Open letter about Zetas
February 12, 2017 12:38PM
edited February 2017
I am writing this as a warning. I know I am only one person and you probably won't care. I've been playing since November 2015 as a pay to play player who spends several hundred dollars a month so I hope you listen.
You need to fix your Zeta system or I will be leaving the game and assume that many more will as well over time.
I spend money on this game buying shards and gear and mods and ship materials and so on. I play every single day, many many times a day, to maximize my position in the game. So I do everything I am supposed to according to your game design and business model, yet I am falling further and further behind because of zetas.
I did what I was supposed to and completed all the ship requirements and challenges to enable the challenge that rewards zetas. Even with that I haven't seen a zeta in weeks. I can't buy them with dollars and the only other way to get them is through the ship store which I am currently stuck farming ships to stay current in that aspect of the game. If I stop that I will drop rank in ship arena and then earn fewer fleet arena tokens allowing me to buy fewer and fewer zetas. See how is also a long term losing proposition? I know, I know, I could spend on maxing out my ships right away and shift focus but as I said, my budget is several hundred a month and not several thousand.
So in a nutshell you introduced an element to this game which is proving to be absolutely critical and yet you leave it to chance?
I've had a bad run of luck which has set me back pretty drastically. If that doesn't change I will be so far down the wrong direction and so far back that I will abandon this game.
A fundamental tenet of game design for games like this is that you blend skill with chance because when you leave it entirely to chance, games implode, people leave and the game dies. If I wanted to spend hundreds of dollars a month on a pure chance game I'd go play slots.
Good night and good luck.
You need to fix your Zeta system or I will be leaving the game and assume that many more will as well over time.
I spend money on this game buying shards and gear and mods and ship materials and so on. I play every single day, many many times a day, to maximize my position in the game. So I do everything I am supposed to according to your game design and business model, yet I am falling further and further behind because of zetas.
I did what I was supposed to and completed all the ship requirements and challenges to enable the challenge that rewards zetas. Even with that I haven't seen a zeta in weeks. I can't buy them with dollars and the only other way to get them is through the ship store which I am currently stuck farming ships to stay current in that aspect of the game. If I stop that I will drop rank in ship arena and then earn fewer fleet arena tokens allowing me to buy fewer and fewer zetas. See how is also a long term losing proposition? I know, I know, I could spend on maxing out my ships right away and shift focus but as I said, my budget is several hundred a month and not several thousand.
So in a nutshell you introduced an element to this game which is proving to be absolutely critical and yet you leave it to chance?
I've had a bad run of luck which has set me back pretty drastically. If that doesn't change I will be so far down the wrong direction and so far back that I will abandon this game.
A fundamental tenet of game design for games like this is that you blend skill with chance because when you leave it entirely to chance, games implode, people leave and the game dies. If I wanted to spend hundreds of dollars a month on a pure chance game I'd go play slots.
Good night and good luck.
Post edited by Mageduckey on
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This discussion has been closed.
Replies
But if you really spend hundreds of dollar a month, you should have uber mods which should compensate your lack of Zeta. (My 288 speed TFP and 270 Boba annoy a lot of players).
I now comfortably sit in top30 ship arena.
Purchasing blueprints from there is not essential, unless you really wanna be n.1 (which doesn't give you that much more ship credits). Besides, you can buy ship packs if you wanna excel in both zetas and ship arena.
Sorry, what you say is wrong. You've just planned your strategy badly. You'd have a somewhat decent fleet and 40 zetas by now, if you did differently.
^^+1 I don't have any zetas yet but purchasing them in shipments seems like the best route to go when I'm ready. I have many toons to Omega for Heroic AAT squads otherwise I would've invested in them by now. And like what the above said, you don't need zeta to beat zeta toons. I beat a zAder team in GW yesterday just because I had more speed and a better squad comp. I wish you the best of luck!
As a player who spend $100s a month I'm sure you have not had to make hard choices but this is one of the hardest for f2p.
Due to their importance zetas should be rare and hard to get, what's the point to all they deliver if everyone can get them right away. Could drop rates be better, probably, but then it wouldn't be such a hard choice to buy them.
