HEX: The now and the future

    • Whiteyzz wrote:

      I feel the issue is you get hit so hard with the collection has no value, when the game dies. I feel TCG's digital ones have to find a way to profit off not the boosters/cards but give benefits to those who subscribe, and give cosmetics. IMO I feel the best way to do a TCG is...
      Make boosters/cards only use gold, the currency people use in game.

      Have the Ranked PVP dictate the Gold Per Match on average. Make it so the tiers give you more GPM.
      The higher tier you are the higher GPM you get, the lower tier get lower GPM, but put a cap per day and make it so it's essentially when you complete it for the day, you just get an average per minute played. So good players get rewarded with quickly completing their daily (but have to play well to keep their rank). (Let's say max rank players have to play 5 matches, and lowest rank would have to do 10 matches)

      Have PVE work on rewards system, give less rewards, less gold per minute on average but getting rare equips/pve cards give greater return in gold if they're valuable.

      Add a platinum <-> gold exchange ala Guild Wars 2 and other f2p games.

      Have the AH use the Gold/Plat and stay as is.

      Make the platinum shop, the subscription bonus and cosmetics.

      Give a very low chance for any card made to be full art, otherwise you have to pay platinum to full art a card (instead of gold)

      Make play board and decks leeves platinum only and more expensive, again cosmetics like Path of exile but no one complains since they don't give you an advantage. Heck even make the league of legends epic or dota epic skins kinda deal where you spend lets say 40$ and you get a play mat/card sleeves that come with a bunch of special effects. Ah but here is the catcher have buffs on them, so they're more of a deal to the player

      Have Card sleeves give 10% more exp (global account and character)
      Have Boards give 10% more gold

      It's doesn't break balance and makes people want to spend money on it.

      Then with the more expensive epic skin ones when combined together give 15% each. Also having cool effects for your side of the field, lets say there is a plant deck I'm making and there is a garden themed decksleeve/decks. With custom effects now on the field like having a plant vine pull cards from my deck into my hand or move them onto the field. Have my plant cards in a little playful planter under them... push them to go oh this was worth my 40-50$

      Have subscription give a lot of the KS features
      weekly draft for free
      bonus gold/exp
      bonus loot
      guild/party leader bonus.
      Acorn a day (Have a sub have to login daily for this, KS backers automatically get one)

      You might go that devalues your account. No you have an account the longer that exists acts like a 12$ subscription for FREE, anyone who didn't KS. You will never have to Sub for those bonuses. Just make everyone who KS 250+ get it (since party/guild is just acting like pro player now with free weekly drafts). I feel the issues of party leader bonus, might have to be changed from it's base concept to not be as broken. Heck make it so if these player sub they get 2x bonus if they do both and (making their account have TRIPLE value, if they're a constant spender)

      Another cool concept could be just like PoE, make it so people have card storage per-say. Allow the players to essentially hold onto a play set of 4 cards/1 equipment, but once you go over that limit. You get a bank storage that stores extra equipment, and have it so cards only leave the inventory slot when sold. AKA people who have low storage might want to just sell the cards right away for a lower price, and players with more space might be fine with holding onto more and waiting on people to buyout. Have people start with something like a 25/25 slots (25 extra equipment/25 extra cards. Have any card from a booster get mailed to you once you have space, loot from dungeons/pve can be switched out with current equipment). Again this is for anything above a play set of cards.

      Honestly I feel like you look at the good F2P Cash shops and translate it into card games for TCG. Especialy for TCG's you have to make it so the cards aren't the dosh maker because it will just turn off every f2p player.

      Not saying this is perfect but we needed something to help keep f2p players stay. A playing player is a possible spender.

