Honest, ernest question poll about 7* cost thought process

SbkruebSbkrueb Member Posts: 566 ★★★
Do you think Kabam announced 7* cost at 15,000 shards just so they can "compromise" at 12,500 with less outrage?

Honest, ernest question poll about 7* cost thought process 267 votes

Of coarse
14%
MasterSmokeTerraLeiva_darkNoıreMangulerBluestoneEB54p01arisWaxer1981Scopeotoe987TheKiryuelif96jay_den_Sham_SbkruebKalantakmonomuggDromar_13zerodudeSpagNidus 40 votes
I doubt it
85%
Kabam MiikeGroundedWisdomCrys23BigPoppaCBONEbdawg923SnakeEyes69DrZolaSnizzbarMr_PlatypusMagicBentonRaganatormostlyharmlessnHort4FrostyJerryJiverbuffajrTendersquadzuffyCapt_MegasauceKthunder 227 votes
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Comments

  • Dart1981Dart1981 Member Posts: 232 ★★★
    I doubt it
    DrZola said:

    Kabam Jax said:

    The answer is no.

    Missed the twitch stream, but perhaps you could discuss the thought process behind the scaling here? Can we expect 6* dupes to continue to be only 275 shards and if so, why?

    Dr. Zola
    This was going to be my question too, the scaling on a 6* dupe should now be multiplied by 1.5 to stay in line 4 and 5* dupes.
  • GroundedWisdomGroundedWisdom Member Posts: 36,634 ★★★★★
    I doubt it
    Dart1981 said:

    DrZola said:

    Kabam Jax said:

    The answer is no.

    Missed the twitch stream, but perhaps you could discuss the thought process behind the scaling here? Can we expect 6* dupes to continue to be only 275 shards and if so, why?

    Dr. Zola
    This was going to be my question too, the scaling on a 6* dupe should now be multiplied by 1.5 to stay in line 4 and 5* dupes.
    I don't believe they're supposed to be in line. That's the reason for the change. I'm almost certain this is to slow the introduction of them, for no other reason than to pace things. If they're introduced too fast, that becomes more demanding, and I believe they don't want it to be as fast as 6*s were introduced.
  • GinjabredMonstaGinjabredMonsta Member, Guardian Posts: 6,482 Guardian
    I doubt it
    Sbkrueb said:

    Kabam Jax said:

    The answer is no.

    That is actually extremely disheartening.
    That was the one hope I had for it not being a complete cash grab.

    There are some very poignant takes on the 15k cost and the titan crystal and none of them are great.
    There is a lot going on in a negetive way with the game right now and this felt like a dropped opportunity for some neutral or even good will.
    Personally, it was logical that the next one would be more than the other 15k was my guess, but every two new ranks have a new cost. This also helps with acquisition and balance
  • o_oo_o Member Posts: 835 ★★★★
    I doubt it
    I suppose this question was honest but i'm not sure it was earnest
  • BelBel Member Posts: 4
    I doubt it
    DNA3000 said:

    Leanbison said:

    DNA3000 said:



    This everything being a cash grab thing is honestly annoying. People lodge this complaint at literally every change even when the effect is exactly the opposite.

    Altering the 7* shard economy by increasing the crystal cost and then boosting every source for shards except 6* duplication attenuates the *primary* way to theoretically buy 7* champs with cash: via champion duplication. Whales open tons more champion crystals than anyone else, and thus they get disproportionately more shards from champion duplication than anyone else. Anything that increases the relative shard sources of everything except champion duplication, or to put it another way anything that reduces the ability for spenders to buy 7* crystals, reduces the gap between spenders and non-spenders.

    Calling this a cash grab is completely ludicrous.

    Paragon Crystals? While we are collecting 2 types of shards the whales will be buying Paragon Crystals. I do think the point of making it so hard to collect shards was to encourage people to buy crystals. From a business perspective it makes a lot of sense.
    Paragon crystals were going to exist no matter what. The whales were going to get the same number of 7* champs from those crystals no matter what. Whether the 7* crystal cost 10k or 15k or 20k. The difference is that when those whales open a gazillion paragon crystals, they will get fewer 7* champs via 6* duplication.

    The Paragon crystal odds have not been announced (as far as I'm aware) but we can speculate that the odds of pulling a 7* are going to be very low, but the odds of pulling a 6* are going to be much higher than for Cav crystals: probably not too dissimilar from the odds of pulling a 5* from Cavs. Those Paragon crystals were not *only* going to land the occasional jackpot 7*, they were also going to flood those whales with even more 6* shards generating even more 6* dups.

