Why Gold Offers Would Have Been A Horrible Idea
Dragonfei
Member Posts: 263 ★★
All right, with the Day of the Deadpool thread going absolutely nuts over the fact that there were no gold offers this year, time to make a separate thread talking about why it would have been an atrociously bad idea to have gold offers.
Let's start with the obvious. It's a good thing there were no gold offers. (Attempt to hold your rage until I explain.)
How much does it cost to rank up a Champion? Great question, let's dive in.
6* Champions
5* Champions
(I have data for 2/3/4* but they're not particularly relevant here.)
Now let's talk about ISO (assuming same class 5k bricks here).
6* Champions
5* Champions
Selling 100 of the 5k Bricks will net you precisely 250,000 gold.
(Before someone says that we need to get more ISO per dupe - I gave Kabam these precise calculations a few months ago making that exact argument - I agree with you.)
(All of this data is stuff I personally collected, calculated, and put on a spreadsheet. The gold totals have a +/- of approximately 15k due to using bigger bricks than is necessary for the next rank, costing you more.)
Last year, in order to pick up all of the offers, you would need to have spent 10 million gold. The last offer was the best one, I remember picking it up myself, since, as a regular arena grinder, I could slow down my rank ups and make that back without a terrible amount of trouble. This year? I wouldn't have taken the offers, even if I could have afforded them - it's simply become too expensive to rank up champions. And I say that as an arena grinder who completes Master, Uncollected, and Cav EQ, does Battlegrounds, and does casual Incursions. You are NOT able to get enough gold to offset rank ups for the resources you have coming in if you're playing in say... a Map 6 alliance or higher, or in a Gold 2 alliance or higher.
In an ideal month? I'm gaining about 2.5-4 million gold. Maybe more if there's more in the side quest, or if I do a larger arena grind, or content like 8.1 or Gauntlet comes out and there's gold in that content. The gold in the Gauntlet? That's enough for a SINGLE Rank 4 6-Star, and ONLY if you are using the same class ISO.
While I do not doubt, for a second, that there were people who sold their ISO ahead of these offers (in my opinion, foolish - never count on offers until you've seen them), and ones who saved up gold to be able to spend (you have gold currently - stop complaining, at least about gold, lol), spending these on rank up resources or shards of ANY kind is a tremendously bad resource management call considering the rate at which we are gaining those materials and items compared to how fast you can gain gold right now.
I'm Paragon, with 9 R4's, and a regular arena grinder who picks up a lot, if not all of the Basic and Featured milestones, and many of the Trials arena milestones. I cannot keep up with gold spend. Even slowing down - I cannot keep up with gold spend. I cannot keep up with the resources I have coming in. It took stepping down to a lower tier alliance, stopping my rank ups for a couple of weeks, and grinding arena, to swing things in the other direction. For someone who does not grind arena or does not do EQ? It's almost impossible to swing the gold gain in the other direction unless you are already sitting on a surplus of gold.
Selling ISO to participate in a gold event has the potential to cripple your ability to rank up champions effectively for months. 250k for 100 bricks? Nowhere near worth it, horrible value in every possible way. Based on some napkin math - R4ing a 6* champion without using the same class ISO would cost you, at minimum, an additional 1 million gold, if not more. But if you've sold all your ISO - you're out of luck. Not only that, if you've sold all your ISO without a plan to get it back (or a roster that allows you to get it back quickly - which is far worse), you've likely destroyed any possibility of being able to effectively use those items you would have bought with the gold offers in the first place.
With all of that in mind - go ahead try and tell me gold offers were a good idea.
Because they weren't last year, and they still weren't this year. This year, at least, Kabam knew better.
Let's start with the obvious. It's a good thing there were no gold offers. (Attempt to hold your rage until I explain.)
How much does it cost to rank up a Champion? Great question, let's dive in.
6* Champions
- Level 1-25: 420,276
- Rank 1-2: 529,173
- Level 1-35: 635,778
- Rank 2-3: 705,565
- Level 1-45: 744,083
- Rank 3-4: 811,399
- Level 1-55: 862,904
5* Champions
- Level 1-25: 41,339
- Rank 1-2: 135,642
- Level 1-35: 106,553
- Rank 2-3: 271,370
- Level 1-45: 212,840
- Rank 3-4: 407,056
- Level 1-55: 320,890
- Rank 4-5: 542,742
- Level 1-65: 507,125
(I have data for 2/3/4* but they're not particularly relevant here.)
Now let's talk about ISO (assuming same class 5k bricks here).
