Poxnora: The Catch 22 Dilemma

Pox is failing because no-one plays.
No-one plays because Pox is failing.
​

This needs to change. I'm sure there will be a lot of you who don't agree with what I'm about so say, some that agree only in part, and some who will like everything. That's fine. I only ask that when You reply to this thread you quote the parts of this that you don't like with feed back. The things suggested here are radical in nature. Please bear with me to the end.

I like MTG, Yu-Gi-Oh, and other TCG's, I love board games, RTS, FPS, you name it. Pox is one of those unique games that bring two genres together to create a blend that is magical. However I have long since noticed a trend in how I play TCGs. They tend to be money pits. So instead of buying the merchandise I've leaned towards buying the games of those franchises- a one time purchase -and play with thousands upon thousands of cards at my disposal. This accessibility makes me choose this way of playing those franchises over their real world counterparts of collecting & trading.

I believe that if Poxnora is to survive. We must take the game in a new direction. Away from the TCG aspect. Accessibility to Poxnora should not only be a highlight among players, but a selling point for the game. Remove the randomness of access, and give players the options to buy factions in bulk. Potential players might try this game and see what amounts to a checklist, and the effort to complete that checklist. This may be a F2P game, but even with the changes to access that we have received it still heavily leans players towards purchasing rather than patience.

The Single-player experience is not healthy for this game. It's name alone makes it seem suited for players who just wish to play by themselves. Which is not wrong. However what they have to play with is a limited number of campaigns. Once they reach that number, or just get plain tired of farming for gold the 'easy' way to gain access to runes. They will try to move onto Ranked. Ranked is an entirely different battlefield. The bad habits, and laid back attitude from single palyer will undoubtedly follow them an lead to a poor experience. Change Single-player to Campaign, and Ranked to PvP. This little change might solidify the mindsets you need to have between them.

As of current the Skirmish AI in Singleplayer is laughably bad. It doesn't punish you for stupid maneuvers, bad ap handling, poor positioning, spell spamming ect. It doesn't adapt to anything you do like a player would. (Nor should we really expect it to.) Again I say that Single Player should't be an introductory to Poxnora.

The suggestion I'm about to make is not well throughout, and likely has a huge amount of work needed to get it implemented. I'm not set on this view, but I've yet to see or think of something better.

A tutor system might be in order. Something where a veteran player can mirror your game, and see what runes you have access to play, and what's currently going-on on the board. It would likely have a VOIP system where communication between the teacher, and player will be more efficient.

Poxnora is a game where a F2P TCG meets a Board Game. It is my belief that that worked for a time, but how players view games has changed. The word F2P has come to mean Grind Wall, TCG has come to mean Money Pit, and Board Game has come to mean less advance and turn based. We should change what they see when they come to this game. The F2P, and TCG aspects of this game need to go. Market this as an Online Board game, where for a one time purchase you gain access to the game, and a faction of your choosing. You can choose to purchase all the factions in bulk for a discount, or just purchase the faction one at a time as you go. (How expansions will be handled I do not know. They could either be added to the game for free, or you could still charge for them, but we gain access to all the rune of the faction we current own from the expansion.)

There are lots of ways to fund Poxnora, and none of them have to be permanent. I know the devs are against ADs, but we might need to rely on them for a while. There are currently many ingame features that we want, or even have had in the past, but can't use. Alternate skin arts, rune name changes, taunts, bases, different rank icons, ect... There are a number of cosmetic changes that can be used to help fund the game.

I don't believe my suggestions are a cure all, but I do believe that there needs to be a drastic change in how Pox is currently run, and marketed for this game to survive. I can safely say that if I was a new player, and not heavily invested in the game for many years, that I would pass this game on by. The low player base alone is a turn-off, an that's before I even get to play the game and possibly spend money.

In conclusion. Poxnora needs a change to pull away from the Catch 22 death spiral that we are in. The suggestions listed may not be the exact direction we need to head in, but we need to decide to head in a direction fast. Death is following this game, and we are standing there waiting for it.

Upon re-reading this several times. It appears I made this way more morbid than I intended. Oops...

 

Idk how to implement the changes properly but alot of this is what would probably be best improve the state of the game, to attract more players, and retain older ones.

 

It'd probably be better if you worked with the devs to form a strategy on how the money could be best spent to the benefit of the game.

Also can you post the link to the boob ads pls.

As far as the amount of players, the game seems to be pretty stable atm. Since the tournament we have been maintaining around 150 on average it seems. I guess this is still not good though considering it is summer and kids are out of school.

 

Classy, DMR. Tits and corgis, we going for the big leagues, yo.

 

Right, poor crawling corpse wouldn't have a chance

 

What a crackup.

 

So the catch 22 situation is the age old dilemma of swanky "tops" vs sweltering "bottoms"? DMrBadguy has me confuzzled.

On Topic:

Radical FTW.

