Please make sure you read…
(Update V37682) : http://forums.warchest.com/showthread.php/41206-Unlock-and-Load-–-Levelling
(Unlock and Load) : http://forums.warchest.com/showthread.php/41210-Closed-Beta-Update-V37682-(11th-August-2014)
Before going any further…
So, there seems to be a lot of mixed impressions about this card/crate system going around at the moment. While I understand some of the concerns I feel much of the distrust comes though poor communication of the mechanics (not what the Developers are saying) and the unknown. In general I feel the basic concept has what it takes to be both engaging and fun at the same time as being balanced and free. Some of what I am going to talk about in this thread may or may not be possible due to legal, financial and time limitations so please, if you like what you see try and remain open minded if it gets shot down by the developers…
Ok, so lets start off with looking at the current system!
CONCEPT
The basic idea is to have multiple PRE-DEFINED loadout cards for each Merc. You unlock these cards via Loot Creates and get the Mercs base card via leveling up. Each card contains 2 weapons, 1 melee, 3 augs and Merc skin. The rarity of these cards in the current build is quite meaningless as some of the most rare cards are also some of the most useless, just remember this is the first run of the system and this all has to be tweaked. The rarity does effect the % chance of getting the card in a drop so obviously you will see many more common cards then you will do epics.
BALANCE
Having spoken to developers, community and friends its become obvious that many people have wildly varying levels of confidence when it comes to balance. For the most part the developers believe they will be able to balance each card, the community seems to believe its improbable and I personally believe that the developers CAN balance the cards but not without gimping the whole card system in the process…
The biggest concern for balance is “Free 2 Win” vs “Pay 2 Win”… While technically this system would be Free 2 Win because you cannot get any special cards that you cannot find yourself… You do still run into the same sort of issues you did with Diablo 3 with the real world auction house. By using a luck based system instead of a progression based system you allow people to dramatically increase their chances compared to someone who does not. This is a major flaw in the system, even if the developers do manage to balance the cards, there is no way to convince the player base that they will be… Mainly because for the most part in gaming, balance is actually more subjective then you would believe… (Shotguns, Semi Autos and Snipers anyone?)
ENGAGEMENT
Ok, so while I am going to cover this topic quickly, its important to understand that ITS NOT FINISHED YET! So many layers of engagement are likely not even being built yet… In short much of this will be added upon and tweaked in future updates. Until then, let’s focus on what these cards do for engagement…
Well… Currently very little…
You play the game, get crates and unlock crates. You then equip the cards and play with a slightly different loadout. If you got lots of crates and lots of cards very quickly the system would actually be very engaging! New loadout every few rounds would be pretty cool when just pubbing around in TDM or Objective. The problem with doing this in the current game is that because the developers have attempted to balance and only added 30 cards you would soon run out loadouts and just get frustrated in unlocking 100+ chest to get that 1 EPIC you desire. This is where the system starts to fall flat because unlike games that use the chests for less important aspects, Dirty Bombs whole progression system is based in it. Also, flooding the game with crates and cards would mean a game with racks upon racks of turd level cards filling up everyones inventories. Again, its important to understand that I believe this system could easily be one of the most engaging Free 2 Play systems on the market! so let’s look into how…
ISSUES I SEE
In short… Here are some of the issues I see with the current / perceived future system.
[ul]
[li]Regardless of REAL balance, PERCEIVED balance will be off.
[/li][li]Large number of Dead/Turd cards.
[/li][li]Early unlocking of late Merc cards. (Possible lacking early engagement)
[/li][li]Lack of depth when it comes to features and loadouts.
[/li][li]Turns people off from spending when its based on luck.
[/li][li]Exploits the people that do spend money (addiction?).
[/li][li]Cards lack a Story… (will explain later)
[/li][li]You place your players early game experiance in the hands of luck.
