We've just completed week two of the Crystal Cleanse event. Where are we now?
We're now definitively below the pace necessary to reach the final one billion crystal milestone. Our current linear projection looks like this:
The current forecast is about 750m, a bit under last week's 800m. That's due to a slow average decline in crystal opening rate, which is easier to see with daily statistics:
There were some people thinking that the new featured 6* crystal change over might cause a bump, but I didn't think that was likely because the numbers were simply too small: even at our current slower-than-necessary pace we're still opening over ten million crystals per day. I can't imagine featured 6* crystals being opened at even one percent of that rate for a sustained period of time.
Of course, every little bit helps. I did see a weird bump on Saturday morning that I don't have a good explanation for:
It could be a data error: the numbers update often but not perfectly in real time, so it is possible I happened to collect data near a data update and some crystals were pigeonholed incorrectly. Another possibility is that a pocket of players decided to open crystals at around the same time: there have been other smaller fluctuations in opening rate, and that spike occurs near when RichtheMan released his Crystal Cleanse video encouraging people to open crystals. So maybe he got a bunch of his viewers to open crystals around that time. Unfortunately, it wasn't a sustained bump upward.
So is it hopeless? Well, maybe not. The question is how many crystals are still out there, and how many of them are players willing to open. There are many people I've seen on the forums, the Reddit, and the Discord who believe Kabam set the number way too high: that there was no possible way we could ever hope to open one billion crystals in 35 days. But that's actually not true: we've done it before, or at least come close.
Kabam doesn't often release game statistics, and there are no recent stats on crystal openings, but during the sixth anniversary celebration video (
6 year celebration) they stated that players had opened "more than" 29 billion crystals in the game. And the following year (
Hercules presents: 2021 Summoner Celebration Event) they said that number was 39 billion. That's approximately 10 billion crystals in about a one year span. That's an average of about 27 million crystals per day, and about 960 million crystals in an average 35 day span, very close to one billion crystals without an event incentive to open crystals.
Now, that was three years ago. The crystal environment might be different. The number of players might be different. That is also the year after Covid lockdowns, when mobile game activity was higher. But even if we assume about 25% fewer players than at the height of lockdown gaming (which would be proportional to the revenue differential) that would imply our ordinary crystal opening rate should be in the range of about 700-750 million crystals in a 35 day span. That's more or less what our rate is now.
So clearly, we could do better than we're doing now. The question is how much better. But it is definitely not hopeless. The current trend is we'll fall short. But the crystals are out there, and it isn't even about players forcing open crystals they want to keep or losing rewards due to expiration. The amount of crystals we're opening now is basically proportional to the number of crystals we used to open in the past just ordinarily. We can certainly do better without wasting rewards and without overstuffing our stash. We can't blame Kabam for making it difficult or impossible. History says it isn't impossible, and given the number of crystals out there and the number of players out there, it isn't even something I think is super difficult or costly for players.
The question is not can we. The question is will we. At the end of the day, this event is still in our hands.
Previous thread:
First Week of Crystal Cleanse Event
