I want to express my reasoning about the game Empires & Puzzles, you can agree with them or not.
A lot of modern games are built in such a way that you can play them indefinitely, while receiving heroes and objects and gradually developing. But in all games it is made so that you can buy heroes or items for coins or crystals, or other means of payment, and gradually pump them. But many players, having reached a certain level, understand that there is nowhere to develop further and the game becomes uninteresting. The question arises: what next?
What do the developers do in this case? Thatâs right, they stimulate players in various ways up to cash prizes! What are Small Giant developers doing? NOTHING!!!
Now letâs explore other games.
The developers of the famous Dota2, Fortnite, and other games host annual tournaments with a prize pool of several million dollars! For example, in Dota2 for 2 years in a row, a player from Finland became a champion and each time received a prize for the first place of about $ 6 million! But in the Fortnite game, one American student won $ 3 million for second place!
Such tournaments very much stimulate players to increase their level, purchase new heroes and items!
And what have the Empires & Puzzles developers done in this regard? NOTHING!!! Have you ever heard of a tournament in which you could get at least $ 1 million for first place?
Small Giant profit in 2018 reached the level of 190 million dollars !!! What do you think, could at least $ 1 million be allocated from this money to organize a tournament? I think it is possible, but the greed of the developers does not allow this!
In some other games, for example, World of Warcraft, you can exchange heroes and objects! Yes, a lot of people make money on this when they get a good hero, they pump it to the full level, and then sell it to another player. Yes, part of the money passes by the developers, but this approach encourages people to invest in the game to get a good hero!
Almost all players with a level of 50 and above have a lot of good heroes in several copies, they donât need colorful ones (by the way, I also have), and they would be happy to exchange them for other necessary heroes! For more than 2 years, Small Giant developers have been asked to introduce an exchange of heroes between players at least within the same alliance, for example, if players have been in the alliance for more than a month, then they can exchange heroes with each other! What do developers do? Instead of exchanging heroes, they introduce some ridiculous clown costumes for some heroes, which you can get again for crystals, but âcanâ does not mean âgetâ, even for money !!! And why did not the developers make an exchange of heroes? Because this does not make them greedy, because in this case, players will buy less crystals!
But the developers did not stop there! In 2019, they made it so that the chances of getting good heroes and items for their rebirth became negligible! Iâll tell you by my own example: if at the very beginning of the development of the project I got good heroes at least once every 2-3 months, then I received the last good hero - Ursen in May 2019 !!! After that, no matter how many crystals I buy, no matter how much money I invest in the game, not a single good hero: neither the hero of the month, nor the hero of events, nor even the right hero from the ordinary! I really need Vivik, and I did a lot of recruiting yellow heroes, but she never fell out in 3 years! And in December, I bought a lot of crystals to get Mother of the North. And also never fell! Only in October and November from the 20th camp fell to me Justice and Magni, which I already have the third in a row and which I do not need! For my money, I received only âgarbage.â Friends, I am much luckier in sweepstakes and in online casinos than in this game!
And since January 2020, I no longer bought a single crystal, because I do not see the point! I advise others to do the same!
There is one more point on which some Empires & Puzzles players made money: they pumped their profile, and then sold it along with all the heroes! What did the developers do? They began to ban the accounts of those players who have more than one profile on their phone! Question: WHY ???
To upgrade your profile, you need to play for at least 1 year, but there are some players who want to get everything at once and are ready to pay money for it! Therefore, other players registered an account, bought crystals in order to get good heroes. bought VIP passes to quickly upgrade and sell your profile! But the developers of Small Giant were so greedy that even this was not allowed to do !!!
Now the game has turned into a real âswampâ: everything in it is done in such a way that players invest as much money as possible in the game, while not getting anything in return. The developers even came up with many new features that are not needed in the game, but which allow players to get extra money to buy crystals, for example: raid tournaments, clown costumes for heroes, the âpath of valorâ in which you need to buy a pass to get good prizes! Why are these meaningless innovations needed?
