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Online CCGs with unlimited free drafting?

Damned Registrations

Furry Weeaboo Nazi Nihilist
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Do any of these exist? I find it by far the most interesting way to play, but it always seems to be locked behind some kind of currency wall, forcing you to grind repetitive matches out to get back into a pvp draft.
 

UglyBastard

Arcane
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Jun 29, 2014
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4.4 is decent value, nice.

I just started playing this week and hit a bad streak of Drafts as well after getting a pretty good start with 3x 7 wins. I have another really bad deck in the pipe and dread playing it. I'm also pretty torn on drafting high rarity cards vs cards that fit in my deck because my collection is still small.

It's definitely not self-sustainable if you are new to the game. :/
 

FeelTheRads

Arcane
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13,716
Don't you get your money back only at 7 wins which essentially makes it impossible to go infinite?
 

Grunker

RPG Codex Ghost
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Don't you get your money back only at 7 wins which essentially makes it impossible to go infinite?

Including dust no, excluding does yes, but 6-1 gets you close enough that you can play two or three matches of ranked and you're good. Including dust, you need 4 wins for good value.

In any case, you're right about your main point. I doubt there's anyone going full infinite in Eternal in the sense of being able to draft for free forever without playing any matches of other game modes.
 

Grunker

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The game has the best dust values I've ever seen in a TCG though. If you play somewhat steadily you get so much and so many decks so quickly I'm actually a bit concerned about their ability to sustain the business model. I've never bought a single pack and I like the game enough that I would if I needed to. I hope they sell a lot of cosmetics.

4.4 is decent value, nice.

I just started playing this week and hit a bad streak of Drafts as well after getting a pretty good start with 3x 7 wins. I have another really bad deck in the pipe and dread playing it. I'm also pretty torn on drafting high rarity cards vs cards that fit in my deck because my collection is still small.

It's definitely not self-sustainable if you are new to the game. :/

1. Always draft legendaries no matter what, unless you literally have a full set of all sets and enough to get a lot of the next one (which I doubt anyone has).

2. If you like drafting, I wouldn't pick bad rares. But if you want to build up a collection really quick and you're not too confident in your drafting ability, it's definetely a good strategy to draft all rares regardless of whether they fit into your deck. I used that strategy in the beginning and got 3 top tier decks within two weeks.
 

Damned Registrations

Furry Weeaboo Nazi Nihilist
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Even if you could get 7+ wins every draft at that point it'd be pretty dull- the point is to have challenging, varied matches on demand. If I just wanted to draft cards and stomp I could do that vs AI.

I don't really get why the mode is so restricted to begin with. Obviously the rewards need to be limited or everyone gets all the cards instantly, but the mode itself doesn't need to be attached to the rewards.
 

FeelTheRads

Arcane
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Apr 18, 2008
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Yeah, I never understood why HS, or this or ESL doesn't have a free draft mode, where you don't get any rewards or perhaps just the same rewards as in ranked.

I just assume it's because they don't want to split the player-base... something that Eternal and ESL I guess still could have troubles with. And HS... well, Blizzard are just greedy fucks.
 

Grunker

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You don't understand why you can't get stuff for free..? Why would they spend money on making a game and then give everything away for free?
 

Damned Registrations

Furry Weeaboo Nazi Nihilist
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You mean like the ranked matches, the casual matches, the tutorials, the AI matches, and the daily quests? Yeah, clearly they can't give things away for free. :roll:
 

Grunker

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Drafts are more popular i.e. a better target to gate behind value-progression. That's why they're the lynchpin of the business-model of nearly all TCGs that have them.
 

Grunker

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(Also, Ranked isn't actually free - you have to build up a collection to get decks to compete. That's where they make money from that mode - people buying packs - hence my worry about Eternal's business model since it's so easy to get those decks. The same isn't true for draft since you don't need anything to play that mode. Which is why you have to pay Gold or Gems for them.)
 
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Damned Registrations

Furry Weeaboo Nazi Nihilist
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It does make sense, but everyone simply aping Hearthstone's business model makes sense as well. Would certainly be interesting seeing hard numbers on what makes these games all float- besides the relatively low production costs and trivially small server load.

My own suspicion would be that the real profits lie in milking collection addicts- the kind of people willing to shell out a few grand to get a full set of shiny flavour of the month cards or make sure they have a full play set of every last card.
 

Zeriel

Arcane
Joined
Jun 17, 2012
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13,379
Fair warning, haven't read thread, just going off title.

Shadowverse has this among friends. You can play rewards-less draft with friends any number of times for free, and you can even play reverse draft where you draft a deck, then each player plays the other guy's deck.
 

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