Are we heading to Pay2Win? Plus, other concerns

[TomV93]

I have only been playing since april, but after reading a big part of the forum I understand why people are complaining and sometimes even leaving the game. It gave me the idea to start this topic Business Model SG, with the goal: to come up with ways to increase SG’s sales, without the P2W aspect being strengthened, so that perhaps the problems concerning 4*/5*/Event/HOTM heroes and ascension materials can be solved more easily.

It is nice to see that a highly valued person, such as Avicious, with a voice that is going to be heard is taking the initiative to convince the developers of the shortcomings and irritation factors of the game that have already been mentioned on this forum. I hope that the significance of other worrisome forum posts is increased by his post. It should.

[Nol_Nas]

ye i remember monster chest being much better that its now all this started b4 2 months ,and think chances for gettting good loot r drastically reduced not only for monster chest but for all the chest , lets not talk about titan chest thats a total ■■■■■■■■ now is even worse than a monster chest a chest that takes about a week to be opened and gives u food iron rock feather and 1 or 2 gem lol

[Maaeetz]

The topic was nice, well thought and constructive please keep it like this and stop spamming it with personal fights. It won‘t help anybody

[Sanni]

As far as you are referring to Anchor he isn’t always streaming Beta, 90% of his streams contain normal game stuff. He only occasionally showed Beta content with permission by the way and it was a lot because viewers ask him to do so.
Right now he isn’t even streaming anything from S2 and is following SG restriction on Beta.

I don’t really know what you want to imply anyway since he wasn’t even complaining about the embaro.

[Whitey]

The game has a problem with the direction, but the players leaded the dev’s in this way. If the players do not stop to hunt like a wolf after some heroes (with loads of diamonds), the dev’s will bring op heroes. They do this in Season 2 to 100% and Seven Days will start to hunt again. They are no good example this way…
Sorry but that’s the truth - most of them have no measure and no goal…only toooo much Money.

[Sanni]

So players should be punished with even higher prices, because heroes and 4* items becoming too expensive?

What is the use of a game, when you can’t have and use(!) some of the best heroes without spending some serious money?

I find it a bit odd to blame it on the players, when SG decide to spice up the prices so much.

[Whitey]

they will only do something if enough People stop to spam money like crazy on single heroes - I saw a video a guy spending 1700 Euro to get Panther at the last event. Did not get Panther. Then he cried like a baby, and wrote: “I hate SG”. I see no fault on SG here, only players fault. The whole community has to stop giving for a month or two, then they start listening - but that’s impossible. So there will be no changes for more F2P entertainment…and heroes.

[Kalel]

I enter to read the post frequently with the hope that some SG developer will say something, I expected at least one “be calm we are listening to your concerns and we will do everything possible so that everyone is happy” … something like that even if they want to burst portfolios, but I think the community deserves respect, and that the least they should do is run and say something

[Wearybear]

(Resuming a rather entertaining topic.) After SG took our desire to speed up farming (and ran with it in a different direction), I am very skeptical about September. I have stopped gem purchases and will remain in a holding position until we know for sure how much they listened to us. As much as I love this game, I am simply no longer interested in “playing their game”.

[Blades]

Those 1 month promos with daily buys are a nice mix between spenders buying matts and non spenders squeaking out 3$ for gems. They should do them every month.

[FunkyknightHay]

SG Devs, where are you? @Petri. You’ve got an excellent, well-written, well-thought out OP by a lead player. You’ve got a litany of other well-reasoned replies and around 170 replies total as of this posting.

Most people posting here are at a minimum C2P if not larger spenders. We are therefore your CUSTOMERS. Basic business rule - ignore the customer at your own peril.

It should be obvious that a lot of people care a lot about your game. Lack of communication on your part suggests to your customers that such concern is not a two-way street.

