They definitely have hit it with PayPal factored in (last reported to be around $22K). Can’t believe Dragon Lord was the next to go. The only had 50 slots versus Grand King’s 1000, but still…
I have to say it has been a well run kickstarter. They have everything in place - artwork, etc. I have to think that they did not expect the stretch goals to be hit so rapidly and are probably busy trying to come up with some additional goals.
I’m really hoping that one of them (most likely the last) is iOS/Android apps at launch.
Hey a Pro Tier just went up for grabs - if anyone can get it quickly enough!
Someone must have upgraded to Grand King.
Kickstarter could probably make money selling cell phone alerts for changes or something - laugh!
Already gone. I think a lot of commenters are manically refreshing for such opportunities.
Yes, they are all lurking trying to talk themselves into switching to the Grand King instead. I can see myself trying to explain 500 dollars to my wife; “but honey everyone is getting the Grand King…” “This will be my Christmas, Father’s Day and birthday present including 2014!”
Actually that is true for me at Pro level
:>)
Folks who want the pro should be watching the KS page this afternoon. I’ve seen four come up and disappear since GeeWhiz’s first post 20 minutes ago. The prevailing theory is that folks are upgrading to Grand King in fear that it will also sell out by the end of the weekend. Could be true; GK has gone up by 15 or so in the last hour.
It is amazing how much money people are spending on this game.
I think most people will end up regretting it to be honest. I’d imagine most of them probably think that if they play the game for 5 years, paying $200 or maybe even $1000 would be a good deal, but anyone who has played a lot of mmorpgs know that more often than not, most people don’t stick with mmorpgs for even a year, much less forever.
I did pledge for the $120 king, but then i probably spend too too much money on kickstarter and i set a reminder on it so i can decide if i want to go through with it at the last minute. Even i could never see myself playing $250 for a game i know basically nothing about except that it is heavily influenced by magic.
This is also a mmorpg, so if “Something” happens, like for a crazy example, a month after release, Wizards of the coast sues them because the game looks very similar to magic and they end up closing down, you’re out of luck (and $1000).
You’re judging the spending by the lights of spending money on an MMORPG, while they’re spending by the lights of spending money on a TCG. For which serious players routinely pay as much or substantially more. A high end pro deck in Magic apparently can cost over $500 to put together.
I have a really hard (impossible) time viewing cards in a video game as collectable items.
As a former magic player, one of the greatest advantages digital versions had is that they weren’t so crazy expensive. You could play with cards you like without spending thousands of dollars. Sadly, basically every digital adaption has failed in some way, many because they tried to have CCG prices (ie nearly free money for them) and some (the planeswalker games) because they don’t let you customize your deck (which is half the game in my opinion).
I worry that hex is going to fall in to the same trap of costing $100+/month to get any cards worth a damn. At the end of the day, this is why i have a really hard time committed funding for this project.
I hate to break it to you, but Magic Online is a huge success, as is Duels of the Plainswalkers. Also, cards in Magic Online cost the same as the physical versions.
Hex is deliberately pricing itself at exactly half of Magic for boosters and entry fees. Plus you get extra goodies in Hex.
I’m not attacking or defending Magic Online. Just stating the facts.
Hex will also have a substantial PvE component with (set 1) 300 PvE-specific cards and from everything I’ve read (Chris Woods can no doubt confirm) none of that will be charged for. (Also, all of the Kickstarter exclusive cards and mercenaries are for PvE). If people end up wanting to buy 50 boosters a month, that’s up to them, but that would only affect the competitive end of the game. I generally am not wild about the randomized booster pack model of distributing cards and I have refused to get into any more physical TCGs, so I was admittedly going to avoid Hex at first…but for me, the way they’re taking advantage of the format for their design and offering a robust singleplayer/cooperative experience without expecting you to pay a dime both do a lot to alleviate my distaste for that business model. Plus, of course, Pro Player should keep me in boosters indefinitely.
