Whales, offers, f2p and the root cause of disgruntlement?

Free to play or just minor spenders, didn't have to compete against whales in the past.

For nearly all of the games history, you could obtain an end game account through broadly free to play activity, play competitively enough for your tastes in AQ and AW, complete all end game content and never have to run against any whales, unless you were a super try hard sweaty f2p, trying to complete for a place in a top 30 AQ or AW alliance.

As entertainingly documented by Brian Grant over many years.

Yes dolphins and those best of the best f2p or occasional spenders, would come up against whales every now and again, but for the rest of us, it never happened.

Until, in my view, BGs

Before BGs, you could be an end game paragon, full completion account, like wouldrunforadonut, play wars and AQ and never come across a whale. Feel like your account with 1 or 2 r5s and full roster of r4s is competitive, for what you play against in AQ and AW. Achieve day or month 1 new progression titles, have the full 6+ 7* on release. But never feel like you are losing out on being competitive by whales spamming on offers.

BGs means that now, every f2p paragon, or even minor spender, has to face and be crushed by whales, every season; that sinking feeling of your R4 roster being pointless in the face of multiple duped R2 7*s.

And that's not in GC or just those pushing to catch bero.

It's from bronze III, all the way through the VC, for every paragon.

Everyone now gets to feel the crushing gap between a decent f2p player and a whale. What used to not bother in the slightest, is now a raw experience for every paragon.

You can simply not play BGs, of course, but kabam have been putting the very best rewards in the game, behind playing BGs. Even today; want to ascend your R5? Better get used to being crushed by whales.

The gap is now visible and stark for such a huge amount of the player base.

Personally, I'm immensely grateful for the whales keeping the lights on; they need to have that advantage.

Kabam could solve the perception problem, by solving the BG problem. Which isn't going to be easy.

Comments

HungaryHippo

Jealousy mostly and the rest is misunderstanding the nature of business. If Kabam sold nothing or made the game subscription only, the game would be dead. If Kabam increased all the rewards in game, F2P would still be behind.

ahmynuts

The whales are always going to be ahead, that is just the reality of it. The only thing Kabam can realistically do is make things feel less bad for FTP players.

Not sure this is a solution but something i spitballed in their survey was increasing the acquisition rates of important items across the game and opening a store to trade in lower rarities of catalysts, shards, and iso for higher ones. The whales would benefit too but at the very least the FTP community doesn't feel absolutely disrespected at the same time.

The blubbery whales will always have the leg up with the cash offers but at the very least the FTP peeps shouldn't be made to feel this disrespected, left out, and forgotten. Keep them happy and you have a great and thriving game. As it stands now, especially with the commissary FTP players are feeling some of the worst of how Kabam has chosen to run this game in the past few years.

TL:DR: While an increase in rewards would also benefit the whales, it would also make the FTP players happy and feel less sh**ty about the entire game because they get to have nice things too. The whale problem will never go away but that doesn't mean FTP players need to be shafted.

Ashacekar

I have 2.5 M Loyalty, i m hopeful on buying 4 loyalty bundles on 29th

1199345

I suggested removing purchase caps and item refresh timers in the Glory and Loyalty stores...it would certainly help ftp specifically and everyone overall

ahmynuts

I suggested removing purchase caps and item refresh timers in the Glory and Loyalty stores...it would certainly help ftp specifically and everyone overall

Also the escalating prices, there really isn't a justification for that other than making people who run lower levels of AQ feel like dogsh*t

Searmenis

The problem is solved now, by upgrading AW Master s rewards by 1000%. Dozens of times better than BGs, only for top spenders alliance.

unknown

This content has been removed.

laserjohn26

Free to play or just minor spenders, didn't have to compete against whales in the past.

For nearly all of the games history, you could obtain an end game account through broadly free to play activity, play competitively enough for your tastes in AQ and AW, complete all end game content and never have to run against any whales, unless you were a super try hard sweaty f2p, trying to complete for a place in a top 30 AQ or AW alliance.

As entertainingly documented by Brian Grant over many years.

Yes dolphins and those best of the best f2p or occasional spenders, would come up against whales every now and again, but for the rest of us, it never happened.

