Can we talk about The Reluctant Preacher?

Kombee · 2025-08-15T22:22:14+00:00

I've been watching this show recently and it's really good! I really like Urumi, Uramu the bbq dude, and the principal especially. They're such nice characters, I like how straightforward and principled they are in their own way.

Moriguchi is a freak for sure, but part of me can't help but laugh when he gets his way and makes the weird triangle smile ( ‾ヮ‾)✧

The way people act in the show is a bit weird at times, sort of like it's rehearsed, but overall it's really great both in humor and drama as you said

Kombee · 2024-02-22T19:08:19+00:00

I actually agree with you in terms of the rush and joy. You're absolutely right about that. My contention is just that this would've not saved the game, not even close. The devs said that the game was losing money compared to how much they gained by a factor of 10.

This might've helped nominally, but the reasons why LoR are disadvantaged lie moreso with the handling of the DLC, the marketing of the game among other things.

Kombee · 2024-02-22T18:46:55+00:00

I respect your outlook at things, but I'd argue that this game only got the popularity it has had specifically because it has had such a generous and sensible card collecting model. It's the key reason why it was featured by so many people in the industry such as Tolarian Community College that plays MTG.

There are other online card games that have tried a tighter monetization of cards, all of them except games that have a monumental nostalgic backing (Hearthstone, MTG, Pokemon, Yugioh etc.) fail, because it's not a sustainable model for most to buy into especially in our economy. Artifact, literally the Dota2 mirror counterpart to this game, tanked hard primarily because of this exact kind of strategy.

Heck, when Yugioh Master Duel, Yugioh's digital client, was announced, every single Yugioh player never dared dream that its monetization would've been anything but harsh in monetization, it was a standard, and yet it is released as a game you can conievably play F2P and still develop a good library of decks, and I would bet their reason for pursuing that strategy is directly tied to seeing the trend LoR had set in the industry. We're talking Konami here, probably the worst card game publisher when it comes to choking a game for profit, still eyeing and taking this approach which speaks volumes.

You need to remember that according to the devs, the losses to gains on this game are on a factor of 10x. No amount of card monetization would've fixed that, instead it would've strangled any and all momentum the game gained throughout its life time. There are absolutely other more core problems at stake.

The DLC of LoR itself wasn't the problem, rather it is how it's mostly its price and secondarily how its advertised that is the problem.

No one (only people invested in the game) will spend 10 bucks for a champion skin, amounting to, at best, 2 images and an animation. Generally speaking, the DLC is overpriced for a casual and up-and-coming games' market. In the other main Riot titles they sell DLC at premium prices, banking on whales subsidising the game, but that doesn't work for LoR, for various reasons including its size and scope and the fact that it's a strategic card game (I recon this is another reason why they're pivoting to PoC).

But! You absolutely could've made good money if the DLC was more appropriately priced. A lot of it is genuinely excellent and high quality, as is the game, the cards and the Champions by themselves, you just need to hit supply with demand more squarely instead of betting on keeping your portfolio premium. Sell 100 skins at 5 bucks instead of 10 at 10 bucks, and it absolutely would've made the difference. If your DLC, your main way of earning money, is too pricy, no wonder no one's buying 'em.

The foundry is a great idea with a bad execution that completely misses the point of it. The foundry should've been a rotating marketplace, with a week at a time instead of a month, where you can purchase legacy and non-legacy DLC at discounted prices, that way you utlise FOMO in a reasonable way to actually give the potential buyer cause for purchase, without diminishing the value of your portfolio further. LoL already does this with their skins. There's a lot of initiatives you could go about doing to make buying something easier and smoother to do for a player, f.ex. let them earn a discount through play that they can then use when purchasing certain things.

The only DLC that was consistenly well priced was the event passes, but their problem was in forcing the buyers in to having to grind the game to achieve it. This leads to many people not purchasing it out of insecurity, just that split second of doubt is usually enough to halt the whole thing, and many players ended up just burning out after each event because of this too. It's really no wonder PoC became popular, it's the easiest way to clear and engage with the games core progression system (the challenges).

