[Implemented] Obtaining Unobtainable Cards

[SherpDaWerp]

When you try to make a large collection (or even a small one) CTE'd nations are often a plague. If a nation ceases to exist before someone finds it's card, that card is then entirely unobtainable unless the nation comes back, which, most of the time is quite unlikely.

Refuge Isle's collection of every Ultra Rare card (here) will likely be incomplete, as they estimate around 45 of these cards to have CTE'd with 0 owners. I'd love to get a copy of Wujotek, but that's unlikely given they've ceased to exist. Salaxalans' collection of S2 Spiritus cards can't be completed because of 15ish unobtainable cards, and even TNL's collection of every card from The North Pacific can't be completed due to two 0-owner common cards. Fundamentally, that means there will be cards that exist and we can never collect, making some collections impossible to complete.

The prevalence of these unobtainable cards is extremely annoying. And while I can see the value in ex-nation cards becoming rarer during the season, especially those with only one or two owners, I think something should be done to allow us to complete our collections.

My proposal to remedy this is that for a one-week period at the end of every season (or perhaps during the "snapshot" period for the next season), every 0-owner CTE'd card can be pullable. This keeps their rarity throughout the season, but provides collectors with the opportunity to finish their collections and get every card they need.

Some anticipated/already asked questions:

• How does this interact with the current system of CTE'd cards?
  The current system stays. CTE'd cards are unpullable outside of Auctions or the one-week ex-nation frenzy.
• What about nations who have the card, but then cease to exist, meaning that the card now has 0 owners?
  Ideally they could be included in this "unobtainable card finding" period, because even if they had an owner they don't anymore, meaning they are unobtainable.
• What about cards that have only one or two owners?
  TG the owner(s) and beg.
• What if they still don't reply?
  In this scenario, the card is theoretically obtainable, but practically, given the single owner won't sell, it's still unobtainable. I'm torn on what to do here - it would be good to make these cards pullable, but 1-owner cards are often sold at a high price given their extreme rarity, and making these cards pullable would mean they have significantly less worth. So I'll err on the side of the already existing system and say "no, these cards shouldn't be pullable during this one-week event". However, I can see the case for making every CTE'd card pullable during this period, so let me know what you think.

TL;DR Cards are unobtainable, so people can't complete their collections. This should be fixed by making them obtainable for a short period of time right at the end of the season.

[SherpDaWerp]

After further discussion in the NS Cards discord server (https://discordapp.com/invite/yn5a4p9) another idea was floated:

Any card that has Ceased to Exist with 0 owners at the end of a season could be deleted. There are many arguments for and against this suggestion (I for one am against), but it's another potential solution to the unobtainable card problem.

[Doge Land]

Another thing could be that at the end of every season, the game gifts you a single random card (rarity* doesn't matter). 0-owner CTEs are favored, then 0-owner existing nations, then cards that are owned.

*Like common, uncommon, ultra rare, etc.

[SherpDaWerp]

Yeah but giving out free cards is kinda against the spirit of the game - and if you don't get the one you want then it's fundamentally the same as them being randomly findable in a pack.

[[violet]]

I can't remember why CTE nation cards are unpullable in the first place. Is it just because not many people care about those nations any more?

It's certainly possible to make CTE nation cards pullable but less common. I'd prefer that to having to manage a special recurring event with different rules.

[SherpDaWerp]

I can't remember why CTE nation cards are unpullable in the first place. Is it just because not many people care about those nations any more?

It's certainly possible to make CTE nation cards pullable but less common. I'd prefer that to having to manage a special recurring event with different rules.

I think the original idea might have been that people wouldn't want CTE'd nations, but if that was the case it seems to have been proven wrong... plenty of people want to collect CTE'd cards. It might muck with the value of some cards, but I'd support CTE'd nation cards being pullable but less common. (and the same rules still applying around auctions etc.)

If that would be easier for you to manage it seems fine to me. The main reason I went with the "one-week event" thing was that it would maintain the same system for CTE'd nations throughout the season.

[9003]

I can't remember why CTE nation cards are unpullable in the first place. Is it just because not many people care about those nations any more?

It's certainly possible to make CTE nation cards pullable but less common. I'd prefer that to having to manage a special recurring event with different rules.

As for not caring about cards we care a lot about Mindless contempt and Soops and Nerven as for lower cards that have CTE we already have countless Card Farming puppet X cards so adding more really does not tip the balance

As one of the larger collectors of CTE and Ex nation cards I fully support all cards being pull able.

