I Thought They Were Trying To Steer Us Away From Hoarding?
Polygon
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In this screenshot, Kabam Miike clearly states that they’re trying to move away from hoarding and implies that hoarding in itself is frowned upon.
However , in the Comissary Store one of the 2 only good offers requires you to have hoarded 165k shards.
As it turns out , I was sitting on a stash of shards under the assumption that I could possibly trade them in. But whenever I saw that post by Miike, I ended up opening them thinking that the event wouldve been on a smaller scale.
If I’d known, we could get a 7 star, I would’ve saved those shards. Just seems like misinformation at this point.
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It’s pretty ridiculous, honestly. Literally the only way most people could get some of those deals is by hoarding. It’s stuff like this that makes me intentionally save stuff for some future event that I don’t know about.
So one month after the last Featured release I do have those Shards just naturally.
For me, hoarding is hanging onto every single Awakening gem for fear of using it on the "wrong champ" or duping that champ the next time you open a crystal. Never using sig stones for the same reason.
We regularly see posts here on the forums showing how many shards we have saved for the next featured and then related posts once that featured is released. Never have I seen anyone from Kabam discourage people from saving champion crystal shards. Hoarding is saving with the intention of never using/getting rid of those items. Saving crystal shards with the intention to open a ton a featured crystals is not hoarding.
But I don't really see how this event has anything to do with hoarding.
It's the same as the gold or units offers in that store. I could try and never spend units period waiting for the off chance there will be an event like this or I could use them. It's up to the player in how they want to manager their resources. Holding on to things like 5, 6 or 7 star shards is not hoarding. 6* shards are as available as the air we breathe.
Holding on to every single AG you ever get for fear of missing out on a trade in-store is hoarding.
In that sense, Kabam aren't being contradictory because they didn't expect people to have all the shards on hand - they wanted at least some if not all to come from your wallet.
With respect to other unit deals, some of them just feel like ones for people with an itchy trigger finger to siphon units before the real sale event.
They haven't, at least from what I've seen, ever acknowledge why players horde. Acknowledge that a core aspect is due to the game itself. When we get resources, rewards, etc... it makes sense for us to spend/open them right away. Until it doesn't. Whether it's because of limited inventory/storage/other resources/etc... something has changed so that it makes more sense to hold onto them. Players reach a plateau. Then in many areas we also reach a weird area where holding things makes more sense for other reasons, because what we use them to buy decreases in value, so it makes sense to wait and buy them at a cheaper and more efficient cost. And the cycle continues.
Now, we could say that making this trade-in event regular and scheduled would help give us notice and allow players to plan better. That's true. Kabam's response would be that it would only encourage us to horde until that specific time. Which is also true. It's just kicking the can down the road. Doing the same thing over and over but expecting different results is insanity.
But hording is already happening Kabam, you need to acknowledge this and change course. This is an economy. There will be ebbs and flows. Hording is going to happen. It's intrinsic. You need to address why we horde and the best thing to do in my opinion, would actually be to have this type of trade in store/whatever be something permanent instead of limited. Having it as limited relieves some pressure, but doesn't actually address anything. You're just sorting the gravel. You're right, saying that this event/store/whatever will return once a year encourages us to horde until that time. But, what happens when it's twice a year? Tri-Annually? Quarterly? You see what I'm getting at here? The more frequent this is, the more this pressure gets relieved and the more efficiently you actually combat the hording issue.
Yes, part of the responsibility also falls to us as players to manage our inventory. If we hold onto items because of deflation, we're going to eventually reach a point where the items we have are worthless to us and we shouldn't be offended when we go to sell them for almost next to nothing. To many players, a 3* awakening gem is worthless, so we can't become overly offended when we go to sell it for almost 0 gold. I've said in another thread that being able to trade it in for a 4* awakening gem would be nice - but if I'm being honest those are worthless to me too, so I'd actually need a couple of additional steps because I'm at the point where I'd need to start trading in 6* awakening gems soon. Well, clearly I'm not going to ask you to let me trade in 6* awakening gems for a 7* awakening gem.. so I acknowledge that some of these trade-ins also don't do much beyond kicking the can further down the road. It would be nice to have those trade in options to a point and then allow me to trade in/up and then sell the final item for a higher multiple of gold than selling all the individual items I traded.. but that's also just shifting the resource strain. So in these instances, I accept my loss and realize that the items I'm hording no longer have any value to me.
Now, yes there's the sigil store for spenders. But this is massively outdated and just as restrictive/limited in the things I can trade. This needs to be updated and it also needs to include a lot more things we are able to spend sigil credits on as well as things we can trade in/trade up.
You won't like this next comment, but there also needs to be a FTP option. I'll repeat what I said above: The more options and opportunities players have to trade things in/trade up, the fewer options and opportunities they have to horde. Giving FTP players something like this commissary store would massively benefit your efforts to combat hording as well as the deflation/inflation aspects of the economy. I also think both versions of this store, the FTP and Sigil Store should include options for exchanges. Not just a direct trade-in (x amount of T3 for y amount of T4) but more cross-item exchanges for areas it makes sense. (X amount of Single potions/Revives for y amount of Team Potions/Revives for instance, ect.)
Now, with all that being said: Once the first round of Gladiator's arena was over and I got the 6*, I felt like I had no reason to horde my 6* shards anymore. I had all the champions that would be in the next featured so I opened a bit more than 20 basic pool 6* crystals. At the time, I was fine with that decision because I benefitted in what I thought was the most efficient way possible: I didn't need to go for the featured as I have all the champions who will be in it, so I was able to open more crystals and obtain more resources from them.
Now I wish I had held onto them for a bit longer. Am I bummed out? Yeah, of course I am. I would have had another 7* and who doesn't want that? But I couldn't have known what was to come and I can't reasonably ask them to turn back time. Now I could say "You should have told me before!" but what's a reasonable amount of notice that I could ask for? There's always going to be things and events that occur just around the corner and there are always going to be people who spent or use or turn in resources that could have otherwise been used more efficiently. So unless they decide to take my above opinions into account and unless this becomes a more frequent/permanent feature, I just have to kind of accept my loss here.
Even the 7* CW is out of reach of most people. Based on current calculations from the community, ftp can get around 3100 points and I think increase it to 3800 with the casual drop of 20k units. That makes the final milestone out of reach of both ftp and casual spenders alike (unless they really want to buy every single deal).
Lets just have an eventless game that way everyone is happy 🤣
Again, to me, having units, gold and shards isn't hoarding.
PHC, 3*, 4*, 5*, t3cc crystals since he took the post verbatim.
Hoarding has a negative connotation, ever watch Hoarders? They hoard useless junk not useful things like 6* shards.
Kabam doesn't want players to hoard anything, just buy and go 😉
Someone needs to hoard crystals in order to maintain his account functional and up to date.
It’s not a choice, it’s how the game is played.
If Kabam wants to stop hoarding, the way to do that is by removing timers from stashed items, so opening crystals won’t send items straight for expiration.
Since Kabam won’t ever do that, people won’t stop ever hoarding too 😉