Greed.

Sorin81

THEMAGICkMAN said:

yes, not everyone has an abundance of runes. that's only a small group of players, and now for the rest of us they're harder to get.


With the reward updates its pretty obvious they want people to slow down, and to move quicker you have to spend money.

This.

First of all Not. Another. Dime.

So it is blatantly apparent that they want progression to slow to a crawl. Whether it be to extend the life of the game by making it take longer to acquire resources and therefore having players put more time in playing the game or just as likely to increase revenue by slowing progression for players unless they are willing to pay.

In my case the recent rewards policy has drastically slowed down my progress both because of the reductions directly and because indirectly I have lost interest in the game due to the reductions. 

Good job D3.

Justyce

Wasn't the reasoning for reducing prizes was to share the original prize pool. Before brackets were 3k now they are 1 k meaning 3 times the players will receive top 50 rewards so halving the rewards is actually a gain when 2 thirds more get the rewards. But most people don't care about distribution of rewards they usually just care about what they are getting. It was hard for me to come to those terms as was getting so many rewards before but now I do see it as being fair 

Justyce

What I really want now is actual value for money. I have lots of disposable income and now I'm waiting for the chance to buy real advantages. I don't want crystals and runes bundles. I want advantages that will put me above people that don't want to pay. Lots of games do it and it's about time this started that road. 

Lagartha

Like I've said before.. I've lost almost all my steam on fighting for changes that would actually make the player base happy. I was excited to go to Wizards and ask for help and truly felt like they cared, but now I feel like all that has yielded was more frequent posts of, "We're working on fixing things. You guys will love it, we promise!"

Well... as far as I can tell, for every ONE thing that gets fixed, ten more things get broken. So forgive me if I read, "we're working on it and we really care" as "we'll give you a new update that will give you ONE thing you guys have been asking for and take away TEN things that you actually liked about the game."

Honestly, there's no pretty way you can word it and no justification you can give me that will convince me that you guys are doing anything other than trying to push out the old players in favor of collecting new players who will spend more cash. 

This game doesn't profit from whales, it profits from a million guppies. 

shteev

Justyce said:

What I really want now is actual value for money. I have lots of disposable income and now I'm waiting for the chance to buy real advantages. I don't want crystals and runes bundles. I want advantages that will put me above people that don't want to pay. Lots of games do it and it's about time this started that road. 

I cannot even begin to tell you how opposed I am to this point of view.

madwren

Justyce said:

What I really want now is actual value for money. I have lots of disposable income and now I'm waiting for the chance to buy real advantages. I don't want crystals and runes bundles. I want advantages that will put me above people that don't want to pay. Lots of games do it and it's about time this started that road. 

Paying for convenience? Sure. Paying to win? When money supplants skill, it's to the detriment of the entire game. 

murtagon

Justyce said:

What I really want now is actual value for money. I have lots of disposable income and now I'm waiting for the chance to buy real advantages. I don't want crystals and runes bundles. I want advantages that will put me above people that don't want to pay. Lots of games do it and it's about time this started that road. 

All this does is make two tiers.  Top tier is not a game as much as it is a contest over who is willing to spend the most money.  Bottom tier has the people that want to enjoy the game and really it's were the real game community resides.  As many have posted the real money in mobile games comes from many small purchases not few large purchases.  I do hope this game does not devolve into a pure spend game.  They really are not fun.

Ohboy

Many have stated it. 

Many are wrong. 

https://www.recode.net/2014/2/26/11623998/a-long-tail-of-whales-half-of-mobile-games-money-comes-from-0-15

madwren

What many would wish for is the large transactions *and* the small transactions. 

murtagon

Interesting post ohboy.  Well D3 clearly does not agree since the recent changes have driven away many Whale level purchasers.  I know my purchases have dropped dramatically due to these economic changes and these quality of life changes are not going to bring me back to spending at Whale levels.

gruntface

Ohboy said:

Many have stated it. 

Many are wrong. 

https://www.recode.net/2014/2/26/11623998/a-long-tail-of-whales-half-of-mobile-games-money-comes-from-0-15

This is an interesting article and I tend to agree. I see this type of proportion as an aspirational state for the game runners and in getting there, they have to trim quite a lot of fat, ergo the changes we have seen lately.

