[Idea] End-Game Content: Customized Cards.

[KUST_LunarTM]

There really isn’t any end-game content as of right now. Most people, by the time they reach ~lvl20-30 or so, they will more than likely have all the mercs and most if not all of the cards that they want. The only thing left is for them to go all pokemon trainer and try to collect every single card in every single rarity in every single variant. I would like to propose a new idea for possible end-game content that I’m sure many people may enjoy.

Before we look at new content, we need to address the specifics of the problems.

• EXP: No point to it aside from a personal ranking of your experience with the game as well as a means to get arsenal crate. Aside from that, exp is fairly useless.
  
• Credits: There’s nothing really to use them on aside from going pokemon trainer on the loadout cards and saving up for new releases.
  
• The Loadout System: It lacks a sense of personalization. You are forced to pick from a set of predetermined cards with specific weapons and abilities with no room for change.
  
• Overflow of Cards: Eventually, you’ll have a bunch of cobalts, golds, and silvers that you don’t know what to even do with. Most of them will probably be stuck in your inventory building dust.
  
• Card Dusting System: This is more of a concern than an actual problem. I would hate to see the new system come out that ends up requiring more cards than normal to craft a certain card, if RNG-based. I’d prefer to have both systems. The Trade-up/in system would be there for cheaper RNG while the card crafting system is there for picking the exact card you want.

I’d be nice to do something that would make use of all these different things that would create viable content for players who have played the game through to the end. The loadout system makes it pretty difficult because of it’s strict take on loadouts…

https://dncache-mauganscorp.netdna-ssl.com/thumbseg/800/800107-bigthumbnail.jpg

My best idea for this is to take use of the upcoming card dusting system and turn it into something better.

CUSTOMIZED CARDS!

It sounds a little insane, but we all need a little bit of insane here and there, lol. Hear me out.

Assuming we keep both the card crafting system and the tradeup system, it is safe to assume that the card crafting system is going to see little use for poor players with very little cards and credits to spend. They may probably rely on Trade-ups initially to get some bronze cards and up. Richer players, on the other hand, will make much more use of the card crafting system to get the card they want in a specific rarity (and hopefully variant as well). This good and all, but in the end, you can get the same card regardless of your card/credit status depending on RNG.

With this new system I am proposing, you will be able to craft custom loadout cards with the weapons and abilities of your choice. The ability to add weapons a merc usually could not use could be a possibility (Nader with an M4, Phantom with an M9, Rhino with a Katana). But, these cards will definitely not be easy to create and will require a lot of materials as well as other prerequisites. In order to unlock custom card crafting, you will need to meet the follow requirements. Keep in mind these are my suggestions and are subject to change should this be implemented:

• At least level 20
• Must own all the mercs
• Needs to be unlocked with a one-time payment of 100k credits.

Once the custom card crafting system is unlocked, you will be able to create your custom cards, but it will take a lot of materials.

Creation of a crafted card will be a long process. Because of this, you will only be able to create one card at a time. The card will be saved in the custom crafting screen so that if you can only create a few parts of the card, you can do that, save it until you have more materials later, then come back and continue working on the card right where you left off. You can make as many changes to it as you want, given you have the materials, but payment for each part will be required upon creation and you will not refunded should you change your mind, so choose wisely. A card will not be fully crafted until you click the Complete button (speculation) along with verification to make sure you want to complete the crafting process of the card. Once it has been crafted, it will be added to your inventory for use, and the custom card crafting will be vacant for the crafting of a new card.

[KUST_LunarTM]

The card crafting will come in three stages with an optional fourth stage: Weapons, Ability Slots, Abilities, and Skin. Each part will require an amount of crafting points, and some features may require a certain rarity of card to complete. Picking a merc for the card will NOT have a cost attached to it.

PLEASE NOTE: I do not know the cost of crafting points or how many is too much, so I will just give them all X value for now until we know the cost of crafting points of all rarities.

Weapons

You will be able to pick the weapons you would like your card to have from two different pools. Pool 1 will contain weapons the merc has access to, and Pool 2 will contain weapons the merc does not have access to. Picking from the Pool 1 will be much cheaper than picking from Pool 2. Each weapon (primary, secondary, melee) will require individual selection and costs.

If picking from Pool 1, the cost per weapon would be:

[list][]X crafting points
[]Any card of Silver rarity[/list]
If picking from Pool 2, the cost per weapon would be:

[list][]X crafting points
[]Any card of Cobalt rarity[/list]

Ability Slots

You will be able to select how many ability slots you would like your custom card to have, from 0-3. Why 0? Possibilities. Perhaps you’d like to create a challenge loadout card, but don’t want to be restricted to whatever the default cards have on them.

