Artist wrote:Multi wrote:originally i suggested that the point card prices reflect their recycle prices, with 1* cards recycling for 5 gran, and 1 point card recycling for 5gran, so they are apparently equal in the eyes of the recycling system.
Well I like this system a lot. 1 star for 1 point card, 2 star for 2 point cards, 3 star for 6 point cards, 4 star for 30 and 5 star for 60?
This would achieve that whole "help out the newbies" goal everyone's mentioning since everyone is able to get around 5-6 point cards easily, that'd really help people finish their sets of 1 and 2 stars they don't have, and also it'll help the new ones get that 3rd Dalos they need as well.
And then if you're more of a hard core payer, you would have all the 1-2 stars usually already anyways, and you can just save up for something big like that 3rd Athira shin or Verlaat.
That system would've worked, before all the point card events. Without doing much of anything, I now have 20 point cards without getting any from any events that require any more participation other than playing once a day. That would mean I could get 20 1*'s or 10 2*'s. 10 2*'s is pretty much 5 packs at least, a loss of $7.50 in the eyes of alteil, moreso if i was chasing down just a few. If they continue to have easy events that give out 5 point cards, they'll pretty much never be able to rework the point card pricing to that system, however I think it's a worthwhile system, since it still takes quite a few matches to even buy 1 point card, and new accounts get just 1 point card. It would've been ideal before the generous point card events.
I for one would've played a looooot more often to grind FM if I could fill out 1*'s I wanted with just 1 point card, though even after 121 wins, 47 losses, I think i've only gathered about enough FM to buy 2 point cards. With the pricing point I and others have suggested, that'd get me two 1*'s or just one 2*, big deal for alteil's profits, but it makes for a happy player. Our level ups already are retardedly worthless, with 10 level gaps once you hit 30. You don't feel any incentive to grind whatsoever because there's nothing waiting for you at the next level 9 times out of 10, but if you could actually grind out a 1* every week, or even everyday, then instead of having sleeper players like me who play once or less a week, or once a day for events, you would probably have people playing many games a day because there's something to love forward to. These events that make you play once a day are going about it all wrong, it feels more like a chore with a conditional reward rather than playing to EARN your reward, you know? Reason to grind can keep people playing for a lot longer than some 10 level milestone for a single random card. People will grind like crazy in an mmorpg just so they can get that next skill point at the next level, and get better stats, here it's just "lolol you're the same as you were levels 31-38 with no new cards, grats on 39 though! :V"
Now that I think about it, there would be some people, newer players, that would waste every point card they'd get on a 1* or 2* as soon as they could anyways, which would mean they'd never be patient enough to collect point card to get 4*'s and 5*'s, which everybody wants. Most vets either have most 1* and 2*'s through MM/weekly gran or by donating, so they'd save up for 4*'s and 5*'s which would still take forever. I don't think anything would break, actually even if we did it now, what with all the point cards we're getting, people getting 20 1*'s out of 500, 10 2*'s out of like, 100 x the 3 they need, or 3 3*'s won't do diddly squat to sales or meta. Afterall, I have 20 point cards through events over like, the past 3 or 4 months or events, so they weren't THAT quickly attained.
Big changes are big decisions, and big decisions take time. But i'm like 99.9% sure this still won't get implemented, for whatever reasons companies do things in f2p games. Probably because it isn't broken, and it's not worth taking the risk to change things, because if things go wrong, it's not worth the PR trouble to have to fix it over maintaining the status quo and keeping the same ratio of satisfied and dissatisfied players. I'm playing DFO right now, and Nexon has pretty much like tripled the xp reqs for each level over the jp and kr versions of the game, no exaggeration whatsoever. They've also set the level cap at 40 instead of 60, even though we can see that we get new skills at 45, there is no free auction house like the other versions, rather, you have to pay $4.50 for a monthly license to open a shop. Skill reset costs $25 dollars, and avatars (which give extra stats and attributes), are randomly chosen and given random stats from a gachapon. You can choose class and which slot, but that's all. Also, the only cash items that are tradable are the avatars, the shop license, skill reset, and cash potions aren't tradable so you can't sell those. The jp version also uses this system for avatars, but kr does not, and for the western market, choosing your avatars would make for many more happy customers, but random avatars is actually probably a lot more profitable.
It sucks to be the guy who has to balance customer satisfaction with profits, but that's probably the truth of the matter. That it's ok to make people unhappy as long as you don't make enough of them that were going to spend money, quit. Just the right amount of unhappiness is key, so that they WILL spend money, rather than stay free. Because an unhappy spender, and a happy spender are still the same in the end. I mean hell, look at alteil, look at how many people complain, yet still buy more and more gran. I dunno if it's almost like being strong armed, or an addiction or what, but there's always that easy excuse that "you don't have to spend any money to enjoy the game." But for some, enjoyment is greatly reduced if you don't. But now I've gone way off topic :V
Sometimes, it's like this.
