Re: Pay to Win

Yeah, saying this game is "pay to win" makes  the term meaningless because then all other games (including all real life sports) are also pay to win, given that this game has some of the most generous f2p rewards in any CCG out there.

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@Gabochido wrote:

Yeah, saying this game is "pay to win" makes  the term meaningless because then all other games (including all real life sports) are also pay to win, given that this game has some of the most generous f2p rewards in any CCG out there.

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That was a really great, detailed description of the different games. However, I think you missed a few of my points:

1. You almost lost me when you called my post a "rant". I was in no way ranting. Never have done so. Simply posting my opinion and disappointment.
2. I made it very clear in my OP and several comments that I was mainly disappointed because paid reviewers called it "Free to Play Done Perfectly". To me, if there is anyway to buy an advantage, that is not "perfect". I was not nor ever have compared it to any other games.
3. Paying should be to SAVE TIME. Period. At least that is how I feel. If you are willing to "grind away" mindlessly or watch the max ads, you should be able to have the same CHANCES as someone who is paying. When you can buy a specific card, you are totally negating the "drop rates" or the rarity of the cards. Yes, I understand through the sparks you can basically do the same thing. But then the payers should at LEAST have to buy jewels, buy packs, destroy the extras for sparks, and THEN build the card you want.
4. The "Finish this Deck" is a back-door to buying exactly the card(s) you want for jewels...sometimes at pretty reduced rates.
5. I was not just saying "Four of a Legendary is Pay to Win". I specifically said that within 2 weeks of game LAUNCH there were people playing decks with four of MULTIPLE legendary cards. No way they ground those out that quick.
6. Never said Dragonfruit was Pay to Win ... not sure where you got that idea. I do think it is ridiculously OP, but that is well covered ground. :-)
7. I have NO IDEA how you are trying to tie this to IRL sports...totally meaningless to this discussion.

THANKS FOR POSTING THOUGH! Really enjoyed reading it and learning more about the other games.

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@Gabochido wrote:

Mr TAllen Sr, I respectfully disagree with your views.

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How the HECK did this get "Accepted Solution" status? I did not click on that button.

Oh ... I see ... the community manager did it. So they see a long post that defends them and they say that is the "solution"? Got it. Thought this was a place to discuss openly. LOL

1. It got the answer because it perfectly explained why it if free to play dome right, especially for this genre.

2.  This is only pay to speed things up, exactly how you said it should be.  There is NOTHING in this game that can only be accessed by a pay wall.

3.  Your problem was being able to buy specific cards, which you absolutely could not do two weeks after launch as you keep stating.  Premade decks were not a part of the game until series two was almost upon us.

4.  I don't work for EA.  My knowledge of the game mechanics and such have put me in a position where I can mark answers.

You aren't going to sway me because you aren't hearing what you want to.  Go play any other free to play game.  ANY other.  Not even this genre and then tell me this game isn't more fair.  Just because it isn't the answer you want to hear, doesn't mean it isn't the right answer.

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@daalnnii wrote:

1. It got the answer because it perfectly explained why it if free to play dome right, especially for this genre.

2.  This is only pay to speed things up, exactly how you said it should be.  There is NOTHING in this game that can only be accessed by a pay wall.

3.  Your problem was being able to buy specific cards, which you absolutely could not do two weeks after launch as you keep stating.  Premade decks were not a part of the game until series two was almost upon us.

4.  I don't work for EA.  My knowledge of the game mechanics and such have put me in a position where I can mark answers.

You aren't going to sway me because you aren't hearing what you want to.  Go play any other free to play game.  ANY other.  Not even this genre and then tell me this game isn't more fair.  Just because it isn't the answer you want to hear, doesn't mean it isn't the right answer.

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It does not say you marked it as accepted ... it shows another user with an EA avatar. Not trying to sway anyone ... I did not think it was the "right answer" because as I pointed out, it misstated several things about "what I said". I really don't care...I was just surprised to see that answer promoted to "accepted" status.

