The reason for DoC's decline may possibly have begun in Q4 2013 | Forums

[Durendal100]

Economic.... jeeez it was simple back then. Instead of continue working on draft, they abandomed it so they could release more and more expansions which was guarantee money. Statistic said it loudly, people were leaving the game after tutorial. Why? because they joined swiss and got paired with ppl like me.... 300+lvl. Got zerged isnt fun i guess. So Every single card game need draft mode because its always best choice for new players. Now we have it (until u got crash while picking, which ends it forever), but dev team is like 3 people. It was like 3 people since 1 year, thats why they didnt release anything. Endless rage and hate on forum forced them to push draft mode out and now they cant deal with bugs. I had amazing fun for like 30 drafts before i got crashed. That single game mode is the best thing DOC ever had. Its 10000x more fun than r2p events. Now since i cant draft again, game remains dead for me. If you guys think that some wild cards prices or no seals during lvl up means anything for people..... we just wanna have fun. Loosing isnt fun. No friendly new player mode is what killed this game. They could at least make some ingame tourneys with seals or something... but no.... they have to keep on pushing new expansions while there was no competetive scene so we could use it properly....

[Zugman]

No friendly new player mode is what killed this game.

That's a really good point. I was able to play draft mode only a little bit until I got the infinite loading bug, but it was quite fun, and clearly offers a relatively more level playing field for old and new players alike. If the developers had come out with a functional draft mode sooner, instead of cranking out expansions so fast, perhaps it could have helped maintain interest from new players.

[cpcg101]

[QUOTE=Durendal100;11103030] No friendly new player mode is what killed this game. QUOTE]

I said this last year in an infamous post titled "Dump Standard" and everyone ****ged it off. They really should have done something about encouraging new players and that (as well as blowing all the money on world tours) is what went wrong with DOC.

[Nurdell]

I'd like to write a purely subjective point here. I've never been interested in ranked play, The gameplay was done well enough and I played a couple games every second day. The thing I silently protested against, by playing less and less, was boneyard and how it effectively just blocked an entire lane for the rest of the match (and later, the seemingly unstoppable barracks rush) Then there was another reason of latest expansion packs being more expensive than the rest. I sort of saw that as a power creep and basically stopped playing till the next expansion.
Certainly there were a lot of casual players who bounced from too good control cards. Idk, the introduction of the standard format could have helped, it did for me. But the time until bugs were fixed and card balancing in general, discouraged.

[ZeddBG]

The bottom line is, in their greed Ubi did a really good job in discouraging the new players. When I started playing this game there was an option at the store to buy a starter deck from every faction for ingame gold. Few months later it was gone, only seals...
Also, why the players can't trade cards? Even if it limits only to common and uncommon. Why I can't give to a friend, who joined the game because of me, some cards for better start?
The whole strategy here was wrong. Releasing new cards every 3 months is nice, but not that will keep the players to play every day. Add to that the stupid bugs, multiplying with every patch "fixing bugs" and we are here, now, having unplayable game, players running away, and "experianced team" who can't fix anything, otherwise we would have hotfix just hours after the last "great" patch was released...
Sad story, but at least now I know - a game from Ubi, not a cent from me...

[Zugman]

I'd like to write a purely subjective point here. I've never been interested in ranked play, The gameplay was done well enough and I played a couple games every second day. The thing I silently protested against, by playing less and less, was boneyard and how it effectively just blocked an entire lane for the rest of the match (and later, the seemingly unstoppable barracks rush) Then there was another reason of latest expansion packs being more expensive than the rest. I sort of saw that as a power creep and basically stopped playing till the next expansion.
Certainly there were a lot of casual players who bounced from too good control cards. Idk, the introduction of the standard format could have helped, it did for me. But the time until bugs were fixed and card balancing in general, discouraged.

I'm super sympathetic to the plight of casual players in the face of the competitive element, and the desire of the designers to cater to that element. As I see it, this balancing between casual and competitive players is yet another reason why it is so difficult for a for-profit CCG to stay in business. Very difficult to make a game that generates enough buzz and broad interest with a fun, inviting game while still making a sufficient profit.


