would love to hear a game economist's take on the Banquet event

TLDR; The gifting event is so amazing I think it damages the mid player experience severely and could present quite a serious problem for the games retention.

The banquet event is kind of ridiculous. Not ridiculous as in amazing ridiculous as in worthy of ridicule. Don't get me wrong I love it and think the rewards are great but as a thronebreaker who crossed over to paragon due to the event I would say that r4 materials is kind of what I was looking for in a special event. The issue comes with conqueror and uncollected players get the same rewards. I don't mean this in a ahhh I had to suffer to get those rewards so should other people I mean it may actually ruin the game experience for some people. In a previous interview with RTM and Dan talking to Kabam Frenchie talked about replacing the early act premiums with 2* crystals because some players would pull a 4* and it would make early acts so easy that it would be boring.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0oZ859iUPu8&list=PLxdOELf7Mjy7mxLJhE2IRxIv_J3CC2xZv&index=97

So this is evidently a problem kabam is aware , except it kinda goes out the window around December. I absolutely understand the need for revenue and think for thronebreaker/paragons the rewards are fine, however for anything lower r3/r4 materials are either irrelevant or either way to OP they break the game. I advocate for a banquet tied to progression level, like every single other event in game. That way you could even eliminate minimum requirements and let people do whatever they want with alts and baby accounts. You could even eliminate A lot of people will really struggle in the coming months. They won't have had the challenge needed to build their skill so one of two things happen. They either quite because they essentially autofight all the way into act 5, which isn't a compelling or exciting experience or they hit late act 6 early act 7 and smash into a brick wall as they struggle against the more skill based boss fights.

I know it doesn't sound very positive but I promise I don't want to take away people rewards out of malice or some misplaced "I think these young-uns should have it as hard as I did back in the day". I say very seriously I think the superior experience is with much more balanced rewards. A lot of screenshots have been floating around with conquerors with rank 3 6*s which makes for a cool thumbnail or funny reddit post sure. But seriously think are they going to have a good level of challenge and play for years or are they going to have a few months of fun and then quit in favour of something else because the challenge isn't there. Or worse they get a massive dump of 6* shards nexuses and high tier catalysts and have to fight all the way into act 7 before they get anything even remotely comparable to the point where they just can't be bothered to complete content and again drop the game.

Would love to hear a kabam response on this since you guys will have way more data on this than me.

Comments

AmaadAkira

Erik_Killmonger1001

oh yeah, this could be a bit of a disagree farming fiesta, we shall see

Pikolu

In all fairness, those who dropped 100k+ had 3 or so r4s last year and then kabam hyperinflated the economy of r4 materials and now a casual spender can have 15+ r4s.

I'm interested to see if kabam will be holding r5s back to the majority of players since ftp typically get access to the new rank up via exploring an act. Examples: r4 5* explore act 4, r5 5* explore act 5, r3 6* explore act 6, r4 6* explore act 7.

Kabam might be inflating the economy faster due to the release of 7*s as well.

Buttehrs

Its an event that's been around every year for 8 years. If kabam was worried about it affecting game economy balance, it would've been scrapped after the 1st year.

Graves_3

Game economy/balance is a myth. Don’t read too much into it. Just enjoy the game as you see fit.

Mackey

I agree that there should be some form of progression based limits to the crystals but I don't necessarily think it takes away from the newer player by having that 6* at r3, I know I'd be well happy about being able to tackle content with a 6* opposed to a 4* which the content was initially designed around. I think progression based would be better for the top end players, the lower rewards in these gbc are not worth the cost of the crystals and is a huge kick in the teeth if you have bad rng, yes Lower rewards should be in there but scrap .... additional iso/gold, 5* shards ... are all pointless to a paragon/TB player these days

kus234

Just enjoy and let Kabam make money.. remember u r not competing against the players but the AI…

GroundedWisdom

Every year, we've had people claim this Event will break the game, and every year we move on.

DNA3000

Would love to hear a kabam response on this since you guys will have way more data on this than me.

So would I, but you're not gonna.

The short answer is that monetization is always economy breaking, or at least bending, and there's always a compromise between the requirements of sustainable monetization and the resource balances within the game economy. There's always tension between many different factors in most game design decisions, and there's no such thing as the perfect decision that does everything you want and leaves no wreckage in its wake.

So when people ask "doesn't this break that" the answer is often yes, yes it does. The unstated assumption often being "if it does, shouldn't you avoid that" to which the answer is "no, because if we don't we'll break something else even more."

There is a long answer, but it quickly turns into a monetization lecture, and all these Economics 101 people start coming out of the woodwork who have only gotten to page four of the textbook.

altavista

Conquerer/Uncollected players getting Paragon level rewards might make everything before Act 6 trivial, but (1) They are still limited by being Conquerer/Uncollected, and (2) It does not matter if they become Cav/TB/Paragon sooner.

Sure, you might get one or two players who now have 6R4 Herc doing Act 4, get bored and stop playing. But you also might get more players who are now more interested in playing and trying to achieve Cavalier and progress.

Kabam definitely has a better sense than anyone as to how many players are in each Progression tier, and how many players quit or progress in the month after December. I'd wager that since Kabam has done this every year, that it doesn't negatively impact their bottom line.

unknown

This content has been removed.

Adevati

I don’t get the argument. Games progress. New content and progression are added. Because the content takes longer now; you have to speed up progression for newer players so they are not overwhelmed and in permanent catch up mode.

This happens in every game.

So what is your issue again? That they will quit because they don’t have the painful struggles we all remember as negative experiences? Most people ignore exploring Act 6 because of how awful of an experience it was combined with the poor rewards. Nothing about completing Act 6 gave me a sense of pride and ignited a drive to keep pushing. On the contrary, after finishing the Grandmaster I contemplated quitting because that fight was so draining and demoralizing for an average skilled player like myself. I’m glad some of those Act 6 fights are easier now than when I did it. I welcome any and all downgrades on Act 6 difficulty.

GOTG

You have to spent really lot of money to really go faster through Banquet event. Not many people can do that.

So your claim is meaningless.

DNA3000

Conquerer/Uncollected players getting Paragon level rewards might make everything before Act 6 trivial, but (1) They are still limited by being Conquerer/Uncollected, and (2) It does not matter if they become Cav/TB/Paragon sooner.

Also, the vast majority of players are not getting those rewards. FTP players could be getting some GBCs, but most of them are going to get something like twenty or so, if they put their minds to it. Beyond that arena grinding FTP players could conceivably get a ton of them, but they only represent maybe 10-20% of the player population.

The vast majority of players are free to play (over 90%) and most of them are not arena grinders, which means the impact of the GBCs on the overall game is far lower than most people account for. 10% of the players spending their way past a progression rung is not the end of the world for the game, as almost everyone will still be facing the same game with the same ladder and the same progression hurdles, just with a small temporary boost from the event.

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