Hello all,
It's been about 4 years since the last reset to the "My Cards" collection. That's also right around when I started playing, so many of you know far more about that than I do. A lot of things ensued, but for the past several years the personal collections have been neglected entirely. At this point, because nobody is able to use My Cards, it seems to reason that everyone would gain from a reset (though it could be argued that some would lose more than others). Trouble is - to what end? Either peoples collections will fill up to the point where it's the same as casual play or unwanted resets take away any progress.
Having lived in the first reality, this is not the way My Cards should be. There need to be resets, but I know many people were very frustrated with the second reality too. Is there a way to make resets wanted, or at least accepted? Well, an idea has struck me and I'm looking for some criticism.
Several games have a "seasonal ranked" structure. Players start the season on equal footing and compete until the end of the season. At that point, all players' ranks are evaluated and reset back to the baseline and players receive some sort of prize for how well they do (and potentially one for participation). The prizes are usually purely aesthetic, a symbol of prestige rather than an edge on the competition. There are a few main benefits that I see to this style.
• Everything is routine: players know the reset is coming from the start of the season, and there's a normalized schedule to how it all works.
• Late-comers are not greatly penalized: a highly skilled player coming in half-way through the season may not be able to rack up the same number of wins as an average player who was in from the start, but the skilled player can simply wait for the next reset for redemption (and knows how long the wait will be).
• There's a reason to play outside of the season itself: you lose all of your stats, but gain something that persists.
Now, I don't think there's any reason to introduce another way to play LotR ranked. The leagues are already a fine way (in my opinion) to pit one player against another a variety of different ways. However, this style could have an interesting application to My Cards collections. Instead of a ranking, it's your collection of cards. The season should last long enough that people can collect what they'd like to have, but not so long that collecting becomes arbitrary - I'd propose a year for length (or perhaps 11 months, with a break from mid-December to mid-January). It won't be as easy for someone starting in July to just wait for the next reset, but it shouldn't be impossible to win games and have some fun with My Cards until then, either.
As for the third reason, I'm looking for suggestions. We have permanent Tengwar collections, which is really cool but not altogether worth a year-long play stretch (plus I don't propose a Tengwar reset, so it's a less valuable prize). Next are the spectacular Promo versions of some characters - currently nigh impossible to get and worth coveting. I think the current (defunct) way to obtain these cards has to do with My Cards already, so this could be an easy change. I'd really love for these to be seen more often without being commonplace, so perhaps this could work. Maybe someone from days gone by can come by and explain how it worked previously.
So, thoughts? A vain crusade, or a feasible endeavor?
Topic: Reviving My Cards (Read 2747 times)
