People on this forum are really deluded about how freemium games finance themselves.
Successful games do not rely on their big spenders for the critical part of their income; and if they do, they die; quickly. If you're calling for more focus on serving the tiny fraction of customers who have endless amounts of cash, you're calling for this game to stagnate.
Successful games tend to use the big spenders in the early stages of launch to help achieve scale quickly. It keeps the door open for people who believe they're strong willed enough to never spend money on a mobile game, to come in and play, then get hooked.
What then happens over time: again, in successful games, is that the game developers tweak the right ecosystem of incentives to make their huge funnel of "FTP" players slowly get drawn into paying money. The goal is to make MORE PEOPLE spend small sums, not to rely on the mega rich to keep the game afloat.
Think of it like an insurance system: you want more payers, to flatten the costs, to get more payers, to further flatten the costs.
Clash of Clans and Pokemon Go are great examples of games that respectively succeeded and failed to do this.
Think about Candy Crush: millions of bored middle age moms who tell you they'll never spend money on a mobile game, but actually do, month in month out. Not a small clique of millionaires funding everyone else's game play out of their own largesse.
OP +1. Whale here. Got my Ahsoka to 7* full gear and again not meta impacting. I am in the software business and if you think any strategy doesn't involve keeping your top clients the happiest it will fail. Right now there isn't enough benefit for the $$$ and the last few purchases of Phoenix etc have made many people who spend freely reconsider.
It is great if everyone spends $20 a week but the free community will always make up 80%. As with most places the top 1% pays for 30-40% of the revenue but as soon as there isn't enough sustained benefit than we will move to another game.
Maybe FTP won't care since on these boards if you question anyone who is FTP you suffer the wrath of the board but without major change the whale will die.
Im definitely not a whale... but i have droped a decent amount of $ since i started playing in Nov. 15' since i have tried to get new release bundle paks like R1, ships, etc when available. Gem paks when on sale, 21-day boosters, and finally mod paks when they emerge there elusive head.
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!
It is great if everyone spends $20 a week but the free community will always make up 80%. As with most places the top 1% pays for 30-40% of the revenue but as soon as there isn't enough sustained benefit than we will move to another game.
You can't seriously believe that a videogame needs to collect 80 dollars per month on average from its audience in order to stay in business.
Not when the going rate is only 15-20 a month for very profitable subscription games with unlimited play & almost bottomless wells of content.
It is great if everyone spends $20 a week but the free community will always make up 80%. As with most places the top 1% pays for 30-40% of the revenue but as soon as there isn't enough sustained benefit than we will move to another game.
You can't seriously believe that a videogame needs to collect 80 dollars per month on average from its audience in order to stay in business.
Not when the going rate is only 15-20 a month for very profitable subscription games with unlimited play & almost bottomless wells of content.
Perhaps my wording was bad I meant it would be nice if everyone spent 20$ a month as other posters suggested . But 80% of players will be FTP so I believe better exclusive content for the whales is needed
I'm a F2P player, and I may understand the point of whales however I'm on october 16 shard. I have been first almost from the start, everyday,I've been planning every step, however I always faced a problem against whales who doesn't even care about their mods and some of them about thier line up, I always follow the meta, however I struggle to beat them. I'm not even close to have proper teams for the hAAT and it's been like 8 month I'm in the game. I've completed was just all mods and I guess a rancor, but that's it. So those whales that complain, maybe you have to realize you haven't invested enough in the game to have the advantage?
I'm a F2P player, and I may understand the point of whales however I'm on october 16 shard. I have been first almost from the start, everyday,I've been planning every step, however I always faced a problem against whales who doesn't even care about their mods and some of them about thier line up, I always follow the meta, however I struggle to beat them. I'm not even close to have proper teams for the hAAT and it's been like 8 month I'm in the game. I've completed was just all mods and I guess a rancor, but that's it. So those whales that complain, maybe you have to realize you haven't invested enough in the game to have the advantage?
yeah these complaints are fom launch time whales as f2p also have huge rosters. on newer servers the gap will be considerably wider.. as a launch time f2p i dont have much left to do either, on save mode on all fronts.
i'm not buying this idea whales need something special others can't get that one or two have mentioned. the day anything becomes exclusive to the money spenders is the death of this game.
everything needs to be offered to everyone. the spenders have their advantage and that's maxing out toons before anyone else. they don't need exclusive content in addition.
