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  1. #1
    Senior Member Pandevmonium's Avatar
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    Shadow Era is too hard on noobs?

    During the F2P challenge many players impersonated noobs trying to climb top score and get as much gold/cards as possible... That was not an easy challenge, and I don't really know if Shadow Era now is a very welcoming environment for newcomers.
    I couldn't play against the AI because it was banned from F2P. But I have a good grasp of where to spend my starting gold and SC, although I almost never played during the last year, and I totally missed recent balance and meta changes.
    New cards were out of reach anyway because of limited budget, so it wasn't a big deal for me.
    I picked Boris, sold some garbage, bought 4x of Blood Frenzy and Crippling Blow and I was good to go. Even if I still played my initial games with Rain Delay and Valiant Defender, otherwise I couldn't reach a minimum of 40 cards
    Could I do this operation if I just discovered Shadow Era last month? My guess is a no 99.9% of the times, even if I had the chance to play the campaign.
    That's because, aside balance/scoring changes happened during last years, I believe that there're 3 flaws into the game.

    1) There's nothing to win if you lose
    Ok, this may sound odd, but if I am a weak player I will lose more often than not. And Shadow Era as of now punishes me with the gain of little to no gold and SC, while winners become even more winners.
    So if I am starting to play and I want to try to get gold to buy new cards, the best option is already having those cards; because with the crappy starting ones I can be at stall and not being able to win enough to upgrade my deck.
    I don't know if this situation motivates new players to quit or spend money on a game where they just can't win.

    2) You can't pick a Shadow hero at the start of your career
    Not gamebreaking, but you see a meta full of human heroes because F2P players couldn't afford shadow ones.
    I don't get why you can't choose any hero you like, even if you keep the restriction for CotC because they have cheaper starting decks.

    3) There're too many cards
    People complain because there aren't enough new cards, but if you start from zero there a lot of cards to buy and learn now. I still have problems learning cards and combos from Shattered Fates and Lost Lands, I guess the game can be overwhelming for a noob.
    I also felt at disadvantage against normal accounts, because I was almost limited to cheap/CotC cards, while they normally had access to tribes and cards they wanted.

    I don't know if new players really feel these issues, but I found those problems during the F2P period.
    Maybe a different TCG approach like the one from Epic Card Game could give a boost to the starting experience and still force people to spend real money onto this game. I mean selling expansions in block, rather than passing through deck melting and going to the merchant to buy single cards.
    CotC coul be free for anybody, and CotC players can only play rated against other CotC players. This way at least I can really enjoy the game when I am a young player.
    Then if you want to play tournaments or enjoy new cards you must spend money or grind a huge amount of games to buy DP, then SF, then LL, excetera.

  2. #2
    Lead Developer / Designer Gondorian's Avatar
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    Thanks for this feedback. There's a lot to digest. If others want to chime in with their thoughts, that will be useful when we come to review this in near future and decide how to try to improve things.


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  3. #3
    Lead Developer / Designer Gondorian's Avatar
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    I don't understand flaw 1. If you lose a lot you will end up low rating and meet other people of low skill and then win more. If you play enough, everyone ends up at a rating where they should win 50% of the time. Even if you are at rating=50, you get the same gold as if you win at rating=350. And you should be learning as you go to get better. Am I misunderstanding your point here?


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  4. #4
    Community Manager SEF Mango's Avatar
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    I believe the point he was making is as a new player, even new player vs new player, you may lose far more than win and the amount of exp/gold you gain per game is not something that adds up quickly enough to help a struggling play have some hope knowing that at least they will have some funds for new stuff regardless of how badly they perform.

    I’m just throwing out this idea. I have not put much thought into it.

    Perhaps, for brand new players with their first Hero, they can have 5x Gold and 2x exp per game for the first 10 levels.

    Again, ONLY FOR THE HERO THEY START WITH. If they purchase a new hero, then the bonus will be canceled even if they have not reached level 10.

    Something like this I believe is what Pan was getting at. What it would take to input something like this I do not know. However, I believe it would be far easier than trying to set up a way for CoTC only server.