If premade decks were not available as you say, than there are some real idiots out there that dropped some SERIOUS real-world dollars on this game early on. That is just sad. :-)

(deleted by poster because he was very wrong) 😉

Can we agree on at LEAST one thing? If you can buy a particular card, regardless of HOW you do it, that bypasses the drop rates, and in turn negates the rarity of the Legendary cards? I think that is my main point that is getting lost in all of this.

No, because free players can do the exact same thing (free gems everywhere), but again, you're only paying to do it faster, which you said yourself is what paying in a free to play game is for.

By faster I meant save maybe a day or two. In that scenario, it is saving WEEKS. Daily video gems max out at about 100, Challenges max out at about 60 (6 x 10 each ... every once in awhile there will be a "100 for 100" challenge, but those are rare). During tourney, until you get to 50, let's say on average you can earn 50 gems by advancing two levels. So that is 210ish -- let's be super-generous and bump that to 300 per day to take in account 100 point tier leveling etc.

Depending on how full the premade deck is already, the average "Complete this Deck" looks to be 4000-5000 gems minimum. So if we take the low end, we are talking 12+ days of serious grinding and watching videos just to do it once. So I still say that purchasing has too much of an advantage over grinding. But hey ... it is their money to waste I guess.

And again, to be CLEAR: At this point it does not really matter. I have most cards, make level 50 every tourney quickly, and the game appears to have been abandoned by the devs. I just think it was very unbalanced in the early days (Payers vs Grinders) and did not deserve the "Free to Play Done Perfect" award it got.

I'll discuss the point that I think are worth discussing:

I will agree that Free To play Done Perfectly is more marketing speech than a hard statement of fact, but it is based on the fact that this game has a far more generous reward system than most other games. Having said that, according to your stance, no game with gameplay based microtransactions can ever be perfect free to play, so essentially to you F2P doesn't really refer to the financially viable business model, it just means that a game is free. Oncea again, you are making a term with a significant meaning, become meaningless by applying your own idea of what it should be when a term for that already exists (free).

"Paying should be to save time. Period. At least that's how I feel." Let me fix that for you by incorporating some of your other comments regarding this feeling.

"I feel that paying should be to save time, however, it can't save time by allowing people to bypass the natural progression system and thus letting them purchase individual cards and it can't ever allow people to save more than a day or two of the natural progression".

Just how do you think a financially viable business model that did this would work? First of all, you would have to put a hard limit on how much people can spend in the game. A day or two is about 200-400 gems so basically no one can spend more than $5 total on the game. I'm sure any CCG will thrive with this, given that its such a small percentage of people who actually pay any money at all. Next, you basically need to remove the ability to spark cards, since that is the most effective way to obtain a specific legendary.

At that point, the game basically has no significant microtransactions and it might as well just be free, with only aesthetic based purchases (which can work, but to a much lesser degree).

I think that (here is the TL;DR)  you're upset that the game takes about 2-3 months to allow a free player to catch up with a player who has paid enough to obtain cards to make a competitive deck on day one and you think that a better F2P system would be to either ensure that all players have access to all the cards within a few days or that people don't have the option to pay.

I think you're wrong because I've seen other games try this and have considerably less appeal. Living card games are a good example, where instead of having booster packs, you pay a fixed amount for all the cards in an expansion. But then people don't have a reason to progress and aren't as enticed by the game as one where you slowly build up your card pool.

I believe that 2-3 months is actually a really good amount of time for card pool progression because it allows a player to grow their skill with their collection. The important thing that needs to exist alongside this is a good matchmaking scheme, that mostly places players with similar power levels. Note that power levels can be a combination of skill plus card quality, so a skilled player with a budget collection may be placed against a less skilled player with a deck full of legends.

One more thing I want to say. You said you had a hard time understanding the relationship between spending money on a card game and spending money on a physical sport. I think the term "pay to compete" is a good way to relate them. To you it seems that the concept to "pay to compete" is what you consider "pay to win", but you should realize there is a big and important difference.

