The fact that people are even offended by this tells me they're not doing the math. How many Revives have been farmed? Hell, I even got in on this for my Necro run when Jax gave us the indirect hint. (Albeit I went in with around 45 or so, and a number were from Solo Events and Crystals.) We're talking hundreds in terms of some Players and thousands upon thousands overall. They have that data, and have had it all along. This isn't just some punishment or diversion to spend. It's a move to keep control over the content they can put out that adequately challenges Players. Many people reference 12.0 whenever they want to elude to a boycott, but not many remember or understand the reasons for those changes. The game wouldn't have continued because the Devs were in a corner with the content they could produce. The old system and the old Champs made it impossible to put anything out those Champs and their percentages couldn't cut through like butter. I'm actually surprised that here we are some years later, and people still can't understand how no Dev wants to lose control of what they can put out. It was an unreasonable farm. If people saw the numbers, I'm quite sure it would be hard to argue.
No there shouldn't be. Revive farming is being removed because it is too easy to get free revives. If there is a half decent way to get 100+ revives within the week, expect all difficult content in the future to either not exist because the devs don't want to waste their time on it (as they talked about in one of the livestreams in december) or for them all to be as stupid difficult as the 4* Star Lord LoL challenge. By removing the easily accessible revives, we can see more content like Necropolis that don't cost a lot of resources to do with the right team. If you keep easy revives in, then every carina challenge is going to be like the Brian Grant necropolis duck run to compensate for you being able to get easy revives.
Can we please end the "revive spam prevents endgame content development" narrative already? The actual issue is that Kabam doesn't want free revives to cut into their profit margins. If revive spamming truly were an existential threat to the game, Kabam would simply cap the number of revives on endgame quests, much like they do for AQ and AW. I'm not saying that's something the player base wants, but its absence is proof that Kabam doesn't think spamming revives isn't a problem so long as players purchase them with units.
I have seen you post this many times in different places, and I want to clarify something because we have not avoided this and have been clear about it; you can use all the revives you want if you are willing to use your units on them. We have said exactly that.
Units are powerful, and they are meant to be a choice.
When there are limitless revives available without the cost of units, that is specifically when it prevents the development of end-game content. That is when it is no longer worth our time or effort to make this content because players are not choosing to use their Units to progress over using them on other things.
You can farm all of the units you want and use them to buy all the revives in the world, but you're making the choice there for what you do with those units. You have to decide if you want to use them to finish content or to purchase other items.
You have to make the choice, and that is how this game had been for many years before farming started and the way it should be. Content should not be inevitable, and units aren't only for deals.
Can I ask this then? Is it intended for Necropolis to cost units? If the inventory on revives is what it is, and there are paths that arguably take more revives than inventory allows, then by your reasoning we should be using units in Necropolis. I think we can all agree that is where the friction from the player base comes from. The choice to use units on revives for Necropolis(just necro for this argument) isn't a choice, if the content demands more revives than inventory allows to hold.
Nothing is ever "intended" to cost units directly. Rather, Necropolis is intended to have a certain level of high difficulty, and it is up to the players to decide if they can do it without units, or if they choose to do it with units, or if they decide to wait until they can do it at a cost level they feel is appropriate.
The entire premise of most F2P games is that you always have a choice: do it for free or do it with the assistance of spending. Doing it for free generally takes more time, more effort, and more skill. The Necropolis is no more "intended" to cost units than Act 5 is.
There is no content in the game that can't be beaten eventually for free with the right roster, the right skillset, and the right amount of practice. .
No there shouldn't be. Revive farming is being removed because it is too easy to get free revives. If there is a half decent way to get 100+ revives within the week, expect all difficult content in the future to either not exist because the devs don't want to waste their time on it (as they talked about in one of the livestreams in december) or for them all to be as stupid difficult as the 4* Star Lord LoL challenge. By removing the easily accessible revives, we can see more content like Necropolis that don't cost a lot of resources to do with the right team. If you keep easy revives in, then every carina challenge is going to be like the Brian Grant necropolis duck run to compensate for you being able to get easy revives.
Can we please end the "revive spam prevents endgame content development" narrative already? The actual issue is that Kabam doesn't want free revives to cut into their profit margins. If revive spamming truly were an existential threat to the game, Kabam would simply cap the number of revives on endgame quests, much like they do for AQ and AW. I'm not saying that's something the player base wants, but its absence is proof that Kabam doesn't think spamming revives isn't a problem so long as players purchase them with units.
I have seen you post this many times in different places, and I want to clarify something because we have not avoided this and have been clear about it; you can use all the revives you want if you are willing to use your units on them. We have said exactly that.
Units are powerful, and they are meant to be a choice.
When there are limitless revives available without the cost of units, that is specifically when it prevents the development of end-game content. That is when it is no longer worth our time or effort to make this content because players are not choosing to use their Units to progress over using them on other things.
You can farm all of the units you want and use them to buy all the revives in the world, but you're making the choice there for what you do with those units. You have to decide if you want to use them to finish content or to purchase other items.
You have to make the choice, and that is how this game had been for many years before farming started and the way it should be. Content should not be inevitable, and units aren't only for deals.
Can I ask this then? Is it intended for Necropolis to cost units? If the inventory on revives is what it is, and there are paths that arguably take more revives than inventory allows, then by your reasoning we should be using units in Necropolis. I think we can all agree that is where the friction from the player base comes from. The choice to use units on revives for Necropolis(just necro for this argument) isn't a choice, if the content demands more revives than inventory allows to hold.
Nothing is ever "intended" to cost units directly. Rather, Necropolis is intended to have a certain level of high difficulty, and it is up to the players to decide if they can do it without units, or if they choose to do it with units, or if they decide to wait until they can do it at a cost level they feel is appropriate.
The entire premise of most F2P games is that you always have a choice: do it for free or do it with the assistance of spending. Doing it for free generally takes more time, more effort, and more skill. The Necropolis is no more "intended" to cost units than Act 5 is.
There is no content in the game that can't be beaten eventually for free with the right roster, the right skillset, and the right amount of practice. .
Inhuman, and starlord LOL Carina
Spending money was the reference I believe. Anything is doable if you're patient enough.
No there shouldn't be. Revive farming is being removed because it is too easy to get free revives. If there is a half decent way to get 100+ revives within the week, expect all difficult content in the future to either not exist because the devs don't want to waste their time on it (as they talked about in one of the livestreams in december) or for them all to be as stupid difficult as the 4* Star Lord LoL challenge. By removing the easily accessible revives, we can see more content like Necropolis that don't cost a lot of resources to do with the right team. If you keep easy revives in, then every carina challenge is going to be like the Brian Grant necropolis duck run to compensate for you being able to get easy revives.
Can we please end the "revive spam prevents endgame content development" narrative already? The actual issue is that Kabam doesn't want free revives to cut into their profit margins. If revive spamming truly were an existential threat to the game, Kabam would simply cap the number of revives on endgame quests, much like they do for AQ and AW. I'm not saying that's something the player base wants, but its absence is proof that Kabam doesn't think spamming revives isn't a problem so long as players purchase them with units.
I have seen you post this many times in different places, and I want to clarify something because we have not avoided this and have been clear about it; you can use all the revives you want if you are willing to use your units on them. We have said exactly that.
