Energy Economy Suggestions

First time posting on the forums, but since the game has been having so much happening recently I feel like it’s a good time to give my thoughts. For context I’ve been playing 7-8 years, have 100% up to 9.2, and am have a solid valiant account where I have spent before. Sorry if this is the wrong channel to post this, I am just hoping to share some ideas and spark conversation.

I think that the idea of fixing the energy economy is actually a good one. It has always felt unhealthy for energy refills to be expiring so frequently on my account and the need to use energy refills so much seems like a problem in resourcing in general. However, just reducing the amount of refills you can get while maintaining the cost of everything just feels inherently bad. Especially as they remove a form of currency that I’ve used to replace energy in battlegrounds.
Instead of just criticizing, I’d love to offer some possible solutions to make the energy ecosystem healthier in a way that would keep players around.

1) There is no real reason for the extremely high energy per tile cost in a lot of content right now. 5 energy per tile on monthly quests is just ridiculous as that means you’ll get to do about one fight an hour. The new daily quests taking two full rotations of energy also feels bad to the player as I can’t do any actual content now without feeling like I’m missing out. If Kabam lowered the cost of EQ to match the old lower difficulties (1, 2, 3 energy per chapter) and made dailies cheaper by one energy each, the lower refills could be a great fix.

2) If having inflated energy costs is needed for some reason, Kabam could also increase the energy cap to 100. 70 has always felt arbitrary and this would allow players to do more content at once without needing so many refills. It would also let players do some BGs and a quest per day, which is perfect for people with full time employment. Lastly, a higher energy cap would increase the value of 2 energy refills a week to about 3 refills a week while still encouraging spending on refills since 100 energy would leave an awkward amount left for a second quest.

3) Kabam could add energy boosts or refills to out of date content/weekly content to encourage players to play more of different modes. This could be every 5 zones of incursions, part of solo raids, arena milestones, or even the frequently underwhelming weekly events for monthlies like the current boss rush. It would be cool as a player to finish some harder content and be rewarded with energy, allowing you to effectively trade revives (40 units) into energy (30 units) which would still help Kabam make money.

I want to end off by saying I understand why everyone is so frustrated by all of this, especially ftp accounts. Changes like this can be scary and could hurt the game that’s already getting pretty glitchy these days. But I do think @KabamCrashed has been getting a little too much hate for somebody trying to communicate with the community about upcoming changes to try to help improve the game. I’d love to see more constructive criticism from creative players giving solutions that innovate on the mobile game genre to help us draw in and keep new players since this is a game many of us love.

Let me know your thoughts and please be kind to each other,
Toastmaster

Comments

Ikaliban

https://forums.playcontestofchampions.com/en/discussion/403567/energy-economy-suggestions

{ I think that the idea of fixing the energy economy is actually a good one. It has always felt unhealthy for energy refills to be expiring so frequently on my account }

Your bill cannot be used as a benchmark. There are thousands of new and short-lived bills. And if there is excess energy, it is used in the BG.

Toastmaster

That’s fair, I’m not a super competitive player anymore since it was taking a lot of my time and I had to stop. BGs for me have never been as much of a priority as other content because of my own preferences in gameplay. Losing the elder marks does feel like a big loss for the BGs community

Zeraphan

Honestly, the entire concept of energy is outdated.

Any company, not just Kabam, is saying "we really want you to play our game, but only in limited amounts for free, otherwise pay us".

Don't get me wrong, I completely understand any company needs to make money to exist, but it doesn't have to be from simply playing the base content.

As an example, Guild Wars 2 makes the vast majority of their money from the cash shop which is all cosmetic stuff. They do not have a monthly subscription like many MMOs do (or did). I still spent more a month on that game on optional purchases than what a normal monthly sub would have cost.

The same is true for my spending in MCOC. I spend on stuff I choose to, which often includes crazy sales I shouldn't spend on but do anyway. I do not, and will not, spend money either directly on the Energy Card or indirectly by getting refills with Units.