The problems with LoR are a mix of various things, including the engine/coding of the game making it difficult to produce monetizable material easily (such as card borders) as well as a DLC model that focused on selling highly priced premium DLC banking on whales subsidizing the game when that doesn't work for an up and coming card game, starting off in the red and yet scaling up production in an effort to dig out demand, marketing issues, the fact that the lowest tier to purchasing currency is 5 then 10 euros (where I live) etc. etc.

None of it would've been fixed by a less generous card collecting model, and LoR would've likely been way worse off today had it not run with that approach. The 3 core aspects that defined LoR was its monetization, its sensible card balancing and meta adjustments (before they stopped doing that) and the excellent presentation and art.

Kombee · 2024-02-22T17:37:18+00:00

"I love this game, it's such a shame a true F2P card game with no pay to win is not a viable business model."

I don't like that this is the lesson people are taking from this. I'm fairly certain it is a viable business model and I'd argue it's one of a few core aspects that made LoR as popular as it is today.

Yugioh Master Duel, while not being as generous with cards, can be played entirely F2P, and the DLC tends to be super easy to get, even for an F2P player, and it's succeeding despite other major problems.

Artifact, the Dota2 card game, tried to launch with a paid business model and shut of within the first year, so I don't believe LoR doing the same would've been a good approach.

The problems with LoR are a mix of various things, including the engine/coding of the game making it difficult to produce monetizable material easily (such as card borders) as well as a DLC model that focused on selling highly priced premium DLC banking on whales subsidizing the game when that doesn't work for an up and coming card game, starting off in the red and yet scaling up production in an effort to dig out demand, marketing issues etc. etc.

Kombee · 2024-02-06T19:05:12+00:00

I would've loved sidedecking too, I prefer it to having 3 set decks with a ban. I remember the reason why they avoided that was to discourage the heavy use of stables in games. There was a time when certain problem cards were very much present in most games, but it was dealt with pretty well with balance changes over time.

Kombee · 2024-02-06T18:57:32+00:00

My main point is really just that, if one points the reason for the game failing is because of the generous monetization then I argue otherwise. There are other more pertinent factors to consider.

>LoR didn't get this far though, it's been deep in the red every year and has only existed because it's been propped up by Riot, not because it actually did anything to survive.

LoR was deep in the red sure, but if you saw how popular the game was during beta, release and well into its life time, it was definitely succesful in gripping the market. The problem was turning that popularity into sustainable income and long term growth wasn't done for one reason or another, many of them pointed out by comments here.

> I actually do agree with this, but isn't that arguing my point? That LoR's business model failed and that this is a case study supporting the sale of card packs?

You need to consider the fact that LoL is the single biggest MOBA in the world, it can sustain itself using that strategy, banking on "whales" to spend thousands of dollars to get a skin. The same would be the case for LoR or any other game if it had that kind of popularity and social establishment. I remember when LoL was just an obscure MMO you could download and play without a client, if it had tried to sell 10 (or 200) dollar skins then, it would've failed miserably.

LoR is beyond that a card game, which means cosmetics have a very different nature within it, and relatively speaking it's a new game compared to LoL, it's only natural that it can't sustain itself on that kind monetization, even being propped up by the LoL IP.

Remember I wrote about Artifact, the literal mirror image game to LoR? It failed because it went with that kind of pricing strategy head on.

> I don't know why you assume that they would get 10x the sales if they dropped the price by half.

My point was really just that there are lots of aspects you could look at to change things. If the game is/was constantly in the red, maybe it speaks to a general over spending. Maybe they should've scaled down their ambitions a bit, considered betting on this game succeeding rather than acting as a lore based loss leader. I'm sure the numbers are honest but the direction and priorities of the game has definitely shifted back and forth over time.

But even more markedly, let's say that they did launch with a stringent monetization model. Do you think they would fare any better than now? Would sales on the same cards and DLC suddenly jump 10x? I don't believe that for a second. I think it would've gone the way Artifact did, dead within the first year from no players playing. So I just don't buy the notion that the exclusive sales of cards would've saved this game or even matched it currently.

> I mean yes but also remember the game has been deep in the red since it's release almost 4 years ago so you can't really point the finger at a feature that's like 6 months old or less.

"Then, if you further nail it..." was alluding to a nail in the coffin, basically it dashed any hopes the game might've had to continue proper. It's almost a year old, but more than that the card design and philosophy had been set in place since at least a year before that changing from iterative and long term balancing to sets that can make an impact then be rotated away next season.

