Hi everyone! I’m Flaxative, a Card Hunter player whom you may know as pioneer of Peasant PvP, host of the first Card Hunter tournament, and founder of the Sorcererers guild. Jon has invited me to guest-blog about my latest Card Hunter endeavor: organizing the first ever ranked PvP season, a special metagame event that began on April 1st and will run through the end of June. The purpose of this event is to reward player activity and encourage Card Hunters to participate more fully in competitive play.
I’ll be here weekly with some stats and thoughts on the season. As this is the first time I’m discussing the event, though, I want to touch on what it entails and some of the rationale behind it.
Beginnings
When I began the work that would lead to me starting the season, I didn’t have a goal in mind. I was just curious. Who were the top 20 players, by rating? No—who were the top 20 players, by rating, who actually actively play? My criterion was “played 10 games within the last week.” Using a combination of the in-game leaderboards and Farbs’s meta site, I did some sleuthing and found that to get 20 active players you had to look at the top 58 highest-rated players.
This chart shows the active:inactive ratio among all players I had to consider in order to get the top 20 active players. Lest you find my criterion of 10 games/week harsh, it should be noted that the vast majority of “inactive” players actually hadn’t played a single game in over 2 weeks. This seemed tragic to me: all these strong players, disinterested or burned out, either way not participating in the evolution of the game’s environment, meta, or community! What could I do to encourage top players to remain active?
Thus the season was born. The idea was to reward, at the end of a 3-month period, the top 20 ranked players who stayed active throughout most of that period. I also wanted to reward people who played a lot even if their builds didn’t allow them top ratings, so I came up with two categories—best rating, and most wins.
Here we see the standings for the first week of the season. On the left are the players who placed for playing games; on the right are the players who placed for maintaining a high rating. Click for full view.
More details on these categories and the calculations involved can be found in my forum post announcing the season. Finishers in both categories are eligible for prizes—chests, as well as a shot at unique slime figurines! Whether it is the tangible prizes that entice players, or just the prestige and bragging rights of topping charts for 3 months in a row, I hope to see Card Hunters doing their best in coming weeks! Topple the reigning champions! Climb the weekly leaderboard! Glory, in the form of lovely, lovely cards, awaits.
Week 1
Assembling the standings for the first week yesterday, I was pleasantly surprised to find 20 active players in the top 45! This chart looks a lot better than the previous, and suggests that a full twelve high-rated players returned to the game this week. Whether they came for the season, whether they’ll stay: unknown. But I think the game is healthier the more people play more games, especially when those people are trying to win their games, and my hope is that the Card Hunter Spring Season serves as a fun incentive. Additionally, as noted in various places, standing factors into the calculations for the Most Wins category. I was extremely pleased to see that average standing was up from week 0 among the players who win the most games!
I’ve probably gone on long enough, though I’m happy to entertain discussion in the comments! Next week, I’ll be bringing stats for the 2nd week of the Spring Season, as well as some analysis of what is happening among high-rated players. It’ll be exciting to see if the upcoming expansion shakes things up 
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