**Mastery Loadouts**
Due to issues related to the release of Mastery Loadouts, the "free swap" period will be extended.
The new end date will be May 1st.
Due to issues related to the release of Mastery Loadouts, the "free swap" period will be extended.
The new end date will be May 1st.
Cavalier pool tier crystal
Graves_3
Posts: 1,301 ★★★★★
The cavalier nexus pool tier crystal seems to have 48 champs with about half being good and the other half undesirable. The drop rates are that of a regular cavalier nexus crystal. Why then does it have an escalating cost? What am I really missing? If anyone purchases 50 of those, they are basically having to spend 45125 units. Regular featured cavalier costs 15k units for 50 of the crystals. This doesn’t make sense.
17
Comments
Dr. Zola
Terrible deal.
Maybe...
*SHNORF* Checkthisout, checkthisout. So, they're the regular rates, the pool is trash, and they keep getting more expensive! *SHNORF* We'll make a fortune!"
"Wait, what? Why would you buy more than one?"
"I don't know!! *SHNORF* But someone will cuz 'Nexus' and that'll keep the lights on!"
This should be embarrassing.
Dr. Zola
Buffs for "The Other 24" confirmed...
The only thing escalating about this crystal is the hate kabam is gonna get from anyone who purchased the first crystal only to see the drop rates DONT get better smh please do better kabam
No, escalating costs do not necessarily mean better rewards. That would only be true if the game wanted to reward you for spending more units, which it doesn't. In fact in general, the game doesn't reward people who spend more. Spending more does tend to get you more, but that rarely escalates. There are more diminishing returns pressures on spending than escalating discounts. And that's by design.
People will tell you that basic economics says Kabam should try to price things to sell as much of them as possible to maximize profit. These people probably failed economics. That's only true when the only consideration is incremental sales costs. It isn't true in other situations, for example situations where inventory has inelastic limits. For example, try to buy a lot of grain, or oil, or copper, or any other world wide commodity, and the more you buy the more expensive it gets. There's only so much to go around on any given day. Spread those purchases out and the costs tend to remain fixed. Try to buy a lot all at once, and you pay more. No one gives you a volume discount. That only happens when the seller is huge, the buyer is tiny, and the amounts the buyer buys is insignificant compared to the seller's inventory.
Free to play games do not have unlimited inventory. Sure, they can make as many crystals as they want, but if they make an unlimited amount of anything they will destroy their game. There isn't a hard limit on what they sell, but there's a soft limit. Each thing they still dilutes and devalues the rewards in the game. And everything they sell for cash (or to a lesser degree intermediate currency) dilutes the value of gameplay. If Kabam sold Cav crystals for a nickel, all spenders (even tiny ones) would gain a ton, but all the free to play players would be left in the dust. It would be completely pointless for them to play at all.
Instead of trying to sell as much stuff as possible for as much money as possible, free to play games tend to try to sell as little as possible for as much money as possible, maximizing revenue while keeping the influx of stuff purchased in the game to as low an amount as possible, so that the difference between spenders and free to play players is as narrow as possible. Of course, whales will still get massive advantages, but for *most* players the difference that spending has tends to be moderate.
So why would anyone buy these things? Because. People spend for different reasons, and the value of money is different for different people. For some people an Odin is an immense expense, for other people it is a trivial expense. For some people, time is far more valuable. People spend to complete content, they spend to buy rank up materials, and people spend just to see crystals twirl. Everyone is different, and what they choose to spend money or units on is different. Of course, I doubt anyone is going to go all the way to fifty with that offer, but I also wouldn't bet on what the highest anyone will go will be. Ten? Twenty? I honestly don't know. And neither does Kabam. Or at least, they don't know yet.
And that's what you're missing. No one really knows how much people will pay for a crystal like this. Not you, not I, not Kabam. Except, in a few days they will. They won't just know how much people will pay maximum, they will have a nice distribution curve of buyers. They'll know what percentage of players will only buy one and stop. They know what percentage will keep going until the costs hit 600 a crystal. They'll know if there are crazy people who will go up to 1000 units per crystal. And that is extremely valuable information if you're running a free to play microtransaction supported game.