"Rewards budget": What does this mean for a game?
Terminatrix
Member Posts: 3,730 ★★★★★
I've seen this being mentioned when discussing a rewards buff. I'm trying to get a solid understanding of what this means for a GAME.
Irl, a budget is money/income set aside for a purpose. Money doesn't have to be reserved for buffed rewards and other items in the game. These are things that can be changed and buffed by changing the rewards coding right?? Or does this mean the type and quantity of rewards created?
Can somebody break it down for me in laymans terms please?
Irl, a budget is money/income set aside for a purpose. Money doesn't have to be reserved for buffed rewards and other items in the game. These are things that can be changed and buffed by changing the rewards coding right?? Or does this mean the type and quantity of rewards created?
Can somebody break it down for me in laymans terms please?
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Comments
Dr. Zola
1. They dont want players to progress too fast, get all of the things in the game, and then quit.
2. They want to control the in game economy to give paying players an advantage, while making sure F2P players are still rewarded adequately for completing content.
A rewards budget is basically a necessity for a live service game like this, but we as players can debate whether we think Kabam's reward budget is too tight, and whether it should be expanded and where that reward budget should be distributed (for example, most of the unit reward budget is locate in the arenas).
TLDR: The rewards budget is basically just the total amount of rewards Kabam wants to put in the game, so they can tightly control the progression of the game economy.
I don't think anyone denies is a pay to win mode (with regards to roster). And frankly, Kabam, and every FtP player should want that, as it offers a mode that helps keep the lights on.
Now imagine for a moment the reward budget gets out of hand, and every FtP player has every meta champ as a 7*r4.
The likely scenario is that that devalues what spenders spend on if being FtP gives the same thing, so spenders stop spending and the game shuts down.
The alternate scenario is that it speeds up the spending race, so now you have to spend on 8* champs to maintain an advantage when you literally just got done spending on the same 7*R4 champ.
Ultimately, as @TurboMeme said, we as players can debate if the rewards budget is appropriate in 2025, and for what it's worth, I think there are many aspects that could be increased....but at the end of the day, the game has been running for 10 years. We have to give them the benefit of the doubt that they're doing it right, or else it likely would have failed by now.
A better analogy would have been, you got your PS5 (champ), but now you need to rank them up to 7*R3 (let's call that getting new games for the game system).
An unbalanced system lets you get a PS5, XBox, and whatever else exists (all champs) in one day, plus all the games (rank up mats).
A balanced system may let you get both systems (champs) on a single day, but it takes months to rank each up (acquire games) to a playable state for the content you want to tackle with those champs. This system ensures you don't get bored with the system as a whole, cause by the time you're bored with one game (ranked up champ), you get a new game (ranke up champ).
And oh, by the way, while you're saving for those games you don't have today, you're thinking about the game (new champ) you don't even know about yet, and hoping you have resources (money/units/other) to get that new champ/game when it releases.
Ideally, this system keeps you entertained with games for a PS5 until a PS6 comes out, then you're ready to get all the same games over again to play them with the better graphics (I've run out of analogies).
He is probably spending the money on other things, and we gotta send him to farm to recover.
That's one aspect I don't agree with.
Right now Kabam limits that. Personally, if a person wants to blow their life savings to have every champ at 7*R4, I don't have a problem with that. Let them own BGs and keep the lights on for everyone.
But again, the game has been running for 10 years. I don't agree with everything Kabam does, but they certainly seem to have found a balance to keeping folks engaged.
I think we're at a tipping point right now, but I think that's based largely on the fact that the different content (AW/BGs/Everest) requires the top 1% of skill, and counter most don't have yet, or a ton of revives.
Again...the game has been running for a long time...they appear to have figured out the formula even if I don't love it.
Stalling progression doesn't fit in with the pace of R4s. R4s came way too quick in my opinion and r3 mats are not as abundant. They are not low, but probably could have been more before R4 was introduced.