[/li][/ul]
Obviously there are MANY more issues that we can all think up… Just remember that with basically any game system you can pick out just as many potential issues… (You would not like to see my list of issues with the current Objective mode. Could be here for a long time…)
Our job as beta testers here should be to TRY our dang hardest to point out potential flaws and provide useful feedback/ideas on how we could improve the system/feature/mechanic… Someone recently told me that game development is all about compromise. This is something we are all going to have to accept if we want to be taken seriously here. I am by no means saying the concepts and ideas that I am about to list are the ONE WAY IT SHOULD BE DONE! I encourage you guys to start your own threads and do the same…
THE ABSTRACT
My concepts will basically form a game within the game for those who choose to use it. Also, the system would allow customisation of cards meaning that the balance issues would be for the most part negated. In doing this we would remove the Merc system almost completely and focus more on the cards themselves. Decent options when it comes to “crafting” cards would also mean players are able to add value to cards. This would happen by using Skins, Purity levels, Naming and Stats Tracking to each card. Effectively this would mean you could have two cards with the exact same Merc, Weapons and Augs having differing rarity levels. Certain features would be locked out of “common” cards and as you go up the list of rarity more features are unlocked. These would include stuff like personal card names, stats tracking, purity levels, taunts and kill messages. This means that the rarity becomes purely vanity items much like the hats in Team Fortress 2 or the skins in Counter Strike: Global Offensive. Certain features would also reward/encourage the destruction of cards meaning we create uses for even the most useless of cards. This removes many of the luck based factors of cards while at the same time addressing the balance concerns for the most part. This is how its done…
HOW YOU GET CARDS
Before going forward understand my NUMBERS are just an example and can easily be tweaked!
In the early game you will have an additional stream of cards that you receive by levelling. Every 2 levels you will unlock the choice of one Mercs base card. These cards have set values by the developers to be a decent all around card for that Merc but lack any real specialisation.
The main way to unlock cards throughout play would include…
[ul]
[li]% based chance every #### xp gained - (% stacks with xp stacks)
[/li][li]Loot Crates recieved based on % chance ever #### xp gained
[/li][li]Burning # number of already owned cards
[/li][li]Gifted cards from other players
[/li][li]Traded cards with other players
[/li][li]Skin codes from outside of the game
[/li][li]Special events inside of the game
[/li][li]## cards recieved on “prestige”
[/li][/ul]
HOW TO REMOVE KEY ANXIETY
When it comes to random unlocks though crates, it can be scary. It is literally a gamble to what you get for your money and some people really don’t like that aspect. Other people love it and they will go out of their way to find ways of doing it. Simply having an option to buy a “Personal Key” that would unlock ALL Loot Crates that YOU find would be a good way of monetising from the people that don’t like the gamble as there would be a cap on how much they spend but no real cap on how much they can get. Then giving the ability to trade crates would allow people with no interest in opening them to give them away or sell them. Crates you buy from people can not be opened with your personal key so you would have to buy keys from the store… To balance frustrations you could even offer a key discount price to people who won the “Personal Key” item as they have already spent money with you.
Still some people have no desire to spend money on a gamble. What you can do for these people is have the already unlocked crates drop from time to time. Give them random card drops and have a decent crafting system. Also allowing them to buy certain cards from other users (where SD and Nexon take a cut) would really benefit all parties involved. Remember what I have said about the rarity of a card being based on its features, purity and skins. This ensure that even though people can buy cards from a centralised store it is not Pay 2 Win.
I believe that this is the best way to monetise from people that like the gamble and people that do not and allowing them to still take part in the same activities. Inclusion is key (get it >.<)
CARD CREATION
The only thing that should be locked with a card is the Merc its attached to. Allowing merging of cards around a well thought out crafting system would deal with the huge number of crappy cards while allowing enough customisation to prevent the luck based perceived balance issues.