We would hate to see you go. Good luck.
Well.. If u want that devs read this, they just read stuff in they filters.. Use keywords like august in the end to make them read your threat.. It works
Not to hard to keep yourself in top 50. 1300 token is enough for 1 zeta every 2 days + 5 shard of slave or cimetarry as a bonus.
My first zeta asks me 30 days. Very bad rng on challenges. I received 8 zeta with them and bought 12 in shop store.
What is the point of being more competitive on ship fights ? Unless you get top 3 every day there is quite no difference between top 100 and top 10 if you think on duration and not on a single day.
Just ignore ship competition for the moment. We will all end 7* ship and g11 pilots. Then you'll be able to compete with you dollars, buying new ships before others.
Remember, cristals >>> all. So focus on zeta >>> ships
Literally ONE thing gets added to the game that you can't buy and you instantly call it a "pure chance game", Calm down.
You will upgrade your fleet and continue to progress in Zetas.
This. Don't put all the eggs under one basket.
Zetas can make some teams viable, but they are hardly needed in the arena. The two best teams in my arena don't even use zetas and they never leave the top 10. People with 2 or 3 zetas lose to them.
Overrated, but yes fix the drops so we can at least attempt to try something new without waiting months just to zeta one freakin toon.
One factor people rarely bring up when talking about f2p vs p2p... is time in game.
A f2p player who has been playing since the beginning can easily have an advantage over a p2p player with less game time.
f2p and p2p can be near identical in many aspects of the game, though p2p usually can do it in shorter time.
The take away I get is the problem is the RNG and some that are completely striking out with goose eggs.
Given the power of zetas (just like my opposition of lucky uber speed secondaries), I would tend to agree it seems like the variance causes gaps in power that is purely luck vs toon/gear planning and resource management.
They could almost just have 1 ability mat challenges that guarantees one zeta with low odds for a 2nd. Or 2 zetas with low odds of getting 1 or 3 similar to how Credit Heist works.
This is basically what I did.. I got a good number of those ship packs and used most ship resources to fill in gaps and buy zeta.
Yeah, I bought the Executrix bundle (mainly to get the 50 Sun Fac shards, who I didn't have yet) and got a whole bunch of blueprints and pilot shards of pilots I didn't have leveled up. Then, I bought some of those 499 crystal packs and got some blueprints to add to it.
After that, I bought Sun Fac and Rex shards when I saw them in Fleet shipments and Zetas whenever I had 2,000 fleet currency saved up.
I now have a zVader and will have an additional 40 zeta mats by tonight, giving me the ability to add TWO zetas if I want (although I am waiting to see what zeta abilities Nihilus or the other 2 toons being released may have).
Bottom line is I would make zeta farming a big priority, when it comes to ships.
Do we not think 30 days is a problem though??? For me at my current rates I think I calculated it at 24 days per zeta, but I think that's still crazy. I'd like to make a first order team, but they need 4 zetas. That's 100 days before I get all the zetas for 1 squad!
Since they've been adding more zeta abilities I'm hoping there are more ways to get zetas soon. Kind of like omegas eventually became easier to earn.
+1
So used to get everything paying ....when one thing is like us mortals he posts this rant xD
This forum should be constructive and he gave a good point: He pays hundred of dollars to play this game every month and although he might have made bad decisions or took the wrong strategy, he still contributes more to the income than most FTP or small spender and thus to the life of this game.
I am not defending all the points of OP, but it would nice to have players respecting each other...
its hard to respect someone that pays to win and than complains when his economic stature can't get him something and has to farm it the long way like f2p. I do agree that the drop rate is very bad i haven't gotten one the last 4 days its been around, but you can't make people respect others it has to be earned
As a small spender (the 21 day subscription), I am grateful to all P2W who basically finance the game for me. The game is created for players to spend real money and he does ask for something become free or anything, he asks for spending more money to make up for his mistakes.
All the FTP strategy to get them are correct: buy ship packs and buy Zeta with fleet coins and it is still valid now.
My point was just some diplomacy would be a good thing to display if we want the game to survive.