[Julia]

Well spoken Avi. As an leader of a smaller top alliance I am sharing your concerns.
The members of my alliance loves the game and most of them spend a fair amount of both time and money to play the game and have been active players for a long time.
Staying competitive in a top alliance takes a lot of effort from all members, grinding, growing, raiding and using all available flags for aw and titans. Every day all days of the year. To keep having fun with that and not feeling it is like a job or a duty, you have to get something in return. Even in the best alliance, something have to move on in game as well. New goals to achieve and still having the joy of sometimes actually getting something really good without paying a fortune to get it and a feeling of all the grinding and leveling actually getting you somewhere.
I am worried about a lot of loyal players burning out and getting a feeling of not being able to stay somehow competitive in the game if not spending hundreds of dollars.
One of the things I love about this game and kept me going for a long time is that F2P, P2W and moderate spenders can enjoy and play the game together even in top alliances.
Not that long ago I experienced that skilled F2P or C2P players, being active and grinding with some patience and a little luck could be competitive in challenges, on titans and in raids and even get a lucky pull on a 5*, HoTM or event hero sometimes on a hero token or some saved up gems. Those days seem to be gone…
6 months ago we rarely had someone leaving and if they did it was because the was busy in life. Now we have 2-3 members leaving every month for reasons mostly according to the game.
Some of the issues I “feel” that have changed (not having any proof as it is all RNG)
This is only personal experience, I know some have more luck than I

• Rare chests, I used to be thrilled about getting one of those to often getting a 4* ascension items and maybe 2 hero/troop tokens. Now it have turned to meh, usually it is like normal chest just 3 daily tokens instead of one and a not farmable 3* item if lucky.
  4* items seems to be less frequent in all parts of the game that have a minor chance of providing them for free. I do get quite a lot of not farmable 3* items on titans though.
• New heroes. I have spend quite a lot on hero summons this year.
  I had one lucky pull on Red Hood in a 10x summon. When counting up I got something like 1 5* event hero, 1 HoTM and 4 regular 5* in 250+ summons. Last year I got 13 5* spending like 30 summons a month in average. I did also got 3 new 4* and 2 new 3* this year though weeeh…
• AW seems to make a lot of people feel stressed and inadequate if not having 30 leveled heroes
• Ingredients for battle items. I am not farming 24/7 but most often use my 39 flags twice a day. Even with this farming I often have a hard time keeping up on basic battle items like arrows and small mana for titans. I more or less gave up on saving up for challenges and now only do a halfhearted attempt sometimes to get a spot that gives some ingredients in return.

What I would like SG to consider:

• New heroes in season 2 should be added to training camps for all to get a chance of grinding for them. Players that wants to be the first to get them and the new and previous HoTM will spend to get them anyway
• Make elemental chests great again
• Consider to make use of hero tokens in both epic and elemental/event summons. (It is not like we will get less Renfelds or Dawars but at least maybe feel just a little rush having a tiny chance of getting something new for free) Hero tokens are really rare in the game so giving your players the tiny chance of getting a 5* or a new 4* once in a while will probably not spoil the business model, but may even motivate F2P to spend a little to get more new heroes and items.
• Consider the amount and use of some ingredients, to not have the same ingredient used for low level items to survive battling high level titans daily and high level items used for challenge bosses and rare titans.
  Right now I have 241 dragon bones, 330 Meteor fragments and 171 Nuggets all 4* ingredients but I only have 6 grimoire dust, 24 midnight roots, 8 large bones, 2 leather strips and no crude iron.
  This game is great and I would like to keep supporting it and spend the time it takes keeping a top alliance going and being active in all aspects of the game.
  But if comes to the point when I can only accept new members spending fortunes, to stay competitive and move on as a top alliance, I will consider throwing the towel in the ring.

[Blitz]

I think one scary part for SG should be the amount of players saying its now principle that they wont spend money unless things get better. Many are tied to the game as they have spent a decent amount of money to get where they are. The longer people go though without sinking in additional money, the easier it will be to set the game down. People wont feel as bad walking away as its easy to forget how much money you burned as time goes by. I for one dont mind spending some money to support the game. I am just tired of feelling like im getting even worse than casino odds for everything in this game…

[TheFue]

Thanks for posting this @Avicious, I am a newer player but already running up against many of these issues.

