So basically I’m a little skeptical that the cause is a direct result of 4x speed introduction.
Fact is most late game players use it to knock out minimums and are spending a lot less time in game. High turnover of endgame players since introduction of guild wars then unity and now perceived shortcomings of 3.1 patch.
While the overall population has increased the ratio of new players to longterm players has changed dramitcally.
My conclusion is this is the biggest factoring towards increase in total gold generated is newer players vs older players ratio due to the current PvP formula generate 2-3x as much gold as late game players over the course of the same amount of time spent in game.
I’m hoping the raw gem reduction in basic tasks and removal in legendary tasks are revisited soon. These are immensely unpopular moves to late game players. While I’ve had a fairly easy time with my guilds turnover given we are GW optional,0-2 weekly since GW introduction. This has been a very bad week on us and perceptually more so for other top guilds. Its hard to keep up with. When top 50 guilds are perpetually turning over greater than 10% of their players weekly, these are not people leaving for better guilds as much as just leaving the game altogether.
Strangely, they decided to scale the game downwards instead of up. There would have been little backlash if they were to have left tasks nearly as is, but simply make all gem purchases have a base value around 2x more than they currently give.
They have not changed the payout to gem purchases since the game started, yet the economy of the game has morphed drastically since then.
They are changing things that are already working fine in order to fix something that is broken.
If there truly is a 25% increase in Gold flowing into the game they should have just incrementally increased the cost of each subsequent LT for the week, to keep the rewards in check on the top end. And Keep rewards similar to pre 3.1.
1st LT would be same cost as before 1M, 2nd 1.1M, 3rd 1.2M, 1.3M, etc.
Instead it was decided to hit all Guilds across the board with a 20% voodoo economics tax.
I used to be able to maintain and further a collection on 100 gems per week. Slowly, but while never missing a new release. 100. gems. per week. About 850k donated between the entire guild. Purchases made sense then, because I both accelerated my collecting and knew (or thought, at the time) that I would be above the collection level if I just remained above a certain level of activity. Beyond that, it would have taken years to get everything fully ascended, but again, I could keep pace without missing new releases.
Crafting bottom caps what a gem is “worth” by giving a path from gems to crafting materials and the patch also induces scarcity on gems to make them make sense as a premium currency, but its comparative purchasing power is still in the toilet. If you are attempting to collect mythics, you need thousands of gems each month (rather than hundreds every few months) just as upkeep to not have an increasing number of empty spots in your collection as time passes, indefinitely.
I think you should be able to sell back resources you do not need for half their value! Like maps for instance! Or armor you don’t used because you bought the $50 one!
Personally I don’t agree here. The most common counter to this is people saying “but I’ll just be using the 4x speed to play less, not earn more”. The problem is that this won’t apply for everyone. There WILL be players who will plays just as much time and get more rewards as a result of the 4x speed.
Every other week or so there is a thread or a post on discord about how there are players getting x PVP points/wins in short periods of time after reset, followed swiftly by people pointing out that those values are technically possible. The people getting these points won’t be playing less with the speed, they’ll likely continue to play the same amount of time, and getting more resources as a result.
Also occasionally I’ve seen stories of guilds having friendly internal competitions to see who can earn the most trophies in x amount of time. The 4x speed won’t make these people play less in these competitions, they will still be competing against each other and gaining more resources.
While I’m not suggesting that 25% is the correct value, I haven’t run the numbers (and I’m not sure we as a community have the correct numbers to run), but there will be an overall increase in gold generated due to the introduction of 4x speed.
There will only be an overall increase in gold if enough players are playing the same amount of time at 4x. But with the reductions, it means that those playing at 4x are getting roughly what they use to, while those playing at slower speeds are getting less then before. So the overall net is still a reduction, and has me wondering what the purpose of 4x was supposed to be for, since it doesn’t appear optional based on the reductions.
