Okay, let’s forget the entire system of the actual card game.
I’m more talking about the systems of rewards.
Please note that most of the ideas here come from another TCG I played back when it wasn’t ruined. It’s not a worldwide thing, it is only available in 2 countries. If you switch to the English version of the site, it doesn’t let you log in to your account nor access the shops.
The game always promises that “not a single card is the same as another one!”
First of all - Rarities
I feel that we shouldn’t have the same rarity system (common, uncommon, rare, ultra rare, …) as in the rest of the game.
The game that I have mentioned has 3 systems of determining the rarity of the card:
- Stars, from 1 star to 4 star. Stars are assigned to classes of weapons/heroes (in PW for characters/action cards) instead of the cards themselves.
- “Power Number”, in the corner of the card, the “average” power is stated. Power of your card is counted by adding up all the attribute numbers the card has, and then comparing it to the average number. “Minus” cards are worse than “Plus” cards.
- Foil or not, some cards are foil. Only very rare or celebration cards are foil.
You should learn from this that you cannot categorize every card into 5 rarities. Each card has it’s advantages and disadvantages which can up/down the rarity of the card.
Second - Point shops
So back when the game was still “in”, they had a system of “bonus shops”. Buying cards and winning tournaments got you points, which you could then redeem for extra boosters, starters, or card protectors, full card albums, etc… without paying a dime. It was a cool system that rewarded you for your loyalty. You could even GET A CARD with your OWN name or your OWN design if you had about 40k points and the highest account rank. You could also purchase higher ranks with points before they replaced it with the system of “participate in tournaments to earn higher ranks”.
31th december 2020, they permanently shut the bonus shops down, leaving your unused bonus points useless. I had 360 leftover points, probably good for 1 card or a pack of card protectors. Guess what they reward via tournaments now? Useless premium currency for renting digital cards in their app.
So what can PW get from this?
- Reward people. Give them points (I call it pixelium for now) each time they buy cards or participate in tournaments.
- Make a shop for points with good prizes, such as extra boosters or even cards with custom names.
- Make playing the card game worthwhile.
Third - The Tournaments
The game hosted (and is still hosting) tournaments. I’ve never been to one, so idk how they work, but I’d guess you pay an entry fee, and battle people. Depending on how you did, you got rewards. The rewards were tickets that you scratched to reveal redeem codes, to redeem bonus points or up your account rank by 1.
The point tickets had a cool design, they looked like banknotes but were instead issued by a bank in the capital city of a magical world.
There were 5 types of tickets:
- 100 bonus point ticket
- 200 BP ticket
- 500 BP ticket
- 1000 BP ticket
- Account rank UP by one (before the system redesign)
What can PW learn from this?
- Make some card tournaments.
- Reward them with pixelium cards that you can trade to other people, unlike pixelium itself.
- Up your “skill rank” when you participate or win in tournaments, unlocking more bonuses in pixelium shops and earning perks such as no entry fees at highest ranks.
Last, but not least…
Each weapon card had 3 “tokens” that came with it. You could scratch each token and find out what type of token it was.
Again, the token system went through a redesign, so all my previous key and chest tokens are now useless.
You “used them” by sending a letter by snail mail to their HQ, which included the required tokens and a piece of paper with your username.
Old token types
- QR code: Could be scanned by any other account than what redeemed the associated weapon in the app. Granted some silver/gold coins in the app. Common.
- Sword: 20 of these + 1 key token = Enough shop points to redeem for 1 random weapon card. Uncommon.
- Helmet: 20 of these + 1 key token = Enough shop points to redeem for 1 random hero card. Uncommon.
- Starter: 20 of these + 1 key token = Enough shop points to redeem for a starter box. Rare.
- Magic tome: 20 of these + 1 key token = Enough shop points to redeem a album for your cards. Ultra rare.
- Chest: 20 of these + 1 key token = The current JACKPOT prize. Legendary.
- Key: Used as a “combiner” for any other tokens. Legendary.
New token types
- QR code
- Shop QR code, when scanned, it revealed a redeem code for 100 shop points. Kinda rare.
What can PW learn from this:
Why not include extra stuff in boosters than just the cards? Why not add in some pixelium for the shop, or rarely jackpot pieces?
I think that in PW’s case, a booster should include a certain number of “Bonus Boxes” which include pixelium/pieces of jackpots/rare cards/whatever.
Whew, what a long time it took me to write this all. But I loved their shop system that was “moneyless”, even shipping was free. And the tokens were really nice bonuses to the actual cards. I just want something like that because they just started moving the whole game to the app, I think that soon they will stop selling physical cards and move to entirely digital tournaments and cards.