Rather than the traditional end of year look back at 2019, I thought I’d focus on the future by running through how I approach designing a new feature for Combat Cards.
I’m going to use a ‘season pass’ as a case study for this because that’s what I’m working on right now, but I want to be very clear – just because I’m posting about a feature, it doesn’t mean that the final season pass will look exactly like this. It might undergo small or large changes (or even never be released) because our priorities might shift or the design below might end up not fitting with other features being added. Basically, I’m talking through how I approach adding something to the game, NOT confirming exactly what’s coming or when.
And to ensure everyone’s on the same page, what I mean by a season pass is a series of rewards that players earn in some way before that season ends and is replaced with another, usually with bonuses such as faster progression for players who choose to pay for the pass. What those rewards are, how they’re earned and where all this fits into the various Combat Cards UI screens is what I’ll be covering.
Why
Every new feature has to start with why we might want to do it, because if we’re working on feature X then some of the team aren’t available to work on feature Y, so we need to be sure we’re prioritising the right things. However, it’s important to point out that just because some of us are working on something, the rest of the team can still be working on other areas – it’s rare that the entire team is working on the same feature.
This also varies by discipline (art, code, design, etc.), with different people working on stuff for right now or off in the future. For example, our artists have been exploring ways for players to customise their profile for a while because the current workload is more code heavy (more on customisation in a future blog post).
So what’s the ‘why’ for a season pass? Despite what some people will say, it’s not just about trying to extract more money from players, instead I’m looking at the pass as a good way to add structure and a sense of progression to disparate gameplay features.
Considerations
Even a relatively simple game like Combat Cards includes a lot of elements for players to consider, with more being added all the time. For example, when you load the game should you build deck A and take part in a Campaign battle to achieve one of your daily Objectives and increase your Campaign + Mission score? Or are you better off building deck B to increase your Ranked score? And should you start pack A or pack B opening, or maybe before all that you should upgrade card X and add it to your deck?
So I wondered whether a season pass could help with these questions, though first I needed to decide if all these decisions really were a problem at all. Perhaps our player base likes having to make these sort of priority choices? In fact, I’d say that the type of players who are into deckbuilding card games and / or the complex lore of Warhammer 40,000 are probably going to be comfortable tracking short / medium / long term objectives and deciding what to do next (as opposed to, say, a casual puzzle game audience who just want to be told what to do).
With that in mind, I think the season pass should reward players for doing certain things (so you can choose to focus on those things right now) but not absolutely require you to do A over B (as that removes the enjoyment of setting your own priorities).
Continued
So step one of the process tells us that the season pass should be designed to help players decide which of the many actions they could choose to do right now, without being too simple (just turning up gets you a prize) or too restrictive (you must do X to get a prize).
There will be several more posts on this topic, digging deeper into the activities, rewards, menu design and so on. In the meantime, do let me know if there’s an area you’d like more detail on or if there’s something you love or hate about season passes that you’d like me to bear in mind.
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Thank
I think one of the most important things with a season pass is you need it to be accessible to everyone a good example is how the ranked mode you just added is a massive grind to reach the top. I remember in the early days of combat cards you guys wanted to make a game you would pick up and play for 5/10 mins in short bursts but to reach the top end of ranked mode players would have to win over 400 games and as you get higher you won’t win them all meaning you would have to play probably around 800 this is way to much time required to be invested just to reach Terra.
That’s a good point. We added Ranked mode and the like because we continually had players asking for longer play sessions but it doesn’t suit everyone. I don’t intend for the season pass design to encourage even longer sessions, more that it encourages specific actions you might already be planning.
First time commenting on the blog.
I think the main thing that season pass can offer is a better structure to the purchasing/paid element of the game. By having a season pass you can guarantee people a base level without people feeling they are overspending. If the trend of the last month continues and the amount of paid legendary packs continue to increase you are pushing people in the wrong direction. While it was once a month it was palatable, but in December alone 3 paid exclusive cards were released. This is escalation is quite alarming. If there was with the season pass a guarantee that each season pass came with 2 copies of each legendary paid release I think that would be much better as a start point. I would appease collectors and would stop people feel they are missing out because a card pops up unexpectedly, and they cant justify buying it or happen to miss it.
While the game is quite simple I’m not sure what kind of rewards to game-play you could add. Add a % boost to points for ranked or campaigns for example is absolutely not a good thing as it pushes things too hard towards a pay to win model which really does do a game disservice in the long term. Something like a 20% reduction on victory pack opening times and 200 plasma a week (one campaign pack) would be much better, I think anyway. It accelerates a players deck growth while not isolating the chances of non-paying players, and still leaves the player with control.
