Which part do you think is inaccurately represented? Do you think people who post on the forums are more engaged in the game and more likely to spend money, so the actual amount of players buying passes is far lower than the poll shows? Or do you think the forums attracts disgruntled players more likely to not spend money so the actual pass sales are far higher?
Not everybody who plays the game come here. I think the people who voted here are just a drop in the bucket compared to the amount of people that play. The forum at one time was actually one of the best places to find out about this game. Now I think it’s full of a lot of disgruntled players which I kind of find ironic: they hate the game so much but apparently the developers are are so good at making the game awesome these guys can’t stop playing it.
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Precisely. If devs are worried about getting enough sales, they’ll boost their product. That means more stuff for paying players, which widens the ever-increasing gap between paying and non-paying players in terms of available progress.
It’s also true that the forums in no way represents the userbase as a whole, which is partially why so much of our feedback goes unheard. The majority of the player base looks happy on their statistic sheets.
Yeah, I guarantee they have balance sheets far more accurate than the results of a forum poll.
And profitability only cares about being in the black period — no need to capture every single cent.
In fact, if they cater toward the dollars discerning customers might part with, they probably lose out in the end by not chasing the much larger pile of money rubes will throw their way, same as with any product 
I don’t think this is an accurate analysis. Some players will never spend money on a game no matter what. They can’t be grouped with people who would, or have before but stopped now. Also, the free player base is always large. I dont know the stats for other games, but by this poll I only see 30% being F2P no matter what which is way less than I would expect. That says most people will spend money on this game.
The figure that stands out the most to me, is the 21% who have bought a pass before but not this one. That suggests a noticable chunk of people are willing to spend money but arent right now.
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Which will make more F2P players quit.
The reason F2P games want F2P players is that they serve as content for paying players. No paying player wants to play in an empty sandbox.
F2P players fill guilds, stream the game, run discords, post on websites, etc. all of which stimulate the health of the game.
Ideally a F2P game wants to secure as high a conversion rate as possible - that is, the conversion of F2P players into paying players - while not alienating the F2P playerbase as a whole. It’s well-established that only a small minority of players pay and that minority tends to includea tiny percent heavy spenders (or “whales”) who provide the bulk of financial support for any given game.
Heavy spenders (and spenders in general, for that matter) want a living active game, or they’ll leave. Thus the onus to not piss off the F2P players too much.
Maybe. If the gap becomes too excessive, they’ll begin to bleed F2P players, which is a risk to the health of the game as a whole.
It’s not a matter of whether players are happy. It’s a matter of whether revenue is up over last month, or over last quarter, or over last year. That’s it.
Corporations don’t care whether their earnings come from satisfied players or from people falling prey to a gambling addiction. A kid from a well-off family with a ton of disposable income can’t be distinguished from a problem gambler on the balance sheet. They. Don’t. Care. They can’t afford to let ethics into the conversation when their balance sheet depends on support from one or both groups. They have shareholders expecting to make more money this period than they did last period and THAT is who they care about, because their employment/livelihood depends on it.
That is why we’re seeing increasingly manipulative tactics. It’s why we have an unofficial “mythic troop subscription” via elite (lol) pa$$es. It’s why we have literal pay-to-gamble-on-power-orbs via Shrines. It’s why a significant portion of the last how many updates now has been related to either implementing new lines of monetization or refining existing ones (i.e. the shop revamp) and it’s why so little attention is paid to anything related to QOL or the improvement of the player experience.
It’s why part of the IP2 buyout included a 4-year financial incentive based on how much money the game makes. The entire IP2 team is officially being encouraged to find more stuff to monetize because it means they earn more money. I’ve always been one to make sure I’m not directing my criticisms at the dev team because they’re not the ones making the decisions, but now…? I have no way of knowing if the next moneymaking scheme came from a dev or a suit. That line has officially been blurred.
It would be great if at some point the suits would reinvest some of that revenue into things that benefit the players. Or do operations-related stuff like hiring competent QA.
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Well, I’m here to tell you all that I told you so. Look at this poll. 80 votes and only 7 people indicated that they purchased the $25 pass and 0 voted they were going to. People replying saying that the $25 pass was only there to make the $10 pass look good – it’s an interesting theory, I agreed with that. Others saying the poll isn’t accurate, they have better data. Yeah, they do, and look what they did: now the $25 pass gives you far more gems, 2 epic vault keys (instead of 1 normal vault key), and an Orb of Power. They simply weren’t selling enough $25 passes, like I said. It’s not rocket science, it’s basic marketing (and I have a degree in business management, so I would hope I would be able to recognize bad business decisions when I see them…)
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With two boss troops queued up and the EPass+ giving a single Power Orb, did they really make the EPass+ better value or did they just make ALL options, including EP+, worse than last campaign?
How could it possibly be worse? I don’t understand your rationale behind that thinking… the Pass+ literally gives better rewards than in previous campaigns. There is no downside to that. I’m still not going to buy it, but it is what it is.
I think what he means is that, although people can buy Power Orbs for $15 now, presumably by the end of the Campaign BLUR POTENTIAL SPOILERZ a player will need 8 or 16 Power Orbs to keep their collection “completed”.
So if that blur is correct in the former posit, then it’s “better” except in the sense that Power Orbs, as a currency, have been devalued due to inflation. And if the latter, the problem is twice as bad
Basically like if a cost-of-living increase doesn’t outpace inflation — can one really claim to have gotten a “raise” that year? The balance sheet says “yes,” but the quality of life lived says “no”…
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Magnusimus explained it better than I could’ve.
(I had this typed out before I saw Magnusimus’ reply)
Assuming your goal is 100% or close to 100% completion then your dollar now buys you less progress towards completing the game than (ever?) before. Assuming you had close to 100% completion before the introduction of campaigns and little use for the random bits of resources, then either pass would’ve bought you the maximum amount possible of progress towards 100%. They’ll just keep pushing the goal post further back. At some point they’ll start adding 4 boss troops per campaign and sell you 3 Power Orbs in the Ultra Pass Plus for $99.
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Yeah, I can understand that. However… I don’t currently know what their plans are with potential uses of Orb of Power in this campaign, so I don’t want to jump to conclusions on how many we’ll need.
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