Pox is a wonderful game, as evidence by the rabid fan base, but it is also at a point where it is almost impossibly huge for new players. These threads are cropping up everywhere, I am aware, but this wall of text is in hopes of offering something truly useful to the owls. First, this game needs to look at what it wants to be and how long it wants to be there. Right now, it is beginning to look like every other CCG out there near the end. Massive power creep set in, the number of cards available is overwhelming, and the existing players are head and shoulders better than any new player could hope to be in years. While the power creep is being adjusted (and it is a huge undertaking) the other two issues need to be looked at. One idea is to take the magic the gathering approach, make different formats for different runes. Older runes can be played in un-ranked games and extended ranked games (and tournaments), new runes in ranked games, unranked games, and normal tournaments. (perhaps make the release set a sort of global set to round out the factions as well) This gives newer players the chance to build a deck out of newer runes and compete with people who, while more experienced, are still learning the new runes. It also lets the older players with bigger collections use them without worrying about having to immediately get the new runes. Second, monetizing the game. Back when the game was new the prices were not bad, $20 got you a good chunk of what was available and mostly let you play ranked games. Today, even $200 wouldn't get you there anymore and that is a massive roadblock. You need to decide on how much is enough for each set and try to price them to match that figure. Changing the game play types would help but the prices (and what is being bought) need to change too. My suggestion, since there are technically unlimited rune numbers, is to price as follows; New sets can be bought by the pack (as they are now) for $1 a pack. Boxes are 11 packs for $10. Older sets (so further back that the last say 5-10 sets but more recent than 10-15 back) have an option to buy the entire set for $100. The oldest sets (so 10-15 and older) would have the same option but at $50 for the set. All of this would scale in the F2P currency as well, meaning you could, in theory, get every rune for free but the effort required would be on the year scale (which is the kind of player you WANT to have every rune anyway as they are the people who will play the most games and support the community the most. You want to reward that.) Having an option for a person to "catch up" or even know what they are getting ahead of time would be a huge help. Third, tournaments need to be regular and need to be supported. A FREE (free, again, FREE) monthly tournament (assuming the earlier format changes) for each format with prizes that are free to the company (so packs and boxes or specific, existing limited runes) would help generate some competitiveness and encourage people to actually log in. In addition, a "new set" tournament for whenever you release a new set which rewards the winner a complete set of the newest set would be a good money generator and fun tournament. (so, say, $0.50 to enter winner gets the new set in full, top X get a free box, top Y get a free pack, all players get a free rare or exo from the set.) Either way, supporting games and tournaments in some fashion would help tremendously. Fourth, there needs to be a real way to F2P this game in full. The free coins, right now, will get you MAYBE two boxes a month if you really hammer at it. This is only discouraging people who see the free to play part of the game then look at the set list and the box prices and give up before they even get started. Decide on a range of time you want a person to play before they are at the top and set the F2P prices for that. My opinion, if you want players you need to actually reward active players. The daily quests are a great example of this but the real goal should be to get people to play each other. Which would bring me back to the set types but I will get the the big picture at the end. Honestly, you should reward a player more F2P coins the more games they play in a day. 1 finished game gets you the first game bonus. 5 finished games gives you another bonus, then 10, then 20. Make the bonuses bigger each time and make sure there is something in place to prevent people from farming the crap out of it (like each game must last X rounds or each player in the game must spend Y nora, or even make it only count if the enemy shrine is destroyed.) This rewards activity in a day and encourages more games to be played, not less. The sum of this would look like the following: A new player is shown the tutorial with the newest set of runes (make it part of the new set update). After they complete whatever you decide on, they are given a pre-made battle group that the player counsel decides on each new release from the faction of their choice. (this battle group contains runes from the last 2 or 3 sets.) With this battle group they can play ranked games and unranked (new) format games only, but that keeps them in with other new players. As they earn F2P coins they can get newer sets (the ranked packs) or older sets (the extended packs) depending on how they want to play. Each new set, the oldest set from the ranked format is phased out into the extended format, thus encouraging newish players to get older sets and play more experienced players while also encouraging players to update their collections. At any point, players can buy packs or boxes as a shortcut to catch up with the meta (if they lapsed) or play the extended format (if they are new) for a more reasonable entry fee. This would make it so returning players are more likely to stick around and new players do not feel like they need to get runes from all (nearly) 30 sets right away in order to play. Lastly, you need to look at the F2P group as your core audience, not the enemy. Games like this RELY on the community, players are part of the content. Without a healthy F2P group you will never get a good paying group going at this point.
We also need more people getting to know Pox Nora. If we could get a strategy game youtuber with many viewers, (Maybe a Hearthstone player since that's popular now?) we could gain new users who would learn the game from watching, overcoming some of the hurdles for a new player.
I got 2 of my friends who have never heard of this game before, to start playing and they enjoy it. Maybe you could even introduce some sort of incentive system for current players who get new players to play, in which case, everyone wins (including you). This game is different to most games I have played and the uniqueness lies in the huge number of possibilities in designing decks. I think this could be somewhat of a popular selling point. Maybe a youtube channel or facebook advertising would really help in making this game more popular. I just wanted to say this game has potential and I'm sure if more people knew about it, you could gather a much larger player base. +1 to op for this thread
I think all it takes to make PN more accessable is just slightly more gold from playing the game and a better organized store. Being able to buy packs from certain expansions would go a long way. Having premade decks that you can buy that serve as a decent, but not perfect start into a faction or theme would be great. Those would have to be priced based on the runes that they contain so we can avoid all the "untradeable" nonsense.
I have 3 friends that play. Two of them were unable to transfer their accounts from SOE. Sending a ticket to DOG wasn't helpful at all.