    Whales always get the chance to buy into the top rarity. With Cavs/Paragon crystals, with special offers, with special crystals. None of that is likely going away. The specific change being discussed here is the change to shard costs, and the net impact on 6* duplication generated shards. Those are now relatively less valuable. And however you look at it, the whales are always going to get a lot more of those than anyone else. An order of magnitude more in many cases. Every time an F2P player gets one 6* champ from 5* dups, the whales are getting ten. Well now every time an F2P player gets a 7* champ from 6* dups, the whales will be getting seven. In relative terms, F2P players come out ahead.
    So you agree it is a cashgrab then? Since if we start with the presumption that "whales are gonna whale" then anything that forces them to spend more to achieve the same outcome will result in more $ for Kabam.

    Furthermore if the goal from the design team was to truly slow the acquisition of 7* champions then the Paragon crystal would not be coming out for a long time. There was a long period (years I believe) between the release of 6*'s and the release of the cav crystal. After the cav crystal released it is obvious that whales spammed the opening of them to acquire "all" the champions.

    Lets be clear: the paragon crystal will be no different and Kabam are betting on it.
    Whales will buy as many paragon crystals as necessary to have all the available 7* champions at max sig and then more again to get the titan shards+crystals for the other champion set.

    While I appreciate Kabam Miike's post earlier explaining the design decision, much of the reasoning is completely nullified by the financial decision of the paragon crystal.

    All this is before you get into the sheer disastrous PR approach. Kabam knew the cost of the crystal would not be received well. So much so that Jax said it on stream as gently as possible and immediately had the "first two for 10k" cookie ready to go to help make the medicine go down better.

    I'll leave it there for now and see what others have to say.
  • SearmenisSearmenis Member Posts: 1,672 ★★★★★
    I doubt it
    Humm... what outrage?
  • Hort4Hort4 Member Posts: 507 ★★★
    I doubt it
    DNA3000 said:

    Bel said:

    So you agree it is a cashgrab then? Since if we start with the presumption that "whales are gonna whale" then anything that forces them to spend more to achieve the same outcome will result in more $ for Kabam.

    If you want to put it that way, sure. The game is a cash grab, and the new rarity structure will grab even more cash from the biggest spenders.

    That's what this game does. It grabs cash from thousands of spenders, so hundreds of thousands of people can play the game completely for free. I'm not a big spender, but I do spend, and I approve of this. And I'm also fine getting less for my money so that those of us that do spend have a lower advantage over the rest of the F2P community.

    Normally that's not what people mean when they call something in this game a "cash grab." They mean something derisive. But in the sense you're implying, this is a good thing and something we can only hope the game does more of in the future.
    A voice of common sense in the darkness of MCOC.
    I have no doubt more 7*s will be opened by the average player than 6*s when they were introduced.
  • BigBlueOxBigBlueOx Member Posts: 2,491 ★★★★★
    I doubt it
    DNA3000 said:

    Sbkrueb said:

    Kabam Jax said:

    The answer is no.

    That is actually extremely disheartening.
    That was the one hope I had for it not being a complete cash grab.
    This everything being a cash grab thing is honestly annoying. People lodge this complaint at literally every change even when the effect is exactly the opposite.

    Altering the 7* shard economy by increasing the crystal cost and then boosting every source for shards except 6* duplication attenuates the *primary* way to theoretically buy 7* champs with cash: via champion duplication. Whales open tons more champion crystals than anyone else, and thus they get disproportionately more shards from champion duplication than anyone else. Anything that increases the relative shard sources of everything except champion duplication, or to put it another way anything that reduces the ability for spenders to buy 7* crystals, reduces the gap between spenders and non-spenders.

    Calling this a cash grab is completely ludicrous.
    Gotta agree with this take. Also the insane amount of 6star shards in the current economy compared to 5star shards when 6s launched can’t be understated here.

    Not sure how I feel about the Titan shard acquisition through dupes, but I’m willing to concede that the ideas around that probably aren’t very mature yet and Kabam is trying hard to be transparent with us about this new idea
  • MagrailothosMagrailothos Member Posts: 6,036 ★★★★★
    I doubt it
    DNA3000 said:

    Bel said:

    So you agree it is a cashgrab then? Since if we start with the presumption that "whales are gonna whale" then anything that forces them to spend more to achieve the same outcome will result in more $ for Kabam.

    If you want to put it that way, sure. The game is a cash grab, and the new rarity structure will grab even more cash from the biggest spenders.

    That's what this game does. It grabs cash from thousands of spenders, so hundreds of thousands of people can play the game completely for free. I'm not a big spender, but I do spend, and I approve of this. And I'm also fine getting less for my money so that those of us that do spend have a lower advantage over the rest of the F2P community.

