Hello everybody, i just quit playing Duel of Champions after having spent 200 Euros and still werent able to build high-end decks. This experience made me very, very careful about playing F2P games, and before trying this one, i have several questions, and please answer them honest and objective: 1) I saw that the newest expanion can only be bought with premium currency. Is there a (regular) way to get premium currency without spending real money? 2) Is there an option to trade cards? And if no, is there an option to get specific cards? 3) Do players get rewarded after every game, and also when they lose? 4) What other options to players have to get rewards? 5) How generous are these rewards, means: how much do you need to play, log in, quest etc. to buy new stuff? 6) How much Pay2Win is this game? Means: Which advantage do players, which spend a lot of money, have, compared to players who spend little or no money? Thanks in advance
1- I haven't kept track of the recent currency changes, so I don't know 2- Yes, almost all cards are tradeable 3- I believe so, refer back to point 1 4- Aside from playing and paying? What more do you want? Different ways to play or pay? What are we defining as rewards? I'm interested, but confused by the question 5- Under the old system it would be a while before you played enough to get a competitive deck for free, typically you'd be able to get a decent number of common cards and such pretty easily from people with many spares and then trade them around through community run rune pools and so on to make the process easier 6- for someone who's just starting out, paying money for runes/cards is in a lot of cases likely to give them stronger cards. Recently, though, the free decks have been massively upgraded, and I think (think) it's easier to get most things in general for free. Basically, I think there's still an advantage for people that pay, but honestly considering the power of some of the new starter decks I think so long as you learn the game you can go a fair way with them before you start making your own I haven't kept up to date, so I might be off on some of the information. Likely KTC will be in here at some point to tell you the right stuff
Rarity here means exactly rarity. To put it simple, properly built decks with expensive stuff and cheap stuff together are better than decks with expensive or cheap stuff only. Different themes require different amount of expensive staples, some themes are really cheap (and there're dozens if not hundreds themes here unlike tcgs you are used to). You do get rewards for everything, but those currently suck. However the game is still in a transition phase and is not currently targeting new players, so you can safely expect rewards to become better in some time. You can play premade decks for free right away and get used to the game for some time.
1 no 2 yes all cards are tradeable and most are forgeable 3 yes you gain gold for any game, more for a victory 4 not sure with the bew company. But there were regular tournys with larger payouts. A single player mode and comunity events (rare) 5 dagdas post 6 there are alot of very competitive budget decks. But there Is a definate advantage (there are some amazing decks out there with just a few exos )
1) no, there isn't a way to adquire premium currency other than paying, but you can trade for the cards on the latest expansion set. 2) trade is everywhere, there is even a third party automated trader (poxbox.net) were you can get almost any rune. You can get common, uncommon, rare, exotics and legendaries buying packs and boxes with gold (only rarity left is limited, and those are mainly luxury cards without real impact) with different rates obviously. You can trade the cards you don't want or turn them into shards to forge any common/uncommon/rare/exotic rune from all expansions but latest. 3)yes, the amounts vary, but everybody receives gold, even when playing PvE. 4)they are not necessary, there aren't promotions involving ads, downloads and such. 5)In roughly a month of playing with the free, premade decks (that are very good btw), you'll be able to buy a extended set box, wich will let you make 2 or 3 standard battlegroups. 6)There are several themes or ways to make a deck, some are more powerful than others, but this changes all the time, if you happen to be in a time were the expensive runes are at the top, you may think that the game is p2w, but that's not true, and now, everyone has access to everything, so, sooner or later, you'll be able to make a expensive deck without paying.
You can trade for all the cards with other players, so in theory you never have to pay anything. But in practice, the one who pays a lot will of course have a seizable advantage over the one who doesn't (given comparable amounts of time and effort invested). Since almost all the current top players have played the game for years and put in quite a bit of money, you cannot expect to compete on a high level anytime soon. The game is currently not a good place for a beginner, but if you decide to slug it out anyway, you'll have a huge edge if and when the game is really opened up to new players again, e.g. by getting on Steam again after some significant improvements. Also in theory you could start out by just playing the free public decks in training grounds, where nobody has an advantage (only public decks are allowed), but in practice nobody is playing that mode right now since there are not enough beginners yet. Winners and losers gain gold (the only form of reward really, which you use to buy packs and other things), but the reward for losers is a lot lower. You can also earn gold by playing single player campaigns, and if you optimise your moves, you can earn the most gold this way. It's not a lot of fun, but if you have patience and understand that it will take a long time before you can truly enjoy the competitive side of the game, you may be rewarded greatly for it in the end. There is also going to be a huge overhaul of the champions soon, which will hopefully make the game more approachable to beginners again, so keep that in mind if things appear a little scary at first. Good luck!
Answers are in the quote in red! If you have any other question, please feel free to post them up in here or in the Training Grounds and if you have any other specific questions, you are more than welcome to post in the questions board. Pox Nora is a fun game that I have not been able to find any other like it. If you don't want to pay, you don't have to pay and I personally have only limited myself to the public decks. While I do not play any ranked play, I have had a lot of fun within the single player and the casual player (Training Grounds) for the past few years.
