Card Packs In the Bazar

[furballdn]

Buying nymps-no.
Buying rares-eh...

The idea is great (Your art is also great Ajit), but the thing is, EtG has such a small card base, there are only 3 rarities of cards, can buy from bazaar, can't buy from bazaar, ultra rare. While this might be a good idea for newbies (oh boy! Random cards!) it doesn't really serve much since nearly all cards can just be bought from the bazaar. Also, that expensive? No newbie would pay 600, and no experienced player would either.

Just hoppin' in, I too am not sold on the practicality of this, but what if the Bazaar was significantly reduced?  Say only half or less the current size.  Then, as you acquire new cards from booster packs, they'd become available at the bazzar?

If bazaar was restricted, it'd be a whole different story (could be good or bad). The main bad part would that it'd seriously restrict the cards and potential of newer players (I want a phoenix and the only way I can get it is by RNG while paying lots of electrum for random cards?)

[ZephyrPhantom]

Implementing a bunch of pack exclusive cards would make this interesting (pack exclusives can simply be derivatives of existing cards like an "Etheral Queen" that generates "Etherbugs" with generation each turn, with most/all exclusive variants simply having -1 cost as their upgrade.)

Otherwise, I would wait until the ETG has built up a sizable 'standard' card base that all players can build capable monos from in all 12 elements, and then start thinking about introducing packs with non-Bazaar "Uncommons".

As long as all non-rare cards are obtainable in the bazaar or through the upgrade panel, I otherwise don't see much of a point since all rares are obtainable ingame. (I love the art Ajit made though. )

(Sidenote : Pack Exclusive Uncommons shouldn't be mandatory to build good decks/dominant metadecks, similar to how not all decks need rares.)

[Ajit]

Implementing a bunch of pack exclusive cards would make this interesting (pack exclusives can simply be derivatives of existing cards like an "Etheral Queen" that generates "Etherbugs" with generation each turn, with most/all exclusive variants simply having -1 cost as their upgrade.)

Otherwise, I would wait until the ETG has built up a sizable 'standard' card base that all players can build capable monos from in all 12 elements, and then start thinking about introducing packs with non-Bazaar "Uncommons".

(Sidenote : Pack Exclusive Uncommons shouldn't be mandatory to build good decks, similar to how not all decks need rares.)

On a slightly unrelated note, to gain a significantly larger card base, its going to take a decade at this rate :/  I'm not dissing Zanz, I mean he works for free, made a great game, and has a life, but I just wish we had a solution to the lack of updates.  CCG's shouldn't be so static, and online ones even less so.

[ZephyrPhantom]

Implementing a bunch of pack exclusive cards would make this interesting (pack exclusives can simply be derivatives of existing cards like an "Etheral Queen" that generates "Etherbugs" with generation each turn, with most/all exclusive variants simply having -1 cost as their upgrade.)

Otherwise, I would wait until the ETG has built up a sizable 'standard' card base that all players can build capable monos from in all 12 elements, and then start thinking about introducing packs with non-Bazaar "Uncommons".

(Sidenote : Pack Exclusive Uncommons shouldn't be mandatory to build good decks, similar to how not all decks need rares.)

On a slightly unrelated note, to gain a significantly larger card base, its going to take a decade at this rate :/  I'm not dissing Zanz, I mean he works for free, made a great game, and has a life, but I just wish we had a solution to the lack of updates.  CCG's shouldn't be so static, and online ones even less so.

AKA we need

smaller, more frequent updates

or another developer/a way to quickly implement cards through some copypasting. (The last one would be especially useful IMHO - assuming ETG is still the semi-messy codework Xeno claims it to be, a boost in efficiency would be probably be very helpful to Zanz.)

Until then, we'll just stick to developing this idea and waiting for Zanz to come back.

[OdinVanguard]

Buying nymps-no.
Buying rares-eh...

The idea is great (Your art is also great Ajit), but the thing is, EtG has such a small card base, there are only 3 rarities of cards, can buy from bazaar, can't buy from bazaar, ultra rare. While this might be a good idea for newbies (oh boy! Random cards!) it doesn't really serve much since nearly all cards can just be bought from the bazaar. Also, that expensive? No newbie would pay 600, and no experienced player would either.

... Ya, I know nymphs probably were a no go, but they make a good example for ultrarares, along with shards.