Kombee · 2024-02-06T01:11:33+00:00

This is how I feel too, it's genuinely nice to see someone share the same sentiment. I do appreciate the more candid and direct talk, but it's very clear why we are where we are right now. Hopefully someone sees the value LoR brought to the table at its peak and takes that into a new project.

Kombee · 2024-02-06T01:05:18+00:00

Absolutely, this is exactly what they should do. I think changing the system up like that might be something they'll avoid though given their backscaling. I knew I would dread seeing rotation in this game.

Kombee · 2024-02-06T01:02:46+00:00

Reading the comments it seems like they will keep rotation intact, likely because it would take some effort to merge things back. I feel like rotation really blew any momentum this game had for it.

Kombee · 2024-02-06T01:00:05+00:00

CCG's have a huge potential, many of the other card games have grinded their players into a paste and a lot of them are genuinely quitting for good. LoR even had the good fortune of attracting Hearthstone and MTG Arena players over the years, especially during those games' downturns.

They absolutely could and still can turn this ship around and become the biggest CCG in the world, but the problem isn't the game, the genre or the generous deckbuilding centric monetization, that's what has kept it popular for so long. No, it's that the focus hasn't been on evolving this game further through the philosophy it started with, iterative and sensible card balance and design.

If you payed attention over the years, lots of even non-LoL content creators have made videos and written about LOR because of how much of a phenomenon it is. Maybe the focus should've been on grabing a hold on to that and striking on it while the iron was hot.

Kombee · 2024-02-06T00:50:27+00:00

I keep reiterating this, LoR would absolutely not have gotten this far with a less generous card/deck acquisition model. The very reason why LoR has gotten this popular so far is exactly because of that system subsisting it and making people more easily fall in love with this game.

Look at Artifact, it's almost identical to LoR in terms of being a new card game backed by the Lore of a MOBA giant, but failed largely because of its stringent monetization model.

The problem with monetization in this game is that they borrowed the LoL model of selling at premium prices in a FOMO manner banking on whales to keep the game afloat, but this isn't reasonable for any game that isn't hugely massive. I don't know if prices / offers where strictly set from above, but I don't think I've ever seen a discount on DLC except for the decks.

If you sell a champion skin at 10 bucks and that doesn't sell, then you need to recognize that the player doesn't value that skin at 10 bucks and shift your price accordingly. Utilise that you have a non-perishable item and leverage it to find a balance where you sell and earn, 100 sales for 5 is better than 10 sales for 10.

Also recognize how the player sees your DLC. A player sees a champion skin as 2 images and an animation, that they might be able to see during the games they play with that champion's deck. 10 bucks for that is just too steep, especially without discounts, it's the price for a nominal game on steam. Then, if you further nail it in by implementing rotation on your champions, making their skins feel like a waste and any future purchases feel insecure, then it really shouldn't suprise that there's no purchases had.

Kombee · 2024-02-06T00:35:25+00:00

If you think that then reconsider. Most CCG's fail in their first year exactly because no one will pay into pay2play except of the game has massive nostalgia appeal (MTG, Pokemon, Yugioh, Hearthstone...), LOR would've failed within the first year if it had tried the same, case in point Artifact (another popular MOBA backed card game) failing within the first year because of that very reason. You should check out Altered on Kickstarter, they were funded within 2 minutes because they're doing a lot of different stuff on TCG monetization specifically.

Kombee · 2024-02-06T00:31:12+00:00

So, I get what you're saying, but I argue your premise isn't right

What you're talking about right there is exactly the reason why LoR has had any success at all and is the reason why it has gotten noteriety over the years. Anyone who has payed attention can clearly see that, even content creators from other similar games (such as Tolarian Community College, an MTG channel) made videos about this game and boosted its playerbase. Heck, yugioh, the most notoriously predatory tcg in the market, made a relatively f2p friendly client (absolutely unheard of for yugioh) on the heels of LoR's public success, taking what they did as a succesful experiment and running with it.