The game must have some ceiling - aka the max power level achievable. Currently it's 7* r4. Noone has a more powerful champ yet.
Resources to achieve this power level are rare to some extent. They need to be hard to get for two reasons: players need a challenge (aka sth to have as a long term goal), and also Kabam wants to sell these to paying customers. Given it's a f2p game w no ads, these are a major income source for them.
Now, hypothetically: if they coded the new quest so that everyone starts getting 7*r4 champs super easily, what would happen? First off, people would get bored. Their rosters would boom and all PvE content (story, permanent quests etc.) would become really easy. And secondly, who would pay their real world money for stuff, that they can easily obtain? Would you now pay a dollar for T2A? No! That stuff piles up like crazy already.
Long story short, it wouldn't cost Kabam any money to buff the rewards NOW, because it's just typing a code. But it would mess up the game's economy if they've overdone it, and that would hurt their vallets in the future.
they can't feed us too fast or we'll eat it all then ask for more then get mad at them for making more and then we'll ask to speak to the manager while threatening to boycott with signs and some nutjobs show up with pitchforks and they can't feed us too slow or we lose interest and go somewhere else.
and their food isn't just one giant slab of plain dessert, it's dressed up and layered. there's vanilla ice cream, sprinkles, fudge, bananas.
and it all doesn't come in it's finalized version (a sundae).
it's starts off with the basics like plain vanilla ice cream and more gets added over time.
in the beginning we only get vanilla ice cream with no toppings and as time goes on we get toppings added in small amounts and one at a time only. and the rule is, once we get a topping in a certain quantity, we never go smaller, it's a slow constant push to the sundae and once we get one topping we move onto the next and once we get it all, everything runs out and they have to make another type of dessert.
that's the reward budget. finite stuff that they need to roll out at the right pace. if we're greedy and ask "FOR MORE, RIGHT NOW!", they need to figure out if we're really being greedy or just genuinely starving. if we're greedy they shouldn't listen to us and if we're undernourished they need to figure out a solution quick or it's bad news.
most of the times we're pretty greedy but this time it doesn't look like it.
Champ progression accelerated massively but the same couldn’t be said for relics, R3 6* relics have been here for over a year and it’s still expensive as hell to rank them to R3.
Progression on relics has been stalled big time
As an example let's day monthly we can be expected to get a maximum of 2 titans, 10 7 star crystals and like 50 6 stars. Now they won't just give you everything but find a way to split the rewards I.e. 100 titan shards in the eq and majority in top ranked rewards in aw and bg, or 6 stars actually being cav crystals
The problem with the reward “budget” argument is that you don’t have to blow the top off ranks to allow casual players to just expand their rosters with R1 to R2 rank ups with monthly content. That’s where the rewards are lagging and hurt the game badly. It’s like the reward budget is solely focused on “don’t let the top ranks get away from us!” to the neglect of feasibility for normal players just expand your roster through content. Thats what EQ/SQ and even things like lower tier wars, etc contributed to… but not anymore. You are FAR better off just doing arena milestones and cash in units for sales.
Basically the more rewards they give out to players playing the game, the more it will cannibalize sales and revenue
On 1 end of the spectrum, they cannot give nothing, on the other end of the spectrum, they cannot give everything bcos they have to sell something like T4A
So there is a need for a balance all the time, give too little and the players will boycott, give too much and sales & revenue will be affected
Players are boycotting now bcos they felt that rewards are not keeping up with the current situation of the game, end game rewards are very limited bcos they want to sell those end game rewards to players
The desire to add so many " must do" events/sales is hurting casual spends as they are always after best personal value and so many it is confusing on how to budget funds over each period of time.
Also at the heavy spend level. Going all out to get something special, then finding out you can buy it for much less a month or two later feels like you spent foolishly. The first 7 star rank 4 was an expensive purchase. These large spenders did not have much time to enjoy the exclusive nature of the purchase.