      The only other successful TCG's essentially is Wizard 101 which is big player base + sub, and MTGO which has the name of MTG behind it.
      Pay cash only for cosmetics seems rude to me... I have 289 extended art cards having to pay real money for more will deeply piss me off. And most of my sleeves are from holidays or gifts from hex themselves suggesting we make every for fun thing p2use only deeply annoys me.
      Lore Hound: Self Proclaimed Expert to Hex Lore (and right 80% of time with theories)

    • Whiteyzz wrote:


      Another cool concept could be just like PoE, make it so people have card storage per-say.
      Sorry but I fail to see how going from having unlimited free storage to this super restrictive storage system where you lose control of your cards is 'cool'. In fact it sounds like an absolute nightmare and a direct disincentive to buy cards and invest money in the game. Unfortunately when you start going heavily in the F2P route and not directly monetizing cards/packs, this is the type of sleazy practices that start creeping in and ruining the game for people who actually do enjoy the game enough to spend on it and instead are forced into this hole of being taxed for stupid stuff and having their freedom/flexibility to play the way they want removed in order to subsidize the F2P crowd.

      AceBladewing wrote:

      I wish people would stop trying to shift the blame from the developers to the people who wanted their purchased cards in a TCG to hold value.

      People wanting their cards to retain value were NOT the problem. The problem was HOW the developers approached that goal. Stop with the victim blaming.
      Those people who cared about collection value are the ones that poured enough money to keep the game afloat all these years, funny how they're know in hindsight pointed at as the reason for the failure. For a F2P business model to be viable you need a HUGE playerbase, and HxE was in no position to bite the hand that fed them for some obscure chance at overnight growing their playerbase by orders of magnitude.

      Besides, having a few chase expensive cards at the top is not the reason why the game didn't succeed, especially not on the PvE side which seems to be the focus going forward. The #1 reason for all the game's failures (if there even is such a thing) is the horrible codebase they inherited following the KS, and their inability to ship features/fixes in even close to a reasonable amount of time following that (I'm not sure how much the fact that they were essentially a new video game company at that time further contributed to it). That is the root cause for most other problems, the domino effect was something like this:

      -Radio silent communication because the reality of how far they were behind on everyone's expectations was the lesser of two evils (this is ofc debatable) compared to even the deafening silence that frustrated all of us.

      -A heavy focus and reliance on PvP because it would takes years maybe a decade to have the PvE fleshed out enough to be able to rely on it for financially supporting the company (further pissing off a huge section of the supporters).

      -The sudden unexpected rise of Hearthstone that brought along with it new way of doing things, and a whole new slew of expectations which HxE wasn't equipped to respond to because of the aforementioned lack of agility in shipping features/fixes

      -Rushed Invitational/Steam releases as a hail-mary before forced layoffs.

      -Features like Keeps coming out half baked and without the post-launch support/iteration

      ------------------

      Having said all of that, I do actually think some business model changes would help the game a lot. I still maintain that TCGs are the friendlier overall business model (try to consistantly amass a bunch of junk rares/legendaries/uncommons/commons in HS/MTGA and lemme know how you get on), but there are two major caveats that need addressing. Many people on this board I presume are well aware of how far you can go in a TCG like Hex with little investment (I've seen many posts bragging about 100Xing their collection value so the proof is in the pudding). The problem is that it requires an active and thoughtful approach (doing the right activities, in the right order, being involved in the AH/trading side, and keeping an eye on card value fluctuations and trends) which means that the majority of new and novice players (the ones you really want to be onboarding into your game) can't really benefit from it.

      That's definitely a problem. So the gift/F2P inflation in the market needs to shift from those being able to 100x their investment and comfortably never have to spend money into the game, towards those that are just trying out the game for the first time and need a lengthy handholding period in which they shouldn't need to reach for their pocket.

      This is where I believe introducing account-bound cards into the system makes a tremendous amount of sense. You can shower them with loads of goodies in a very controlled/predictable manner and have very little impact into the rest of the stakeholders in the ecosystem (HxE themselves, crafty F2P veterans, collectors, going infinite limited crowd, you name it). You can give people lots of PvP rares and legendaries (and limited phantom tickets) during a) tutorial completion b) account leveling c) the campaign which as I mentioned before should get a reward rework based on this d) participation into paid events e) the list goes on.