Units are powerful, and they are meant to be a choice.
When there are limitless revives available without the cost of units, that is specifically when it prevents the development of end-game content. That is when it is no longer worth our time or effort to make this content because players are not choosing to use their Units to progress over using them on other things.
You can farm all of the units you want and use them to buy all the revives in the world, but you're making the choice there for what you do with those units. You have to decide if you want to use them to finish content or to purchase other items.
You have to make the choice, and that is how this game had been for many years before farming started and the way it should be. Content should not be inevitable, and units aren't only for deals.
Can I ask this then? Is it intended for Necropolis to cost units? If the inventory on revives is what it is, and there are paths that arguably take more revives than inventory allows, then by your reasoning we should be using units in Necropolis. I think we can all agree that is where the friction from the player base comes from. The choice to use units on revives for Necropolis(just necro for this argument) isn't a choice, if the content demands more revives than inventory allows to hold.
Nothing is ever "intended" to cost units directly. Rather, Necropolis is intended to have a certain level of high difficulty, and it is up to the players to decide if they can do it without units, or if they choose to do it with units, or if they decide to wait until they can do it at a cost level they feel is appropriate.
The entire premise of most F2P games is that you always have a choice: do it for free or do it with the assistance of spending. Doing it for free generally takes more time, more effort, and more skill. The Necropolis is no more "intended" to cost units than Act 5 is.
There is no content in the game that can't be beaten eventually for free with the right roster, the right skillset, and the right amount of practice. .
Inhuman, and starlord LOL Carina
Well now a FTP will have to farm arena instead of 5.4.6. But seriously those 4* Labyrinth Carina challenges need to get revisited. They have the worst reward to effort ratio in the game by a mile. The rarity restrictions need to get removed (f.e. complete LOL with only SL in your team at any rarity), or at least be upgraded to 5*. These objectives are a disgrace for the game, and are only damaging the game's image at this point. I have done all 3* Carina challenges, and most of other ones. But despite the completionist inside me want to do these 4* Labyrinth challenges too, the logical part of me prevents me of putting my self on such a torture. And that's coming from someone who explored Variant1 early with 4*s and low ranked 5*s, and had explored Act6 before it's massive nerfs. These challenges need to change, and similar ones should never come back. They aren't challenges, they are pure item sinks no matter your skill level 🙂
But seriously those 4* Labyrinth Carina challenges need to get revisited. They have the worst reward to effort ratio in the game by a mile.
.....
These challenges need to change, and similar ones should never come back. They aren't challenges, they are pure item sinks no matter your skill level 🙂
And this is why I've been ascending my inhumans and Starlord - as the only challenges left in the game.
But if it's about units, why weren't units mentioned at all in the initial revive nerf post?
Because it is not about units. It is about revives trivializing content.
Units only come into the discussion because some players contend that since you can buy revives with units, the devs must not actually care about revive usage, they only care about money. But that ignores the context of how the game is developed.
Just handing out all the champions would trivialize champion collection so the devs don’t do that. But anyone willing to spend enough money can always have all the champions. So does that mean that they don’t actually care about whether everyone has all the champions or not, they just care about selling them?
No, that’s not what that means. In a perfect world, you wouldn’t be able to buy units with money. In games that are supported by subscriptions and not microtransactions, it would be impossible to buy such currency and yet they still restrict resources just like MCOC does, because the reasons are independent of monetization. But we don’t live in that utopia.
Most players don’t spend. 95%+ of all players who play the game live in a world where there is no unit store, you can’t buy anything with cash, and the only way to use anything in the game to do anything in the game is to earn it in the game. The cash stores literally don’t exist for them, because they don’t spend and will never spend a cent.
The game supports itself on the less than five percent who spend. But the game has to work just as much for the 95% who don’t spend as for the 5% that do.
Outside of cash, the unit economy is very strictly regulated. And the units available are balanced against the opportunities to spend those units. That balance pre-exists the arrival of the Necropolis. Anyone who chooses to spend units on the Necropolis is incurring the opportunity cost of not being able to spend those units on the other opportunities for them. That’s factored into the design of the Necropolis, and the overall revive economy.
The short answer to why the revive farms were nerfed is simple: revives trivialize difficulty and difficult content. This is would be true whether units existed or not, whether cash microtransactions existed or not. That is the fundamental reason for the change, period. The unit economy only enters into the discussion when players ask “but why not this, or that, or the other thing? Why not all these other options I would prefer instead?” Those questions get into the territory of holistic game economy design. To answer those questions, you have to dive into all the parts of the game design those questions touch. But none of that changes the fact that the actual cause of the revive farm nerfs, the actual driving imperative for making the change, is that revive farms trivialize difficult content, period. Without that cause, the devs would not have looked to change anything. The *obvious* change is to get rid of them, because they are obviously problematic. You only need to discuss the unit economy or the issues of monetization and content completion or the revive/energy balance if you decide to not take the obvious avenue to resolve the issue and attempt to do unobvious things, to search for alternatives to the obvious. And when you do, that’s when it takes knowledge of how the rest of the game economy and design works to answer all of the “why not” questions.
It would be impossible to address them all in an announcement addressing the question “why are we doing this?” Because none of those things are the reason.
No there shouldn't be. Revive farming is being removed because it is too easy to get free revives. If there is a half decent way to get 100+ revives within the week, expect all difficult content in the future to either not exist because the devs don't want to waste their time on it (as they talked about in one of the livestreams in december) or for them all to be as stupid difficult as the 4* Star Lord LoL challenge. By removing the easily accessible revives, we can see more content like Necropolis that don't cost a lot of resources to do with the right team. If you keep easy revives in, then every carina challenge is going to be like the Brian Grant necropolis duck run to compensate for you being able to get easy revives.
Can we please end the "revive spam prevents endgame content development" narrative already? The actual issue is that Kabam doesn't want free revives to cut into their profit margins. If revive spamming truly were an existential threat to the game, Kabam would simply cap the number of revives on endgame quests, much like they do for AQ and AW. I'm not saying that's something the player base wants, but its absence is proof that Kabam doesn't think spamming revives isn't a problem so long as players purchase them with units.
I have seen you post this many times in different places, and I want to clarify something because we have not avoided this and have been clear about it; you can use all the revives you want if you are willing to use your units on them. We have said exactly that.
Units are powerful, and they are meant to be a choice.
When there are limitless revives available without the cost of units, that is specifically when it prevents the development of end-game content. That is when it is no longer worth our time or effort to make this content because players are not choosing to use their Units to progress over using them on other things.
You can farm all of the units you want and use them to buy all the revives in the world, but you're making the choice there for what you do with those units. You have to decide if you want to use them to finish content or to purchase other items.
You have to make the choice, and that is how this game had been for many years before farming started and the way it should be. Content should not be inevitable, and units aren't only for deals.
Can I ask this then? Is it intended for Necropolis to cost units? If the inventory on revives is what it is, and there are paths that arguably take more revives than inventory allows, then by your reasoning we should be using units in Necropolis. I think we can all agree that is where the friction from the player base comes from. The choice to use units on revives for Necropolis(just necro for this argument) isn't a choice, if the content demands more revives than inventory allows to hold.
