or stories in cool new ways. I don't think Blue Manchu's approach to development was "criminal" Obviously, anything I say should be taken with a grain of salt. I have some residual bias from serving on the dev team, etc.. But I was a fan before I was a dev. And I've worked on a number of games now, and played a lot of competitive strategy games. In my humble opinion, Blue Manchu did its best to develop the game within the constraints that Jon set out for it. Attempts at diplomacy aside, the 'plot' of the modules within Card Hunter is intentionally campy (it is satire, intentionally bad in places, and was never the 'point'). I am surprised that anyone specifically wants to see that aspect of the game continued, but hey, we humans are super varied and it's awesome that you enjoy the story @mikey76500 . If I were TKOU I don't think my priority would be to get to the bottom of these in-universe Card Hunter module plots that are just spoofs of old, trotted out D&D adventures, but for your sake, dude, here's hoping.
@Flaxative: You're not technically developing CH, anymore, right? Grain of salt taken, sir, but, still, respectfully, I think it'd help both us fellow CH fans more closely understand how development worked, as well as possibly helping the Knights a little with development, themselves, if you could PLEEEEEEASE explain what the reasons you speak of are. Seriously. I for one, would LOVE to know how development worked.
Things like not having the player base to sustain two different ranked ladders? Which the Knights might mitigate by bringing in way more players because they might have a different approach to marketing than Blue Manchu did? Not sure I've kept many cards close to my chest here. Put another way - besides a small selection of features (coop, quick draw, leagues), the "frame" of Card Hunter didn't change for 7 years. Every piece of new content was designed within a box of sorts. We explored some new design space with each expansion, but did not drastically rework any systems. That meant that a few things folks have asked for that would have hidden ramifications on other parts of the game and thus require deeper overhauls were left at the wayside. (Another example: a common ask was more classes but that would have drastically messed with the SP loot acquisition progression in a bunch of complex ways. I really don't think I need to [nor should] explain every decision BM made over the years, but these are the kinds of considerations we were grappling with.) TKOU may see fewer constraints in revitalizing and continuing development of the game. This means they might make big fundamental changes to systems in order to implement new features, and it also means they might break or ruin things. I'm optimistic.
CoC is proof that Flax is a sadist, probably influenced by Jon's commitment to randomness in this game. Were he not a sadist, he'd not have included so many elf wizards for the players. Gotta say, I'm a HUGE fan. Not to play it (I burned out early once I got the gist), but to read of the angst, gnashing of teeth, and general whining it produced. Take a bow, bro! Better than (a certain player's) predictable profane carping about "Luckers" when an opponent's combo comes together. Those of us still hanging onto the game probably vary widely in what we want from it. I don't want something super hard, I just want to play for fun, and to be able to beat the adventure with several different approaches. For farming I'll use whatever's quickest, but that's what farming is about. If I find it more annoying than fun, I won't play it. YMMV, and probably will. Who wants to be normal, anyway? Face it, we're different and we don't all want the same thing. My greatest hope in this regard is that The Knights of Unity love the game too, and are adept at herding cats of our varied stripes. I believe BM's "neglect" of the campaign was a result of a lack of monetization, and I don't expect people to work for me unless I pay them. I suspect many of us didn't. There is more I'd like to address, but my thoughts are not entirely collected because I've been drinking because don't have to go to work unless I get a job. (Notice the minimalized domino progression?) And I worked last millennia, so I'm taking this one off. Peace, out.
These stats made me think about the reasons why do the half of the players leave CH so early. I've been thinking that the learning curve is quite nice, but once you reach maps for levels 10-11, the game starts getting hard unless you replay the first levels a couple times in order to get some items, which is perfectly fine. Hovewer, it seems that the players are leaving before reaching these levels. The tutorial, in my opinion, is quite informative and presents the general concepts well. Maybe the issue is that the players don't have any items whatsoever and get discouraged because, as you said, having to use Weak strike and zaps isn't as fun as playing with a bunch of good items. I wonder if letting player use a basic premade decks (or letting you buy one for free) would encourage some to play more? One way for that would be letting players below renown X use "Gary's party" with some reasonable cards instead of your own. The big drawback of this would be that the player's characters levels would reamin the same for the entire "extended tutorial". On the other hand letting people buy premade deck/item sets may overwhelm the new players. And now I've came up with an another idea - what about letting people play using quick draw as an alternative "game mode" instead of the party items? Or what about (dare I say) making a quick draw as an alternative for every single level or a Loot Fairy-esque challenge? P. S. I'm a big fan of AotA - I just love the setting, the new cards, items and that it is quite a challenge, but also a fun one.
