TLTR:
Levelling and fighting the AI (as well as other players) is like printing money. You do not want to print money if You are a "government". Do something about it
I was reading the thread in the "Dev Blog" section and, a question came to me: how are You planing to regulate the problem of inflation?
At the moment the AH will be implemented there will be X gold in the economy and Y cards - if I understand correctly the only way to get more cards into the "global market" will be trough shadow crystals - and that is ok, it will surly put the proper demand on them eventually after the market stabilizes (will take 2-5 weeks) but someday You will release a new expansion and suddenly because of the way how the free market works Prices for the new cards in gold will be astronomical.
Because of the fighting with A.I and levelling the X amount of gold will be incising all the time while the Y amount will get only higher when people buy shadow crystals and spend them on cards - that's a conflict in how the market should work.
Yes it will produce the demand for shadow crystals but at the same time gold WILL become irrelevant - only veteran players will have enough to actually purchase, a new card and new players will only have the option to buy shadow crystals and it will be very obvious to them - that will contradict the f2p part of shadow era (these players will quit instead of taking there time and eventually buying some shadow crystals - majority of their cards would be bought with gold but they would still buy SOME shadow crystals as well as increase the popularity of the game) - that is not good for business
I do have some suggestions on how to address that issue:
1) Remove the gold.
A good solution balances X to Y directly and forces people even more into buying shadow crystals while at the same time gives new players just enough hope to keep them playing - the amount of SC rewarded for levelling and wining vs AI needs balancing of course.
2) Introduce gold dumps.
It could be anything: alternative hero card avatars, booster packs, different font colour in chat, name change, rating reset...
Prices based directly on the X amount of gold in the economy - veteran players will dump the gold on them thus stabilizing the market.
In my opinion You should combine the 2 above and gold should vanish. As for adding those "novelty items" I'm positive You are planing on putting them in to the game but not for the "free currency".
Also on another note: DO NOT ALLOW DIRECT TRADING BETWEEN PLAYERS - it will only create a "black market" and some of the money You could earn via SC will be distributed to 3rd party's.
If any details regarding the way You plan on implementing the AH, that would make my post Irrelevant had skipped my attention - I'm sorry. Also sorry for the wall of text and any grammar mistakes - English is not my main language.
Regards,
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