Something radical to solve the games biggest problem…
TP33
Member Posts: 1,737 ★★★★★
The biggest single problem in the game, at least from what I’m seeing, is the rewards from content.
The problem is twofold:
1. Older content becomes obsolete, as a result needs constantly updating to stay relevant, BGs, side quest, daily events, alliance events, everything which isn’t permanent content requires constant close attention and balancing from the devs, something which they just don’t have time to do every month
2. Balancing of rewards for higher and lower tiered players. Events are constantly broken down into multiple difficulties and thus reward payouts, but rarely do kabam get this right for everyone, it’s REALLY hard to appeal to players even within title ranges, let alone creating events for 4/5 of these title ranges
So then what’s my radical solution?
Change the Traders outpost such that it is a genuine platform for summoners to Trade items with one another for Mysterium.
How would it work?
Player A selects an item from their inventory or crystal stash, using a sell button they can select a Traders Outpost option
They then go to a screen where they choose how much Mysterium they wish to sell each item for, in this screen they get a guide (automatically updated at least daily) showing prices that same item is being sold at.
Player B goes into the traders outpost to buy items, which can be filtered and found there, or by selecting an item from a players inventory and hitting a “buy more” button
Player B is then met with a screen where they also get information about prices, they then set a maximum price they are willing to pay for their selected item.
Player B then receives that item once a sale goes through, with the game trying it’s best to get the lowest price item on the market
If player B sets the maximum price too low, and after 24 hours doesn’t find an item to buy, the transaction cancels.
These stores will then be Progression gated, thronebreakers, paragons, valiant will only be able to trade with one another.
What would this do?
It would bring relevance to quests with Mysterium as a reward. Obviously in order for this to work rewards would have to be available otherwise, from permanent content, other in game stores and rolling content. But it would give kabam more time to update content before it becomes irrelevant. They can add or remove Mysterium to events to incentivise players to go into them. (Not saying they should) but they could put it into objectives for stuff like Back Issues or Abyss to bring some players back into those game modes.
Initial problems and how I would overcome them:
Problem: How monetisable is this?
One thing to be sure of is that it should NOT be possible to trade Mysterium for units, or items which can only be bought with units (yes including revives), not should it be a purchasable resource in deals for example. But I think the introduction of a system like this would in fact increase the number of sales for kabam. Most people don’t buy offers cause they feel like they don’t get “value” out of them. Big offers during special sales often include 3-5 different items or resources, and every player has different reasons for buying them. Now imagine if you could take the items you want from the deal, and then sell the surplus value to acquire more of that item.
Example: An Odin offer includes a Titan crystal and a 2-3 gem. You only want the 2-3 gem not the titan. You wouldn’t buy it normally. With the traders outpost you can buy the offer, sell the Titan, and using that Mysterium buy another 2-3 gem. (This is an EXAMPLE, im not saying that a titan is worth a 2-3 gem i just wanted a simple explanation to get my point across)
I mean if kabam really felt like it they could start selling Mysterium in big offers and deals, it would become probably the biggest chase reward if this is implemented, so it wouldn’t harm their business models, but player welfare is obviously important.
Problem: could this not lead to exploitation by some players?
In theory yes, Players could try using it to “gift” each other rewards, but taking notes from similar markets in other games (CS, R6, Steam are the ones I’m most familiar with) this practise is countered simply by the number of pending requests at one time, which this game is certainly big enough for
Problem: could this lead to the inflation of certain rewards over others simply depending on the month?
Yes. I mean on the release of a champ like Dazzler, (one which can be acquired by a great many players and is very good) Mutant Gems will become more valuable. The current state of the game would suggest that Cosmic, Mutant and Science resources will be more valuable than skill or tech resources.
This would then lead to more players buying tech/skill resources, they’ll be cheaper, so players will start ranking up more skill/tech champions, oh and what’s that demand increases? The market settles? Wow.
Only standout champion releases would have a marked effect on prices, although in many ways this is exactly the purpose of this store. Dynamic rewards pricing to keep monthly/rolling content relevant and grant players options for rank ups.
Overall I think this would be a really exciting and radical new change. It would keep content relevant without kabam feeling pressured to constantly deliver update after update. Now this SHOULDNT be a substitute to regular updates, but it would mean that updates have a more lasting effect, the BG store rewards update was actually quite recent, but can already feel dated. It also means that every player benefits from these updates, as they can choose how valuable rewards are to them, which is likely to match the perception of players at the same level as them.
I would like to know peoples thoughts on this as a concept, obviously it’s quite radical but I do think it’s the best way for kabam to move forwards with rewards in the future. Keeping content is key, but for game modes like BGs, War, AQ, EQ, SQ, it’s just not feasible to expect kabam to stay constantly up to date on rewards to please every player of every level just by themselves
The problem is twofold:
1. Older content becomes obsolete, as a result needs constantly updating to stay relevant, BGs, side quest, daily events, alliance events, everything which isn’t permanent content requires constant close attention and balancing from the devs, something which they just don’t have time to do every month
2. Balancing of rewards for higher and lower tiered players. Events are constantly broken down into multiple difficulties and thus reward payouts, but rarely do kabam get this right for everyone, it’s REALLY hard to appeal to players even within title ranges, let alone creating events for 4/5 of these title ranges
So then what’s my radical solution?
