Chapter 162: Card Packs
Chapter 162: Card Packs
At that, he instinctively realized this game was not played only with the initially provided cards, and he confirmed it again by checking the manual and the Spirit Space bulletin boards.
<When are they selling card packs for this?>
<Hurry up and release them already. How are we supposed to build decks by grinding coins?>
Coins referred to the currency earned by winning games. When he checked the market mentioned in the manual earlier, he saw that card packs and individual cards were sold using that currency. However, the offline card packs, the other card acquisition method mentioned in the manual, did not seem to have been released yet.
In any case, this game seemed quite popular. Billus checked new releases fairly often, so it had definitely been released yesterday or today, yet there were already many posts about Magic and Creature on the bulletin board.
Among those posts, the desire for specific cards was especially intense.
<Damn it! If I had just one “Divine Protection,” I could win everything!>
<Huh? Isn’t that card kind of bad? It only blocks one attack.>
<That’s if you use it raw. You have to use it in a combo. After summoning everything, you block the opponent’s field wipe, or if I wipe out all the opponent’s creatures, it becomes a guaranteed-win skill.>
<Keep dreaming. Can you even afford that cost?>
<Yeah. Next scrub. Don’t you even know “Automatic Activation”?>
<Oh. Right. But that’s a rare card too.>
It seemed people had already researched quite a few strategies. Then again, among the people who usually talked about games on Spirit Space, there really were many whose actual job might as well have been game research.
Billus decided to look up strategies first.
He simply wanted to win, but more than that, he needed to win and gather coins if he wanted to buy in-game card packs.
Oh... something like this exists.
At first, he had understood the game simply as gathering mana, summoning creatures, and casting magic. But when he read the strategy posts people had written, he realized there was depth to it.
Some of them were so unconventional that he wondered how anyone even thought of them.
Billus admired a strategy that used “Offense-Defense Reversal,” one of the basic cards, to build up a powerful creature.
<Swaps Health and Attack points.>
He had only thought of it as something used in emergencies to reverse a glass-cannon summon with high attack power and use it for defense, but there was a strategy that combined several cards to finish the opponent in one blow.
I want to try this.
He immediately returned to the game and tried it.
But in TCG games, learning a strategy did not mean one could use it right away. The cards appeared randomly. Billus somehow endured while gathering the necessary cards in his hand, but the key card, “Berserk,” refused to appear no matter what.
Damn it! RNG bullshX game!
In the end, Billus died without even using the strategy, simply getting beaten while holding cards in his hand. And then he realized something. In this game, charging in with only one strategy could easily ruin him.
Billus returned to the strategy board and searched for usable strategies again.
Then he repeated matches over and over. Still, his sense was not bad, and his active search for strategies this early paid off, so his win rate was not poor.
Thanks to that, he managed to gather enough coins that day to open his first card pack.
Billus felt deeply moved as he looked at the text reading 100 Coins at the bottom of Spirit Space’s crude screen. Each win gave 10 coins, and getting 10 wins truly had not been easy.
Everyone else was also staking everything on these card packs, so they were desperate to win no matter what.
At last, he was about to buy a card pack with slightly trembling hands when a familiar voice came from outside his room.
“Billus! Come eat!”
“Huh?”
Billus looked up at the clock in surprise, then became even more flustered when he saw that it was already six in the evening. Two hours had passed without him even realizing it.
He had started only intending to try the newly released game a little, but he had not expected to become this completely absorbed.
“Yes! Just a moment!”
Billus considered buying the card pack before eating, then changed his mind. Since the cards that appeared were random, he wanted to open it after preparing himself a little more.
He stood up, then suddenly seemed to remember something. He placed his hands back on the keyboard and pressed the package download button.
It was obvious that he would be absorbed in this game for a while, so he thought he might as well enjoy it through the package version with proper illustrations.
Forty minutes later, after returning, he confirmed the download had finished and installed the package first.
“Oh...”
The package version was definitely different. For one thing, the fact that it launched as a separate program rather than inside Spirit Space already made it feel different, and after watching the opening that explained the setting, it felt like a properly made game.
More than anything, the illustrations were cool.
The overall layout was no different from Spirit Space, but the card images that had been roughly represented by symbols were now depicted as atmospheric illustrations, so the feeling was completely different.
I really want these.
He had never been interested in buying pictures to hang up, but when combined with the characteristics of a game, they felt incredibly appealing. With his desire to own them stimulated, Billus decided that when those card packs came out, he would definitely buy them too.
Of course, first I’ll open this online card pack.
Billus checked the in-game market. The market he had seen earlier on Spirit Space had already made his heart pound, but this one had proper illustrations drawn in, so it felt even more exciting.
The card packs were also packaged like small paper envelopes, making them feel more realistic.
So the card packs that come out later will look like this?
This world did not yet have TCGs or card pack products, so the form of the market inside the game became a way for players to imagine what the card packs that would be sold later would look like.
In truth, Ras had not thought too deeply about it and had simply copied the image of card packs from the card games he had played in Korea. But it ended up slightly lowering the entry barrier for this unfamiliar product.
This had a greater effect than expected. People always tended to prefer familiar things and avoid unfamiliar things.
