The presumption I have (and acknowledged above) is that developing characters takes time and money; representing a cost outlay. The cost is recouped by selling crystals as a fundamental aspects of Kabam's business model.
Redeveloping older champions similarly takes time and money. There is no (immediate) recoup, because these are largely champions players already have. Currently, Kabam simply can't prioritise this, because it's an activity with significant cost and little tangible benefit. There are benefits to player experience, and satisfaction levels of the players (and quite possibly the Kabam team themselves); which is why it happens at all.
Currently, Kabam updates older champions as fast as they can, but only after they do all the things that form the primary business model of the game: creating new champions and new content on a specific schedule. The only way to update champions faster than they currently do is either a) hire more developers or b) do less of everything else. I assume when you say "prioritize" you mean spend more time updating old champs at the expense of doing less creating new content. That's never going to happen just by shifting revenue around. If as you say your goal isn't to try to force players to spend significantly more money, then in net overall terms there won't be any money to hire new people, and there won't be enough money to cause them to rethink their entire business.
Basically, this idea loses on a tie. If it somehow generates *huge* amounts of money, that means players must be spending more. That's the only possibility that would cause Kabam to change their mode of business. If it doesn't do this, then there's no reason to adopt an idea that changes the business but offers no return on the investment of doing that.
And I'm discounting all the side effects of trying to make this shift that I guarantee Kabam wouldn't discount. Shifting away from making new champions and towards updating old ones has the implicit effect of making the game more attractive to older players and less attractive to newer players. New champions are something no one has, and while veterans have advantages towards trying to get them, those advantages are vastly smaller than the advantages veterans have over directly possessing older champions. Tampering with this weighting is risky, since it affects your ability to attract new players and if you damage it, by the time this becomes evident in business reports it can be too late to do anything about it.
Comments
Currently, Kabam updates older champions as fast as they can, but only after they do all the things that form the primary business model of the game: creating new champions and new content on a specific schedule. The only way to update champions faster than they currently do is either a) hire more developers or b) do less of everything else. I assume when you say "prioritize" you mean spend more time updating old champs at the expense of doing less creating new content. That's never going to happen just by shifting revenue around. If as you say your goal isn't to try to force players to spend significantly more money, then in net overall terms there won't be any money to hire new people, and there won't be enough money to cause them to rethink their entire business.
Basically, this idea loses on a tie. If it somehow generates *huge* amounts of money, that means players must be spending more. That's the only possibility that would cause Kabam to change their mode of business. If it doesn't do this, then there's no reason to adopt an idea that changes the business but offers no return on the investment of doing that.
And I'm discounting all the side effects of trying to make this shift that I guarantee Kabam wouldn't discount. Shifting away from making new champions and towards updating old ones has the implicit effect of making the game more attractive to older players and less attractive to newer players. New champions are something no one has, and while veterans have advantages towards trying to get them, those advantages are vastly smaller than the advantages veterans have over directly possessing older champions. Tampering with this weighting is risky, since it affects your ability to attract new players and if you damage it, by the time this becomes evident in business reports it can be too late to do anything about it.