The packs "by expansion" use to exist and, to an extent, I agree we should go back to that. I think it changed because of the chance to get legendaries which in turn hurt their value and made some of the big spenders mad. I like the idea of having a "format" pack too though, a general boost if you just want a bigger collection instead of specific runes. As for the "slightly" more gold bit, this game is currently very near pay to win. If I were to try to F2P right now, it would take me years to get a good collection and a lot of people are not willing to put in that much effort for that small a reward. Even a slight increase in gold will only set the clock back a little before you are back to square 1. We need a more systemic change so the free players aren't excommunicated within a few months, hence my suggestions.
I made a test during the last few days. I invaded IS territory and made a cheap paladin BG, with all those pallies nobody ever sees. They're cool, flavorful, and can actually pack a decent punch with the support of IS spells/equipments. But Then I noticed: there are 4(IIRC) champions with commander: paladin, 2 exotics and 2 LEs. So I felt a great sadness when I realized my BG wouldn't be that good without trading something valuable for one of those(paladin commander isn't that valuable but try finding one). So, everyone here must agree that I do nothing whenever I'm on Pox, and for some reason I'm still around. Even with all this love I got pretty bummed because of the aforementioned event... Now imagine a new player who meets the same problem I did. It was just an example, I'm sure you can find more throughout other themes. Essential runes that are incredibly hard to find, this is what this game is about atm. My suggestion would be to bring everything down to the same level, so that rarity won't play such a big hand on games. For example tone heroes down, right now theyre insane powerhouses with more abilities than everything else, and any champion similar to a hero is completely shoeboxed . I'm not just asking to remove the ridiculous -15 nora from hero ability, but also my idea would be to remove one ability the hero has from every other champion, so that the hero becomes unique, and not just a superchamp candidate as I see every day. It increases the flavor, and justifies the rarity. For those who use an exo/lim/leg rune just because it wins games, l2p.
ALL limited runes that aren't reskins need to get a legendary version. Then ALL legendary runes need to become exotics, and thus craftable.
I find myself in much the same boat. Every time I try to make a battle group to compete with I end up finding runes I want/need to make it a better group, then I look at the cost of getting those runes and forget about playing against others again. I really do enjoy the game but there is a massive rift between F2P and paid. Hell, I even paid a few times and probably never will again (with the current model) because of how little it helped me make a battle group. Rarity does need to play a role to an extent, however, there should be a little more homogeneity among runes of the same rarity. Perfect example from FW (the only faction I have any collection to speak of) is the bloodworm vs deathcaster vs tormented priest. Bloodworm has nothing but upgrade abilities, Tormented Priest has two signature abilities and 2 upgrades, and Deathcaster has 4 base abilities and 2 upgrades. All are exotic but they all vary so much! My idea here, tie the number of abilities to the rarity of the rune (and ignore racial's and base attacks.) Commons get one base ability and 2 upgrade abilities (and a base attack), Uncommons get two base abilities (and a base attack) with 2 upgrade abilities, Rares get three base abilities and two upgrade abilities, and Exotics get four base abilities and two upgrades. Limited and Legendaries should be the same as exotics but with maybe better stats or maybe even a third upgrade ability but only three base abilities. I think ALL runes should be accessible F2P with MAYBE the special skins as an exception (like the holiday heroes ^.^) Never sell power!!!!!!!!!
If i may add: - Putting premade decks into rotation will surely help new players get a better feel of the game and compete free of charge. Each rotation lasting a couple of weeks or better yet a month will most likely ensure it ll work. Im certain the community, and specifically the top ranks, is more than welcome to provide information on limited material bgs. Reward said limited player/contributor by spotlighting/naming the bg after them. - Im not sure how this could work out but a tutor system would be great to have. Setup a restricted rune loan system in which one can loan runes to a player which will be returned after X time period while keeping them locked to avoid foul play. Reward the donor with a scaling achievement badge (the more you loan the greater the achievement you get) visible on his profile page.
Even though I agree with many of your concerns, I have to point out that none of it will make a difference so long as the current CP/Token system remains unchanged. That, more than anything else, prevents new players from quickly acclimating to the ranked environment. Giving players more free runes translates to needing more (not free) Tokens. DOG made it a goal for the default upgrades on each champion to be competitive, but it's a unfortunate fact that in many cases this simply isn't true. If you want to improve the new player experience, the first thing that must be changed is how (easily) players acquire Tokens. (see Marketplace link in my sig) The way I see it, DOG should take the following steps, in order, to address Pox's current problems: 1) Overhaul the CP/Token system (simplify and tie to ranked games) 2) Overhaul the Rune Forge (normalize IN/OUT values and add Legendaries) 3) Overhaul the Marketplace (remove RNG involved in acquiring Exotics) 4) Finish the Rune Revamp (increased accessibility = more data/feedback) 5) Revise the NUX (larger starting package, rewards per level and previously promised "goodies") 6) Release Expansion (will exacerbate current accessibility issues if too soon) 7) Relaunch on Steam (use new expansion/revamp/improved NUX as hype; will fail otherwise) 8) ??? 9) Profit?! (fingers crossed!) Things like tournaments (especially multiple draft formats like Free/Gold/Ticket) can come after an influx of new players. Ranked/Training Grounds will collapse on itself if tournaments are revived before the playerbase is increased just like with adding new game modes.
I do not believe the re-release on Steam is going to help our player base much at all, mostly because of the issues I pointed out. I also do not think there is a massive problem with the current CP system, it is just slow. I can agree that if we removed it completely it would streamline things a lot, so I can see that as a good thing I suppose. The training grounds is already deserted, not sure why ranked would collapse from monthly tournaments when people would want to practice. Everything else you mentioned I replied to when others asked.
