Earlier this week, I came across the phenomenon of bad Paladins fanart created in Paint to protest the controversial Cards Unbound, the game's lootboxes that players deemed incredibly pay-to-win and well... the results were frankly majestic. Still, the desired result of any protest is change, and that is precisely what Hi-Rez have offered with the removal of Cards Unbound.

Speaking to the playerbase directly, Executive Producer Chris Larson explained that looking solely at the Cards Unbound metrics, the system was actually fairly successful from a financial and player conversion standpoint however, they have heard players complaints loud and clear.

"We know this system has angered many of our most loyal fans and become a point of continuous contention in the Paladins community (and even inside of Hi-Rez). Your voice has been heard loud and clear.

Our team will be working over the next major release cycle to remove Cards Unbound from the game. We will be replacing it with a new system that I believe the community will be really excited about -- including the re-introduction of the deck building point system, and a method for obtaining cards that will be way less grindy."

New Card System

Larson says that Hi-Rez first and foremost want Paladins' card system to be about fun ways to customize champions and that they want to bring competitive and casual playstyles together within one system so that there is no more separation of bound vs unbound.

The rough outline for the new system, though subject to change, is thus:

  • Legendary Cards will now be called Talents.

  • Talents will only have a single level.

    • Talents will be unlocked for free by earning XP and gaining Champion levels (for example; level 1,5,10,15).

  • All Champion Cards will now be free (No cost or grind).

  • Deck creation will return to a point system where players can distribute 15 points across the five cards they select for their loadout. Each Champion Card will have five ranks to choose from.

  • Talents will not have ranks, and are not included in the loadout point cap.

  • Talents and Decks will continue to be chosen at match start to allow players to tailor their playstyles based on their opponents.<

  • New Talents will be added over time and give further varied playstyles.

  • Champion Mastery will no longer be capped at level 25. Instead, it will work similarly to Player Account leveling (which has no cap).

  • Card chests will be removed from the game.

  • We are evaluating the best options to compensate players for their previously earned cards, and hope to share details soon.

We can expect to see this new system on the PTS asap, perhaps as soon as next week, so if you want to be involved in making sure the Cards Unbound replacement is up to scratch, make sure you get in on that and share any thoughts and critique you can.

Battlegrounds

In other Paladins-related news, Battlegrounds began Open Beta testing on Wednesday so if you're interested in seeing how Hi-Rez do the battle royale format, you can you can read more about the latest update here or watch the video attached below.

## Our Thoughts

Hahahahahahahahaha. I'm sorry, I didn't get to say it earlier and bad art is my one true weakness. Thanks to the legend on the Paladins subreddit for documenting everything, but perhaps most importantly, thanks to Hi-Rez for listening to its fans and making the change. It is always awesome to see devs listening to players and this is a good step forward.

Source: Google Doc, Official Site via MassivelyOP

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