It doesn't help the profit margins to enable a lot of players to sit at or near the top having spent little to nothing in game. From a business perspective it is crazy. Thinking back, most other games I have played evem cap the amount of playing time you can productively have without spending and mtgpq has been different in that respect with only pw charges being a barrier to massive qb sessions and that is workable with a decent zoo deck including life gain (uh oh, that's another thing for d3h to exploit, pay for playing more than a few fights a day.....)

All the changes are a step away from enabling the f2p players from being able to be top players and towards enabling the mega spenders (recognizable by their posts in fb about what they got from their third elite pack of the week).

So players like myself who have barely spent, are not the future, in fact we are a direct problem because we blur the lines of p2w. Time to actively discourage our playing time (it's working btw) and put increasing numbers of cards behind a paywall. Thin the herd and embrace the full p2w model at last. Sure there will be some collateral damage in the middle but whales for the most part will continue and new whales are waiting to be caught. 

So thanks for the article, depressing as the conclusion may be. For a 20,000 strong player base, 0.15% is what, 30 players? That may be too light but people spend staggering amounts of cash on mobile games so nothing would surprise me. 

Ohboy

gruntface said:

Ohboy said:

Many have stated it. 

Many are wrong. 

https://www.recode.net/2014/2/26/11623998/a-long-tail-of-whales-half-of-mobile-games-money-comes-from-0-15

This is an interesting article and I tend to agree. I see this type of proportion as an aspirational state for the game runners and in getting there, they have to trim quite a lot of fat, ergo the changes we have seen lately.

It doesn't help the profit margins to enable a lot of players to sit at or near the top having spent little to nothing in game. From a business perspective it is crazy. Thinking back, most other games I have played evem cap the amount of playing time you can productively have without spending and mtgpq has been different in that respect with only pw charges being a barrier to massive qb sessions and that is workable with a decent zoo deck including life gain (uh oh, that's another thing for d3h to exploit, pay for playing more than a few fights a day.....)

All the changes are a step away from enabling the f2p players from being able to be top players and towards enabling the mega spenders (recognizable by their posts in fb about what they got from their third elite pack of the week).

So players like myself who have barely spent, are not the future, in fact we are a direct problem because we blur the lines of p2w. Time to actively discourage our playing time (it's working btw) and put increasing numbers of cards behind a paywall. Thin the herd and embrace the full p2w model at last. Sure there will be some collateral damage in the middle but whales for the most part will continue and new whales are waiting to be caught. 

So thanks for the article, depressing as the conclusion may be. For a 20,000 strong player base, 0.15% is what, 30 players? That may be too light but people spend staggering amounts of cash on mobile games so nothing would surprise me. 

This is why top players who think they are whales are overrating their influence on the income stream(even though it IS a negative influence).

When you're a top player, you're going to spend a couple of hundred here and there over a few months. You're not the whales the game needs to survive on. The game has given you so much free stuff there's simply not enough things for you to buy even if you want to be a whale. Crystals? You've banked up 2k. New cards? Cool, you spend a hundred a month, maybe? Previously exclusive cards? Look at how many boosters you've already banked! Top tier players simply cannot be whales. And that was a problem. A whale is someone always looking to buy more crystals to buy more boosters. That's the only scalable income source in this game. If you're not someone constantly doing that, you're not a whale.

Not going to beat a dead horse, but suffice to say the old system wasn't a good move for their income stream. Not only do the whales at the top stop being whales, the wannabe whales at the bottom are discouraged because of the monstrous hill they would have to climb to get to the top. These games reel them in by giving the semblence of progress with each purchase made. The game's progression from mid tier to top tier at it's current state is like an insurmountable cliff. Things need to change, or income dries up, servers go unpaid, and the game ends.

If you like this game you should be rallying to break down the cliff right now, because it's a big problem for the game in future. That's why I'm always frustrated by people demanding more rewards to continue reinforcing this cliff. It's survival mode now, not high score mode. The fact that the devs are willing to face this backlash means their hands are forced, and it's getting really bad. 