Just wanted to point out, if you spent 200 euros on pox you'd have multiple BGs that could win in ranked after you were done trading. The problem is the amount of knowledge it takes to know what runes to keep, what to trade, what to put into a deck etc etc etc. That all comes with time.
1.only real cash. 2.you can trade any card that u buy. 3.player get for win and lose in-game currencies as reward(but amount is very low) 4.daily skrimish, campagain, PvP matches. 5.with regular play if you do daily and PvP each day you need 3-4 week to get box. Or pack every 2-3 day. If compare with mmdoc I buy 2-3 pack a day and +box every 2days, if spend same time on poxnora each day I can allow box only once every 2 week(without packs). But in pox you can trade and in mmdoc you can't. 6. A lot of player will say to you p2win is not exist here. And they can link you tons of cheap decks. But you can log In and watch top player duels, they all use tons of high tier runes. And to be competive you need this runes. This game is hard to start playing without cash but its worth to try. This game a lot more expensive than mmdoс(but better). In mmdoc I don't spend any $ and I have 1500+elo and winrate in swiss 70% , here I spend in total around 400-500$ and its hard to be competive. This game is best tcg but its not newcomer-friendly. And after latest update prices for real shop is very cheap 200euro can bring you a lot of boxes.
IMO, Pox is in a state of tansition. The past model is gone, the current model is only current for today, and the future model is unknown. My advice is two fold. First, if you only play because you want to be number one then be prepared to spend money in Pox, in other online games, and in life. Second, Pox could be the best game ever. Play the walk throughs, play some campaigns, play some games in the Training Grounds. All of this is free. If you have fun and fall in love with the game, then think about how you want to deal with that. But if being the best trumps loving the game, then this is not the game for you.
As Dantezz said, the game is in transition. Consider it to be a beta of sorts, with the new ownership a lot has changed and more will change. Sony Online Entertainment corrupted a lot of the original game in the attempt to monetize it more. Two of the original founders now own the game, and from what I've seen so far, they are trying to bring back the original game more. I have been around since the second expansion, which was in 2007. I stopped playing for a large part of SOE's ownership, but came back now that the original owners are back. There will be some bumps for sure, but if you give it time, you will enjoy the game. KTCAOP's reply is probably the best I've seen in this thread as far as answering your questions. Many have mentioned poxbox.net as a trade source. It is useful, but keep in mind it is a service that someone setup, and as such there is an overhead. You may or may not feel that overhead is worth it. I only spent about $80 on the game in the seven years I've played, and I feel I have enough to be competitive. I'm just not a very competitive player, so instead of building the most meta deck I can to try to get to the top rankings, I build theme decks that are more fun for me to play. Feel free to message me if you have any questions, otherwise I'll check back here too.
Thank you very much everybody for your helpful answers. I guess the game in its current state would lead to the same situation as i had in DOC: spending hillarious much money, just to realize that you cant compete with top decks. Sadly, thats the only way to play (and enjoy playing) for me: aiming for the top... But, i will keep this game in mind, and if it really develops to a better financing model, or even away from this terrible F2P, i'd surely love to give it a serious try... Greetings
You don't need to spend crazy amounts of money to be competitive, you just wouldn't be able to field more than one competitive deck, which for me would get repetitive. You would also have to closely examine the metagame to determine which of the competitive decks you could get relatively easily. The free decks would have to last you a month or so until you were able to earn enough gold for the first box of extended. Once you had that, you would have to trade carefully to get the right runes for your deck.
That said, since you can trade for any card directly, a certain amount of money will always get you exactly the deck you want. It's not like you have to spend over and over just for the small chance of pulling that exact card you are looking for. It would be interesting to make some calculations as to how expansive the decks of the current top players are, but if you are willing to spend a few hundred, there should be nothing in your way to compete with the very best. The much bigger problem really is the massive advantage in experience that the current top players have. It isn't realistic to compete with that until you have played at least a few hundred games, if not thousands. And the bigger your pool of cards is, the easier it is to gain experience with a wide number of decks.
Entirely respectable for your decision and I can understand how after being burned out by one model, it feels overwhelming to join another. I would encourage you to join in Pox Nora and enjoy play just casually. Again, I love this game and it has a concept that I have not seen really well presented anywhere else. I am working through the planning and logistic of a public deck tournament and at the moment, you can try your hand at being the best in terms of the public/standardized decks. As I said earlier, while investing will give you the advantage in terms of flexibility in building any type of deck you want, the far bigger factor is the "skill" involved in the game. I put skill in quotes because it involves so much which makes the game amazing in my eyes - the ability to make decisions quickly, the knowledge required for knowing rune interactions, spell interactions, nora balance regulation, movement and positioning, and more, all of which can come of time. If you ever just want some casual matches, feel free to send me a message, I'd be happy just to play around, though I am by far not the best player in the game =).