The cost for a 0 slot card would be:

[list][]X crafting points
[]Any card of Bronze rarity[/list]
The cost for a 1 slot card would be:

[list][]X crafting points
[]Any card of Silver rarity[/list]
The cost for a 2 slot card would be:

[list][]X crafting points
[]Any card of Gold rarity[/list]
The cost for a 3 slot card would be:

[list][]X crafting points
[]Any card of Cobalt rarity[/list]

Abilities

Once you’ve crafted the number of ability slots you want, you can click on the empty slot to open up a list of abilities. From here, you can select the ability you want to go in that slot.

Each ability will have a flat cost of:

[list][]X crafting points
[]Any card of Gold rarity[/list]

Skins

This step is optional and does not have to be completed in order to create your custom card. Each crafted card will have the Default card skin by default, but you will be able to add any skin you like to them for a cost. For example, I like the tan skin from lead cards (I’m very simplistic) but I don’t like only having one ability on the card. The cards themselves will have the background of the skin you chose along with a special colour on the ability ribbon to indicate that your card is a crafted card. I would suggest something along the lines of the non-existent diamond rarity skin for the bar.

Applying a skin from any known card will cost:

[list][]X crafting points
[]Any card with the skin you want[/list]
There will also be Custom Card exclusive skins that will require:

[list][]X crafting point
[]Any card of Cobalt rarity[/list]

Once you are satisfied with your creation, click the Complete button (speculation) and it will have one or two popups telling you that once your card is created, you will not be able to change it any more, and asking if you are sure that you really want to complete production of your card. Agree and complete the card to have the card sent to your inventory. The custom card crafting center will now be open for the crafting of a new card.

I personally think this will solve the issues of having too many credits/cards as well as rewarding players who have played the game for a while. Combined with the card dusting system, this will reduce the number of cards in the eventual market, acting as a guard from price drops for cards; and it will encourage players to continue to buy cases. This will give revenue to SD will will inevitably keep the game running! At least, that’s my perspective on it.

[KUST_LunarTM]

I had to break up the idea into two posts because of character limit, lol.

What do you guys think? Would you like to see this in-game? Do you think this will make the game at least a bit more interesting to play?

[arcaneCanvas]

[quote=“KUST__LunarTM;189706”]I had to break up the idea into two posts because of character limit, lol.

What do you guys think? Would you like to see this in-game? Do you think this will make the game at least a bit more interesting to play?[/quote]

well yea, i was wondering about that.
what happen if i unlocked all the merc and get every cobalt i ever want…

its like thinking what will happen after i die

[TheStrangerous]

Pretty much what I’m doing is grinding for bronze card bundles, since I got nothing better to do, skin’s don’t bother me at all.

[Ardez1]

I honestly think the dusting system will be fine. Besides, with the customization system as you suggest it, that means that people could potentially get an unfair advantage in tournaments/ranked play. Everybody needs to have reasonable access to the same mercs/loadouts for this to be a fair system. While mercs can be expensive, players can generally get any loadouts they needs because they can buy bronze for credits. The expense involved with your customization system seems ridiculous in terms of materials required and that is without any credit cost factored in.

This isn’t an RPG. There is no ‘late game content’. A session based game like this should be enjoyable based on the gameplay. If you absolutely need some major goal to work towards to enjoy a game, then was it ever really a fun game for you?

[KUST_LunarTM]

[quote=“Ardez;189728”]I honestly think the dusting system will be fine. Besides, with the customization system as you suggest it, that means that people could potentially get an unfair advantage in tournaments/ranked play. Everybody needs to have reasonable access to the same mercs/loadouts for this to be a fair system. While mercs can be expensive, players can generally get any loadouts they needs because they can buy bronze for credits. The expense involved with your customization system seems ridiculous in terms of materials required and that is without any credit cost factored in.

This isn’t an RPG. There is no ‘late game content’. A session based game like this should be enjoyable based on the gameplay. If you absolutely need some major goal to work towards to enjoy a game, then was it ever really a fun game for you?[/quote]

I didn’t expect them to be allowed in tournaments and such, but my main goal was to make something useful for players who mainly just have too many credits and cards. I personally enjoy the game purely for the gameplay, but I’d like to see at least something we can do with all our extra credits and cards later on down the line.

[Ardez1]

[quote=“KUST__LunarTM;189730”][quote=“Ardez;189728”]I honestly think the dusting system will be fine. Besides, with the customization system as you suggest it, that means that people could potentially get an unfair advantage in tournaments/ranked play. Everybody needs to have reasonable access to the same mercs/loadouts for this to be a fair system. While mercs can be expensive, players can generally get any loadouts they needs because they can buy bronze for credits. The expense involved with your customization system seems ridiculous in terms of materials required and that is without any credit cost factored in.

