Pay to win or skill game

Sorry to bring this up, noobie player here just be honest with me people if i just buy the best legendaries and build a gimmick deck were i regen lots of nora got all the chrapest trick spells, you know the kind of deck im talking about them sure win decks that have been kicking my **** whenever i try play ranked, will i also be a winner!?! Or do i need to study my deck more learn what cards combo well learn each races hidden moves build balanced decks... Like i said i new to the game i thought i had made pretty strong decks but when i play people just summon these amazing legendary cards that never die.. should i just make a list of the cards in my opponents deck and just copy them, because whether i contest their nora fonts for 6-7 turns while ive got 2 of my own or i try to immobilize his units to bring down shrine they play a angel card and a couple more legendaries and its over plus most of the time i cant even tell what spells he has cast... i thought this game got balanced i play sundered lands and savage tundra are these races nurfed or something i had this myx i could attack really far away now its range is 1, ive even introduced my friend to this game we try 2v2 opponont has the best legendary cards ive got like an arctic delgate and a lonx defender the crapest cards in existence?
Anyway Pox i love the art and gameplay and you! but i cant play ranked until i have all those gimmick legendaries seems like skill comes second runner up. im not saying im super skilled and should wn every match but seriously i have only won once and thats cos the guy was afk, every other time it didnt matter what i tried to do in the match opponent was just playing me with all his special expensive cards, correct me if im wrong guys any links to any guides would be very much appreciated im trying to read up on it as well but im not hardcore poxxer do i have to be to stand any chance in this game?

 

I don't see Stitched as an option. I have looked everywhere. -_-

Sidenote. It's moved away from a PTW, but it wouldn't hurt to purchase a few legendary packs. Even if for a jump start to trade potential. There are still some issues, but not as many as there was when SOE had the reigns.

 

I wouldn't say its pay to win but buying cards does reduce the time needed to build a viable deck. If you browse around the faction forums there are usually a few threads discussing budget decks that can compete very high in ranked. This game has a very steep learning curve. Ask any top ranked player and they will tell you that they likely lost the majority of their first 100 games.

 

Due to the time/money required to earn packs and the limited player pool, I'd argue that it's basically pay to win until there's a serious overhaul or renewed interest -- and the former would likely be required for the latter.

At the moment, as a new player, you're mostly going to be playing against people who have both been playing longer and have dumped way more money into the game.

 

This game has been moving further and further away from a pay to win game. Years ago in the 2007s or 2009s ish there were some factions that were really only competitive if you dumped tons of money into them. First thing that comes to mind is IS which would have people running mostly all exos and other hard to get stuff. Or other factions which relied on hard to get exos/limited/legendary runes. Now you can still find BG's like that, but you can make quite a few competitive ones without all of that. In the past I ran moga, because I literally needed just one exo (dirge) and one legendary (the warbanner) to be able to be very competitive. With that BG I was able to reach the top 50 and I loved it. Now most BGs do well with at least a few exos, but with the gold from dalies and games, it is so much easier to get runes for at least trading purposes. As opposed to the old crafting system where the champs you could make were super limited and many of the shards needed you to buy particular single player campaigns (although I loved the taunts why did they get rid of that I wish I knew ;_. Yes it takes time farming gold, but really if you save up for the box you can get what like 100ish runes to trade off/keep. Or more safely buy one of the better decks and trade off the 4-6 good runes in them to get yourself started. While you are doing all of this playing in order to get the runes you want you can build up experience by playing a lot of different people/ trying different factions with the extras or free decks so you can get to know the faction a little better. With all the traders, beginner rune pools, and everything building BGs and getting runes is probably easier than ever now. I would suggest finding fun/experienced players and if possible watch their games/the games of others or have them watch how you play and give you tips. I am sure a lot of the trouble you might be facing is a problem of fine tuning if not experience since each BG has their weakness to exploit, Exos and Legionaries or not. You just have to get to the point where you can see and take advantage of these things.

Hope this helps a bit

Also @Markoth I totally lost a bit more than the majority of my first 100 games lol. I had the tendency to spell spam/rush with BGs built for mid to late game.

 

Skill>Money
No matter what runes you own you will lose to better players 95+% of the time.
I played some rare league player yesterday with a fully decked out Tree BG. He went first on the Kthir Hill 4 font map.
Despite this I still defeated him with easy because he had no grasp of positioning, AP counting, Damage calculation or basic Nora management.

Some runes are better than others, but at the moment most of them are easy or free to aquire runes. Yes it will take TIME to get them, but you can do so without spending a single $.
Money is a shortcut to getting the things you would preferer to play with. If you want to play Skeezick instead of the Dwarfs, Skeletons and Elfs you have gotten at random from free packs then throwing some money into the game will give you a far bigger chance of getting that or something to trade with faster than just by spending free gold.

 

imo it favors the skill over the deck.

a good player with a bad deck will beat a bad player with a good deck.

 

Easy way to know if a game is pay2win: A newbie comes, buys every rune, copies a deck from a pro, gets into ranked and... 100% lose rate.

 

Pay to Skill

 

Used to be pay to win, but after revamp it changed drastically. Rune availability has improved and the hard to get runes are not as strong as they used to be, which is good.

With that said, I still think there are some problematic runes that promote pay to win. For example the Harbs and Haunting Spirits. Especially the Haunting Spirit, since it's 2x auto in spirit decks. So if you don't have em... I guess you're not playing that deck.

 

In some ways I'm a good counterexample of someone who bought (was given) many expensive runes and still loses (to people who run cheap/easy to acquire runes). It's not perfect (what game is...), and players with more runes have an incremental advantage over players with fewer runes, but it's pretty good. To be fair though, you'll probably need to invest some money upfront since acquiring your first set of useful runes can be time consuming for free.

 

Pay to not waste time doing tedious campaigns and single player mode to aquire runes.

 

Meh, most my decks have 10 uncommon / common / rares now. Yeah I have about 5 exo and above. Don't need em though...

Problem is that you can win with a cheap deck just that this game requires a lot of time to become very good at this game. A person with 100 games for example doesn't compare to a person with 1000 games although you'd could argue the 100 are a lot. People with expensive runes have also played a long time.

 

you'll get a few answers to this.

mine would be this- think of skill in this game as a j-curve, an exponentially increasing thing (relatively). someone who is well-regarded and known to be "skilled" at pox is going to be at least past the midpoint (where it really starts to shoot up)

think of deck-strength as a straight diagonal line. this isn't properly representative maybe, but it's functional.


the thing about this line is that, at its peak, at any given point in pox's history (think series of graphs now), it's likely to be higher than the midpoint on the skill-graph. but not much.


so yeah, decks are important. skill is more so, but most people in this game are neither at nor past the aforementioned midpoint.

P.S. i'm aware that i didn't do anything that combined the two, skill+deck, in that case just, i dunno, try comparing your graphs to someone else's and see what happens.


this make sense, roughly?

 

In my mind, at low skill levels, deck doesn't make a lot of difference. At the top skill levels, it does. That isn't to say that hard to obtain runes are necessary at top skill levels, it just means that two evenly skilled players at the top end, with similar decks, will come down to draw/deck differences more than skill.

 

This is i think 3rd time since i came back to pox(few months?) ive seen you mention the j-curve....... you might as well draw it( on paint ofc) and save , "THE DAGDA SKILL THEORY"

 

i've seriously considered it, guy

don't tempt me

 

Just Do It #Nike

 

https://docs.google.com/drawings/d/1q_ZleJ1kkHXFCjYY_S36h2OUxz0PApVjMzPaF7qvU58/edit?usp=sharing

@Agirgis1 googoogoo

 

I fixed it