Misunderstanding, oh my, it’s my only weakness !
I get your point. I like Duelyst because it fits me too, but it being niche makes me like it even more. As long as it doesn’t die out because of that.
Soo.. Smite Tactics.. did they copy Duelyst's gameplay?
If it’s Duelyst without all the RNG, then I’m all for it. Thanks for sharing!
Yup I also understand that. It wasn’t what I said, but I think for about 1% of my like it’s also because it’s ‘niche’, that reason alone. Now that I think about it.
I do think that the consequences of it being ‘niche’ (I use ‘’ because I think it’s not thát niche actually) account for 9% of why I like it (consequences like: smallish community with as a result more recognition of individuals with as result more friendliness and maturity), and 90% just the game being my taste and the art etc.
And don’t worry about misunderstandings, they are what makes this world 
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Doesn’t seem like a rip-off to me, though it’s possible they based it off Duelyst and were inspired by Hearthstones success. A card game played on a tiled board with heroes, that’s all they have in common, everything else is different or unknown.
- This tactical form of gameplay has been done many times (ex. Heroes of might & magic).
- Board based card games have been done before (ex. Scrolls).
- A significant part of Duelyst is inspired by, based on, or ripped off from Hearthstone.
I don’t know, I’d argue it’s pretty niche. To truly enjoy Duelist, you have to enjoy 3 things at minimum.
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Card Games
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Tactics based gameplay
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Pixel graphics.
You have to hit all 3. Miss even one, and chances are you’re not going to play or stick with Duelyst. That sounds fairly niche to me.
What crime would that be?
You can’t even patent an idea. It has to be a specific expression of an idea.
Every game in existence borrows something from some previous game. Same with every other type of software. The “influences” in Duelyst from other games are clear and obvious, and there’s nothing wrong with them.
We don’t even really know what this game actually is yet. At least I don’t, all I have is a 2-minute trailer that conveys no meaningful information about gameplay.
We’ve had a developer from CPG come in here and post in a very classy way about this. Let’s try to follow his example.
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Some legal stuff: game mechanics are not covered by copyright, they’re covered by patent. The standards for getting a patent are much, much higher than for copyright. For one, you have to apply for a patent. None of the individual mechanics of Duelyst would meet the standards for a patent in the United States. The only parts of Duelyst covered by IP law are the code, assets, and lore. So if you’re accusing Hi Rez of a crime, you need to show that they stole code, assets, or lore.
Source and disclaimer: I am not a lawyer. I had one lecture on IP law for engineers and checked Wikipedia and Gamasutra.
The only thing about Smite Tactics being a source of competition is that Counterplay has literally done everything as right as you can expect a group of human beings to develop a game. They took huge risks in the face of lots of doubt - going to 1 draw per turn which improved the gameplay diversity by about 1000% at least. They give us great pull rates and monthly cards - and the sisters as rewards for being collectors. They are doing everything right ALREADY.
What is smite tactics going to teach Counterplay with their competition? They let CP take the risk with a low budget art entry and now they wanna swoop in with 3d art after the concept has already been proven and streamlined to near perfection!
I fear the answer to this will be “marketing”.
It’s not flashy, it is not anything gamers would claim was important to them, but it ultimately is probably more critical to the success of a game than any other factor.
This is not intended as a criticism of CPG, just a recognition that this is how large companies can crush small companies even with an inferior product.
ETA: To give you an idea of what I am talking about, Duelyst has about 11,000 Twitter followers. Smite has roughly 954,000. Even if only 1% of them are interested in this new game, that’s a lot.
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Sad but true. WOW is a prime example of this.
WOW has only been successful due to blizzards incredible marketing campain combined with a massive budget. When in reality the game is years behind in both graphics, gameplay, and writing then many completly free international games from Korea/Japan.
It also has a pretty toxic community. It turned the amazing lore filled history of the Warcraft series into this awkward cookie cutter MMo, and has gone the way of Stephen King Novels. Yea he has some great books but he writes so many of them so quickly that the quality really began to decline, same with WOWs constant churning out of expansions. I have not even mentioned my hatered of subscriptions, and wow does BOTH sub and out of pocket purchase.