Likely the reductions are to prevent inflation. I’m posting my ideas across multiple threads at the moment, so apologies if I miss notes somewhere. Basically players getting overall richer is a bad thing, since it makes individual resources worth less, and requires the introduction of mechanics to allow players to spend their higher number of resources, which leaves behind players who don’t have the resources to sink into the new high end sinks.
So yes people are getting less now, and the net result is a reduction, but it will likely be better for the long term health of the game economy. (In my opinion at least)
Every free-to-play game out there has people who nolife it to earn as much premium currency as they can. It’s generally a small yet slightly masochistic ( no insult intended) subset who wouldn’t have paid in anyways. For them it’s about the challenge to see what they can pull off without paying.
I don’t care if some random dude’s guild can put out 100 LTs every week and makes a couple hundred gems off it every week. Those people were never going to buy gems, and certainly won’t buy them now.
My guild averages 12-15 LTs per week, and I don’t know one person who plans to start buying gems to make up the shortcoming.
By putting a soft cap (not counting pvp defense, treasure maps, tributes, etc) on the amount of Gems players can earn per week, all that’s going to happen is that people will play less. It’s not going to be a magical fountain of money, because the problem with Gem packs was never addressed…they’re horribly, horribly overpriced.
This isn’t a warzone where you can hoard away all the bread and sell it to starving people for $100 a loaf and know that people will buy it because they want to survive. This is a game… a luxury…the same rules don’t apply.
Again, my feeling is that this is an attempt to prevent inflation as I’ve posted in a couple other threads.
I’m not suggesting that this is the BEST way they could have done it, I’m just trying to understand why it was done.
There have been plenty of calls in the past for the ability to speed up animations. So yes, players did ask for it.
Possibly, though it’s also worth mentioning that there is usually this sort of team (meta) somewhere in the game at any one point in time. If it’s not Justice/Valk/Mab, it’s Mercy/Maw/IK/Sheggra or it’s Goblin Teams, or it’s FG/Kerbx2.
From what I understand is that Justice League is mostly an issue on defense, and as such isn’t likely to gain people that many extra resources. (Yes you get some for defense wins, but they amounts are tiny mostly) On attack however, they’re no different from any other fast invade team.
Looking at pre and post unity resource generation by the handful of guilds that do legendary tasks in great number and its pretty much self-evident. Its nowhere near as accelerated as when the one troop defense was in effect and that lasted such a long time. If anything it’s reduced. Sure .00001% of the player base will grind to no end and that won’t change. But reality is the younger accts that are the source of net gold generation increase typically are not participating in legendary tasks in any volume. So the change to legendary tasks isn’t very welcome among late game players who are already inhibited in farming capability.
Speeding past animations is not the same as speeding up the way you play though is it?
However, i do love the x4 speed, espicially for trait farming. Just aswel, as crafting Arcanes is again another scam… using Celestials to craft a lower Arcane??? madness.
I think the really critical thing people neglect is that, from my experience/understanding, almost every guild gets a disproportionate amount of its gold from a few really active players. I’ve probably bounced between 8-10 guilds throughout the 2+ years I’ve played and this has always been the case. I’m sure it’s true throughout the spectrum and I’m guessing more so the further you go down the rankings.
Why is this important? B/c these people are highly engaged, are sure to use the 4x speed, and thus are sure to generate a lot more gold. The people that matter – those edge cases that generates obscene amounts of gold – benefit immensely from 4x speed.
The inflationary effect of 4x speed can’t be denied. There’s simply no argument against it. You can complain about the changes, but not this grounds. They’re dead right on this point.
We’ve only had true Unity resource generation for a week (not even that yet), as mobile didn’t have it, and it’s difficult to tell how many people play on mobile alone.
Also we don’t have concrete numbers on how many guilds actually do LTs and in what kind of numbers. Yes we assume that only the top active guilds do it, and only the top of those do them in great numbers, but that might not be entirely true. We just don’t know. However, I am inclined to agree that we probably see at least half of the LTs completed by guilds active on this forum.
no insult intended) subset who wouldn’t have paid in anyways. For them it’s about the challenge to see what they can pull off without paying.