Each card would contain…
[ul]
[li]The Merc
[/li][li]1 Primary weapon out of that Mercs pool of weapons
[/li][li]1 Secondary weapon out of that Mercs pool
[/li][li]3 Augs that go from slot 1>3 from that Mercs pool
[/li][li]Purity level based off crafting imperfections (100% if fresh find)
[/li][li]Primary weapon skin - valued
[/li][li]Secondary weapon skin - valued
[/li][li]Merc skin - valued
[/li][li]Stats tracking - on/off
[/li][li]Card name - customised / not customised
[/li][li]Previous 3 card owners
[/li][li]Rarity level - based on Purity and skin values
[/li][li]Shiny - Item used - must be minimal “rare” rarity and 75% purity. Can no longer customise.
[/li][/ul]
Providing the bounds are setup correctly at the very start. We could see millions of combinations… Due to the crafting system I about to try and sell everyone, it would be possible for everyone to get a card with exactly the combo of items they wanted eventually but it would lack some cool none gameplay effecting features. It would also give at least some value to some of the really bad cards that would otherwise be worthless. I honestly do think that SD could both have their cake and eat it if done correctly.
When a player spawns a card (the server makes one) it will select a Merc and then go though all the bounds on % chances for each of every possibility and craft your card with 100% purity. Based on the value of Merc skins and Weapon skins it will give a rarity value. If it is above RARE it will have a 50% chance of stat tracking and custom name. don’t worry you will be able to buy a stats tracking and custom name plate from the store later on if needed. If your card drops in rarity due to bad crafting the name and stats tracking and name will remain (we are building the cards story here) but they will be “Broken” only getting them back to RARE will get them working again. Once you have finally crafted the perfect card you can make it shiny (provided its above the RARE rarity level). Once its shiny you can still wipe the cards stats tracking but you can no longer edit it. Applying a shiny will randomly increase the cards purity level between 50% and 100% meaning it could also improve its rarity.
THE CRAFTING
This is what I suppose could be considered the core of everything I have been leading up to…
Providing like mentioned above, all cards come from random chance within bounds. There will be an awful lot of trash cards! However just because a card is trash does not mean its not useful. You will be able to sacrifice bad cards for the chance of transferring their features to a different card. The only thing a card has to have in common to do this would be its Merc. You would simply select the features you want to try and carry over to the new card and the game will tell you what the percentage chance is for success. The player can then decide if they want to proceed knowing they will lose use a card if it fails (the crappy card). The cost for crafting would be the crappy card and some of the card you are trying to makes purity.
COMMON cards would start with 80% purity and UNCOMMON cards 90%.
All new RARE cards would start with 100%
Crafting will effect purity randomly also by selecting a number between the 100% and the current purity level of the card you are using to add to it. So on average crafting using 5 commons would bring you down to around 50% purity. You can however sacrifice cards to increase purity levels.
100% purity + Stats Tracking + Name + Highly rare skins + shiny = PERFECT
The one card level above EPIC.
MONETISATION
Main monetisation methods would be as follows…
[ul]
[li]Personal Key
[/li][li]Crate Keys
[/li][li]Skin Craftables
[/li][li]Stats Tracking craftable
[/li][li]Name craftable
[/li][li]Shiny craftable
[/li][li]Percentage of real money trades (if possible)
[/li][li]Card cleaner (wipes stats)
[/li][/ul]
WHY WOULD THIS BENEFIT DIRTY BOMB?
The crafting system is a slow process and much incites the same emotions as building a character in an MMO. The time invested in the inventory + the potential value means people are less likely to walk away from it. People often talk about how the money spent on a WoW or LoL account has a big effect on why people stick to playing that game over new games. Normally Free 2 Play games do a good job of this with people that spend money but seem to fail when it comes to people that play for free. This system is literally the best of both worlds because you have given the player the ability to add value to his account purely though cosmetics and vanity items.
The other advantage is the fact its a hands on system if you allow it to be… This means during que time for matchmaking the player has something to do, meaning if que times are a little longer then normal you may actually be able to get them to spend some money… Now imagine that! lol
I could write 10x more then I have already (and I did until I decided I really needed to shorten it)
But basically this is how I would like to see the card system handled in future…
THE END
