Subscription service for new heroes

I don’t know how it is with match-3 games, but there are games out there that are sustained solely from cosmetic microtransactions. Those don’t even tickle game’s integrity, but are rewarding for spending players. So a game stays entirely F2P while bringing in solid revenue.

I’d be in favor of a game supported by small micro transactions. But there’s no value for that with the current setup, except for something in the $2-4 range that gives an ascension item (think some of the xmas deals), for anyone wtih a moderately developed team. For most ppl in that situation, an epic hero token or event pull is simply another useless 3* fodder or a dup 4*. Once a bunch of the player base moves into the scenario where they spend for a 3x10 pull and get nothing useful, they probably aren’t going to do it again.

I seriously wonder if this game is big enough to sustain itself on cosmetics.

Improvements to the base look, new fancy avatars, hero recolors, fancier skill animations, all the crap like that.

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I’d be willing to spend to get rid of specials animations! Some animations are brutal during Titan fights.

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<---- that one idiot running Thoth on yellow titans for the lack of better options.

I agree haha.

Also, in raids. When I’m one hit away from doing something good and they just keep CASTING AND CASTING AND CASTING I’m like SHUT THE ■■■■ ALREADY WITH YOUR DUMBASS SKILLS AND LET ME PLAAAAAAAAAY!!!111oneoen111

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You derailed my attention before you really got started. Just because a thing has a cost that must be borne by others does not mean that people cannot be entitled to it as a right. There is a cost to freedom of religion, freedom of association, and freedom of speech. There is a cost to education, healthcare, food, shelter and clothing. The civilised world has long since agreed that we all have a right to all these things.

This aside, you might be correct to think that P2W players will not support freeloaders in future. Perhaps the game dying when revenue falls off is just what ought to be expected. Or maybe new players will arrive, eager to pay to play. I guess we’ll find out.

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I’m at a similar place as Dante with my hero bench: I have all the 4* (standard and event), all the HotM since I started (Ares forward), and most of the regular and event 5*. The only cards I really care about getting now are Lianna and Guardian Panther, plus another 4* red troop.

SG is going to run into a wall with its business model, at least for players like me. I only do epic pulls now to get the HotM or event heroes. Next month we’ll see a yellow HotM, but he’s got to get in queue with my unleveled Joon, Guinevere, Vivica, Justice, and Leonides. (Musashi is my active 5*) So February’s offering has to be pretty amazing for me to bother buying any gems to try for it, and if we’ve got Pirates again, there’s nothing there I care much about (Kestrel’s nice, but…).

So how will SG extract what I’d be willing to pay next month? They did a great job in December with the daily offers, but they can’t keep that up. The subscription idea has good potential, but I agree with the points above that removing the randomness from the game would ruin it.

So perhaps instead the subscription packs include varying numbers (depending on Silver/Gold/Platinum subscription level):

  • epic hero token
  • epic troop tokens
  • event hero tokens (new item)
  • Epic ascension item token (new item)
  • Trainer tokens (new item)

The event hero tokens should be in the game anyway. They’d work just like an epic hero token, but only in the event pulls. They could be programmed to exclude 3* heroes from the pull as a premium benefit.

The epic ascension item tokens would randomly draw a 3* or 4* ascension item. Maybe you get a scabbard, maybe you get darts.

The trainer tokens would be just like draws from the trainers in the shop, giving a random trainer of some color and some ascension. Because these are premium, 1* might be excluded.

This package keeps randomness but also provides value.

The only alternative I see is to add a new dimension to the game. An idea floated before is to have items that can be equipped to a hero to modify their stats/skills. New content gives seasoned players with deep benches something new to play with—and spend on,

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I dunno why the December calendar thing couldn’t be done at least for each of the four seasons. I was totally F2P before that, but the ascension items + gems was too good to pass up. Even with 4 of that same calendar it would take over a year to get all items to fully ascend a 5*, so not really unbalancing anything.

I like your HOTM and ascension items token ideas though. Those would be very tempting offers.

