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Players get lead loudout cards all the time, yet it’s extremely rare to land a lead card that is between two lead cards. This leads me to believe the whole spinning is a mystification. It’s determined in advance what card you’re going to get, and then the list of cards for the animation is generated. They make sure to place silver, gold or cobalt card right next to the one you got, to artificially ramp up excitement.
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Because of the above, I think “trade up” is counterproductive. You’re getting rid of 4 Lead cards to get one Iron one. Then you’re going to get the cards you just recycled again, from new loadout cases ! I’d rather play calmly, wait for the lead slots to fill up, NOT TRADE UP THEM, and eventually start getting bronze and silvers over and over. I don’t think it’s possible to have two copies of the same lead card, is it ? Also, trade up costs credits, and you may want those for unlocking characters.
Observations on case opening
Your first point is correct. The card you get is predetermined at the point you click ‘open’ and the whole spinning thing is irrelevant to the results.
Your second point however is not. You can and will get duplicates of lead cards.
I don’t like when I’m getting lead card near cobalt/gold. Even Lord gaben is not trolling like SD does!
The closeness and rarity of the next/previous cards seems arbitrary since the chosen card is picked out of sequence and dropped into the winning slot.
Case openings do a poor job conveying the relative chance of the various cards (especially if you think of it like a slot machine) but SD are open about the drop rates.
oh, I don’t doubt the animation is rigged to look interesting when it’s actually filled with lead.
I’ve never once gotten anything other than a lead card. Not a single time. It makes me think even the text claiming there is a possibility for other cards is bogus.
I got lead (lots of them, of course), iron, bronze and silver so far. I’m pretty confident the other stuff will drop, too, eventually.
Getting useless loadouts is frustrating of course. But I got used to it at some point and treat them merely as resource for crafting. Also, please note that at some point, rather sooner than later, you’ll have a deck of working loadouts for the mercs you play and then there is nothing significant more to do anyway. And that is even more worrying than getting lead loadouts i think.
got 1 cobalt, 1 gold, 2 silvers, about 5 bronze, maybe 10 irons?
I’d also rather have less rare drops but with more significant cards. Even though it makes it harder to craft a card you really want (thru tradeup)
AngryJoe did a video on opening cases for this game. Just a disclaimer, I’m not a fan of AJ. I think he is immature and careless with his content and his shtick of ranting I guess is supposed to be funny but to me is rather pointless and undercutting. But watching this video it occurred to me that maybe the case opening is a bit too much. I mean, at one point the ticker stopped on a cobalt (or other rare card), but then jumped almost half the card to go to lead. This happened often. Too often. Way too often.
Now it isn’t likely that all those times he was about to get a high rarity card, then just by a breadth’s chance got a lead. It is clearly designed this way. And I think that is too manipulative and too misleading to stay this way. I’ve never seen it done this way before and I thought it was something clever at first, but I kind of now think it is just the worst.
Anyway, here is the video. I didn’t watch it all. And there is clearly misinformation in the video about loadout cards and joe is clearly clueless about some of the stuff. And the person explaining things isn’t doing too well either.
[QUOTE=Szakalot;530702]
I’d also rather have less rare drops but with more significant cards. Even though it makes it harder to craft a card you really want (thru tradeup)[/QUOTE]
+1, less drops but bigger percentage for iron/bronze/silver
AngryJoe touched on the P2W point very well, like Protekt pointed out.
Despite all the efforts, game LOOKS P2W to new players. It gives you all the incentives: give us the money $$, and you get all those cool rare loadouts with awesome weapons and great perks.
More transparency is necessary imo, if the game is to grow.
Even though the game is not P2W at all (though merc-grind for F2P players might be painful), huge amounts of players will be put off by the loadout system: you join a new game, you get destroyed due to the high skill curve, and blame all the shiny loadout cards for it.
I do agree the game could explain itself a bit better. But AJ shows himself to be a buffoon who didn’t even try to understand what he was doing or how the system works and judged it based off false information.
As far as transparency, they could put the drop rates right displayed in game. I know it is displayed on the website somewhere.
