Kickstarting and Screaming

Games
1826

Reading over the reward tiers, they’ve got some pay-to-win stuff in the Kickstarter rewards. $120 or less levels are all cards. Some are Kickstarter exclusives, but that seems fairly tame. At $250, you get special abilities that aren’t card related: +1 starting card for all players on your team, or a permanent bonus to dungeon rewards, or a permanent XP bonus. At $500 you those 3 bonuses, plus the “pro player” bonus.

The “pro player” $250 bonus is the one which scares me. It’s not pay-to-win like the other $250 rewards, it’s free Draft tournament every week, forever. That may sound like a lot ($130 extra just for this feature), but consider that Drafts are $6 each, so you reach break-even after 22 weeks. The real issue is that they’re offering a former alcoholic a drink. One game doesn’t begin to scratch the itch for Draft once I start playing.

There are apparently already two people who have pledged $10,000 each.

1827

All of the Kickstarter exclusive cards are PvE only, and the special abilities likewise, aside from Pro Player. The PvP exclusives aren’t exclusive cards, they’re exclusive alternate artwork for cards.

And the drafts are $7 - 3 boosters + $1 buy-in. It’s honestly a much better value than any of the other $250 tiers because you’re getting something you would otherwise have to pay for, and unlike a lot of the other bonuses, it will eventually end up including cards from later sets. I’d be tempted even though I’m not that interested in tournament play, but I can’t really justify dropping an additional $130.

1828

Pay-to-win is a common phrase for free to play games which aren’t player vs. player. The classic free-to-play money grab is the game where you pay a small fee for extra lives.

That’s the rub, really. Here we are, a bunch of gamers who argue over whether a game is worth $5 or not if it’s a new iOS release or a Steam sale. $60 is the current “normal” for a brand-new game. Here we’re looking at paying $250 for a game, and realizing that if you’re seriously hooked, that’s a good deal. $250 for a game is very expensive, double so for an unreleased game with no reviews. It still could suck. Lots of designers have tried to copy Magic and done a bad job of it.

1829

Yeah, the Pro Player tier is just a fantastic deal, since it just keeps on giving. I initially pledged at the early-bird $90 King tier, but wound up upgrading to Pro Player. At $7 worth of benefits per week, it pays for itself in a few months. There’s a reason it’s three times more popular than the rest of the $250 tiers put together. Obviously it’s a leap of faith that the game will be good and the drafting will remain fun, but Cryptozoic’s track record is very strong, so I’m not too worried on that front.

There are even people that have bought three separate Pro Player tiers and will have them merged into a single account later.

1830

They have a web page devoted to spelling out the rewards at each tier. Yeah, yeah, PvE so common balance concerns don’t apply, but still. No, I don’t want the farting Orc, but some of the Champions look pretty strong, if I’m understanding the game correctly.

One is clearly a call-out to the infamous Black Lotus from Magic, which retails for thousands of dollars now. An artifact that costs nothing to play and gives you +3/0, which is neigh identical to the Black Lotus if I understand the Hex rules, and is only available to Kickstarter backers at $120 or above, ever. They’re clearly having fun with it, since you get an additional Spectral Lotus every day, but when you play one in a game, it’s permanently destroyed, gone from your deck for all future games.

1831

Shadow of the Eternals now on Kickstarter. Because of the hubbub surrounding Precursor/SK/their first pseudo-kickstarter attempt, I doubt we’ll see this one crossing the finishing line. I’d be happy to be wrong but there’s no way I’m touching this one until it’s released & on Steam with some solid reviews behind it.

1832

All the Kickstarter rewards that aren’t account flags will be tradable, including Spectral Lotuses. But only Kickstarter backers at King tier will have a renewable source of the Lotuses. (I’ll be honest, it’s a big part of why I’m at King and not one of the lower tiers, although the King level mercenary looks fun, too.)

And I’m not really that concerned about overall balance outside of the competitive environment, which they seem to be being very careful about. It sounds like the PvE content will contain a wide variety of challenges so awesome combos for one fight may not be that useful in another, and ultimately I’m just as happy to be a little cheaty if it’s amusing to do so.

1833

$1.35M is their base target? That’d be a tough stretch for any game, let alone a relatively obscure one like this. I really liked Eternal Darkness and what they have up looks good, but they’re gonna need a lot of luck to pull this off.

1834

I am thinking of supporting Hex because I like card games but I am no expert. I would mainly play the PVE side of the game and maybe some of the unofficial PVP, a little bit for fun.

Not sure what level of support gives the most value for someone like me.

One thing I do not understand. If Hex is an MMO is there a starter deck for each class and race types?

1835

In evaluating the tiers for you, I would recommend mainly looking at the number of packs and starters, since those actually give you enough cards to try out a few different deck concepts as you start out, and to a lesser extent the mercenary champions. The variety of cards available to you is core to any TCG, but the rewards can get a bit distracting with all the unique cards, equipment, and alternate art stuff. You can mostly ignore those, since you would only be getting one copy of each, which isn’t enough to rely on drawing or build a deck around.