Our alliance has been developing for 2 years, we talked together, beat the titans, fought, tried different strategies in the alliance war! Now our alliance is dead: half of the players simply quit the game because they were tired, and the other half, who are still interested in playing, dispersed to other alliances. Now I am left alone in my alliance, I rarely play when I have time and mood, sometimes I go through events, sometimes I beat titans 1-2 stars, I rarely take part in 1 VS 1 wars. I donât have the enthusiasm that was a year ago, greed developers were killed by the desire to continue playing this game and develop further! I have already reached a certain level, after which the question arises: WHAT NEXT? And then - emptiness!
Maybe someday when the game is completely bored, I will give my account to someone absolutely free!
you are not allowed to transfer Virtual Items outside of the Services (e.g., in the âreal worldâ), for example by selling, gifting, or trading them.
Partaking in breaking ToS or encouraging users to break ToS is against Forum Rules
Criticism of the game and Small Giant is otherwise fine, so long as itâs civil and doesnât advocate for violating Forum Rules or the Terms of Service.
Isnât it awesome then that SG already has a WEEKLY tournament and a MONTHLY event which gives players rankings
Maybe you can try creating a Ideas & Feature Requests thread if you have a more definitive suggestion about what you believe the âAnnual tournamentâ should look like⊠For the life of me I canât think of a way that a Match 3 game could suitably execute such a tournament but if you have ideasâŠ
This idea has been suggested MANY times over the years. Youâre welcome to add your thoughts to the master thread:
People raise ratings only to satisfy their own pride! I also once went to the top 1 in raids. But what did it give me in real life? Show everyone else that in some game I achieved something? Whatâs the point?
And when not only developers, but also the players themselves earn real money in the game, this is quite normal in the modern gaming world! This is called âcombine business with pleasureâ!
For example, do you know that in the EVE Online game one player sold another rare spaceship for $ 40,000? But I have already invested a lot of money in Empress & Puzzles, but what did I get in the end? Loneliness in a dead alliance! And whatâs the point for me to develop further, seeking to get ratings? I got first place in raids or events, but what next?
As i said, if you have an idea of a way a mass tournament could REALISTICALLY and fairly be implemented with an end reward of a cash prize, youâre more than welcome to create an ideas thread.
The current tournaments Nd competitions in EP are designed that the rewards offer IN GAME benefits to aid and further player progression. The reward you get is commensurate of effort put in (usually) and aids in further progressing your account and keeping players engaged.
For now, this thread seems to be more down the line of a âGeneral Complaints / Ventâ thread
Speaking only for myself, Iâm pretty happy with the current volume and schedule of events in 2020. Between Path of Valor, Costume Quests, the new Challenges, and Season 3, there are never more than a few days without something interesting to do. Add in the Rare Quests and Atlantis Rising and there seem to be lots of opportunities to try to draw heroes!
After 5 Hawkmoons in the recent Costume Quest, I was a little underwhelmed though. It would be nice to release at least one new Costume per month.
All of which is to say I donât personally feel any swamp here.
Itâs likely weâll see new Costumes in Beta soonish, and in the live game as some point thereafter.
My guess is itâll probably be a chunk at once again, though, not a monthly drip â but itâs certainly possible they might add them over time instead.
There is a big flaw in your âTournaments for Cashâ logic. Fortnite, WoW, Dota, LoL, Rocket League and so on are not dependent on RNG or cash spend to be stronger as E&P is. It literally is only about the skill you have playing the game. This makes tournaments pretty much fair from the get go.
If you had such tournaments in E&P - which by the way, have MILLIONS of viewers and sponsors to allow for those prizes - can you imagine the outrage when you bring a mono dark stack to your final battle and get 2 dark tiles? No way that works.
E&P is a fundamentally different game than the ones you are suggesting SGG to emulate. There are certainly things SGG could be doing better to stimulate older players, but I donât think the ones you suggested are the way to go.
Personally, I still would like to see a bit more forced strategy on us - only being able to use certain types of heroes in certain levels, wars or quests (similar to tournaments / trials) and definitely Alliance wide quests. Gems of War does this quite nicely.
