Card Drops

[Birdchest]

Why does it take so long for cards to drop in games now? A few years ago they would all drop after the 2 hour mark, but I'm about 4 hours into DmC 4 and I've only gotten one card? What's up with that?

[cinedine]

Once you have gotten a refund, all games will start dropping cards only after the 2h mark (which invalids refunds on them). Then developers set the time. It's rumoured to be between 20 and 60 min per card. Lastly Steam likes to bug out. I noticed that when you happen to lose connection to the community, the drop timer stops and playtime resets.

[Start_Running]

Originally posted by cinedine:

Once you have gotten a refund, all games will start dropping cards only after the 2h mark (which invalids refunds on them). Then developers set the time. It's rumoured to be between 20 and 60 min per card. Lastly Steam likes to bug out. I noticed that when you happen to lose connection to the community, the drop timer stops and playtime resets.

Actually cine, it does that regardless of whether you've ever had a refund. I know my drops started at 2 hours before I used my first refund.

[tmwfte]

Originally posted by Start_Running:

Actually cine, it does that regardless of whether you've ever had a refund. I know my drops started at 2 hours before I used my first refund.

When they first started the 2 hour wait period at the start of refunds on Steam, yeah, it applied to everyone. Now it doesn't. I've never had a refund since the new refund policy went into effect and I get my drops on most games within the first half hour.

[Del_Duio]

When I set my game up I did the drops for 15 mins, but you have to play for 2 hours first. I've noticed that it's not every 15 minutes though, so I don't know the exact formula they use from there.

[FFL2and3rocks]

Originally posted by ;364042063118167407:

Originally posted by cinedine:

Once you have gotten a refund, all games will start dropping cards only after the 2h mark (which invalids refunds on them). Then developers set the time. It's rumoured to be between 20 and 60 min per card. Lastly Steam likes to bug out. I noticed that when you happen to lose connection to the community, the drop timer stops and playtime resets.

Actually cine, it does that regardless of whether you've ever had a refund. I know my drops started at 2 hours before I used my first refund.

I've never requested a refund and I get my card drops right away, before 2 hours. The 2-hour rule applied to everyone for a while, but they silently changed it at some point.

[Purple Tentacle]

depends on the game, a few give you drops before the 2 hour mark but the vast majority still have to be played for a minimum of 2 hours to get anything

[Quint the Alligator Snapper]

Originally posted by Del_Duio:

When I set my game up I did the drops for 15 mins, but you have to play for 2 hours first. I've noticed that it's not every 15 minutes though, so I don't know the exact formula they use from there.

Wait, so how much control do you have over the card drop times -- do you get to set every drop time (even if Steam then adds randomness to it, as it seems you're describing), or just the first one? And what values can you set it at?

[Del_Duio]

Originally posted by Quint the Globular Springtail:

Originally posted by Del_Duio:

When I set my game up I did the drops for 15 mins, but you have to play for 2 hours first. I've noticed that it's not every 15 minutes though, so I don't know the exact formula they use from there.

Wait, so how much control do you have over the card drop times -- do you get to set every drop time (even if Steam then adds randomness to it, as it seems you're describing), or just the first one? And what values can you set it at?

It is recommended to take into account the overall length of your game. Mine isn't super long (that's what SHE said!) so I thought 15 mins would be good. IIRC, the options were 5, 10, 15, 30, 45(?), 1 hour, 2 hours.

So I think what's supposed to happen is after 2 hours of total playtime if you play a session for X amount of time afterwards (where X is the time set above) you should get a card drop. There's only so many you can get per game I guess, equal to half of the total set (ex. I have 10 so you can only have 5 max, and duplicates are possible).

[Dendrobates Tinctorius]

For what it's worth, my observation has been that drops only proc after at least thirty minutes in a session, with the first drop happening immediately after the first thirty minutes (lol no refunds), and subsequent drops happening after thirty minute intervals as long as the drop time has been exceeded. So a 90 minute session would get the first two cards for a 1hr drop time game, and then a second 60 minute session would get the third card.