Thoughts on SH game-design decisions

Feanyar

Sanz of Time replied at 2015-2-27 10:26
That's why he's not asking for a free-for-all, full availability for all the cards. He's just aski ...

Ah, nearly forgot that post...
What Sanz said is hit the nail. But since this thread isn't intended to be a "players wishlish" but a game design discussion, I'd like to add another angle to this problem. This time from SpicyHorse PoV:

While increasing the availibilty of cards seems like giving away stuff for players for free, it does actually have a benefit for SH too! Imagine you're a player. The card you want has a 5% chance to appear in the shops every reset. You have sufficient virage/honor and are growing impatient. What happens?
Option 1) worst case: You get bored due to lack of progress and quit. I've seen that happening - sad but true. Loss of players means for SH loss of potential income...

Option 2) You could use gold refresh. 100g (only the first few times a day) for another 5% to just see the card you want to buy. The chances are to low to really justify the cost - and you'd still have to pay for it with honor/virago.
2a) Lets say you spend golf on refreshs. The likely outcome IF you pay for refreshs is that you just spent a bunch of gold and get nothing at all for it - and since chances are independent it doesnt improve your standing for future (free) shoprefreshs either! Some will become angry and/or frustrated and quit -> see Option 1.
2b) You think about that issue and decide to NOT spend gold on refreshs - simply because it's the wise thing to do and gold can be spent in better ways. No income for Spicy and continuously bored/frustrated players that might decide to choose Option 1) afterall.

Now, lets say you increase card availibility with one (or any combination) of my proposed solutions. Less people become frustrated since they experience progress => more active players, more potential income.
And even the impatient and/or unlucky might actually decide to spend gold on refreshs, since the odds of getting what you want for it have improved enough for it to be a reasonable, viable choice! => more cash income for spicy.

It is a win-win situation for both the players and SpicyHorse if you think about it.

Spike13

voeuxpieux replied at 2015-2-27 23:43
Perhaps a problem of your friend list Spike... i have between 20 and 25 ERB from friends per day. As ...

All my friend list is active and playing... I have a lot of boss only not erb... Maybe even too active!!! But that's not a problem of friend list, is a problem of game setting if you have to look for people who are not interested in events....
Also YOU are not the only one playing, NOR the icon of playerbase, so who cares if you have not the problem. Several people has that kind of problem, several post are opened each raid event 'cause of that (ask Laserman for example) and when a big part of a community has a problem (ignored by SH) is quite worse of "OMG they did 4 time the event instead of 3" ... IMO

@FENyarum: LOL
Summa summarum and you wrote your own opinion nkt the sum of anything!!!
How is different spend gold for potion than for raid boss? You can stock potions, you can't stock raid bosses!! You can get the item without gold using time farming, you can't get the item without summon ERB
Summa summarum: if you are newbye you can't gain a lot from the island event... Well that's why you got jokers fast in IE. Other than that if you can't farm tunam and you don't need jokers you need to stop playing events and focus on build a starter deck (easy to do).
It is normal that a game rewards growing stronger (that is the point of the game itself). It is NOT normal that a event punish growing stronger or having stronger allies (event raid boss)


I am not saying to not doing raid event, it was my favorite event before it became unplayable. I am saying it need to be fixed before and it is probably more urgent to fix it than the others points: and the solution is simple: increase the number of raid bosses spawned! People will still use gold to buy rood so no loss of money but will also have the feeling of playing!!!

Feanyar

@FENyarum: LOL
Summa summarum and you wrote your own opinion nkt the sum of anything!!!
How is different spend gold for potion than for raid boss? You can stock potions, you can't stock raid bosses!! You can get the item without gold using time farming, you can't get the item without summon ERB
Summa summarum: if you are newbye you can't gain a lot from the island event... Well that's why you got jokers fast in IE. Other than that if you can't farm tunam and you don't need jokers you need to stop playing events and focus on build a starter deck (easy to do).

Nope, I didnt write my opinion. I summed up my arguments. And is my analysis that raidevents are playable for everyone yet a bit more tricky for highlvls while islands are unplayable (or just not worth the cost) for low/mid lvls and even for highlvls very ressource intensive wrong in some way?
If u would sum up the usefulness of events over the whole playerbase, raidevents would rate higher in total. That, plus the fact that raidevents are an addition of normal gameplay while island events are a substitution make me believe that raidevents are better in the sum total. That doesnt mean that islands dont have their advantages - it just means raidevents are better overall.

