Personally I'm not a fan of the multi-currency grind/purchase. Systems like these really are the "greed" shining through from their design, and there's no doubt EA will love this system and won't be the ones leading the charge to change it.
However, I personally think the system should have been massively simplified;
1. Change to only Apex Coins as the singular currency.
2. Change levelling to grant 1 lootbox per level.
3. Lootbox rewards can contain all standard cosmetics (from White (common) to Gold (Epic)) plus a small chance to get Apex Coins (50 (Com), 100 (Unc), 250 (Leg), 500 (Epic), 1000 (Myth)). All three items could be common graded.
4. Apex Coin packs can be purchased (1000 (Com), 2500 (Unc), 5000 (Leg), 10000 (Epic), 25000 (Myth), 50000 (Myth+))
5. "Crafting" is replaced by purchasing unlocks at a higher rate ( For example, skins - Common: 250, Uncommon: 1000, Legendary: 2500, Epic: 5000, Mythic (Unique): 10000, Stat Trackers - Common: 50, Uncommon: 100, Legendary: 250, Epic: 500, Mythic: 1000)
6. Legends are unlocked using AC: 7500
7. Player Level 20, and Player Level 40 both should grant 7500 AC allowing for the first two Legends to be unlocked at a similar rate.
8. Lootboxes can be bought for 2500 AC with a Guaranteed chance of at least one new Uncommon unlock (the other two unlocks could be common - epic grade, duplicated or not).
9. Duplicate items can be rolled, but instead return 50% AC value (So if a duplicate Epic is rolled, the player receives 2500 AC instead as a compensation).
So,
- "Free to play" players can fully unlock everything by simply playing the game... the likely result will be that they'd be playing for years to obtain enough randomly generated Apex Coins to buy everything (as well as RNG rolling the other unlocks). However, there is actual incentive to keep on grinding out the game to win lootboxes in order to complete the Legend and Armory galleries.
- Small-time spenders can buy AC to purchase their desired cosmetics directly.
- Big-time spenders can buy AC to purchase more lootboxes guaranteeing a larger chance of more uncommon+ cosmetics.
@Stevoyd I think the cost you posted may still be a little high, but this isn't a bad approach either. I've been trying to avoid referencing the Fortnite model but if we're all honest this is what EA/Respawn's goal seems to be. An awesome free game that generates a lot of revenue through cosmetic purchases. I agree a single currency economy would most definitely simplify things, but would require a much larger overhaul. Bottom line is current cost all around don't seem to be fairly implemented to promote spending.
Community ManagerGreat post, @RecklessKaos ! You have a lot of interesting ideas that I'll make sure we pass this up to the dev team to look into. I just replied not too long ago to a similar topic around this in the discussion below too if you wanted to check that out.
Community ManagerCommunity Manager