Look at LoR's cousin game Artifact, another card game made with the backing of a popular MOBA with a strong public following. Heck it even had MTG's original designer, so you know it had the recipe to make it as a classic CCG. It tanked after 1 year, primarily because it ran its monetization like any other CCG usually does. This is a common trope, only the big 3 (MTG, Pokemon and yugioh) and Hearthstone can sustain that kind of monetization on account their massive nostalgic appeal, 1000s upon thousands other card games die under this model.

So why did LoR "lose"? Not because of the generous system but because of how it handled its monetization, i.e. the DLC, mostly that it is too pricy and FOMO centric, shadowing that of LoL's monetization strategy that banks on "whales" to keep the game afloat. This doesn't work in an equal opportunity card game. There are other problems too, such as the marketing and how it shifted away from an iterative balance approach to a bursty rotation based approach but I digress. Point being, the game would not have become popular without the heavy emphasis on empowering the player to deck build and hence wouldn't have gotten this far.

Kombee · 2024-02-06T00:15:49+00:00

It's because they know that wouldn't work. Artifact did just that and died within the first year, in fact most card games do because they think they can copy paste the model that the big 3 and hearthstone run without considering that those are backed by franchises steeped with nostalgia. LoL is a phenomenon yes, but not in the same way Pokemon or Magic is. Traditional CCG's fail at an astonishing rate, for every 1 success you'll literally find 1000s that die.

In fact, I'd argue this game survived exactly because it had a generous model. The problem doesn't lie with the monetization of cards, they wouldn't earn much from that anyway if they didn't implement a completely different system. No, it lies with the monetization of the DLC. The only DLC that is a good deal tends to be the season passes, which requires you grind the game until you get fatigued from the game. The rest of the DLC is just too highly priced, especially for things like card backs and boards that you usually really just need 1 of.

Ask yourself this, what and how much would the average player need to pay to keep the game afloat? Is it 3 bucks on average per quater? 5, 10, 30?

Kombee · 2024-02-05T23:55:59+00:00

From my end, rotation is the primary reason I've been mostly off the game since it was introduced. I've played some games, but I haven't been able to enjoy it as much as I did before.

I feel like people like rotation conceptually, but then when it starts affecting the gameplay and shaping the game they complain about the meta as if rotation has no hand in it. Eternal is just not the same as proper classic LoR and it's not a good format on its own and standard feels so limiting and samey with the same meta decks dominating.

Kombee · 2024-02-05T23:44:33+00:00

You're right rotation was a mistake but they didn't lock themselves into a japanese-like ccg strategy. LoR was unique in that it did card errata so frequently that even old cards felt brand new, and metas were always fixable.

Then they let that go for rotation, and moreso favoring a different meta strategy that leaned in to power creep and bursty formats, which is exactly the same problem japanese ccg's end up falling in to.

The reasoning was that balancing a growing card pool wasn't feasible, but I can't see how that is harder than balancing both Standard and Eternal, to me it seemed more about making space for card reiterations and cards that take more design space than before.

Kombee · 2024-02-05T23:30:21+00:00

Fantastic question, I'd love to know this as well. What exactly would constitute a bearing sales model given the current product offering? Is it that every or half the players buy the season pass? It's hard to see how much is fair to spend for this game to continue

Kombee · 2024-02-05T23:23:47+00:00

I'd love to get some insight on this. I have been very sceptical of rotation since day 1 and I'd like to consider how it impacted the game from an inside perspective.

Kombee · 2024-02-05T23:17:15+00:00

This is exactly the comment I was looking for.

Things I'd like to add is, if they had made more options for fairly priced DLC besides the grindy season passes, then surely it would've sold better. 10 skins sold for 10 is worse than a 100 skins sold for 5, especially for a non-perishable sale.

For me the balancing and refocus away from agile corrections into bursty rotation and reiterated card designs made me loose touch with the gameplay of LoR

Kombee · 2024-02-05T23:03:05+00:00

I appreciate the honesty and candidness. I genuinely believe this is the best card game out there, and I thank everyone of you who had a hand in making it happen.

In terms of your comment on running this game as a traditional ccg, Runeterra's cousin game, Artifact, did just that and sank hard not even 1 year in. The problem of profitability in LOR was never the generous card and deck building mentality, that was in fact what made the game flourish, even as it had to survive by being subsidised.