PS: Who is "FENyarum"? But since u mean me: I can beat tunam and probably Irkalla too (didnt bother to actually try it). I wasnt talking about me here: I was talking about players at different stages of the game. And newbies cant do shit in island events even if they wanted to. Midtiers could do so, but its usually not worth for them (with some exceptions). Thats why island events completely exclude large parts of the playerbase.

It is normal that a game rewards growing stronger (that is the point of the game itself). It is NOT normal that a event punish growing stronger or having stronger allies (event raid boss)

I am not saying to not doing raid event, it was my favorite event before it became unplayable. I am saying it need to be fixed before and it is probably more urgent to fix it than the others points: and the solution is simple: increase the number of raid bosses spawned! People will still use gold to buy rood so no loss of money but will also have the feeling of playing!!!

I fully agree here. The fact that leveling up is bad isnt just a problem with events but in this game in general (for everything that has something to do with raids). You dont really benefit much from a high account-level, while it does make raids harder. I slightly scrated it already at the beginning of my very first post.

Spike13

Well, your analysis is wrong.Island have more DB as ranking reward (for the same position), more EP reward, the chance of making db for normal raid bosses and the possibility of making for shure a gold equip without gold.

Raid bosses have none of this and if you wanna seriously compete you will need to farm hezelpop on normal level (so a raid boss spawned every 30 hope point that means not farming recources as well.

If the bosses would be a lot more it could be possible to play notmally and in addicion havimg a event. As the situation is now is not possible at least for hing level player.

Probably you just are playing at a level you don't get (and/or reap) all the advantages of island event and haven't yet faced the worst part of raid event.

Jason27104

Dude, raid is 1000% better than island. Who wants to play for 45 seconds once every 4 hours?  If you have good allies you can reasonably get 50 shards from bosses for equipment.

Spike13

Define "good allies".
Cause with strong allies or con half lvl25 and half NE allies, activ, over lvl 50 you don't get them....

Plus you should understand that if you are getting it, 5 or more of your allies are not, 'cause the erb you summons personnaly are that few!!!
So overall the "player community" doesn't benefit from it, only a few with player high lvl, active and still weak!

Plus i qyite like playing 45 second every 4 hours (plus isla mare, pvp and raid bosses)
I have also others things to do in my day...

voeuxpieux

you shouldn't do He-Elzapop... the drop rate of ERB is lower than Hoarhole. Sure yoy have more RB but less ERB.

Spira

Dude, raid is 1000% better than island. Who wants to play for 45 seconds once every 4 hours?  If you have good allies you can reasonably get 50 shards from bosses for equipment.

Which bosses? I can't never see them.

With the advantage equipment it's even worse. We can't rely on other players to summon the bosses and the ones who we can summon (after making 6 fights) costs 42-60 hope. And i have wasted many hope summoning SR's and not the event boss as well. Tell me how different is it from the 45 seconds every 5 hours. I end up feeling that type of event it's based on my luck spawning them cause i can't rely on others to do it for me.

The only way to compete for any prize is to spend gold to summon bosses because i usually end my raid events by seeing about 10 raid bosses in the full week at most.

Beginners might find raid events easier than island, but after they get a full lv25 SR team they are on the sweet spot because they can farm Tunam easily and get some rewards for participating, and play raid events as well because there are many bosses around.

After level 50 it's quite hard to get something from raid bosses due to a flawed design regarding the lack of bosses to attack. Islands become reliable, you know you always get something (EP rewards), you just need to participate.

If you still think raids are better, you probably:
- Aren't over level 50
- Don't have a full NM friend list
- Can't farm Tunam at least
- Spend gold to spawn bosses

Spike13

voeuxpieux replied at 2015-2-28 18:45
you shouldn't do He-Elzapop... the drop rate of ERB is lower than Hoarhole. Sure yoy have more RB bu ...

How you know that? Never seen any news about it and never got more bosses while doing Hoarhole. The max number of erb i found was while doing hezelpop due to the higher number of bosses in general

Jason27104

I'm lvl 58. I have a full NE team plus reserves and I think raid boss is much better than island. I have plenty of powerful allies, but also quite a few weak ones that spawn me plenty of raid bosses. Sure it could be more, but it's enough to get 50 shards and complete an item, plus get some rank rewards.  
Farming irkalla is boring as hell. It's 21 hope, insta- finish and done. While doing raid I'm also collecting Hell Forge shards and checking for other people to spawn raid bosses and checking mission log for rood or bs missions. In general, I get to spend about 5-10x more time actually playing the gate during raid boss. The island it is click click and done for 4 hours. To me that sucks but whatever floats your boat.