I have an idea on how to fix pox...

The success of the likes of Hex, Hearthstone, and paper Magic: The Gathering begs to differ on this one. I'm not really advocating that a "set" system is the way to go, but I'd love to hear what people think would be a good strategy.

I'm going to zero in on this bit, so I apologise if I take something out of context. I have never heard a complaint from a new player of a TCG that has a revolving set system say "ugh, this TCG blows because there are only 4 sets in standard, that's only ~1500, what a snooze fest!" Granted I wouldn't consider competitive, and that may be part of the disconnect, but I have never heard that complaint, even in passing. I feel like number 1 might be the truth root of the issue, and I'm not saying there is a perfect solution either way, but unless there are some fantastic ideas coming out of nowhere, it might behove the Owls to take a risk on losing their shrinking customer base for a potential revival.

I will outright say that I have only spent about $100 on Pox Nora so far, obviously, I know that others have spent WAAAAAY more, but I'd give my $100 up to be able to only wait a minute or two in the PvP queue.

Agreed.

 

The set system only works in a game with a high population and strong competitive scene. A "standard" format with only part of the card means there are less "good" runes to be played, so the format becomes more fixed into 4-6 decks to beat and the rest "alternative" decks. This process is faster when you have a lot of players, because they find the best interactions faster. A lot of competitive players (and with competitive i mean people who do it for work, that get money by playing) like playing this kind of format because its more "skill based" when you just have 4-5 archetypes of deck and you can prepare more on what will come from this decks.
Realistically, in Poxnora introducing a rotation will mean:

1. Some players leave the game because they cant play the runes they collected in years.
2. There isnt any "competitive" scene so almost nobody would want to play this format. (could change if they introduce again tournaments with rune prizes)
3. People will complain because with a reduced format most of themes would be not good anymore so 90% of players would play Meta BGs

the only good choice to help new players get better without making them spend too much money into the game to get runes or getting them lost in the bg building process, is to make a DRAFT system working again, where they can play at same level of other players, playing a lot of runes they dont own (or gettin new runes if you actually buy boosters in the draft), and learn the game in a useful way.
Seeing a lot of different runes in action, helps to understand better the game, and would be a great "school" for new players, and even better for older players to refresh their knowledge of the game and dont focus too much on the BGs they own.

 

I get what you're saying, that actually does make sense to me.

I understand this viewpoint, I truly do, but at a certain point veterans who hold this disposition(?) need to ask themselves whether they want to play the same ~100 people with all of their runes or expand the player base, profitability, and thus continuation of the game. I also understand that being able to use all your runes is one of the great differentiators for many veterans when it comes to Pox Nora. There has to be a middle ground that can be found.

I was thinking about this last night, and I think this is one of the major things that needs to change, quickly, for Pox Nora to head towards healthy growth. The game needs to be twitch-able and for a strategy game like Pox Nora that means a healthy competitive scene.

Got it, and I understand this as well. There has to an answer somewhere.

I think this is a great idea, and while new players, such as myself, will still need to exercise our tactical skills and gain more knowledge of runes it would at least level the playing field in terms of available runes.

Agreed! I think part of my problem is that I don't know what's happening half the time. Yes, I know I can inspect enemy runes, read abilities and read the logs, but I wish abilities and interactions were displayed in a better way. I don't know what that way would be though!

 

I suggest you to observe as many matches as possible, both high rank players and low rank players. When you play youre in a hurry to think moves and do them, but when you observe you can focus on whats is going on, what are people playing, watch abilities, see what they do, how they start a match, what they do when they lose a font etc...Every hour you use to observe games is worth one full day of skirmishes. Also i understand that you still need to get the basics so you want to play vs AI, but you should play as much as possible vs other players. Maybe ask somebody to help you understanding. Because ai will do stupid things, just rush you etc. And NO player will play like it. I know its an error because i played too much PvE before starting PvP and i payed it in terms of bad use of time...

 

Good advice, thanks!

 

Those card games you mentioned are actually great examples. While they still have a solid fanbase, they are a farcry from what they used to be. Hearthstone and magic used to have a ton more players, but many players like myself quit those games because we started to realize we were wasting our time when the cards we would get would soon be useless. I love pox because I can go in and know that if I make a viable bg, with some tweaks to adapt to the meta, can always be viable. It won't be like hearthstone where I make a killer shaman deck and I can't use it in 2 months because all those cards are pretty much "retired"

 

The advantage physical CCGs have is that you and your friends can stop playing at the same time. After a couple years, you can dust off your collections and play again for the nostalgia. I don't know if any of the electronic games allow that, but I know something similar can be done with Pox.

 

While I have heard that Hearthstone is starting to dip, that's apparently due to balancing problems rather than rotational fatigue. I receive the investor report from WotC and all I see is continued growth for Magic: The Gathering, both in paper and digitally through Magic: Duels and M:TGO.

Got it, and I see where you are coming from, but you can still play with those cards/runes in extended or what have you. The only bad thing about that, in my mind, would be a smaller amount of players playing in that "open" category, but then we are par for the course compared to where we are right now. 2,000+ playing Pox Nora's "Standard" and ~100+ playing Pox Nora's "open" is still better than only ~100+ playing the current Pox Nora.

Emphasis Mine: I feel like there is a lot of anecdotal evidence being thrown around in favor of pushing forward with more of the same. The game will eventually stagnate and crumble under the immense balancing act of keeping so many runes viable within the current mode.