Until, in my view, BGs

Before BGs, you could be an end game paragon, full completion account, like wouldrunforadonut, play wars and AQ and never come across a whale. Feel like your account with 1 or 2 r5s and full roster of r4s is competitive, for what you play against in AQ and AW. Achieve day or month 1 new progression titles, have the full 6+ 7* on release. But never feel like you are losing out on being competitive by whales spamming on offers.

BGs means that now, every f2p paragon, or even minor spender, has to face and be crushed by whales, every season; that sinking feeling of your R4 roster being pointless in the face of multiple duped R2 7*s.

And that's not in GC or just those pushing to catch bero.

It's from bronze III, all the way through the VC, for every paragon.

Everyone now gets to feel the crushing gap between a decent f2p player and a whale. What used to not bother in the slightest, is now a raw experience for every paragon.

You can simply not play BGs, of course, but kabam have been putting the very best rewards in the game, behind playing BGs. Even today; want to ascend your R5? Better get used to being crushed by whales.

The gap is now visible and stark for such a huge amount of the player base.

Personally, I'm immensely grateful for the whales keeping the lights on; they need to have that advantage.

Kabam could solve the perception problem, by solving the BG problem. Which isn't going to be easy.

It's not an issue with roster in bronze like you claim. Skill trumps roster. That's why I can use a mini account I haven't played seriously in years, go into the victory track with a a couple r3 and mostly r5 5* and destroy rosters with all r4 and higher all the way to diamond. Yes equal skill comes down to roster and its hard to finish on celestial as a ftp now, but what you are describing is a skill issue. Unless you get unlucky and happen to match a top 100 player in victory track, most whales don't have a clue what they are doing in the game.

Maat1985

Free to play or just minor spenders, didn't have to compete against whales in the past.

For nearly all of the games history, you could obtain an end game account through broadly free to play activity, play competitively enough for your tastes in AQ and AW, complete all end game content and never have to run against any whales, unless you were a super try hard sweaty f2p, trying to complete for a place in a top 30 AQ or AW alliance.

As entertainingly documented by Brian Grant over many years.

Yes dolphins and those best of the best f2p or occasional spenders, would come up against whales every now and again, but for the rest of us, it never happened.

Until, in my view, BGs

Before BGs, you could be an end game paragon, full completion account, like wouldrunforadonut, play wars and AQ and never come across a whale. Feel like your account with 1 or 2 r5s and full roster of r4s is competitive, for what you play against in AQ and AW. Achieve day or month 1 new progression titles, have the full 6+ 7* on release. But never feel like you are losing out on being competitive by whales spamming on offers.

BGs means that now, every f2p paragon, or even minor spender, has to face and be crushed by whales, every season; that sinking feeling of your R4 roster being pointless in the face of multiple duped R2 7*s.

And that's not in GC or just those pushing to catch bero.

It's from bronze III, all the way through the VC, for every paragon.

Everyone now gets to feel the crushing gap between a decent f2p player and a whale. What used to not bother in the slightest, is now a raw experience for every paragon.

You can simply not play BGs, of course, but kabam have been putting the very best rewards in the game, behind playing BGs. Even today; want to ascend your R5? Better get used to being crushed by whales.

The gap is now visible and stark for such a huge amount of the player base.

Personally, I'm immensely grateful for the whales keeping the lights on; they need to have that advantage.

Kabam could solve the perception problem, by solving the BG problem. Which isn't going to be easy.
It's not an issue with roster in bronze like you claim. Skill trumps roster. That's why I can use a mini account I haven't played seriously in years, go into the victory track with a a couple r3 and mostly r5 5* and destroy rosters with all r4 and higher all the way to diamond. Yes equal skill comes down to roster and its hard to finish on celestial as a ftp now, but what you are describing is a skill issue. Unless you get unlucky and happen to match a top 100 player in victory track, most whales don't have a clue what they are doing in the game.

You say that but its not true……
It might be the case most of the time but its not entirely true.
You are failing to see the matchmaking brackets at play prior to plat2
Only a paragon account will face these whales.
An account like your mini will not see an account much different to itself until plat 2.

My mate who has not played bgs yet this season just jumped in. And has been struggling.
He is a good skilled player.
Has a decent roster.
Has been having a bit of a rough run in silver 1.

