A hidden cost of war (that Kabam overlooked)
So for a while now I've been buying war potions and revives, to try to slowly stock up on them You want to buy these over time if possible, because the costs escalate. I know a lot of people are hoping the entire system is either scrapped or radically overhauled, but I'm not going to wait around for that Christmas miracle.
However, it occurred to me today that this process of stocking up contains a somewhat hidden, but gigantic cost of war that Kabam has introduced. This might seem obvious to some, but I don't believe it has been actively discussed. So let's look (again) at some numbers.
The loyalty store has three levels of revives for sale: L1, L2, and L3. Their costs are 7k, 25k, and 45k. For now, it isn't important what they do. The inventory limits on those are 10 each, 13 if you have the Sigil. I'm going to assume no Sigil for now. In theory, that means you actually fully stock your inventory, even if you spread out the purchases enough to only buy one at a time at the base cost, it will cost you 770k loyalty to fill your inventory with those revives. Similarly, single potions cost 1500, 7500, 15k, and 20k. Their inventory limit is 20, which means it would cost 880k loyalty to fill that inventory. And finally team potions cost 4k, 25k, 50k, and 75k with a 10 inventory limit. This costs 1.54 million loyalty to fill. This means it will take a total of 3.19 million loyalty to stock up to full. We are, however, getting a flood of certain items, including L2 revives. Let's assume no one has to spend anything to fill up on that one item (we are also getting a flood of L5 health potions, but we can't buy those anyway from the loyalty store). So let's deduct the 250k it would take to fill up L2 revives. That leaves 2,940,000 loyalty to stock up on the potions for sale in the loyalty store.
That loyalty is just *gone*. What do I mean? Well, let's consider the case of anyone who's actually doing war, actually using potions, and actually wants to avoid ever running out of potions. You know potion costs escalate, so there's a huge advantage to spreading out your purchases if you can. You never want to be in a position to have to buy more than one per day if you can avoid it. Your inventory is your buffer to prevent that from happening. Even if you don't expect to burn ten potions in the next war, you still have an enormous incentive to keep buying potions as long as you are not maxed out in your inventory, if you can. If you're not full, and you have loyalty, and you're doing war, you're going to buy potions. Maybe not the little ones, but the little ones also don't matter in terms of cost in the grand scheme of things. Something closes to three million loyalty is going to go towards keeping inventory up that unless the player decides to quit spending potions, they will never actually get back.
The cost to fill war potion inventory is like a security deposit. You pay it with first month's rent, and in theory you get it back eventually, but as a practical matter that money is just gone. You get it back when you move, just like a player can theoretically get that loyalty back by just deciding to stop doing war (or playing it at a level where they know they will never need potions ever again). But so long as a player is reasonably active, so long as they know they will need potions, and so long as potion costs escalate and there's a significant discount to spreading out purchases, that loyalty has essentially been permanently removed from circulation. It is a little more dynamic than that, but that's the bottom line.
Kabam has said that the new potion costs go in now, but the increased loyalty isn't going to be added to the game until the issues with gameplay are fixed and compensation goes away, because in their opinion players shouldn't need those expensive potions until compensation goes away. When players start needing to use them, they will also have the higher loyalty amounts from war. Fair enough. But this line of thinking doesn't account for this somewhat hidden invisible cost of war. Players are, in a sense, being charged three million loyalty to participate in war. Whether you pay it up front or put it on layaway, if you play war at all competitively and make any attempt to play it efficiently, you're eventually going to be paying this three million loyalty. And I don't think this "security deposit" for war has been accounted for anywhere.
Maybe the time to start giving players the enhanced loyalty numbers is now, when they are still getting compensation packages and can use that loyalty to start stocking up for the time when compensation will go away.
TL;DR: to use portions effectively and efficiently, you really need to stock up. And you're going to spend about three million loyalty to do that over some period of time. That's a lot of loyalty the players have to eventually put up to "prime the potion pump", and for all practical purposes will never get back. Where is it supposed to come from, when we aren't getting increased loyalty yet?
