[suggestion-Cards] Bring back TCALS

[Riemstagrad]

Hereby i suggest to bring back TCALS in Cards.

I do understand the reason why TCALS was removed, yes, In the end it there were way too many pull-events.
However, while the removal of TCALS seemed a logical move to combat the abuse, this decision led to some big changes in the card-game:

1. It encouraged the inflation-game, where players inflate common and uncommon CTE cards with only a few owners to insane market values (up to 10000 bank), to artificially increase their deck value and storm the rankings.
2. While TCALS abuse caused distortions in the rankings, the inflation game that emerged after the removal of TCALS is far worse.
3. The abundance of highly inflated commons and uncommons makes it very hard for a collector to complete a collection. If you need a card that's heavily inflated, you will have to pay a rediculous price to get the card, or face troubles to transfer such a card to a collector-puppet.
4. This unlimited inflation is an additional blow for collectors, after the blow of losing the TCALS-mechanism as a way to obtain difficult cards.
5. People who don't like inflation have no way to retalliate: Inflating can be done without any danger. And even if you later pull an inflated card, trying to deflate it again is simply not feasible: difficult to pull off, requires a lot of trades back and forth, might cost you bank while the reward is zero.
6. Pull-events were a great thing for the cohesion of the cards-community. They were fun, required coöperation and sparked activity.

The ideal solution would be of course to tweak the TCALS mechanism in order to reduce the disadvantages of it, but in a non-ideal world, the simple restoration of TCALS seems better then what we have now.

[Islands Of Ventro]

I agree, while reinstating TCALS does not fix the problem it will certainly be better then it is now.

[Refuge Isle]

To the best of my understanding, the purpose of TCALS was to make transferring money between accounts inconvenient or rife with risks. But as soon as I started doing mass-copy bank transfers three years ago at a level that made TCALS interceptions negligible, this mechanic was no longer effective at achieving its goals (although it did take a while for it to catch on).

Pull events being developed to form a recreational pastime was helpful for activity and perpetuation of the cards community as a game sub-group, that's true. But the ability to just create a specific high-value card out of thin air isn't ideal for an economy in the long term, nor is it particularly fair to those who do not already have the means to keep expanding their wealth on a whim. As we have played out that "long-term" with players who have been somewhat less altruistic than r3n, we now have a rather broken system. Bringing back TCALS isn't going to fix it, as the mechanic turned out to not be able to "fix" anything in the first place.

Contending with how things are broken now (inflation of CTE cards, accumulation of stupid amounts of bank) will likely require decoupling cards from issues and into a less puppet-centric system, as previously suggested, removing CTE's affecting card spawns, as well as potentially resetting the economy to a certain extent (archiving old bank accounts to clear wealth build-up and force card junking) or some other method of heavy admin intervention to get it back on track.

Or perhaps cards will continue to sit and decay until their relevance has truly ceased. In either event TCALS isn't the answer.

[Riemstagrad]

I never claimed that the return of TCALS would solve all problems. And i largely agree with your analysis.
My post came from the narrative that there is no admin-time available to spend on the cards mini-game, wich is fine, because it IS a mini-game and admins are still volunteers. I think it's safe to asume that the card-game will not get a big fix anytime soon.
With these conditions in mind, i conclude that only simple/quick solutions have a chance to be implemented. TCALS existed before, it must be easy to switch it back on.
Hence my proposal: I prefer the system with TCALS over the current system without for the reasons listed above.

[Dabarastan]

The problems with TCALS are far too great to justify reintroducing it, especially when it seems a consensus has been reached that pack generation needs to at some point be decoupled from issue answering. TCALS destroys the concept of a rare card, and allows the top card players to generate, essentially, anything they want. As a result, the legendaries of both seasons are far too numerous, with many of the additional copies just being hoarded by top players.

The current TCALS-free system also has many problems (as you've identified), but for me this just further illustrates the need to decouple pack generation from issue answering altogether.

[Noahs Second Country]

I believe it is easier to create wealth (purely from a deck value standpoint) without TCALS than with TCALS.

Thus, bringing back TCALS could make things slightly more competitive again, at the very least. Currently things are very one-dimensional.

[Haganham]

The current TCALS-free system also has many problems (as you've identified), but for me this just further illustrates the need to decouple pack generation from issue answering altogether.

I partially agree with this. TCALS won't solve anything; however while decoupling pack generation from issue answering might have helped years ago I think the card economy has gotten too top heavy to be fixed without something approaching a reset; and I don't think that would ever be considered.

[Bawkie]

I don't think the old TCALS is an ideal solution. If it didn't count towards generating legendary cards it might be a start, as those were more sought after before pull events brought too many copies into circulation. Inflation is out of control, and there is no easy way to solve it. It doesn't help that the card game has stagnated with no season 3 for 2½ years.

Perhaps if they simply removed the decreased chance of finding a CTE card, making it easier to deflate. But this still doesn't stop the motivation to artificially inflate values, it just increases the risk.

[Panagouge]

The only apparent solution to inflation I see is raising the risk of inflating a card so high as to make it not worth it for most. Vastly increasing chances of CTE & S1 pulls, in a TCALS aligned manner, would be a part of the trick.

[Fauzjhia]

Serious, this discussion again ?
I though we said everything a while

Obviously the right move would be decide for a MV for each rarity, and to give players increased chance to spawn the card as long as the card is over the (max rarity)

an easy move right (for a tacls reintroduction), would be 25 / common, 50/uncommon, 100/ rare, / 200 ultra rare / 400 epic.
so when a card pass over the max value, its chance to spawn increase, giving weapons to us who would like to deflate, the chance to do it, by selling it for a low Price.


or you could also, just abolish the deck value leaderboard (international artwork trophy) that way, no one would care about the value of card, and there would no reason to inflate a card's value, except for the fun of doing it.

Decoupling cards from issues is not as easy and as clear and as we think it is.

I think I said like everything, here.