This isn’t an RPG. There is no ‘late game content’. A session based game like this should be enjoyable based on the gameplay. If you absolutely need some major goal to work towards to enjoy a game, then was it ever really a fun game for you?[/quote]

I didn’t expect them to be allowed in tournaments and such, but my main goal was to make something useful for players who mainly just have too many credits and cards. I personally enjoy the game purely for the gameplay, but I’d like to see at least something we can do with all our extra credits and cards later on down the line.[/quote]

Save them for future events. You never know when a special case will go on sale or when an event like ReV will hit. If everybody ran their credits on an empty tank, then nobody would get any good rewards when those events swing around. Even though a lot of people didn’t like the previous events, there is no reason to say that there won’t be a potentially high credit cost for future events. I’d prefer people being encourages to save credits for future events myself. That way they can’t complain when an event pops up and they are sitting on 5k remaining credits.

[KUST_LunarTM]

[quote=“Ardez;189737”][quote=“KUST__LunarTM;189730”][quote=“Ardez;189728”]I honestly think the dusting system will be fine. Besides, with the customization system as you suggest it, that means that people could potentially get an unfair advantage in tournaments/ranked play. Everybody needs to have reasonable access to the same mercs/loadouts for this to be a fair system. While mercs can be expensive, players can generally get any loadouts they needs because they can buy bronze for credits. The expense involved with your customization system seems ridiculous in terms of materials required and that is without any credit cost factored in.

This isn’t an RPG. There is no ‘late game content’. A session based game like this should be enjoyable based on the gameplay. If you absolutely need some major goal to work towards to enjoy a game, then was it ever really a fun game for you?[/quote]

I didn’t expect them to be allowed in tournaments and such, but my main goal was to make something useful for players who mainly just have too many credits and cards. I personally enjoy the game purely for the gameplay, but I’d like to see at least something we can do with all our extra credits and cards later on down the line.[/quote]

Save them for future events. You never know when a special case will go on sale or when an event like ReV will hit. If everybody ran their credits on an empty tank, then nobody would get any good rewards when those events swing around. Even though a lot of people didn’t like the previous events, there is no reason to say that there won’t be a potentially high credit cost for future events. I’d prefer people being encourages to save credits for future events myself. That way they can’t complain when an event pops up and they are sitting on 5k remaining credits.[/quote]

Ah, I see. I did think that the ability to use credits to help further my progress on the event in ReV was a good idea, even though I, myself, was saving up for mercs at the time. Some event Gen II cards will be nice, although I’d love to see more events that aren’t just focused around limited time cases. The trinkets from ReV were cool, and I was able to get them all.

Edit: So, I just read this post from Amerika
[spoiler][quote=“Amerika;189741”][quote="-BigRed;189680"]I can understand that there are a lot of new players, but what about player retention. After you get all the mercs there is nothing to do, except skins. Most of the people I pug with are experienced players. There is a cup coming up and the NA division has no sign ups.
If there were no pugs or cups, I’d be done too. Also why is this called a highly competitive server by nexon?[/quote]

You can play the game. Collecting things isn’t the only reason to play a game or even the primary reason. Competitive events are still happening and will most likely get a huge boost in the future when players are allowed to create their own communities/forums via renting their own servers that they can run their own way. Virtually all real competitive pools are fed this way.

DB hasn’t been able to support a competitive community since it opened up. That’s part of why I’ve never seriously competed despite my rather lengthy history of doing so in other games. I could see the writing on the wall and have been voicing my concern/opinion for a very long time now. That whole blow-up with tons of teams at the start was going to fail and fail hard…which happened. Now things have been limping along for a while now with some pretty great people trying to keep something going (DBN people).

However, it won’t be such a struggle for those people in the future. I see a lot of those issues being resolved pretty soon as one of the big features that seriously affects retention rate is going to finally be available. And the queue system, assuming it gets working correctly, will fix some of the perceived balance issues since due to the much larger pool of players that will be used to balance games. It would also be nice if either SD or Nexon did some kind of built-in or company supported league like a ton of devs/publishers do now. Something they can easily market to generate interest.

If all of these things get put into place then the game can go from being a daily grinder to being a legit competitive game that has good support which will lead to longer retention. That’s my hopes anyway. Whether or not it comes to pass is up to the devs to get things implemented right and us players to do what we can to support.[/quote][/spoiler]

I guess because the game in its current state is still being a work in progress, the main thing people have been focusing on is the grind despite the fact that DB is going to be a competitive game. I can see how my idea wouldn’t fit in the competitive scene. I guess I just let the idea of the grind get to me

[frostyvampire]

It looks like a really great and unique idea but it will be unfair towards new players as they won’t be able to get it.
Also I don’t like the idea of giving mercs the ability to use weapons they normally can’t (MOA Redeye too OP for me) but it will be nice to see more options (so instead of 3 weapons, some mercs will have more but Nader won’t have assault rifles).

