Nerf / Reduction of Vault Keys?

Gameplay Chat (PC/Mobile)
21

It feels like @Sirrian was lying to us during that stream :mask:

22

Well, defo there wasnt any nerf, last 4 gnomes events (before that one) i had a whopping 1 key each.

Friday got 4 of them just doing daily stuff and a few explore.

Didnt got anymore but gotta say i didnt tried either, didnt done anything other daily stuff Sat and Sun.

23

They sell them now, so…

Same with epic ingots. Let’s alsonot forgot they boosted gnomes to x5 chance last time. Our guild, despite the same production, had seen 1/3 of the pet events it normally does, since the “Extra” gnome event last month. Nothing is given without something being taken away in this game, and nothing that is for sale is easy to find.

They showed us, right after gnomes were originally released, that they have the ability to turn gnomes off and on and adjust them on the fly. Of all of the things in this game, i trust gnome events very close to least

24

They did. However, this event was not set to x5, but to x3 again - default value.

25

I don’t feel like it was x3 this time. I saw about the same number of gnomes as usual. I guess the point i was making is that they gave us extra, and nothing extra in this game comes without something being taken away later to “balance the economy” in the game.

26

I did over 4000 explore battles on gnome weekend. There are definitely vault keys happening. It does feel like pet gnomes are much less common than they used to be. It seemed before like I only got vault keys from treasure gnomes, but now I’ve gotten a few from jewel gnomes too.

Out of those 4000 games I got 0 pet gnomes and my guild got 13 pets over gnome weekend.

For some reason I seem to get Cedric the most in vault keys. This weekend got very few gnomes. Last vault weekend I got a lot. The RNG in this game is streaky, so the same stuff seems to go in waves. I’ve also had much better luck on vault keys I bought for $1.99 than regular vault keys. Seemed like I average 1 ascenscion orb for every 6, while normally it’s more like one every 40.

27

Pet gnomes dont appear in explore

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28

Exactly…he usually would of had 16 vault keys in that amount of time.
I’m quite certain that Tacet plays on a different server than everyone else. Normal RNG doesn’t apply to him.

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29

OK that explains it. Thanks.

30

I’m super lucky with blue orbs… but I bought one vault key and got a minor blue orb!

I think it’s a coincidence because if ‘enhanced odds’ was added as a feature in this game, there would be some awesome in our favor bug occasionally. Oh wait :thinking:

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31

Just popping in to confirm that we have not nerfed or reduced the possibility of getting Vault Keys. A lot of people above have mentioned that the previous Vault event had the odds increased as a once off. :slight_smile:

Also, a few of you mentioned that less people are playing the game. You might be seeing your friends, or other veterans, leaving the game, but our DAU’s are still continuing to grow.

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32

I definitely get Cedric the most as well. I’ve received around 15 copies of him, while I have 5 or less of each of the other gnomes.

33

All the other Gnomes are (currently) useless though, except for completionists :slight_smile:

34

Like a sack of potatoes. :laughing:

35

I don’t think she’s lying. But she is laying out the kind of gamestate I’ve warned always exists in PvP. Let’s phrase it another way:

“Old players, who don’t spend as much, are leaving the game. But more new players, who spend more, are joining the game. Good memories don’t buy groceries.”

It’s easier to trick a person who doesn’t have Dawnbringer into thinking souls are worth gems than a person who already has more than a million souls banked. So it costs $10 of effort to get $1 out of an endgamer. Unwise.

This is why it’s sort of against gamers’ interests to play F2P at all, but when the table’s set F2P is the only option we get for on-the-go play. It stinks.

36

Players leave but I doubt what we getting players that last. And the surge of players that started this game after E3 is the players that got that pack for watching E3 and wondered what the game was about before they realised how unbalanced the game is and left (I had friends from other games that joined us and left) RNG is a problem the person that spend 10h can get rewarded less than someone that played 1-2h :mask:
It’s like you guys @Saltypatra working at 505 you pay is based on RNG how long can you last if spending more time than @Sirrian working but @Sirrian get more pay because of RNG.
You data is from us that talk on forum but you ignore the fact that we have the data of the people that left and don’t have time for forums convos

37

My hunch is Salty, and the people who make business decisions at 505, are well aware of the risks and making the moves that they feel are best for them.

You are a player. You have different goals than they do. You want the game to last forever in some particular state you like. There used to be a day and age where that would happen: games released, you paid for them, and any changes to the game after that both cost money and were optional. I can still play OG unpatched Starcraft if I want, with or without Brood Wars.

They are devs. They’d love for you to have fun, but they also have to buy groceries. That cycle you want is hard for them. If they release “Fun Game 2” with the new features they want, but those features aren’t popular and it doesn’t sell well, they’re out a lot of money. And it takes a long time to make a new game to try and make that money back. They might not have enough money to do so, and the series dies.

So they have retooled the business (on mobile at least) to where instead of “release Fun Game 2”, they release one feature of Fun Game 2 at a time. Ideally, the features have to be unlocked, and it costs money to be easier/faster to unlock them. Sooner or later the players are playing Fun Game 2 and don’t even know it, and instead of paying $30 for it, the average might work out to about $90 of purchases due to overspenders tilting the playing field. But it’s not all bad. If some feature of Fun Game 2 really stinks, the devs will find out very quickly and can step back, re-evaluate, and decide if they should do something different. So they might lose money this month, but that’s better than losing money “this year”.

If Starcraft had followed this model, there wouldn’t be a way to play OG Starcraft without Brood War anymore. The only version of Starcraft that might still work would be the last update. And if Blizzard turned those servers off in this universe, the game stops functioning.

The only way to “play” GoW 1 is to find ancient Youtube videos. You can’t play “GoW before Doomskulls” if you don’t like them. The devs know this and it’s all in the accounting. There’s usually a good chance after a year or two players get nostalgic and peek back in. What they find is a completely different game from what they remember, so they give it a chance. But they’re pretty far behind, so they’re likely to spend a few bucks getting back into the swing of things. Maybe they fade out again, that doesn’t matter. They paid for some groceries. They’ll probably be back again.

So you’re arguing for a completely different model. You’re thinking of supply/demand where if the playerbase shrinks, nobody’s going to pay for GoW 4.5 and it will fail. The devs are thinking of a system where:

  • Some players are always leaving.
  • Some players are always joining.
  • As long as the leaving players are people who don’t spend money, it’s OK to lose them.
  • As long as the joining players do spend money, the bills are paid.

It’s a far more complex supply and demand that encourages them to change even things that aren’t broken.

If you don’t like it, you’re sort of stuck with it. The only way to change stuff is to spend more than the whales, or find a way to make the “pay to play” model perceived as more profitable instead.

3 Likes
38

I’m not saying that we don’t value end-gamers, which is where some people have run with my statement. And by run I mean sprinted excessively far.

This is what happens with F2P live service games. People leave, others join. If a player wants to experience a game that doesn’t evolve, and exists in one state, there are a lot of options to do that! However, live service games are different, and constantly evolve over time to retain some players, attract new players, and adapt to an ever evolving marketplace. Staying relevant is hard, but necessary for the success of a live service title and the company that produces it.

1 Like