Amen @pac0naut That's the part that **** me off. Not that I dropped money on a character but that her damage output is nowhere near as advertised. That video made you believe that she would change the meta and now I'm not sure she's useful anywhere if you don't want to free fall in arena
People on this forum are really deluded about how freemium games finance themselves.
Successful games do not rely on their big spenders for the critical part of their income; and if they do, they die; quickly. If you're calling for more focus on serving the tiny fraction of customers who have endless amounts of cash, you're calling for this game to stagnate.
Successful games tend to use the big spenders in the early stages of launch to help achieve scale quickly. It keeps the door open for people who believe they're strong willed enough to never spend money on a mobile game, to come in and play, then get hooked.
What then happens over time: again, in successful games, is that the game developers tweak the right ecosystem of incentives to make their huge funnel of "FTP" players slowly get drawn into paying money. The goal is to make MORE PEOPLE spend small sums, not to rely on the mega rich to keep the game afloat.
Think of it like an insurance system: you want more payers, to flatten the costs, to get more payers, to further flatten the costs.
Clash of Clans and Pokemon Go are great examples of games that respectively succeeded and failed to do this.
A few minutes after the Release of Fulcrum Ahsoka, I already saw her 5* gear 11 in arena :P (guess it's 7* now)
True, but she doesn't make an already meta team better. Someone who threw $300 on a toon would expect to play her in arena for a while... on our shard at least, she came in for 48 hours and then disappeared.
You can't seriously believe that a videogame needs to collect 80 dollars per month on average from its audience in order to stay in business.
Unfortunately they seem to think that way. A triple A class console game costs 70-80 and people buy it once. But hey, the new Ferraris cost money, too...
Not when the going rate is only 15-20 a month for very profitable subscription games with unlimited play & almost bottomless wells of content.
I played World of Warcraft for ages for less than that. And the amount of content? No comparison!
I would echo that since I only need to wait 2-3 months I no longer have a need to spend on toons/packs. My arena ranking hasn't suffered. The game is a F2P paradise at the moment, soak it in while it lasts!
I still see the historical whales on my shard maxing toons from the packs 7* - 6* minimum. The true whales are still as whaley as ever. I take your approach as well - just wait a bit and it's either free in shard shop or greatly discounted in shipments if I want it from there earlier than shard shop.
Anyone who's read my previous posts knows better than that. Deadly serious.
its true too, its not a troll because the game is supported by whales. without them there would be no reason to keep the game running, and nothing to pay for the servers.
You can't seriously believe that a videogame needs to collect 80 dollars per month on average from its audience in order to stay in business.
Unfortunately they seem to think that way. A triple A class console game costs 70-80 and people buy it once. But hey, the new Ferraris cost money, too...
Not when the going rate is only 15-20 a month for very profitable subscription games with unlimited play & almost bottomless wells of content.
I played World of Warcraft for ages for less than that. And the amount of content? No comparison!
I would wager that World of Warcraft has a larger number of players overall, and a much different economy of scale apply there.
i'm not buying this idea whales need something special others can't get that one or two have mentioned. the day anything becomes exclusive to the money spenders is the death of this game.
everything needs to be offered to everyone. the spenders have their advantage and that's maxing out toons before anyone else. they don't need exclusive content in addition.
What the whales get is time, and in this game it's a big advantage. Of course the content will be the same for everyone, but whales have immediate gratification and are able to dominate (potentially) before the opportunity becomes available to everyone else.
