Perspective of a returning player from 10 years ago.
Introduction: I stopped playing the game 10 years ago, when my family received a PlayStation 3 for my dad's birthday. I've been playing a lot of other games since, and returning for the nostalgia trip down wizard 101 made me impressed with how much potential this game has. However, there are a couple things that I thought that would make the game a lot better.
There isn't a lot of room in the game to experiment with different cards while still doing well at questing, there is one route that is efficient and kind of necessary in order to go far in the game. Coming from Hearthstone, a game with a lot of room to experiment with different strategies, this was kind of counter intuitive to the idea of a card game. I think there are a couple different ways to fix this.
Encourage deck experimentation:
The problems with the current deck building system are that the training point buyback system discourages players from experimenting with different cards and some schools are mandatory for pve and pvp. For example, learning sun school to epic is pretty much mandatory for doing high damage or solo questing. Ice school and death school are both mandatory for feint and tower shield. Training points can't really be spent in fun schools like the moon school, because it will make it hard to progress into later parts of the game due to sacrificing other important spells like feint, tower shield or the sun school spells.
First, I would try to make the training point buyback system something that is more accessible to all players. Maybe this would be permanent free buyback for members or a much cheaper price. This way, players wouldn't be punished for trying to experiment with different strategies, cards, or schools. A new player also gets punished without this if they for example, put their points into the whole fire school because fire is cool.This is a mistake that I made 10 years ago, and finally remedied, this month after waiting for free point buyback so that I could finally start learning the sun school on my storm. This is an important step for encouraging deck experimentation, something that would add more depth and potential fun to game. Deck experimentation is the one of the main reasons that hearthstone, magic the gathering, and other card games are so popular right now. This is why I think that, while it is a source of income lost for KI, it would make steps towards improving new player retention, which would benefit the game greatly.
Secondly, I would buff the moon school polymorphs. One of the things that I was surprised by, was that after 10 years, the polymorphs are still useless. There are a lot of ways to buff this school, that should be easy to implement, wouldn't take away any source of income for KI, and could possibly add strategies for PVP and PVE. There are currently several aspects of polymorphs that make them bad for use in pve and pvp.
Sacrifices turn to polymorph Lose universal resistance Gain weakness in some cases Depending on school and level: lowers health Change lasts 6 turns Cannot use treasure cards or cards from deck
Possible changes: Without a complete rework, making polymorph decks spells cost 1 less and do a little more damage, healing, or buffing would not break game balance and would make them at least a little more viable. However, I doubt this is enough to have them see use.
The rework that’s interesting: This would make for a school that thematically competes against the consistent damage of the sun school, and would make for a high risk high reward style of play. Give a substantial buff to the spells at their disposal, and make the polymorph last shorter periods of time depending on the polymorph. The risk would come from sacrificing a turn to cast polymorph and having lower health or stats for several turns. This change to polymorphs would add a lot more options for deck building and potentially add a lot of depth to the game, both pvp and pve.
Improve new player experience:
I have a hard time suggesting that my friends pay for the game, when they don’t have any experience with the parts of the game that I like the most, which are the dungeons and pvp. There are no dungeons within the free portion of the game, so it also is hard to show them the parts of the game I would like. I know a lot of people have asked for making wizard city free to play, but you could just add a dungeon to the free portion of the game that shows a new player what they can expect from dungeons in the rest of the game. If this is implemented well, new players might be more likely to get a membership, because they are shown a part of the game with more depth.
I would also like to see changes to pvp that make it more accessible. As it is, a new player won’t enjoy pvp, neither will an experienced pve player who doesn’t know anything about pvp, because they will likely just get stomped by a player who knows more or has much better gear. It would help to find ways to encourage pve players to playthrough pvp by offering different pets or wands that will work well in pve. This would likely expand the pvp playerbase a ton, meaning that players new to pvp would not have to deal with warlords or other players with a ton of pvp knowledge. Making pvp more accessible will improve new player retention, because it is an aspect of the game that can be much more fun than pve for some people.
Quality of life Improvements:
I think making it would make questing more enjoyable for players if the teleportation system didn’t require mana to use. It slows the game down a lot by adding a cost to it. I also think that making chests drop guaranteed treasure cards scaled by world would make picking them up more fun. The gold drops don’t feel like enough to incentivize picking them up.
TLDR: encourage deck experimentation improve training point buyback buff moon school fix new player experience quality life improvements make treasure chests guarantee treasure cards
Re: Perspective of a returning player from 10 years ago.
Okay, so at least I can put one of your concerns to rest, but quite not all the way.
The New Player Experience(NPE) is improved, especially in the early game. While the dungeon in Olde Town exists, its not available until level 15, which is a LOT of grinding, even after completing every side quest available in the free portions of the game.
I agree with many of your concerns.
I play hearthstone on and off (Usually in large bursts that last a month or few at a time) and deck experimentation is something I'd like to see more of. I want to call out the Storm Titan as a boss that NEEDS a change to allow ANY experimentation with his boss in PvE. With PvP, I would recommend having daily or weekly rewards for winning matches with (choose an abstract card) used (Number) of times in the match.
With regards to Moon, well..... You aren't the first person to bring it up recently, I encourage you to show support for other threads that discuss Moon in depth on this board. They are pretty in depth about it.
Regarding Training Point Buyback, I am going to assume you know about the periodic Free Buyback that is offered. Take advantage of that to change up your decks. I think they should have a mode where all the cards are available to draft decks from, or even cards can be drafted in packs. Would make for a cool tournament format.