      Some might see as gifting someone 2 account-bound Vampire Kings as devaluing others' collections, but I think the way to look at it is creating possible new demand for 2 more VKs that were never there before in the first place. And if the player decides to leave the game and not like it, you didn't just inflate the economy with new cards for no reason, they essentially just disappear from existence.

      With all of this newfound generosity, you can craft a nice onboarding period for new players that can last months until the rewards start dropping off a bit. If by that time you didn't convince them that this is a cool game they should keep sticking to, then that's another problem all together.

      There's also the 'problem' of retaining these players, especially F2P folks who basically never really intend to spend but still serve a valuable purpose in giving the game some life and filling in queues. For those you can also use the account-bound card system to gift them weekly based rewards, and these players won't pray on the market making tons of money because their rewards will be untradeable.

    • OzawaWanderer wrote:

      2: Will Wizard sue again for breach of settlement..? I mean they sued cuz Hex got too popular but Hex while settling out of court did manage to keep the Magic The Gathering inspired (and cooler) mechanics but I'm mildly worried Hex 2 will be forced to create an entire new tcg system...

      OzawaWanderer wrote:

      Wizard of Cost is kind of a mixed situation in an odd way it's a bit of a shock that WoTC of all things would CARE to sue somebody so in a way Hex kinda has badassery points for at least getting big enough for Wiz to do that... But realistically it was terrible and god knows how much was forced to spend on Wiz to shut up about it...
      WotC sued Hex to defend their IP (the game mechanics, card style, copied names of cards, etc.). In the American legal system, large corporate companies basically have to do this to keep the rights to their IP exclusive. The first reason is, of course, because of profits, but failure to protect their IP, in the right courts anyway, could damage their claim towards them. Widespread use of the IP by other companies, with failure to defend their claims to it, could mark the IP as generic use or abandoned. That means suing for damages (loss of profit by "stolen" customers) would get increasing difficult.

    • It's a good question, though. Whatever settlement was reached, if Hex is relaunched as Hex 2.0, would it be open to a similar lawsuit?
      I suppose not, if it's under the same LLC? I don't really know how these laws function.
      Old username: Aradon | Collector backer | Starting a guild for Newbies -- "The Cerulean Acadamy" -- Taking applications once guilds are implemented

    • Erukk wrote:

      WotC sued Hex to defend their IP (the game mechanics, card style, copied names of cards, etc.). In the American legal system, large corporate companies basically have to do this to keep the rights to their IP exclusive. The first reason is, of course, because of profits, but failure to protect their IP, in the right courts anyway, could damage their claim towards them. Widespread use of the IP by other companies, with failure to defend their claims to it, could mark the IP as generic use or abandoned. That means suing for damages (loss of profit by "stolen" customers) would get increasing difficult.
      Yes but in Hex's defense any card game can say tap or use it's mechanics Wizard was too high and mighty to think anyone could copy them and when a game did they sued and lost cuz they failed to care to renew their patant on the mechanic and now legally speaking anyone can use it and Wizard is out of luck about it.
      Lore Hound: Self Proclaimed Expert to Hex Lore (and right 80% of time with theories)

    • OzawaWanderer wrote:

      Yes but in Hex's defense any card game can say tap or use it's mechanics Wizard was too high and mighty to think anyone could copy them and when a game did they sued and lost cuz they failed to care to renew their patant on the mechanic and now legally speaking anyone can use it and Wizard is out of luck about it.
      If it was just tap, wotc probably wouldn't have cared, but there were a slew of other cards that were basically copied and mechanics that were the problem. Also, wotc didn't lose the case. Them and Hex settled for an undisclosed amount, which is what usually happens in these sorts of cases, and Hex had to make different changes to more differentiate themselves from MTG.

      The biggest (and most welcome) was probably them having to change all the champions life totals to anything other than 20. It forced to actually balance them by lowering the aggro champs and raising the more control-y ones.

