---
title: Collective Economy Overview
author: Alec
---

##### talk about this?

- first person voice
- All cards pass is news to literally everyone but plass and isn't mentioned anywhere lol
- The games don't have to be multiplayer like in most other card games. -> "necessarily have to"?
- Could really use either a flowchart or a big bold sentence that says OK BASICALLY YOU DO QUESTS WHICH FILL UP THE FREE PASS WHICH GIVE YOU 500 GOLD A DAY AND 1000 AMBER A WEEK WHICH IS EQUAL TO X AND Y
- No idea how to conclude but we really need to say "hey look we're like you we dont want to be assholes and this game is generous"
- Need to discuss a couple details of the mock economy

**article starts**

In this post we will finally write up a basic plan for the economy/monetization. Real transparency is important to us and necessary for a small, independent, community focused game like Collective.

The most important thing for us to communicate is that we essentially procrastinated on planning the details of the economy and monetization until we finally got to making this upcoming patch. To people who ask for more information about the economy: every time you asked, we also wanted to know what it would end up being. There was a general plan, but we tweaked or totally reworked it once a month for about a year, based on a ton of different factors and potential features for the game. The low points get the spotlight in community discussions of the economy (which is totally fair), but there are also times when we threw a huge amount of currency into the game all at once, like with the tournament rewards or incursion levels.

The game is launching on steam in a couple months and we're finally ready to provide details on the economy and monetization. Additionally, we'll be releasing a patch soon (at best, within a week!) where we create a very simplified version of the economy that will be playable immediately.

This is a pretty big post because it's a rough draft for a later post (which won't have to explain the whole 'mock economy' thing) that will clearly explain our economy. This will probably be a set of pages in the library, not just a blog post.

## The mock economy (temporary)

Right now the economy is in a bad state. We are working on the final version of the economy, but in the meantime we will release a simplified "mock" version of the economy. Basically we'll be setting up a version of the achievements aimed at new players, with at least the rewards nailed down. The achievements will be boring, but the purpose is to make the economy work in the short term so we can verify that the numbers are working out so that you don't get everything immediately, but also don't feel like you're not making progress. Existing players will be able to take advantage of the new achievements.

## The numbers-only view of the economy

A deck of 5 commons, 5 uncommons, and 5 rares will cost 2125 Amber (remember, blueprints mean you don't pay for multiple copies of a card). At the time of writing most of the top decks on the leaderboard cost much less than that. The community controls the rarity and effects of cards, so the Amber cost of a meta deck will shift over time.

(Note: Once the Season Pass is implemented, "from daily quests" actually means "from completing tiers of the Season Pass via daily quests")

### Continuous Rewards

A player will earn an average of 500 Gold per day if they complete their daily quests. This is enough to buy a Hero every 20 days. If that seems slow, consider that it's more than twice as fast as we release Heroes, since we'll release a new Hero every 1.5 months.

Players can expect to earn 1000 Amber per week from completing daily quests and playing games. That's enough to buy a completely new competitive deck in most cases every two weeks. The seasonal achievements (refreshing every 3 months) will be worth around 4000 Amber.

### New Players

A new player will earn around 6000 Gold from achievements and quests in their first 2-3 days, enough to buy Vriktik. If they don't buy Vriktik, they can expect to get to 10,000 Gold in 5-7 days total, and buy any Hero they want. They'll earn about 1000 Amber from permanent achievements, and another 1500 from the low effort seasonal achievements, giving them more than enough to build a competitive deck. Achievements in the next 1-2 weeks after that will give another 7K+ Gold. When combined with daily quests this gives enough for a second Hero.

We're also going to give Dhat to new players rather than Buluc.

## Details of the Economy

Much of this section is stuff you already know, either from playing the game or other discussions.

### Currencies

- Marbles - Purchased with real money. \$10/€10 = 1000 Marbles.[^1]
- Gold - Free currency that can be used for most items
- Amber - Used to buy cards.

### Gameplay Affecting Stuff

#### Cards

- Common - 50 Amber
- Uncommon - 100 Amber
- Rare - 275 Amber
- Legendary - 325 Amber (there are very few legendary cards)

**The primary way to get cards in Collective is buying them outright with Amber.** That means when we're talking about earning cards, we're really talking about earning Amber. We don't sell card packs (or other forms of lootboxes). When you buy a card with Amber, you get the card's "blueprint", which allows you to make any number of copies of it. Blueprints can't be destroyed once purchased.