ZeddBG, your idea for trading is interesting. I think that would have been a nice addition for players, although I also think it would have decreased the willingness of players to make purchases with seals, thereby making the game less financially sustainable. I really think the seals vs. gold issue (for starter decks, for example) is very important for understanding why this game has been going down the tubes. The reality is that Ubisoft can't keep spending money on developing and maintaining a game unless they receive a greater amount of revenue from player seal purchases. When Ubisoft, for instance, makes a change such as removing the option to buy with gold, I don't see that as "greed" so much as an attempt to increase revenue (possibly to prop up lagging profits) while recognizing that changing something from "free" (gold) to "not free" (seals) will ALWAYS be unpopular, even in cases where it is the prudent and responsible thing to do. I agree that the bugs definitely make the game less inviting (I can't even log in and play anymore!), and that affects the game's profitability by driving people away. But to me, it seems like Ubisoft has stumbled since the beginning (based on what I've heard) over how best to monetize the game - give too few freebies, and people won't want to keep playing, but give too many and Ubisoft don't make enough money to justify keeping the game going.

[ZeddBG]

Zugman, what you are saying is correct, but just think about it - a new player comes to a FREE 2 PLAY game and he must spend 1000 seals! just to get a starter deck of one faction. Thats 15 euros per faction. And we all know thats way not enough if you want to progress, but at least you have the feeling that the game wants you to play and progress. When they changed it from 20000 in-game gold to 1000 seals the game was not quite free to play anymore. It would be kind of acceptable if it was 100 or 200 seals, but 1000... its like the game itself is against you.
The marketing here really sucks. They must make the new players to really love the game and then offer them to buy more. What they made - "Buy this and this, and this. You will like it, eventually"

For example, last few days I've played Infinity Wars. Just by going through the campaign and leveling to level 5 I have received enough free cards to make a deck with every faction! Every faction! In DoC, from doing campaign you also get packs, but you cant make a deck unless you have a hero, and we all know what is the chance to get one this way. I may be wrong here if they have changed the rewards of the campaign missions, but I seriously doubt it...

[cpcg101]

For example, last few days I've played Infinity Wars. Just by going through the campaign and leveling to level 5 I have received enough free cards to make a deck with every faction! Every faction! In DoC, from doing campaign you also get packs, but you cant make a deck unless you have a hero, and we all know what is the chance to get one this way. I may be wrong here if they have changed the rewards of the campaign missions, but I seriously doubt it...

Yeah, me too. It's a good game, just wish I didn't keep on getting the snot kicked out of me lol. Made it to level 10, ranked games brings a new level of snot kicking. Just gotta lose and learn a lot, like DOC in the good old days. Can't really see how I'm going to pick up many cards for free, although the log-in bonus system is miles better than DOC.

As an ex-DOC player I'd recommend Infinity Wars to anyone who likes DOC.

[Kasper-Hauser]

you can unlock all starter packs for free or you can get them directly by entering a ref-code.

i feel like, doc was always generous with rewards, seals, gold and stuff. thats why they cut it down with bs2 update. and this was right imo, to make it profitable and continue developing. but it went all wrong. before bs2 it had balancing problems (kelthor/ishuma meta). with bs2 it was just more beginner unfriendly. and with the following expansions it was just unbalanced again (winferno).

Problem was, the priority became economiclly and they started to build game-machanics around that. Wich has to be obviously, the other way around.

Imagine bs2 "expansion" cut down to their original expansions and a simple flag/marker for cards in standard mode. Much more user friendly but most important, its so much easier to balance the meta just by adding/removing that flag. But for economic reasons, it had to be an expansion.

[Vengyre]

Pre BS2 balance was pretty good, imo before they changed the legendary interaction (which killed cool and complicated recursion decks like Asalah Pao recursion and Jkkk's Dhamiria) the game was the heathiest, all sort of decks worked: hard rush: Crag, Ishuma, typical aggro: Kelthor, Cassandra, midrange: Adar-Malik, and all kind of control decks from classic spell control to mill, recursion, lock and OTK. For instance, I enjoyed playing 1-1-5 combo Belias, really unusual, but working deck.

Kelthor was strong, but many decks countered him. I've made my own tweaks to classic Cassandra to have a positive winrate vs him, for instance.