So I've been thinking about this a little bit and here's what I could see working well for Pox. Poxnora has a serious complexity creep problem and ironically the overhaul of the levelling system way back in 2009 or so added to the problem. In order to make all 4 ability choices compelling on new champions a lot of fairly powerful abilities would get shoved in there. Now, instead of a common with two or three abilities you needed to keep track of, new commons had four+ abilities to keep in your head (with one or two exceptions). Basically, the way I feel, is while having choices to customize your champions is cool and fun it ultimately hurts the game. If pox involved only having 5 0r 6 champions deployed over the course of the game having super custom champs would probably work. As is... Streamlining leveling and cp is the way to go. How? Imagine instead of cp each champ just had two levels beyond basic (kind of like how it is now but without the numbers). So champions would have their base form (Fireslinger), one level up called 'Veteran' (Veteran Fireslinger), and a second, maximum, level of Elite (Elite Fireslinger). Instead of all champions gaining a tiny trickle of cp in battle after each battle (win or lose) you would get a level up token. The level up token can be applied to any champ and bumps them up one level. To get any champ you like to Elite all you would need to do is play two games. This provides players with a trickle of feel good level up moments, rather than grinding 10 games with nothing, only to have 5 champs level up on game 11. It also eliminates the need for multiply tokens, which is nice. The actual mechanics of what happens to a champ when it goes from base to Veteran to Elite would be simple. A Veteran champion gets a stat bonus or ability, at an appropriate bump in nora cost. Example- Lets say a basic Fireslinger is 78 nora. When you level it up it gains the Lavastorm ability and costs an additional +6 nora. Level it up again and it get +1 speed and costs +4 nora. So an Elite Firseslinger would cost 88 nora but be quicker and more powerful than the basic one. Essentially, this changes the players choice. Instead of choosing 2 abilities out of 4 now players choose to trade off champions power for cost. I imagine players would be able to go in and move a slider 'de-leveling' champs while not losing the ability to bump them back to Elite when they want. Anyways, thats my idea.
I've seen this kind of thing in such as in Urban Rivals and Kings and Legends and I never really have been a fun of this type of upgrade system, first, it would effectively double the number of runes, which can further complicate trading and deck building, and secondly, I'm not really sure it solves the issue that to be competitive, you still need to grind out enough games to get all of your champions at a higher level. I don't know if it would be a terrible idea in this game, but I have never been a fan.
All I can say is that it adds to the "grind" and I've always hated that system in Eredan and other such games to the point that they stopped seeming worth playing really quick
Man, tokens would still come in packs and in purchasable token packs. Wouldn't really change anything except champs would level up slightly faster (I regularily see all but one champ get 4 cp for a fight).
Then just make flat CP rewards - say 25 a game for any and all runes that got deployed during that game - instead of making another system. It'd be way easier to implement and does the same thing.
Well what would be different is there would be no cp. cp is like an appendix at this point- you no longer spend it on anything. Why clutter up a system needlessly with it?
Games need benchmarks in between levels to allow players to feel like they made progress - that's what CP is. It's the same as the exp in your system. Putting the Eredan system in a game like Pox is what would really clutter it up. Pox is by nature more complicated than a simple TCG and thus has more small integrated systems. Putting in a completely new system not only strains the limited resources of Pox but ironically complicates the rest of the systems further. The best solutions for Pox is changing or modifying current systems because that takes less effort for the devs and streamlines the game overall since each system is affected by each other system. That's why just a flat CP increase, simple and easy, would be the best solution to the CP issue. I don't see why a completely new system (to Pox) is even necessary when this is an option that does the same thing (make CPing much easier and less grind but some grind)
I think one thing that would be interesting is if there were differences in leveling between rarities of runes. Commons would have upgrades only related to stats, and fewer abilities. As you move from commons to uncommons to rares to exotics, you lose the ability to upgrade stats, and gain the ability to upgrade "specials". It would have to be carefully done to prevent any "rarity = power" problems... but if the commons were somehow "tougher/stronger" and the exos were somehow "synergistic/flavorful" then people could conceivably run a lot of commons in a power deck, or run lots of exos in a finesse deck. I realize the pitfalls in this idea, and understand that implementation might be impossible... but wth... why not?
That sounds pretty cool. I think ideally pox would just generally be like that, meat and potato commons run side by side with techy rares.
I think this could work... 1 game with a level 1 champion and no upgrades, and he gets +100 cp. Then, another game with that same champion (that now is level 2 and has 1 upgrade) and he gets another +100 cp. Eureka! You got your rune to level 3!! With this option, coding and system changes are minimal. You get to play that champion once at each level and get a feeling of how to run him, and get rid of the terrible actual CP gain rate... I like it, man!
its been this way for a long time.. I could see just removing it tho. have all runes come pre leveled. I think its for the company to make money. At this point to get more people manybe remove it for now?
