Quest idea: Contract from Below

[Agetian]

Hey guys,
A friend of mine had an idea today (for quests) that I liked and would be willing to implement if there is enough interest. I'll quote from my friend here:

"It would be a loan system for tournament entry. It would add a bit more roleplay to Quest mode, and be useful too, I think. It could be named "Contract From Below" or some other appropriate reference (I was hoping there was a Goblin Banker or similar but couldn't seem to find such a card). Essentially this would appear as another button on the Tournament screen when you have a tournament selected. Clicking on it, you would be offered to have a portion of the entry fee paid for you, for a drawback.

A drawback that makes sense, would be for the portion you were "loaned" would then be added to the cost of the next tournament you wanted to enter (potentially + a percentage). As for how much the portion is, I think it would be nice if it were simply the difference between the entry fee and your current credit amount (that way you're always guaranteed to be able to enter at least one tournament). But there are various ideas that could work (for example, maybe it's just half the entry fee, for a simple solution). Or maybe there's a cap of how many credits would be offered. Lots of stuff could work.

So basically, the reason tournaments are expensive is because they supposedly contain valuable cards. So you're gambling that you can indeed get enough valuable cards from that tournament, that you'd be able to sell them and pay off your loan in order to be able to enter future tournaments. Probably you wouldn't be able to take out more than one loan at a time (or even potentially one loan per quest, period). Again, many ideas could work."

Let me know what you think, guys.

- Agetian

[friarsol]

"Icatian Moneychanger"

It could work although you could basically "rig" the system, by getting a loan for an expensive tournament, and just play normal quest mode completely ignoring tournaments after that. If you're "good enough", it would be a free gambling roll on the loan sharks dime, but that's kinda the same as real gambling?

I think a capped loan based on your player level is probably the best way to go (who would loan a complete nobody so much gold?)

[Agetian]

Thanks for the input, Sol!
I think that it'd be more difficult to rig the system if the said loan is limited to be only used for one purpose (to pay a portion of the quest draft tournament price). Like, you don't physically get the gold, but instead you just get a certain "discount" on the next tournament. That way it's impossible to get the loan and just forget about the draft tournaments forever, and for really expensive tournaments (Alpha and friends) it still covers only a part, so the tournament is still very expensive and a level 0 player won't be able to afford it even with the discount.

It might make sense to introduce a certain, potentially configurable, starting level cap on this feature too.

- Agetian

[friarsol]

Yea I mean, you get the loan. Do a tournament, earn actual Forge quest cards (that are themselves sellable).

Do all cards sold pay down your debt before they go in your pocket? Or are tournaments the only thing locked out while you are paying back your debt?

[Agetian]

Hmm that's actually a good question: I think that if cards sold went towards paying your debt, then it would have made it more difficult to benefit from this "for free"

- Agetian

[nefigah]

Hi there, Guy With the Idea here Agetian told me about this thread.

I think a cap is perfectly reasonable. The goal is to allow the player to get started on their tournaments, even if they got unlucky with low-valued cards from their starting pool/first duels. The tournament is the most reliable way to shape your deck the way you want it, given the card prize for 1st/2nd place.

Perhaps at level 0 the cap is such that you can get a loan on newer/inexpensive set tournaments (1k-2k credits), and increases from there.

I hadn't considered the game tracking your debt outside of the tournament system (as it seemed easiest to implement debt as an increase to the price of the next tournament), but that's fine too.

[roarwallow]

Why not! Its worth the try. I love card games actually its my favorite activity during weekends.