July 4th Sales and Game Economy
EliOrSomething
Member Posts: 115 ★★
I’ll try not to sound too whiny especially considering this is all pictures on a screen, but I can’t help but feel as if this company is a bit short sighted. The way this game functioned at one point was you could either invest a large amount of time to acquire resources, or you could invest very little or no time and get the same or slightly better resources. At this point I think it’s safe to say that is no longer the case. After this most recent “Fun in the Sun” Sale there is absolutely no way a free to play player could have anywhere near the roster of a paid player even if they were dedicating 24 hours of their day towards acquiring resources and stockpiling units. I’m not saying don’t make deals as tempting or well valued as they are, but maybe someway of putting in the work to get at least somewhat close to what you can pay for? Right now there is LITERALLY nothing I can do in this game to get anywhere near even half the amount of Rank 5 6 star champions as someone could’ve just gotten from swiping their credit card. I love this game, I would hate to quit playing it… but at this point playing it feels like an unnecessary step. Click, swipe, win.
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You need to save ur units for these instead of spending them throughout. You now have 4 months to save for next major sale. You should easily have 15K or more units if u save.
As someone who used to run in an above average alliance (say, top 300 AQ and tier 5/6 AW) and has generally been a higher than average arena grinder, I have *always* felt that I could keep pace with the top players, in terms of not falling too far behind them, but also *never* felt that with just a little more spending, grinding, or pushing I could actually catch up to them.
I'm now in a much more relaxed alliance (~3200 AQ and tier 12 AW) and honestly I don't feel like I've fallen that much further behind. I spend a bit more, I push a bit less, and I'm still drafting behind the economic wake of the top tier players.
I understand that experience is individual. I know people who have echoed what you're seeing. I just don't think this is a universal sentiment based on objective economic realities. It is driven by the perception of moving targets, and honestly some rose colored views of the past. There are players who had no trouble in the T4CC days and now feel like they are falling behind. But then there are people like me who had no way to approach the top in those days and see a more accessible economy today. And it is not just spending. Even the unit offers which F2P arena grinders can get are offering ways for those players to make significant progress. Now some people believe that arena grinding shouldn't be as good or better of a path to progress as other content driven paths. But that to is a matter of preference, not economic constraints.
Dr. Zola
You take the time and effort to collect enough t6ccs to r5 a 6*. Takes you months or years even. Now you see some schmuck like myself cash in and snag 3 6r5 rankup gems and 10 t6ccs in an afternoon. Seeing as how going into the event i had a grand total of 50% of a cosmic I can see why that's frustrating for those not willing to pay. Don't know what to tell you, other than i don't have the time or inclination to play the required amount but i got a lot of monthly discretionary budget to play with, so i make it work for me. Thanks kabam.
On the other hand, one could argue they're running this like a fire sale, and you know what fire sales usually mean...
Why do the offers have limits, for example? There's no direct revenue reason for purchase limits. If the limits on J4 offers was six or twelve or twenty I'm sure there would be people who would max them out. How about the daily specials? I would bet anything that if you could buy a hundred of them all at once, Kabam would be selling thousands more of them. What's the revenue driver that sets these limits?
In fact, I cannot think of a single monetization offer in the history of the game whose design could be explained solely or primarily by the desire to maximize the revenue from that offer. Can anyone?
It was those Odin offers that widened the gap a bit too much
8.3 is coming soon and it will surely have more rewards for exploration, than 4th July cash offers 😉
At least the Peter Parker's wallet ones 😂
To be competitive, you may need to invest and support the game as well. It is logical that Kabam shall treat the players who provide them financial support differently from FTP. If they are going to treat them the same way like FTP and they need to compete with FTP on the similar ground or slightly better, who will support them? Everybody will become FTP. The company will not be able to pay their developers and hardware to keep the light on.
FTP still could have some fun though but you should not expect the same treatments while you have never spent a single dime to support them. You should appreciate the whales who spend to help you enjoying the game as FTP.
