Concept/idea for a new in-game currency to access certain heroes

Hey guys,

The essence of the idea is trading in maxed heroes (three, four and five stars) for a new type of currency, let’s call it ‘X’. With this type of currency we can buy our desired heroes. Down here I’ll work this idea out and tackle potential problems with it. Before you see this as a greedy comment to get easy heroes, I’m definitely not intended to have it easy whatsoever.

One of the biggest frustrating factors in Empires and Puzzles is the fact that almost nothing is 100% guaranteed. Yes you can have 200 epic hero tokens and still not summon a five star hero, yes you can use Alchemy Lab lv 10 fifty times in a row and still not get your desired ascension material, yes you can end up as A+ attacker on a rare titan and get nothing to show for. This is fine, this is how games work. However regarding to heroes it is getting frustrating quickly. What I personally need, and I’ve heard this from more people, is guarantees. I want to know for sure if I do this I’m guaranteed to get that.

So how do we do this? In my time of playing I have heard different ideas.

The first one obviously is trading between players. If I give you my lovely Obakan you can trade me your Guardian Owl (best trade ever). Though, as mentioned many times, trading between players triggers farmer accounts. So far I haven’t been able to find a good solution for that.

Second, people talk a lot about the idea if you cross a certain threshold with summoning you get a guaranteed five star hero or the Hero of the Month. Much like the ascension material boxes but then with heroes. Also possible but still to easy accessible for most players, and let’s be real, knowing Small Giants it is not something they want to go for.

Third, my idea. Trade in maxed heroes for currency X and with this currency you can go into the shop and buy a specific hero. Sounds easy, sounds way to strong and by far not profitable enough for Small Giant I hear you say. And you are absolutely correct, let’s tackle that by asking and answering some questions.

How much currency X do you get from a maxed hero?

The required exp for maxed heroes:

  • Three star hero: 49.918 exp

  • Four star hero: 167.592 exp

  • Five star hero: 353.599 exp

If you assume you have one training center 2 and two training center 11 running nonstop you would get 72 heroes every day. Assuming that the ratio between 1* heroes and 2* heroes is 1:1 and you feed all the heroes to the same hero you would be looking at 20.217,6 exp per day.

Into perspective that would take:

  • Three star hero: 2,47 days to max

  • Four star hero: 8,23 days to max

  • Five star hero: 17,45 days to max

Let’s take the three star hero as a base and say 50k exp equals 1 currency X. Let’s add one additional currency X for the ascension materials for a four star hero and three additional currency X for five star heroes. This would translate to:

  • Three start hero: 1 currency X

  • Four star hero: 4 currency X

  • Five star hero: 10 currency X

How much currency X would a hero cost in the shop?

I think as a nice baseline we would need to trade in ten heroes of the same type to get one back. What I mean with this is that we need to trade in ten maxed four star heroes to be able to buy a 1-1 four star hero. Looking at that it would mean:

Shop

  • Three star hero cost : 10 currency

  • Four star hero cost: 40 currency

  • Five star hero cost: 100 currency.

I hear you say, ‘ Ten five star heroes for a 1-1 five star hero?!’. And I reply confidently with yes. This is not a way to easily get the heroes you want. You have to work for it, hard. The big big big benefit from this is that you are guaranteed to eventually get the hero that you want. Don’t forget you can trade in 100 three star heroes as well. It would mean you can buy a five star hero every 175-250 days depending on which maxed heroes you use for currency X.

I hear people thinking: ‘Oh nice, now I can finally get rid of that maxed duplicate Hu Tao I got as my first two holy four stars’. And you are right! This is another way to ‘use’ the heroes that don’t or barely get any play from you besides Hero Academy, Tavern of Legends and Ninja Tower.

Which heroes are available in the shop?

This one is answered simply. All of them, but with a giant but. Only the heroes that are currently available in the summoning portals can be found in this shop. If there is no Valhalla Forever there shall be no Valhalla heroes. If the current portal features the Ninja Tower event, the ninja’s will be available for purchase in the shop.

Can we obtain currency X in any other way?

This one is very tricky and very interesting. In my personal opinion there should be ways to obtain currency X in more ways than just trading in maxed heroes. Very carefully though so they are not to easy accessible.

A few example (Small Giant probably has some ideas about the amounts/costs as well):

  • 1, 2, 3 currency X for respectively finishing rare, epic, legendary challenge event.

