It’s known to be a commonly re-occurring frustration expressed by different people that they don’t get adequate value for their spend. This drives people to leave the game, or discourages people who want to stick with the game from continued spend. (I fall in the latter category).
I think we would all agree that it’s desirable that SG get a decent income from the game. It funds their ongoing efforts to continue to improve and expand it and this benefits all.
So I asked myself, what would encourage me to spend while not allowing people to simply max out a team overnight?
For me it’s knowledge that I am getting something concrete for the spend, even if the gems that I purchase do not produce immediate results when I cash them in.
So the idea is this:
A spend in gems awards you a ‘shard’. Each shard comes with a small absolute boost in percentage terms of pulling 5* from your next gem summon. As you spend more you accrue more shards which stack to increase your boost percentage. This means simply: The more you spend, the higher your chances of actually pulling a 5* over time on subsequent gem summons. This is returning you something concrete for your spend.
When you get a 5* from a gem pull then this consumes your shards, and you start again from there.
There would need to be some discretion over the thresholds… how much total spend should give you a ‘good’ (say over 50% chance) of getting a 5*? Should there be a cap at less than 100%? But that’s really all just detail.
Given this, I would be far more inclined to spend on gems. I’d be less irritated taking a run of bad luck over a £20 spend (say) if I know I’m still left with a greatly boosted chance of getting a 5* in a subsequent gem pull.
Yes, if you spend enough you can be more sure of building a team of all 5*… but that’s the case already. (I discuss this in some detail in this post). All that’s being modified is the amount of spend you need to get you there.
Really I think it would be to SG’s benefit to encourage people to be tempted to spend to those levels, because it’s better income… and people are more inclined to spend if they can be sure their increasing spend is offering them increasing chance of getting just reward for it.
It also doesn’t take away from the ‘Gambling’ element of the game, which (distasteful as some may find it) does offer a degree of interest and excitement for certain types of players.
Sure this may lead to further consequences (like more people with stronger teams)… but this isn’t necessarily a bad thing. It just requires a bit of innovation as to how the increased community of stronger players can compete and evolve to ‘stay fresh’. Plenty of different ideas here - but that’s a subject of different threads.
Other uses can be found for the shards as well… example cashing them in to exchange for an ascension item (or a pull from a pool of rare ascension items) etc.