He has like 1 r5 and a fair few r4’s but nothing like what his opponent had here.
This is not going to come down to skill. This is clearly just a whale who has been lazy on bgs ain’t got no chance here

Agent_7

I would disagree that it’s purely skill. Skill definitely plays a significant role, but when you pull up that first match in Bronze III and see every recently released (and insanely top tier on defense) champ at R4 and fully awakened, they just beat you on roster depth alone unless you get an incredibly favorable draft. Most of the time, it’s not getting absolutely trounced. Its losing 51k-50k in the third fight, as an example.

So you could say “don’t play it if you don’t like it” and a great many players take that approach…until they tie one of the most anticipated new features in the game to it.

It’s a valid perspective. Where the disparity only used to be impactful to a degree in Arena, the disparity is now massively impactful in BGs.

Fryday

I have created a Poll on how to improve BG.

https://forums.playcontestofchampions.com/en/discussion/347754/how-should-bg-change#latest

and a simple solution to fix this issue here

https://forums.playcontestofchampions.com/en/discussion/347716/fixing-bg-for-95-of-players-with-one-simple-change#latest

Have a look and share your thought

FrostGiantLord

Free to play or just minor spenders, didn't have to compete against whales in the past.

For nearly all of the games history, you could obtain an end game account through broadly free to play activity, play competitively enough for your tastes in AQ and AW, complete all end game content and never have to run against any whales, unless you were a super try hard sweaty f2p, trying to complete for a place in a top 30 AQ or AW alliance.

As entertainingly documented by Brian Grant over many years.

Yes dolphins and those best of the best f2p or occasional spenders, would come up against whales every now and again, but for the rest of us, it never happened.

Until, in my view, BGs

Before BGs, you could be an end game paragon, full completion account, like wouldrunforadonut, play wars and AQ and never come across a whale. Feel like your account with 1 or 2 r5s and full roster of r4s is competitive, for what you play against in AQ and AW. Achieve day or month 1 new progression titles, have the full 6+ 7* on release. But never feel like you are losing out on being competitive by whales spamming on offers.

BGs means that now, every f2p paragon, or even minor spender, has to face and be crushed by whales, every season; that sinking feeling of your R4 roster being pointless in the face of multiple duped R2 7*s.

And that's not in GC or just those pushing to catch bero.

It's from bronze III, all the way through the VC, for every paragon.

Everyone now gets to feel the crushing gap between a decent f2p player and a whale. What used to not bother in the slightest, is now a raw experience for every paragon.

You can simply not play BGs, of course, but kabam have been putting the very best rewards in the game, behind playing BGs. Even today; want to ascend your R5? Better get used to being crushed by whales.

The gap is now visible and stark for such a huge amount of the player base.

Personally, I'm immensely grateful for the whales keeping the lights on; they need to have that advantage.

Kabam could solve the perception problem, by solving the BG problem. Which isn't going to be easy.

I understand your frustration. However, the issue with whales is only present in high levels of BG. Players in lower levels don't have this problem, meaning Kabam won't bother fixing this issue. This issue only affects a small minority of the overall playerbase.

Red867

Everyone was so excited to have this content come out. Well when you start pitting the player base against one another a huge portion is bound to be upset and lose interest in the game. Pandora box has been opened.

willrun4adonut

Before BGs, you could be an end game paragon, full completion account, like wouldrunforadonut, play wars and AQ and never come across a whale. Feel like your account with 1 or 2 r5s and full roster of r4s is competitive, for what you play against in AQ and AW. Achieve day or month 1 new progression titles, have the full 6+ 7* on release. But never feel like you are losing out on being competitive by whales spamming on offers.

Is someone impersonating me? And I'm glad I don't come off as a 🐋. I'll try to spend more than $200 a year for 2024.

I will say, I always get to GC and this season has been my fastest yet, and even made it up to 150 points (normally I just chill at 1-40 points). The whales haven't been killing me with their rosters somehow recently.

And you're a Sinister Six member? Good to know for next month.

BringPopcorn

I dunno why there is this F2P vs P2P thing going on right now, the deals for P2P are terrible.

WOLF_LINK

I have 2.5 M Loyalty, i m hopeful on buying 4 loyalty bundles on 29th

The Loyalty Selector for 1000 Pts. will most likely cost Units or something else again AND contains tons of Loyalty. They named the other Packs after what you will get as well.

And why will you be able to buy a big chunk of Loyalty? Because they might release the 7* Loyalty Crystal the same day and that one will be expensive.