How is it that I've become addicted to SteemMonsters?

I fundamentally disagree with SteemMonster's monetization mechanic, as I pointed out in my previous post about opening up my booster packs that I got for backing SteemMonster's on a funding platform. The leveling up in the game is done half through battles and half by the purchase of cards, duplicates of which are combined. To actually get enough duplicates to level up a card from booster packs you would likely need to buy an astounding number. Thankfully they developed a market to buy and sell cards, so you can level up a card, as you go up in ranks, with a combination of duplicates that you get from booster packs, and ones that you buy from the market.

That mechanic in the game means that the game is far beyond just pay to win. To rank near the top in the game, you have to pay an extreme amount of money. If you don't have a lot of money, you can still play a bit, perhaps winning cards from contests on Steem. So, we are lucky that Steem comes with a social network where people like to throw contests. But you'll be better off in the game the more you pay.

Card games have always been a bit of a money pit. You spend a ton on a pack and booster packs...but you could definitely buy a starter pack and maybe a booster pack or two and at least have enough cards to put together some killer decks to play with your friends. Sure, you probably couldn't win against decks made by obsessed fans who bought fucktons of starter packs and booster packs...but those tournaments where those people play were not fundamental in the mechanics of the game.

When I started playing the game with just cards that I got from backing them, and a few I won in contests, after I dumbly upgraded a ton of them, trying to get the price up to sell them on the market, I quickly found that it was exceedingly difficult to win in the tournaments and succeed in the daily challenges to get booster cards. To win those challenges, you have to have enough cards under that color to win battles. To do that, you gotta possibly buy extra cards.

Of course, your cards don't get damaged and you can always sell them back and get some of the money you spent back, or even more, if you're lucky.

I actually bought a booster pack before I started writing this and managed to get a gold foil!

But that card's only going for 47 cents currently. That's assuming that no one dumbly buys a card for more expensive than the bottom price.

The best card there is actually the wizard, because it's a summoner.

You can also upgrade your cards by buying some of those in the market and then combining them with your own, hoping that by selling it at 2nd or 3rd or whatever level, you can get a slightly better price. That's what I did when that caused me to accidentally spend a ton of Steem on SteemMonsters. When I started doing that, I hadn't even played the game. I was having some kind of issue with Keychain and I couldn't manage to get it to play for some reason. But, also, the game is somewhat complex and hard to figure out the first time you play. This isn't helped by the fact that they didn't make an easy to follow tutorial that's linked in an obvious place. All these have is this shitty text explanation that points at shit.

But, once you start playing, you might pick up a bit. Then you get better and better at it as you play more games.

But once you start playing, you have no control.

So, just like DrugWars, this isn't really a game. You choose your cards, and the order of them, and don't even see what you're up against, and hope that whatever strategy you have for your deck works to win against theirs.

You also can't use any card more than once. This means that the more cards you have, preferably powerful ones, the easier it is to win, assuming you can manage to develop a good enough strategy.

All the choices they made in Steem Monsters means that it isn't just "Pay to Win", it's "Pay to Compete" and "Pay or Lose".

Steem Monsters is a bit challenging. You have to pick your cards and put them up against random users and hope you win...but it isn't really fun. It's just paying to collect these digital cards and then trying to figure out the order of them to win a contest to get more cards and rank up and get higher in the ranking.

And yet I've managed to spend a ton of money on the game, getting cards, upgrading them to hopefully sell them for a profit, and buying decks to hopefully get cards that are worth a lot.

Half of the "game" is gambling and betting on selling these cards for a profit. The other half really isn't that fun. But you have to play it to try to get more cards.