6* Champions
- Level 1-25: 78 5k Bricks
- Level 1-35: 120 5k Bricks
- Level 1-45: 140 5k Bricks
- Level 1-55: 163 5k Bricks
5* Champions
- Level 1-25: 8 5k Bricks
- Level 1-35: 20 5k Bricks
- Level 1-45: 40 5k Bricks
- Level 1-55: 61 5k Bricks
- Level 1-65: 96 5k Bricks
Selling 100 of the 5k Bricks will net you precisely 250,000 gold.
(Before someone says that we need to get more ISO per dupe - I gave Kabam these precise calculations a few months ago making that exact argument - I agree with you.)
(All of this data is stuff I personally collected, calculated, and put on a spreadsheet. The gold totals have a +/- of approximately 15k due to using bigger bricks than is necessary for the next rank, costing you more.)
Last year, in order to pick up all of the offers, you would need to have spent 10 million gold. The last offer was the best one, I remember picking it up myself, since, as a regular arena grinder, I could slow down my rank ups and make that back without a terrible amount of trouble. This year? I wouldn't have taken the offers, even if I could have afforded them - it's simply become too expensive to rank up champions. And I say that as an arena grinder who completes Master, Uncollected, and Cav EQ, does Battlegrounds, and does casual Incursions. You are NOT able to get enough gold to offset rank ups for the resources you have coming in if you're playing in say... a Map 6 alliance or higher, or in a Gold 2 alliance or higher.
In an ideal month? I'm gaining about 2.5-4 million gold. Maybe more if there's more in the side quest, or if I do a larger arena grind, or content like 8.1 or Gauntlet comes out and there's gold in that content. The gold in the Gauntlet? That's enough for a SINGLE Rank 4 6-Star, and ONLY if you are using the same class ISO.
While I do not doubt, for a second, that there were people who sold their ISO ahead of these offers (in my opinion, foolish - never count on offers until you've seen them), and ones who saved up gold to be able to spend (you have gold currently - stop complaining, at least about gold, lol), spending these on rank up resources or shards of ANY kind is a tremendously bad resource management call considering the rate at which we are gaining those materials and items compared to how fast you can gain gold right now.
I'm Paragon, with 9 R4's, and a regular arena grinder who picks up a lot, if not all of the Basic and Featured milestones, and many of the Trials arena milestones. I cannot keep up with gold spend. Even slowing down - I cannot keep up with gold spend. I cannot keep up with the resources I have coming in. It took stepping down to a lower tier alliance, stopping my rank ups for a couple of weeks, and grinding arena, to swing things in the other direction. For someone who does not grind arena or does not do EQ? It's almost impossible to swing the gold gain in the other direction unless you are already sitting on a surplus of gold.
Selling ISO to participate in a gold event has the potential to cripple your ability to rank up champions effectively for months. 250k for 100 bricks? Nowhere near worth it, horrible value in every possible way. Based on some napkin math - R4ing a 6* champion without using the same class ISO would cost you, at minimum, an additional 1 million gold, if not more. But if you've sold all your ISO - you're out of luck. Not only that, if you've sold all your ISO without a plan to get it back (or a roster that allows you to get it back quickly - which is far worse), you've likely destroyed any possibility of being able to effectively use those items you would have bought with the gold offers in the first place.
With all of that in mind - go ahead try and tell me gold offers were a good idea.
Because they weren't last year, and they still weren't this year. This year, at least, Kabam knew better.
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Comments
So money offers aren't good either huh?
And since I already mentioned cutoffs here, does anybody happen to know more or less how many points were needed for top500?
But that's the extreme end of the spectrum. Something more realistic - would be wanting to take a new Hercules or Doom to R3. That's very doable these days - but gold is one of the main things that stand in the way. It either stands in the way because you're using the wrong type of ISO (making it worse), or because it simply costs so much.
of gold so to mount the characters it's a bad argument sorry
I'm still disappointed it becomes more of a gambling than fun and I would have liked to have enjoyed myself without money that I don't have.
If it had been an injection to fuel this event (I'm reminded of the Mojo event last year where you could get 9 mil gold in a month) - or to fuel gold offers - many, many people would still be left in a poor gold situation. Champ acquisition is faster and quicker than ever - doesn't make any sense to dump those offers into resources when you get those far faster than you do gold. (Obviously depending on your progression, but that holds true for most.)
I just used the same logic but swiched the currency. The 13yo example can be ignored
But sadly, that is not the case for the majority of players, and as a result, making an offer that would hurt the majority, rather than help them, is not a good idea. (Especially if said majority turned around and made themselves more broke trying to pick up what they saw as good offers - hurting their ability to progress even more due to FOMO.)
We get a lot more champions now. They are expensive to rank up. Gold is hard to acquire if you do not do arena. It is easy to blow through gold quickly as a result of those things. Not running gold offers was a good idea because it is a resource that is hard to acquire a lot of.
My own, personal experience was meant to add nothing but flavor to the overall point. Thanks!