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yuhi wish i had computer access this weekend and not just mobile but ah well.

yes that’s exactly what it means. freedom of expression, association, etc. they don’t have a cost. just a slight cost to enforce (ie slight enforcement cost to stop people from infringing on said rights).

thats a vast difference from food shelter healthcare education, which cost a lot of resources to produce. goods and services can not be rights. rights are inalienable. limited goods and services by definition cannot be inalienable because a natural disaster could wipe them out. a natural disaster can not wipe out life liberty or the pursuit of happiness. it cannot wipe out freedom of expression. it can wipe out healthcare. or shelter.

the government could declare that beachfront property for all is a right. that doesn’t mean there’s enough to go around for 330 million americans. it’s a limited good.

no one is entitled to something that someone else has to produce. most countries that try that are not economically able to sustain that.

now that doesn’t mean a country cannot decide that a good or service should be available to everyone. but i has to take resources from one group to ensure goods and services to other groups. that’s not an in-alienable right, it’s just s thing the govt decided everyone should have and we all should pay for. vastly different from freedom of the press, freedom from search and seizure, etc. there’s a reason many countries with large welfare systems can not sustain those systems anymore.

EDIT i’m fairly middle of the road politically and am not trying to troll anyone. and just because i believe something isn’t an in-alienable right, doesn’t mean i think we should have a variety of safety nets or that the current drain of wealth to the upper few percent shouldn’t be mitigated to some some degree.

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I’m lost—how does ocean front property relate to E&P subscriptions? You’ve hijacked your own thread, Dante.

I became a paying (spending) player this month…I WILL CHOOSE HOW I SPEND MY MONEY, if they allow subscriptions then I am out of this game.

I want to choose if i spent 99c or $99 and on what. What day and what time of the month I spent it on.

There are a lot of F2P players and their numbers far outnumber paying players. I was a F2P player and I initially spent after I said I would not…how many potential “would-be” spenders would SG lose if all the F2P players leave the game? It is a huge business risk and a financial one.

A lot of people will leave…and this “new - paying” player too.

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I think you are quite wrong.

Freedom of religion, association and expression have explicit and painful costs, most obviously visible when a crowd of religious types gathers in a public space to shout at God, or whatever it is that they do. These rights (like any other ‘rights’) are expressly alienable, which we know because for a large part of human history large chunks of humanity have been systematically denied them. Happily, humans are a bit better now than they were - we collectively grant people the right to these things. Mostly.

Similarly, food, shelter, healthcare and education also have a cost, have also been systematically denied to people in the past, and are also collectively granted to people now as of right.

The mere fact that something is scare or costly is no barrier to it being granted as a right. Beachfront property could be declared the right of all people tomorrow and we would then have to share relatively small chunks; the only issue would be distribution. (I don’t think that’s a great idea, by the way, but there is no barrier to it happening.)

What someone is ‘entitled’ to seems more a moral question than a political one, so I’m not sure you really meant to go there, but to say that no one is entitled to something that someone else has to produce is errant nonsense in all senses. It even smells a bit Marxist.

  • The essence of capitalism is that the owners of the means of production are entitled to its outputs, not the people who do the actual producing. If no one was entitled to something that someone else had to produce, then capitalism would be finished.

  • We take money from people (as a proxy for the stuff they have produced) all the time. We call it tax. Society spends it as it sees fit. We often use it to pay the cost of things that we have decided are rights, be it by paying for the police or by funding social housing.

I’m not sure what the countries are with large welfare systems that ‘can not sustain’ them any more. I haven’t visited them. In many countries with an aging population the funding of retirement benefits is a live issue, but the broad global trend is certainly towards expanding social welfare programs, not contracting them.

You’re kidding yourself if you think there are any ‘inalienable’ rights that are qualitatively different from any other rights. Freedom of the press is a terrible example for you to cite. Most countries regard it as strictly limited, subject to the rigid proscription of defamatory content and even to the whims of the government (see the UK’s ‘D notices’, for example). Freedom from search and seizure is another poor example. Many countries have systematised legal programs of random stopping - to breath test drivers for alcohol, for example. Both these ‘rights’ are thus commonly restricted and even alienated from people.

