How can we increase the player base & boost the longevity

I had a friend who playes hearthstone and he is legend bla bla. I tried showing him this game and i was amazed at how hard it was to explain the game to him compared to when he explaind hearthstone to me. i was like "you need to kill the shrine with your champs...also you have equips, spells,relics....ooh ya and their are 8 factions....ooh ya and about 3000 cards compared to the 300 od hearthstone cards. umm also you need to be able to count and see what they are going to do next turn and this and that...and and and...." this game is just so complicated, and i believe thats why this game does not have the amount of players that hearthstone has...its just to much for the yung minds of the new erra of kid.

but to be honest if they did change pox to be as easy as hearthstone, so every champ has one ability and there were only equips and champs for example i would not like this game as much as i do.... so im fine with this not having a giant player base if it means it does not get as boringly obvious/easy as hearthstone. ive played 30 games or so of hearthstone but it feels like knowing what card to play is obvious 60% of the time, and there is no movment of champs like pox has, so pox just is to complicated, and im good with that.

 

I think we need to separate the complexity which is necessary for pox to be pox, with the complexity which isn't.

Pox should never try to be hearthstone, but it should do what it can to be as intuitive and pick-up-able as possible.

 

I think in the lower rank games you need to have a more visual effect showing where + and minus are coming from. The auras actualy cover the area they affect . Have greenies be uber tip masters for newbies when they can. Explain why they got beat so bad at times. Better pre-made bgs with a theory of how they are supposed to win.

Prolly the biggest one is to try to eliminate the must have champs to compete in Meta games.

 

Increase the speed of the games...User friendliness is a primary consideration for what games people will keep playing.


Good start is a better version of BG builder, and Improving the combat log.

For instance an AE spell could

-spell/rune/ability- does:
10 damage to your -champname-
10 damage to your -champ2namr-
8 damage to your -champxxx- (2 resisted)
4 damage to their -champyyy- (6 resisted)


With color formatting, it will be way more clear and easy to understand than the very long strings of clutter we get right now.

Another good idea is to have a mouse over damage tooltip for both spells and attacks...with a hotkey like shift-click to automatically move to x space and attack. This is a pretty basic feature in many similar games. Saves tons of time.

 

Make the game less of a grind. What is the point of having 99 levels? What is the point of achievements? Since avatars were nerfed, do we really need 50 levels?

 

Units get red .... Then you couldn't possibly make as much mistakes. The point is to read the abilities?

 

I know one thing is that i've seen players use it as a reference point. They complain that there's no one around their level.

 

You can do a lot of things in a game like this, but magically increasing the playerbase is a trick worthy of harry houdini.

 

Add poxnora for latinoamerican , yeah spanish text, .

Remember , no all world write english, there are many peruvian with many money for spend in this game.

 

UD is kill or dead!

 

I'm sure you know the stats better than me, but I would question how easy it is to measure the impact, and whether previous simplification measures were not offset by a greater trend towards complexity in other areas, and a general dated-ness of the game generally.

I'm guessing you're primarily talking about the first revamp - but was this not also the point where champ ability count started getting silly? And was not the motivation behind it not because the complexity in other areas of the game meant it could no longer support complicated upgrade paths?

So I wouldn't necessarily see a lack of growth as a negative there, as you could argue that it still had a positive impact in preventing a greater decline.

I'm not necessarily disagreeing with you, since you have the data and I don't (and the better ability to interpret it), just saying there are a lot of factors to take in.

 

With The rise of indie games and indie culture, the "dated" graphics don't have as much impact. Pox is one of the best looking card games with really great artwork and sprites + board look perfectly fine. Look at games like ascension or solforge - the artwork in pox is at least comparable, and IMO often much better. Check out low res graphics of duelist - they're great and have distinct style with multitude of colours. So does pox (although admittably, duelist has better animations). I believe that old and bad client has much bigger impact than graphics and art, which kept their charm throughout the years. Client on the other hand is just ugly, unwieldy and confusing.

 

Graphics are fine i like them.

A way to highlight / visualise interactions in game that takes away the need to work stuff out, would help a lot since the turn timer is too fast to effecively do this (yes i know some ppl think like super computers lol). Visual damage calculations on screen, highlighting what a basic attack / ability / spell etc effects. could be a button press to activate the visual mode like others said, on and off.. then just mouse overing attack type could reveal damage a unit would take etc. hover over cleanse and it would highlight all who needs cleansing, something like that. could colour code squares an enemy can possibly move to or move and attack to etc... could even have one max range colour for possible move/attack range if deployed units abilities were used on it, would be nice to include at least runes that have been used and you know the enemy has, so if they have mobility extend the max range.. ugh idk how to do this all i know is there is so much need to reference stuff all the time, looking back and forth - that needs to be cut to a minimal.

i realise why higher ranked players do not spam champions,..they would not have time to use them in battle.

 

spamming every other gameing forum with how great pox is

 

to live again

 

I personally believe Sepulcher's videos were massively important for new players back when he made videos.
However there are currently no educational videos on how to play Pox which are up to date.

Poxyoutubers who are currently halfway active aren't currently suitable for new players.
Problems such as being uncomfortable commentating, aimed only toward pros, low quality mics, long pauses of not saying anything, cursing, no explaining thought process or explaining what they are doing and so on.

I believe high quality youtube videos would help a lot and cause players get the urge to play themselves.

 

I also LOVED sepulcher's vids.