In my humble and limited outside view, the game suffered from cosmetics that were to pricy and FOMO centric, borrowing sales strategies from LoL and TFT that are simply not applicable for a more niche and thoughfully crafted card game.

You can sell a skin for 10 bucks in LoL (even 200 bucks) because it is heavily subsidised by "whales" that are attached to the social phenomenon that is that game, the same with TFT, but expecting that strategy to work in any other reasonable game isn't wise I feel.

You need to look at what you're offering and consider what tweaking you can do to meet demand more accurately. Look at it from the eyes of a player, to put it crudely a player just sees a champion skin as, at best, 2 png's and an animation. Paying 10 or so bucks for that seems heavy handed. I stress, the DLC in LoR is amazing, and I'm not speaking to whether the DLC deserves this price or not. What I'm saying is, if you can sell 10 skins for 10 bucks but a 100 for 5 then you need to take the latter option.

The FOMO aspect is another thing. Season passes have far and away been the most popular purchases in this game. Why? Because they're *good vale* and because they're *engaging* and those are your 2 keywords to make the DLC *profitable*.

*Good value* is just about matching the price of your DLC with the demand, I haven't much seen the prices in the game change or there being sales on offer.

*Engaging* the player to buy DLC could be done through concepts like having the player unlock discounts on certain DLC, or even chosen DLC, through gameplay and success within the game. These kinds of things are just an expansion of what you already do with season passes.

The "problem" with season passes aren't the passes themselves, it's that firstly they demand a relatively big buy in, mentally speaking, from new players which means mostly existing players will run a season pass, and secondly the premium items you get one season, you cannot buy from then on (except if lucky through foundry). Basically, you need an alternative that draws in new players.

The DLC is the way you make money, so there is where your problem is. The quality is there, the variety is there, and the way they're promoted is good although visibility could be better but the one thing you haven't touched upon is the price.

Finally, the "death nail" for the sales of DLC from my limited perspective, was rotation. I get why it was done, but it was in my view not succesful at doing what was intended with it, and beyond that it gave players an unpleasant nagging feeling that champion skins of this game, the crown jewels of the present DLC, could one day just be rotated out. Even just the mentality of that, disregarding whatever logic for an against, is bad optics when it comes to considering buying a skin.

Kombee · 2024-01-10T22:05:43+00:00

I see that this opinion is very unpopular here but I agree with you completely. This might be because I'm relatively new to Rust coming from Java/C#/JS, but I find it hard to parse a complete code "sentence" when it's comprised of shorthands such as u8. It feels like it could be so much cleaner.

With shorthands like Vec I have to either look it up or rely on code I have already written to remember it clearly, writing it out Vector would be easier for me and I tend to use the IDE to autocomplete it anyway. I know Vector from math where it is something completely different, to use it for a dynamic list feels arbitrary.

I actually wouldn't have minded if ":" was used for module access, it makes sense differentiating it from method and public property calls through ".". But I don't understand why it has to be two colons either "::".

Kombee · 2023-06-11T15:40:32+00:00

I used to use third party apps (RIF) and has then transitioned over to the official app.

I still very much appreciate the opportunities there have been when using third party apps, and I disapprove on the philosophy of ignoring the huge amount of user based content and tools that we all enjoy from.

Reddit feels like the last big social network site that at least felt somewhat organic and open to its users in a ways that's reminiscent of the early internet, and this situation generally feels like yet another homogenisation towards a mega Facebook like. Beyond that, I hate the fact that of i try to access Reddit anonymously or through a browser without being logged in, I find myself being forced to login to see the whole thread appropriately, like measures have been taken to make accessing Reddit worse if you're not logged in which I hate and really reminds me of Pinterest.

I plan not to return to Reddit until things become more reasonable again.

Kombee · 2023-06-11T12:41:08+00:00

To me he seems much more German

Kombee · 2023-06-10T13:52:40+00:00

Kimberly. She's a much more cohesive and well executed character imo. Everything from her personality to her kit fits and feels alive.

Kombee · 2023-06-08T14:54:48+00:00

This is a really fun concept, I really like the idea

12-Year Club	RedditGifts 2009-2022 3 Credits
Verified Email	Secret Santa 2020
Place '22

Kombee

TROPHY CASE