Let's talk a bit about why we introduced Single Player Pandora, and announce a couple slight changes to the Monthly Cup.

Why Single Player?

After we introduced Pandora Single Player earlier this month, we received a bit of feedback along the lines of... "Where did this come from? That's a bit out of left field." You're not wrong. Single player Pandora wasn't a commonly requested feature in our various social feeds, of which we are constantly listening and filtering carefully into our development eardrums. There is another very important line of silent feedback, however, of which we are also monitoring: The behavior pattern of our players. It would be irresponsible of us not to monitor the plethora of data fed to us by those who log on and play Faeria every day. A lot of what that data shows us is that a large portion of our playerbase is extremely interested in single player content, but become relatively starved for it after a certain amount of play time. Like most problems we recognize - we work toward a solution. This is why Pandora single player mode was introduced. In this case, we were able to leverage our existing features in a creative way that produces more single player content for our players to enjoy. Since its introduction, we've been monitoring the activity of Single Player Pandora and are happy to see it is indeed popular with the player audience we were targeting. Everyone wins! I want to stress that just because we sometimes reinforce the single player aspects of our game it does not mean we are abandoning multiplayer development. On the contrary, we are constantly working toward improving all angles of Faeria, and have no plans to stop.

Monthly Cup changes

Shifting gears entirely, we have two slight changes coming to the Monthly Cup and integrated tournament system that we're announcing today.

Timebank reduction

Firstly, we'll be reducing the Timebank total by 1 minute per potential round. When we introduced the Timebank system early last year, we started off with what we knew would be a very generous total. After having witnessed many tournaments under this system, we are confident we can slightly lower the total time available without affecting the majority of games played. To be clear, the Timebank changes are as follows: Old Timebank values:

• Best of 3: 30 Minutes
• Best of 5: 50 Minutes

New Timebank values:

• Best of 3: 27 Minutes
• Best of 5: 45 Minutes

The idea, as always, is to keep tournaments moving as quickly as reasonably possible yet still allow plenty of time for players to make the difficult decisions in-game that are so closely tied with high level Faeria play.

Fourth place prize, bounty adjustment

For a long time we've been hearing requests from our competitive players to provide some sort of prize for 4th place. We agree that finishing that high deserves some sort of reward, as reaching the top four in any Monthly Cup is an impressive accomplishment. With that in mind, we will be taking the suggestion of lowering Krog's Bounty award from $150 to $100, then redistributing it to the 4th place finisher - who will now receive $100. In other words, prizes will be redistributed as follows:

• Bounties: $100 each (down from $150)
• 4th place prize: $100 (up from $0)

The total amount of prizes available remains at $3300. This will go into effect for all future Monthly Cups. Thanks for all your feedback!

Monthly Cup X Qualifiers

Speaking of the Monthly Cup: The first qualifiers for Monthly Cup X begin tomorrow, April 22nd!

• Sign up for the Monthly Cup Qualifier here.

Remember, even if there is a waiting list, only those players who are checked in will compete. If you sign up and show up, you'll likely still have a spot.

Deals of the Week

You'll find these new items in the in-game store, starting today:

Decks of the Week

• BR Mobility Burn - by luuu90
• Neutral Warlord Rush - by Aqua "King Beef" Blad
• 21 Hour to God Rank - by JustFun
• BG Events - by luuu90
• Shara pew pew - by patron
• Green/Yellow Flying Deck - by Sbrubbles

Helpful Guides

• The Art of Behaving Beautifully - by CrashDiet
• Beginner's Guide "What to Craft?" - by DefaultThis
• Faeria Academy: How to get started - by Aquablad
• Faeria Academy: Card Interaction FAQ - by Aquablad

Okie dokie, that's all. Take it easy!

[ 2017-04-21 17:28:25 CET ] [ Original post ]