Are we heading to Pay2Win? Plus, other concerns

Loot probability and the odds to get good pulls is a part of the discussion.
I consider myself C2P, Not paying more a month than 5-15 euros. Which is about the same as a MMO subscription.

But I do notice some changes during the last month. (Odds of getting 4* ascension items and TC20 pulls for example)

The system was good as it was, just needed more new content , which I believe Season2 will provide.
It was already hard to get the 4* items and 5* heroes, but they came eventually with patience.

Make the odds better would be unfair to players that paid or grinded to make progress.
Making them worse (which I feel is currently the case) is unfair too, it stalls the progress of the newer or midrange players (like me)

Regarding the odds of getting stuff: if it ain’t broken, don’t fix it.
Special offers with ascension items should be there to speed up things for those willing to pay. Not as a replacement for a chance to get a free item apart from the rare quests.

Lowering the odds of getting good stuff hurts both F2P and P2W players.
And besides that, its not really P2W, it’s P2G (Pay 2 Gamble) :wink:

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Not turning this thread.
P2W aspecs are coherent with rewards.
We need statistics of rewards to have an answers from what the OP asking.

Statistics will prove it.
There, we got an answer :blush:

I am disappointed with some reactions to each other and mainly to the post from Sarah. I understand them, there is a lot of frustration (born out of love for the game), but it makes me sad to see immature and intrusive behaviour.

Hopefully everyone can enjoy breakfast on a fresh kitchen table this morning. With a full stomach it might be easier to let Sarah’s message sink in.

‘‘Quickly’’ implies that she does not have the time to write a long message and so to respond to everything mentioned in this topic.

She has told us that they will take action regarding the missing hits of Wu Kong. If we may believe her (funny in relation to the ‘‘misstrust’’ messages), then nothing is wrong unless something has been adjusted per accident. It is therefore possible that there is another cause that deceives the appearance of this situation. For example: everyone has always accepted it until more and more players have paid attention or something is going on with the titans and not with Wu Kong. There is already a forum topic on the latter. What is most important; they will pay attention to it as requested by us. Probably it is just a quick check, but I have little understanding of how this works.

This implies that the focus for now is on Beta and perfecting the aspects before season 2 is released. They probably spend a very large part of their time on this, which will temporarily delay the answering of our other questions.

Take an example of Avicious’s answer. Mature and constructed that is opposed to some messages that have a very high ‘‘hateful’’ context. A clear answer will bring peace to some of us, so that they worry less about this. I think we know the answer for sure, but transparency is always nice. Whatever the answer, some of us will not be able to accept it.

I have been tracking all my rewards for nearly a month now. My intention was to write a message about it after 2 months, but perhaps I could just open a topic later today and give a preview of the results

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There are many useless statistics threads already on the forums where people think picking a few loot screenshots is real data.

It takes like 10.000 samples for each loot tier to get accurate statistics and few people posting their results, or in your case one person, isnt’t enough data to make any accurate conclusions.

I wish people studied some probability and statistical math before trying to do that kind of ”analytics”.

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Totally agree. However, I do not intend to generate data about the separate ‘‘value’’ of the items. It is meant as a look into a situation of one of the players. Not so much a single mystic vision, but 100 for example. Fun facts, no hard conclusions.

Again I want to start off with an apology, as we’ve been unable to react to this post (and the whole thread) in a timely manner. Thank you for also keeping this conversation civil.

As some of you might know, we are a small company and that comes with limitations. Add running a live game and holiday season to the equation and you can probably imagine the effect it has on everything outside of running the core functionalities of a company.

While we understand that hearing from us very little when you feel you need it the most is very frustrating, we hope that you understand that replying to an issue as fundamental as this is not something we take lightly.

Everyone knows that at the heart of any game are the players; the community. The game is brought to life by the people who are playing it. This is by no means different in our game. We take feedback from the community very seriously and we value our players and truly care how you feel about the game.

To cut the wings off some rumours, we want to let you know that:

  • We have not changed the summon probabilities since the game launched globally
  • We have not changed the loot drop rates except when communicated in build notes
  • The odds of receiving heroes or items are equal for everyone and don’t change based on players’ progression, upcoming offers or events
  • We always announce changes to hero stats in our build notes
  • The boards are completely random
  • While we might not reply to everything, we do value and read all your feedback

We want to continue developing Empires & Puzzles and keep up the discussions with the beta testers and the community to ensure the game is heading in the right direction.

We want to make sure our game remains free to play for everyone, but at the same time we also want there to be clear benefits for the people who choose to pay for faster progress. That being said, we do try to keep a good balance as we value all of our players regardless of how they choose to progress in the game.

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Thank you for an answer with a lot of clarity. Rook could even close a number of topics based on this answer, but I do not think that is necessary. To speculate is part of any community.

Very logical. Someone who thinks differently about the latter, is wrong in my opinion.

That being said I would encourage everyone to keep writing structured feedback concerning payers and non-payers. Preferably with a possible solution which contributes to the vision they have about this. Only then you will offer the most useful help for them to make any progress needed.

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[Edited]

About Sarah’s answer. Thanks for explanation. Hope you really are listening to players and will make best possible solution - you as company happy and we as customers more or less happy.

My only concern, way to strong new heroes. If that is the plan then I’m afraid you will loose many old customers.