For simplicity I would say that all cards regardless have the same pull-able odds. I am sure it would be slightly easier on the server side but also easier for us (mainly TNL) to maintain Marketwatch and card pull odds and other statistics

Pros:
Less "safe" transfer cards as all cards are pull-able.
We can complete collections


Cons:
Really low odds for legionaries or other high end cards.
More Commons

[Refuge Isle]

I can't remember why CTE nation cards are unpullable in the first place. Is it just because not many people care about those nations any more?

It's certainly possible to make CTE nation cards pullable but less common. I'd prefer that to having to manage a special recurring event with different rules.

There are pros and cons to CTE cards returning without their nation. On the one hand, a CTE nation's guaranteed scarcity means that a lot of deck value is built around this known volume of cards. Returning those cards to print would take out that value and take out some novelty in existing collections. Additionally, you could argue that a player needs to be in the game if they want their cards to exist, be minted, and traded regularly.

On the other hand, those CTEs being unpullable ordinarily means that a heck of a lot of cards on the leaderboard for most valueable are simply just cards that Koem Kab or Fris used once in a multi-thousand bank transfer and then discarded. It's not a representation of a working leaderboard or a working card system if it's cluttered with cards that don't actually matter to anyone. Also, without some way for cards to return to print, not only would the Ultra-Rare collection be incomplete (again), but so would anyone's legendary card collections, which lost two nations immediately. And there's no guarantee that the one Nervun that was printed will ever actually be traded for a pull event due to the risk involved.

I feel like the cons of having CTEs restricted ultimately outweigh anything that players could get out of it being the case.

[Racoda]

I agree with what Refuge and 9003 have already mentioned, especially about CTEd nation's cards being used as fake DV.

Bringing back 0-owner cards is a good idea for completing collections, but making every CTE pullable will alter their perceived rarity (ex.: there is already a market for 1-owner cards).

Another argument for keeping the current system would be the amount of puppets that CTE — those are usually uninteresting in collections, because they don't stand out (default flag, generic motto, etc.). Nations that have had some amount of work put into them don't CTE as often as puppets (and will probably be restored at a certain point).

That being said, if such a system is implemented, I believe the odds of pulling CTEd nations should be low[er], or perhaps a threshold for it to be pullable (ex. less than 3 copies or 3 owners), which would retain their rarity whilst balancing out the cons of the current system.

Edit: smashed the submit button instead of preview.

[Refuge Isle]

Thoughts on the Soops effect:

That is to say one hyper-expensive, almost meme-level card that has monetary value because of it's great scarcity, but does have more human value than a discarded transfer. This would presumably no longer occur, and in some ways that would be sad because I've put about two months of farming work into being able to buy one of them and that would ultimately amount to very little. That said, it's a very exclusive idea, because it's a card that has that value because it spends most of its time locked up instead of being traded, and with the CTE-auction system there's even an incentive to reduce the amount that it *will* be traded.

Only a few people will ever put in the effort to get close to buying the card and people that play the game casually have a zero percent chance of ever feasibly getting there. And even though I'm one of the people that did, it doesn't feel very NationStates to me because nothing else on the site has that kind of time investment for party hat exclusivity. There should have been more S1 legend collections than there were and maybe we would have been better for it through increased participation.

Another side effect of CTE cards returning without their namesakes:

Where commons are more likely to CTE because they are new players that lose interest, legends are more likely to keep sticking around as they have been. This means that toward the end of the season, you're much more likely to pull a legend than you are in the beginning. In my opinion, this contributes to over-saturation of the legend market at the end of the year and erases investments made earlier because eventually people lose interest in collecting their 22nd copy of Sciongrad. If CTEs were no longer removed, the original drop table odds would be preserved more or less throughout the season.

[Frisbeeteria]

I like the fact that some cards are naturally rarer than others. I think all the suggestions that ex-nation cards be pullable are bad ideas. The pursuit of rare cards is the fun part, not completing collections. If you make all cards pullable, it's just a mechanical exercise of answering issues and opening packs. Where's the fun in that?

[[violet]]

Thanks for the feedback.

It sounds to me that they should be pullable at low odds. Even if it's a card that only comes up once every few months, that seems like a better situation than if it's definitely gone forever.

Also I'd rather not put a premium on cards of nations we've banned from the site, i.e. guaranteed non-returnables.

The numbers are malleable here; if they're low enough, there's almost no practical difference to the current situation, where CTE cards never come up at all. The mechanism would probably be that when drawing a card, you'd have an X% chance to draw from the entire deck of that season, rather than just the portion that contain live nations. Right now, for example, we have 168k Season 2 cards of which 119k are live nations. If we set the chance to draw from the main deck at 10%, your chance of drawing a specific CTEd nation card would be 1 in 1.68 million. For Season 1 cards (183k cards and 53k live nations), since you only have about a 1% chance of drawing these in the first place, the chance of getting a specific CTEd nation would be about 1 in 168 million.

