Duelyst Forums

Is the current expansion pricing model bad for new players?

#1

First up, glad to see the new expansion out - some very cool cards, and I’m still playing games, buying packs and forming an overall view. But as I build up cards, I’ve started to worry about the impact on new players.

While I liked the Bloodborn model, I think there are problems with using it more than once. Basically, it is like buying a Hearthstone adventure without the adventure (and with more cards but a higher price). The fun part is that anyone can get 3 of each card with not that much grinding, particularly if they already have gold stored up. The problem is that if a new player is faced with 2 (or more) such expansions, they have either a) a ridiculous grind, or b) an expensive start, if they want to play any competitive deck.

In the past a new Duelyst player could focus on 1-2 factions and get all the key cards they need by disenchanting. Now they can’t.

I understand that new players are vital if this game is going to continue, but this current model seems to lock out a lot of people. Thoughts?

#2

As I have stated before, this would be a non issue if cp started buffing some of the older cards. Thankfully, this expansion has many cards that can be skipped out on, whereas rotb has so many strong ones, such as trinity oath, punish etc.

#3

Yeah bloodborn is…admittedly pretty tough to play around, but I think you can hold up with non-expansion decks still. I think the point where you become ‘competitive’ is something where you would need ridiculous grind or to pay money regadless of whether the expansions can be crafted or not.

Maybe the devs will let you craft expansion cards eventually, after they’ve gotten a little older. That’d solve the problem.

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#4

As a semi-new player I understand, it was only after a whole season or so of grinding for a few bloodborn orbs that I made a semi-competitive deck. it takes about 2-3 days of an hour playtime each day to get one of these orbs, so I think bloodborn cards should be top tier, but ancient bonds… not so much

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#5

Blood born has way too many key cards (can you even play cassyva without obliterate or viriax?), Ancient bonds, not so much (except for emp because area removal is so important) but theres still Ironclad so all is not lost.

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#6

As far as the grind or money investment required to get a competitive deck running is concerned, I’m afraid this is a common problem in card games. As more cards are released, the difficulty of acquiring cards you want will inevitably increase.

This is one of the many reasons why MTG put focus on what they call “Standard.” Their idea was to only make the X most recent expansions playable in this format. As cards got older, they were no longer allowed to be played (except in other game types). This helped reduce the level of entry for new players while also providing other benefits such as providing incentive to buy cards and reducing the burden of knowledge on players.

Of course there are other options for fighting this. I personally hope that CPG will create new packs that, while they may not offer new cards, could instead offer a different pool of cards to be pulled. For example, faction specific packs which give you cards like the Core Set packs do, but the cards you pull will be for the selected faction and from any expansion (this would require more fine tuning, but you get the idea).

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#7

Think it would depend on what type of new player they are. If its a person who doesn’t want to spend money but doesn’t care about about the grind then these kind of orbs should be fine for them, after all they won’t be wasting gold on surplus cards. Some new players won’t mind spending money on the expansions, while others won’t want to grind and won’t spend money, and so they’ll leave the game quite quickly anyway.

I think the main thing that might be off-putting to new players is that the orbs are 300g, however there could be a chance later down the line when CP could do a special bundle to put Bloodborn and Ancient Bonds avaliable for a cheaper price both gold and real money wise. After these expansions have been out for a year or something to help newer players.

That’s an idea I like, if it could work out somehow.

#8

Wut? Obliterate isn’t RotBB, and Variax is NOT a Cassyva staple.

As a sidenote, I wouldn’t recommend Ironclad either. Card is p bad. Lightbender is always better

#9

Creep decks are not very good without like 3 of the BB cards. As a returning player, I’m definitely not psyched about having to grind orbs.

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#10

I don’t know anything but seriously without variax, Obliterate or ghost azelia, I doubt I could use cassyva. And ironclad hasn’t failed me yet against this arcaynst fiesta, but I mean I really don’t know anything.

#11

Ironclad is incredibly slow, I haven’t been able to make it that useful except for with Consuming Rebirth.

Variax Cass is worse than normal Cass. Obliterate is important but most games are closed out by grinding your opponent out with Kelainos, an unanswered Juggernaut or a Spectral Revenant. Obliterate definitely isn’t the finisher for most games.

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#12

well, emp is pretty much staight-up better then ironclad in almost all scenarios. it works emidiately, destroys artifacts, and has a huge body tacked on for value

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#13

arcanyst fiesta 2 op T-T

#14

Pretty sure obliterate and ghost azalea are shimzar and are craftable.

Cassiva usually is about spamming revenants and reviving them with nether summonig (both are craftable). Obliterate is more of a secondary win consition.

To the topic:
Those who are ready to spend some money will find it a good deal to get a whole expansion for 20$.
Those who aren’t​, will have to grind for a while. I do feel like the core set is getting weaker with the expensions but with some research making a good enough deck should be possible.

You don’t really need top meta deck unless you aim for s rank, even there you can manage with a none meta deck as long as it is very good. I really don’t think a new player should be aiming at s rank on the first month of play anyway. Maybe if he is a pro hearthstone player and has lots of free time to spare, otherwise nothing bad about aiming for diamond on first month.
Those expensions cost about as much as you get from a month of daily quests. So after 2-3 months you can save gold for an expansion probably bloodborn, ancient bonds seems less worth for most factions at this point.

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#15

I agree that there is a problem here, at least in theory. This mini-expansion system gives very good value for money but it’s a Gold-sink that’s prohibitively limiting for newer players if they want/need to get specific cards. Not being able to craft individual cards is a big drawback. RotB is pretty bad for that, but Ancient Bonds seems pretty damn balanced overall so you’re not as likely to just get stomped because you don’t have Top Tier Card X to play around with. It’s going to be a balancing act unless CPG decides to unlimit older expansions to allow for crafting those cards later down the line (not that I expect that to happen).

#16

obliterate? I think you mean punish. Punish is blood born, obliderate is core set (or shimzar) i believe

#17

Yes, rotating sets seems to be something that is necessary in any card-game long term. The Duelyst situation is still slightly different, as new players can’t guarantee any of the key cards from recent expansions without getting a lot of packs (whereas anything else can be crafted normally). Even in Hearthstone’s adventures, you could individually buy wings instead of the the whole pack.

As it stands now, I think it is still a bit too grindy for new players.

#18

While I agree that the current situation is less than optimal for new players, I can absolutely understand why the approach is necessary. For players who’ve been playing for a good while, it’s just too easy to blow what gold and spirit they have and get most of what they need from a new expansion if the cars can be crafted. Likewise, I believe that the cards need to be competitively viable to motivate players to try and acquire them.

That said, this shouldn’t continue forever, lest new players are driven off by the initial cost and grind. To that end, I do hope that CPG allows us to craft expansion cards eventually. Like, RotBB becoming craftable with the release of the next expansion. By that time, most of us older players will have all of the cards anyway.

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#19

Yooo, what if they do like the league thing where there’s like a free card rotation? So like for a week, some 2-3 cards for each faction are free to use?

#20

It’s been some time since ancient bonds came out and I still can’t play golem vet, which is the deck I wanted to play since the release (I’m a vet main) because I can’t craft the cards. I also can’t DE all the epics and legendaries songhai cards I have (I don’t play songhai). It sucks