  • A chance for 1, 2, 5 currency X in Elemental chests, war chests and top 1%/5% tournament loot.

  • Offers, yes the ones we buy with our hard earned real money. I am not sure how to implement this last one, can we buy currency X from the shop all the time or do we only have offers pop up occasionally or only with certain events. I’ll let Small Giant decide what they want to do with that and how they price it. For a rough estimate I can see a giant offer of 100 currency X (in essence a free finley, or 10 Gill-ra’s), a few battle items, trainer heroes, three star ascension materials and maybe some gems go for something like 125-130 euro.

What are the restrictions?

Even when we established it takes long to get a five star hero we still need to implement a few restrictions. We can’t make it to easy and we want to avoid exploiting.

First and foremost, no trading between players whatsoever. Simply not possible without risking farmer accounts.

I hear you say, ‘ I’m going to hoard 500 currency X to buy all the ninja’s!’. Big nope to this one, once again to easy. We restrict the amount of currency X we can spend per month in the shop. Personally I think the max of 150 currency X fits perfectly so you can buy a three star, a four star and a five star.

I haven’t explicitly stated this but the hero you buy will be a 1-1 hero. You have to start from scratch all over again!

Why would Small Giants want to do this?

This question is the trickiest of them all. I can’t answer for them, I’m not in their shoes. However I have some ideas. I do not like to talk about money and Small Giants, of course they have to make money and of course as much as possible. That is how business works. As a player for a potentially free to play game I should not be concerned about this, let alone think about it. Yet, I have to talk about this because it is a big issue.

A feature like this, any feature that gives us more guarantees is most likely to harm the profit Small Giant makes. I can’t say how big of a harm, I do not have that insight.

However, some guarantees in the game would make me personally happier playing it. I have heard from some friends they would likely be happier player as well. As a psychology student I can confidently say that happy people tend to stick around longer, enjoy the game more and spend more money. Once again I can’t tell how much and if this would profit Small Giant. Neither can I say if the benefits outweigh the cons. Yet I think a lot of players want to see a change that is in the interest of the player base.

I would love you guys feedback on this idea and feel free to ask any questions you have. Let’s work this concept out and implement it in a good way!

Peace out,

Yoyotje.

Hello,

sorry but i stopped reading there… whole point of their system is, that they want you to pull loads of tries to get specific hero…Thats how they really earn money. If you change system to trade your heroes for some tokens /random heroes, thats is more plausible

I kindly ask you to read the entire thread to see how I think we can avoid this problem. I’m personally convinced people want to chase multiple heroes per year. Yes, a desired hero every 200 days with a lot of effort but I bet there are people (including me) who won’t change their spending habbit a lot. Besides that, is the cut in profit of Small Giant worse than the benefit of happier, longer staying players? I don’t know, you don’t know. Only Small Giant knows.

Why would they cut largest revenue option from their position? To make playerbase happier? They can do that just enough with introducing new features, more qol changes, new modification and alliance options etc,… (while keeping ways of obtaining heroes same)

I will read your post in its entirety when i find time…

Interesting concept and well thought out. Whatever a system like this for trading would entail is spending cold hard cash, aka purchased gems. I’d imagine they’d make it both…gems that you can earn in many ways but also a cash purchase. Something like 300 gems for a 5 star plus a 99 cent charge. This would be a not-so sneaky way of getting the #nospend crowd back into the swing of opening their wallets.

I know SGG will hide behind the notion of they don’t want to create a black market for top heroes, which is fair to a point. But this would be a way to get revenue from a channel that is closed at the moment. And allowing this with your stipulations would cause them harm. Instead of spending ten dollars on a ten pull in Wonderland next month, I could just trade someone who has an extra Black Knight lying around. SGG wants you to take the .3% shot rather than a sure thing.

good thoughts @yoyotje !

Hiya @yoyotje; I am going to close your thread as it is extremely similar in essence to previous suggestions called “hero Shards”

The premise is the same that you can get/ earn shards which you can then trade in for a desired hero.

The main thread is this one:

But this one is very similar to your idea:


Regarding your first two ideas, there are existing threads for those also:

  1. [Master] Trading Between Players - Please add your comments & ideas here!

  2. Pity Counter/Timer for Summons MASTER


I would advise simply copy pasting (or quoting) your thoughts over to one of the existing threads :slight_smile:

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