    • Erukk wrote:

      If it was just tap, wotc probably wouldn't have cared, but there were a slew of other cards that were basically copied and mechanics that were the problem. Also, wotc didn't lose the case. Them and Hex settled for an undisclosed amount, which is what usually happens in these sorts of cases, and Hex had to make different changes to more differentiate themselves from MTG.
      The biggest (and most welcome) was probably them having to change all the champions life totals to anything other than 20. It forced to actually balance them by lowering the aggro champs and raising the more control-y ones.
      I meant Wizard lost the case about tapping. They sued judge said their three years too late to have any ground and they can't reclaim the patant on tapping after the case was over.
      Lore Hound: Self Proclaimed Expert to Hex Lore (and right 80% of time with theories)

    • Plotynus wrote:

      But also, MTGA has one thing that is good and Hex should try to emulate if possible: Games are fast! Playing Hex again after playing MTGA is like playing at a different pace. Games are slow, a lot of clicks are involved. Hex should try, if possible, to automatize more things: auto-passing priority if there's nothing to do (and having the option to disable that only if you want) is a good start. Making the first rounds of the game faster will enhance the experience a lot. Once we're immersed in the game, we can wait for the rival to do stuff. But in the first turns waiting for the pass when there's nothing to do it's pointless. Specially with a lot of PS4 players.
      well you can press one button in hex and pass all priority. auto-pass is bad because it gives information

    • NyashMyash wrote:

      Plotynus wrote:

      But also, MTGA has one thing that is good and Hex should try to emulate if possible: Games are fast! Playing Hex again after playing MTGA is like playing at a different pace. Games are slow, a lot of clicks are involved. Hex should try, if possible, to automatize more things: auto-passing priority if there's nothing to do (and having the option to disable that only if you want) is a good start. Making the first rounds of the game faster will enhance the experience a lot. Once we're immersed in the game, we can wait for the rival to do stuff. But in the first turns waiting for the pass when there's nothing to do it's pointless. Specially with a lot of PS4 players.
      well you can press one button in hex and pass all priority. auto-pass is bad because it gives information
      I know the F10 key. But it's a little more than that. For example, on attacking on the first turns, when there's nothing to do if you don't have a quick action or an ability in a troop, there're like 3 or 4 clicks involved between me and my opponent, which takes time. That could be easily (at least in theory) summed up, as well as how the phases are set by default.

      Those small things helps the game feel smoother and help the overall experience.

      But maybe at this point is worthless to say, don't seems to be much interest in revamping what currently Hex has.

      Of course, all automatization should be optional. But what should be optional is having the chance to manually pass every priority, not the other way around.

      p.s. As I say this, I'm playing vs a PS4 player who confirmed my attack, can't do anything to block, and I'm still waiting that he push the button to assign damage. Two clicks that could be joined into one.
      Twitter: @Plotynus

      The post was edited 1 time, last by Plotynus ().

    • Obsidian wrote:

      It's a good question, though. Whatever settlement was reached, if Hex is relaunched as Hex 2.0, would it be open to a similar lawsuit?
      I suppose not, if it's under the same LLC? I don't really know how these laws function.
      Provided that they keep the changes they already made by not literally ripping card names and whatnot like they had before? They should be fine. The way things were before was pretty much BEGGING to have a suit sleeve leave a mark redder than a burning coal across your cheeks and the lesson was ideally learned by all involved parties.

    • OzawaWanderer wrote:

      Pay cash only for cosmetics seems rude to me... I have 289 extended art cards having to pay real money for more will deeply piss me off. And most of my sleeves are from holidays or gifts from hex themselves suggesting we make every for fun thing p2use only deeply annoys me.
      Again why I suggested it would more work like foils in real life, with some cards coming as full art in a pack, to make an economy for them in the AH.
      Also with the Gold <-> Platinum exchange you wouldn't be forced to pay money. I'm not talking expensive either.Like making a deck on average full art cost 1-2$.

