Patch Notes - 11/13 Discussion

IceIX

Apologize for placing the Patch Notes up a bit later than usual. You can find them here.

Placing this topic here because I suspect there will probably be a little discussion to be had about one change in particular, along with providing a place for more general stuff about the changes today.

Unknown

As a 100% F2P player I can not express how much I love the price reduction on Cover Slots ..... Thanks dev team!!!

Unknown

What exactly are the price changes for cover slots? 21st slot costs 300 now.

Unknown

Stormheart wrote:

What exactly are the price changes for cover slots? 21st slot costs 300 now.

25th slot is 350. Think it was 250 before? Maybe 300.

Unknown

So are we S.O.L. if we've already spent HP on cover slots?

Unknown

Whoa. Slot 25 is up to 350 now. At this point, I'm almost hoping I don't get that Ragnarok... And really wish I'd hit 1200 in the Thor tourney this morning...

Unknown

Evolution888 wrote:

As a 100% F2P player I can not express how much I love the price reduction on Cover Slots ..... Thanks dev team!!!

Then you must be as some low number of cover slots, cause I see cost of my next cover, 27th, increased by 100 HP Hence, I don't really appreciate the change

Unknown

Looks a lot more expensive now.

Unknown

ZzzWolph wrote:

So are we S.O.L. if we've already spent HP on cover slots?

No, they are more expensive now, so you are better off if you already have them. A little annoying since I was getting ready to buy another.

IceIX

Overall, the cover slot pricing starts lower and ramps higher than it did before. Still maxes out at 40.

What we're attempting to do is make the ramp for new players a little easier and push those that are playing for a bit to do one of two things (or both). One is to play in all the various events we've got running and have planned. Pulling 100 HP from an Event isn't too difficult (and our numbers show that this happens for a large number of players) and a large portion of the prize pool at the end also offers Hero Points. This should give users that play enough HP to continue gaining new Cover Slots when needed and have a little left over to toss at Cover Packs or Ability Upgrades if they want. The other route of course, is to monetize which is definitely a plus for us as a business. We like to put food on our tables and also to fund further development of the game which has a decent cost attached to it. So we'll be looking at the change in Hero Point spending habits across the board with the change and tweaking knobs if necessary to make sure that we don't raise any pay-concrete-walls while still trying to provide a good reason to push open new Slots as players move forward.

Edit: We've also got a change in R42 that I can't talk about quite yet that alters how the collection/cover slots work in general a bit, so that also has an effect on why we pushed in the change that we did.

Unknown

So is this a direct result of this thread?

IceIX

Aluminium_Man wrote:

So is this a direct result of this thread?

Not at all. This was already in the pipe when that thread was made.

Unknown

As someone who generally dislikes f2p on principal, but has spent money on the game, I get it. I've had a great time with the game (was a major fan of the original PQ and think you have improved upon it in some ways, which none of the other variants have managed to do, IMO). I would venture to say most of the people here aren't against you folks earning a living

Still, while it might have defeated the purpose somewhat, and I can understand why you didn't, it might have been nice to give people a heads up that covers past the Xth slot were going up in price a bit. As players, it helps to trust that the economy is relatively stable before investing with real money. As I said before, it is a mild bummer to realize that the HP on hand is effectively worth less now.

Unknown

_Misguided_ wrote:

No, they are more expensive now, so you are better off if you already have them. A little annoying since I was getting ready to buy another.

Phew, I should be good for the next few new characters then

Unknown

IceIX wrote:

Overall, the cover slot pricing starts lower and ramps higher than it did before. Still maxes out at 40.

What we're attempting to do is make the ramp for new players a little easier and push those that are playing for a bit to do one of two things (or both). One is to play in all the various events we've got running and have planned. Pulling 100 HP from an Event isn't too difficult (and our numbers show that this happens for a large number of players) and a large portion of the prize pool at the end also offers Hero Points. This should give users that play enough HP to continue gaining new Cover Slots when needed and have a little left over to toss at Cover Packs or Ability Upgrades if they want. The other route of course, is to monetize which is definitely a plus for us as a business. We like to put food on our tables and also to fund further development of the game which has a decent cost attached to it. So we'll be looking at the change in Hero Point spending habits across the board with the change and tweaking knobs if necessary to make sure that we don't raise any pay-concrete-walls while still trying to provide a good reason to push open new Slots as players move forward.

In other words, it's even more expensive to do well. Between this and the new Lightning Rounds, we're starting to see a theme.

Unknown

Actually i'm going on my 22nd slot, and it's still 300 hp, i posted that assuming that it hasn't patched yet ? I don't know.

Unknown

used to be 200, so 300 is definetly the patched one

IceIX

ccseifert wrote:

In other words, it's even more expensive to do well. Between this and the new Lightning Rounds, we're starting to see a theme.

The thing to remember about the Lightning Rounds is that they're unbracketed, constantly shifting, and running between time zones. So even if someone with a max level team is dominating for a couple hours, they won't keep it up for the entire time. The longest we've seen anyone continually place has been a few Tourneys in a row, then they settle down again. We've seen quite a few people that haven't monetized at all top out on one Tourney or another simply due to deciding to push on a given time. It's definitely possible. More than that, it's not uncommon.

Unknown

For how long are we going to have lightning rounds? 24h? 48h?

Unknown

I have no doubt that any one individual doesn't dominate every single lightning round. But taking a character who is expensive as hell to max out (Ragnarok), is already one of the top 2 or 3 hardest hitting characters in the game and then buffing them 200% for every lightning round that you run makes a very easy division between haves and have-nots. With enough people maxing him out, you don't need one individual to dominate, there's a relatively small pool of them who can do it. They'll walk away with more 3-star covers and everyone else fights for the scraps. The rich get richer, etc. etc.

Unknown

Can we see a table comparing the costs for each slot from before to now? It might help me not be mad about my 21st slot costing 100 hp more. Especially when I have 1000hp saved up I could have used before the patch! !