Its sort of a terrible game, but Blizzard has been so successful that it has just crushed it’s competition, where as all of these international games and fledgling Indy companies most people have never even heard of since they can’t compete with Blizzards Reputatuon and Wallet.
Some competition can be really bad. If you crush your competition you can get away with a lot of shady buisness and a mediocre game because people almost don’t have a choice but to play it, since little Indy games like this just can’t draw the same type of numbers, especialy if there is some big name developer game siphoning away its community.
I think it is way to soon to criticize them. They may make a great game that is quite different from Duelyst. Let’s wait to get up in arms untill after it is out.
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Original ideas are nonexistent. You could say that Duelyst copied chess, or that chess copied checkers. Get over yourselves.
Honestly i don’t think it is a bad thing to copy the good parts from an existing game, but you always have to add some new ideas.
Btw: I’ll never get it why you would choose those crappy 3D-graphics over real 2D-ART. For example Stronghold Crusader looks much better in my opinion than Stronghold Crusader 2. A game is not necessarily better if it is 3D.
Hi-Rez for example could teach CPG how run a TCG similar to theirs with a business and pricing model that relies more on the carrot and less the stick and thus feels better to the players while still bringing in enough profit to sustain the game and future development.
how is counterplay not already using a business model that is friendly to players? This is literally the most generous CCG I’ve ever played. A free legendary for making Mediocre/For Fun Division each month? That’s all carrot and nearly no stick imo.
I don’t mean to be rude or try to change your opinion, but I think that repeating the same statement is all threads is not making it more convincing to others You should definitely try to play other CCGs for a while and check whether their business model is better than this one. I’m building an excellent collection in Duelyst just by playing less than a hour per day, mostly doing dailies.
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Did you try any of the new TCGs that recently have cropped up all over the place? The F2P progression in Elder Scrolls Legends and Shadowverse seems much better. In neither of these games I ever had the feeling to be held back by a limited card collection or that acquiring new cards is too grindy. On the other hand I started Duelyst around 2 month ago and still struggle to get my hands on basic cards while having 2-3 times the amount of time spend on it. Frankly the only other TCG I played that was worse, is Hearthstone.
I tired one of these, ESL, and quit it after a week. One of the reasons was cost and the pace of progress without paying money compared to Duelyst. IIRC it 15g/3wins instead of 15g/2wins. The games are also glacially long, so it is actually much worse than that.
You don’t get 25g per day just for breathing, and quests IIRC require wins, not just attempts.
But mostly, no board, and a terrible “you get punished for winning” mechanism that means every game takes upward of 15 minutes, did it in for me.
To be honest I do not even know how much gold I get for wins. I did the solo content which gave me a decent starter collection. I do the dailies each days which gives 40-70 gold depending on the type. Some of them give bonus follow up quests. And I get gold and a card (of random rarity) for the first win each day and more free cards when my character levels up. When I take a look at my collection and the cards I am missing I seem to make good progress considering I only spend about half an hour each day in it. One could say the progress is that good that I did not even think about the progress much. It feels satisfying and natural. Maybe the fact that each booster pack contains 6 and not 5 cards makes the difference.
One could also say that it’s confirmation bias since you seem absolutely convinced that every game but HS is more generous than this one.
Oh, I forgot about the free card. They used to give you a card of rare or higher rarity every 3 wins I believe. They nerfed it to a common the week I was there.
At any rate, I don’t actually care how generous they were, because the game is terrible. It’s an HS clone with two sides (which in terms of adding strategic dimension is worth about 5% of Duelyst’s board.) Every match took 10+ minutes, often 15+ minutes, and their “prophecy” cards make winning or losing more subject to RNG than even Hearthstone.
Only every other digital TCG that I played to far except HS. Also I started playing ESL before Duelyst so my opinion on ESL’s F2P progress being confirmation bias makes no logical sense because the opinion to confirm did not yet exist.