I’m not furious the gold offers haven’t returned, though I was looking forward to them.
Do you not think that it’s up to the player whether they want to take the gold/iso hit? In a resource management game it should be the players decision whether to use their resources. Not Kabam saying, well gold is hard to get at the moment let’s not give them offers for it.
Maybe it will take a little while to bounce back from taking a big gold hit, but I (and I suspect many others) would probably rather a nice new 6* Kitty Pryde/Doom/Herc etc than 10m gold, even if it takes a little while to rank them up. Add in rank up gems, R4 mats, awakening gems or the like and my answer is still the same.
I’d rather work to build up my gold and ISO reserves and be unable to rank a new god tier champ, than not have said god tier champ but enough gold. Hell, I’d rather have 10 more god tier champs than I can rank, if it means they’ll be useful in the future. Gold comes in at a steady rate, who knows when the next drought I have will be where I don’t pull any good champions for a while.
I can always get more gold, it’s rather harder to grind out for a god tier champ.
Add in incursions being updated, so there’ll be gold from there. DLL (Daddy Long Legs) a YouTuber who works for Kabam has mentioned in his relics video we’re getting increased gold at some point with the introduction of relics.
I’d always place exciting new champions and rank up mats and awakening gems over gold. Gold is very important yes, but I can grind that from arena, incursions, EQ and guarantee myself gold there. I potentially cannot do so with the items from offers. (Obviously that depends on the contents of the offers, but that goes without saying, because I’d be weighing up whether the offers are worth it)
Overall, it should be each players decision if they can forfeit the gold. I understand the point you made and it’s an interesting angle, but I don’t think it’s a reason we should be happy the offers aren’t here, more of a shrug and “at least I still have my gold/ISO”.
Ultimately, it comes down to a variation of this: There are people who have enough gold to get these offers. They are not the majority. Creating offers like this, that everyone has the potential to get - but only a few wouldn't cause short-term damage to their ability to advance in the contest - those are not good offers, for anyone.
I spend a lot of time in the community - line chats, discords, the forums, youtube channels. I can say pretty definitively that "How do I get more gold?" is one of the most frequent questions asked by players - because they don't have enough. And again, this post isn't about me, or my experience - but the fact that running the gold offers is a bad idea because of the amount of gold required to keep advancing in the game!
I think there are already many places where players can choose to make bad decisions about gold (such as using the wrong type of ISO, which is one of the worst gold-based decisions you can make in the game) and how to spend it. Players should always (and do always) have the ability to make that choice. They can choose to sell their ISO in stash, and rank up a new champion that they just picked up, even though it might be harder to rank another in the future. All of that is decisions I believe can and SHOULD remain with the player at all times - because it is the core of the resource management that you're talking about.
The gold offers are different, in the same way that July 4th resource influx is different, and Black Friday resource influx is different. It's a forced deficiency (which players might chase even when they shouldn't due to FOMO - to the severe detriment of their account) in many ways that ends up taking any positivity with the event and turning it sour in the longer term. We see it all the time after July 4th - people angry 30 days later that they can't use all the resources they bought. There is absolutely onus on the player for those situations - but I also firmly believe that there is a game design aspect to that too. If possible, Kabam should not be designing scenarios in which players are going to be put into a severe situation if they can help it. We saw proof of that in the July 4th event. Remember those side offers for T4CC, T4B, and T1A? All of those existed, specifically, to offset the influx of resources. (I know this, because I did the math out and proceeded to pick all of them up.)
The gold offers were one of those severe scenarios. Yes, you can always get more gold. I know that, and you know that. But all of the gold influxes you mentioned above point to one thing, in my mind. That I'm right. Because Kabam is putting more gold into the game in a wide variety of ways - which means that there IS some sort of shortage going on at present, that would only have been made worse with something like gold offers.
And yes, I do agree with you - it is far harder to target amazing champions, and a way to do that would have been great. But with the rate of 6* shard gain when you account for Battlegrounds alone right now? I opened 710k 6* shards on July 28th, and now already have 430k. Yes, I do buy offers, but I'm far from a whale. So many of those come from Battlegrounds purchases - where I picked up over 50k in shards this month alone. Champ acquisition can never be easy (basis of the game, right?), but it is getting easier.
I definitely get why you disagree - but this is an instance where game design needed to step in to help player decision making (because players can never be trusted to make 'good' decisions and that has to be factored in) to prevent a really bad experience a few weeks down the line.
And you might remember the gold offers as popular, but I don't. I remember people being furious with them. They had no warning so they could have farmed up gold. They had no idea how much they could get, so they sold all their ISO. They pushed their accounts to try to pull the offers in and regretted it later. You can go back and see some of the threads that say as much on the reddit and here. It feels great to buy the offers in the moment - but it wasn't great for many, many people.