Revive nerf and impacts on the community
I’m curious if Kabam hires economist? I assume they do? I believe there can be more compromise when nerfing revive farming. Maybe they have a plan but my confidence is uncertain at best. I’m not oppose to a nerf but I’m not excited about what’s happening currently in the game. It makes me feel uncertain about nerfing in the future such as arena units, but that is another topic. When I see revive farming I see it as a currency of energy refills vs units. With unlimited refills you can farm unlimited revives given the time. I am not an economist, but I’d like to breakdown act 5.4.6 revive farming which is scheduled to be nerfed 100% from my understanding. When I farm I see it as 2 20% revives/ 1 energy refill. This was very comparable to 3.2.6 farming which has already been nerfed. 1 energy refill cost 30 units, so each 20% revive farmed is 15 units of value . A 40 % revive is 40 units. So the problem kabam has is farmed revives are cutting into their bottom line and making it harder to make content that can’t be just nullified by farming. They have also addressed that farming creates an environment that makes death meaningless. The issues I have with this is how much time it takes to farm does have cost because it takes so much time. The questions I wish they would address more is “Why summoners farm? Why do they have to?” They have tried to address this by making content easier because “ content is too hard”. That’s only one aspect of it and I believe there are more reasons. There is a reward of feeling accomplished when you spend so much time grinding then finally see your farming and planning come to reality when you finally push to complete Everest content that you previously thought unattainable( it is fun win) It are things like this that I feel Kabam may not address publicly enough. There are many reasons people farm and I feel it’s overlooked by the negative impacts it has on Kabam’s bottom line. Before putting farmers out of business it would be nice to see them address this opposing side of farms being nerfed and the impact it has on the communities engagement.
Kabam could nerf the farms and make both parties somewhat happy or at least content. The currency of farmers is not units it is energy refills. I don’t think they should be more stingy on refills to solve this problem. There’s too much content in the game to nerf energy. If they tune these farm rng to give 1 revive/ refill vs 2 revives/ refill they could bump up the value of a farmed revive to 30 units by making it cost the exact same as a energy refill. This is not 40 units like they currently sell 40% revives. So kabam will still be only making 3/4 of what they would if the completely nerfed it. They would probably lose more if you account for purchasing revives as being a monopsony/ monopoly. If they wanted they could make farming just as efficient as purchasing revives and settle at making farming cost 40 units per revive by tweaking the rng oj paths. They absolutely could find a compromise. I would bet the demand for farming revives would come down since the cost went up and it would fit the optimal price on the bell curve for supply and demand better than it currently is. Another thing to note is 20% revives and 40% revives are not the same. So I don’t believe 20% revives should cost 40 units. The 30 units I’m suggesting for compromise is similar to buying a 20 oz of pop vs a 2 liter. Sure you might not get as much per unit cost but a lot of people still go for the 20oz out of convenience even though it cost more overall. Cutting the revive farms to 1 revive per energy refill would allow kabam to dip more into the profits of selling units like they want while also allowing us farmers to continue to farm if the need arises. I think the community would be happier with this decision vs a complete nerf. This game is tough.
Farming is time consuming and doesn’t make sense from a time best spent perspective to obtain revives. If you were to farm 125 revives from 5.4.6 right now it would take about 20 hrs. ( Yes, I can autofight this act, but for my calculations I was manually playing which is even faster) This is based on my personal experience of farming and keeping track of time spent on the current ratio of 2 revives farmed/ 1 energy refill. To play devils advocate and assume I don’t want free time to actually play the game for fun or ftp you could just work more to buy revives. I don’t recommend this I’m merely just breaking down the “what if” to show that farming isn’t the most efficient way to obtain revives. People spend time farming in game because they enjoy the game or they feel it’s a better use of time. If you worked those extra hours@ $16/hr and used that money to buy units to purchase revives it would in most cases be more beneficial for acquiring revives. I accounted for 50% tax deduction in my math which is too high, but should cover cost to commute/ lunch to work and also any currency issues when purchasing Odins. ($16/hr x 20 hrs).5 taxes= $160. $160/$100 per Odin=1.6 Odins. 1.6x 3,100 units per Odin= 4960 units. 4960 units/ 40 units per revive= 124 revives. So if you spent those same hours in game working you could buy revives instead, but that’s not feasible for all players or how they want to spend their money or free time. In the end this is a game we play because we enjoy it. Sure we could spend our time elsewhere but we don’t people enjoy playing the game and that’s one reason they spend their time farming.
In conclusion, I believe revives should still be farmable if Kabam allowed for a better compromise when nerfing revives. I’ve spent so much more time in the game because I can farm revives. It takes a lot of time and I’m curious if Kabam will lose player engagement since they can’t farm anymore or will the players just reallocate their time elsewhere and continue to play and pay the price. I also don’t think apocathary is entirely the answer. My biggest issues with that are the stash limits are too small and false advertising. Increase the time for expiration from 14 days to 30 days. That would allow us to obtain 16 more revives to push for harder content that still exist in the game. As far as what I feel is false advertising in apocathary is the quest icon for the easy path shows a level 1 revive on the cover and if you go to the exploration rewards for that easy path you only get a potion, not a revive. Also, the quest icon for the expert path has a lvl 2 revive displayed. If you go to the exploration rewards it shows a lvl 1 revive. I understand there is some rng to allow you to acquire these item on the paths when they pop up but to be displayed on the quest icon to me is false advertising because those rewards are not guaranteed. All other daily quest show what you receive. Please fix those quest icons to represent the exploration rewards. I’m looking forward to playing the game in 2024 I just feel a complete revive nerf isn’t as exciting because of how much the communities loses without knowing or being certain that things aren’t going to get worse.
