Deeds - Discussion and Critique

He always go for the 1 trophy thing and is scared about the things you mentioned

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I think the question you are asking here is rather ā€œWhy donā€™t you mind the stat disparity in those game modes?ā€.

PvP is a symmetric game mode, somewhat similar to chess, any player investing enough time has the same tools available. You donā€™t buy any extra chess pieces, or extra moves, or extra lives for cash, that would defeat the purpose of playing chess against someone. If you win, some other player loses, if you lose, some other player wins.

Delve/Bounty is an asymmetric game mode, sort of like playing a Roguelike, you try to survive as long as possible against insurmountable odds. You can tweak the odds as much as you want, similar to choosing a difficulty level. If you win or lose, nobody except you cares (or even notices).

I just read your post and you put in to word everything i have been feeling about deeds,flash offers,and the general negativity i read every time something new come to this game that i love thank-you

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Thereā€™s more than one way to charge money for content. I reject attempts to say because I do not like how the game is currently monetized it must mean Iā€™m arguing I want things for free.

What I want is simple. I want a game that gives me about a month of play for between $10 and $20 of investment. Plenty of other ā€œlive contentā€ games exist on that budget without additional microtransactions, MMORPGs practically birthed the concept of a subscription game. If other people want to go above and beyond the $10 or $20 spend, so be it.

Gems of War is a game that values 20% of a single weekly event entryā€™s cost at something near $15. If we were to take the amount of gems it takes to participate in each monthā€™s events and reach all reward tiers, itā€™d cost at least as much as two brand-new AAA games on the platform of your choice. For one month. You can F2P a lot of that. If youā€™re in the right guild. That goes back to the time investment mentioned before and thatā€™s part of the equation too. GoW used to feel like it only asked me for an hour or two a day. Thatā€™s creeping upwards. Thereā€™s only so much time Iā€™ll give a game in one day. There are a lot of other games with a better notion of what $60 buys out there.

Some games deal with P2W by investing heavily in cosmetics. The GoW devs have explicitly stated thatā€™s not worth it to them. Whatever. Iā€™ve spent more money on a game that only sells cosmetics in 2 months than I did my first 6 months in GoW. Maybe the economics donā€™t work at scale, but Iā€™m going to argue on the basis of, ā€œWhat do I spend money on?ā€ because Iā€™m the only person I remotely understand.

If thereā€™s a vending machine that wants to charge $45 for a can of Coke, the people who say the price is too high arenā€™t entitled freeloaders. Planning to make $45 off of the single person desperate enough to pay it for a drink instead of planning to make it from the people who would pay $1.50 isnā€™t necessarily good economics. It means you think itā€™s easier to find 1 person who overvalues soda than talking 25 people into spending the market price. That doesnā€™t say good things for your product or your savvy.

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Great you will be able to take 1 or 2 Deed Flash offer by month :wink: .

Not the majority by far. I guess that you should need a lot of players to be able to survive with only cosmeticsā€¦
Moreover, itā€™s clearly the publisher who has the responsibility of what devs put in the dollar shopā€¦

Donā€™t get me wrong I opened few topics about cosmetic stuff to buy (alternate visual for troops).

When did they say that? They did a test with the Dwarf and Lapina bundle, are you talking about that?

Yes. One of the few Q&As I visited someone asked about new kinds of avatars and there was a lengthy discussion about how apparently it was a backbreaking amount of art and they felt like they still hadnā€™t broken even at the time of the Q&A. IIRC there was a small amount of discussion that itā€™s soured them to the idea of cosmetics entirely.

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Any non-failing B-School MBA will look at that scenario and come to the following conclusion every time:

($45 / $1.50) = 30x multiplier
1 / 30 = 0.0333%

If the vending machine owner can convince more than 3.33% of the expected customer base to purchase that $45 can of Coke, then the vending machine owner will generate more revenues by pricing the can of Coke at $45, than if the can is priced at $1.50 and everyone buys it. That is the definition of market pricing. If a sufficient portion of the market is willing to accept that price, then it makes sound economic sense to do so.

This is one of the major reasons why the MMO subscription pricing model has died out and practically everyone these days adopts the F2P pricing model.

I believe the concept was brought up again on a very recent Salty stream (perhaps even just this past Monday), where she said that cosmetic avatar gear was too financially risky to pursue.