Nothing is ever "intended" to cost units directly. Rather, Necropolis is intended to have a certain level of high difficulty, and it is up to the players to decide if they can do it without units, or if they choose to do it with units, or if they decide to wait until they can do it at a cost level they feel is appropriate.
The entire premise of most F2P games is that you always have a choice: do it for free or do it with the assistance of spending. Doing it for free generally takes more time, more effort, and more skill. The Necropolis is no more "intended" to cost units than Act 5 is.
There is no content in the game that can't be beaten eventually for free with the right roster, the right skillset, and the right amount of practice. .
Inhuman, and starlord LOL Carina
Are you saying no F2P player has ever completed that content? Are you saying it is impossible to complete those without spending?
Those challenges were created at a time when revive farming existed, and players were able to theoretically expend a practically unlimited amount of revives to complete challenge content. To the extent that people say those challenges are just resource sinks, they are half right. They are resource sinks, but that resource sink is necessary to make them challenges at all. It takes a high level of skill to reduce the amount of resources required to a manageable amount. Unfortunately, they can also be completed by any level of skill if someone is willing to dedicate ludicrous levels of resources to complete them, because ludicrous levels of resources is, or at least was, an achievable possibility.
I have zero doubt those challenges were completed by players without spending any cash, and in some cases without spending any units either. Will that still be possible after the revive farm nerfs? I’m not sure, but I wouldn’t bet against it. That’s the whole purpose of challenge content, to be a challenge. A challenge everyone knows they can do is not a challenge.
No there shouldn't be. Revive farming is being removed because it is too easy to get free revives. If there is a half decent way to get 100+ revives within the week, expect all difficult content in the future to either not exist because the devs don't want to waste their time on it (as they talked about in one of the livestreams in december) or for them all to be as stupid difficult as the 4* Star Lord LoL challenge. By removing the easily accessible revives, we can see more content like Necropolis that don't cost a lot of resources to do with the right team. If you keep easy revives in, then every carina challenge is going to be like the Brian Grant necropolis duck run to compensate for you being able to get easy revives.
Can we please end the "revive spam prevents endgame content development" narrative already? The actual issue is that Kabam doesn't want free revives to cut into their profit margins. If revive spamming truly were an existential threat to the game, Kabam would simply cap the number of revives on endgame quests, much like they do for AQ and AW. I'm not saying that's something the player base wants, but its absence is proof that Kabam doesn't think spamming revives isn't a problem so long as players purchase them with units.
I have seen you post this many times in different places, and I want to clarify something because we have not avoided this and have been clear about it; you can use all the revives you want if you are willing to use your units on them. We have said exactly that.
Units are powerful, and they are meant to be a choice.
When there are limitless revives available without the cost of units, that is specifically when it prevents the development of end-game content. That is when it is no longer worth our time or effort to make this content because players are not choosing to use their Units to progress over using them on other things.
You can farm all of the units you want and use them to buy all the revives in the world, but you're making the choice there for what you do with those units. You have to decide if you want to use them to finish content or to purchase other items.
You have to make the choice, and that is how this game had been for many years before farming started and the way it should be. Content should not be inevitable, and units aren't only for deals.
Can I ask this then? Is it intended for Necropolis to cost units? If the inventory on revives is what it is, and there are paths that arguably take more revives than inventory allows, then by your reasoning we should be using units in Necropolis. I think we can all agree that is where the friction from the player base comes from. The choice to use units on revives for Necropolis(just necro for this argument) isn't a choice, if the content demands more revives than inventory allows to hold.
Nothing is ever "intended" to cost units directly. Rather, Necropolis is intended to have a certain level of high difficulty, and it is up to the players to decide if they can do it without units, or if they choose to do it with units, or if they decide to wait until they can do it at a cost level they feel is appropriate.
The entire premise of most F2P games is that you always have a choice: do it for free or do it with the assistance of spending. Doing it for free generally takes more time, more effort, and more skill. The Necropolis is no more "intended" to cost units than Act 5 is.
There is no content in the game that can't be beaten eventually for free with the right roster, the right skillset, and the right amount of practice. .
Inhuman, and starlord LOL Carina
Are you saying no F2P player has ever completed that content? Are you saying it is impossible to complete those without spending?
Those challenges were created at a time when revive farming existed, and players were able to theoretically expend a practically unlimited amount of revives to complete challenge content. To the extent that people say those challenges are just resource sinks, they are half right. They are resource sinks, but that resource sink is necessary to make them challenges at all. It takes a high level of skill to reduce the amount of resources required to a manageable amount. Unfortunately, they can also be completed by any level of skill if someone is willing to dedicate ludicrous levels of resources to complete them, because ludicrous levels of resources is, or at least was, an achievable possibility.
I have zero doubt those challenges were completed by players without spending any cash, and in some cases without spending any units either. Will that still be possible after the revive farm nerfs? I’m not sure, but I wouldn’t bet against it. That’s the whole purpose of challenge content, to be a challenge. A challenge everyone knows they can do is not a challenge.
Well no. I meant these do require unit spending in the context that revive farming does not exist.
300 units isn't "basically free". It's about $10, meaning it would cost me about $30 to do each path of Necropolis. $180 for 6 paths.
Or I could grind for those units if I didn't want to spend.
You don't wanna spend, then you make your peace and enjoy what they give you at the fullest you can. Like it or not, if you are F2P you don't really bring anything to the table, and got 0 power to negotiate a compromise.
Sounds like a peasant to me. I do feel bad for them.
Let’s address the elephant in the room here. Arena is boring af and takes way too long to get units that way. If we can’t farm revives we are going to buying them. No one in their right mind is going to be farming arena for units to then burn them on revives
20 minutes a day in addition to everything else we need to do in the game every day.
ah got it. 20 minutes a day is too much to ask, but grinding revives on top of “everything else you have to do everyday” is fine
Let’s be real here. If you farm revives all day you’re getting like 100 a day. If you grind arena all day you’re not getting 4000 units. We can’t compare the 2 as like for like and Kabam should stop doing that as well.
They removed a very easy way to get revives which no one really knew was out there until the YouTubers showed us due to necropolis.
Now it’s gone and anyone who used it and isn’t willing to spend will likely taper off and stop playing. Kabam won’t care though anyway as those players didn’t spend anyway. They only real losers are the players as the community will shrink and the game will shrink a bit.
No there shouldn't be. Revive farming is being removed because it is too easy to get free revives. If there is a half decent way to get 100+ revives within the week, expect all difficult content in the future to either not exist because the devs don't want to waste their time on it (as they talked about in one of the livestreams in december) or for them all to be as stupid difficult as the 4* Star Lord LoL challenge. By removing the easily accessible revives, we can see more content like Necropolis that don't cost a lot of resources to do with the right team. If you keep easy revives in, then every carina challenge is going to be like the Brian Grant necropolis duck run to compensate for you being able to get easy revives.
Can we please end the "revive spam prevents endgame content development" narrative already? The actual issue is that Kabam doesn't want free revives to cut into their profit margins. If revive spamming truly were an existential threat to the game, Kabam would simply cap the number of revives on endgame quests, much like they do for AQ and AW. I'm not saying that's something the player base wants, but its absence is proof that Kabam doesn't think spamming revives isn't a problem so long as players purchase them with units.
