Purpose of this thread

The objective of this thread is to try and influence HexEnt towards something I believe would be on the low end of efforts (not insignificant, but likely lower than any other new content) and that would add significant replayability and value to the current PVE offering while we wait for bigger, dedicated PVE releases.

• Enabling a form of PVP including PVE cards and equipments
  

The Context
Knowing that the next “big” dedicated PVE upgrade is far off (months) and that we already been without new content for a while, I have been trying to figure out what could possibly be the least amount of effort for HexEnt. that would produce something related to PVE that would give us something to do while we wait.

What occurred to me is that the least amount of effort for them would be having the community handle most of it. As things are right now with PVE, there isn’t much room to work with besides deck building contests. Most of the other things we can do often ends up not being very accessible to most players or very narrow (need players to be streamers, handle things through third party softwares or rely on the replay feature that is not yet configured to efficiently track PVE).

Ultimately, my thought process ended with the conclusion that what could help achieving these goals was introducing some form of PVP that would incorporate PVE cards and equipments. It would enable players to theorycraft and play with each others in this new PVE contest and most importantly, would create a meta that, hopefully, will be evolving throughout the upcoming releases and beyond.

This idea raises a few issues but I believe we can work around most of them.


The suggestion - new "Heroes" format
For the sake of argument, I’ll just call this new suggested format "Heroes". I’ll use the shortcut to make this write up easier.

• Put in place a new Deck Validation format on the Frost Ring Arena deck builder section that would follow these requirements:
  
  • Deck size 100
    
  • Singleton
    
• Enable us to use this new type of deck when challenging other players.
  
  • In the Challenge Player window, add “Frost Ring Arena” in the Format list and only display the decks that fulfil the “Heroes” deck validation
    

The "Heroes" format would end up being a larger singleton format using 100 cards deck size and current FRA selection of cards (Immortal + PVE cards), equipment and Champions (Immortal).

The goal of the suggestion is to stay minimalist so no "official" tournament or events. Just the opportunity for players to start exploring PVP(E). Let us test it and see how the community rallies behind it!


The commitment

Asking Hex to implement a format, even if it appears to be a good idea, is not enough. We need to demonstrate, as a community, that this new format would indeed be something that would generate enough participation to make it worth the efforts. Even more so if we want the format to not only exist, but to eventually get its own dedicated support!

As such, we suggest that we take the following two steps:

• Show your support in the suggested new "Heroes" format by answering the poll in this thread. A big number of positive answers will go a long way to show our global interest!
  
• Implement a community league around the "Heroes" format
  
  • To really demonstrate that the community would start rallying around the new format we need to show that we are ready to support it. actual. As such the Wardens of Entrath will put in place a new "100 cards, singleton" league to hopefully demonstrate that the interest voiced in this thread is not just curiosity!
    

Evidently, we cannot really put a league in place for the "Heroes" format just yet since we just can’t do it in client. However we can do something that would be close to it as a "proof of concept". Wardens of Entrath will be creating a dedicated post for the new league with all the details and its prize structure in the next week. Expect some cool Platinum and PVE related prizes attached to it (meaning many Kickstarter exclusive items!)


Details and thought process

Playability and balance issues

• One of the biggest pitfall of trying to do PVP(E) is the power level of the cards. PVE cards were never created or balanced with the mindset of using them between players. We already see it with the kinds of deck in Frost Ring Arena. There are decks that consistently win on turn 3 or 4, doing outrageous things that are not very interactive. However, when I saw the announcement for “Singles Night” I just thought this was the perfect solution! By making decks singleton with a significant deck size, we will be avoiding nearly all of the linear strategies we currently see. After giving it some thoughts and trying to build a few decks with this rule, I strongly believe the format could be very interesting.
  

Minimalist implementation

• Using anything from the campaign outside of it (mercenaries, characters, talents, etc) would likely be too complicated for a “simple” implementation. Using the already in place deckbuilding restriction and the collection manager filter that already exist is likely the least amount of effort to achieve the “Heroes” format.
  

Support from the replay feature

• The replay feature currently enables us to find matches between players. Having a format we can show and cast would at least give a great tool to the community to start building around it!
  

Adding value to the campaign

• There are currently many loot drops from the Campaign, Frost Ring Arena and Kismet Reserves that could potentially be staples in such a format. If it ever becomes popular, it could raise the value of a few “farmable” items (not to mention sets that have rotated out). That would added value for new and F2P players alike.
  

Evolution

• This format would literally be affected by any new cards and equip created (new sets, updates to FRA, updates to campaign, new Kismet reserves rotation, etc.). As such, it would create the most fluid and evolving meta the game could offer!
  

No limits!

My suggestions were made with the mindset of keeping things simple. However, here are the things I believe would greatly improve the format if they would be implemented (later on or with its release):

• Make sure that players have larger health pools (I would suggest doubling what they currently have)
  
• The possibility of exploring using some of the mercenaries for the format or even having dedicated champions for it. (could even have a champion rotation)
  
• This one is way out there but if there is a format that lends itself well for "testing" what multiplayer could be, it would likely be this kind of format (2v2 or 4 player free for all).
  
• This could also be made into some kind of regular tournament or event that would reward exclusive PVE items. Could be a way to release new exciting exclusive PVE stuff like AAA PVE cards.
  

Conclusion

I hope this suggestion will raise great enthusiasm in our community. I can certainly say I would be thrilled to start playing it. Just working on this suggestion had me theorycraft a few deck concepts for it! (using both crusaders AND Emsee!)

Hopefully we’ll gather enough feedback and enthusiasm around it to make it happen!

It is indeed not PVE, the key is in the title!

I can respect the sentiment but to me this is just paranoia. Besides, the whole premise is that this would not delay anything. Off course no PVE enthusiast wants a pseudo PVE feature if it is to create some significant delay to the release of future dedicated PVE content. However, that is not the idea here.