Post-Update Discussion re: Apothecary/Consumable Economy
Kabam Jax
Member, Moderator Moderator › Posts: 1,718
Hey Summoners,
As Miike mentioned, because the last thread got cluttered, we wanted to provide you a new space to discuss the most recent changes announced in this followup post!
As Miike mentioned, because the last thread got cluttered, we wanted to provide you a new space to discuss the most recent changes announced in this followup post!
13
Comments
Would have preferred a larger increase to the revive cap, but having level 2 revives available through events is great. Not a fan of the rate of acquisition, boosting the apothecary to a guaranteed 2 level 1 revives instead of 1 + a 1% chance at another would have been another good change. 2 more revives per week will take a while to add up
Dr. Zola
It is interesting to think how people these last few weeks have said that removing revive farming would kill the game when the inverse is actually what is true. No endgame content being created is what would actually kill the game.
I appreciate the transparency, and also approve of the changes being made. I do wish the potion overhaul would be faster than 5-6+ months, but I also understand it isn't as simple as changing a few numbers and the team already has a lot on their plate.
Why not just have 25 for all, and add something else for the sigil?
Then for the item capacity increase, it is still far too low. Keep in mind, that you are making assumptions, calculations on what people are able to hoard on their STASH. You can't count on those, as that isn't an inventory, but rather just a way to aware players of items expiring. Your calculations are already wrong if you are including this area of the game.
I'll make it simple to understand: the Star-Lord Carina challenge. It takes 50 revives to complete, more depending on the RNG or dropped inputs. So at the very least, the capacity should be 50 revives, not including the ones in the stash for logical reasons.
As for the potions, if they aren't changed for % values, then make it at the very least 200-300 inventory capacity.
A major flaw you are also making on your assumptions is "how much we expect people to spend". Content should be designing with the idea of being possible to complete ITEMLESS. If the content ultimately forces someone to spend items, then it's flawed.
And finally, you continue to avoid the simple solution in order to stop people from "simply spamming revives", which is to limit the item usage.
When Abyss was introduced, you lied to yourselves saying "we don't expect anyone to be able to complete this in the next few months". When in reality you knew very well that this was a lie, and that people would spam revives to complete it day 1.
Now, you are afraid of new everest content being introduced and that it won't meet your expectations. It will NEVER meet, no matter how many nerfs you do to the revive farming. Unless you directly conter the concept of "spamming units to spam revives", then forget about new everest content being challenging.
Being honest here Kabam, I think you will see this will have the reverse effect you're intending. I would not be surprised to see MANY summoners lose interest in new content and ultimately leave the game. Being FORCED to use units for story mode or any content is a major issue with game. You said in a nutshell that units are for revives and potions, ok, fair enough. But then why does nearly every single deal in the game require units? How am I supposed to keep up with the rest of the players in the game, let alone my very own alliance, without spending real money? It has mostly been easy for f2p players to keep up, but this changes that, whether you want to acknowledge that or not. And for the record, I AM NOT a f2p player but many in my p2, map 6 alliance are and they will not be able to keep up with us in just 3 months time. That is not right.
All in all, this still goes back to what I believe is the community's biggest issue here. You don't want us to just plow through content with revives? I understand that completely. But when you design content (carina challenges, Abyss) that REQUIRE a ton of revives AND an insane amount of time commitment, then what is the point and what is YOUR suggestion to counter that?
On the whole this still feels like a very poorly timed change to champion sustainability when the mechanics of the game are still a long way off what they should be.
When the contest returns to being a "fair" fight (meaning that defenders aren't capable of things that attackers can't do) then the latest proposal doesn't seem to bad. But we aren't there yet are we?
Yes, it will still take longer to build up a large surplus of revives, but we think this is a fair tradeoff for what is considered a reasonably large stash of easily accessible revives.
You are so out of touch with the player base. Noone really cares about the increase in the inventory if you are cutting our supply of revives in half (at least).
Before we could theoretically do a Carina Challenge v3 once every 2-3 weeks (with let's say 70 revives). Now we are gonna have to wait for god knows how long.
This point, is the point in which the game will begin it's downfall. Now the question is not if the game will continue but for how long. I'm giving it 15 months top.
The original announcement was about farming in 3.2.6 and how it had to stop etc etc as well as the introduction of this new quest. This new quest guaranteed a return of 5 revives per week, so over 5 weeks you would have got a total of 25 guaranteed revives before they started to expire 1 by 1 ... 15 in inventory and 10 in overflow. The new announcement (the compromise to the original announcement) now guarantees a return of 7 revives per week with an increase to your inventory by 5 (sigil is more but let's work without it) meaning over a 5 week period you now get a total of 34 guaranteed revives.
That means the overall increase of revives that one is guaranteed to get is 9 revives, before they start expiring 1 by 1.
You have addressed (openly) about why the farming had to happen, you've addressed the issues we had with it by giving us the above mentioned compromise but I really can't work out why the solo event has anything to do with the original announced changes and the huge discussion the community had following it, almost like its created to appear like we're better off 🤷♂️
The biggest change is to the 22hr events being level 2, so we're no longer stockpiling one kind of revive but 2, so in essence doubling the amount of guaranteed revives we can stockpile (while also slightly increasing the cap, which is nice but not a huge deal). We're definitely worse off than before, but overall it's not a horrible compromise.
Also I feel like if they're going to adjust the potion ecosystem they should just hold off the apothecary until then. 5-6 months probably gonna be longer than that so rather see it all at once.
There is an aspect to the 'brute force' that hasn't been mentioned - the frustration and blocker to progress that continually pulling bad champions is. By 'bad' I mean champions that do nothing to help with progression in the Contest.
If you have the ideal champion and are lucky in your pulls, you can progress without needing to brute force. If you can't, you have to wait or brute force with less than optimal champions. Skill is important, but roster selection can be king.
Brute forcing though content isn't working for Kabam. I understand that even if I think there's more layers to it than just that.
Barriers to progression aren't working for players. Whether it's the issues with input controls or the fact that opening a 6* basic crystal will result in most champions being only being useful in Arena. That's a barrier to progression. So many paths and nodes demote player skill into second place in favour of optimal or perfect champion selection. Or brute force.
This isn't intended to be a rant about the wish crystal, but the need for players to have more control over their rosters and champion acquisition is perhaps the other side of the brute force coin. Maybe?
That said, it’s misguided to see that the original solution which was disappointing to say the least will still be implemented on the original timetable. I’m not optimistic about when the changes I can agree with as an acceptable compromise will be delivered on in the current trust environment will be implemented and because of trust being at an all time low for myself and many others it is a mistake in my opinion that the original design will be launched in-spite of community feedback.
Howver saying we have to wait 5-6 months for all those exciting level 1 potions available in the apothecary to be improved/put in the bin is annoying.