I am about level 1000 and l find this game requires more and more cash. Yes, I know l can play for free too, but if l want to get more out of the game l need to pay. It makes me desperate that it gives less and less and wants more and more. This is unproportional. Lately l had a vip chest key and l got absolutely common things from that those not fit for my level at all. It is sure, I don’t have THAT much money that it requires to improve and l am tired to fight for years for better position. Thanks.
I’ve played for less than a year, I haven’t paid a single cent, and my collection is at 1031/1048.
Of course, progress is largely correlated with how much time you spend playing, but it certainly is possible to optimize and streamline that progression without paying. In fact, despite the influx of bugs and increasing monetization, GoW is still one of the most free-to-play-friendly games I’ve experienced.
(PQ3, on the other hand…)
9 Likes
This.
Abundant monetization is the nature of f2p games, unfortunately. Cosmetics-only monetization is a really hard model to run and profit from (and no game is gonna keep running if they’re losing money doing it).
There is of course going to be a time investment to catch up to other players in a years-old game, but GoW isn’t very competitive, preferring solo play over PvP. Even if it were, between the vast amount of troops to choose from and the negligible stat difference between mid- and end-game players, I still don’t consider this game p2w, just pay to complete.
This is not specific to GoW, but to F2P/gaming in general.
It’s not that you can’t make a profitable game with a cosmetics-only approach. It’s just that other models are more profitable.
Every company will eventually run into the same ‘issue’: I’ve got a good, profitable product - but where do I go from here? Your bean counter person will tell you to increase profits by not increasing investments. Add value without adding value. Convince people they’re getting more ‘product’ even though you’re giving them less ‘product’.
Eventually, the market converges on whatever’s most profitable as the new standard model. That’s why 9/10 of games on phones are poorly made carbon copies of each other, trying to profit from whatever’s popular right now.
And that’s the tyranny of democratised gaming. Companies have access to 4 billion potential customers now. There are enough customers to make a profit even if your product is unacceptably terrible. You, as a company, don’t have to be accountable anymore. Your product can’t be that bad if it makes you solid profits, right? Well, you’re wrong! Just because companies are much further removed from their customers does not mean people are generally happy with your product. It’s just infinitely harder these days to get companies to listen when their product sucks. Easy to ignore forum posts. Much harder to ignore the customer in front of you.
There’s a reason Google and Apple happily waived store fees for apps, but will not yield on games.
5 Likes