A lot of people like cracking packs, so we may add "Blueprint Packs" at some point in the future, but we won't charge money for them. (This approach is also shared by [Riot's upcoming card game](https://outof.cards/legends-of-runeterra/409-a-guide-to-legends-of-runeterra-for-hearthstone-players).) In-game drafts have a small chance to be a Blueprint Draft, where you immediately get the blueprint of whatever card you pick.

For voracious deckbuilders, we're also going to offer a \$30 USD "All Cards Pass": a one-time purchase of all the cards in the game, including all future cards. Players who own the All Cards Pass will have their future Amber converted to Gold one-to-one, and half the Amber value of their existing blueprints at time of purchase converted to Gold.

#### Heroes

![Buluc](assets/econ/buluc.jpg)

10,000 Gold or 1000 Marbles - some will cost less.

A Hero serves as your avatar in a match, and as the focus point for your deck. As Heroes gain EXP throughout each match, they level up and get Hero-specific rewards with a powerful in-game effect. Heroes have an Affinity: Strength, Spirit, or Mind. Cards also have an Affinity (or are neutral), and cards that don't match your Hero's Affinity cost 1 more mana. A few cards are exclusive to Heroes of a particular Affinity. **The main value of a Hero is synergy with cards in your deck.** You can play almost any card with any Hero. I'm emphasizing this point here because players coming from Hearthstone sometimes think not owning a Hero means being locked out of an entire class's worth of cards.

We plan to release a new Hero every ~1.5 months after launching on Steam. One common criticism of Hero systems in other games, e.g. League of Legends, is that new Heroes are often OP. We'll always attempt to balance the Heroes, but I'll say now it's very difficult for us to do that top-down, because the community has control over what cards are in the game. Our primary goal when designing a new Hero is to create something with a novel playstyle or deckbuilding angle. We expect it will sometimes take a couple months for the community to print the cards to support a new Hero.

#### Astral Gauntlet

1,500 Gold or 150 Marbles per run

AG is our version of a Limited mode. Entering with Gold will pay out prizes in a combination of Gold and Amber. Entering with Marbles will pay out prizes in Marbles.

### Cosmetics

Most cosmetics will be purchasable with Gold or Marbles, but will generally be "cheaper" with Marbles. Don't have pricing set for all of these yet since we're still developing them.

- Hero Skins

  Hero skins change the appearance of your Hero and/or their reward cards. These are expensive and time consuming for us to produce, so there probably won't be that many at first.

- Emotes - 2500 Gold or 200 Marbles

  Used to communicate in-match with your opponent. ![angry](assets/econ/ashgerdy_angry.png) ![Thinking](assets/econ/buluc_thinking.png) ![Devourer](assets/econ/devourer.png) ![Wow](assets/econ/heldim_wow.png)

- Game Boards

  By default, matches are played on a board specific to the game mode you're playing. This can be customized by buying game boards.

- Card Backs

  Customize what the back of your cards look like in a match.

- Card Frames

  Customize the front frame of cards. Purchased and applied per-blueprint. Once we've made a few of these, they'll show up sometimes in in-match drafts, just like blueprint drafts.

## Gameplay mechanisms for getting stuff

Every ~3 months will be a new season for Collective. At the start of each season, we'll be releasing a new Hero, new achievements, and a new Season Pass.

### Achievements

Achievements are one-time accomplishments and earn you a big chunk of Gold and/or Amber. The new player experience will be guided by achievements. Each season will also have its own achievements that award a large amount of Amber, to allow returning players to immediately build decks and jump back into the game.

### Season Pass

**Nice preview picture goes here once I have it working in-game 😅**

1000 Marbles to Unlock Premium track & the season's featured Hero

The basic format of the Season Pass will be familiar to most gamers. As players complete Daily Quests and win games they'll earn Season Points, which will complete tiers of the Pass. Each completed tier gives a reward to the player. All players will earn Gold, Amber, or an Emote at each tier. Players can purchase the Premium Season Pass to earn additional cosmetic rewards at each tier. Rewards for owning the premium pass include:

- Immediately unlock the Hero released at the beginning of the season. Yes that means you get the Hero + the premium pass for the price of a Hero.
- Dozens of cosmetic rewards (see above Cosmetics section)
- Earn up to 1000 Marbles by completing the Pass. Go infinite!

