deflation of in game rewards
Erik_Killmonger1001
Member Posts: 427 ★★★
so decided to make this because of the communities negative reaction to the holiday calendar and the deflation of rewards it showed being a step down from previous years. To be clear this thread is written before any official kabam response and in general I don`t think mcoc is going to continue deflation, this calendar was just an outlier point on a overall upward curve, however I am intrigued as to what deflation would look like in an in game economy as supposed to a real one. I have no training on game design or economics so feel free to disagree with me in the comments all I want to do is create an interesting discussion.
In classic economics say with money or any high value resource such as gold the way to achieve deflation is restricting access to a commodity once a certain amount has been created/mined/produced, therefore the existing resource acquires scarcity value (low supply+same demand=increasing value.) Now in game to achieve this you would have to reduce the rewards for content as you progressed through the game. This is not practical or even a good idea, the reason so may game use restricted inflation models is it incentives quick progression and high IAP spending, by making existing resources less valuable and introducing higher tier (think catalysts tiers) resources you create competitive markets that leads to high spending (this taken to extremes leads to whaling behaviour in competitive sectors such as AW).
However if you were to introduce deflation mechanics one of the first things it would effect would be the the reach (how may people initially start playing the game) and engagement (how many of those are still playing after say a week or a month). For most games reach looks like a slash \ with high initial engagement followed by a steady drop until it plateaus ( it generally plateaus but may fluctuate with synergy promotion such as avengers endgame causing high reach in marvel games for a few weeks). Whereas engagement steadily increases like / starting out low but steadily growing as the games loyal player-base grows. So most games reach engagement graphs look like an X. How does deflation effect this? Well reach increases as in deflation models the initial amount of a resource such as rewards is higher to offset value increases, lot`s of rewards are present at the beginning of the game making reach and initial engagement rise, however this destroys long term engagement as loyal players are playing harder content for lower tier rewards.
In terms of IAP scores the graphs largely act as a slow upward trend as players through the game followed by (only in some cases) a huge curved growth where whaling behaviour is shown and you have theoretically unlimited upper spend. Whereas in a deflation model game economy it is more of an M shape with a spike at the beginning where rewards are most prevalent followed by drop off towards the mid-game as new rewards dry up and existing ones increase in value. followed by another spike towards the endgame where new rewards are gone so any IAP rewards are perceived as extremely valuable. This is another reason deflation is seldom used in game design, it leads to initial spiking of spending (useful for making up the costs of development where no return is shown) but leading to mid-game detraction's which harm the games long term survivability.
The one scenario where deflation could theoretically work would be an inversion of the currently accepted progression curve. If content gets easier the reduction is appropriate and engaged players are happy being thrown in at the deep end as early game is where better rewards are. Again this is not a good idea as it destroys reach, as new players Don`t have the skill or rosters to do the content early. Practically it is a horrific mess but the theory indicates it might, MIGHT! work. Assuming you can figure out a way to avoid all the other associated problems with an inversion of commonly used progression curves.
overall hopefully this shows why kabam are setting an interesting if dangerous presidence with rewards reduction, hope you found it interesting
Ps: I am aware most examples I give show the consequences of extremes never seen in game but most of the effects still apply just less obviously and with less power
have a good day
In classic economics say with money or any high value resource such as gold the way to achieve deflation is restricting access to a commodity once a certain amount has been created/mined/produced, therefore the existing resource acquires scarcity value (low supply+same demand=increasing value.) Now in game to achieve this you would have to reduce the rewards for content as you progressed through the game. This is not practical or even a good idea, the reason so may game use restricted inflation models is it incentives quick progression and high IAP spending, by making existing resources less valuable and introducing higher tier (think catalysts tiers) resources you create competitive markets that leads to high spending (this taken to extremes leads to whaling behaviour in competitive sectors such as AW).
However if you were to introduce deflation mechanics one of the first things it would effect would be the the reach (how may people initially start playing the game) and engagement (how many of those are still playing after say a week or a month). For most games reach looks like a slash \ with high initial engagement followed by a steady drop until it plateaus ( it generally plateaus but may fluctuate with synergy promotion such as avengers endgame causing high reach in marvel games for a few weeks). Whereas engagement steadily increases like / starting out low but steadily growing as the games loyal player-base grows. So most games reach engagement graphs look like an X. How does deflation effect this? Well reach increases as in deflation models the initial amount of a resource such as rewards is higher to offset value increases, lot`s of rewards are present at the beginning of the game making reach and initial engagement rise, however this destroys long term engagement as loyal players are playing harder content for lower tier rewards.
In terms of IAP scores the graphs largely act as a slow upward trend as players through the game followed by (only in some cases) a huge curved growth where whaling behaviour is shown and you have theoretically unlimited upper spend. Whereas in a deflation model game economy it is more of an M shape with a spike at the beginning where rewards are most prevalent followed by drop off towards the mid-game as new rewards dry up and existing ones increase in value. followed by another spike towards the endgame where new rewards are gone so any IAP rewards are perceived as extremely valuable. This is another reason deflation is seldom used in game design, it leads to initial spiking of spending (useful for making up the costs of development where no return is shown) but leading to mid-game detraction's which harm the games long term survivability.
The one scenario where deflation could theoretically work would be an inversion of the currently accepted progression curve. If content gets easier the reduction is appropriate and engaged players are happy being thrown in at the deep end as early game is where better rewards are. Again this is not a good idea as it destroys reach, as new players Don`t have the skill or rosters to do the content early. Practically it is a horrific mess but the theory indicates it might, MIGHT! work. Assuming you can figure out a way to avoid all the other associated problems with an inversion of commonly used progression curves.
overall hopefully this shows why kabam are setting an interesting if dangerous presidence with rewards reduction, hope you found it interesting
Ps: I am aware most examples I give show the consequences of extremes never seen in game but most of the effects still apply just less obviously and with less power
have a good day
19
Comments
It's a horrible calendar, but it's ONE calendar.
The biggest gripe I have is the downgrading of cavalier progression rewards. In general they've been knocking it out of the park with Thronebreaker rewards, but instead of just adding to the tier of cavalier to achieve those rewards, they've simultaneously reduced the cavalier tier. The value of being "cavalier" has gone backwards. This affects a section of the player base, but is not reflective of an overall reduction in rewards across the game.
Deflation means basically devaluation of material compared to it's previous worth.
Earlier Monthly Rewards were A 5* and Few Catalysts, Now Sometimes we get Awakening Gems and More than 6*, 3-4 5*, T2 Alphas and more.
You may understand this that even with supreme skills FTP of Lagacy and BrianGrant did Cavalier in 5 days which took me 10 months😆
Yes, the rewards are climbing, but so is the amount of champions and need of specific counters to certain encounters. So in order to get specific champions, you have to open more crystals, which you need to get in higher quantities.
And this one calendar is:
1) arguably worse than last year, so it isnt a slowing trend, it is a fall down
2) probably a "dent" on the value of rewards (preceded by anniversary and likely succeeded by christmas gift)