 

It's kind of hard to discuss a catch-22 situation without being somewhat morbid.

I gather Pox Nora is an old game within its genre. It may get some new players who stumble on it like I did, but in a fairly crowded field this game either must be viewed as spectacular or special or it will fade as the small core of veteran players pass on or onto other things.

I think IMAGIRL hit on the solution with combining more genres. The game needs either some special breakthrough in the tactical play or the cards or it needs to evolve by adding a strong element of another genre. The game lends itself to the inclusion of a strategic nation-building aspect (even if not full 4X) that could easily attract people from that genre.

Think of the possibilities of a tactical, nation-building strategic game that uses cards. I would keep the original game and develop the new game. I don't see it being a free game, but it need not be costly either.

 

I wish you luck

 

>implying aylas fine bum aint worthy

 

What a perfect way to advertise this game.

Realistic, yet comedic.

Its like George Carlin or Richard Pryor except poxnora style.

 

Maybe we could do some crowdfunding

 

Uhm, I feel like throwing money their way every expansion is crowdfunding enough. I don't feel like we should crowdfund something that DOG should have done a year ago.

By the way, a single runestore with 9 dollar everything, watch how quickly the game gets funded.

 

Obviously, none of us players can speak for DOG, but I assume changing the whole model carries too much risk for them. They are dependent on a small group of players spending a lot of money per player.
That being said, the player base does need to expand.
Imho, the biggest issue new players face when playing Poxnora is the lack of other newbs: they constantly have to face more experienced players (I don't care about the AI being dumb, that's the same everywhere), they sometimes have to wait in que for several minutes and they have nobody to share notes and compare rank with.
It's not that hard to get some runes. Play the 2 dailies and you'll have at least 600 gold and 2 runes. A new player has to be patient/expect to lose/spend money.
More advertisements would be the way to go, imo.

 

DMR, I feel bad for you sometimes bro, and I'm not being sarcastic or ironic here. If you want more details on why, PMs.

 

On topic:

Pox is failing because no-one plays.
No-one plays because Pox is failing.

I agree completely with this notion, and I really want this vicious circle to break, and have been for a while.
However, I'm advocating for a Pox 2.0 now.

 

If funding is the main aspect.
They should bring out cosmetic stuff, its what makes most F2P games a killing (I am a sucker for this)

Taunts
ReSkins
Subscriptions
and the most important
Single Rune Store
You have 3rd party sites selling runes all the time, sell all runes for cash prices.
Sell like 50 random common packs
50 random uncommon packs
5 random rare packs
then
Exo/Lim/Leg runes singles

 

If pox opend a store for single runes then pb and pp would not make money for all the hard work they have done. Maybe they pay pox not to open a store on a monthly basis?!? Illuminati confirmed.

 

Advertising would bring new players. Steam has shown is what new players actually accomplishes with the current state of the game.

 

Well to be fair, both Sex and Cuteness rank high up there in things that both sell, and get lots of views.

If a game like Tower of Saviors can get millions of downloads with cards that have names such as Ed, The Innocent Necrophilia, and Jackie, Holocaust Igniter, then Pox can get players that will pay for boobs and puppies.

I don't really want to see an i-phone ap of Pox because tiny screen...but tablet compatibility certainly seems plausible.

Ease of use features go a long way too towards streamlining peoples play experience and giving them more time to actually play...For instance, it is pretty dumb that the browser isnt smart enough to remember that when you go into deck editor it should go the the 'last faction' you set it to. Also, more sort options seem like a no-brainer...sort by cost/damage/spd/etc. And did I miss something or did the 'new card filter' button disappear at some point with no explanation? It might sound a little silly, but I would be very satisfied if I could drag-n-drop cards into my BGs too...its clunky trying to click the little X, or just trying to click the card to see it and it removing itself.

Of course, balance patches being fairly regular is awesome. About once a month is where we have been, and that is actually pretty good. However I very much dislike the current nerf system. It feels an awful lot like the 5 people that complain the loudest in the forum are the ones that determine what gets nerfed. I kinda feel like things that are strong should be left as they are unless it is apparent that they are single-handedly causing shifts in the meta. Magic has only banned 1 card from standard in how many years, and they simply cannot nerf/buff cards without changing abilities with a blanket rules change. It's pretty crappy to watch several sets come out and follow the exact same pattern of 'whichever runes get played the most in the first week get nerfed'. It is a -way- better strategy to buff a couple pre-existing cards that are not otherwise meta powerhouses and give them counters to the new 'OP' thing....Currently Free meat spam is still an issue, and Rebirth WAS very OP but it got nerfed already. A couple older runes being given Defile Corpse(or say a 'good' version Cleansing Burial) would function perfectly fine as silver bullets to keep the meta from shifting a ton. Or, you can integrate said silver bullets into the next expansion and nobody will really be able to ***** too loud.