Bring back pull events - or something similar?

[Witchcraft and Sorcery]

Hi folks,

WS here. I think most of the big card players know me, but if you don't, hi. I'm here because I see a bit of a problem on the horizon and would like to discuss a new/old solution.

Way back when (2019ish?), players figured out that due to a loophole of sorts in the Trading Cards Anti-Laundering System (TCALS), you could spawn many copies of rare and valuable cards by putting it up for a very high price at auction - usually 400x junk value or higher - and spamming bid increases of 0.01 on them. The effect of this was a massively increased pull rate of these cards, which both allowed aspiring collectors to more easily acquire these cards and gave new players interested in climbing the leaderboard a legitimate chance at climbing if they farmed regularly during these events.

It was also, to my knowledge, the only thing in the code of the game that allowed for the community to come together and work toward a goal. Especially after it was nerfed, it was essential that players came together and all farm together in order for anyone to have a shot at generating the card in packs. There have been other community events over the history of cards - but none of them actually encouraged working together the way that pull events did.

I write all of this because there is a budding problem on the horizon: we have already seen the nations behind S3 legendary and epic cards CTE, and there is no real way for players to get cards for them other than either hoping beyond hope they pull it eventually, or ponying up a likely massive amount of bank to challenge for it at auction. This causes a couple of related problems:

1) as it stands, there is no real way for new players who did not already have a huge amount of resources to climb the rankings. Even notwithstanding the comparative eons of time it is taking under the new MV system for most cards to even have an MV, it is going to be extremely difficult if not impossible for new players who started playing cards with S3 to have a reasonable shot at making a splash in the rankings. The general consensus among top players is that climbing the rankings, regardless of your play style, is harder now than it has ever been. As a player who benefited from pull events as my primary way of attaining my current rank in the top 20, I am quite confident that I would not have been able to attain this ranking the way I play the game without pull events.

2) Some cards are taking forever to spawn at all. This doesn't just hurt whales and "Big Farma," this hurts anyone who just wants to play the game and complete a collection. I am aware of at least two epic cards which have not yet spawned at all because they CTEd during the inscription period, and probably many more ultra-rares, rares, uncommons, and commons which have met the same fate.

TCALS in its post-nerf form (removing the ability to spawn pull-event cards from pre-saved packs) would already be healthier than it was before: the addition of a luxury tax on sales above 10 bank already ensures that pull events would have a real cost to them. It is no more simply the risk of getting heisted; now, the individual running the pull event would be required to pay a tax of anywhere from 40-100 bank simply to run the event. This is not saying that simply bringing back TCALS would be the best solution to the above problems, but it is worth considering that "TCALS with a tax" would provide some insurance that the system would not be used willy-nilly to spawn copies of a card for oneself, though one modification could be that the tax could be progressive based on how high the sale is above 10 bank or whatever.

The bottom line is this: I and many other active players are sorely missing the ability to come together and work together to spawn extremely rare cards. This was, in its purest form, what a pull event was. While TCALS was a flawed system, the ability for the community to come together and accomplish a goal was undeniably a good thing for the health and longevity of the game. And arguably, the world in which TCALS and MV inflation both existed was less flawed than the world in which neither TCALS nor inflation existed, simply because there were real ways to rank up past a certain point. (Credit to Riemstagrad for that thought - which I shamelessly quote and wholeheartedly endorse)

Regardless of how you played the game, virtually everyone who actively participated in pull events was able to gain something. I'm making this post and creating this thread so we can discuss what a solution might be. I'm not saying "bring back tcals grass is always greener on the other side," I'm saying that there needs to be some type of thing where players can actually work together to be able to pull rare cards, whether that's a modified version of TCALS or something else. I am not that technically literate, but those who are probably will have more ideas. My post here simply summarizes a lot of major talking points from the cards discord today, but I'm sure there are more out there.

[Varanius]

I fully agree with everything W&S has laid out here. I think it’s especially worth re-emphasizing that newer players will have an absolutely horrid time attempting to climb anywhere substantial on the leaderboard without TCALS. Most of the players on the leaderboard are TCALS era players for a reason: they had the ability to pull 300+ MV cards out of thin air. That is no longer an option for everyone starting the game now. So what do we end up with other than this skewed nonsense, where players who could manufacture obscene amounts of DV sit at the top, and everyone else has to what?

[Laudesia]

Simply amazed with the amount of effort you put into this post, it clearly shows in its quality. You organized some of the thoughts and concerns I hear in the card community beautifully.

[Triseria]

When TCALS was initially removed, I was bummed out but didn't really mind the easy and free transfers that I could pull off since there was really no risk anymore. However with taxes making transfers of hundreds of bank require mass transfers and the fact that we've already had multiple scares in the s3 leg collection and the epic one already having CTE problems (partially at the fault of a longer inscription period) and the fact that there are now two previous seasons to catch up on for new players to the cards game, I believe it's fully worth looking at re-implementing TCALS in some capacity, whether it's a post-nerf revival or something entirely new.