Sure. I know how Louis Vuitton works. But bring it back to my initial point:

Does that make it the only viable business model, unworthy of criticism? Thatā€™s what Iā€™m responding to, here. Target wants to have a word with you about the world of high volume, low-margin sales. Are they a failure? What about Starbucks?

The landscape of games isnā€™t any better than it used to be before F2P. Weā€™re not in a sparkling utopia where any random app store game is a gem. Devs arenā€™t working fewer hours to produce better product. All thatā€™s changed is how much money it costs the players. Thatā€™s the real reason why it works, right?

I"m tired of this thread, you guys win. Deeds are perfect, I hope we see a level 15 kingdom next week. Yes Iā€™m throwing a tantrum, thatā€™s what happens when even the people who fundamentally agree with you show up to ā€œWell, actuallyā€¦ā€ your feelings.

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No business model is ever unworthy of criticism, nor is there ever a perfect business model. Everyone is positioned differently in their own industries. Targetā€™s market positioning as a low-cost leader will very likely never come into direct competition against Starbucks, who sets the market for premium coffee and tea beverages. That said, thatā€™s not the intent of your argument, so Iā€™ll leave it at that.

On Saltyā€™s PQ stream tonight, she was candid about the realities of the deed situation. Deeds were decided at some point to be a thing, as GoW needs to make money to do things (like create updates). The publisher had its input on the matter, which the devs took into account, and tried to balance out the publisherā€™s needs, the developerā€™s needs, and the playersā€™ concerns (which is still ongoing). No solution was ever going to be perfect about this. Hard decisions had to be made, and they were for better or for worse.

The monetization model has long been chosen for this game going forward. I strongly doubt that they will ever go back and add new subscription features or cosmetics for the game. The winds just arenā€™t blowing in that direction, and havenā€™t been for a long time since the Ring of Wonder was put into the shop.

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I was very surprised with this change. Just prior I watched a dev stream where ā€˜energyā€™ mechanics in other games were discussed and the dev made a point of how in this game sigils are used for events but all the other core game modes did and would not if up to him. Apologies if I am mis quoting that or misunderstoodā€¦ I thought it was a solid point though and it encouraged me about the future of the game.

I am not complaining about p2w or the flash deals or even that the base levelling loop was dramatically extended with the insertion of a new currency to arbitrarily gate progress. My complaint is the only method of acquiring deeds are to play on your schedule. Personally my life is busy and this is a match 3 game so there are days I donā€™t login. I am fine limiting my progress in some ways such as someone who plays more will likely be able to afford higher guild requirements thereby being in a guild that progresses farther (and earning many more rewards) but this is a silly design.

I get the design goal of encouraging daily logins. That is a design goal though and does not justify this design. Quite the opposite I think this is going to cost you players and money in the long run. You should have mechanics that support player schedule not yours. Already doing poorly in this department with the guild system that does not really allow for someone to go inactive for a week because ofā€¦ I donā€™t knowā€¦ an emergency \ vacation \ reallife \ zombie apocalypse but this is disrespect on another level.

The devs I have seen on stream were very rational and thoughtful and considerate. I know there is a battle going on between unbridled greed masked as business concerns and ethical game dev so I expect those folks did pick this battle and this was as far as they could influence. If so I am sorry and empathize.

I will wait and see but if this turns out as is then I will vote with my wallet and influence. Respectfully remember that part about this have the opposite of effect of the intended goal?

Some discussion I have already heard:
-if you miss sunday you donā€™t get the bonus diamonds from dungeon
The analog would be if diamonds were ONLY available on Sun. and if they were required for kingdom levelling. Instead there are several methods of getting diamonds every day and soulforge troops\weapons can also be acquired via other methods.

-we want daily logins
That is a goal. The ends do not justify the means. Ideas are cheap and I could give you 10 better ideas over a 30m lunch and so could any inexperienced junior designer to accomplish the same goal. You should also have other goals and tenets like appealing to diversity and respecting your customers.

Further that goal is misunderstood in the industry and yes you have poorly modelled your data and come to the wrong conclusions. Grouping in general in games is at best over-rewarded and at worst forced. I know your beancount tells you otherwise but meh.

Please rework the distribution of deeds (both free and for purchase) to be longer than a bunch of 1 day events that you miss out on if you canā€™t play that day. I donā€™t pay you to dictate or force a rigid schedule I play at.