I see the point on the 600 cost being too high... I've been playing for a while, but I don't have the raw data compiled to know a really good scale here, this was just a guess / suggestion... A good place to start calibrating would be to figure out:
1) How much electrum the average "common" card costs
   -> Using entropy as an example: Bazar costs = {59, 29, 106, 56, 25, 24, 56, 100, 62, 59, 57, 25} (no pillar / pendulums), Average = 54.833
2) How long does it take to win a rare form the various AI / Arena Levels
3) How much electrum could be earned from "grinding" for the same amount of time as it takes to win / grind a rare at each level.
(no idea on 2 and 3 ... I'll need some help from others on that one)

Boosters give an additional place to start adding new cards. It gives a way to add in rares that fall somewhere between the level of the standard "can't buy in bazaar" level, and the ultra rare level. This can be further adjusted depending on whether
1) They are available from arena grinding
2) They are available from HB / FG grinding
3) They are available from PvP
4) They are available from Oracle
Adding in new, cards as booster incentives enhances the "Trading Card Game" feel, and depending on the rarity of the added cards, can also help to promote "Uniqueness of accounts"

In fact... you might expect more nymph-like cards in the future, cards that will do something that is already in the game, but in a different way. My goal is to have people actually creating their very own deck instead of everyone playing with the very same deck. That means that there is a price to pay: the chance that you will never get to have a specific card -ever- because it simply is too rare.

Boosters would give another way to distribute new rare cards.

[furballdn]

You have to ask yourself you demographic when thinking of things.

Who most wants random scattered cards? Probably newbies. How much do they have? Not much.

[OdinVanguard]

You have to ask yourself you demographic when thinking of things.

Who most wants random scattered cards? Probably newbies. How much do they have? Not much.

Good point... so for bronze, we should base it on the average cost of a card in the bazar, and weight it a little under as incentive to make up for the randomness...
So 5 cards * 54.833 = 274.165 ... lets round that to 260 ... Its better than just buying random cards and they have a small chance to get a rare out of it.
Setting the chance for a card to be rare at 6% yields ~30% chance of getting at least one rare out of 5 cards, so that seems reasonable to me.
This means a player would need to buy ~3 to 4 bronze packs on average to get a rare (780 - 1040 ).
For cost reference discord, entropy's rare, would cost about 220 ... calculated as 1.5*sell price.

So to figure whether the cost and rare rate is reasonable at bronze level, ask:
1) How long would it take to a beginner to grind 780 electrum
2) How long would it take them to win a rare from a reasonable level AI (level 0 - 2 ... maybe 3)?
If these match up, then we're good.
(I honestly don't know here, I'm not sure where to find the statistics on it)

[furballdn]

No idea how much average card cost is worth. I hazard a guess at around 40 or so (someone pull up data please).

1)How long does it take a beginner to grind 780 ? Too long. Assuming a win vs an elder is 15 coins, and they need 80 seconds for a win, they need 52 wins. That's 4160 seconds assuming no losses. Or about 1.2 hours.
2)I think it's about 1% (Someone pull up real stats please).

[OdinVanguard]

No idea how much average card cost is worth. I hazard a guess at around 40 or so (someone pull up data please).

1)How long does it take a beginner to grind 780 ? Too long. Assuming a win vs an elder is 15 coins, and they need 80 seconds for a win, they need 52 wins. That's 4160 seconds assuming no losses. Or about 1.2 hours.
2)I think it's about 1% (Someone pull up real stats please).

If your guess is right, and its a 1% chance to get a rare per win at lower levels, then in 52 games, the player would win about .5 rares.
Using boosters, then, they double their chances.

[AnonymousRevival]

This seems interesting. However, the moment we can purchase booster packs, the 'rares' are no longer 'rares' but 'common' because they can be easily purchased using one of these.

[CuCN]

No idea how much average card cost is worth. I hazard a guess at around 40 or so (someone pull up data please).

1)How long does it take a beginner to grind 780 ? Too long. Assuming a win vs an elder is 15 coins, and they need 80 seconds for a win, they need 52 wins. That's 4160 seconds assuming no losses. Or about 1.2 hours.
2)I think it's about 1% (Someone pull up real stats please).

I just did a test using MrBlonde's mono death ai3 farmer exactly as posted in its thread, it took 3626 seconds to get 788 electrum without selling any cards (three losses, didn't count how many wins). I won no rares.

The average buy price of all cards in the bazaar is 48.022... (180 cards totaling 8644 electrum). Not counting pillars or pendulums it is 53.406... (155 cards totaling 8278 electrum).

[furballdn]

No idea how much average card cost is worth. I hazard a guess at around 40 or so (someone pull up data please).

1)How long does it take a beginner to grind 780 ? Too long. Assuming a win vs an elder is 15 coins, and they need 80 seconds for a win, they need 52 wins. That's 4160 seconds assuming no losses. Or about 1.2 hours.
2)I think it's about 1% (Someone pull up real stats please).

I just did a test using MrBlonde's mono death ai3 farmer exactly as posted in its thread, it took 3626 seconds to get 788 electrum without selling any cards (three losses, didn't count how many wins). I won no rares.

The average buy price of all cards in the bazaar is 48.022... (180 cards totaling 8644 electrum). Not counting pillars or pendulums it is 53.406... (155 cards totaling 8278 electrum).

Heh. Wow. Nice job.

mono death gets around 1 hour. I probably overestimated because I assumed most people didn't have such good grinders like that.

You can set a booster pack of 5 randoms for 150-200 , but that will lead to a lot of frustration when a newbie spends nearly a quarter of what they just spent an hour grinding of to get an antlion, thunderstorm, plague, nova, and bonewall.