I always enjoyed PEs and although the material rewards helped motivate me, being able to have a chance to bond with the community was absolutely awesome. That said, I think there needs to be a change to how they work. My initial thought is that, instead of being triggered for every card, maybe it should only be triggered on auctions above 100 bank, which would effectively be a fee for starting one. Also maybe it could be ratelimited to maybe 1 pull a minute or something to ensure that there aren't a flood of them? Idk, just throwing a possible nerf out there.

Another solution (and maybe the better one) is to remove/reduce the decreased odds of pulling a card for a CTE nation. The current rates make CTE epics and legendaries nearly impossible to find unless you farm thousands of puppets daily for weeks or months on end, which might not spawn the card you're looking for even then.

At the end of the day though, I agree that something needs to be changed for the health of both this season as well as any possible future seasons, as there will eventually be a point where an entire set of cards will be entirely impossible to get without being Big Farma or getting god-like luck, which isn't something that we should be leaning towards.

[Conklandi]

I have a lot to thank Pull Events for helping me with NS Card Trading.

Agree with W&S fully.

[Haruhi Japan]

When did they remove TCALS? I started playing the game in early 2020 and I don't remember this being a thing.

[Witchcraft and Sorcery]

When did they remove TCALS? I started playing the game in early 2020 and I don't remember this being a thing.

I don't remember exactly when it was removed but a quick search of my own post history suggests it was around a year ago, November of 2021.

I was one of many who lamented its loss at the time and with the advent of S3 I think we will begin to quickly see the negative effects of its loss with the increased interest in cards once again. New players are going to have a hell of a time getting anywhere close to the top of the rankings. Thanks to all for the feedback thus far - if you have any ideas as to what could be done for the community to come together for something like this, please add them.

[New Makasta]

I have little remarks to add here, I agree fully with the sentiment expressed here and elsewhere, however much i would love for 2021 era TCOW's to return there is the invetable problems that arise. As much as I disagree with the sentiment Seanat and others has made some good points about the sastunbilty of such a system, one such example of this 500 MV cards having 5 10, even 15 asks of 300 on them from people running PE's to make a quick buck. I am hopeful the system does return in some form, heck I even like the idea of limiting finds the like 1 TCOWS a minute from the whole system as one of my collages has stated. I also agree that the tax will give some cost to the runner of the PE meaning they cant just run a bunch at some odd time and be the only ones to cash in on it, and if such a system was made it force higher levels of community interaction due to the limit.

As a person who was only briefly able to be around for PE's before my rise to my throne on 3rd and later first, I enjoyed them. I didn't like the spontaneity of some of the sure. But the mere fact that someone else, even if it was for selfish reasons (sorry WS!) like WS trying to complete the s1 leg's collection they worked so hard on, it still allowed small fry like me to get into the fray and really experience a cards community, something that feels to be lacking as of late due to entirely separate reasons.

TLDR for you peeps who don't want to see some nerd like myself ramble: I like the idea, there just need some sort of limiter in place to prevent over-expoltion

[Mikeswill]

Pull Events definitely contributed to creating a Community in the Card world that was most enjoyable.

[The Orwell Society]

Pull events were before my time; however, I fully agree with W&S and believe that the cards community lost something they held dear when TCALAS was removed. I see players in the cards discord talk all the time about the glory days of TCALAS, and very much wish that us newer players get a chance to experience the apparant joy that comes with TCALAS.

[Thorn1000]

I think it’s especially worth re-emphasizing that newer players will have an absolutely horrid time attempting to climb anywhere substantial on the leaderboard without TCALS

Hi, I am newer players trying to crawl, fight, and scratch my way to the top 100. It seems to me that everyone who has posted thus far has been some sort of older farmer who was around for TCALS, so I figured I'd throw in an opinion from a "newer" person who did not get to experience it. For context, I recently finished collecting all of the season 2 legendary cards, a project I started around the beginning of September and finished around the end of November taking me 87 days total to finish. I was lucky enough to have the ability to farm for around 80 days of Season 2 in order to obtain a lot of the cards that I needed and I was even fortunate enough to pull Uniserve. That being said, I had to beg people to get rid of the CTE legendaries that comprise 11 of the 12 most expensive legendaries for Season 2 (save only Testlandia). It was incredibly unfun/not engaging/downright painful to not be able to legitimately pull any of these cards due to the odds of pulling them being so much lower than any other card. In a roundabout way, the only reason I was able to finish my project at all was through the generosity of people like The Atlae Isles who did get to benefit from TCALS and subsequently had several copies on hand of the card I needed.

Now I am facing a situation similar to that all over again in trying to collect all the season 3 legendaries and I am not looking forward to it. The prospect of maybe 30 copies of these cards existing in total and needing to get my hands on one is something that is deeply disheartening. There needs to be some sort of checks and balances in order to fix this, and I think some sort of pull event type system coming back to be the best solution to this and coincidentally would fix other issues I see cropping up soon too: bringing the community together, having more copies of cards that are nigh impossible to get for no good real reason, and designating of the leaderboard. A system like TCALS would fix all of these big issues that I see with cards in the present and make it more accessible for newer farmers like me (well maybe not me anymore ) to get into cards by lowering the barrier to entry to this little game we enjoy.