[9003]

Banned nation's could have their cards marked and excluded from the pullable pool and when they have zero owners the card is nuked to prevent any idolizing or spotlighting them

Or disgraced nation's have their market vaule set to junk price regardless of sales.

[Aclion]

Banned nation's could have their cards marked and excluded from the pullable pool and when they have zero owners the card is nuked to prevent any idolizing or spotlighting them

Or disgraced nation's have their market vaule set to junk price regardless of sales.

Any special mechanics like that would make them attractive for collectors I think.

I like the fact that some cards are naturally rarer than others. I think all the suggestions that ex-nation cards be pullable are bad ideas. The pursuit of rare cards is the fun part, not completing collections. If you make all cards pullable, it's just a mechanical exercise of answering issues and opening packs. Where's the fun in that?

The fun in not having collections that can never be completed. Not everyone plays the card game like you do.

Edit addendum; there's actually even more to it then that. Since this is not so much a mechanic that makes these cards rare, as one that keeps their number fixed, even as the card economy expands and players that hold these cards leave, taking them out of the economy. Fris is not so much asking for rare items to stay rare, but for them to slowly become rarER, becoming an a safe asset that can only appreciate in value as the supply of bank expands and the supply of discontinued cards dwindles.

[SherpDaWerp]

Thanks for the feedback.

It sounds to me that they should be pullable at low odds. Even if it's a card that only comes up once every few months, that seems like a better situation than if it's definitely gone forever.

Also I'd rather not put a premium on cards of nations we've banned from the site, i.e. guaranteed non-returnables.

The numbers are malleable here; if they're low enough, there's almost no practical difference to the current situation, where CTE cards never come up at all. The mechanism would probably be that when drawing a card, you'd have an X% chance to draw from the entire deck of that season, rather than just the portion that contain live nations. Right now, for example, we have 168k Season 2 cards of which 119k are live nations. If we set the chance to draw from the main deck at 10%, your chance of drawing a specific CTEd nation card would be 1 in 1.68 million. For Season 1 cards (183k cards and 53k live nations), since you only have about a 1% chance of drawing these in the first place, the chance of getting a specific CTEd nation would be about 1 in 168 million.

That seems like a good balance between Fris's need to have some cards be naturally rarer, and everyone else's need to complete their various collections. Realistically, as well, that means your specific S2 card will come up every 336000 packs. I have no idea how many puppets are out there card farming, but that seems like a pretty low number given that some players have 1000+ puppets. By law of averages, The Northern Light's 1500* puppets alone will pull every S2 CTE in around a year. Of course, RNGesus doesn't work that way, but there are a lot more card farming puppets out there than just TNL's. You could probably drop the "main deck draw chance" from 10% to 5% and most CTE's from that season would still be drawn at least once.

*technically, only 1000 of these are actively farming, but the point is that there are lots of farmer puppets out there.

[Riemstagrad]

1 pull in a year is not much....
Keep in mind that when the season is over, the chance to pull that card drops to once every 100 years... A Soops-pull in 2098 will be Breaking news all over the world....
These odds are still closer to "Keeping the rare cards rare" then to "I want to complete my collection".

Wich is fine for me.

[SherpDaWerp]

One pull in a year is OK if the person who pulls it puts it up for auction... more cards will be generated quick smart if that happens. Plus, as I said, that's 1 pull a year if TNL was the only player opening packs in the entire NS card game. There's probably at least 10 times as many nations out there opening packs.

[[violet]]

This is now implemented: When drawing cards, there is a 10% chance that they will be drawn from all of that season's cards, not just those of live nations.

[SherpDaWerp]

This is now implemented: When drawing cards, there is a 10% chance that they will be drawn from all of that season's cards, not just those of live nations.

Great! Thanks for taking this suggestion on board so quickly

[Benevolent 0]

This is now implemented: When drawing cards, there is a 10% chance that they will be drawn from all of that season's cards, not just those of live nations.

I'm glad you have limited that to the current seasons cards.

I like the fact that some cards are naturally rarer than others. I think all the suggestions that ex-nation cards be pullable are bad ideas. The pursuit of rare cards is the fun part, not completing collections. If you make all cards pullable, it's just a mechanical exercise of answering issues and opening packs. Where's the fun in that?

Everyone has their own take on this but I have to agree with your position. Additionally, there has to be some cards that are unobtainable even for the player with the most cards and bank. That's life. Watch the film Citizen Kane if you don't understand what I'm saying. Some things are just unobtainable. I have deleted several last copies of S1 CTE cards which other players demanded from me but were not willing to pay a decent price. One player in particular refused a gift exchange with me as I will not put the card up for auction and see it duplicated thus reducing it's value. That may be harsh, but those players which conlude on pull events and manipulate TCALS to enrich themselves at the expense of other nations are far worse in my opinion.