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I think some are confusing pay to win with pay to be first. This game has been pay to be first for a long time. Every time they release new content some have got to have everything right this second. My advice is if you donā€™t want to log on everyday then donā€™t log in. Will you miss something? Sure. Will it be the end of the world? Absolutely not. We are not talking as if you miss something then you can not get it. What we are talking about is someone getting it first. Some one is always going to be first because they have a bigger wallet and more time. Their wallet and their time and if they choose to spend all of both on Gems then Iā€™m not mad at them.

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Two days since the release and no deeds in any adventure boards yet. 55mths may have been too optimistic.

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Yeah I got me traitstones 1 traitstones 2 glory 2. Of course. Iā€™ll probably mark down deeds on my calendar if they appearā€¦

RE: the above, I got caught up in the philosophy of the gameā€™s monetization instead of the topical monetization. Until we see a few months of deed drops and offers, itā€™s hard to tell how bad it stinks. Until someone reaches the level milestones, itā€™s hard to feel what the impact will be.

I think if I were a new player this would all look better. The challenges would look like far-off goals, and so would deeds. Iā€™d anticipate by the time I needed deeds Iā€™d have a cache. Being an endgamer and looking at deeds just seems like a mess of daily login anxiety and disappointment.

Back when I said all of the updates felt new/midgamer focused last update, Salty promised the next few had something for endgamers. This is ā€œsomethingā€ all right, but I was expecting more like, ā€œnew game modes with interesting challengesā€ and less like ā€œyou get to play 298 pet rescues for currency you already have and wait 6 months to get a tribute bump.ā€

(I accidentally made this a reply to someone and had to modify it a bit to repost it as a not-reply.)

Is there any other way to get deeds; it feels who been playing GOW are starting over all over againā€¦ And of course if you got the money, they say you got the power, ignoring the little cheap people like usā€¦ :frowning_face:

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Mithran - I think you hit it on the head; Saltypatra - really need to fix this deed issue; I donā€™t want to wait 5 years to up my kingdoms to level 15, for that matter donā€™t have $50 just buy deedsā€¦ Thatā€™s likeā€¦ gambling???:frowning_face::frowning_face::frowning_face::weary::tired_face:

Sirrian talked about 1 year (he didnā€™t say if it was for a free player) so my best guess is that devs are going to add another game mode where you could get deeds. Exactly what they did for ingots and delves. Or they didnā€™t do their math properly :thinking:.

Devs like to look like saviors: ā€œnow you need ingots to level up your weapons, and you need to farm as hell to get your Mythic/Legendary ingotsā€ and then they added Delves: ā€œyeah we know that you really need ingots, so we are good guys so letā€™s take this game mode so you can get them properlyā€.

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Hey guys, Iā€™m here to volunteer myself as the sacrificial lamb!

I came here to address some of the concerns you have and to collect feedback but this discussion has a lot of posts all with different points, small tangents and nuances, to the point where Iā€™m looking at this long thread wondering what needs to be addressed, and what is just interesting discussion points that doesnā€™t require an official response.

So in the interest of pinpointing whatā€™s most important to you can you please help me by dot pointing:

What questions do you want an official answer to?
What are your main feedback points about the deeds so far that you would like me to share with the team?

One note I would like to make in general is that not everyone has the update yet, we plan to force the update next week. While the Adventure Board is random each day, we also didnā€™t want to put Deeds on it until everyone has the update, so weā€™ve made sure of that. Allowing some players to get extra Deeds others couldnā€™t get would be unfair to everyone.

I also know many of your concerns wonā€™t be addressed by anything I say, and you are going to judge for yourselves how you feel about the Deeds in the Adventure Board and Flash Offers as you get a feel for how freely they are offered as part of each - so Iā€™m not going to sit here debating whether you should trust us or not, Iā€™ll let our actions speak for us on that.

As always, with any new feature, we will be monitoring how the changes go and making any adjustments as necessary.

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Meanwhile those who updated early are getting 100% crap AB rewards. Where as had I not updated. Iā€™d at least have a chance at getting decent rewards. :man_shrugging:
Why canā€™t those players get those deeds? Is the update not available to every single player at this time?

(Itā€™s possible that many havenā€™t updated solely because thereā€™s incentive not to.)

Agree, if the update is out and you donā€™t update, it is your fault isnt it?

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