I can do that in Hex, Hearthstone, Shadow Era, Cabals, Pokemon TCG, and more. If we are talking about doing so in a match-maker type of sense then sure, but then the paper TCG analogy isn't as analogous is it?

 

I totally understand your point, and many people do really enjoy everything being standard. However no matter what you do, pox will not be simple. There is just too much information from abilities, to faction bonuses, to spell effects that will make the learning curve fairly steep. I don't believe trimming runes in any way will fix that. Once you know what oblivion shield does, you can hover over any champ, see it has oblivion shield and know what to do.

While looking at a whole rune list can be intimidating, realistically not many people would do that. You are more likely gonna be looking at the list for the faction you want to play and honestly, roughtly 2,000 cards diveded by 7 (I know there are 8 factions but I will say 7 due to split cards) isnt too bad.

Take pokemon as an example. They have over 900 pokemon now and their abilities and moves are entirely hidden from the opponent and it is more popular than ever with all normal pokemon still being legal. With all the info about your enemy champs being presented to you, I don't think having all these runes is unreasonable

 

True enough. I am certainly not advocating for a simpler Pox Nora.

To a point, I'd agree with you.

I think you are talking about the Pokemon video game, Pokemon moves are certainly not hidden from the opponent in the TCG, but I still get your point, but I would also say that the way a rune interacts with the game is infinitely more complex than how a Pokemon interacts with the battlefield in the video game. I don't really know if it's reasonable or not, I think only time will tell. I really enjoy Pox Nora, so don't think I'm advocating to change it away from what it is, but something as some point will have to give for firm positive growth to ensue.

If the Owls hired me for Marketing I would do the following:

Create a landing page called The Nora Font which would include articles written by the staff and by guest community members about different aspects of Pox Nora, including trading, budget BGs, competitive meta etc.

I would then announce a large tournament set a few months after the Playstation/new client release to celebrate and build buzz for the game.

I would produce a monthly podcast (with show notes) in which the developers give updates and receive direct questions from the community via TeamSpeak or something similar.

I create three different competitive structures:

• Leagues: Open League & New Player League. Open League would have access to all runes and prizes would be any of the Rune Packs. New Player League would only have access to the Core Set, and prizes would be in the form of Core Set Rune Packs. You can only play in the New Player League for a certain amount of time and then you can only play in Open.
• Drafts: Open & New Player much like the above.
• Tournaments: Open & New Player much like the above.

I would also be working with some pillars of the community to stream their games on Twitch for more exposure.

 

The landing page idea is awesome.

 

Yeah some of these are really freaking cool man. Would be very happy if they got implemented.

Also will be surprised and disappointed if dog doesn't try to reach out to sep to do a vid on it when everything is going on.

 

delete st imo

 

Dang this thread took off. Lots of great ideas being tossed around and I agree with both arguments. Pox is great because you can use all the runes you ever collect for ever and ever and that's amazing. But, there does need to be a way to trim it down a bit for newer players.

This is a great idea that would allow new players some shelter from the veterans and less of a brain overload on the rune side which would allow them to get their feet wet without being completely lost. I think you have a lot of really solid ideas Bravesteel and with any luck the devs will reach out to you or at least implement some of your suggestions to help boost the playerbase.

 

Isn't the Training Grounds supposed to be the New Player PvP room? Creating a New Player League doesn't help
anything if there are not enough new players to make a match. I do like the idea of tiered leagues, and a New Player
League would be much more inviting for beginners, but I would also suggest Training/New Player PvP matches fall back
to bot battle if no match is made after X seconds. Nothing is so discouraging than to sit in a PvP room for minutes without
a match. The 'bot' could be other player's defense decks or one of the in game faction decks.

Even better would be a PvP system like Conquests of Champions (correspondence? Is there another term for it?) and I would
very much like to see something like that implemented in Pox. In fact, I think I enjoyed the CoC PvP system more than any
other game I've played. It removed the pressure of the clock and the spectre of the other player waiting for you to complete
your turn. You play your turn and submit. If the other player is online, then you might get a live match that completes in
30 minutes, an hour or two, whatever. But if you're playing someone on the other side of the globe you can both enjoy the match
without either party having to be up at 4am. Instead of playing one game at a time you can have dozens of matches active.

Both 'live' and 'correspondence' PvP have their merits and I think adding a correspondence PvP room would greatly enhance
the Pox experience, as well as allow active participation in slow rooms. The New Player room could be a 'live' room that falls
back to correspondence if no one is online.

 

Sorry, is that a touchy subject here?

 

I just logged on to say that it aint a touchy subject at all. In fact, the only real way to save Pox is to release Pox 2.0, I have been saying this for a couple of years now.
People are going to have to learn how to let go of their runes for one of these two reasons:
1) Revamping of Pox;
2) End of Pox.

Its pretty simple.

 

Correspondence pvp would be neat.

 

Think poxnora has a future, even though it was a long time since a new expansion was seen. The work of fixing errors/unbalances are going forward. the new client can maybe attract some new players, hopefully alot of known bugs/typoes are fixed before that. what i think is missing alot is the interraction from pox admins, if a rune/ability is confirmed to be buggy, block it from pvp-ranked until its fixed. Weeks without small bugfixes are bad with new players, so when they release a new client they better already have their list of service windows where new updates/versions are being sent out.

But with less fanbase doing the admins work, i fear poxnora is going down. cant understand why poxnora wants players to use external websites to see abilities, filter runes etc to find things easier. This must be a few days work for a webadmin with database info.

its still fun here, but think its because i was away a few years so a lot of things are still feeling new