_{Edit: Paragraph breaks are hard}

[The Atlae Isles]

That being said, I had to beg people to get rid of the CTE legendaries that comprise 11 of the 12 most expensive legendaries for Season 2 (save only Testlandia). It was incredibly unfun/not engaging/downright painful to not be able to legitimately pull any of these cards due to the odds of pulling them being so much lower than any other card. In a roundabout way, the only reason I was able to finish my project at all was through the generosity of people like The Atlae Isles who did get to benefit from TCALS and subsequently had several copies on hand of the card I needed.

To add my two cents into this, I largely agree with everyone above to bring back TCALS. With the unintended features came a community that flourished, where people came together and helped each other finish their collections. The one that comes to mind is the fact there are three complete S2 Europeia collections, which would not have been the case without TCALS and some dedicated people who care about their region and for each other's collection progress. Because of TCALS, many regional cards organizations were formed and brought many new people into the minigame with the allure of being able to collect cards of revered members of their respective regions. TCALS facilitated the growth of the cards community, and in my opinion, the death of TCALS and no feature to replace it lead to a steady decline in activity and enthusiasm in the minigame.

For me, my general rule is more access to cards is pretty good. For many, including myself, the defining objective of this game is to collect whatever cards they like, whether that is anime flags, every card from a region, or to get the most DV as possible. Thus, easier access to certain cards via TCALS and more collections completed is a good thing in my mind.

This isn't to say, of course, that there shouldn't be any challenge or effort in completing collections. In contrast, it took a lot of work even with TCALS, to fully take advantage of certain things, which in general big farmers proportionally tend to benefit more than smaller farmers. However, from the perspective of any person, it is easier to buy a plentiful card from someone who has many copies than a very rare card where one may only part with it for a very high price. It makes completing certain collections from virtually impossible to within the realm of feasibility.

Even with TCALS, there will be very hard cards to collect. 0-owner CTEs cannot be generated by TCALS because one requires a copy of it at auction for TCALS to generate copies. But TCALS will help if only one or two copies exist of a certain card which many people want.

As for effects to the greater market, they will assuredly come. The problems that TCALS was removed for in the first place will arise again if not addressed. To this end, I support changes that have suggested above, and also suggest that a form of MV decay take place for each copy generated (an IC justification could be like forgeries bringing down the value of artwork). But I am confident that these problems can be addressed without scrapping the feature and its benefit of making cards more accessible. There's something magical about a stellar card appearing in the middle of a pack, and I wish more people can experience it. And I believe that with the dawn of a new season, this will help generate lots of activity for the trading cards minigame.

[Fhaengshia]

The easy thing to do would be to continue in this thread of nostalgia listing how it helped me and how it could help others. But let’s look at the “problems” this is trying to solve.

Community aspect
Months before TCALS was removed, card organisations were dead, the discord was basically as well. I know this was partly due to “s2 fatigue”, but this was mid 2021, only the halfway mark into s2. Adding something that does what TCALS did might help in the future, especially if seasons aren’t so far between, but it’s not a magic bullet. Most players wax and wane in activity and just like anywhere on this game, entropy will kick in with more inactivity inevitable, and we’ll see the same personal abuses that happened in the lead up to TCALS’ demise.

Leaderboard stagnation
I recognise that as someone in the top 10, who benefitted from TCALS for almost a year, I would have a biased perspective. But it was the much more recent mv change that boosted me from 35/36th place up to a peak of 6th (before Feu de Glace revived and Giovanniland reinflated). Estimating my mv by subtracting cards I found in pull events or traded from players who found cards in pull events, then I would still be over 40k (instead of ~71k). I have spent a ridiculous amount of bank collecting and boosting the value of selected legendary cards as the most consistently active member of the Cardtel. If I went up multiple ranks from inflation being nerfed, I don’t think it would be incorrect to say I would go up ranks if cards from TCALS magically *poofed*. I am not saying I want that, I know it won’t happen, it would hurt my collections as well. But I was a newcomer who missed the most overpowered parts of TCALS and grinded my way to where I am today. One other point on this “stagnancy”, cards is the most dynamic stat there is in the game (arguably tied with endorsements). If you were to look at the places the top 10 have inscribed on their cards, you would not be able to tell the correct order as inscription happened over a week and multiple people moved up and down many places. There aren’t any reasonable arguments about stagnancy in other stats (besides the ones with maximums, like was fixed recently for recreational drug use). If someone higher than you is grinding just as hard, then they’ll stay there. The argument only makes sense for a tiny majority of players, a handful. And Giovanniland has shown that the podium is within reach even without having a high mv TCALS card.