    Personally, I believe that the game is decent in being F2P. I can just see where Pax is coming from. He wants to be able to keep as many players as possible.

    Especially the lazy ones xD
    Last edited by SEF Mango; 03-12-2018 at 04:40 PM.
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  5. #5
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    I know this game can be overwhelming for a new player I props if new players are really havon problems like you say give him a prize yo welcome him to the game or something along those lines

  6. #6
    Senior Member Pandevmonium's Avatar
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    My point was that when I start to play this game I am very weak and prone to losses. Since only victories award you something I will have a very hard time making some progress.
    Some sort of noob protection, such as XP accelerator proposed by Mango, may help newcomers to keep playing and have some fun.

  7. #7
    Lead Developer / Designer Gondorian's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Pandevmonium View Post
    My point was that when I start to play this game I am very weak and prone to losses. Since only victories award you something I will have a very hard time making some progress.
    Some sort of noob protection, such as XP accelerator proposed by Mango, may help newcomers to keep playing and have some fun.
    I see. But surely a new player would play the campaign to learn the game and have easy chance of wins? We only banned it in the F2P challenge so it wouldn't harm PVP activity whilst in progress.

    Still, we can look at increasing the cards you get as a new player for completing the revised tutorial we're working on and set some easy hoops to jump through to get more in the initial weeks.

  8. #8
    DP Visionary Demnchi's Avatar
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    1)There's nothing to win if you loose:

    As you kind of pointed out, the F2P event (oddly enough) doesn't represent the new player experience very accurately because you couldn't progress using the campaign at all. The campaign will likely be much easier than real players and be decent way to progress if they are feeling stuck (so long as it remains farmable). I'm not sure that rewarding people for losing is a great idea (XP is nice though), but rewarding them for trying could be. I think better rewards in the campaign chests (especially the 20 star and (even more especially) the 30 star chest) would help a lot with giving new players more avenues to leverage. A rewarding quest system could also help ensure that struggling players still get something in the way of progression. I know that the progression of yourself as a player should be the reward, but unfortunately, not all players think this way and need a steady stream of progress to get them moving.

    A quest system could also be used to help guide players towards ways they could progress as well by introducing them to the multitude of avenues they could improve (campaign, merchant, replays, community, ect.).

    2) You can't pick a shadow hero at the start of your career:

    I don't really see an issue in letting players start with a shadow hero. Although I do think it helps focus them at the start around 1 class and 1 faction, especially with your 3rd point.

    3) There're too many cards:

    I don't disagree that the amount of cards coming in could be a bit daunting. However, I don't think its quite that negative. Players will learn cards as they play and it facilitates discovery. It also facilitates one of the best things about TCG's in general, community. Most players learn new card games by emulation and discussion with those who already play it until they can handle themselves. My traversal into the Pokemon TCG was rough because of this exact reason (and that's with Rotation formats limiting what I should even look at), but by simply playing with others and discussing it with them (and some net decking) I can now make my own decks in that game and play it without having to feel like I'm lost in a sea of cards. This is also how I started in Shadow Era when there was only Call of the Crystals. Speaking of net decking, so long as the practice is explained well, it helps ease players even into the most complicated games by limiting their focus so they can build that experience that leads them to no longer being newbies. Thankfully the community of Shadow Era is pretty good at this, I think the game itself could encourage this a bit more by having features such as a deck import/export function.

    ---

    Anyways, I do think the game could help new players out a bit more by giving them more things at the start. More booster packs and SC to help ease them into the more grindy aspects of winning and collecting. A quest system and better rewards for what already exist could do this quite well. Not to mention rewards for staying active on QM, high win rate or not.
    Last edited by Demnchi; 03-13-2018 at 02:18 AM.
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  9. #9
    Senior Member Kylt's Avatar
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    Let us check the cards on the field when it’s opponents turn.

    It would save so much time.
    IGN: Kyltz

  10. #10
    Senior Member phillipw123's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Kylt View Post
    Let us check the cards on the field when it’s opponents turn.

    It would save so much time.
    Yes that would be a great addition.

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