Well crap. I didn’t realize this was a thing I wanted until all of the Pro level were spoken for. If I come into a few hundred bucks maybe I’d go for the Grand King but that’s a lot of money (for me) to set out without having a finished product to judge. My big concern with buying in at a lower tier is that the market is likely to be flooded with cards from the first set thanks to all the booster packs they’re throwing around in this Kickstarter (not that I think they should lower rewards because of me!). It would be great if some of those backer packs could be deferred or offered as a voucher that could be used for the next one or two sets (maybe they are, but I didn’t see anything indicating how the packs were being delivered).
No, the KS boosters are all set 1, that’s been confirmed. Some might end up being Primal Packs, though, since those pop up randomly.
Which shows how predatory TCG pricing is. This, speaking as a guy who was silly enough to pledge $250.
It’s not that they charge for cards, or that there are so many cards for sale. It’s that you can’t just buy a complete set for a reasonable price, as you can with Ascension. The core issue is, as you mentioned, distributing the cards in randomized boosters, with the rarity model so that even if you had perfect luck in buying boosters with no overlap in the rares, you end up paying for far, far more uncommons and commons than you’ll ever use.
Hex isn’t quite like that, even though most of us are using Magic as a guide when assessing what is a “reasonable” price. The multiplayer side is pretty much identical in the pricing approach as Magic, though at half the cost, but the single player side really does seem truly free to play. From how I understand things, you could eventually get all of the non-Kickstarter single player cards just by using the standard free starter and playing long enough. Cryptozoic can afford to do what you can’t do with a physical card game since giving away digital cards doesn’t cost money.
I’d be a lot happier if multiplayer were priced more reasonably. Heck, you can get three blocks of cards for online mutiplayer Ascension for a total outlay of $12, and that’s if you pay full price for the base game instead of waiting for a sale. Playdek seems to be doing OK despite charging $4-$5 at most for a block of 150ish unique cards.
Yet, I’m willing to pay. I know how much I liked Magic drafting, and I’m willing to pay an exorbitant price for that as long as I know it’s a fixed price, rather than the open-ended money pit of Magic.
What seems weird to me is that the pricing seems reversed. One reason I never felt WoW was a ripoff despite the subscription cost was that the world was huge, much larger than any single player game I can think of, even Skyrim or Fallout. I was getting value for my subscription, and I could see that creating, maintaining, and updating that kind of world cost money. Yet Hex is not charging for that aspect, they’re charging for the multiplayer side, which doesn’t have those kinds of ongoing costs.
Which points out something I think you said earlier - the Pro tier is the only one that has a benefit for later card blocks.
Yeah, it’s why I’ve never really heavily bought into any TCG that hadn’t been discontinued and remaindered (like Hecatomb, which is a decent little Magic-esque game from WOTC using gimmicky pentagonal transparent plastic cards. Must not have taken off, so you can get booster boxes of it and the two expansions for about…$30 a pop, I think, right now, and I bought mine even cheaper). One of the reasons I ultimately went for Pro Player was the prospect that that could potentially represent the only investment I’d ever need to make in Hex, since the payoff is ongoing.
Yep. That’s the other reason. (Well, technically Dungeon Crawler and Raid Leader will apply to all future PvE content including later “sets” thereof, but since you don’t directly get ongoing content from them, it’s not the same.)
Maybe one of the stretch goals will be able to turn in old boosters for newer ones. If they do decide to retire sets than keeping the old boosters would prove valuable in a couple of years.
At any rate getting a card pool will not be a problem if everyone who backed does open their boosters. That could make for a good community and help people get started because there will be plenty of extra 1st set commons around. to gift to new players - though the guilds maybe able to do that somehow.
Where is the MMO in this game? Or is it just being used as a buzz-word for glorified lobby matchmaking?
Lots of loot grinding, single-player dungeons (sort of like a mini-board game with lots of themed card battles), and 3-man raids. With tons of PVE-specific cards and equiment.
Lots of info here and here.