I too am fairly middle of the road, politically, and am not in the trolling business. If anything, I have a slightly Libertarian lean. But it’s clear that rights are just societal constructs, none are ‘inalienable’ and all have a cost that has to be paid.

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Guys, we have veered into off-topic Territory. Back to topic please. :wink:

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A post was merged into an existing topic: Idea for a New Building - THE MARKET

You seem totally biased against us “freeloaders”. I have left several games because there was that element of greed that favored the players with the most $ in their pocket. Yes, I do spend a dollar here and there but it’s for what is currently offered. By adding a feature that favors money players’ chances of better heroes, you create an unlevel playing field and alienate a HUGE player base.

There will ALWAYS be players coming up that will throw money into the game just like there will ALWAYS be players with more important things to do with their money. To categorize players as freeloaders is extremely offensive and unwarranted. Not one single player should be demeaned for their financial input. IT IS A GAME.

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This thread became so ridiculous that I lost track of what I’d initially wanted to say. And now I don’t even care to remember. Smdh.

Is this topic over? Let me know if I should close it. :slight_smile:

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Lexie - without a large number of small spenders, the game would disintegrate. I totally get this. The game isn’t sustainable on only players who spend $200 or more a month (yes there are bunches who spend this). But right now there’s a ton of people who spent a little once or twice and got almost nothing of value (i.e. a bunch of 3* repeats). Those small stakes players probably won’t spend again.

There’s also tons of players like me - who have all or most of the 4* heroes worth having and a reasonable number of 5* heroes too. The chance of getting a 5 star hero on a 10x is around 25-30% or so. On top of that, there are a ton of 5* heroes just not worth leveling or ascending since they are so underpowered compared to the ascension resources you’d have to put in. So why would someone like me, who has spent a reasonable but not crazy amount, want to spend $25 on a 10x pull, when most likely, I will not get anything of value.

My point was EXACTLY the opposite - we need to encourage people to want to spend just a little bit. $10 a month, something like that. For a lot of reasons - long term financial health of the game, etc. But the most common complaint seems to be “I’m not getting anything of value for my spending”. Would you go to a movie theater and shell out $10-15 for a ticket plus snacks/drinks if instead of choosing your movie, you got sent to see some random movie of whatever’s out? Most people wouldn’t, that’s not good value for their entertainment budget. If there’s 12 of the 15 movies out that you want to see and haven’t seen, it might be a good value, but there’s diminishing returns the more movies you see (heroes you have).

Right now, unless you’e a brand new player that doesn’t have any/many 4-5 star heroes, spending $ on gem summons provides a HUGE range of value, most of which seems to be negative. Most people are not willing to shell out large amounts of $ for a small chance to improve their team.

That’s what I was getting at. I’m all in favor of making sure the little guy can improve his team - but IMO “little guy” isn’t totally 100% F2P, but the small stakes spender. Someone who’s going to spend $5-10 a month. or maybe drop $25-50 at xmas time. If THAT group of ppl stops spending, then the game will be in serious trouble. I’m ok advancing the small time “little guy” player more than someone who is totally 100% F2P and doesn’t want to support the game. They can still play and get heroes from training camps. But I’m less concerned about their ability to compete as I am wanting there to be value for everyone who spends money.

NO ONE should ever spend money and feel like “aw man, that was a total waste”. This subscription service idea was just one idea I had that would give people defined value for their entertainment spend. Maybe it’s a bad one, but if the main reason for complaint is that “total F2P players will fall behind”, well I’m less concerned with total F2P players than with making sure small spenders get value.

Other ideas I’ve seen such as hero shards (i.e. if you don’t like your heroes you smush them up for fractions of a hero that you can later cash in for some large thing X. ie. trading up prizes a the carnival) could be interesting as well.

@Rook - yes this thread has probably outlived it’s usefulness at this point, probably best to close it. I’m sure the dev team has seen whatever’s worth seeing out of this idea at this point. Now I will go back to being a robber baron and stealing old ladies’ retirement money. :smiling_imp::smiling_imp::smiling_imp:

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I love your movie analogy, Dante! Thanks for putting a highly emotionally charged issue into one we can all follow.

I appreciate your focus on small spenders. :wink:

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Summed up by Dante.