EtG contains a few hundred of cards. This means that each card is looked at individually by all the players as soon as they come out and balance suggestions are given. Each card is equally as strong, as opposed to having virtually useless cards like Moonlace. Due to this the balance of each individual card is called into question. (...) The balancing issue is extremely more prominent in EtG because (...)
I disagree about all cards being equally strong. A card like Holy Light doenst have equal power when compared to Fractal or Lava Destroyer. And we have other weak cards as well. But I agree about the rest: the balance is more prominent, and each card is analysed individually, and OP cards are usually nerfed while UP cards are buffed. But our suggestions shouldnt change that. The idea is still to add cards in little ammounts (3-5, probably), so they can be tested and changed considering the players opinions. And with more frequent updates, changes needed could be done faster. There is no need to add tons of cards like MtG, just to let them left to rust, like you said. EtG shouldnt become a copy of Tyrant, Card Monsters or any generic booster based card games. This is probably the most beautiful thing about EtG, and no one wants to change it.
Well, this is what we are talking about, read the thread title. How to increase revenue to the point EtG becomes main project for Zanz, or a regular staff can be hired.
I am reminding people that the first question is "Would Zanz wish to?". Only after that does considering "how?" become worthwhile. Part of this reminder includes the reasons to suspect that Zanz would not wish to.
Also I doubt this could grow large enough to be a main project for a programmer (they are worth a lot) and remain free to play.
Surely, Zanz needs to approve. Because of this Blaze is trying to contact him, and all this discussion is just a brainstorm about how it could be.
Like Blaze, I believe the game has great potential. It has less diversity, but much greater quality than most multiplayer games I have seen. And I have seen something alike already.
In 2006, I started to play Risk (board game) on a website. It had just 3 maps to play: Classic world map, USA and Asia. But, the maps were beautiful, and the rules were simple: playing was fun. The growing community wanted to participate of a greater number of games (usually people had 1 day to play their turns, so games were long and people were wanting to play more), so the owner of the site created a premium feature which would allow unlimited games (non premium max of games was 5 at same time). People started to design new maps (like people design possible cards here), and the site owner put some of them online. As the number of maps grew, so did the community. The owner used to work as programmer for a company, left his job and started to develop the site, adding more options for the games as they were requested for a majority of the community: different number of players, games for doubles, triples and quads, speed games (reduced turn duration), etc. Community members were hired, as here, to organize the forums, tournaments, and discuss the quality of new maps added. The original guy was just programming, and with the proper community support, the quality never really fell. I dont really play more, and dunno if the guy is still in charge, or if he sold the site, but I know that now it has more than 200 avaliable maps and more than 12 million games served.
Bring more fun, more content, expand the game... this attract people, and with a product that is good enough to be sold (look, UNLIMITED games, although of course people used to have 20-30), EtG can grow. Or so I hope.