      Bootlace wrote:

      Whiteyzz wrote:

      Another cool concept could be just like PoE, make it so people have card storage per-say.
      Sorry but I fail to see how going from having unlimited free storage to this super restrictive storage system where you lose control of your cards is 'cool'. In fact it sounds like an absolute nightmare and a direct disincentive to buy cards and invest money in the game. Unfortunately when you start going heavily in the F2P route and not directly monetizing cards/packs, this is the type of sleazy practices that start creeping in and ruining the game for people who actually do enjoy the game enough to spend on it and instead are forced into this hole of being taxed for stupid stuff and having their freedom/flexibility to play the way they want removed in order to subsidize the F2P crowd.
      I mean I didn't say every solution was perfect. But if they allow a play set of every card you're not shot in the foot in any other way then how much you can profit to make gold, so those who want to maximize profits would need more storage. I would say if you go PoE model, they've never been all that scummy. I've spent 20$ once on Storage and I can never fill it up in a league. But I guess trusting Hex is the hard part here.

    • What's all this Hex 2 focusing on PVE and "Even if we have to recreate the system." Mean? Also as your officially nicknamed lore hound I can help with any lore that Hex needs to make. Also does Hex intend to scrap servers make new ones and rebrand or completely change mechanics..? Also if we're getting focus on pve I hope they can keep system such as Class only cards like Pet Treat or Great Spore Beast that's pretty cool imo to have class cards and unique abilities.

      I donno what Warlock would entail but I'd totally love to see all 6 classes added to PVE.
      Lore Hound: Self Proclaimed Expert to Hex Lore (and right 80% of time with theories)

    • AceBladewing wrote:

      You're not the officially nicknamed lore hound. You were just given whatever custom title you chose when we migrated from the old forums. My custom name is Dingler (notice mine is green instead of the normal gray Dingler). That doesn't make my title "official" any more than yours does.
      Roostersaur a friggen DEV nicknamed me a lore hound
      Lore Hound: Self Proclaimed Expert to Hex Lore (and right 80% of time with theories)

    • OzawaWanderer wrote:

      AceBladewing wrote:

      You're not the officially nicknamed lore hound. You were just given whatever custom title you chose when we migrated from the old forums. My custom name is Dingler (notice mine is green instead of the normal gray Dingler). That doesn't make my title "official" any more than yours does.
      Roostersaur a friggen DEV nicknamed me a lore hound
      So... Roostasaur wasn't a dev. He was a chat moderator. His word carries about as much weight as HEXKingGabriel's did, which is to say they could say pretty much anything they wanted to, as long as it wasn't making statements on behalf of the company.
      Old username: Aradon | Collector backer | Starting a guild for Newbies -- "The Cerulean Acadamy" -- Taking applications once guilds are implemented

    • OzawaWanderer wrote:

      What's all this Hex 2 focusing on PVE and "Even if we have to recreate the system." Mean? Also as your officially nicknamed lore hound I can help with any lore that Hex needs to make. Also does Hex intend to scrap servers make new ones and rebrand or completely change mechanics..? Also if we're getting focus on pve I hope they can keep system such as Class only cards like Pet Treat or Great Spore Beast that's pretty cool imo to have class cards and unique abilities.

      I donno what Warlock would entail but I'd totally love to see all 6 classes added to PVE.
      May I ask where to link these cards? They have a place to check cards name?

    • Well we can probably all agree on the fact that the core game mechanics, artwork or overall interaction of cards wasnt the problem. The pure tcg aspect of Hex was or is the best that is out there.

      What wasnt good was the underlying code, performance and stability.
      Plus there was a huge lawsuit and publisher change. Both would have cut heavily into profits and ultimately further development of the game.

      If they can pull of a Hex 2 with better code and without all the entanglements of the past, I guess there is a good chance for Hex to succeed this time around. Well if they manage to win back the trust of their playerbase in the meantime. The last year was a PR nightmare and entirely self-inflicted.

      Talking about additional streams of revenue... Well why not? Although one way or another everything in the game was linked to real world currency, so why not keep it that way and think of additional items to sell to the community?
      Maybe you can also create 2d avatars, which are displayed during matches and which you can dress up with all kinds of stuff?