The question is always how long should any advantage, whether earned through in-game play or through spending, persist. Think about someone who might have spent tens of thousands of dollars in 2021. What does any of it mean now? That level of *cash* will deflate away pretty fast in this game. You're buying time, not things. So yes, the stuff end gamers obtained through game play in the past is also being subsumed by cash offers in the present. So those lasted six month, maybe a year? How long were they supposed to last, when money depreciates pretty fast as well?
The idea, and this is not an idea Kabam invented it is extremely common design practice, is that no advantage should last for long in a game like this. When advantages can pile up and persist, the game becomes very hostile to new players. Once the game becomes too hostile to new players, it is heading for maintenance mode and sunset. Of course, you don't want to make things too hostile for existing end gamers, grinders, and spenders as well so there's a balance that has to be set. Where that is set is a judgment call. But the characteristic time window for the game economy is something I would guess at somewhere in the neighborhood of nine to fifteen months. This is an oversimplification, but that's about the time window you'd expect sudden influx of game advantages to be deflated by 50-60%.
To gain the top rewards you need to clear content, to catch up (not to overtake) you can use the offers, deals what ever…
Feels really bad atm
Every single player could have bought the deals. If you had 8 6r5, now you have 17 vs a noobs 5 6r5. No one could sit on their butt and just buy the deals. They’d need to have lots of r4s!
This is just salt as far as I can tell. People who made their way into to high prestige alliances and cliques wanted to maintain dominance without spending a dime.
If you’re unhappy, play the game casually but it’s the whales that keep the servers running, not your bellyaching.
I definitely see that side as well, and I very well could be falling victim to the rose colored lenses of the past, I just know I personally have completed almost all of the end game content except for some of carinas challenges and still have yet to get a single r5, I just feel as though event quests most difficult setting should be providing you with at some convoluted way to get close to a rank 5 6 star, right now thats not the case, even look at the newest story content 8.2. Exploration of that got you 1 T6CC and thats about it as far as rank 5 materials go. I just think we usually see a smaller gap between what is readily available in the rewards of eq or story content and whats available in the unit store. All I’m saying is it sucks to feel Kabam put a 100 dollar price tag on things that are beyond the reach of even the highest level of content
2) other people having more than you does not detract from what you have, compete at your level. Battlegrounds you get matched loosely on prestige it seems up until platinum so can avoid the biggest accounts and after that you have as much chance as being matched with smaller as the bigger accounts so can still progress
3) Skillful people with 6r4 will still beat unskilled people with 6r5 and 7*s in BG and 6R4 is still more than enough to clear any current content and things on the immediate horizon.
4) if the people who are spending are not offered good deals, they won't buy and the game will die and then you cant play at all. If someone wants to spend $1000s of their moneyband can afford to you should be grateful not bitter towards what they have done, they are letting you still play for free.
5) As a f2p there is so much you can do, you can do all content at least for now, you can still perform well in Battlegrounds, you can farm obscene amounts of units to use in sales such as this and banquet. So why be bitter you can't compete with the people at the very top, it sounds so entitled
Let me ask ya'll something. How many Paragons and high level thronebreakers were using a ton of r5 5 stars lately?
7 stars exist in the game. They are the future and that future isn't far off.
There of course is the immediate advantage in BG that folks are going to enjoy but I wouldn't count on it being a long advantage.
It's going to be alright.
The problem this time, is that there s a new unreachable gap between level of spending. Before this set of ridiculous offers, people who spend, a nice amount, about 1/3 or half of the old set of offers, were rewarded, could keep up with whales, and be competitive. That's over now. Even if you spend money it s for nothing if not purchasing everything.
Is this still a game?
In fact, Kabam never restricts any player to have access to those deals. If it is so good, why don't FTP starts buying the deal.
Without even considering buying the deal but complaining that the deal is too good for players who pay.
If the deal is not attractive, who is going to buy? Why don't you buy too?
This is such a ridiculous complain.....
Again, Kabam has never restricted anyone to buy the deal. If it is so good as you complain, you should start buying to keep the game sustain itself.
Now the complain is the deal is too good for the people who buy but you don't even think about buying.... but complaining to lower the value to the people who pay.
So selfish....
If you have issue with your bank statement, it is better to stop playing and work seriously to make more money for yourself and your family.