I have seen you post this many times in different places, and I want to clarify something because we have not avoided this and have been clear about it; you can use all the revives you want if you are willing to use your units on them. We have said exactly that.
Units are powerful, and they are meant to be a choice.
When there are limitless revives available without the cost of units, that is specifically when it prevents the development of end-game content. That is when it is no longer worth our time or effort to make this content because players are not choosing to use their Units to progress over using them on other things.
You can farm all of the units you want and use them to buy all the revives in the world, but you're making the choice there for what you do with those units. You have to decide if you want to use them to finish content or to purchase other items.
You have to make the choice, and that is how this game had been for many years before farming started and the way it should be. Content should not be inevitable, and units aren't only for deals.
Based on this, I feel like a better compromise would have been to keep the revive farm and nerf the availability of energy refills. Players cannot farm without energy, and many of us have energy refills in overflow with almost nothing to use them on without a farm. So, in line with the intention of forcing players to make a choice with their units, wouldn't it make more sense for players to be able to spend their units on energy refills and keep farming? Why can't we save units, reinvest those units into energy, and manually pluck the revives off of paths? Greater effort for a greater reward. The revives still expire, therefore they would need to be used. This creates the cycle of acquire units, buy refills, farm revives, complete content, and repeat.
An energy refill is 30 units and a 40% revive is 40 units. This is not a significant difference. However, with old revive farming methods, we could take a 30 unit energy refill and turn it into two or three 20% revives. The balance here is that there was some amount of time required by the player to be involved in the game (even if it's just setting up a team to auto fight) plus good ol' RNG. Some farms were more efficient and required less interactions, but that gives players incentive to rank champs specifically for farming purposes. We would also be choosing quantity (multiple 20% revives) over quality (one 40% revive). Additionally, people that buy units would be able to farm quicker, if needed.
I think Kabam should remove a majority of energy refills from rewards and free crystals and replace them with a high tier quest potion instead. Once that is done, I think revive farming should be restored to it's former availability. In this scenario, Kabam wins because they still get players to spend their units on difficult content via energy refills and players win because the ability to accumulate large amounts of revives for difficult content is still available. In my opinion, this is a much better compromise and it doesn't give the impression of a cash grab by Kabam.
The Apothecary is not a good enough compromise as revives will start to expire before the average player can accumulate enough to run a path in a piece of content like Necropolis. I believe this change to revive farming will end up frustrating many players as it will take most players months to acquire the necessary resources. Once they hit that wall, players will lose interest in the game and move on to something else.
I hope this suggestion will be considered!
We have been very clear that the apothecary, which was already updated, is the maximum amount of Free Revives that we are comfortable with being available on a very reliable basis, but also don't leave out the revives available in Solo Events.
This change is not new; it was already done once before, and we were aware that we would get to a point where Act 5 would become more auto-fightable and the revives here would need to be removed too. We were clear on that then and are just doing what we said we would do when that situation arises. If more methods to easily Farm these consumables arise, we will be changing those as well.
While you are on this thread, I do have a couple of questions: 1: are the drop rates for energy refills being nerfed as well or is it only the revives? 2. Is the team also looking at the drop rates of chests in monthly quest? Anecdotally these seem to dropping revives way less than the past when revives would spawn on the paths. Thanks.
1. I don't believe we've changed the drop rates on Energy Refills 2. I don't know this off the top of my head, but I will raise it with my team!
No there shouldn't be. Revive farming is being removed because it is too easy to get free revives. If there is a half decent way to get 100+ revives within the week, expect all difficult content in the future to either not exist because the devs don't want to waste their time on it (as they talked about in one of the livestreams in december) or for them all to be as stupid difficult as the 4* Star Lord LoL challenge. By removing the easily accessible revives, we can see more content like Necropolis that don't cost a lot of resources to do with the right team. If you keep easy revives in, then every carina challenge is going to be like the Brian Grant necropolis duck run to compensate for you being able to get easy revives.
Can we please end the "revive spam prevents endgame content development" narrative already? The actual issue is that Kabam doesn't want free revives to cut into their profit margins. If revive spamming truly were an existential threat to the game, Kabam would simply cap the number of revives on endgame quests, much like they do for AQ and AW. I'm not saying that's something the player base wants, but its absence is proof that Kabam doesn't think spamming revives isn't a problem so long as players purchase them with units.
I have seen you post this many times in different places, and I want to clarify something because we have not avoided this and have been clear about it; you can use all the revives you want if you are willing to use your units on them. We have said exactly that.
Units are powerful, and they are meant to be a choice.
When there are limitless revives available without the cost of units, that is specifically when it prevents the development of end-game content. That is when it is no longer worth our time or effort to make this content because players are not choosing to use their Units to progress over using them on other things.
You can farm all of the units you want and use them to buy all the revives in the world, but you're making the choice there for what you do with those units. You have to decide if you want to use them to finish content or to purchase other items.
You have to make the choice, and that is how this game had been for many years before farming started and the way it should be. Content should not be inevitable, and units aren't only for deals.
Based on this, I feel like a better compromise would have been to keep the revive farm and nerf the availability of energy refills. Players cannot farm without energy, and many of us have energy refills in overflow with almost nothing to use them on without a farm. So, in line with the intention of forcing players to make a choice with their units, wouldn't it make more sense for players to be able to spend their units on energy refills and keep farming? Why can't we save units, reinvest those units into energy, and manually pluck the revives off of paths? Greater effort for a greater reward. The revives still expire, therefore they would need to be used. This creates the cycle of acquire units, buy refills, farm revives, complete content, and repeat.
An energy refill is 30 units and a 40% revive is 40 units. This is not a significant difference. However, with old revive farming methods, we could take a 30 unit energy refill and turn it into two or three 20% revives. The balance here is that there was some amount of time required by the player to be involved in the game (even if it's just setting up a team to auto fight) plus good ol' RNG. Some farms were more efficient and required less interactions, but that gives players incentive to rank champs specifically for farming purposes. We would also be choosing quantity (multiple 20% revives) over quality (one 40% revive). Additionally, people that buy units would be able to farm quicker, if needed.
I think Kabam should remove a majority of energy refills from rewards and free crystals and replace them with a high tier quest potion instead. Once that is done, I think revive farming should be restored to it's former availability. In this scenario, Kabam wins because they still get players to spend their units on difficult content via energy refills and players win because the ability to accumulate large amounts of revives for difficult content is still available. In my opinion, this is a much better compromise and it doesn't give the impression of a cash grab by Kabam.
The Apothecary is not a good enough compromise as revives will start to expire before the average player can accumulate enough to run a path in a piece of content like Necropolis. I believe this change to revive farming will end up frustrating many players as it will take most players months to acquire the necessary resources. Once they hit that wall, players will lose interest in the game and move on to something else.
I hope this suggestion will be considered!
We have been very clear that the apothecary, which was already updated, is the maximum amount of Free Revives that we are comfortable with being available on a very reliable basis, but also don't leave out the revives available in Solo Events.
This change is not new; it was already done once before, and we were aware that we would get to a point where Act 5 would become more auto-fightable and the revives here would need to be removed too. We were clear on that then and are just doing what we said we would do when that situation arises. If more methods to easily Farm these consumables arise, we will be changing those as well.