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I will answer without knowing 100% but I would say that they get enough income through other means, downloads … advertising … there are hundreds of totally F2P games or with a large majority, games of success and years … I understand that no they work for the love of art …

With respect to Sarah’s response … did they announce something about the nerf of the elementary chests? because I just opened one yesterday and another today with 2 different accounts, and received only boots and covers and junk in the 2 and not a single gold coin in either of the two. I used to get 4 to 5 hero dollars a month when I started playing, now I can take away the one I can get in the event … maybe with luck … I’ll get one more a month. I think I can say that practically 100% of the community have noticed a very big nerfeo in the booties, I understand that we are all wrong …

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pander
20 caratteri
heheheeheh

I need 3 tabards to ascend sartana.
I have 2800 gems I bought it before
went to shop “featured crap” “get at least 2” for 600 gems… tabard is there
This is what I got for the 600 gems 1st try
3 bractice sword
1 trap tools ( have 6 already)
2 dagger (have157)
This is what I got 2nd try
1 trap tools ( have7 already)
3 training manual ( have 770)
No tabard not even 1 for 1200 gems
This is blackmail

That‘s still lucky. Often people end up without any ascension item.

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do not spend money … do not make this mistake … the system sees what you have and does not give it to you … if you had only one tunic you gave it maybe … but if you miss it 1 you’ll never have … I have made this mistake a thousand times, I spent 7000 euros and maybe even more in 11 months and I’ve never had any material from those called … also because the scam is there … to ascend a 5s serves tome of tactics and damascus blade that you can not buy … I have at least 5 heroes to climb but I have no blade, I saw one in 4 months and I used it for alaise … every day is a titan between 9/10/11 stars, at least 2 trunks raid and 2 or 3 trunks monsters … never seen a blade … it’s called legalized scam !!!

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Taking the @Sara’s reply that they didn’t nerfed the loot from the beginning of the game without it being announced…

Could it be our perception?

I mean, you’re here long time, before wars, and after the wars. Before wars you didn’t need let’s say more than 2-3 heroes of the same colour. Now you need 6+. That’s huge increase in demand for heroes, and if loot stayed the same, I think the feeling would be that it’s worse now - because you need more and you don’t get more. Before you needed some, you got some, and that was okish.

So I think maybe we should concentrate in not saying ‘SG you did something bad to us in secret’, but say ‘SG we now need more, gameplay changed, give us more chance even if we don’t pay for each mat’.

Edit: I think they should investigate that there’s no bug in the algorithms which use randomisation, that’s the base line, of course.

Also, I think they should do some data analysis from logs. If they need help, I’m here :wink:

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I think there is an assumption that SGG cares if this game continues or not.

From what I’ve seen and the lack of response, I don’t believe they do. It’s a cash cow they are trying to milk for all it’s worth.

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This game is not random. It simply wouldnt work being random. If it takes 10.000 samples to make sure its accurate, then lots of players who maybe kill only 30 titans in a month could get nothing at all or maybe 10 orbs and nothing else from the others ascension material. Because it would be random. This is happening? Not for real…

It could be a coincidence, but i am most f2p and I got since the beggining of the game almost the same number of ascension itens for each color. If i open 2-3 chests a day, in 6 months I would have opened like 1k Chests. It could be a total mess for lots and lots of people.

I dont know how it works but i am pretty sure its not complete random. Nothing will make me believe so

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@Sara, absolutely. There is no reason for me not to be civil. You are a human being just like me. :slight_smile:

I do hope the team at Small Giant can see my heart, and others, that most of us want the game to succeed. We just want to make sure that both sides have that mutual interest.

I think if there were a way to help win back some of the lost hearts, it would be, let’s work together :slight_smile: As company and playerbase. Let’s have more civil conversations about the game direction and mutual trust that we all want the same things - a successful game that brings success to your business and company, and continuing to build on what is already a great game. I truly believe we can accomplish this <3

Sincerely,
Avicious

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I will not directly address my post to Sara as she just confirmed that the Staff is keeping track and reading closely every post. I hope this is the case and this is why I will make a suggestion how lots of the frustration experienced by the community can be addressed.
As you SG already have an excellent platform (This forum) for the community to discuss, collaborate and also complain. Please build a dedicated section where you post the stats of all the heroes, Summon probabilities, loot drop rates, other relevant data requested and of course announce all the changes you do in the forum not only in your build notes.

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I maybe be going uncivil, but its with a purpouse.

A company would not admitt being wrong. No one does that. You could change every single day the codes betwen 0,5% chance to 1% chance and nobody would know that.

I dont know how to quote, so lets go like this, you said:

" That being said, we do try to keep a good balance as we value all of our players regardless of how they choose to progress in the game."

I will answer with a quote: “Do or do not. There is no try.” In fact trying is nothing, because right now everything that is new is payable. New avatars, loot tickets, double builder… Everything that was implemented was so you could buy it. This is NOT keeping a good balance. You cant and you wont fool anyone. If you guys try to go to this path everybody will lose.

For instance, you admitted that the Rare titan had a bug and was not showing up, now for me its not random, it show up to everybody in the same order and almost at the same time… Why? It was said it would be Random, but it is not, so maybe it is because you were unable to do in the correct form? yMeaning that you dont know how to make things random. I will make it easier for you, you can go a head and say that it was done on purpouse.

If you can’t make a rare titan appear randomly how can I trust you that all the loots and summons are really random? I can´t!!!

Also in my post above I say my opinion about the drops being random. I dont think they are completly random.

Thanks for being brave to be out here, If you dont own the company dont take it personal.

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