I personally don't see a reason to take away the mana cost from teleporting, as someone who played before it was in and as it was introduced, but I won't object if they choose to remove it. If I were them, I'd worry about finding a way to abuse the teleport marker.
I don't know about others, but I barely use treasure cards in PvE and PvP doesn't use most of the TCs found in the chests. I would instead proposed a higher drop of reagents in chests, and taking it as a chance to put rare reagents in chests as a super rare drop. THAT would give you a reason to get the chests.
Sorry for bouncing around your list, but I will end on the point that I feel is the most clear. The KI team are talking about making PvP available to F2P players eventually. They want to make sure that the meta is healthy before they do this first, though, so that it isn't allowed to get out of hand. They have stated this in an interview with BlakePvP recently, so I recommend looking around for that video if you still have questions down that line.
Re: Perspective of a returning player from 10 years ago.
greatstar25 on Jul 14, 2020 wrote:
Introduction: I stopped playing the game 10 years ago, when my family received a PlayStation 3 for my dad's birthday. I've been playing a lot of other games since, and returning for the nostalgia trip down wizard 101 made me impressed with how much potential this game has. However, there are a couple things that I thought that would make the game a lot better.
There isn't a lot of room in the game to experiment with different cards while still doing well at questing, there is one route that is efficient and kind of necessary in order to go far in the game. Coming from Hearthstone, a game with a lot of room to experiment with different strategies, this was kind of counter intuitive to the idea of a card game. I think there are a couple different ways to fix this.
Encourage deck experimentation:
The problems with the current deck building system are that the training point buyback system discourages players from experimenting with different cards and some schools are mandatory for pve and pvp. For example, learning sun school to epic is pretty much mandatory for doing high damage or solo questing. Ice school and death school are both mandatory for feint and tower shield. Training points can't really be spent in fun schools like the moon school, because it will make it hard to progress into later parts of the game due to sacrificing other important spells like feint, tower shield or the sun school spells.
First, I would try to make the training point buyback system something that is more accessible to all players. Maybe this would be permanent free buyback for members or a much cheaper price. This way, players wouldn't be punished for trying to experiment with different strategies, cards, or schools. A new player also gets punished without this if they for example, put their points into the whole fire school because fire is cool.This is a mistake that I made 10 years ago, and finally remedied, this month after waiting for free point buyback so that I could finally start learning the sun school on my storm. This is an important step for encouraging deck experimentation, something that would add more depth and potential fun to game. Deck experimentation is the one of the main reasons that hearthstone, magic the gathering, and other card games are so popular right now. This is why I think that, while it is a source of income lost for KI, it would make steps towards improving new player retention, which would benefit the game greatly.
Secondly, I would buff the moon school polymorphs. One of the things that I was surprised by, was that after 10 years, the polymorphs are still useless. There are a lot of ways to buff this school, that should be easy to implement, wouldn't take away any source of income for KI, and could possibly add strategies for PVP and PVE. There are currently several aspects of polymorphs that make them bad for use in pve and pvp.
Sacrifices turn to polymorph Lose universal resistance Gain weakness in some cases Depending on school and level: lowers health Change lasts 6 turns Cannot use treasure cards or cards from deck
Possible changes: Without a complete rework, making polymorph decks spells cost 1 less and do a little more damage, healing, or buffing would not break game balance and would make them at least a little more viable. However, I doubt this is enough to have them see use.
The rework that’s interesting: This would make for a school that thematically competes against the consistent damage of the sun school, and would make for a high risk high reward style of play. Give a substantial buff to the spells at their disposal, and make the polymorph last shorter periods of time depending on the polymorph. The risk would come from sacrificing a turn to cast polymorph and having lower health or stats for several turns. This change to polymorphs would add a lot more options for deck building and potentially add a lot of depth to the game, both pvp and pve.
Improve new player experience:
I have a hard time suggesting that my friends pay for the game, when they don’t have any experience with the parts of the game that I like the most, which are the dungeons and pvp. There are no dungeons within the free portion of the game, so it also is hard to show them the parts of the game I would like. I know a lot of people have asked for making wizard city free to play, but you could just add a dungeon to the free portion of the game that shows a new player what they can expect from dungeons in the rest of the game. If this is implemented well, new players might be more likely to get a membership, because they are shown a part of the game with more depth.
I would also like to see changes to pvp that make it more accessible. As it is, a new player won’t enjoy pvp, neither will an experienced pve player who doesn’t know anything about pvp, because they will likely just get stomped by a player who knows more or has much better gear. It would help to find ways to encourage pve players to playthrough pvp by offering different pets or wands that will work well in pve. This would likely expand the pvp playerbase a ton, meaning that players new to pvp would not have to deal with warlords or other players with a ton of pvp knowledge. Making pvp more accessible will improve new player retention, because it is an aspect of the game that can be much more fun than pve for some people.
Quality of life Improvements:
I think making it would make questing more enjoyable for players if the teleportation system didn’t require mana to use. It slows the game down a lot by adding a cost to it. I also think that making chests drop guaranteed treasure cards scaled by world would make picking them up more fun. The gold drops don’t feel like enough to incentivize picking them up.
TLDR: encourage deck experimentation improve training point buyback buff moon school fix new player experience quality life improvements make treasure chests guarantee treasure cards
Welcome back to the Spiral! You have some great ideas here and well thought out. If you haven't seen it yet in the current Test Realm, we're reworking a lot of the spells with more changes to come in the months ahead. It's a long process to calibrate these systems, but we're confident it'll be a positive change for Wizards in the future.
I'll be sure to pass along these other suggestions!