I am not crazy enough to think they will just get rid of energy, I know better than that, but I don't think most people were ever saying "man I have too much energy this is a bad thing".

Now, they could take the approach of another Marvel phone game and you just build up extra energy over the limit, so that any refill you got never went wasted. They could also make it so refills don't expire so even if we get less of them we don't have to worry about when/how to use them.

There are ways to solve this, but limiting the amount we get while increasing the required daily spend is not going to end well.

Toastmaster

”There are ways to solve this, but limiting the amount we get while increasing the required daily spend is not going to end well.”

Absolute bars. I hope Kabam implements something to address that exact sentence

CavemanOOG

My only issue is I don't see any reason for energy to exist at all, except for creating yet another way to monetize playing the game. I do spend pretty frequently, but I want to spend money to get something I want, not to buy the privilege of being allowed to play the game. I can't re-arrange my work schedule and sleep schedule around MCOC, does Kabam want me to play the game or not? Make up your minds.

Controversy

My biggest issue is they justified this change because of energy wasted during the 4 hrs revive potion farming which,

A.) They themselves admitted this was happening during endgame content releases yet failed to mention if that rang true for any other time outside of those releases

B.) Not the players fault when you consider opening a stack of 10 4hr crystals can almost garentee a full energy refill yet is like a 50/50 on wether or not you actually get that revive. If they really wanted to fix this issue then either increase the revive drop rate or decrease the energy drop rate

C.) Ultimately it's the players choice, either you can choose to open a small stack once a week to keep up and spend a little more energy with that occasional revive bonus or you can just save a huge stack of 4 hr crystals for a nice revive stack when end game content/yearly carina content releases and have an abundant amount of energy to use and/or sell since that stack of 4hr crystals were purly used for revives.

And I will agreed especially with this past year, the devs have been getting more heat than they probably deserve, since it's nice to see them actually try to communicate more openly and more consistently lately. But I cant in good conscience say these changes this past year or so have been for the benefit of the players because most changes have not, most changes were for monetization purposes. And I honestly cant help but think that this is just another one of those changes that will incite more spending later down the line. Cuz I cant be the only player who occasionally dips into their 4 hr crystals, and opens a stack of 10 for that quick cheap energy refill

DrWooper

https://forums.playcontestofchampions.com/en/discussion/comment/2876799#Comment_2876799

Exactly, it feels so backwards having an energy system in 2025. I don't understand do they expect us to plan our time around this game? Cause I can tell you I'm sure as **** that won't be happening. You want us to play your game? Don't limit us and start treating us like "adults".

MikeTheMighty1

For almost a decade, energy has essentially been “free” for me—I always had more than enough refills in overflow. That meant I could engage with the content I wanted without thinking too much about this particular resource. This past week, for the first time, I actually ran out of energy and had to spend units to keep playing. That shift feels jarring. It’s not that I’m against supporting the game—I already do—but psychologically it feels very different to pay for something that has always felt like a baseline resource.

I appreciate the devs sharing context about why energy matters for pacing and balance. I don’t think most of us mind energy existing as a limiter. What feels bad is when the system moves from “abundant, almost invisible” to “suddenly scarce and monetized” without alternative adjustments to offset it.

I like some of the proposed solutions in this thread and have a couple of key takeaways myself:

Lowering tile costs in EQ and dailies could help smooth the transition.
Raising the energy cap (100 instead of 70) would better fit modern playstyles, especially for people balancing jobs/family.
Redistributing energy refills into other content rewards would feel healthier than just pulling them from crystals.

At the end of the day, I love this game and want it to succeed for many more years. But I hope Kabam considers that changes like this hit veteran players hardest, because we know exactly how different it feels from the last decade. If the goal is sustainability, I’d encourage leaning into solutions that let energy act as a soft pacing tool rather than a new wall that forces spending.