I started slow, got the new-b pack and that was it for a while. I really enjoyed the game at that point, every victory or level felt great. Eventually I found a fun little alliance and we started to really take off, taking down titians, winning a war or two once that came out. I put in a little more money and got my first four star hero, I was so excited. Up till that point I feel like every penny I spent was worth it. But as things ramped up and my fellow alliance members spent more and got HoTMs I got caught up in the hype.

Now, looking back on the past two months especially, I’ve put in more money than I thought I would. I made some conscious larger expenditures. But it’s my money, I’m not starving or anything, and I chased a few heroes I strategically thought would bolster my position. I have a Gravemaker! He’s gunna be great once I can ascend him. I got cabin boy, and two hansels, and two gafars, and a falcon, and a million copies of any normal four star… but for the most part the bulk of my investments fell short. And I have more mouths to feed than I can do reasonably.

But my real point is that after all that and not winning the event hero lottery, I’m almost glad I didn’t get them because they will be overshadowed by the 2.0 heroes coming this fall. So right now I feel like I spent my money and I got what I got, but if I’d got more of the top heroes only to have them rotate out of meta before I could ever fully level them that would have felt like a bigger loss.

The most reactive and insightful development I’ve seen in the game is the hot deals and special offers!

It’s like they read minds, but of course it’s not that it’s the hype of new heroes power levels combined with the false scarcity of materials. Extra gems are tempting but a four star ascension item seals deals! Of course after months I am still unable to ascend even one of my five stars, despite my now silly purchase history. (thankfully not thousands but a few hundred to be sure).

So currently I hope I’ve spent my last dollar on the game, won’t be renewing my VIP. I want to see 2.0 if only for the fun of it. I want to keep chatting with my Alliance and developing my heroes… but it’s starting to feel like a chore, like I need to milk my entertainment investments.

For me the most enjoyable part of the actual game is the tactics and strategy, I want to feel like there is a goal. But my alliance hasn’t been in a fair war in almost three months. We still try to kick butt and take names, we get into it to the best of our abilities, even knowing we will fail once again. But I’ve been leveling teams and looking for ways to bolster our chances, but I can’t be spending any more money on that.

So as a PTW player, I’m not even getting a proportional boost for my $$, and my current investment is about to tank post 2.0 so… I guess that leads me to my final point.

Developers and investors:

Please respond to Avicious’s points. Poor @Rook is doing their best but we need to hear from you. And you should pay Rook too. Or fire Rook and hire someone, anyone, because whoever is doing this work (and talking on your behalf) should be compensated. It’s gross to see. You pay your coders and your artists (I assume) pay your moderators. I’m getting off track…

My real point was speak for yourselves. Respond to the community. Be open with us about what our investments actually return. And figure out a balanced FTP ascension items system.

[KoolRhoDee]

I may spend more time on Gems of War if this keep up. The lvling is a little more complicated, but there are so many heroes, but there are many different ways to do it, and you can keep quite a few teams.

[Duaneski]

Hmmmmm maybe we need to shout some obscenities or something ?

Yo @petri let me help you out bro. Say something like this:

“We at SG take your concerns very seriously. We feel it is important to acknowledge the concerns of all of our players, and certainly we respect the well reasoned words spoken here by @Avicious. Because of how deep reaching these concerns are, we feel it is appropriate to conduct a conversation internally before providing any further detail. We will continue to monitor the discussion here and will provide our thoughts on the future of the game in the near future.”

[Almeida]

@mhalttu since you seemed so eager to receive players’ help on the crowd sourcing translation thread (a thing that makes my job as a Professional Translator harder, because so many people are willing to be volunteers that big companies can avoid spending with that) you could also come here and talk to us about something that’s even more important to us than a perfect translation. What do you say? Are we partners or are we (players) just prey?