I know it's a bit futile to talk about cool potential future stuff right now, but I was reading a Hearthstone producer interview where they were talking about how well the Curse of Naxxramas expansion was received. In case you don't know, it was released over the course of 5 weeks through opening "dungeon wings" which were each short single-player campaigns. Drawing it out made the expansion a really big event and kept the energy up. Good artists borrow, great artists steal. The quickly fading interest and population following the typical expansion feeding frenzy is a real issue for growing this game. What if Pox Nora did something similar, taking the same content for a typically-sized expansion and spreading it out over several weeks? That's the simplest possible implementation without requiring any further attention. But the possibilities go deeper. What if expansion content was unlocked over time by a series of in-game events? Maybe go simple Drums of War style, with the victorious side getting their runes a week early. Or give each faction a public deck with expansion runes in it, so that victories using the public deck in ranked PVP contribute to unlocking expansion runes for everyone. What do you guys think? And what other ways can you think of for the Greens to get the most mileage of out of an expansion?
Could be an interesting idea, the biggest impediment would be the additional work required to manage all of that, or at least set it up, for a long period. The Dev team for Pox is much smaller than the team for Hearthstone, and work prioritization could be an issue, even just quantity of labor present. For those reasons alone, this looks like a long shot in Pox's current state. That aside, the idea could work alright if implemented. Because of the in-game mechanics, Pox will have more interesting and rewarding single player than other TCG's, so some tie-in to a single player campaign could be better than Naxx was. On the flip side, sustaining interest would be great, but how much of that would keep people on longer than the expansion time? If people still drop at a similar rate once those 5 months are over, it isn't as great as it looks on paper - unless expansions get closer together, and the gaps between expansion periods are smaller. But, that would compound the problems outlined above. Nifty idea, doubt it would be used.
All true. I think that ideally there would be some kind of a constant engagement treadmill - by the time the expansion is completely finished, maybe leave a couple of weeks for ranked PVP to settle with the new runes, then time for the midterm release, etc. But managing something like that would need at least one full-time person with all the necessary tools to make things happen, give prizes, reset Drums of War, etc. As a side note, that person would probably be the same as the dedicated community manager. I appreciate the importance of what Senshu is doing around here, but even he is wearing multiple hats so I'm not sure he has the time yet to take care of these things too. In theory though, if I were making my own CCG, I probably would lean towards designing my expansion releases more towards Curse of Naxx than MTG. It just seems to make sense to fill an expansion with as much epicness and drama as possible.
Its funny you talk about that i was thining the same thing what i was thinking was every 3 weeks we get one camp from each faction instead having a full expansion common 3 weeks uncommon 3 weeks rare 3 weeks exotic 3 weeks leg this way we can get in less time instead of getting in one go. The good thing aboutthis is if there a a lot of glitches for each time 3 weeks is enough time to fix the glitches
Yeah, that's a semi-intentional benefit of spreading out the release. You also spread out the crunch time and build in some opportunities for fixing stuff, if you're going to have a patch every week or so anyway. In that sense, its actually more efficient for a small team with fewer resources, though it would still take a bit of up-front work to set it up right.
- Im kind of used to buying my runes ... Hearthstone you bought the dungeon and grinded your cards from completing it. Are people suggesting we unlock expansions with gold or dollars?
That's a really important part of the implementation, but something that I'm intentionally not asserting an opinion on. How best to monetize a phased expansion is something that really depends on the form those phases take. I will say that, done right, Pox Nora has some serious pre-existing advantages over Hearthstone that could be integrated into expansion releases: Single-player campaigns as a vehicle for delivering narrative Public deck PVP for controlled balance Social elements like guilds and even (sort of) facebook integration! Rune trading
truthfully you only have limited opinions the next step is to sell the idea to @Senshu see what he think about it
Yeah, we really would like to do stuff like this in the future, but at the moment we need to get our productions at a point where that is possible. When we get to the point of releasing expansions the first few may be more conventional, as we get everything settled. Good discussion topic.