Collections
This is the point that I would align with most. But consider, how reasonable is it for someone to attempt a s1 legendary collection now that we’re in s3? Even in s2 it was considered masochistic and ridiculously expensive. Making out that completing former season collections as some sort of bar to becoming a high level collector is gatekeeping. It goes way beyond a reasonable expectation for what is achievable, and encourages burn out. An incomplete collection is not a mark of shame, but a show of a dedication to the absurd difficulty such a collection presents in collecting. Increasing the rate of cte finds would be a much better solution.

Helping new players
This is wrong. This would help active players, not new players. Those with the most puppets, and speedy pack generation will benefit the most. This is a pure script arms race and puppet management. The poor/new will benefit as much as they did with inflation, that is a tiny fraction of how much the active established players will achieve. The only new players this will help are those like Thorn who use the methods of the elite already. These players are set to rise the leaderboard anyway. Furthermore, setting a requirement of hundreds of bank to host would cut out many players and make it more difficult for the better aspects TCALS was used for (eg. reçu’s gifs, europeian regional collections).

Solution?
OP mentioned the core of this thread is that there needs to be a way for the community to work together to pull rare cards.
An idea I have is probably a bit much to ask from admin for, but here goes.
A new Security Council resolution type: “Commemorate: A resolution to celebrate and respect a former nation” - valid for cte nations that have a trading card.
A passed commemoration would make that nation’s cards appear at a rate as if the nation had not ceased to exist. It is limited in scope, uses the already existing voting infrastructure, and it’s not like the sc is too busy.

[Noahs Second Country]

Hi. I don't really care much about whether or not TCALS is implemented again but there are some points that may be worth considering. Sorry, I put most things in boxes so hopefully I'm not misconstruing anyone's points.

maybe it should only be triggered on auctions above 100 bank, which would effectively be a fee for starting one. Also maybe it could be ratelimited to maybe 1 pull a minute or something to ensure that there aren't a flood of them? Idk, just throwing a possible nerf out there.

I think this would make pull events more inaccessible to new players, and most of the time pulls occur at a frequency of less than 1 pull/minute anyway.

the world in which TCALS and MV inflation both existed was less flawed than the world in which neither TCALS nor inflation existed

I agree with this sentiment. Inflation will never leave us, but now it is really the only way to improve your rank, which is tough because it takes a lot of farming bank and finding the right cards to inflate cards to anything anymore.

I recognise that as someone in the top 10, who benefitted from TCALS for almost a year, I would have a biased perspective. But it was the much more recent mv change that boosted me from 35/36th place up to a peak of 6th (before Feu de Glace revived and Giovanniland reinflated). Estimating my mv by subtracting cards I found in pull events or traded from players who found cards in pull events, then I would still be over 40k (instead of ~71k). I have spent a ridiculous amount of bank collecting and boosting the value of selected legendary cards as the most consistently active member of the Cardtel. If I went up multiple ranks from inflation being nerfed, I don’t think it would be incorrect to say I would go up ranks if cards from TCALS magically *poofed*. I am not saying I want that, I know it won’t happen, it would hurt my collections as well. But I was a newcomer who missed the most overpowered parts of TCALS and grinded my way to where I am today. One other point on this “stagnancy”, cards is the most dynamic stat there is in the game (arguably tied with endorsements). If you were to look at the places the top 10 have inscribed on their cards, you would not be able to tell the correct order as inscription happened over a week and multiple people moved up and down many places. There aren’t any reasonable arguments about stagnancy in other stats (besides the ones with maximums, like was fixed recently for recreational drug use). If someone higher than you is grinding just as hard, then they’ll stay there. The argument only makes sense for a tiny majority of players, a handful. And Giovanniland has shown that the podium is within reach even without having a high mv TCALS card.

The problem I have with your point on stagnancy is that cards isn't just some other stat. It's significantly more nuanced than any individual stat in the way that it can be manipulated. We really shouldn't see so much stagnation unless the higher ranks are truly dominant. Plus, it's boring at the top when there isn't ever any threat. Gio has simply demonstrated the power of inflation, especially when there isn't any mechanism to prevent it. If Gio started from square one after the lastest update he'd have a significantly tougher time considering much of his early wealth still came from pulling and selling cards from pull events.

This is wrong. This would help active players, not new players. Those with the most puppets, and speedy pack generation will benefit the most. This is a pure script arms race and puppet management. The poor/new will benefit as much as they did with inflation, that is a tiny fraction of how much the active established players will achieve. The only new players this will help are those like Thorn who use the methods of the elite already. These players are set to rise the leaderboard anyway. Furthermore, setting a requirement of hundreds of bank to host would cut out many players and make it more difficult for the better aspects TCALS was used for (eg. reçu’s gifs, europeian regional collections).

New players may be more engaged by the prospect of pull events, or at least that's what I observed when TCALS was most active. Sure, a few people may end up having a much higher chance of pulling the card, but any chance is better than the current odds presented by the existing system. It's also notable that you don't need a significant amount of bank to run a pull event on the majority of cards.

