Thanks - I really appreciate this type of feedback and these ideas! The short answer, for pretty much everything, is that we we want to make sure that the community of players is happy with how everything works. So if we go in one direction and it has issues or the majority of players don't like it, we will change it. Making this a really fun game for everyone is our top priority.
More specifically, we are DEFINITELY going to have leaderboards/ladders/whatever you want to call them. We will also probably modify the Elo system a bit to make sure it's fun and that players can feel like they are constantly progressing.
As for the "pay to win" aspect, there is definitely part of that in the game - a player who buys a lot of cards will have cards at higher levels and will typically beat a player who didn't buy many cards even if they are less skilled. But we plan to make all different types of game / tournament / ladder formats to appeal to all different types of players. For example, there may be tournaments that limit the levels of all cards, so that there's not an advantage to players who bought a ton. In general we are going to try to have something for all levels of players and all levels of spenders.
This is so great to hear!
Balancing a game (in this case, from cards to gameplay) is no easy feat, and I'm really happy to hear that you and your team have given it much thought (as I can tell from your response).
Awesome - this is going to keep players around fora long, long time.
Time to add that witness vote :D
Cheers,
Great to know. After coming across so many posts by people saying they were buying dozens of cards and maxing their entire deck's levels, I was getting worried the game might become purely "pay to win." Well, one of the initial posts months ago (I think it was the alpha release post) said it wouldn't be so much, but we had had practically no updates about the battling part after that, so... good to confirm that there'll be space for everyone!
Last but not least, I really hope the UI for setting up the battles will be accessible to screen readers :D .