Feedback on tophat's character introduction letter
@CG_TopHat
First let me apologize about the stun cuff remark in your introduction post, I thought it was funny at the time because your post made it sound like you were in charge of that kind of stuff. I was told it was not and in retrospect I agree. Now on to the topic at hand.
The introduction post goes a long way to taking some uncertainty out of budgeting for the game. It is a good start but there remains a lot of problems and I think you need to understand them from a top spender ( well, ex whale ) Pov.
Before mods you could safely budget 1k a month, get lightning progression, all the new chars, etc. mods and raid gear slowed progression with that budget a little but not too badly. Then several things happened, crystal trooper, rogue one pack for cassian and chirrut, ship chromiums, epic gear, ship pack and krooper. This was all lightning fast and placed an enormous burden on spenders. What was once a 1k budget for play, gear and characters became 3k or more. Worse, every new ship and char was priced super premium with no middle ground. Even more worse, people had certain expectations of price, went in and ended up spending up to their old cap and getting an unusable ( ala raids ) character.
The boycott is a product of former very healthy spenders being unable to participate at the top end any longer while at the same time the value of their previous investment is decimated ( i.e. Without chirrut you're not going to place top ten in the aat raid, without Jyn you are not going to have a team that can solo the pit in under an hour ). I keep saying there is no middle ground between free and too expensive.
I don't particularly mind too expensive so long as the game provides some time to digest the expense and reap the reward before it moves on to the next big thing. That is to say, a crystal tournament ( which should cap cheating at the top end ) is fine every six months or so for a super premium character. Balance that with one or two super premium ftp characters ala Yoda and palpatine. And in between or even during? Aurodium price characters ala the event with every third or fourth going straight to ftp farm instead of a pack.
This should strike a healthy balance of letting you extract the super premium prices out of the krakens while still engaging your heavy spenders without decimating their previous investments.
I see where you are going with chromium shard shop currency but it's critical you get the price of chromium shard shop purchases back in line with what we were paying last year keeping in mind thanks to mods / mod drop nerds / mod shipment nerf / mod pack nerf, and epic gear eleven you are already extracting a premium to make a character usable over last year.
If you can do that then I think the community can bear having a few people pay incredible prices for super premium characters once or twice a year, and because they will be status symbols you can probably ask even more for them than you are now. But there has to be a middle ground and it is not asking former whales to become dolphins -- you are simply leaving too much on the table and putting too much pricing pressure on the krakens if you don't bring back the 1-2 hundred dollar characters.
Tl:dr: there needs to be a cadence that allows for some exclusivity for heavy and moderate spenders in addition to the kraken tiers.
First let me apologize about the stun cuff remark in your introduction post, I thought it was funny at the time because your post made it sound like you were in charge of that kind of stuff. I was told it was not and in retrospect I agree. Now on to the topic at hand.
The introduction post goes a long way to taking some uncertainty out of budgeting for the game. It is a good start but there remains a lot of problems and I think you need to understand them from a top spender ( well, ex whale ) Pov.
Before mods you could safely budget 1k a month, get lightning progression, all the new chars, etc. mods and raid gear slowed progression with that budget a little but not too badly. Then several things happened, crystal trooper, rogue one pack for cassian and chirrut, ship chromiums, epic gear, ship pack and krooper. This was all lightning fast and placed an enormous burden on spenders. What was once a 1k budget for play, gear and characters became 3k or more. Worse, every new ship and char was priced super premium with no middle ground. Even more worse, people had certain expectations of price, went in and ended up spending up to their old cap and getting an unusable ( ala raids ) character.
The boycott is a product of former very healthy spenders being unable to participate at the top end any longer while at the same time the value of their previous investment is decimated ( i.e. Without chirrut you're not going to place top ten in the aat raid, without Jyn you are not going to have a team that can solo the pit in under an hour ). I keep saying there is no middle ground between free and too expensive.
I don't particularly mind too expensive so long as the game provides some time to digest the expense and reap the reward before it moves on to the next big thing. That is to say, a crystal tournament ( which should cap cheating at the top end ) is fine every six months or so for a super premium character. Balance that with one or two super premium ftp characters ala Yoda and palpatine. And in between or even during? Aurodium price characters ala the event with every third or fourth going straight to ftp farm instead of a pack.
This should strike a healthy balance of letting you extract the super premium prices out of the krakens while still engaging your heavy spenders without decimating their previous investments.
I see where you are going with chromium shard shop currency but it's critical you get the price of chromium shard shop purchases back in line with what we were paying last year keeping in mind thanks to mods / mod drop nerds / mod shipment nerf / mod pack nerf, and epic gear eleven you are already extracting a premium to make a character usable over last year.
If you can do that then I think the community can bear having a few people pay incredible prices for super premium characters once or twice a year, and because they will be status symbols you can probably ask even more for them than you are now. But there has to be a middle ground and it is not asking former whales to become dolphins -- you are simply leaving too much on the table and putting too much pricing pressure on the krakens if you don't bring back the 1-2 hundred dollar characters.
Tl:dr: there needs to be a cadence that allows for some exclusivity for heavy and moderate spenders in addition to the kraken tiers.