Another potential feature that would really benefit the higher players, is once a card is maxed out if that card stops being generated in packs, or at least its frequency is greatly reduced. As the card pool grows its going to penalise people with more complete collections as the game goes forwards. Not a massive issue as there are not many players with lots of maxed cards currently, but something that a season pass could potential help with? It’s the paying players who will have their collections at this point so having it as a paid feature shouldn’t be an issue?
By all means do keep the larger paid packs available too, I’m not saying do away with them. If people want to spend extra then that’s great, but by the frequency of the paid packs currently trending you are in danger of cutting people out.
Sorry for the length of the post but its something I have thought about a fair bit and will massively affect the future of the game.
MadEmp
Welcome aboard and thanks for the well thought out feedback!
I can’t really discuss areas like shorter pack opening times or not letting packs give maxed out duplicates because those are part of our economy and we have analysts and designers who focus on that (I’m more involved in gameplay design).
However, you may be correct that we need to add ‘something’ to the game in order to offer more varied prizes in the seasons. That’s something we’re discussing right now and I’ll post about our decision in a future blog. Sorry I can’t offer more insight right now but watch this space!
I think a faction wars mode would be a good addition to the seasons if profiles come along.
Players would pick a faction to align with for that entire season and would receive faction based rewards during and at the end of a season.
Each faction would have a reputation, reputation is gained by the player for defeating enemy faction decks and achieving certain requirements. Reaching certain milestones unlock rewards; cards, unique cards, titles e.g. (Warboss,) profile cosmetics etc
At the end of the season a faction winner is concluded by some clever math and a top tier reward is handed out to the winning faction players.
I think this will allow players to focus on one deck at a time, and setup some great clan wars since I guess clans would all align with the same faction to win the overall prize. It may in a small way help with the roleplay and immersion of the game (I know it is a mobile game) but I do love me Orks more than the stupid Tal tin boy’z.
Interesting. I do like the idea of seasons that focus on one or more factions but am not sure we’ll go as far as ‘faction wars’ because that’s an idea we’ve discussed as either an expansion of clans (i.e. part of clan v clan) or part of Ranked mode in the future. Not saying it’ll definitely happen, just that I’m going to avoid it for the seasons for now.
Faction wars is a cool idea, but if you’ve experienced other games with that mechanic you might also know why it ultimately is a bad thing.
People love rewards, might say that their actions is often dictated by the rewards at the end. If a faction war was put into the game, people would acclaim, observe or wait until they see which faction is best or currently winning and they’d just join that faction.
Almost everyone would win, would get their ‘wrong’ faction rewards and would be dissatisfied that they had to join a ‘boring’, ‘cancerous’ and ultimately ‘overpowered’ faction just to get rewards.
People don’t play to support their favorite colours or pictures of plastic models, people play to get rewards so they can play more effectively.
At least they do so from my observations.
Maybe the season pass could be something like you need less skulls to get kill packs etc. Or specific warlord challenges that everyone can try but the season pass gives a bonus.
Also people who want shorter games, maybe there could be specific card challenges, like get calgar to the end with two other cards. Assassination mission with a vindicare. Poison 20 cards with typhus etc
Interesting idea, thanks. I’m definitely considering offering players ‘challenges’ as part of the seasons but the idea of making them Warlord specific could be fun. I’ll bear it in mind and thanks again!
Will there be balancing for premium units?
Currently, some cards that you sell for real money are exponentially greater than their standard counterparts. Such as the new TAU Tank you added is as good as an 80 point mech except it costs 56 points.
Not saying to change stats, but perhaps balance point costs to reflect the effectiveness of a unit.
That’s a good point but it’s not specific to cards that we sell – we changed how we calculated card points recently and it lead to some being more powerful than they should have been. The error has been corrected and we’ll look into fixing the overpowered cards, but hopefully it won’t happen again.
I take your word that you don’t want extract money with season pass. So I assume it wil be available by plasma purchase.
But season pass shuns be top 5 priority.
-People asking for disable time wasting animations and no answer.
-Players complain every day minimum 1 new topic how retarded is matchmaking but devs sit silent.
-unbalanced new cards. You made that in long run only heavy hitters count which deal 50 or more dmg in 2nd lvl vs commons on lvl 10 can’t survive that kinda attack
-bug bug and bugs
-constantly decreasing players database
– to much cards which 90% is useless
And many more and you focus on battle pass ofc it is obvious money grab
I’d Like the season pass beign more focused on challenges than a simple pay to have/win.
Many of the ideas written above would work, but please don’t make ita a simple “exclusive content” by paying, please please please!
Thank you for your great work!
Agreed, I’d like to avoid that, too.