My opinion on Gold Kards

[BladeofSharpness]

The way Gold cards are implemented is an extremely aggressive commercial strategy to force people to collect the entire set not once, but twice.

Of course, one could say that Kards is generous on a daily basis with the modest common cards or with the missions (which yield roughly the value of an officer pack per week), but all of this is just the bushes hiding the forest—the commercial scheme of the Gold card.

What should be a 'prestige' cosmetic plus is actually a constraint, a burden that everyone endures.

[Roland the Thompson Gunner]

I mean... only thing FORCING you to collect gold cards is OCD.

[BladeofSharpness]

I think you are missing the point where having gold cards that are stored separately from normal cards means that you are forced to store twice as many cards before the extras are automatically added as bonuses to the weekly chest.

[sushi_komplett]

Like you say, the one, alas quite severe issue with gold cards is that they exist outside of duplicate protection for normal cards and are basically a second collection of cards on their own. And yes, that could be so because of evil intention, it's hard to say. A while ago I got a Co-Belligerents in an Officer Pack. Problem was, I already had the card in gold, from a monthly Ladder reward, I believe. So it meant a significant loss in value for the the Officer Pack. Also, the second copy of the card (an elite) didn't add to my crate progress. If I had paid real money for the pack, I would have been angry I believe.

I don't mind so much when it happens with regular or limited cards, but even then it's frustrating when your collection is small. Missing on Specials or Elites because of it, is very annoying to say the least.

[Roland the Thompson Gunner]

Originally posted by BladeofSharpness:

I think you are missing the point where having gold cards that are stored separately from normal cards means that you are forced to store twice as many cards before the extras are automatically added as bonuses to the weekly chest.

Well, that is another issue entirely.

[puschit]

But that's why there are no gold cards in regular packs ... which turns this into a non-issue, at least for those without OCD as Roland put it. Or FOMA.
The way this game handles premium cards is far from optimal and not really user friendly but certainly not "aggressive commercial strategy" and de facto doesn't force anybody into anything. It's the elite card you get at the end of the month as a FM where it is annoying that it is golden. However, it's a freebe you got on top, so no right to complain. And looking at my collection I see a 100% Elite cards for every expansion despite getting golden doubles. And that's without paying real money and still 26 elite wild cards collecting dust.

[BladeofSharpness]

Puschit, read what Sushi says. Ultimately, it does not matter much if you can only get gold cards through rewards, although I did not know that for sure, so I stand corrected here and admit I am partially wrong.

His logic is valid. You get a gold card from a reward, but you can still get it as a regular draw from a pack you might have bought. However, for all practical purposes, only one of the two can ever be used, meaning that some of your investment is lost upon opening the regular pack.

[puschit]

And I said right away that the gold mechanics are not user friendly. But, since all the problems only ever arise when you get rewards, not when you buy, your main complaint

Originally posted by BladeofSharpness:

The way Gold cards are implemented is an extremely aggressive commercial strategy to force people to collect the entire set not once, but twice.

Just isn't valid. You buy regular cards. You get things for free on top, among those are premoum cards that might or might not be redundant to you depending on if you like gold or not, but it puts zero commercial pressure on you. It does, however, give those that have completed their sets and additional goal to keep on collecting. And providing gold cards is a non-invasive way to do so because it's purely cosmetic. There are games out there that have cards that are real-money-only. Or the other WWII-CCG from FrozenShard where you combine copies of cards to craft the next tier of the same card which becomes MUCH stronger each time and where it takes forever to upgrade a single card to maximum tier if you don't pay money.

What you COULD say is that the rewards this game gives are actually less generous than they seem to be because of the gold card issue. And that's factually true. But it's also factually true that you are getting regular cards at a very fast pace and that the total amount of free stuff you get between expansions exceeds the amount of new content added by the next expansion. And as long as that's the case, players are not only able to become up to date, they can actually catch up, which means this is one of the very few true F2P CCGs out there. I wouldn't be here if this wasn't the case.
Also, "don't look a gift horse in the mouth" as we say in my country ...

And remember, I am with you that gold card mechanics are poorly implemented and have always been an issue. Back, at least, we could freely scrap them for a resource and craft new cards with it. Iirc the amount of scrap you got was enough to get a card of equal rarity if the card you scrapped was golden, so you actually got a wildcard for it's rarity or below. Since then a lot of things changed, some of them for good, some for bad. But the net balance of "stuff you get for free" vs "stuff you need to play" has never changed.

I just wish this company would stop shooting themselves in the foot by masking their overall great model with bad looking shenanigans like the gold card situation, stupid crate mechanics and so on.

[BladeofSharpness]

Right, logical arguments. I should not post when under working pressure. Time to read a book with genuine paper and take a walk ;-)

[Maj_Cyric]

Originally posted by BladeofSharpness:

Right, logical arguments. I should not post when under working pressure. Time to read a book with genuine paper and take a walk ;-)

And don't forget to stop and smell some flowers too..