Death Knight. This one looks cool. Ah, but Curse of Corrosion also seems really good.
He did not open the card pack right away and instead checked the list of cards that could appear from it. Before buying something, he wanted to know what kind of item it was, and since gathering 100 coins had not been easy, he hesitated slightly.
But these 100 coins were money he had gathered to buy this card pack. In the end, Billus clicked the purchase button.
Then the card pack shone brilliantly and slowly opened.
Since this world did not yet commonly use vinyl or plastic, most packaging was made of paper, so Ras had also depicted the card pack with paper wrapping.
Inside the light were eight silver-shining cards. They soon seemed to float upward, leaping out of the pack and settling calmly on dark red velvet. Decorated with Rune Language and geometric patterns, the cards gave off a faint glow as they waited for the player’s click.
<Please click the card you want.>
There was a separate button at the top to flip everything at once, but Billus wanted to enjoy this moment, so he decided to flip them one by one.
“Come on...”
The first card he flipped showed a rotting zombie. It was not in the basic deck and had slightly high Health for its cost, but in the end, it was nothing more than filler.
Billus grumbled that it had such needlessly flashy effects for such a worthless card.
Still, he straightened his expression again and moved the mouse cursor to another card. Like that, Billus flipped and checked each card one by one.
“Uh...”
The result was that every single one was a dud.
At least Skeleton Grave could be considered a somewhat usable card, but this was not the result Billus had wanted.
In this way, Billus learned what gacha was.
And three days later, he found himself agonizing over real card packs at Arcade Game Land.
Originally, Ras wanted to release the card packs at the same time as the game. But unlike uploading a game to Spirit Space, real-world distribution had many variables.
Some regions were prepared without any major issues and could have released them immediately, but Ras wanted as much of a simultaneous release as possible, so he simply chose to delay the release by a few days.
“These are used in matches between players. If some regions can buy them first and build decks while other regions have to fight with basic decks, it’d be too unfair.”
“True.”
Ella nodded at Ras’s words. She had also found this game quite fun, so she had asked because she wanted to buy card packs and build a deck too.
However, the delay in the card pack release actually seemed to help its success.
Over the past few days, those who had played the game learned which cards were good, started wanting them, and no longer hesitated over whether to buy them or not. Their attitude had changed to simply wanting the packs to be released already.
The same applied to resistance toward buying cards used in a game with real money.
If one wanted to achieve 10 wins using a basic deck against people of similar skill, one’s head would practically explode. It also took a lot of time. But if they bought packs with real money, they could open a card pack for only 1 Del, so it only felt cheap instead.
On top of that, they could also own the physical cards.
“Give me ten!”
After standing in line for a long time, Billus immediately called out the number as soon as his turn came. He had been agonizing over it the entire time he waited.
After opening online card packs through the game for three days, he realized the probability was truly awful. So if he wanted to pull anything worthwhile, he calculated that he needed to buy at least ten packs.
Of course, the more he bought, the higher his chances would be, so in his heart, he wanted to buy about a hundred. But even he felt burdened by spending too much money on a game, so after much thought, he settled on ten.
“Ah. I’m sorry. These card packs are limited to five per person.”
But the female employee taking the order replied with an apologetic expression.
“Five?”
“Yes. The quantity is limited.”
She said this while gesturing to the people standing behind Billus. Billus was dissatisfied, but when he saw dozens of people standing there looking in his direction, he found himself nodding.
“Yes. Then it can’t be helped. Give me five.”
“Yes. Here you go.”
Once he accepted that number, he also felt a little relieved. Part of him had wondered whether even ten was too many.
Also, if packs could be bought with money, he had worried that people with lots of money would quickly build their decks and he would inevitably lose whenever he fought rich players. But now he knew that would not happen so easily.
In fact, this was what Ras had aimed for.
It was not a countermeasure against limited stock. Even he had not expected the response to be this strong.
This was a strategy to make the game’s lifespan last as long as possible.
He was also a businessman, so he did not think making profit was bad. However, he judged that moving only in the direction of selling as many packs as possible would instead shorten the game’s lifespan.
As Billus had just worried, if the game became unfair, some people’s motivation would break. And from the perspective of people who bought many packs, if they collected all their decks too quickly, their interest could cool as well.
Of course, this kind of sales limit could be bypassed by going around to other stores or asking other people to buy packs.
But if someone was willing to use tricks like that, their interest probably would not cool that quickly.
Also, such people would be a minority anyway. And since card packs themselves granted cards through luck, there would inevitably be players with stronger decks than others, so the overall structure would not become severely distorted.
Footnotes:
Glossary reference checked against uploaded project glossary.
Translator’s Notes:
TCG (Trading Card Game) — A collectible card game genre where players build decks from cards acquired through packs or purchases and compete under defined rules. Real-world examples include Magic: The Gathering (1993, USA) and Yu-Gi-Oh! (1999, Japan).
Gacha — A monetization and reward mechanic derived from Japanese capsule toy vending machines, where players spend currency for randomized items. In games, it commonly refers to randomized draws for cards, characters, or equipment.
RNG — Short for “random number generator,” commonly used in gaming to refer to luck-based outcomes. “RNG game” is often used negatively when players feel results depend too heavily on luck.