A new Security Council resolution type: “Commemorate: A resolution to celebrate and respect a former nation” - valid for cte nations that have a trading card.
A passed commemoration would make that nation’s cards appear at a rate as if the nation had not ceased to exist. It is limited in scope, uses the already existing voting infrastructure, and it’s not like the sc is too busy.

I doubt that the rest of the site would really want to be voting on the revival of a single card when the vast majority of the playerbase doesn't care about said card beyond a handful of collectors.

There have been other community events over the history of cards - but none of them actually encouraged working together the way that pull events did.

There was the week long auction, that was probably much more collaborative than any pull event really. I do agree though.

Perhaps the most notable point that hasn't come up yet is the fact that a pull event can indeed be blocked. It's an aspect of TCALS that hasn't really been explored much but if someone is really upset about a pull event, it takes 10 bank to stop it from happening, limiting the overall abuse of the system. If TCALS ever returns in any form I don't ever expect it to reach the level it did in the past.

I'd also like to note two other items that I think are important to consider.

Collections: The collection potential of TCALS is obvious for cards with very few copies. In many cases, if a player has a card in a collection, they aren't ever going to sell it but would be willing to try and duplicate it for the benefit of others. I think this has been mentioned already but it is worth restating.

Monopolization Potential: In the current state of cards, a player can monopolize a card easily since the odds of pulling any specific card is quite low. I could pick a card, buy it at a price higher than anyone is willing to pay, and then the only chance of the card being accessible to a large number of players is if all of them pull it or gift it. Even now, inflating a card that you have a monopoly on has significantly more value than the tax it would cost. TCALS was nice because it added an extra dynamic to counter this strategy. With even one copy, players could counter a monopoly and create more interesting gameplay by attempting to deflate the card or keep it for themselves.

I must admit that I was probably the largest beneficiary of TCALS among any individual player in cards. There is certainly bias. I still think that I would have gotten to 2nd place with or without TCALS, but one way is definitely more engaging and fun than the other.

[Coffin-Breathe]

Imo, this thread shows one more time, how less people are willing to learn from history. There were good reasons for making 'pull events' impossible, and those haven´t changed.
If the 'community' wants to work together as a community, it will find ways to do so; to exhume what was abolished as a tool of abusement isn´t one.
And, as already said : pull events greatly favoured 'mass farmers', not the 'new/little' or casual' players; while, as far as I remember, also not was helping 'collectors', as mainly legendaries were pulled, not 'cards missing in specific collections'. Cards of a certain rarity are 'hard to get' because of their rarity, and should stay rare.

[Doge Tax Collector]

Since of course I'm a newer cards player, I never got to experience it, but personally I know the struggle of grinding to 1,000+ bank, did it about once.

I'd love to see it back.

(Edit) But, personally, I don't really think it'll come back, at least not in the next year... I just think it would be cool, I'm moreso a small farmer and I think even though it could favor the larger ones. I think i'd still like it.

[Galiantus III]

I don't think the problem is so much that pull events are over, but that some cards are actually unobtainable without them (or perhaps something similar). When I was trying to get all S2 benevolent dictatorships, some cards were extremely difficult to obtain not because of the cost, but because of how few there were. Obviously when there are zero copies TCALS just wasn't an option. However, TCALS did open a lot of doors on 1 and 2 copy cards when they were a part of a collection. I would rent the cards to create my own private pull event so the other collector would not have to give up their copy to help me get my own.

Personally, I don't think there's a reason to bring back TCALS, but there does need to be a back-route for obtaining otherwise virtually unobtainable cards. And preferably it would be something that would encourage cooperation among the cards community. I'm not sure what the best solution here is, but I'll take a stab at it:

I propose letting us sacrifice unopened card packs to increase the chance of a specific card being pulled. For the sake of balance this would obviously have to be subject to some limitations, but I'm not sure what the proper balance is. As an initial proposal, I'm thinking up to N packs could be sacrificed to increase a card's pull chance to a certain maximum value, until the next time it is pulled, where:

N = 10 x SQRT( OWNERS x COPIES + 1)

So a card with zero owners could be fully boosted to its max with just 10 packs (50 cards), but legendaries like this one would require over 1000 packs (5,000 cards) for the same result. This should help with availability issues for obscure cards only a few people care about, and also help balance the desire for community pull events against their own deflationary effects. Basically, we'd get some control over the number of copies of cards, just at a cost. Importantly, it means practically anyone could lend aid to help with anyone else's collection, simply by donating packs to help increase the number of available copies.

[Witchcraft and Sorcery]

Thanks everyone for the feedback and support on this.