FWIW, when I first played the campaign (and a lot of the early modules were harder than they are now and Priests were much weaker than they are now) it was specifically the Trog modules that almost made me give up. Melee enemies that love to attack from a distance with armor that negates a ton of damage and send them out of your reach with a difficult to exploit handicap. So I think BM already did several alterations to smoothen the ramping difficulty there. The idea of being able to QD every module is an idea that I think is really cool, it's been something I've hoped gets implemented as a type of quest if the distribution of card qualities stops being hardcoded, the card qualities drafted could then depend on the module's level, with the early modules being mostly paper and bronze cards and slowly working your way up to silver and gold. Maybe even Emerald cards at the highest level!? I wonder how big the pool for Emerald player cards even is currently, maybe you'd just run into the same cards constantly. I think I found the difficulty of the level 18 AotA modules offputting when it first came out, but I think with all the newly added items and card re-balancing since the modules have grown on me. Reflecting Mental Flensing back with Wyrmhide Armor, Rocket Charging the Elder Mind, Cushioning Armor against the Troll King, those are all quite fun. That one map with all the Totem Statues is still just a Volcanofest though, I don't really get what the idea was with that one... The level 7~9 modules are probably under-tuned in comparison, but I assume that was in part on purpose since that level is when the main campaign difficulty starts to ramp up. The Maztec flavour of them is totally on-point as you say and a nice breath of fresh air after the more typical fantasy fare of the main campaign. It makes me want to see more expansions in that style, like an expansion set in Far Cardhuntria, or whichever underground place those menacing underground Elf and Dwarf figures came from. Or perhaps CH gets bought out by Mazbro and has a crossover with Her Petite Equine, finally making Rudolpho Emulio a playable character!! (Wait, when did RudolphoCH get banned from Twitter?! @Flaxative how could this happen?!)
I think those percentages would be higher if it was a paid game. The cost of trying out Card Hunter is extremely low (just a bit of time) and it's safe to assume that if only 64% of people finish the tutorial that there's a good chunk of that other 36% that wouldn't get into the game no matter what changes we made. But with a free game, I think there's a lot of folks who approach it casually and just dip when they encounter an obstacle, which is going to be at different points for different players depending on a lot of different factors (luck, an instinctual feel for the game, etc). Of course we tried to smooth some of those humps over the years (our early game priest card rework was part of that), and easing the drop-off points (Trogs was a big one) was always on our minds, but there's some limit (at least theoretically) to how much hand-holding a game can do. There's no one-size-fits-all solution, and unfortunately anything that lets players choose how to approach something—like the above-proposed "premade deck" idea—can still lose folks, to differing degrees depending on the quality of the UX implementation. (The game I'm currently working for has been really eye-opening as we're A/B testing different tutorial/NPE flows and seeing the retention stats. Player habits are fascinating. Basically ANY interruption of the core game loop loses some % of players, so any time a game forces a player to upgrade, switch out gear, get more heroes, blah blah blah, you lose people.) @Maniafig not sure when the mule got banned or why, but was aware it had happened. Sometime before the TKOU deal went through.
I wanted to compare our stats with other free CCGs, but when I tried to check Hex: Shards of Fate, I found out they shut down last month. This article is good at discussing the game's problems, and general issues for any game that has PvE and PvP at the same time. In particular, that players come for the PvE, but the money comes from PvP. And it's really hard to resolve those conflicting goals.
I tried PvP, but could never bring myself to actually enjoy it. Based upon the quoted research (not to mention the opinions of my past girlfriends), I'm probably a freak. In game terms, because I've spent a considerable amount of cash. As to the others, it's doubtful any you'd be able to ascertain much without litigation, but might be amazed to discover that little or no money was involved on my part. (Some women will fall for just about anything, especially if you sing it with a ring of sincerity.) Note: Always be sincere, whether you mean it or not (but most especially if you don't). Just sayin'. I suspect the majority of people who quit early on just didn't like the game. Devs may not like to hear this, but they should understand it. I might have quit early on were it not for some of the people I met in-game. Oberon, Jarmo, Flax, neoncat, Pengu1n, and others whose names I can't recall through my drunken haze. (HUGE props to the drunken haze!) I listened, I learned, I took another pull off the bottle. I was less concerned about being a good example than a quotable one, and not terribly concerned about quotability. I was having fun with friends, and that was the entire point. If I could bottle the friendship aspect, I'd probably just distill and drink it instead of creating a new game. I hope you're better at the game aspect than I. Coherence, IMO, is overrated.