Infested

Ohboy said:

gruntface said:

Ohboy said:

Many have stated it. 

Many are wrong. 

https://www.recode.net/2014/2/26/11623998/a-long-tail-of-whales-half-of-mobile-games-money-comes-from-0-15

This is an interesting article and I tend to agree. I see this type of proportion as an aspirational state for the game runners and in getting there, they have to trim quite a lot of fat, ergo the changes we have seen lately.

It doesn't help the profit margins to enable a lot of players to sit at or near the top having spent little to nothing in game. From a business perspective it is crazy. Thinking back, most other games I have played evem cap the amount of playing time you can productively have without spending and mtgpq has been different in that respect with only pw charges being a barrier to massive qb sessions and that is workable with a decent zoo deck including life gain (uh oh, that's another thing for d3h to exploit, pay for playing more than a few fights a day.....)

All the changes are a step away from enabling the f2p players from being able to be top players and towards enabling the mega spenders (recognizable by their posts in fb about what they got from their third elite pack of the week).

So players like myself who have barely spent, are not the future, in fact we are a direct problem because we blur the lines of p2w. Time to actively discourage our playing time (it's working btw) and put increasing numbers of cards behind a paywall. Thin the herd and embrace the full p2w model at last. Sure there will be some collateral damage in the middle but whales for the most part will continue and new whales are waiting to be caught. 

So thanks for the article, depressing as the conclusion may be. For a 20,000 strong player base, 0.15% is what, 30 players? That may be too light but people spend staggering amounts of cash on mobile games so nothing would surprise me. 

This is why top players who think they are whales are overrating their influence on the income stream(even though it IS a negative influence).

When you're a top player, you're going to spend a couple of hundred here and there over a few months. You're not the whales the game needs to survive on. The game has given you so much free stuff there's simply not enough things for you to buy even if you want to be a whale. Crystals? You've banked up 2k. New cards? Cool, you spend a hundred a month, maybe? Previously exclusive cards? Look at how many boosters you've already banked! Top tier players simply cannot be whales. And that was a problem. A whale is someone always looking to buy more crystals to buy more boosters. That's the only scalable income source in this game. If you're not someone constantly doing that, you're not a whale.

Not going to beat a dead horse, but suffice to say the old system wasn't a good move for their income stream. Not only do the whales at the top stop being whales, the wannabe whales at the bottom are discouraged because of the monstrous hill they would have to climb to get to the top. These games reel them in by giving the semblence of progress with each purchase made. The game's progression from mid tier to top tier at it's current state is like an insurmountable cliff. Things need to change, or income dries up, servers go unpaid, and the game ends.

If you like this game you should be rallying to break down the cliff right now, because it's a big problem for the game in future. That's why I'm always frustrated by people demanding more rewards to continue reinforcing this cliff. It's survival mode now, not high score mode. The fact that the devs are willing to face this backlash means their hands are forced, and it's getting really bad. 

The solution is not breaking down the cliff of too many rewards, it is multiple items to spend the cash on (deck slots and the new purple crystals). If a whale feels like they get nothing from spending their cash (less cards, dups, ect.) or they cannot get any great reward from it (rewards are not worth the time, purple crystals not worth anything, ect.) then the devs have made a mistake in how they have approached their changes.

If purple crystals were released and mythics rewards were changed 1:1 then no one would have said a thing. They would have likely been happy as lower tiers could have gotten more good cards. Now they wait a few weeks and try cutting rewards back by half and introduce 1k brackets, this would have still been an acceptable ratio and a great time to introduce TotP to make up for that half loss (rewards should be boosted). 

What we actually got was an over nerfed reward system where very few people get higher end cards (see the 5 year club) and events that have questionable time/effort rewards. Changes that affect the core of the game need to be watched and it is very risky to do so much to your in-game economy at once.

The sad part is that the Devs have listened to lots of what was said on the forums, but the ways that they went about it will likely mean that both the players and the devs will suffer (guessing TotP will be changed to a sad state then removed and the income that comes into the game will be lessened to a noticeable degree that more quick changes will be put in and over looked that will only provide short term gain).