Finally, in the clone game SGG has running (Puzzle Combat) there is a special quest this week called Zombie Horde where basically your screen keeps filling with enemies unless you kill them. There is a chest that will open at 200 killed enemies - no idea whatâs inside because my team is super weak but itâs a great idea that I would love to see implemented in E&P as well.
Please donât compare E&P to real e-sport games. Dota, Fortnite etc are all about skills of individual players and teams working together in constantly changing meta. What is E&P? An RNG lottery about getting the good board allowing to destroy your enemy in 5 turns before they can destroy you in 8. Itâs nowhere even close to e-sports. Not to mention majority of what makes up to your troophies is about how many good heroes you have and were you lucky getting mats to finish them. You can be the walking genius of match 3, working out the pseudo rng algorithms in your head, and you will do sh*t with a team of Dawas and Renfelds against fully emblemmed typical diamond tier defense.
This was suggested before and it would be awesome for the players, but be mindful that the whales now are willing to spend 1000$ to get a new shiny hero that was released. If the same whale is able to buy the said hero for 100$, they would do it. And even if 50% of this transaction goes to the company (and other 50% to the seller), SG just loses 950$ there. Yeah, itâs all about them getting more money because of how the game is designed. But donât expect them to change that in a way that the business loses itâs revenue. Espiecially now when they have a major gaming corporation as a shareholder. Letâs face it, thereâs little room to make revenues in a game like that other than the rng based summons. In Dota 2 they make money only on selling cosmetics and visual items - you can be world champion and never spend a penny, just the game will be less shiny. And they still make hundreds of millions USD. E&P lacks complexity, mechanics and skill involvement to make the player base that enganged Iâm afraid.
Well, the terms of the game said itâs forbidden, by playing the game you agree to the terms, so whereâs the surprise⊠The black market for selling the accounts is huge and I know people who are doing this all the time and get away with it. Do I like it? No, I personally wouldnât find fun in it and it bothers me others do it. But on the other hand, thereâs a lot of money invested into an account so if I do not want to play the game anymore, an option to âcash outâ this way is indeed comforting. But no game I know allows it officially, and I would assume it may be somehow regulated by laws or something that the companies have to comply. I donât know how it works but perhaps the fact that the account is never âyoursâ for the fact, it belongs to the âcompanyâ, just so you canât claim them in case they close the business etc⊠so by âsellingâ your account you actually sell something that doesnât belong to you, and itâs forbidden because otherwise the company would have to be involved, regulate it and maybe even pay taxes out of it. So Iâd rather not expect this to be officially approved ever, rather anticipate more sanctions in the future.
Seeing that skill is hardly a factor in this game and in particular with PvP matches due to the randomness of the boards I donât see how there could be a serious tournament for this game. The tiles determine most of the outcomes.
Also thereâs no realtime PvP, as youâre just fighting against the ai controled defence team of your opponent.
Itâs a phone game with a pretty clever profit model and the game should be treated just as that.
Sorry but i have to laugh
This is just another moan thread that i accedently stumbled upon. Theres heaps to do, change your team and do it all again. Seson 1 2 and now 3, or have you finished that too. Valor thats a bit of a challenge, is it not. Ive actually opted my alliance out of war for a week, feeling the
Oh i did not know that @zephyr1, i have my sons account on my phone, i chop and change when required, is that illegal??
But anyway, cheer up bro, or change your hobby. Happy Hunting
Even an account in top 100 worth nothing. This game is worthless in terms of real money. Even if along 2 years of investing in it. Letâs say 100k dollars, o wouldnât buy it. Itâs just worth nothing. Right now with this world virus around, itâs even worthless.
The only point I agree with the OP is that It would be nice to exchange heroes and mats with other players. But just imagine people with toons of gems purchasing ideal teams ;(. At least now they need to trow a lot of money just to get opportunities to the heroes.
And to that statement alone, I would have to say are you 100% on that? I have not heard of such a thing. SG just says âunsupportedâ, i.e., if you donât understand what you are doing, the chances are, if things go south, it could go badly for you!!
If you like gacha games, but feel the need to make money from them, why not just take up actual gambling?
SG/E&P have never dangled the possiblities of cash tournaments, trading items/heroes between players, or selling accounts. It hasnât âturned intoâ anything.