About the materials thing, I expect it to be actual materials (like iron, scrap, wood and stuff like that) which will have a chance to be unboxed in equipment cases (but not expert or elite ones) and the crafting points could actually be the points you get from dusting loadouts in the loadout card dusting system.
Also better skins should require more points, if I want the dirty skin from lead cards and someone else wants the amazing shard (from cobalt), obviously it makes no sense that we both pay the same amount. And it will be nice if you need special materials for each skin but be able to customize every weapon differently.
For example: Fragment skins will require diamond material, and you will need 2 diamonds to paint your primary with a fragment skin, and swiss skin will require ruby but secondary will only need 1 ruby to be painted swiss and the player clothes color will require 3x of the material I want.
Also you need to use basic materials to craft the weapons themselves, so to craft the Cricket Bat you will need 2 wood and to craft a Stilnotto you will need 1 iron while Katana will require 3 iron (these materials will be more common than diamonds for fragment and seagems for shard). Augments should only require craft points with no materials.

Overall it’s a great idea but you need to think about the noobs and think about overpowered stuff because we want it to be balanced (sutff like Vassili with MOA, MP400, Katana Quick Eye, Spotter and Focus and a Fragger with M4, MP400, Katana, Explodydendron, Unshakable and Bigger Blast shouldn’t exist), maybe to balance it give each player 10 augment points to spend on augments and better augments (like Explody) will cost more than bad augments (like Cool), Explody should cost 4 or 5 points while Cool is useless so 1 point will be fair, but it will change depending on the mercs, Quick Eye on Proxy should be only 1 or 2 points while Quick Eye on Aimee should be 4 points

[KUST_LunarTM]

It’s a poor idea for the type of game SD is trying to achieve. I’d much rather let this one die.

[Orivar]

[quote=“Ardez;189728”]I honestly think the dusting system will be fine. Besides, with the customization system as you suggest it, that means that people could potentially get an unfair advantage in tournaments/ranked play. Everybody needs to have reasonable access to the same mercs/loadouts for this to be a fair system. While mercs can be expensive, players can generally get any loadouts they needs because they can buy bronze for credits. The expense involved with your customization system seems ridiculous in terms of materials required and that is without any credit cost factored in.

This isn’t an RPG. There is no ‘late game content’. A session based game like this should be enjoyable based on the gameplay. If you absolutely need some major goal to work towards to enjoy a game, then was it ever really a fun game for you?[/quote]

What do you think about it now? xD

[Ardez1]

[quote=“AnotherGuy;194207”][quote=“Ardez;189728”]I honestly think the dusting system will be fine. Besides, with the customization system as you suggest it, that means that people could potentially get an unfair advantage in tournaments/ranked play. Everybody needs to have reasonable access to the same mercs/loadouts for this to be a fair system. While mercs can be expensive, players can generally get any loadouts they needs because they can buy bronze for credits. The expense involved with your customization system seems ridiculous in terms of materials required and that is without any credit cost factored in.

This isn’t an RPG. There is no ‘late game content’. A session based game like this should be enjoyable based on the gameplay. If you absolutely need some major goal to work towards to enjoy a game, then was it ever really a fun game for you?[/quote]

What do you think about it now? xD[/quote]

I think I turned in 3 cobalts for 39k fragments and made 3 gold cards. I have a massive pile of fragments left and got 1 great loadout, 1 decent and 1 bad. Feels similar to the same system but it only took me 5 minutes to get my 3 loadouts rather than 30 minutes of trading from lead -> Iron -> Bronze -> Silver -> Gold.

We didn’t have a way to trade down before. We had trade in(and I had ZERO desire for more cobalts) and we had trade up(You can’t trade up useless cobalts). So I like the new system myself. Saves me a ton of time and it isn’t too bad to get gold cards. If you want cobalts, good luck. Tough road. I’m happy with my golds.

[solace]

TBH they could implement a much simpler system that separates skins from weapons and characters. Something like, you are able to pick your character, the weapons, the augments and then you can choose a skin if you own one. Skins could be acquired by either purchasing with real money, or if you get enough fragments from cases (fragments instead of cards now) you can buy one with fragments.

Much simpler, much more consumer friendly. Also, still friendly for the devs and not pay-to-win whatsoever. Players can pay if they want skins quickly, those who don’t want to pay can still customize their loadouts however they please and maybe get a few skins along the way.

Thumbs up for effort, but your system does sound a tad complicated.

Anyways, this would be my ideal system, I realize it will never happen. sighs