I will begin by pointing out to some of the criticism of the ideas in this thread (looking at you, coffin-breathe) is that the goal of this thread is NOT just to argue that TCALS should come back - there were legitimate reasons for its removal and while I personally do not agree with them and think it should be back, especially in light of the recent changes, I don't want to exclusively operate under that assumption. I rather would use it as a jumping-off point for ideas on how to solve a specific problem. After the most abusive part of it was patched out, that is, being able to save up packs and then do a self-pull-event for a few minutes like Noah often did, TCALS provided a way for people to work together and give players a chance to pull the card and solved a potentially major issue for players with all kind of different ranks and goals that currently seems poised to rear its head.

Helping new players
This is wrong. This would help active players, not new players. Those with the most puppets, and speedy pack generation will benefit the most. This is a pure script arms race and puppet management. The poor/new will benefit as much as they did with inflation, that is a tiny fraction of how much the active established players will achieve. The only new players this will help are those like Thorn who use the methods of the elite already. These players are set to rise the leaderboard anyway. Furthermore, setting a requirement of hundreds of bank to host would cut out many players and make it more difficult for the better aspects TCALS was used for (eg. reçu’s gifs, europeian regional collections)

I would clarify that players like Thorn are exactly the type of player I'm talking about. When I talk about "new players," I'm talking about new card players legitimately interested in doing what it takes to climb the rankings or complete large collections. A lot of those of us who started during the TCALS era followed much the same path, only it was far easier for us to make a name for ourselves at the time. I would even contend that part of the reason why we don't see more players like Thorn these days is precisely due to this.

Solution?
OP mentioned the core of this thread is that there needs to be a way for the community to work together to pull rare cards.
An idea I have is probably a bit much to ask from admin for, but here goes.
A new Security Council resolution type: “Commemorate: A resolution to celebrate and respect a former nation” - valid for cte nations that have a trading card.
A passed commemoration would make that nation’s cards appear at a rate as if the nation had not ceased to exist. It is limited in scope, uses the already existing voting infrastructure, and it’s not like the sc is too busy.

I... don't know that this entirely helps solve the problem, but it's an interesting point. Especially when we think about older seasons, I don't know that it would solve the core problem. Old-season cards are still extremely rare at non-CTE levels, albeit more attainable. Still, I like the idea of having a way to "rate-up" certain cards for periods of time. Perhaps...

... actually, it's just given me another idea. In my time away from NS I became very involved with Genshin Impact, and cards is, in many ways, a gacha game where whales spend silly amounts of time instead of money trying to get the cards they want. In Genshin, just like gacha games pretty much across the board, characters and their gear have "rate-up" banners where their pull rate is massively increased for a specific period of time. These are announced in advance and last a finite amount of time before either disappearing or returning to their normal pull rates. Players will often save up resources for weeks or months to pull for the character they want.

I think you probably see where I'm going with this. Perhaps the same could be done with cards: every so often, different cards could be selected to be rated up and appear more often in packs for a set period of time while other cards retain their normal pull rate. A setup like this could also retain some of the features of pull events - more players active means the chance of spawning is better or something like that.

[Vylixan]

Thanks everyone for the feedback and support on this.

I will begin by pointing out to some of the criticism of the ideas in this thread (looking at you, coffin-breathe) is that the goal of this thread is NOT just to argue that TCALS should come back - there were legitimate reasons for its removal and while I personally do not agree with them and think it should be back, especially in light of the recent changes, I don't want to exclusively operate under that assumption. I rather would use it as a jumping-off point for ideas on how to solve a specific problem. After the most abusive part of it was patched out, that is, being able to save up packs and then do a self-pull-event for a few minutes like Noah often did, TCALS provided a way for people to work together and give players a chance to pull the card and solved a potentially major issue for players with all kind of different ranks and goals that currently seems poised to rear its head.

Helping new players
This is wrong. This would help active players, not new players. Those with the most puppets, and speedy pack generation will benefit the most. This is a pure script arms race and puppet management. The poor/new will benefit as much as they did with inflation, that is a tiny fraction of how much the active established players will achieve. The only new players this will help are those like Thorn who use the methods of the elite already. These players are set to rise the leaderboard anyway. Furthermore, setting a requirement of hundreds of bank to host would cut out many players and make it more difficult for the better aspects TCALS was used for (eg. reçu’s gifs, europeian regional collections)

I would clarify that players like Thorn are exactly the type of player I'm talking about. When I talk about "new players," I'm talking about new card players legitimately interested in doing what it takes to climb the rankings or complete large collections. A lot of those of us who started during the TCALS era followed much the same path, only it was far easier for us to make a name for ourselves at the time. I would even contend that part of the reason why we don't see more players like Thorn these days is precisely due to this.

Solution?
OP mentioned the core of this thread is that there needs to be a way for the community to work together to pull rare cards.
An idea I have is probably a bit much to ask from admin for, but here goes.
A new Security Council resolution type: “Commemorate: A resolution to celebrate and respect a former nation” - valid for cte nations that have a trading card.
A passed commemoration would make that nation’s cards appear at a rate as if the nation had not ceased to exist. It is limited in scope, uses the already existing voting infrastructure, and it’s not like the sc is too busy.