    Normally that's not what people mean when they call something in this game a "cash grab." They mean something derisive. But in the sense you're implying, this is a good thing and something we can only hope the game does more of in the future.
    As a FTP player, I completely agree; and I'm very grateful to those who fund the game.
    DNA3000 said:

    Anything that increases the relative shard sources of everything except champion duplication, or to put it another way anything that reduces the ability for spenders to buy 7* crystals, reduces the gap between spenders and non-spenders.... now every time an F2P player gets a 7* champ from 6* dups, the whales will be getting seven. In relative terms, F2P players come out ahead.

    As usual, it's interesting to read your perspective on this kind of thing. I wasn't too troubled by the announced cost (and was pretty happy about the introductory offer of 10k, which I would suggest will also disproportionately benefit those who acquire champs/shards more slowly), but I'm more than fine about it now. Thanks, DNA.
  • TyEdgeTyEdge Member Posts: 3,130 ★★★★★
    edited April 2023
    For people who are binging on paragon crystals, this affects them minimally. It’ll often be a matter of how many sig levels champs have. For regular players who aren’t whales, dupes were probably the primary method of accruing shards, and it’ll hurt them as it now takes 55 dupes to get enough shards for a crystal.
  • DNA3000DNA3000 Member, Guardian Posts: 19,844 Guardian
    TyEdge said:

    For people who are binging on paragon crystals, this affects them minimally. It’ll often be a matter of how many sig levels champs have. For regular players who aren’t whales, dupes were probably the primary method of accruing shards, and it’ll hurt them as it now takes 55 dupes to get enough shards for a crystal.

    To put this into perspective, since the new featured 6* crystal flipped over, I've opened 28 crystals, plus I have one unopened, plus I am sitting on about 15k of shards. So hypothetically speaking, I could have opened 30 featured crystals in about 66 days. How many of those 6* crystals were purchased with 6* shards from 5* dups?

    Essentially, none of them. I stopped opening 5* crystals a while back, once my ISO situation stabilized. For me 5* crystals are a way to save ISO for a rainy day, and it hasn't rained in a while. I have over 440k 5* shards at the moment, plus 30 5* dual class crystals unopened. Of course, I've received 5* champs here and there - from arena rewards, say. But overall, in the last 66 days it is safe to say that the total number of 6* shards I received from 5* duplication would amount to less than one crystal.

    But what if I liquidated *all* of my 5* champion crystals all at once? I could open about 80 crystals between shards, dual class, and nexus crystals. Let's assume all of them generate max sig crystals and all of those drop 6* shards. That would amount to 80x275x2 = 44000 shards. That's four basic 6* crystals and change. Let's round that up to five, for no reason at all, and let's also compare those five basic crystals to the 30 featured crystals I've already opened, all of which cost more shards.

    In that case, my 6* champions in the last 66 days would come about 17% from 5* duplication and 83% from direct 6* shard rewards.

    For my 6* champs to come at least 50% from 5* duplication would require magically opening an additional 465 5* crystals or otherwise max sig dup 465 champions. In 66 days that would require opening seven 5* crystals a day. Really, that is not going to happen. But I could be opening Cav crystals. Basic Cav crystals have a 16% chance to drop a 5* champ then I could be opening about 42 Cav crystals a day to end up with enough 6* shards from 5* duplication to equal the amount of 6* champs I'm currently getting from non-duplication sources. So for regular players buying about 1300 Cav crystals a month, 6* champs could be coming as much from 5* duplication as from direct rewards.

    Except that's wrong: Cav crystals don't actually help at all. They have a 16% chance to drop a 5* but also a 3% chance to drop a 6*. That means for every 100 Cav crystals you buy you get (on average) three 6* champs directly, and sixteen 5* champs that generate about 8800 6* shards on average (assuming every drop generates a max sig crystal that itself drops shards). That's less than one. So no amount of buying Cav crystals will *ever* create a situation where a player is getting more 6* champs from 5* dups as they get from just receiving 6* champs directly.

    A whale that is completely bonkers could buy an unlimited number of GMCs which have a chance to drop 5* champs and no chance to drop 6* champs and eventually have more 6* champs from 5* duplication than from direct 6* rewards. But that's ridiculous.

    *Initially* at release it is possible that champion duplication could be a substantial percentage of the 7* shards available to players. However, history shows that changes fast: it did for 5* and 6* rarity. There's no way that once things get moving the average player is going to be opening 6* crystals at twenty to forty times the rate of 7* crystals, which is what it would take for duplication to compete with direct rewards. That would eventually require Kabam to start handing Paragon players hundreds of 6* crystals. That's extremely unlikely.
  • MackeyMackey Member Posts: 1,597 ★★★★★
    edited April 2023
    I was (and still are) a big believer that the revive nerf thing was a cash grab, or rather, their earnings that they was getting from everest content dwindled since every man and his dog farmed 3.2.6 like crazy, nothing will change my mind on that. Kabam have confirmed it without saying it in more than one way but how is the 7* increase ever a cash grab ... why are people saying it is 🤔
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