So I wanted to offer some PvE ideas on some things I'd be excited to see Hex add, to help improve the PvE experience overall.

Evolving Dungeon
Inspirations: Earlier suggestion(I believe it was by Nico), also the PotD in FFXIV, Evo Sealed Gauntlet
Note: This is a paid dungeon. Entrance fee, say, 400 plat.(spitballed - this could easily be way off)

The basic concept of this is that your character and your mercenaries are stripped of their decks for this dungeon. You're given a preset pool of uncommons/commons to build from, as well as 2 special packs to open, similar to Evo Gauntlet. Each pack contains 20 cards and 4 equipments guaranteed to be for cards in your pool(bear in mind you have the preset of common/uncommon to use). 15 of these are guaranteed to be pvp commons or pve common/uncommons. 4 of these cards randomly roll from among current set pvp uncommons, pve rares, pve legendaries, or pvp rares(with decreasing likelihood of course). The final card is a pve rare.

You're then given the opportunity to build decks for this dungeon and set to tackle 10 somewhat random encounters of increasing difficulty. At nodes 4 and 8 you open an additional of these pack. Additionally, you can complete challenges in up to 4 encounters to earn pve packs themed after the encounter.(ex. you might get a Hag encounter with a challenge. Complete that and you open two Kraken pve packs for your pool. Or a goblin encounter might reward devonshire packs)

If you complete the entire dungeon, you get one current set pvp pack as your prize. All cards opened from the packs are kept. So you're paying the entry fee for up to 8 pve packs, four of these 'special' pve packs, and a chance at a single pvp pack. If you lose five times, you're out.

There are a few intents behind this idea.
1) Offer a way to monetize pve to a degree.
2) Offer a way for people to earn content in pve while paying without needing to play against other people.(since not everyone wants competition)
3) Add a randomized form of pve for campaign characters.
4) Add a way to earn PvE packs that isn't just a repetitive static grind.


Hogarth's Gauntlet
Inspirations: Diablo 3 Greater rifts, Hex Arena
Note: This is a free experience.

Here the basic concept is that on the campaign we'd have a new node. This node would be entitled 'Hogarth's Gauntlet' and would take you into a selection menu with 4 different difficulties.
Upon selecting your difficulty, you'd be presented with a dungeon map. Like all dungeons, you can't see the node layout until you reach it, so you don't know how many encounters or deviations you'll have. However, it'd be at last 10 and no more than 20 encounters, with at least 1 deviation for some special effect.

At random, there will be deviations to the path. These deviations offer you small rewards similar to the ones in the kraken dungeon.(small gold bonus or loot 'chest' to be opened at completion + start all encounters with a charge, x random cards get -1 cost, x random actions get 'when you play this, copy it', x random troops get flight, so on)

Every encounter awards a small gold reward with a chance at a loot chest. These chests contain items pulling from the existing pve packs as well as a few exclusive items. Similar to the above dungeon I mentioned, encounters chests contain items themed somewhat after the encounter, although there are some 'generic' items that are shared by all as well.

2-3 encounters throughout the dungeon will randomly be 'boss' encounters. Boss encounters award two chests guaranteed, as well as double the gold of a regular encounter. Each boss encounter has two items that can ONLY drop from its chests, but are rare.

There are also some 'special' bosses you can find. These are quite rare, and range in difficulty from easy to extremely hard, but reward a large bonus and several special items.

Intents:
1) Make gold farming more enjoyable and less 'solved'.
2) Add challenge scaling to pve to some degree.
3) Add more ways to get pve cards.
4) Add some repeatable content to the campaign.

The Scourge of the Overworld
Inspiration: Dragon's Dogma 'raid bosses'

Every encounter you do has a low chance to be replaced by a special challenge encounter that is difficult but not hugely difficult. The encounter is a PART of a boss. Defeating it rewards you a special token you can gift to a friend. The token, when used, enables them to fight the special encounter themselves. Each account can only fight this boss once. The boss rotates once per month.

Completing the boss takes away a percentage of the overall 'boss health'. Once the boss is defeated, everyone who defeated one of the parts of the boss, gets a bonus loot pack to open with 8 pve cards in it(4 of them special).

If the boss is not fully defeated at the end of the month, everyone who beat part of it gets a small pack containing part of the loot of the full pack based off of how much of the boss was beaten.(25% - 2 cards, 1 special. 50% 4 cards, 2 special. 75% 6 cards, 3 special.)

Vroengard had the idea that there could be multiple of these at once, rotating throughout the year. I love the idea... but even just one would be enough to get people to at least feel that having friends was a plus. lol

Intents:
1) Add a tiny bit of social/pseudo-co-op to the pve that is relatively minimally design time intensive.
2) Add another random rare thing to look for.
3) Give people motivation to play pve every month.