I'm still trying to get my Chirrut to 7* slowly through fleet tokens, and I don't even have a Baze yet! I'm sure eventually I'll have them both, but by then newer and potentially better characters would be available and the cycle starts again.
You can't seriously believe that a videogame needs to collect 80 dollars per month on average from its audience in order to stay in business.
Unfortunately they seem to think that way. A triple A class console game costs 70-80 and people buy it once. But hey, the new Ferraris cost money, too...
Not when the going rate is only 15-20 a month for very profitable subscription games with unlimited play & almost bottomless wells of content.
I played World of Warcraft for ages for less than that. And the amount of content? No comparison!
I would wager that World of Warcraft has a larger number of players overall, and a much different economy of scale apply there.
What I am saying is that a toon a month is not going to make me cough up any coins in this game.
You can't seriously believe that a videogame needs to collect 80 dollars per month on average from its audience in order to stay in business.
Unfortunately they seem to think that way. A triple A class console game costs 70-80 and people buy it once. But hey, the new Ferraris cost money, too...
Not when the going rate is only 15-20 a month for very profitable subscription games with unlimited play & almost bottomless wells of content.
I played World of Warcraft for ages for less than that. And the amount of content? No comparison!
I would wager that World of Warcraft has a larger number of players overall, and a much different economy of scale apply there.
Hard to tell with subscription v F2D, but WOW had a high point of just over 10m subscribers just before Christmas (new release) and a low of 5.6m before that, there might not be a world of difference in size of player base seeing as SWGOH has around 10k installs per day.
So if whales aren't spending, and the game keeps rolling along as it is, what does that tell you? It tells me that whales aren't the sole reason this game keeps rolling along.
In my opinion, whales are deluded into thinking they are the reason that FTP can play at all. "We should have an advantage because we pay for it blah blah blah" Which is just nonsense. It's the people that drop 10$ here and there, maybe 20$ on payday, that keep the money flowing. Treating yourself every now and then is a much better system than gorging yourself into extinction.
This may well be true, but it all depends on how many people are contributing overall in this ecosphere.
By looking at their 10k for 2016, almost 60% of their revenue comes from their sports titles. That trend will likely continue into the future. Their MAU is about 160 million users, and that's spread across all digital titles and all devices (their definition of MAU is just someone who logs in x number of times in 30 days)
Perhaps this title is all about the pops you get with each new character release, with whales spending the majority upfront and a smaller number of people doing 10 here and 20 there as they progress.
I think whales don't realize the other advantages they have. For a f2p it takes AGES to get and gear characters. I got to the top using siths and I still only have a 6* assassin, 4* ST, 4* DN. They took a lot of effort to gear and I can't even use them on raids. In fact my f2p guild just now is starting to do the hAAT so none of us have GK. Now the meta changed to rex/rebels so I have to start over. Slowly starring baze from his single node and so on. And all the while I have to work on my raid teams, clones and so on.
Guys, you don't have to grind! That's fantastic! Try starting a new account without spending any money and see how you like it.
There're also games that aren't ptw and stil do alright like CS:GO. Rich dudes can have those fancy skins and I can still shoot them in the face in perfect equality In any case I do think that another raid or game mode that uses a big roster would be welcome.
And in any case I'm sure that the devs have a close eye on the amount of money they get and how that money gets in (few whles, lot of dolphins, whatever).
i'm not buying this idea whales need something special others can't get that one or two have mentioned. the day anything becomes exclusive to the money spenders is the death of this game.
everything needs to be offered to everyone. the spenders have their advantage and that's maxing out toons before anyone else. they don't need exclusive content in addition.
What the whales get is time, and in this game it's a big advantage. Of course the content will be the same for everyone, but whales have immediate gratification and are able to dominate (potentially) before the opportunity becomes available to everyone else.
