The world is not black or white. Every player of the game is a source of revenue. Maybe just a trickle through Mystic Vision ad revenues, maybe a bit more through the occasional gem purchase. The key to business success is to have such a compelling product that the casual buyer becomes regular, and the regular buyer becomes a wha,r.
Rehpgarding questions about my earlier post, my company is B2B not retail, so the dynamics are a bit different, but my point remains the same: a business that loses touch with its customers is in deep trouble.
Have things changed that many senior players are now expressing concerns? Yes, I think so. But I can’t prove it. I started playing more than a year ago, and my sense is that the drop rates for goodies (5* heroes, 4* loot) has been drifting downward. Also that the frequency of high-stakes offers has been upwards. All this points to a monetizing strategy.
We’re discussing are this game heading to P2W right?
The best answer for it by answering by our self.
Let’s collect a lot of data from all of us.
The data could be anything, from monster chest, mystic vision, titan loot, war loot, pulling heroes etc.
We need something reliable to compare each other, so we can make a fair conclusions.
We answer our own questions. It’s the only way to satisfied us.
Let’s support the community by posting everything what we’ve got… Wheter it’s a junk or a good ones.
We need a lot of input…something to compare.
Answers from SG will not happen. Because the question represent two world, world of F2P vs world of P2W.
Any answer from SG will hurt another world. SG can’t make all of us happy… It’s two side of a coin. F2P vs P2W.
So… Let’s start working guys, F2P and P2W players… Together we can make a fair conclusions.
Well written post and I agree. There are people in this game who do make a lot of money and can afford to spend, but when you get people who make over $100k US per year saying they can’t afford to keep paying in to keep up, the game has gotten out of control.
I recently ran across a newish player. He had been in the game for two months or so and was pretty much doing what I did when I first started playing: Spending money stupidly. I attempted to give him some advice on how to get better value out of his money than the way he was currently spending it and his response was ‘That’s ok, I make a LOT of money’ and he named an amount that was a fraction of my income.
All I could think was “Son, you have no idea.” I tried. He’ll be broke and frustrated in a month or two at the rate he’s going. This does not lead to Longevity of the game. Yes, it’s good for a quick buck, but eventually word will spread that the game is a money pit and then the reviews will fall on what could be an Excellent game that lasts years. Once those reviews fall, it is very hard to come back from that. People will then go to the better rated games instead of coming here. Everyone who remains will either be broke or not willing to spend.
I won’t be broke. I may very well not be willing to spend any further. There is no point in spending on Heroes that will be outdated and underpowered in comparison to the new heroes that are to be released. There is also no way that I am going to invest what will be needed to keep up in Season 2.
Pretty much everyone here has had some crappy 10x summons and that hurts (RNG y’know). $26 down the drain. To some that’s a lot of money. I cannot imagine the feeling of spending $100 on a 30 hero summons and coming up blank. Given my past experiences, I know that I am not willing to gamble $100 to find out.
E&P will have eaten the Goose that lays the Golden Eggs. I hope it tastes good.
1 years ago there was no epic deal at all, i mean the ones with ascension items in it.
And there was a time (as Kerridoc said) that ascension items were extremely rare.
It was a time when the top chart was filled with central Li Xiu (sigh) and surely the game was less filled with players and not so profit maker.
HotM too was just born and we began to understand how much better they actually are.
So you don’t see a difference because you are probably less time in this game, but if we compare the quantity of this offers from the start until now we can see a huge difference.
without f2p there is no game … do you think that it could be maintained in terms of volume of players only with those who pay? funny assaulting again and again the same and playing wars again and again with the same alliances (well, these things already happen quite at the top of the table I think …)
Lets not turn this thread to discussion about loot probabilities statistics and experiences. Can someone moderate that away please.
There are a million threads about it already. This is about the P2W aspect. And you cant really judge anything about probabalities with the words ”some of us” and ”few last titans”
I hope you aknowledge that this game can only be F2P for you because a lot of people spend money on it. So if nobody spends anything then the day will come where it either is withdrawn from the market or what else? The few cents they get from watching the ads won’t fund the game, or?
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)
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
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”.
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.
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.
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.
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 …