While you are on this thread, I do have a couple of questions: 1: are the drop rates for energy refills being nerfed as well or is it only the revives? 2. Is the team also looking at the drop rates of chests in monthly quest? Anecdotally these seem to dropping revives way less than the past when revives would spawn on the paths. Thanks.
1. I don't believe we've changed the drop rates on Energy Refills 2. I don't know this off the top of my head, but I will raise it with my team!
That would be amazing, Miike.
If you asked the community (there have been a few threads here and there), the drop rate of Revives appears to a lot lower - I think I've had just 1 or 2 revives in the last three months, since the chests were introduced. And that's with me clearing every level of every Event Quest; exploring 3/4 of them.
Hopefully your team can access hard data - it would be great if you could look at/share any findings.
On the positive side, I should point out that whilst revives have been lacking, the chests have been giving out a lot more Iso-8; and at least a modest number of healing potions.
Let’s be real here. If you farm revives all day you’re getting like 100 a day. If you grind arena all day you’re not getting 4000 units. We can’t compare the 2 as like for like and Kabam should stop doing that as well.
They removed a very easy way to get revives which no one really knew was out there until the YouTubers showed us due to necropolis.
Now it’s gone and anyone who used it and isn’t willing to spend will likely taper off and stop playing. Kabam won’t care though anyway as those players didn’t spend anyway. They only real losers are the players as the community will shrink and the game will shrink a bit.
i was not talking about arena. i was talking about the 22 hour solo event and apothecary to get 2 revives a day. you still don’t need to grind arena for units if you want revives. 68 a month for free is plenty to do even a necropolis path if you’re good enough. does removing revive farming stop some players from doing necropolis? yes, but likely only the players who don’t have the roster and skills necessary which is a good thing. this game is all about building up a roster good enough to progress and being able to throw 500 revives at any quest you can’t beat isn’t what the game is about
it’s also not true that people didn’t know about farming until necropolis. they removed farming in acts 1-3 early last year before necropolis was even announced, and when they did that they specifically said they would be monitoring other revive farming spots and removing them when they felt was necessary.
I have seen you post this many times in different places, and I want to clarify something because we have not avoided this and have been clear about it; you can use all the revives you want if you are willing to use your units on them. We have said exactly that.
Units are powerful, and they are meant to be a choice.
When there are limitless revives available without the cost of units, that is specifically when it prevents the development of end-game content. That is when it is no longer worth our time or effort to make this content because players are not choosing to use their Units to progress over using them on other things.
You can farm all of the units you want and use them to buy all the revives in the world, but you're making the choice there for what you do with those units. You have to decide if you want to use them to finish content or to purchase other items.
You have to make the choice, and that is how this game had been for many years before farming started and the way it should be. Content should not be inevitable, and units aren't only for deals.
I appreciate the response on the subject. This is the first time I have seen you (or someone from Kabam) say that revive use is not the issue, but the revive acquisition method is the existential threat to endgame content. This may be why there's a disconnect between our views on this, so I'd like to understand it more (and hopefully you can understand why I believe what I do).
Notice the language used in this announcement. "Spam revives." "Trivializes difficult content." And tellingly, no mention of units, at all. There is nothing here about how revives are gathered, only how they are used. By my read, your concern with revive farming is that players gain too many revives to use, which you state is "effectively a loophole for these challenging pieces of content." So you'll understand why I think your justification for nerfing revive farming is that too many revives are being used. What I am confused about now, though, is that you say "You can farm all of the units you want and use them to buy all the revives in the world," which appears to contradict the original announcement. Can you explain what you mean by this?
Second, I am not sure I understand why units are a necessary intermediary that players must use. I think we agree that, whether a person is grinding for units or revives, they both represent the same thing: time spent playing the game. Why do you believe that the time spent grinding for units is not equal to the time spent grinding for revives. I agree that units are more powerful. But if the real reason behind your position is giving players a choice, why don't you let players choose whether to spend their time grinding for units or grinding for revives? In theory, if I'm grinding for revives, I can't at the same time be grinding for units to spend on deals. The tradeoff remains the same, I'm just choosing a different path to get there. So if both grinds lead to the same end result of having enough items to complete endgame content, why isn't what's good for the goose good for the gander?
I've already typed more than I intended, I don't like excessively long posts because they're difficult to respond to. So those are my thoughts, hope they shed light on my position for you.
The crux of this is not about giving players a choice about where they spend their time, it's about where they spend their units. They are NOT the same thing, and unless we change to a system where you can only choose Units OR Revives as your reward, you know that players will spend their time doing both.
Units are also a closely controlled system that allows us to ensure that there's only X amount available by grinding every day/week/month/year. This has not prevented F2P players from finding great success in the game, and has been the case since the beginning of the game, including most of the game's lifetime that occurred before farming was possible.
The tradeoff is not the same in these cases.
I would suggest a permanent option for buying pot bundles like the one that expired yesterday with the 500 unit price, specially for those whom have only done 1 path in necro for the road to the crypt rewards and are now looking to finish the rest of the paths and lack the resources ( revives and hp pots ) so I think you should consider making that offer a permanent deal which i believe you wouldnt mind since its bought with units, i would love to hear your take on this
300 units isn't "basically free". It's about $10, meaning it would cost me about $30 to do each path of Necropolis. $180 for 6 paths.
Or I could grind for those units if I didn't want to spend.
You don't wanna spend, then you make your peace and enjoy what they give you at the fullest you can. Like it or not, if you are F2P you don't really bring anything to the table, and got 0 power to negotiate a compromise.
Sounds like a peasant to me. I do feel bad for them.
Let’s address the elephant in the room here. Arena is boring af and takes way too long to get units that way. If we can’t farm revives we are going to buying them. No one in their right mind is going to be farming arena for units to then burn them on revives
300 units isn't "basically free". It's about $10, meaning it would cost me about $30 to do each path of Necropolis. $180 for 6 paths.
Or I could grind for those units if I didn't want to spend.
You don't wanna spend, then you make your peace and enjoy what they give you at the fullest you can. Like it or not, if you are F2P you don't really bring anything to the table, and got 0 power to negotiate a compromise.
Sounds like a peasant to me. I do feel bad for them.
Let’s address the elephant in the room here. Arena is boring af and takes way too long to get units that way. If we can’t farm revives we are going to buying them. No one in their right mind is going to be farming arena for units to then burn them on revives
That's how it was always done in the past.
“The system was garbage for a long time” is not a reason for the system to be allowed to remain garbage.
Here are my three suggestions, none of which are gamebreaking IMO.
1) fix apothecary. One L1 revive for L1. One L2 for L2. Two per day total can’t possibly be gamebreaking.
Or 2) bring back that revive package you just offered for 500 units on a permanent basis, with a purchase limit of 1 per week. That basically allows for 3 purchases before stuff would be expiring.
Or 3) make a major adjustment to storage limits. If Kabam is going to A) limit inventory, and b) make overflow expire in two weeks, then designing content that inherently requires more than the storage limits allow is less than just.
But if it's about units, why weren't units mentioned at all in the initial revive nerf post?
Because it is not about units. It is about revives trivializing content.
But it is about units. That's what Miike literally said, in this thread.
