Rehashing a POV I heard before I left another game. In any game…
There are always veterans, who are less likely to spend new money (they have everything), but are the most vocal. Some have even contributed greatly in community building, but at the end start to sound repetitively like old-timers with very strong opinions when they stay around. Others leave by natural attrition as with any game, no game can be new/exciting/challenging forever; the threshold varies by person.
Then there are new players that are needed to sustain games, who have a giant GoW backlog to catch up on. Deeds? Diamonds? Chaos shards? Epic tasks and daily deals give opportunity to new grinders (gold) and fresh whales () to pay (time/ ) into the game, to have any hope of parity with the veterans who have Kingdom Power 17, Level 15 all round, boosts from Mythic pets, fully leveled delves etc.
How else do you expect someone 4 years behind to enter the game and catch up? Nothing pleases everyone, but some are more vocal about it than others, wanting their way or the highway.
And then the anger, the absolute rage at “destroying GW” with 2 more magic points (or 5 life, depends on week) after week 6 along $ lines. 2 MAGIC! While newer players face a difference of 100 stat points waiting for mythic/pet to unlock kingdom power, chaos shards to progress faction renown slowly. Forgive me if the majority of players don’t really care about elite problems.
If VIP tiers are too spread out. Could they make a temporary VIP pass? Like $2 a week to become VIP 6 for a week or $20 to become VIP 20 for a week. No other resources or bonuses attached. Would slowly inch actual VIP up as well through VIP points within the purchases.
I stood at VIP 3 for ages because I felt the investment required was too large, and I didn’t actually need anything being offered.
What motivated me in the end was the Steam pet sale that got me to VIP 4-something at a very reduced cost, at that point it felt achievable to get VIP 5 (and eventually 6) with random small purchases over several months… I suspect if they held sales (as in discounted prices, not more not-useful stuff for the same price) more often, others would find themselves in the same situation
Yes, its fair you can get them so easy, but so its hard to make money with them.
So now we have the new pass system, which tries a different way and i think this will work (in addition).
Ironically, my Daily Deal board this morning. Almost put this in the cool screenshot thread.
Only way the roll this morning would have been more relevant is if one of them were an Imperial deed. A portent of the future?
Possible. I’m of two minds on the subject.
One possibility is that books are new currency. The question then becomes how to obtain that currency. A new game mode would be likely to award these.
The other possibility is the a book of deeds is a collection of deeds, much like up-converting ingots to the next rarity in the Soulforge. If the devs went that route and only made single deeds available for sale, they could create a system in the Daily Deals shop where players would be required to frequently engage in the shop to gain the required number of deeds to craft books for kingdom upgrades for potentially years to come depending on conversion rates.
I’m not quite in “change my mind” meme territory on this yet. But, if I had to place my chips on one of the two potential outcomes, I would bet on the latter option than the former. Too much potential synergy in terms of long-term time and gem sinks that are very much in alignment with dev economic objectives these days.
I feel locking things out of reach from VIP 5 is basically shoving your hand in a pile of and then slapping the playerbase in the face…
No, I actually have a better way to ilustrate it: It’s using to facepaint the players and still expecting them to smile.
They lost control of the economy a long time ago, gems became too accessible for a (Peng)long time. And this made all of us addicted to the way things are. If they would have tried to do some damage control, gems should be very scarce but they could have worked things so players in general would play to earn more Glory.
So the Gems would become the very valuable Premium Currency they were intended to be, and Glory would be F2P best chance at unlocking Mythics as well as using the Soulforge.
I also believe it’s just a matter of time until they remove or cut the gems’ gains in half from tributes (while MAYBE adding more Glory or something else) and also removing gems from Gold and Glory chests.
I’m thinking they may limit tribute collections per day, possibly to 4 - 6 per day so that it doesn’t effect most people most of the time. I don’t think chests are that significant a source of gems.
I’ve played almost five years, and I remember the tributes of 2 or 3 gems being a good thing.
If you read further up my thoughts on early-mid level players catching up, gems are absolutely crucial for F2P players. If gem economy is crippled, it further entrenches the advantages that veterans have, from the golden age and [the current age] what would become the silver age to the newly arrive crippled bronze age.
Veterans have received massive amount of gems in their time, and with it all sorts of things that translates to directly or indirectly including Orbs from events, forge scrolls from ToD T7 x 3 purchases, completion of delves on Tuesdays using massive amounts of gems etc. New players in new guilds are even less likely to reach the final Orb rewards in Invasion events, delaying or making Zuul’goth impossible.
So after having completed everything you need to achieve and received all the loot forever, you now want to close the gates on new players by giving only 4-6 tributes a day? Veterans still receive 60-80 (whatever) gems a day, while other players get 20-40 gems, not even enough for daily dungeon gem offer - the only regular source of diamonds for mythics.
I’m actually arguing they need to keep loot for the sake of game health.
3 groups of players
Veterans - more or less loot means little. Most likely group to leave game
New players - need to make an impression. They will either like it or leave quickly
Mid-level players - like it enough, but must be given tools to move into veteran stage. If they don’t see light at the end of the tunnel, won’t stay
When I was a new player I was motivated to get to VIP 5 because I thought VIP chests were paywalled due to them being good. Thought this was the way a new player could spend money on the game to unlock mythics and make meaningful progression.
Then I started opening them and realized they were a scam like 95% of everything else in the shop so never bought gems again.
) to pay (time/ 
and then slapping the playerbase in the face…
And I’m not surprised you don’t want less loot, in fact I bet you want more loot.