I... don't know that this entirely helps solve the problem, but it's an interesting point. Especially when we think about older seasons, I don't know that it would solve the core problem. Old-season cards are still extremely rare at non-CTE levels, albeit more attainable. Still, I like the idea of having a way to "rate-up" certain cards for periods of time. Perhaps...

... actually, it's just given me another idea. In my time away from NS I became very involved with Genshin Impact, and cards is, in many ways, a gacha game where whales spend silly amounts of time instead of money trying to get the cards they want. In Genshin, just like gacha games pretty much across the board, characters and their gear have "rate-up" banners where their pull rate is massively increased for a specific period of time. These are announced in advance and last a finite amount of time before either disappearing or returning to their normal pull rates. Players will often save up resources for weeks or months to pull for the character they want.

I think you probably see where I'm going with this. Perhaps the same could be done with cards: every so often, different cards could be selected to be rated up and appear more often in packs for a set period of time while other cards retain their normal pull rate. A setup like this could also retain some of the features of pull events - more players active means the chance of spawning is better or something like that.

That's close to an idea I had about a year ago and discussed in the Card Gardens.
In it's raw form:

Card Rallies
once a month (or more often) WA nations can pay, say 10 bank (amounts are just an idea)
to elect a card, or number of cards, say 10 ,that have an increased chance of being pulled in a short period for higher chances. (I prefer this to be a short period where the chance is increased, gives it a real event feeling instead of a whole month or so, also makes it more of a real goal)
I'd also propose cards get excluded for a period after they have been selected to prevent repeats

What this will do is create a community event in which people can rally others to pick the same cards, compare it to people campaigning for WA or SC things, a sink for bank to be lost, and a way to still be able to pull cards that are hard to get, like CTE's, ex-nations, or legendaries, older seasons, and in the end it creates an event where people can pull the cards.

It might be fun to also add other elements to this, like the chance goes up if more people join in, and/or it goes up if more people pull the cards (akin to the classic pull events).

Downsides would be that it would still favour people with lot's of farms, I have some ideas there how to fix that but nothing concrete.
Upside is that it would be still be really limited compared to the old pull events.

[Witchcraft and Sorcery]

Ah, yes that sounds a lot like the idea that was forming in my head. I love the thought of the community voting with bank on which cards would be rated up. I also have more thoughts but I'll wait to hear what others say and think about a more fully-formed idea. I was also recommended to read some of the old TCALS replacement posts. But thanks as always to everyone for your ideas both here and on Discord - I am excited to hear more of them.

[1st level of hell]

Basically, we'd get some control over the number of copies of cards, just at a cost. Importantly, it means practically anyone could lend aid to help with anyone else's collection, simply by donating packs to help increase the number of available copies.

But the community actually has already control over the number of copies available; low-owners are rare, because so many copies were junked (often even automatically) by players, not because so few were issued. I remember statements like 'I junk every card below epic' or 'below a certain bid value' more than once, and also many bids at JV or even below for cards. So, if the community wants to change this, players shouldn´t junk so many cards for bank, than enough should be available. And maybe farmers, especially the 'big ones' should check their farms on a at least somehow regular base to look for bids (which many of them dont do), thus blocking existing copies.
As for 'higher cards', those are more seldom and sometimes expensive and hard to get, and this is okay; otherwise there would be no reason for a rarity after all.

[Oofery]

i haven't been too active on ns for a bit, but i felt like i wanted to share my opinions/perspectives on pull events as someone who has benefited a lot from pull events but is definitely not a huge farmer.

Helping new players
This is wrong. This would help active players, not new players. Those with the most puppets, and speedy pack generation will benefit the most. This is a pure script arms race and puppet management. The poor/new will benefit as much as they did with inflation, that is a tiny fraction of how much the active established players will achieve. The only new players this will help are those like Thorn who use the methods of the elite already. These players are set to rise the leaderboard anyway. Furthermore, setting a requirement of hundreds of bank to host would cut out many players and make it more difficult for the better aspects TCALS was used for (eg. reçu’s gifs, europeian regional collections).

i do agree that people with the most puppets/best puppet management/scripts would benefit the most from pull events (which i feel like they deserve for having that dedication and skill to manage puppets) but i feel like pull events can benefit everyone, even relatively casual farmers, since puppets aren't that hard to create. i'm not very good with coding/stuff like that, but the cards discord helped tremendously with setting up my scripts and making scripts accessible for even someone like me. as someone who was decently active in cards during tcals (but i wouldn't consider myself super active) i got most of my deck value from pull events and did benefit from them. at that time, i felt like even if you didn't have the best strategies or spent the most time on cards, you could still benefit from stuff like pull events and do decently well. (my peak mv was about 41k, and i collected 81 s2 legs with pull event farming/occasional gifting alone) i don't feel like that's the case now since you have to farm a lot to get high value/rare cards, and without hyperinflation, those are the only ways that someone can really rise up the ranks in dv.

