Serious addicts can spend tens of thousands of $$ on online games. It takes quite a few happy minnows buying “just to support the game” to make up for one such whale.
After all, if you’re actually happy with the game, why would you even want to spend? What would you even buy, if the economy were structured properly (as in, not pay to win)?
Of course, it’s possible to make a game that is so popular that you have millions of players and can make a profit on low priced subscriptions and\or cosmetic upgrades. But that is very hard work, and requires a sizable portion of pure luck.
I expect that many game devs start out understanding that you’re going to have to engage in some kind of gacha\restricted play\resource sales just to get by. Maybe they promise themselves that they’ll never go too far. But all it takes to ruin a great game is for the marketing and finance to become complex enough that someone “experienced” needs to be hired. And experience in this context would mean “completely destroyed a gaming community and the game itself, whilst making a quick killing”.
I mean, once you’ve started down the lurid path and found out just how quickly certain vulnerable people will hand over their money, it’s probably difficult to stop depending on them. Especially when it happens during a time of relatively decent wealth when people have money to spend.
Inflation has put a big damper on that suddenly, so if you’ve got used to doing business this way, now you really have to tighten the screws.
I don’t think it’s that game devs are bad people (the marketing\finance gurus might well be the Devil, though). Without regulations forcing all your competitors to be ethical (in this case, laws against loot box type things), The Market, in any industry, becomes a race to the bottom.
I intend to keep playing exactly as I have been (exclusively FTP) until I get bored enough with the time required to play in a decent guild. Then I’ll likely move to a very casual guild, forget to log in more and more often, and eventually stop for a year or two. Then I’ll come back on a whim and realize that with most of my kingdoms at 20th level (or very close to it), I’m still miles ahead of almost everyone else, and repeat the cycle.
But I am stopping the 3x daily ad watch. At least until it stops crashing my tablet.
The most fun is between level 700 and 1100. After that, it’s mostly habit that keeps me playing.
Without the fix, the larger majority of players (who are not on the forums), some of whom did 123456 every day would be much more likely to quit. My guild is not highly on forums and many likely did 123456, never once getting a dragonite run. This fix makes it fairer for the vast majority of players. I can see why advantaged players are complaining, and feel it lacks empathy for the majority of players.
–edit
Thinking about it more, I don’t mind that there is a slight penalty for choosing 123456. It just felt like too much, when players didn’t succeed once in a month. It’s hard to balance advantaging very smart players and not disadvantaging normal players too much.
Why even have an all or nothing approach in the first place. That’s always going to disappoint, especially if it doesn’t depend on skill but just on pure luck.
And how can we trust in anything now? How can we be sure it’s not programmed so that what we get is rolled before we even open any door now so that it doesn’t matter which one we pick?
Only thing I trust is that they’ll always put players at a disadvantage if they can. That’s the only thing so far that they have proven (by they I mean the people with the power to decide).
I’ve grown disaffected and disillusioned with the game again. I’ve played on and off for the better part of two years. I come back every once in a while to check out new content, and help out my guild with Guild Wars when they need it. When I first started playing the FOMO really got to me and I’d feel the need to grab every new troop available each week, because it would be exponentially more difficult to get it later on, but I’ve gotten over that feeling for a while now. When you’re in the end game, the incremental benefits of that extra troop, kingdom level, or whatever is subject to some pretty substantial diminishing returns. So after playing solidly for a few years since the release on Xbox, I’ve been not so dedicated the last couple years. Lately I’ve come back into the game to try to find the Hoard Mimic.
I’ve also never had an issue spending money on the game - I think I’m VIP 14 or 15 or something. But I feel really betrayed and misled about the latest dungeon update. And I’ve come to terms that the odds of getting the Hoard Mimic are so small that the effort outweighs the reward now. I’ve already given notice to my guild master that I plan on quitting after the current campaign; since I bought the pass I want to see that through to the end, although I guess I really don’t need to. My guess is I’ll migrate to an inactive guild and log in once a week or something to collect the new troop and whatever tasks are completable. Basically, I’m going into hibernation mode. I don’t plan on putting more dollars into the game for the foreseeable future.
Bruh you’re going to set a record for the most auto locked forum posts. Honestly I’m not even sure what you’re saying half the time. I don’t think English is your first language, which is fine, but whatever you’re putting into the translator isn’t coming out right lmao.
This doesn’t hurt the devs or the company, it just annoys the players who want to share their thoughts on this forum (and may not have a better place to do so).