Change the Traders outpost such that it is a genuine platform for summoners to Trade items with one another for Mysterium.
How would it work?
Player A selects an item from their inventory or crystal stash, using a sell button they can select a Traders Outpost option
They then go to a screen where they choose how much Mysterium they wish to sell each item for, in this screen they get a guide (automatically updated at least daily) showing prices that same item is being sold at.
Player B goes into the traders outpost to buy items, which can be filtered and found there, or by selecting an item from a players inventory and hitting a “buy more” button
Player B is then met with a screen where they also get information about prices, they then set a maximum price they are willing to pay for their selected item.
Player B then receives that item once a sale goes through, with the game trying it’s best to get the lowest price item on the market
If player B sets the maximum price too low, and after 24 hours doesn’t find an item to buy, the transaction cancels.
These stores will then be Progression gated, thronebreakers, paragons, valiant will only be able to trade with one another.
What would this do?
It would bring relevance to quests with Mysterium as a reward. Obviously in order for this to work rewards would have to be available otherwise, from permanent content, other in game stores and rolling content. But it would give kabam more time to update content before it becomes irrelevant. They can add or remove Mysterium to events to incentivise players to go into them. (Not saying they should) but they could put it into objectives for stuff like Back Issues or Abyss to bring some players back into those game modes.
Initial problems and how I would overcome them:
Problem: How monetisable is this?
One thing to be sure of is that it should NOT be possible to trade Mysterium for units, or items which can only be bought with units (yes including revives), not should it be a purchasable resource in deals for example. But I think the introduction of a system like this would in fact increase the number of sales for kabam. Most people don’t buy offers cause they feel like they don’t get “value” out of them. Big offers during special sales often include 3-5 different items or resources, and every player has different reasons for buying them. Now imagine if you could take the items you want from the deal, and then sell the surplus value to acquire more of that item.
Example: An Odin offer includes a Titan crystal and a 2-3 gem. You only want the 2-3 gem not the titan. You wouldn’t buy it normally. With the traders outpost you can buy the offer, sell the Titan, and using that Mysterium buy another 2-3 gem. (This is an EXAMPLE, im not saying that a titan is worth a 2-3 gem i just wanted a simple explanation to get my point across)
I mean if kabam really felt like it they could start selling Mysterium in big offers and deals, it would become probably the biggest chase reward if this is implemented, so it wouldn’t harm their business models, but player welfare is obviously important.
Problem: could this not lead to exploitation by some players?
In theory yes, Players could try using it to “gift” each other rewards, but taking notes from similar markets in other games (CS, R6, Steam are the ones I’m most familiar with) this practise is countered simply by the number of pending requests at one time, which this game is certainly big enough for
Problem: could this lead to the inflation of certain rewards over others simply depending on the month?
Yes. I mean on the release of a champ like Dazzler, (one which can be acquired by a great many players and is very good) Mutant Gems will become more valuable. The current state of the game would suggest that Cosmic, Mutant and Science resources will be more valuable than skill or tech resources.
This would then lead to more players buying tech/skill resources, they’ll be cheaper, so players will start ranking up more skill/tech champions, oh and what’s that demand increases? The market settles? Wow.
Only standout champion releases would have a marked effect on prices, although in many ways this is exactly the purpose of this store. Dynamic rewards pricing to keep monthly/rolling content relevant and grant players options for rank ups.
Overall I think this would be a really exciting and radical new change. It would keep content relevant without kabam feeling pressured to constantly deliver update after update. Now this SHOULDNT be a substitute to regular updates, but it would mean that updates have a more lasting effect, the BG store rewards update was actually quite recent, but can already feel dated. It also means that every player benefits from these updates, as they can choose how valuable rewards are to them, which is likely to match the perception of players at the same level as them.
I would like to know peoples thoughts on this as a concept, obviously it’s quite radical but I do think it’s the best way for kabam to move forwards with rewards in the future. Keeping content is key, but for game modes like BGs, War, AQ, EQ, SQ, it’s just not feasible to expect kabam to stay constantly up to date on rewards to please every player of every level just by themselves
3
Comments
Let's take just one example of the exploitability problem. Suppose I mod up an account and sweep up a ton of rewards into it. Then I start trading with an alt of mine to get those rewards. By the time Kabam catches up with the modded account and bans it, I've already heavily benefitted from it. Are you going to punish the account that benefitted from that trading activity? What if I just trade with everyone, so if Ksbam decides to drop the hammer they will have to whack a lot of innocent players to get to me, because they won't know which if any of the trading partners was an accomplice.
If you don't design your game from the start to support player driven economies, it is extremely difficult to retrofit because a lot of things MCOC does now it would never have done if it had implemented a player driven economy, and those decisions are now contradictory to it. You'd have to sacrifice a lot of things the game now takes for granted to implement this, and I doubt if the devs want to tackle that particular problem. Just the low level unit boost intended to make the game more friendly to new players completely obliterated the gifting system. We can't have both, so the devs kept the low level player experience boost and jettisoned gifting. Implementing a trading or other player economy would be several orders of magnitude more complicated. If they were not going to save gifting, I doubt they would attempt player markets.
Kabam doesn't want players to compete with them for player's money