The Whale is Facing Extinction

"Palanthian;d-114650" wrote:
This game is built on a 3 tier system of whales, dolphins and FTP. It has historically been a balanced ecosystem, where one cannot survive without the other. The whale is becoming an endangered species, however.

The meta leader of the "Rex triple cleanse" team is over a year old, almost everyone has him. All other members of the team are farmable. As an aside, Nihilus works best on a non-Sith team, which I find a little sad!

New characters released since Nihilus have been non-meta-impacting, and even if they were they could be farmed in shipments, 8 shards at a time, by dolphins and moderate spenders after just 4 weeks. There's no significant exclusivity for buying at the top of the market.

Mods used to be the whale advantage, now not so much. Speed mods sold well to dolphins in the recent packs, now they drop 100% in challenges. I'm not complaining here, I'm really torn on this as I mostly approve of this change, but it's further narrowed the gap between whale and FTP in the arena, no doubt.

Ships ... where do I start? Whales have no advantage, period. It's a FTP paradise.

The only thing whales have is a large roster, and where is that an advantage? GW? No, 2 teams are needed at the most. Raids? Who cares after you have the featured character?

I think a few things need to be considered. New characters need a longer period of exclusivity, putting them in shipments for 33% of the initial price, while the premium packs are still on sale, is insulting (as happened with Nihilus).

Aside from this, roster size needs to play a bigger part in the game. The whale may not be popular, but to a freemium game it's an essential component of the business model.

I expect this post will attract some hate, but with a foresight buff you'll know that it's the truth.