After just a few short months since it was first implemented, free-to-play shooter Paladins‘ ‘Cards Unbound’ system is being removed from the game. Introduced late last year, the partially pay-to-win nature of Cards Unbound drew a hefty amount of criticism from the Paladins player base, as well as from staff members within Hi-Rez Studios. The news of the system’s departure comes by way of Paladins‘ new Executive Producer HiRezChris, who released a statement outlining the upcoming changes being made to the game. Check it out here:

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.

We want the focal point of the card system in Paladins to be about fun ways to customize your champion to your favored playstyle.  We also want to unify the COMPETITIVE and CASUAL experiences with the card system so that we use the same system for both (no more separation of bound vs unbound).

We are still working out the details of the new system, but the rough outline of our current thinking is as follows (NOTE: Subject to some change, but hopefully this communicates the general direction we want to head):

• 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.

The release plan is to start testing this new system as soon as we can on PTS (hopefully, next week).  Your analysis and participation will be very important over the next few weeks as we work the kinks out of this design and deliver the best possible product to you in the next update.

Paladins is free-to-play for PC, PlayStation 4, and Xbox One. Its upcoming Paladins: Battlegrounds mode is arriving at some point in 2018.

So, thoughts on the removal of the Cards Unbound system? What other changes would you make to the game? Let us know in the comments section below, and as always, stay tuned to Don’t Feed the Gamers for all the latest gaming and entertainment news! Don’t forget to follow DFTG on Twitter for our 24/7 news feed!