DuskPaladin

Justyce said:

What I really want now is actual value for money. I have lots of disposable income and now I'm waiting for the chance to buy real advantages. I don't want crystals and runes bundles. I want advantages that will put me above people that don't want to pay. Lots of games do it and it's about time this started that road. 

So basically, you don’t care at all about the health of the game nor how to make it fun, you just want a pay to win game. 

I’ve created one for you, it’s called “Duel at Dusk” (trademark pending) whoever give the most money to the other player win. It’s a duel, if you send me more money than I send you, you win and can boast it to the world! Yay! 

Justyce said:

Wasn't the reasoning for reducing prizes was to share the original prize pool. Before brackets were 3k now they are 1 k meaning 3 times the players will receive top 50 rewards so halving the rewards is actually a gain when 2 thirds more get the rewards. But most people don't care about distribution of rewards they usually just care about what they are getting. It was hard for me to come to those terms as was getting so many rewards before but now I do see it as being fair 

You’ve been spreading the same misinformation that Ohboy has been spreading. You’ve both failed to mention that before the 3k brackets, there were more brackets, like there is now, (yes there was more than 1 Platinum bracket) but the devs merged them together. So in fact we’re only back to what it used to be, and yet they cut the reward by 3 again, and not the opposite. Please stop this non-sense about ’since there’s 3 brackets now the rewards need to be cut by 3!” In reality, they have been at the very least cut by 9 (3x3, I can do fancy math too!) already.

Also, what you both never mention either is while there’s more and more players in Platinum, as it’s the maximum progression you can get and naturally tend toward as you master your new cards, we were still stuck at the same amount of bracket, while there should be a number of brackets proportional to this new number of players. 

There's no justice, fairness, nor equity in what you are suggesting.

Justyce

Lots of successful games work in a pay to win basis, clash of clans being one of them. Free to play players stand no chance against people who pay and that game makes tonnes of money everyday. Candy crush also does the same thing lots of things you can buy that makes it easier than waiting for your lives to recover. Of course it sounds bad but if the in game rewards are going south let's not try to get it back but make purchasing more rewarding. 

Justyce

@DuskPaladin I'm not sure what you are implying but your answer is exactly what I was saying. Say if 3 brackets in plat got rewards now there are 9 so there are 3 times more people getting top 50 rewards. So logically to share the original prize pool between the extra winners everyone has to get less at the top end. 

THEMAGICkMAN

Justyce said:

Lots of successful games work in a pay to win basis, clash of clans being one of them. Free to play players stand no chance against people who pay and that game makes tonnes of money everyday. Candy crush also does the same thing lots of things you can buy that makes it easier than waiting for your lives to recover. Of course it sounds bad but if the in game rewards are going south let's not try to get it back but make purchasing more rewarding. 

Money is already very rewarding. If you're willing to spend LOTS of it. All the rewards have been dropped, but what you get for $$ has stayed almost the same.

Justyce said:

@DuskPaladin I'm not sure what you are implying but your answer is exactly what I was saying. Say if 3 brackets in plat got rewards now there are 9 so there are 3 times more people getting top 50 rewards. So logically to share the original prize pool between the extra winners everyone has to get less at the top end. 

yes, that's true. But the rewards aren't even worth the effort anymore, it went from being tough to get a fortune to easy to get a penny.

losdamianos

Justyce said:

Lots of successful games work in a pay to win basis, clash of clans being one of them. Free to play players stand no chance against people who pay and that game makes tonnes of money everyday. Candy crush also does the same thing lots of things you can buy that makes it easier than waiting for your lives to recover. Of course it sounds bad but if the in game rewards are going south let's not try to get it back but make purchasing more rewarding. 

Candy Crush hmmmm

http://www.gameskinny.com/1b054/candy-crush-represents-everything-thats-wrong-with-mobile-gaming

Mainloop25

Not sure why people are going after Justyce for being honest. I am sure there are a lot of people who feel exactly the same way, they just don't come out and admit it. 

If this game is truly moving to p2w, as people say it is, then that's the attitude they are looking for. But unless you are buying mythic cards, I'm not sure what you think you are buying. 

losdamianos

I dont think anyone is questioning whales importance but at the same time game supposed to be accessible for the majority