Also TL;DR on the rest of your post, so don't expect a response. Sorry for being blunt, but you're injecting yourself into a conversation going on between Miike and me. We're having a fruitful discussion, and your rows and rows of text most often end up contributing nothing meaningful at all. Obviously you disagree, I don't want to waste my time.
Here are my three suggestions, none of which are gamebreaking IMO.
1) fix apothecary. One L1 revive for L1. One L2 for L2. Two per day total can’t possibly be gamebreaking.
Or 2) bring back that revive package you just offered for 500 units on a permanent basis, with a purchase limit of 1 per week. That basically allows for 3 purchases before stuff would be expiring.
Or 3) make a major adjustment to storage limits. If Kabam is going to A) limit inventory, and b) make overflow expire in two weeks, then designing content that inherently requires more than the storage limits allow is less than just.
Why purchase limit though? The problem is not having many revives, the problem is them being for free, i dont see why packages bought with units should be limited
Here are my three suggestions, none of which are gamebreaking IMO.
1) fix apothecary. One L1 revive for L1. One L2 for L2. Two per day total can’t possibly be gamebreaking.
Or 2) bring back that revive package you just offered for 500 units on a permanent basis, with a purchase limit of 1 per week. That basically allows for 3 purchases before stuff would be expiring.
Or 3) make a major adjustment to storage limits. If Kabam is going to A) limit inventory, and b) make overflow expire in two weeks, then designing content that inherently requires more than the storage limits allow is less than just.
Why purchase limit though? The problem is not having many revives, the problem is them being for free, i dont see why packages bought with units should be limited
I also didn’t really agree with the purchase limit. But, I guess that’s goes against people saying it’s only for profit haha.
All kidding, I agree that there really shouldn’t be a limit, if people want to spend on it, then that should be their choice, but it limits the usage of “free units “ I guess
It's Kabam's game, they can do whatever they want, as for farming, just means I won't be doing any endgame content and just stick with EQ and SQ. I'm totally fine and content with this. I'm not going to jump into using units to buy up revives and just keep doing what I did which is to save those units for CM and any big event unit deals. As a result, my account has improved because of this. When inputs issues are going on, or when trying to get a dragon man to dex for 14 sec while he's powering up to an sp3 and end up getting blasted in necrophisis it's not worth it to spend units on revives in my situation. If they plan to raise the units to purchase deals on CM, so be it, then I'll just grind the arena for units however disappointing the drop rates are. I rather have my units than go into a frenzy mode of buying units when comes time for CM. I want the Valiant title but not at the expense using units. It's true we have the choice to choose to spend units on revives to advance our account or to spend units elsewhere. I choose to spend units elsewhere on the game. More props to those who took advantage earlier on in November to farm to get that Valiant title. For me, it isn't important to get that Valiant title. Whether it this week or next year or 5 years later getting a Valiant title for my OWN account isn't important. Again, I'm content not being Valiant nor in a rush, for the extent of this game, Paragon maybe the highest level that I'll ever attain in this game, which suits me just fine, and I'm fine watching other people's account advance on.
300 units isn't "basically free". It's about $10, meaning it would cost me about $30 to do each path of Necropolis. $180 for 6 paths.
Or I could grind for those units if I didn't want to spend.
You don't wanna spend, then you make your peace and enjoy what they give you at the fullest you can. Like it or not, if you are F2P you don't really bring anything to the table, and got 0 power to negotiate a compromise.
Sounds like a peasant to me. I do feel bad for them.
Let’s address the elephant in the room here. Arena is boring af and takes way too long to get units that way. If we can’t farm revives we are going to buying them. No one in their right mind is going to be farming arena for units to then burn them on revives
That's how it was always done in the past.
“The system was garbage for a long time” is not a reason for the system to be allowed to remain garbage.
Arenas do need changes (especially Sunday's), but it does not need a change specifically because of the revive farm nerf. Any potential changes would negatively impact some of these players, and also positively impact some players.
What kind of changes are you proposing, and what players would that positively/negatively impact? Current State:
People who currently grind Arenas: It may be boring, but some players like spending a few hours grinding for BCs while they watch a movie. Other players find it boring, but are grinding to obtain the featured champion.
People who don't grind Arenas: They may find it to boring to do. They may think that they won't put up enough points to obtain the Featured champion, so there is no point. They may not be needing units since they obtain it elsewhere or buy units.
If Kabam made it less boring, that might entice more players to do arena; but that could negatively impact players who do arena for Champion acquisition. Since Kabam has made it their official position (whether you disagree with it or not) that they want some level of Unit control in the game, if Kabam made it more rewarding (more battlechips) but as a consequence reduce reward acquisition in other content, then that could negatively impact the above players, as well as the players who don't grind arenas because they used to be able to obtain stuff in other content.
It is the same thing as champions getting buffed. Players are excited by champions becoming better, but then the drawback is that when that buffed champion is a defender, it can be much harder now (look at Red Skull). Unintended or intended consequences of change need to be thought out.
@Kabam Miike I can respect a good bit of what you’re saying, but at the same time see some flaws in your arguments. For instance, you said:
“This has not prevented F2P players from finding great success in the game, and has been the case since the beginning of the game, including most of the game's lifetime that occurred before farming was possible.”
This is just untrue. People revive farmed like crazy before auto-fighting was a thing. They just manually replayed the content instead of auto-fighting it. The majority of F2P players who completed Abyss, for instance, did so through revive farming methods, because it was the most efficient way to spend their in-game time and in-game energy. This also creates another problem for Endgame Content. There is ZERO point to completing Abyss now. The rewards are too outdated. I can get equivalent rewards (arguably better rewards actually), with less/no cost, by 100% TB Monthly EQ. My original plan was to 100% Necropolis and then start on Abyss, spending a small amount of units here and there on it. But there is no point now. At 40 units a piece, and we’ll say 100 revives in Abyss, you’re valuing Abyss run rewards at 4,000 units each. It’s not worth it at all. This is not a criticism of the content. I love the content. I just think the Kabam team’s expectations are unrealistic/unreasonable. A different course of action that would’ve given the same results as your self-described “pre-farming days”, would be to just disable auto-fighting in Act 5 and below. It would require actual input and play by the community, while still giving the ability to physically get the revives. Another solution would be to increase the inventory caps. This would allow people to save up enough revives for Endgame Content runs.
Here are my three suggestions, none of which are gamebreaking IMO.
1) fix apothecary. One L1 revive for L1. One L2 for L2. Two per day total can’t possibly be gamebreaking.
Or 2) bring back that revive package you just offered for 500 units on a permanent basis, with a purchase limit of 1 per week. That basically allows for 3 purchases before stuff would be expiring.
Or 3) make a major adjustment to storage limits. If Kabam is going to A) limit inventory, and b) make overflow expire in two weeks, then designing content that inherently requires more than the storage limits allow is less than just.
Why purchase limit though? The problem is not having many revives, the problem is them being for free, i dont see why packages bought with units should be limited
I also didn’t really agree with the purchase limit. But, I guess that’s goes against people saying it’s only for profit haha.
All kidding, I agree that there really shouldn’t be a limit, if people want to spend on it, then that should be their choice, but it limits the usage of “free units “ I guess
Exactly, I mean thats the best course of action for kabam specially when a content of this size is released, you either encourage people to buy the packages or “farm” with the apoc and solo quests and wait until you have decent amount plus the stash.