I'm still trying to get my Chirrut to 7* slowly through fleet tokens, and I don't even have a Baze yet! I'm sure eventually I'll have them both, but by then newer and potentially better characters would be available and the cycle starts again.
yes this true. personally i'm fine with it being this way. but i read a post that suggested whales need some incentive to spend money, that incentive being some toon or content the f2p players can't get.
i think the time advantage they get is enough. this is the very reason i'm not competitive and not impressed with the whales. all the whales are are a bunch of players with money to buy everything instead of spending the time to get it. i will be able to have everything they have and i will get it for free. i'm in no hurry to get it. let them pay thousands for their chaze then i can laugh when i maxed them for free.
ATF is somewhat along the lines of DN. remember when he came out? Everyone thought he would be like drennic but hey after a week or so triple cleanse came out
I'm kind of curious what exactly the whales in general and OP specifically think they need or deserve. It seems like it shouldn't be hard for them to get first at payout since they have the ideal meta squads and the best mods. And they don't even really need to finish first for the crystals since, by definition, they buy tons of crystals...so is it just to stroke their egos?
Is it frustration that they don't always hold top 5 for 23 hours until next payout? I doubt real whales are dropping much past 20, so it's NBD to fight back to #1 without a refresh. Even buying an arena refresh should be fine because, again...whales, crystals, etc. So is it the lack of unassailable dominance that they loathe?
Isn't the game primarily more about collecting than really strategizing or having superior battle tactical skill? AI defense is too poor to make strategy THAT important, in the absence of live pvp.
Also, I've always thought of crystals more as a way to save TIME than a direct way to win. You get characters faster/sooner, you can buy gear faster, you can buy ships faster to get zetas faster, you can sim more times for gear to get to g11 faster, you have more characters so you can react to meta shifts faster or do new raids faster (to get raid characters/gear faster).
The new release cadence is nice for f2p and light spenders, admittedly, and it seems weird to think that it could make more money than the old chromium/aurodium model. But maybe they burned whales too many times with G-spy, Zam, Wedge...mediocre characters in between the gems like Rex, Sun Fac, B2 and others I'm probably forgetting.
TL;DR, if it's their primary goal, real whales should be able to take #1 in arena no matter what, so what's the big deal?
Replies
Successful games do not rely on their big spenders for the critical part of their income; and if they do, they die; quickly. If you're calling for more focus on serving the tiny fraction of customers who have endless amounts of cash, you're calling for this game to stagnate.
Successful games tend to use the big spenders in the early stages of launch to help achieve scale quickly. It keeps the door open for people who believe they're strong willed enough to never spend money on a mobile game, to come in and play, then get hooked.
What then happens over time: again, in successful games, is that the game developers tweak the right ecosystem of incentives to make their huge funnel of "FTP" players slowly get drawn into paying money. The goal is to make MORE PEOPLE spend small sums, not to rely on the mega rich to keep the game afloat.
Think of it like an insurance system: you want more payers, to flatten the costs, to get more payers, to further flatten the costs.
Clash of Clans and Pokemon Go are great examples of games that respectively succeeded and failed to do this.
It is great if everyone spends $20 a week but the free community will always make up 80%. As with most places the top 1% pays for 30-40% of the revenue but as soon as there isn't enough sustained benefit than we will move to another game.
Maybe FTP won't care since on these boards if you question anyone who is FTP you suffer the wrath of the board but without major change the whale will die.
^^^ bingo! +1
Not when the going rate is only 15-20 a month for very profitable subscription games with unlimited play & almost bottomless wells of content.
Perhaps my wording was bad I meant it would be nice if everyone spent 20$ a month as other posters suggested . But 80% of players will be FTP so I believe better exclusive content for the whales is needed
yeah these complaints are fom launch time whales as f2p also have huge rosters. on newer servers the gap will be considerably wider.. as a launch time f2p i dont have much left to do either, on save mode on all fronts.
everything needs to be offered to everyone. the spenders have their advantage and that's maxing out toons before anyone else. they don't need exclusive content in addition.
Good
True, but she doesn't make an already meta team better. Someone who threw $300 on a toon would expect to play her in arena for a while... on our shard at least, she came in for 48 hours and then disappeared.