The part I don’t like much is the whole wheel affect, it just seems to be too misleading in order to manipulate you into thinking you just barely got something good.
He was being misled by that voice-over wannabe, who didn’t know **** himself. My point is: regardless of what you think about AngryJoe, he is a ‘seasoned’ gamer. New players coming to the game are likely to have similar experiences, esp. if they subscribe to the Nexon-bashing bandwagon
As far as transparency, they could put the drop rates right displayed in game. I know it is displayed on the website somewhere.
My point of transparency is to explain to new players better how the game is NOT P2W. Atm. it feels like SD wants to satisfy both crowds: it looks as much P2W as possible to milk the $-cows, but it doesnt actually give any significant advantages to muffle the P2W whine from F2Players.
This is a double-edged sword: the $-cows will spend some money, get owned anyways, and stop spending more money cause they invested a lot but it didnt give them anything. The F2Players will quit before giving the game a chance, cause it LOOKS too much P2W.
Imo the system should own up to itself: power levels are clearly stated to go from lead to bronze, and the rest is skins. Also, its necessary imo to stress how things like HP and weapon DPS are unaffected by loadouts.
The part I don’t like much is the whole wheel affect, it just seems to be too misleading in order to manipulate you into thinking you just barely got something good.
Aye, the wheel with the ‘gold tease’ is def. pushing it.
I do think they are fairly transparent already. They state that higher rarity cases are just bling whenever you open a case. There is an asterisk next to silver, gold and cobalt rarities indicating that.
And the only way to become more transparent than that, that I can think of, is to put exactly the drop rate for each case. And I guess they can better educate you on how to get cases, like buying bronze loadouts from the store. Also, the trade up system could be explained as well.
Most people don’t notice ‘q’ and ‘e’ abilities in the first few hours of the game on their in-game hud, how likely are they to notice an asterisk? Do consider that average player’s age is likely in the mid-teens.
AngryJoe himself noticed the asterisk, and it only made him consider that the game tries to ‘hide’ its P2W aspect. Regardless of how perceptive Joe is himself, many MANY players already whine incredibly about how P2W the game is. Nexon as publisher is not helping one bit, seems like they have some extremely dark rep on the F2P market.
[QUOTE=Szakalot;530716]Most people don’t notice ‘q’ and ‘e’ abilities in the first few hours of the game on their in-game hud, how likely are they to notice an asterisk? Do consider that average player’s age is likely in the mid-teens.
AngryJoe himself noticed the asterisk, and it only made him consider that the game tries to ‘hide’ its P2W aspect. Regardless of how perceptive Joe is himself, many MANY players already whine incredibly about how P2W the game is. Nexon as publisher is not helping one bit, seems like they have some extremely dark rep on the F2P market.[/QUOTE]
It is more than just an asterisk. It is the only line of text in the box.
If I write an entire paragraph and put an asterisk somewhere in that entire paragraph, people might miss it. This is the current case opening screen I believe:
Now imagine that in full screen with text slightly clearer to read. That is not some hidden asterisk. it is literally the only sentence explanation there. You don’t miss that. Rarer bling BUT NOT ADDITIONAL STRENGTH.
You’d have to be a literal moron to not understand what that means. You’d have to be blind or reckless to not see that notation and SD would have to literally slap you in the face to make it even more apparent than that.
If people aren’t noticing the abilities, it is because they’ve chosen to ignore the tutorial, which literally forces you to learn these things to get past it.
There is a point where any explanation is going to fail. Maybe those people deserve to not be informed, because they are clearly not willing to let themselves be informed.
I understand what you are saying, but from a perspective of a business-model there cannot be enough explanation as to how the system works.
SD made an incredible game, and it would be a damn shame if it never kicked off because a bunch of whiny kids didn’t get it. As a player myself, I’m definitely hoping for the game to grow as much as possible, so it can be frustrating to see unclear UI fooling people over.
Just scroll through the steam negative reviews and see how much P2W whine is there. Naturally, listening to bad reviewers alone is never a good idea, but if 20-40% of negative recommendations stem from P2W whine, well then - the game is not explaining itself properly.