Well, i just got corrected. Now i would encourage discussing this topic. I myself feel like it’s stupid to lock a vital part of the game behind a paywall that is tall enough to keep a lot of players from even competing.
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Please no. Pay to play is usually the exact same content for everybody. But let’s face it, the top 100 players pay for easy to get material and the rest pay for “■■■■”. Or is every participant getting the same loot? Don’t think so. I don’t like this at all.
I don’t know if this will be better if it would be only 1-3 gems (as a extreme example). Always depending on what you get back for it. Not enough informations to decide something like that.
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I have read this in another thread as well and I am just wondering why we have only 42 posts so far 
Its BETA!!! Come down…
Do the raid events use normal raid energy?
1 Like
Paying with gems exclusively to participate in any part of game?
No thanks. I mean, there are games like that, I don’t play them. Part I liked here is that with money, it’s faster, however without it, you still can do a lot.
However, there could be options - eg when you collect eg 5 raiding chest, you get raid tournament ticket, or you pay 100 gems for the ticket. When you fill 10 monster chests you get ticket for some new type of event. When you fill titan chest then…
You got the idea
Having option to pay to make it happen faster, is what this game always had, and I’m ok with it. I used it, supporting devs who made it happen is ok with me.
Introducing paywall, yeah they can do it, it’s their product, however what I can say is that I won’t use it and will discourage my teammates from using it.
If paywalls start coming, and we can’t enjoy the game without them, I guess it will be time to leave and find another match 3 game with additional stuff around it, they should exist?
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My instinct is to play devil’s advocate and try to make a case for why it might be a good idea, but I can’t. It sounds bad.
The most I can say is this: it might not be such a big deal as people seem to be assuming.
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Thanks @Rook for the beta leaking clarification.
If any future action will be taken about it, please don’t touch anybody else beside me. I take full responsibility for it.
Now, back to the topic, I think there are 2 separate questions that come from this information:
-
Is pay to play content (of every kind) something that we want? Is it really necessary to keep the revenues high enough for the game living further in the future? If so, how could they ever survive until now? I’m not a doomsayer but this really makes my ‘greed red alarm’ ring loudly.
-
How can you ask someone to pay to compete against the top players? I mean, do the Devs have any idea of the BIG difference between F2P, C2P and the big whales? For me, it’s basically ripping off players and giving a small amount of people a big help. I don’t even care about challenge events, I know I will never be in the top 100. But I can play it for free and it’s absolutely ok to me to not compete against people that are willing to spend thousands of euros in a game, I can still enjoy the game and the partecipation prize is good enough to keep going.
So it’s not how much they will ask to try, it’s the mechanic at the base of this system that is insanely broken.
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I was lookin forward to another debate with the almighty brobb lol always fun even when i lose
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I do not think so (see the color of the flag is different from the usual)
Well for #2, devs have data on top of data. They have pinpointed a date and time i’ve recieved loot before lol. I dont think the data is tracked forever, most likely in intervals. But they very well know the difference in player strengths in the spending status categories.
At least i would assume so based on today’s technollogy and the automation of collecting such data
No one ever “loses”. We quarrel, call each other mean names, then hug it out and do each other’s makeup. It’s why the forum exists.
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Oh I beg to differ…There’s plenty to discuss if this is the way this game is going to go…I love to raid, but I spend enough on this game and I’m not going to spend extra doing something I can already do for free. @Rigs is right, this needs to be discussed prior to it going live
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Personally I have no issue with providing extras for pay (for example, the VIP content); give me more of what I can get in game for free.)
However, if I cannot even participate without paying, that doesn’t work for me. It’s a free game.
So here’s the question: is the weekly raid thingee like VIP? More content for pay? Or is it a paywall barring me from content which should be free?
What are my criteria to judge? Hmm.
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I’m generally not a doomsayer… and I’ve invested a lot of time into this community (see the wiki), so please believe me when I say that this is hard to declare:
If Small Giants starts to gate content behind a pay-to-play wall, I’m (likely) done with this game.
Their ‘offers’ are already rather ridiculous. One pull, which has a 26% chance to give a 4* hero, and a 2% chance of a 5* hero generally costs approximately $3 each. That’s a ridiculous pricing scheme already. I have yet to find a single gem deal… or any deal, for that matter… that I thought “dang, that’s a great deal!” Every single deal offered gouges the consumer.
…and now, despite having massive growth and a huge year of earnings in 2018, they’re going to leverage their player base yet further and fully exclude F2P from an entire game mode?
That’s selfish and irresponsible. It’s evidence that the game makers have only one goal in mind: profit.
I don’t play games made by companies that I don’t trust. Doing this will lose SGG my trust.
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Pay to play is a terrible, terrible idea. Pay to play against p2w’ers makes it almost ironic - from both viewpoints (p2w and f2p/c2p).
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My apologies, Ichigo. It looked just like my Beta snaps.
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Ok but let’s make some assumptions to understand better the consequences of a system like this:
- Let’s say that 5.000 people have the power to be in the top 100.
- Let’s say that 80% of them will pay to partecipate and that 6000 more (outside the initial 5000) will join them.
- The event is over: 100 people will be happy, 9900 will complain about the board or anything else.
- The top 100 will get big prizes and make the gap with mortals even bigger.
- After a small amount of time (weeks? months?) many players that keep losing gems to partecipate at the raid challenge will stop doing it.
- After (months) SG/Zynga will recognize that it’s not working and will make some price adjustment, let’s say cutting the cost by 50%.
- After (months) nothing will change, people will stop spending gems to make the rich people richer.
- After (years?) SG/Zynga will understand the big mistake but it will be too late, most people will already have left the game.
I know that the numbers will be different but, sadly, I can’t see a different ending…
I love this game so far but I want to know which directions it’s going so I can decide if it’s worth my time and my money or not.
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OMG 2 times I experienced it hahahaha … 