They can literally “force” people to spend units on these packages if they want to finish the content early and then people with higher skill wont need to buy the packages and spend units and people with low skill such as myself compensate that lack of skill with units spend.
Not to mention for the story mode and not just special content
Revive farming was incredibly unbalanced, and that’s kind of undisputed. But what we have now is not a fair replacement for what we lost. The problem is not how many revives we can acquire in total, but how long it takes to do so.
Let’s say you just finished a path of necropolis and completely blew your stash. Now you need to rebuild it. Assuming you want to grab about 80 revives worth to brute force with Aegon, and that your stash is completely empty. You now have to spend 34 days of doing the apothecary to get the maximum 34 level 1 revives without any expiring.
For level 2 it’s the same, One daily from the 22h events for 34 days. On average you’d probably get another 3 level twos from the apothecary rng on average in 34 days. That leaves you with 71. If you get the 4th milestone of the 22 events you’d get 25 units x 34 days for 850 units in total to easily cover the last 9 revives needed.
This is a great amount of revives, but it takes a month and some change to get that many. I like the suggestion I’ve seen others make with adding a lvl 2 revive to the hard difficulty and moving the lvl 1 over to easy. I don’t understand why some don’t like this idea and am genuinely curious why. It’s not game breaking, it’s reasonable, it helps out pretty much everyone, what’s the downside?
Enjoy the participation numbers on Everest content because you won't see them ever again. Take a picture, put in a frame and hang it on the Conference Room.
Enjoy the participation numbers on Everest content because you won't see them ever again. Take a picture, put in a frame and hang it on the Conference Room.
The hardest part for me will be trying to farm revives fast enough before they expire since 20 rev inventory space isn't too much. I know some ppl leave their rewards unclaimed to try and manage this
Enjoy the participation numbers on Everest content because you won't see them ever again. Take a picture, put in a frame and hang it on the Conference Room.
300 units isn't "basically free". It's about $10, meaning it would cost me about $30 to do each path of Necropolis. $180 for 6 paths.
Or I could grind for those units if I didn't want to spend.
You don't wanna spend, then you make your peace and enjoy what they give you at the fullest you can. Like it or not, if you are F2P you don't really bring anything to the table, and got 0 power to negotiate a compromise.
Sounds like a peasant to me. I do feel bad for them.
Let’s address the elephant in the room here. Arena is boring af and takes way too long to get units that way. If we can’t farm revives we are going to buying them. No one in their right mind is going to be farming arena for units to then burn them on revives
Beggar for free revives calling someone a peasant, just LOL
Comments
We're talking hundreds in terms of some Players and thousands upon thousands overall. They have that data, and have had it all along. This isn't just some punishment or diversion to spend. It's a move to keep control over the content they can put out that adequately challenges Players. Many people reference 12.0 whenever they want to elude to a boycott, but not many remember or understand the reasons for those changes. The game wouldn't have continued because the Devs were in a corner with the content they could produce. The old system and the old Champs made it impossible to put anything out those Champs and their percentages couldn't cut through like butter. I'm actually surprised that here we are some years later, and people still can't understand how no Dev wants to lose control of what they can put out.
It was an unreasonable farm. If people saw the numbers, I'm quite sure it would be hard to argue.
But seriously those 4* Labyrinth Carina challenges need to get revisited.
They have the worst reward to effort ratio in the game by a mile.
The rarity restrictions need to get removed (f.e. complete LOL with only SL in your team at any rarity), or at least be upgraded to 5*.
These objectives are a disgrace for the game, and are only damaging the game's image at this point.
I have done all 3* Carina challenges, and most of other ones.
But despite the completionist inside me want to do these 4* Labyrinth challenges too, the logical part of me prevents me of putting my self on such a torture.
And that's coming from someone who explored Variant1 early with 4*s and low ranked 5*s, and had explored Act6 before it's massive nerfs.
These challenges need to change, and similar ones should never come back.
They aren't challenges, they are pure item sinks no matter your skill level 🙂
Units only come into the discussion because some players contend that since you can buy revives with units, the devs must not actually care about revive usage, they only care about money. But that ignores the context of how the game is developed.
Just handing out all the champions would trivialize champion collection so the devs don’t do that. But anyone willing to spend enough money can always have all the champions. So does that mean that they don’t actually care about whether everyone has all the champions or not, they just care about selling them?
No, that’s not what that means. In a perfect world, you wouldn’t be able to buy units with money. In games that are supported by subscriptions and not microtransactions, it would be impossible to buy such currency and yet they still restrict resources just like MCOC does, because the reasons are independent of monetization. But we don’t live in that utopia.
Most players don’t spend. 95%+ of all players who play the game live in a world where there is no unit store, you can’t buy anything with cash, and the only way to use anything in the game to do anything in the game is to earn it in the game. The cash stores literally don’t exist for them, because they don’t spend and will never spend a cent.
The game supports itself on the less than five percent who spend. But the game has to work just as much for the 95% who don’t spend as for the 5% that do.
Outside of cash, the unit economy is very strictly regulated. And the units available are balanced against the opportunities to spend those units. That balance pre-exists the arrival of the Necropolis. Anyone who chooses to spend units on the Necropolis is incurring the opportunity cost of not being able to spend those units on the other opportunities for them. That’s factored into the design of the Necropolis, and the overall revive economy.
The short answer to why the revive farms were nerfed is simple: revives trivialize difficulty and difficult content. This is would be true whether units existed or not, whether cash microtransactions existed or not. That is the fundamental reason for the change, period. The unit economy only enters into the discussion when players ask “but why not this, or that, or the other thing? Why not all these other options I would prefer instead?” Those questions get into the territory of holistic game economy design. To answer those questions, you have to dive into all the parts of the game design those questions touch. But none of that changes the fact that the actual cause of the revive farm nerfs, the actual driving imperative for making the change, is that revive farms trivialize difficult content, period. Without that cause, the devs would not have looked to change anything. The *obvious* change is to get rid of them, because they are obviously problematic. You only need to discuss the unit economy or the issues of monetization and content completion or the revive/energy balance if you decide to not take the obvious avenue to resolve the issue and attempt to do unobvious things, to search for alternatives to the obvious. And when you do, that’s when it takes knowledge of how the rest of the game economy and design works to answer all of the “why not” questions.
It would be impossible to address them all in an announcement addressing the question “why are we doing this?” Because none of those things are the reason.
Those challenges were created at a time when revive farming existed, and players were able to theoretically expend a practically unlimited amount of revives to complete challenge content. To the extent that people say those challenges are just resource sinks, they are half right. They are resource sinks, but that resource sink is necessary to make them challenges at all. It takes a high level of skill to reduce the amount of resources required to a manageable amount. Unfortunately, they can also be completed by any level of skill if someone is willing to dedicate ludicrous levels of resources to complete them, because ludicrous levels of resources is, or at least was, an achievable possibility.
I have zero doubt those challenges were completed by players without spending any cash, and in some cases without spending any units either. Will that still be possible after the revive farm nerfs? I’m not sure, but I wouldn’t bet against it. That’s the whole purpose of challenge content, to be a challenge. A challenge everyone knows they can do is not a challenge.
