The Whale is Facing Extinction
June 4, 2017 3:31PM
edited June 2017
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.
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.
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Anyone who's read my previous posts knows better than that. Deadly serious.
Fulcrum was the least expensive character to be released in many, many months.
My spending should give me a time advantage to stay in front especially when I have a very deep roster that's developed well. When I see players who only have 40-50 toons geared and modded that are benefiting the same as me I have to wonder.
As OP said the haters will hate for me saying this but those who do finance this type of game have the right to feel this way. Remember it's a business model that if not profitable will go away and a different one less friendly to ftp could take its place and then you'll think back on this and say maybe we needed to be a bit more farsighted about this.
Maybe those whales & dolphins who paid for my free fun had a point? I'm not saying it should be a vast advantage but it should be for those who've gotten the roster as deep as possible either from spending or over time as ftp. Just my thoughts and opinion as I'm sure all of you have yours.....
Are you sure, lol
He wants to be able to spend 1000 $ on a character that is only available by paying for it and be able to defeat any team with it.
In your way of thinking you and 10 of your buddies would play on the server and I doubt you would enjoy it as much as you do now .
Agreed, I think the idea for a new game mode that rewards deeper rosters would be a better way to give whales an advantage without just destroying arena balance
Whale here and I +1million this mesaage.
+1 i agree with this.
And also the model as is works fine..if anything i would like a better crystal subscribtion than the crappy 100 for 10.99
What he says is two things, at least in the part you're "rephrasing":
1. Characters that someone pays for should take a certain amount of time before they become available/farmable in chromiums, shipments and shard shop. Where 'a certain amount of time' is a longer period than what it is now.
2. Having such a character should have synergy with a lineage of toons that were ones exclusive. In this case DN should have better synergy with SA and SiTr, who should also not become available so fast in shard shop, instead of doing great in a Rex triple cleanse team with easy obtainable toons.
THAT is what I THINK he means.
Well, tournaments did exactly that... received more hate than mods and were flawed such that it is suspected that FTP players 'broke/cheated' it doing exactly the opposite of rewarding players with a deep roster...
By the way, since crystals is the only in-game currency that can be purchased with real life money. I (as a mainly FTP player) am all for giving whales the advantage in those game areas where crystals are the main reward.
Zeta's will soon be over the hype in which they were game-breaking and so I think whales should be top arena, without being challenged by FTP/dolphins with the same squads, leaving only competition for those who chose early on to take a different route and found a niche that is competitive (e.g. like droids were, like FO and Resistance will be in 1 - 2 months).
The new mode that is coming needs to address this issue or they will lose a bunch of people. I need a reason to gear, level, mod, and USE all of the characters and ships.
666-716-133
That being said... im completely with @Palanthian on deep roster content... GW is great but a real pain sometimes for those of us that grind away 10+ hour workdays... would be nice to sim GW... and more to the point introduce a few new modes. I loved tournaments because i have a decent enough roster... I try to get every toon to lv50 g7 before moving on... this gave me a great advantage in tournaments of the past as a mostly f2p player.
And i felt really good when i managed to rank in top 10, 100 or 200 on those tournaments.
A mode simalar to GW where instead of a mundane un-motivating board.
You had several boards you could choose to boost important generalized stats.
Starforge Board This board upon completion doubles Cantina Energy regeneration for a 48 hr period. One Starforge board available per week. Of coarse Starforge will be filled with mostly droids, some we have yet to see, and rakatans...
Jedi Temple This board on completion grants double the amount of daily/ship challenges available for that day (excluding sunday/monday). This board requires use of only sith, empire, nightsister, bounty hunter, etc...
Mandalorian Blockade This board requires ships and upon completion doubles LS/DS energy regeneration for 48 hours.
Mortis This board only available when other 3 are completed during the week. It is only available saturday/sunday and upon completion it doubles Cantina/LS/DS & daily activities for sunday/monday... Mortis board is for end game players only and will require a deep deep roster.
These are just some of my whack ideas, but individual battles on these boards should be restricted to specfic character types on certain nodes, and maybe possibly a skip or two for each board so leeser players can skip that one node they cant beat.
Lots of potential here to break the monotony of GW and introdice some impactful content that will capture our intrest and incentivize players to go all in for the invreased resouces and spend some $ to get!
Far more f2p than whales. Not smart to make them wait even longer than they already do
But, what else will whales spend their money on than?
It'd have to be something that doesn't pit you directly against other players and doesn't have such a **** time aspect. They could make something like GW for specific teams. Not all "advantages" need to be about proving that your team can beat someone else's team.
Buying one character does not a whale make. A little more inforation is needed. And as was stated above, ATF is on the cheaper side of recent heroes released.
That's not even close to what op was saying.
Nor is this.
To really paraphrase, exclusivity for a longer period of time would be nice.
I agree wholeheartedly with this. Heroes don't need to be broken or over powered. They do need to provide an edge while everyone else is scrambling to find a counter, or building their reserves of gear, credits, etc for the eventual release of said character for ftp to farm.
As it stands right now, whales get almost no advantage. Most new toons are viable at lower stars provided the right mods and gear. People who don't want to spend can just wait until the heroes become available a cheaper way. They can still gear and mod these toons, use them in arena to almost no disadvantage, and then get the last stars later.
It's not that big of a wait anymore, hence little to no advantage. Without that advantage people will stop paying. If they're not paying then there's no game.
Game never has been and never will be set up for the highest spenders to get too far ahead.
More GW boards that are specialized in certain faction aspects, generate exclusive new charactet shards upon completion, and require a deeper more advanced roster to get said shards is my contribution to @Palanthians request... i hope this is a suitable idea that can be added to and modified as i agree with @Palanthian ... currently there is no motivation to develop your roster past the same monotonous meta toons....
There are a lot more casual people that spend money. I for example spend at least 20 $ per month. So it is like a subscription for me and I am not expecting OP characters in return.
I do expect cool events and better accessible gear but for all players and not just for myself .