#### Season Pass Completion

The first season pass will have around 60 tiers.

Q: If I buy the Premium Season Pass, am I buying a part time job for 3 months?

A: It takes about 60 daily quests, plus the games you'd be playing for them, to finish the season pass. If you're efficient, you could play for as little as four hours a week and complete the Pass.

Q: What happens when I finish the Season Pass?

A: You'll be placed on the Off-Season Pass, which only has a free track, and gives Gold and Amber at a similar rate to the Season Pass.

### Daily Quests & Weekly Wins

The daily quest system is similar to that of other card games. Each day, you get a daily quest. You can store up to 3, and re-roll one per day. Less than half the daily quests will require playing multiplayer. Daily quests award Season Points.

Your first 20 game wins per week in any mode will also award SP. We don't want players to feel like playing after finishing their quests is pointless, but also don't want people to get burned out.

Every game you play will award some Amber.

## What Informed the Economy Design?

### Early Ideas

All digital TCGs live in the shadow of Hearthstone. When it came out back in 2014, I was roommates with Nick in our college town, working on an early version of Collective in my spare time. For a good while I regretted not getting Collective, or whatever it would have been, out sooner. Much of the design behind Collective and its economy comes from games we played together. Dominion, Magic: the Gathering Online, Smash Bros and League of Legends were easily the top four, and for fans of those games, the influence of all of them (aside from Smash) can be seen quickly.

Early in the development of Collective, right around when Nick joined, we threw around a lot of ideas of how to develop the economy. Having come up with the idea of user-created cards voted on within Reddit, the basics of the final game were in place.

We both played a lot of Magic Online, so we had to consider a similar economic model. This was the model that Artifact ended up with. Nick wrote a [very extensive blog post](https://medium.com/nickmccoblog/how-magic-the-gathering-or-artifact-could-crash-dc39ebfdcdc0) about some potential pitfalls with this model.

Most people we talked to when we were getting started told us to sell packs. People still tell us to switch to a pack model, because it's pretty common and is proven to be very profitable. I was always against this idea, for a few reasons:

- Players make the cards in Collective. Pitting financial incentives of designers against players is a recipe for disaster (for example, players could want to keep rarities generally low to keep the game financially affordable).
- Packs are the prototypical lootboxes, and lootboxes are very manipulative.
  - Nick proposed the idea of selling packs in early 2017, before the peak of anti-lootbox backlash. Late 2017 through 2018 saw a massive shift of opinion away from lootboxes -- we're very glad that we made the right call.
- Our voting takes place on Reddit. Historically, Reddit can be a powerful force in organizing public opinion on business models, design decisions, etc. This was demonstrated in unprecedented fashion during this period of late 2017 through 2018, where, by our count, at least five huge AAA games suffered massive backlash from the players that seriously hurt or downright ended the games. Reddit was always ground zero for this extremely negative reaction to new business models; it only makes sense that we would benefit most from a relatively generous business model free of randomness.

Nick was the one who was really excited about a "Battle Pass" model. Fortnite is honestly a bit after our time, but the model seemed like a great way to provide a "Free to Play Premium" level of experience to the largest number of players. The most important thing for a TCG, especially an independent little one like this, is for us to grow in scale; the Pass provides cosmetics that we had fun designing for a large number of people in exchange for regular playtime, and encouraging more play is our top priority.

### How Does Collective Compare to Other Games?

Check out [this article](https://rngeternal.com/2017/10/01/going-deep-free-est-to-play/) for an in-depth (albeit slightly dated) comparison of other F2P card game economies.

The average competitive deck in other card games seems to cost $50-150, and the cost of owning 4 meta decks comes in around $250-450. In Collective, the cost of a deck isn't more than $10 for the Hero, plus some time to farm the Amber. The cost of owning 4 meta decks, in the most expensive scenario, would be $70 (\$30 on the All Cards Pass + 4 Heroes).

As a pure F2P player, it can take between 150-2000 game wins to build a meta deck in other games. Yes, I know that's a crazy wide range; see the _Feeling the Grind_ section of the above article. In Collective it will take about 100 (5 games per day for 20 days), assuming you're starting from nothing and aren't taking achievements into account. The games don't have to be multiplayer like in most other card games.

When making Collective, we came at it from a similar place as many of the current players. We've played a lot of games with complicated economies, and we wanted to make something that could be explained clearly and keep a good balance between having things to do without feeling like you're not getting anywhere.