Let’s address the elephant in the room here. Arena is boring af and takes way too long to get units that way. If we can’t farm revives we are going to buying them. No one in their right mind is going to be farming arena for units to then burn them on revives
We can’t compare the 2 as like for like and Kabam should stop doing that as well.
They removed a very easy way to get revives which no one really knew was out there until the YouTubers showed us due to necropolis.
Now it’s gone and anyone who used it and isn’t willing to spend will likely taper off and stop playing. Kabam won’t care though anyway as those players didn’t spend anyway. They only real losers are the players as the community will shrink and the game will shrink a bit.
If you asked the community (there have been a few threads here and there), the drop rate of Revives appears to a lot lower - I think I've had just 1 or 2 revives in the last three months, since the chests were introduced. And that's with me clearing every level of every Event Quest; exploring 3/4 of them.
Hopefully your team can access hard data - it would be great if you could look at/share any findings.
On the positive side, I should point out that whilst revives have been lacking, the chests have been giving out a lot more Iso-8; and at least a modest number of healing potions.
it’s also not true that people didn’t know about farming until necropolis. they removed farming in acts 1-3 early last year before necropolis was even announced, and when they did that they specifically said they would be monitoring other revive farming spots and removing them when they felt was necessary.
I would suggest a permanent option for buying pot bundles like the one that expired yesterday with the 500 unit price, specially for those whom have only done 1 path in necro for the road to the crypt rewards and are now looking to finish the rest of the paths and lack the resources ( revives and hp pots ) so I think you should consider making that offer a permanent deal which i believe you wouldnt mind since its bought with units, i would love to hear your take on this
The amount of free revives people were able to get was asinine, to say the least.
1) fix apothecary. One L1 revive for L1. One L2 for L2. Two per day total can’t possibly be gamebreaking.
Or 2) bring back that revive package you just offered for 500 units on a permanent basis, with a purchase limit of 1 per week. That basically allows for 3 purchases before stuff would be expiring.
Or 3) make a major adjustment to storage limits. If Kabam is going to A) limit inventory, and b) make overflow expire in two weeks, then designing content that inherently requires more than the storage limits allow is less than just.
Also TL;DR on the rest of your post, so don't expect a response. Sorry for being blunt, but you're injecting yourself into a conversation going on between Miike and me. We're having a fruitful discussion, and your rows and rows of text most often end up contributing nothing meaningful at all. Obviously you disagree, I don't want to waste my time.
All kidding, I agree that there really shouldn’t be a limit, if people want to spend on it, then that should be their choice, but it limits the usage of “free units “ I guess
I'm not going to jump into using units to buy up revives and just keep doing what I did which is to save those units for CM and any big event unit deals. As a result, my account has improved because of this.
When inputs issues are going on, or when trying to get a dragon man to dex for 14 sec while he's powering up to an sp3 and end up getting blasted in necrophisis it's not worth it to spend units on revives in my situation.
If they plan to raise the units to purchase deals on CM, so be it, then I'll just grind the arena for units however disappointing the drop rates are.
I rather have my units than go into a frenzy mode of buying units when comes time for CM.
I want the Valiant title but not at the expense using units.
It's true we have the choice to choose to spend units on revives to advance our account or to spend units elsewhere. I choose to spend units elsewhere on the game.
More props to those who took advantage earlier on in November to farm to get that Valiant title. For me, it isn't important to get that Valiant title. Whether it this week or next year or 5 years later getting a Valiant title for my OWN account isn't important.
Again, I'm content not being Valiant nor in a rush, for the extent of this game, Paragon maybe the highest level that I'll ever attain in this game, which suits me just fine, and I'm fine watching other people's account advance on.
What kind of changes are you proposing, and what players would that positively/negatively impact?
Current State:
People who currently grind Arenas: It may be boring, but some players like spending a few hours grinding for BCs while they watch a movie. Other players find it boring, but are grinding to obtain the featured champion.
People who don't grind Arenas: They may find it to boring to do. They may think that they won't put up enough points to obtain the Featured champion, so there is no point. They may not be needing units since they obtain it elsewhere or buy units.
If Kabam made it less boring, that might entice more players to do arena; but that could negatively impact players who do arena for Champion acquisition.
Since Kabam has made it their official position (whether you disagree with it or not) that they want some level of Unit control in the game, if Kabam made it more rewarding (more battlechips) but as a consequence reduce reward acquisition in other content, then that could negatively impact the above players, as well as the players who don't grind arenas because they used to be able to obtain stuff in other content.
It is the same thing as champions getting buffed. Players are excited by champions becoming better, but then the drawback is that when that buffed champion is a defender, it can be much harder now (look at Red Skull). Unintended or intended consequences of change need to be thought out.
“This has not prevented F2P players from finding great success in the game, and has been the case since the beginning of the game, including most of the game's lifetime that occurred before farming was possible.”
This is just untrue. People revive farmed like crazy before auto-fighting was a thing. They just manually replayed the content instead of auto-fighting it. The majority of F2P players who completed Abyss, for instance, did so through revive farming methods, because it was the most efficient way to spend their in-game time and in-game energy. This also creates another problem for Endgame Content. There is ZERO point to completing Abyss now. The rewards are too outdated. I can get equivalent rewards (arguably better rewards actually), with less/no cost, by 100% TB Monthly EQ. My original plan was to 100% Necropolis and then start on Abyss, spending a small amount of units here and there on it. But there is no point now. At 40 units a piece, and we’ll say 100 revives in Abyss, you’re valuing Abyss run rewards at 4,000 units each. It’s not worth it at all. This is not a criticism of the content. I love the content. I just think the Kabam team’s expectations are unrealistic/unreasonable. A different course of action that would’ve given the same results as your self-described “pre-farming days”, would be to just disable auto-fighting in Act 5 and below. It would require actual input and play by the community, while still giving the ability to physically get the revives. Another solution would be to increase the inventory caps. This would allow people to save up enough revives for Endgame Content runs.
Exactly, I mean thats the best course of action for kabam specially when a content of this size is released, you either encourage people to buy the packages or “farm” with the apoc and solo quests and wait until you have decent amount plus the stash.
They can literally “force” people to spend units on these packages if they want to finish the content early and then people with higher skill wont need to buy the packages and spend units and people with low skill such as myself compensate that lack of skill with units spend.
Not to mention for the story mode and not just special content
Win win for everyone, specially Kabam
Let’s say you just finished a path of necropolis and completely blew your stash. Now you need to rebuild it. Assuming you want to grab about 80 revives worth to brute force with Aegon, and that your stash is completely empty. You now have to spend 34 days of doing the apothecary to get the maximum 34 level 1 revives without any expiring.
For level 2 it’s the same, One daily from the 22h events for 34 days. On average you’d probably get another 3 level twos from the apothecary rng on average in 34 days. That leaves you with 71. If you get the 4th milestone of the 22 events you’d get 25 units x 34 days for 850 units in total to easily cover the last 9 revives needed.
This is a great amount of revives, but it takes a month and some change to get that many. I like the suggestion I’ve seen others make with adding a lvl 2 revive to the hard difficulty and moving the lvl 1 over to easy. I don’t understand why some don’t like this idea and am genuinely curious why. It’s not game breaking, it’s reasonable, it helps out pretty much everyone, what’s the downside?