Anyone have their own ideas, or want to discuss the above? Feel free to share

Edited: Removed Fog of War as unnecessary. Thanks for pointing that out Vroen. Also added an idea you suggested to the OP.

An average pve pack is worth like 10 plat. These special pve packs are worth roughly ~3-4 of those. So four of them is worth about 160~ plat, give or take. Remember that PvP rares are by far the lowest chance. Think how frequently pve packs have legendaries, and take that a step lower for the pvp rares. Even with four chances, you're unlikely to see pvp rares even once per run if you get all of the packs. But the chance is there. You could get the god run.

The one pvp pack is worth 200. I'm actually not sure the rewards are high enough given the average value of pve cards, honestly. It SOUNDS like a lot until you look up the real value of pve cards.

Also bear in mind not every dungeon will be completable since you have a limited pool that could end up sucking.


The default commons/uncommons would be designed with this in mind. But honestly, that's part of the challenge. And you only have to choose your mercs when you build your deck at the start. So you can build around your pool, much like a real evo.


The point is so people can't just spam leave-re-enter until they get a layout they want. Some layouts will have more 'side paths' than others, since it's random, you don't want people only completing if they know they'll get lots. It also makes GETTING a random side path much more enjoyable.

Edit: I am aware this would make this take additional coding and makes it less likely to be implemented, but that's fine. Sometimes it's important to reach for the stars
Yes. That was poorly worded, but exactly that. It'll have dungeon specific pve items in addition to the generic stuff.
I dunno if I'd agree that a single pack with up to 8 pve cards in it once a month is extremely high. Realistically, the quality of those cards can be adjusted to counteract this.



Edit: This all being said, the cost/rewards are probably the least important part of the idea. That stuff can all be adjusted. Hex, if they took any of these suggestions, would obviously tweak it to match whatever valuation they see fit.

Since most of the rewards are pve, they're largely irrelevant since all pve content can be farmed as well.

400 plat for 1 pack and 1 random rare is not exactly high value.


That's actually a good idea, overall. Hadn't thought of that, but it's definitely a reasonable variation.


Ya, good call. I'd forgotten about that, the dungeon farming experience is kind of a blur at this point I've done it so often.

Minor edits made to OP based off of discussion.

With all the PvE Buzz going on, I thought we might be able to start a discussion around this sort of topic again. Give Hex some ideas about the sorts of things we might be interested in seeing in the hopes that, if they're struggling to define their vision, maybe our suggestions can help to give them light into it.

The reason I didn't go that route personally was to make non-competitive players have a way to use plat and still have reason to invest in the game.

I love evo. I really do. But there are a facet of players who will never play a competitive match. They just don't want the stress of it. This is a simple reality. Even in games like LoL and SC2, there are players who never engage in competitive play, content to explore the game's pve modes.

If Hex wants to make these players pay money, they have to add a way for them to invest and build a collection. If the evolving dungeon has no way of generating anything of actual value for them, the cost is going to be so low that Hex will never make any real money off of it, or the reward will be too low for anyone to justify paying the plat fee to enter.

If people are investing plat, I do not see it as unreasonable to have a chance to get pvp cards.

One last try - I really do think these are ideas that the game could benefit a lot from.

no worries - bumps are welcome
Would you mind elaborating? I'd be interested in hearing your specific thoguhts about what you do and don't like and it might help us to create a more useful suggestion for Hex long-term

Edit: And just to elaborate, I think it is important to have some form of monetized pve experience to help fund additional pve development and to show the value of pve. And with the evo dungeon providing pvp cards, I figured having a cost to it made sense. But for the rest, yep, I wanted everything else to be free so that there would be options for people to farm for free that were dynamic and engaging... and expandable.

Can we please keep it on topic. This isn't another 'pay or no' or 'pve sucks' or 'pve is neglected' topic... it's a topic for ideas. And for discussing those ideas. It's not just even about my ideas. If you have your own, please - by all means, share. The only thing I ask is that any suggestions you include be PvE and focused on things to add to the campaign specifically.

For me, the big drive of monetizing PvE is that it allows for the rewards to be improved and varied. If we have money involved, we can add pvp cards to the equation. Which then means we don't need to force PvE players into PvP and can create a self-sustaining PvE game.

But I absolutely 100% agree that most of PVE content should be free. However, I do think we need some exceptions to that rule...

I'm glad you like the suggestions. As far as ease - of course I can't know their codebase, but I tried to build ideas that drew from things they had already done successfully so that it HOPEFULLY wouldn't be as difficult to implement. Evo dungeon is basically an evo where you play in pve... the second idea is basically a mix of the arena and a dungeon... and the final one is basically putting something akin to Zakiir/Uru into the campaign with a few extra elements.