[Vylixan]

This is now implemented: When drawing cards, there is a 10% chance that they will be drawn from all of that season's cards, not just those of live nations.

I'm glad you have limited that to the current seasons cards.

No, that's not what was said.

there is a 10% chance that they will be drawn from all of that season's cards,

If you draw an S1 pack, you still have a 10% chance it draws from the full deck. But the chance for an S1 pack is already lower, effectively lowering that 10% chance.

[Noahs Second Country]

I'm glad you have limited that to the current seasons cards.

From my understanding, it's not.

Some things are just unobtainable. I have deleted several last copies of S1 CTE cards which other players demanded from me but were not willing to pay a decent price.

Perhaps because you offer absolutely terrible trade deals? Most players cannot even come close to affording them, from what I've heard in many cases. Sure, you have full freedom to do so but it really takes away from the whole "good sportsman" take that you've exhibited elsewhere.

I will not put the card up for auction and see it duplicated thus reducing it's value.

If a card is duplicated, well, "That's life," right? Lower your prices if you don't want your cards to get pulled.

With the turnover rate of nations, completing any medium+ collection becomes nearly impossible without CTE card spawning.

[Benevolent 0]

I'm glad you have limited that to the current seasons cards.

From my understanding, it's not.

Some things are just unobtainable. I have deleted several last copies of S1 CTE cards which other players demanded from me but were not willing to pay a decent price.

Perhaps because you offer absolutely terrible trade deals? Most players cannot even come close to affording them, from what I've heard in many cases. Sure, you have full freedom to do so but it really takes away from the whole "good sportsman" take that you've exhibited elsewhere.

I will not put the card up for auction and see it duplicated thus reducing it's value.

If a card is duplicated, well, "That's life," right? Lower your prices if you don't want your cards to get pulled.

With the turnover rate of nations, completing any medium+ collection becomes nearly impossible without CTE card spawning.

Too bad. To borrow a line from Mick Jagger... "You can't always get what you want, but if you try sometimes you'll find ...you get what you need."

For you this concerns the TCALS issue. You and a couple others keep on and on abusing the mechanic for your own personal enrichment. As of yet having not gotten what you need. That's in the administration's hands, put there by the complaints of many of your fellow players.

As for collections of CTE'd nations cards, you don't have to "catch them all". This isn't Pokemon, lol. Plenty of players dump them immediately when pulled whether there are hundreds of copies or just one. They don't exactly measure up to the term "international artwork". However, nothing is stopping you or others from trying... but the rest of us who don't are free to not comply with your demands.

[Racoda]

As for collections of CTE'd nations cards, you don't have to "catch them all". This isn't Pokemon, lol. Plenty of players dump them immediately when pulled whether there are hundreds of copies or just one. They don't exactly measure up to the term "international artwork". However, nothing is stopping you or others from trying... but the rest of us who don't are free to not comply with your demands.

It's a Trading Cards game. Either you focus on Trading, which leads you to try to maximize your Bank/DV (potentially by abusing TCALS), or you focus on Cards (and collections). There might be more ways to play, but Trading and amassing riches definitely isn't – and shouldn't be – the only reason people play.

Which means that yes, it is "catch them all", at least for some players, and for wholly different reasons than you're assuming.

[Benevolent 0]

As for collections of CTE'd nations cards, you don't have to "catch them all". This isn't Pokemon, lol. Plenty of players dump them immediately when pulled whether there are hundreds of copies or just one. They don't exactly measure up to the term "international artwork". However, nothing is stopping you or others from trying... but the rest of us who don't are free to not comply with your demands.

It's a Trading Cards game. Either you focus on Trading, which leads you to try to maximize your Bank/DV (potentially by abusing TCALS), or you focus on Cards (and collections). There might be more ways to play, but Trading and amassing riches definitely isn't – and shouldn't be – the only reason people play.

Which means that yes, it is "catch them all", at least for some players, and for wholly different reasons than you're assuming.

Some players = a very few players. That's bc there are over 208,000 non CTE nations in existence and once the CTEs are added, whoa, Maybe over 300,000. Add a second season of cards and we are at over half a million cards. Collecting a copy of each of those cards in any rationale appears an impossible and fruitless task No?

But sure, it takes all kinds as they say and there are a couple players out of the hundred and so thousand of us which have cards who think it's a fun idea, but they are an extreme minority. Do you guys use bots? Is that legal?

https://www.nationstates.net/page=world