In a "pay to compete" game you need to spend money to purchase the right equipment. In card games, its those powerful cards. In sports, it's the right gear. If you don't, you will be at a disadvantage and won't be able to compete successfully. However, once you are at a competitive level, no amount of paying will guarantee a win, its all about the skill. That's the difference. Also, you can still play for free and have a great time, just at a lesser competitive level and, within a reasonable amount of time, as long as your skill also progresses, you will be able to enter the competitive environment.

In PVZ heroes, you can play for free at the lower leagues and have a great time. You will be matched up against people of similar level and will win whenever you play better than they do. If you can to compete at a higher level, you have two choices: progress naturally over the course of a few months or pay money to get all the cards you need to compete immediately.

Perhaps your gripe is that in the course of leveling up to the right competitive level, a paying player will likely trounce others who didn't pay. That is an unfortunate side effect but I personally think it is quite irrelevant because at the lower levels you have nothing to lose.

All good points. One thing I think you are missing however: They make the bulk of their money on these games on the Ad revenue. I am a developer myself and know a successful mobile game dev personally. He gets about 80% of his revenue from the Ads. Almost all players -- free and paying -- watch the ads for the rewards. Very few buy things. Therefore nothing I have said would take much if anything away from the profitability of the game for the devs.

That is reasonable, except that it still puts a hard wall on the revenue a game like this can make. Most mobile games make most of their money from a small percentage of players who don't have a problem with spending a large amounts of money. I'm also a developer BTW 😉

You should also remember that this game didn't have ads when it started. I wouldn't be surprised if they added them because it wasn't making enough revenue from normal sales of gems and packs. Even with the ads, this game is clearly not making a lot of money. After all, ads on average generate about $0.08ish so this game is making $.15 per user every day. I doubt it has enough users for that to finance proper development.

Along those lines, I actually hate the ads system. To me it creates a bad playing experience. I'm a min/maxer, so when I play a game like this, I try to get as much as is reasonably possible every day. While setting down my phone next to my keyboard and pressing play every 30 seconds isn't horribly disruptive, its a chore and a bad player experience. It is not the way I want to advance my progression and I want to earn my gems from playing the game. Therefore, I'd rather have a financial system that allows players to pay as much money as they want to get to whatever level they want to in the game however fast they want. If I'm having a good time and as long as I'm generally matched against people of my level, I don't care how fast people who pay get to advance.

Just wanted to say one more thing. I would suggest you refrain from referring to people who spend money frivolously on games as idiots.

For starters, those are the ones that essentially finance these type of games and they wouldn't be as successful without them. But most of all, why is spending money on a thing you enjoy being an idiot? I spent $100 to go to disneyland the other day. While it was fun, it lasted all of a day to go there. Am I an idiot for that?

I know people who will easily spend hundreds or thousands of dollars on an expensive meal, Halloween decorations, a one-time-use wedding dress. But they do that because it means something to them and its what gives them the most satisfaction for the money they earned. Spending $100 or even $1000 on a game like this will give you an investment that can last for years. Yes, there are other options, even free options, but that is the case for most things. I think its a fine investment, specially compared to what other things you can spend money on.

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@Gabochido wrote:

Just wanted to say one more thing. I would suggest you refrain from referring to people who spend money frivolously on games as idiots.

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I get your point, but I still personally think anyone spending $1,000 on a casual mobile game is an idiot. No one has posted saying that was them, so I don't think anyone here is offended. And those who would probably don't care enough about the game to engage in conversations to make it better. :-)

And I just spent $150 on an Ember Travel Mug to keep my coffee at exactly the temp I like (133 F is my preferred). I am ready to be called an "idiot" for that frivolous investment, especially by someone to whom $150 is a lot of money. So I can take it too. ;-)

I'm one of them, I just don't take offense.  😋