It's not rocket surgery.
Unfortunately they seem to think that way. A triple A class console game costs 70-80 and people buy it once. But hey, the new Ferraris cost money, too...
I played World of Warcraft for ages for less than that. And the amount of content? No comparison!
I still see the historical whales on my shard maxing toons from the packs 7* - 6* minimum. The true whales are still as whaley as ever. I take your approach as well - just wait a bit and it's either free in shard shop or greatly discounted in shipments if I want it from there earlier than shard shop.
its true too, its not a troll because the game is supported by whales. without them there would be no reason to keep the game running, and nothing to pay for the servers.
I would wager that World of Warcraft has a larger number of players overall, and a much different economy of scale apply there.
What the whales get is time, and in this game it's a big advantage. Of course the content will be the same for everyone, but whales have immediate gratification and are able to dominate (potentially) before the opportunity becomes available to everyone else.
I'm still trying to get my Chirrut to 7* slowly through fleet tokens, and I don't even have a Baze yet! I'm sure eventually I'll have them both, but by then newer and potentially better characters would be available and the cycle starts again.
What I am saying is that a toon a month is not going to make me cough up any coins in this game.
Hard to tell with subscription v F2D, but WOW had a high point of just over 10m subscribers just before Christmas (new release) and a low of 5.6m before that, there might not be a world of difference in size of player base seeing as SWGOH has around 10k installs per day.
This may well be true, but it all depends on how many people are contributing overall in this ecosphere.
By looking at their 10k for 2016, almost 60% of their revenue comes from their sports titles. That trend will likely continue into the future. Their MAU is about 160 million users, and that's spread across all digital titles and all devices (their definition of MAU is just someone who logs in x number of times in 30 days)
Perhaps this title is all about the pops you get with each new character release, with whales spending the majority upfront and a smaller number of people doing 10 here and 20 there as they progress.
Guys, you don't have to grind! That's fantastic! Try starting a new account without spending any money and see how you like it.
There're also games that aren't ptw and stil do alright like CS:GO. Rich dudes can have those fancy skins and I can still shoot them in the face in perfect equality
And in any case I'm sure that the devs have a close eye on the amount of money they get and how that money gets in (few whles, lot of dolphins, whatever).
yes this true. personally i'm fine with it being this way. but i read a post that suggested whales need some incentive to spend money, that incentive being some toon or content the f2p players can't get.
i think the time advantage they get is enough. this is the very reason i'm not competitive and not impressed with the whales. all the whales are are a bunch of players with money to buy everything instead of spending the time to get it. i will be able to have everything they have and i will get it for free. i'm in no hurry to get it. let them pay thousands for their chaze then i can laugh when i maxed them for free.
i never understand this idea of assuming people can't be f2p based on their progress in the game.
Is it frustration that they don't always hold top 5 for 23 hours until next payout? I doubt real whales are dropping much past 20, so it's NBD to fight back to #1 without a refresh. Even buying an arena refresh should be fine because, again...whales, crystals, etc. So is it the lack of unassailable dominance that they loathe?
Isn't the game primarily more about collecting than really strategizing or having superior battle tactical skill? AI defense is too poor to make strategy THAT important, in the absence of live pvp.
Also, I've always thought of crystals more as a way to save TIME than a direct way to win. You get characters faster/sooner, you can buy gear faster, you can buy ships faster to get zetas faster, you can sim more times for gear to get to g11 faster, you have more characters so you can react to meta shifts faster or do new raids faster (to get raid characters/gear faster).
The new release cadence is nice for f2p and light spenders, admittedly, and it seems weird to think that it could make more money than the old chromium/aurodium model. But maybe they burned whales too many times with G-spy, Zam, Wedge...mediocre characters in between the gems like Rex, Sun Fac, B2 and others I'm probably forgetting.
TL;DR, if it's their primary goal, real whales should be able to take #1 in arena no matter what, so what's the big deal?