Community aspect
Months before TCALS was removed, card organisations were dead, the discord was basically as well. I know this was partly due to “s2 fatigue”, but this was mid 2021, only the halfway mark into s2. Adding something that does what TCALS did might help in the future, especially if seasons aren’t so far between, but it’s not a magic bullet. Most players wax and wane in activity and just like anywhere on this game, entropy will kick in with more inactivity inevitable, and we’ll see the same personal abuses that happened in the lead up to TCALS’ demise.

there is also the fact that season 3 was not supposed to take this long to come - there wasn't this much of a gap between s1 and s2, and i think a lot of people were expecting s3 to have around the same gap as the one between s1 and s2 and figured that cards wasn't really going to be too much of a thing anymore. also, there were some people who finished their goals for s2 within that time as well, and probably would have needed a season 3 to continue their card goals.

in addition, personally, the community element of pull events did keep me active in the cards community, and although i went inactive before tcals got nerfed, the tcals nerf probably would have made me inactive. i didn't farm unless there was a pull event because i didn't like card farming if i wasn't doing it with the community and having that element of everyone looking for the same card and cheering each other on as we pulled. i don't think that there was another event like a pull event, where a good portion of the cards community united to achieve one general goal for everyone.

in short, during the tcals era, i felt like i was able to raise my dv a decent amount just being a semi-casual card player who occasionally stopped in for pull events. however, if i was in the same place that i was when i first started cards now, i feel like i would be so much more frustrated because there would not be as many ways for me to advance up the ranks without having to put in as much time as more serious farmers and people who started cards earlier. i do understand that some people did have the tendency to abuse tcals which is why it's gone (oh how i wish it was like this for money in real life) but it would be so nice to make it so tcals couldn't be too abused while pull events can still happen.

[The Atlae Isles]

Basically, we'd get some control over the number of copies of cards, just at a cost. Importantly, it means practically anyone could lend aid to help with anyone else's collection, simply by donating packs to help increase the number of available copies.

But the community actually has already control over the number of copies available; low-owners are rare, because so many copies were junked (often even automatically) by players, not because so few were issued. I remember statements like 'I junk every card below epic' or 'below a certain bid value' more than once, and also many bids at JV or even below for cards. So, if the community wants to change this, players shouldn´t junk so many cards for bank, than enough should be available. And maybe farmers, especially the 'big ones' should check their farms on a at least somehow regular base to look for bids (which many of them dont do), thus blocking existing copies.
As for 'higher cards', those are more seldom and sometimes expensive and hard to get, and this is okay; otherwise there would be no reason for a rarity after all.

This part is untrue. As of right now, CTE nations are much, much less likely to drop a card. Not to say that people aren't junking too much, but this leaves out the scenario in which nations who received a card CTEd during the 7-day inscription process and before S3 cards were finally released, leading to many cards that will be unlikely to spawn, even over the coming months. The number of these cards is somewhat substantial, myself encountering many of these while trying to set bids on S3 TEP cards before the start of the season. So TCALS would be useful for these sorts of cards, especially given the fact that we already have 2-3 CTE legendaries at the start of the season, and more at lower rarities.

[Narvatus]

I would like to speak on a few points that I feel are important to consider when this subject is on the table.

It is true that a return of pull events in any form would benefit large-scale farmers more than it would their smaller-scale counterparts. However, as already numerously mentioned, it is also the case that new farmers don't need nearly as many puppets to generate the value that they do in the game's current state. Lowering the barriers to enter the dedicated card community will inevitably lead to more people doing so and more vibrancy and variety within.

We must also remember that even one or two pulls of desirable high-value cards could fund up to a medium-size collection of largely lower-rarity cards, given that the bids are reasonable in relation to the rarity of those cards. Given this fact and the reduction of necessary farming capacity previously mentioned, a return of pull events could spark a wider variety of collections and a more diverse array of card projects in the game.

There is also a more indirect effect regarding low-owner cards that does not often seem to be considered, and while likely to be most pronounced with TCALS, could be true with any form of pull event in which the time restraints are tight: if my memory serves me correctly, cards were often not immediately junked during the event, in an effort to open as many packs as fast as possible within the time constraints of the pull event. Combine this lack of junking with the increased number of farmers operating during the event, and the chances of such a low-owner CTE card making it through, while still low, are enhanced.

[Giovanniland]

Conditionally in favor so long as they're not something that can be endlessly exploited, the nerfs and taxes do a fair job but I'm unsure if it's enough.

There is also a more indirect effect regarding low-owner cards that does not often seem to be considered, and while likely to be most pronounced with TCALS, could be true with any form of pull event in which the time restraints are tight: if my memory serves me correctly, cards were often not immediately junked during the event, in an effort to open as many packs as fast as possible within the time constraints of the pull event. Combine this lack of junking with the increased number of farmers operating during the event, and the chances of such a low-owner CTE card making it through, while still low, are enhanced.

And when multiple collectors needed such a low-owner CTE card for their collections, it was also common for the one owning the card to hold a pull events to spawn copies for the others.