Every tier up to King ($120) offers a better and better price-per-booster in addition to the ancillary stuff. I think the best options are:

Squire ($20): If you get into the game even a bit, you’ll probably buy a few packs, and $20 seems like a pretty reasonable amount for moderate dabbling in an enjoyable F2P game. Basically pay full price ($2 each) for 10 packs, and get two extra starter decks thrown in with the deal so you have more bases to build from, and can experiment with modifying decks right away rather than having to get through an unknown amount of PvE content to build up a decent card pool. You don’t get much free here, but if it’s what you expect to spend anyway, you might as well get the little freebies.

Knight ($65): For around the price of a new-release console game, get 65 boosters ($1 each), along with 4 starters and a primal pack (all rares and epics), as well as a couple of mercenary champions. The primal pack really bumps up the comparative value of this tier compared to the $35 and $50 tiers.

King ($120): 155 boosters ($0.77 each), 4 starters, and a primal pack, along with Spectral Lotus Garden, which is the only exclusive card that I think will be really impactful since you’re not limited to a single copy. And if you decide not to use them, they can go on the auction house to fund a steady drip of income for whatever other cards you’re looking for. Also two more mercenary champions over what Knight gets.

The tiers above King get into more specialized territory, taking the base of King and adding on a special bonus for an extra $130. I think the only ones really worth considering for a PvE player are Dungeon Crawler (double loot and experience) and Pro Player (even if you just draft and drop, the equivalent of three packs per week will really add up and give you lots of additional cards to experiment with). However, realistically I wouldn’t spend anywhere near that much on a game that I mainly planned to play solo.

1836

Your deck isn’t your character. Rather, your character is a sheet with special abilities. Like with a MMO, you gain abilities as your character gains experience.

Those are the only characters allowed in PvP. For PvE, you can choose to play one of the alternate characters that are often not one of the normal races, and which have a non-standard class. They’re called “mercenaries” but they’re player characters. They just have alternate rules, and aren’t allowed in PvP.

You can play any deck with any character. Presumably some of the starter decks are tuned well to work with specific class / race combinations, or specific prefab Mercenary characters.

1837

Yes. We will sell you none of that. We will let you find card sleeves, earn art unlocks, win foils, etc. through the game, but the only thing we’re going to sell is boosters.

This is very important to PvE, because it means we can make a balanced, compelling experience. Pay to win mechanics make it basically impossible to do that. You either alienate the majority of your userbase so the big spenders have a good experience, or alienate your big spenders. Both of those are tragic outcomes.

Chris Woods

1838

How do you acquire Mercenaries after the kickstarter, if you’re not selling them? Do you get them as rewards from dungeons or something?

EDIT: Found the answer in the FAQ thread on the Cryptozoic forum.

1839

Thanks Gus and Boojum!

I appreciate the time you took to answer my questions. :>)

I am thinking that if a person was to stay with the game the Pro Tier is almost a must, to save money in the long run. My son may be interested in playing against other players more than me and we could share the account. Otherwise I think I will try out the king level.

1840

Hmm, interesting analysis. I am at the $35 level, after bumping up from the $20. $65 seems like a better “deal” in the long run, but much more than I’m willing to part with right now.

1841

It’s been a benefit to me researching the answers, because I learned things while looking. I don’t think the “pro tier” is a must for the long term, since it’s only about playing Draft. While I’m a big fan of Draft personally, I think it’s clear there’s plenty to do in Hex without playing Draft. There is of course a side benefit to the free Draft tournaments, since you’re getting 150 booster packs a year from them, win or lose, provided you play every week.

1842

Thanks for clarifying that. This is sounding better and better.

Glad to help! I don’t know if I’d call Pro a must, since I’m sure things will be tuned so players who join after the Kickstarter can enjoy it. But it is one hell of an offer, and there’s no way I’m going to pass it up. If you’re already going for King, then you can look at the upgrade as $130 up front for $300 worth of boosters every year in perpetuity for as long as you play the game and remember to log in every week to use it, plus whatever enjoyment you or your son get out of actually playing the drafts.

Yeah, each tier is definitely tuned to offer a better deal than the one below it, and there’s nothing wrong with the $35 one. But the stretch goals revealed so far are definitely tilting the balance even more toward the upper tiers, with most of the better benefits starting at $50 or $65.

1843

I’m finally off the fence. I went in for $250 and the Pro tier, because damnit, Draft is my favorite format. It’s still a crazy amount to spend on one game.

1844

I wonder if the rewards package is really worth an extra 130 dollars? Do you get extra cards?

3 boosters per week pays back the extra $130 in less than a year if one is serious.

It really stinks because not sure without trying the game but if you end up liking it than will be mad that didn’t get the better package.

1845

They’re now talking about a subscription model where you can get a booster a week for $4 / month, which is a tad less than $1 / booster. So maybe $150 in boosters is a fairer valuation. It’s still a lot like the lifetime subscription model that some MMO’s have offered, spending $250 up front to get what should be enough new cards every week to keep the game going for you.