Gauging thoughts/interest for new VPS

[sin]

The concept has 3 main components to it, but primarily consists of a hybrid between traditional pet sites and card collecting.

Pet/Card Collecting​

So pets and the cards themselves are initially collected separately, but can be combined. The cards themselves are more background treatments if anything, until combined with a pet. Each set of packs we release would have a specific theme to it and would release with a number of unique pets, unique pet skins, and unique cards. The twist is that each of these item types actually have their own drop rate and will come in limited numbers. If you combine the correct pet, skin, and card background, you create the rare card it's meant to be and the rarity is more than the rarity of each of those items separately.

Trading/Selling​

Beyond just collecting packs, you can also trade pets/cards/skins as well as put them up for sale, or purchase them for a set price by other users. Additionally, the system would allow you to destroy cards and get currency back directly. This would be a quicker way of getting currency, but the exchange rate would be a set amount and generally probably not as profitable as selling manually. Mostly useful for getting rid of a lot of low-end duplicates.

Chat​

Collecting is a social experience in my opinion. Showing off your prized collection and getting to see what rare items other people have is part of the excitement. So one component of this concept would be a sort of Discord chat system. This allows people to be more active and chat synchronously than traditional forums (like VPL) usually offer. There would be a sort of user card next to everyone in order to show their best cards and other cosmetics (like avatars).

Misc. Ideas​

• Seaon-based leaderboards. With each season, new sets are released and users are ranked against each other based on who has the most items collected. Users would get awards based on ranking certain rank tiers within a season.
• Events and/or Drops. Events that are either time-limited (ex. you only have 10 minutes to participate), or you must perform certain actions to participate. The items in these events/drops would be unique and maybe happen a few times throughout a season.

 

[KiRAWRa]

This honestly sounds really intriguing, as someone addicted to both pet sites and card collecting, I could see this being a hit. Though I've noticed that the VPS community has a bit of pushback when it comes to "loot boxes" and rare drop rates and anything that could be considered predatory gambling. I'm sure this sort of game would attract a crowd that is used to card collecting mechanics, so it may not be that big of a deal, but I mention it anyway because everyone in the gaming space seems to be pretty on-edge about anything perceived as a cash-grab these days.
Perhaps I skimmed over it, but would there be a battling or gaming element with the cards as well, or would it simply be a collector's showcase? It would be great if the cards/pets had some functions other than just looking pretty.
As long as things are balanced fairly and it doesn't become a "pay to win" scenario, I think this is a really cool and unique take on a collectathon-style virtual pet site.

 

[sin]

This honestly sounds really intriguing, as someone addicted to both pet sites and card collecting, I could see this being a hit. Though I've noticed that the VPS community has a bit of pushback when it comes to "loot boxes" and rare drop rates and anything that could be considered predatory gambling. I'm sure this sort of game would attract a crowd that is used to card collecting mechanics, so it may not be that big of a deal, but I mention it anyway because everyone in the gaming space seems to be pretty on-edge about anything perceived as a cash-grab these days.
Perhaps I skimmed over it, but would there be a battling or gaming element with the cards as well, or would it simply be a collector's showcase? It would be great if the cards/pets had some functions other than just looking pretty.
As long as things are balanced fairly and it doesn't become a "pay to win" scenario, I think this is a really cool and unique take on a collectathon-style virtual pet site.

I'm actually on the same boat with you and that sentiment isn't limited to the VPS community. I think the key to any game with luck-base collection is that it must not be pay to win (giving an explicit advantage for paying users) and must also be accessible without paying (aka still being able to earn packs for free). I think the main monetization model for this game would be some sort of battlepass-like system, where you pay something like $5-10 for a season and get a bunch of content over a period of time, but always having free tiers and reasonable ways to earn premium currency for free.

I agree that a dueling system would be perfect. The reason why I didn't mention it in the first post is because I'm trying to develop the most barebones version of this game that is also still worthwhile and profitable (otherwise known as a Minimum Viable Product aka MVP). My reference for this concept was Subeta, which remains to have many of the traditional VPS features, but users mostly utilize the cosmetics and chat aspects to the game at this point. So my thought was to take the core of what makes Subeta successful and build a game specifically around those features.

That being said, I am finding it difficult to conceptualize a practical gameplay loop (or player progression model). Without a dueling system, the player progression would have to be limited to social activity (logging in and using the chat function for example), or referring other users to the game. FYI when I refer to player progression, I'm talking about the earning of currency and packs, which consequently enables a user to progress in their collection journey. Neonmob.com does employ the aforementioned progression model, but it's not particularly engaging, or fun.

So what would dueling be like? I need to flesh out a full concept of this, but at a high level, I'm exploring ideas that are a blend between Marvel Snap and Clash Royale. I do love the idea of displaying these cards in a "live" environment and making them feel tangible, although that's unfortunately not realistic for a small budget. The other aspect I like about Clash Royale is that it's not turn-based, only based on elixir. So the goal is to create something strategic, yet fairly straight forward, visually exciting, and strictly resource-based rather than turn-based.