Ideas for dealing with duplicate cards (trading system)

Mikeymike

First let me start off by saying I love this game. Huge MTG and Puzzle Quest fan, so this really hits my sweet spot. However, I do feel there is still plenty of room for improvement. In particular, one of the biggest issues I have is investing tons of time into the Quick Battle events only to end up winning rares or mythics I already have in my collection. There is zero game value possessing duplicates, and in turn very frustrating. So I had a few ideas on how this may be able to be solved.

IDEA 1: A Trading forum
Borrowing an idea from the game 'Blood Brothers', create a in-game Trading zone that allows people to offer up cards they own for either a) specific other cards or b) a certain amount of Mana Crystals.
- When a card is offered up it cannot be added to your deck
- People browse the bazaar seeing the requests, and if they want to fill them can do so where the cards immediately swap out into a trade wagon to be collected
- If a trade doesn't happen in 48 hours it is cancelled and the card added back into the trade wagon
- The Mana Crystal bit is tricky since it puts a valuation on the cards that is almost certain to be skewed out of the gates, but that's not any different than a real-world card game either.

The negative with a system like this is that it promotes people to create multiple accounts on multiple devices, where they can quickly fill up on boosters and mana crystals, but that can be countered by putting a limit on the amount of trades that can be exchanged between the same 2 parties (once a week? three times ever? Point is, it can be slowed significantly)

IDEA 2: Sell-back system for Duplicates
Users can go into their inventory and sell off all duplicates at flat rates in one swoop. A sample valuation could be something like
- Commons: 5 Runes
- Uncommons: 20 Runes
- Rares: 5 Mana Crystals
- Mythics: 20 Mana Crystals

This system is both pretty basic, and helps solve the late-game issue where it is almost impossible to get your hands on Mana Crystals, which is another element of the game that can use some attention. (you never want a game economy imbalance)

IDEA 3: Make the Reward system smarter and avoid duplicates
Alter the card selection algorithm to scan a player's inventory first. If they already have a rare or mythic, they can't get it again, so the die roll keeps happening until a card is found they don't own. If they actually own every card, give them a dupe.

Thanks for reading, up-vote if you like it!

Unknown

Idea 2 is what I think they will do.

1 and 3 will ruin the game for both, the players and devs.
If you give players such a simple way to complete getting all the cards out there, then there is nothing to play for and nothing to pay for.

Mikeymike

Nerimos wrote:

Idea 2 is what I think they will do.

1 and 3 will ruin the game for both, the players and devs.
If you give players such a simple way to complete getting all the cards out there, then there is nothing to play for and nothing to pay for.

For comparison, #1 is what Blood Brothers did and it helped them crack the million player mark (routinely getting 30k for each event). However, the key to making it work was continuously introducing new monsters so there was always something new to covet, plus you needed between 2-8 dupes of the same kind to really get the most out of it. Looking at that now with that in mind, I don't think in quite works in the MTGPQ game framework.

Still, I would be totally fine with #2. That feels balanced enough to me, but in order for it to really be worthwhile Mana Crystals do need to be part of the trade-in process.

The_Leftist

I was hoping for an upgrade system of sorts


For example

Level 1: Basic Card
Level 2: (requires 2 additional copies to upgrade) mana cost reduced by 1
Level 3: (requires 3 additional copies to upgrade from level 2) creature gets +1/+1, support buff increases by 1, spell does 1 extra damage or something
Level 4 : (requires 5 additional copies to upgrade from level 3) creature gains regeneration 3, etc/spell can target additional target/support life increased by 2
Level 5: (requires 7 additional copies to upgrade from level 4): Creature/spell cost reduced by 3, support gains 'recall' (or something more appropriate) which means the first time it is destroyed, it returns to play with 1 shield life

After level 5, all duplicates automatically sold for small amount of runes or something

Something like that could take awhile to implement as every card would have different upgrade effects per level, but would make it to where two people with the same 10 cards in a deck could have very different strategies in terms of creature cost/power, spell effects, support buffs, etc

Also, it would make Commons more viable in decks until people gathered more copies of uncommons and rares (I can't imagine how long it would take to get 11-18 copies of a mythic without spending $100's) as their effects might outweigh certain cards for a little bit

Also, it would encourage player spending as many players with complete libraries now have a reason to spend money for card packs

Unknown

There are lots of great ideas to this kind of system. A trading system is much better value than a selling system in my opinion. But...

What if there were a way to utilize all cards to make a card in your deck a tiny bit stronger. This would drive up sales of booster and card packs by the C.C. people, but...

In other card games I play, they use a merge '2 pyramid' after leveling the card up tactic. This requires 8 cards to be fully leveled together in pairs to make a single strong card.

INSTEAD of using that technique.

*Use a card into card merge. You must use the same card and each card gives you just a little more experience to push it up to the next level of strength. maybe use 2 cards to level to level 2... etc...

*Use runes to 'prepare' a card. (kinda like leveling. or like card experience or something.) Then you have to use a 2nd card to boost it to the next level. Merge the cards, at this point, it gets a little stronger. It's different from other games so it's not using the same leveling/enhancement engine and can be copyrighted maybe

Lieguld

Unknown

Helllllll no.

Magic is not balanced this way with a card upgrade system and this would be awful.

Also: new players would get pooped on constantly and players who have had the benefit of the rune card packs will be unstoppable.

Also, that would make uncommons WAY better than most rares and mythics.

TKC

I would strongly favor a trading system of some kind.

Unknown

pandabear wrote:

Helllllll no.

Magic is not balanced this way with a card upgrade system and this would be awful.

Also: new players would get pooped on constantly and players who have had the benefit of the rune card packs will be unstoppable.

Also, that would make uncommons WAY better than most rares and mythics.

lol. I couldn't begin to think of a way to get rid of lower tier cards then, other than a sell back or trading style of play

Lieguld