would love to hear a game economist's take on the Banquet event
Erik_Killmonger1001
Member Posts: 427 ★★★
TLDR; The gifting event is so amazing I think it damages the mid player experience severely and could present quite a serious problem for the games retention.
The banquet event is kind of ridiculous. Not ridiculous as in amazing ridiculous as in worthy of ridicule. Don't get me wrong I love it and think the rewards are great but as a thronebreaker who crossed over to paragon due to the event I would say that r4 materials is kind of what I was looking for in a special event. The issue comes with conqueror and uncollected players get the same rewards. I don't mean this in a ahhh I had to suffer to get those rewards so should other people I mean it may actually ruin the game experience for some people. In a previous interview with RTM and Dan talking to Kabam Frenchie talked about replacing the early act premiums with 2* crystals because some players would pull a 4* and it would make early acts so easy that it would be boring.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0oZ859iUPu8&list=PLxdOELf7Mjy7mxLJhE2IRxIv_J3CC2xZv&index=97
So this is evidently a problem kabam is aware , except it kinda goes out the window around December. I absolutely understand the need for revenue and think for thronebreaker/paragons the rewards are fine, however for anything lower r3/r4 materials are either irrelevant or either way to OP they break the game. I advocate for a banquet tied to progression level, like every single other event in game. That way you could even eliminate minimum requirements and let people do whatever they want with alts and baby accounts. You could even eliminate A lot of people will really struggle in the coming months. They won't have had the challenge needed to build their skill so one of two things happen. They either quite because they essentially autofight all the way into act 5, which isn't a compelling or exciting experience or they hit late act 6 early act 7 and smash into a brick wall as they struggle against the more skill based boss fights.
I know it doesn't sound very positive but I promise I don't want to take away people rewards out of malice or some misplaced "I think these young-uns should have it as hard as I did back in the day". I say very seriously I think the superior experience is with much more balanced rewards. A lot of screenshots have been floating around with conquerors with rank 3 6*s which makes for a cool thumbnail or funny reddit post sure. But seriously think are they going to have a good level of challenge and play for years or are they going to have a few months of fun and then quit in favour of something else because the challenge isn't there. Or worse they get a massive dump of 6* shards nexuses and high tier catalysts and have to fight all the way into act 7 before they get anything even remotely comparable to the point where they just can't be bothered to complete content and again drop the game.
Would love to hear a kabam response on this since you guys will have way more data on this than me.
The banquet event is kind of ridiculous. Not ridiculous as in amazing ridiculous as in worthy of ridicule. Don't get me wrong I love it and think the rewards are great but as a thronebreaker who crossed over to paragon due to the event I would say that r4 materials is kind of what I was looking for in a special event. The issue comes with conqueror and uncollected players get the same rewards. I don't mean this in a ahhh I had to suffer to get those rewards so should other people I mean it may actually ruin the game experience for some people. In a previous interview with RTM and Dan talking to Kabam Frenchie talked about replacing the early act premiums with 2* crystals because some players would pull a 4* and it would make early acts so easy that it would be boring.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0oZ859iUPu8&list=PLxdOELf7Mjy7mxLJhE2IRxIv_J3CC2xZv&index=97So this is evidently a problem kabam is aware , except it kinda goes out the window around December. I absolutely understand the need for revenue and think for thronebreaker/paragons the rewards are fine, however for anything lower r3/r4 materials are either irrelevant or either way to OP they break the game. I advocate for a banquet tied to progression level, like every single other event in game. That way you could even eliminate minimum requirements and let people do whatever they want with alts and baby accounts. You could even eliminate A lot of people will really struggle in the coming months. They won't have had the challenge needed to build their skill so one of two things happen. They either quite because they essentially autofight all the way into act 5, which isn't a compelling or exciting experience or they hit late act 6 early act 7 and smash into a brick wall as they struggle against the more skill based boss fights.
I know it doesn't sound very positive but I promise I don't want to take away people rewards out of malice or some misplaced "I think these young-uns should have it as hard as I did back in the day". I say very seriously I think the superior experience is with much more balanced rewards. A lot of screenshots have been floating around with conquerors with rank 3 6*s which makes for a cool thumbnail or funny reddit post sure. But seriously think are they going to have a good level of challenge and play for years or are they going to have a few months of fun and then quit in favour of something else because the challenge isn't there. Or worse they get a massive dump of 6* shards nexuses and high tier catalysts and have to fight all the way into act 7 before they get anything even remotely comparable to the point where they just can't be bothered to complete content and again drop the game.
Would love to hear a kabam response on this since you guys will have way more data on this than me.
8
Comments
I'm interested to see if kabam will be holding r5s back to the majority of players since ftp typically get access to the new rank up via exploring an act. Examples: r4 5* explore act 4, r5 5* explore act 5, r3 6* explore act 6, r4 6* explore act 7.
Kabam might be inflating the economy faster due to the release of 7*s as well.
The short answer is that monetization is always economy breaking, or at least bending, and there's always a compromise between the requirements of sustainable monetization and the resource balances within the game economy. There's always tension between many different factors in most game design decisions, and there's no such thing as the perfect decision that does everything you want and leaves no wreckage in its wake.
So when people ask "doesn't this break that" the answer is often yes, yes it does. The unstated assumption often being "if it does, shouldn't you avoid that" to which the answer is "no, because if we don't we'll break something else even more."
There is a long answer, but it quickly turns into a monetization lecture, and all these Economics 101 people start coming out of the woodwork who have only gotten to page four of the textbook.
Sure, you might get one or two players who now have 6R4 Herc doing Act 4, get bored and stop playing. But you also might get more players who are now more interested in playing and trying to achieve Cavalier and progress.
Kabam definitely has a better sense than anyone as to how many players are in each Progression tier, and how many players quit or progress in the month after December. I'd wager that since Kabam has done this every year, that it doesn't negatively impact their bottom line.
This happens in every game.
So what is your issue again? That they will quit because they don’t have the painful struggles we all remember as negative experiences? Most people ignore exploring Act 6 because of how awful of an experience it was combined with the poor rewards. Nothing about completing Act 6 gave me a sense of pride and ignited a drive to keep pushing. On the contrary, after finishing the Grandmaster I contemplated quitting because that fight was so draining and demoralizing for an average skilled player like myself. I’m glad some of those Act 6 fights are easier now than when I did it. I welcome any and all downgrades on Act 6 difficulty.
So your claim is meaningless.
The vast majority of players are free to play (over 90%) and most of them are not arena grinders, which means the impact of the GBCs on the overall game is far lower than most people account for. 10% of the players spending their way past a progression rung is not the end of the world for the game, as almost everyone will still be facing the same game with the same ladder and the same progression hurdles, just with a small temporary boost from the event.