Previously I was buying energy (120 energy points + 20 tickets) for 50 diamonds. After some time price for the same pack was 100 diamonds. Now it went back to 50 diamonds again.
Could anyone please explain me what it depends on? Time? Number of purchased energy per day (witch is ridiculous by the way, because usually price become lower)? Or maybe something else?
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In one day, you may refresh Cantina one and a half times (180 energy) or Normal twice (about 200-240)
Option one: 0 Crystals. No extra
Option two: 200 Crystals, 360 energy.
Option three: 1000. 1000 energy.
For 200 you double energy. For 1000 you triple. For 2000 you do 4 times regular. All this assuming you use energy within day to allow more to build up.
The design of the game is to bring you to it for shipments, arena, using capped energy, to then you are there won't allow anything else to be done. It's designed to temp you
There are many books and articles discussing freemium markets. I understand the psychology used. I've done a little bit of research into microtransactions. I also do not agree with it. Unfortunately, unless laws are passed against it, microtransactions are here to stay along with the free to play business model.
A better way would be to charge an upfront fee for the game. The same way traditional pricing has always been for gaming. I'll continue to spend and support CG for quality content. What I disagree with is anything that starts to fleece anyone. Whether they willingly make the purchases or not.
Now if they raise the level cap to 80 and it's exponentially more XP per level, then they need to do something about the energy costs. But it's not *really* that big a deal right now.
Jesse made note of it in another thread about this topic. He said he would bring it up to his colleagues, or something similar. Which doesn't really mean a lot, as that is a touchy area for both the players and the developers (I'd imagine), let alone their EA overlords. It's a major staple in their income, and that money is going a lot of places than just to the developers, obviously. That being said, we never had to put up with scaling premium currency costs in other CG titles that I've played (as far as I know). It's a ridiculous concept, and even more so that the cost can extend into the thousands. I'm not even sure what the cap is, as I wasn't crazy enough to purchase a refill for 1600. I doubt we'll see anything substantial on this soon, but as you said, the best we can do is to make sure it is kept a hot topic. I do appreciate Jesse at least communicating with us, though. If you want to see the exact post, it's probably fairly recent in his profile's post history, in a thread about energy costs.
It's been a while since I was this perturbed about anything game related. This has been my favorite game on mobile since it came out in September
Getting reasonably ranked in the arena nets you over 100 crystals per day. Think that can help with recharge expenses.
-Aaron
The cost doesn't bother me. I have a bad tendency to hoard game currency, for that just-in-case moment that may or may not come in the future. Once I am out of energy, I just switch to the next mobile game that has been recharging over the past few hours, and use up my energy their. Then rinse and repeat.
I agree that voting with wallets is a great method to get their attention. The problem is, while there are few that argue the point on principle, many others just pay the asking price, albeit reluctantly, thus justifying the price remaining suitable from the Devs perspective.
At the same time, I rarely ever request more stuff be made easily available to Free players. I recognize that EVERYTHING I am doing in the game is at absolutely no cost to me, and that I am entitled to nothing. I also recognize that businesses have to make money, of which F2P games do it best by first making a good game, then by making free-play progress EXTREMELY slow, then through creating a subtle or blatant pay-to-win/progress system. At the end of the day though, each consumer has a choice, although the psychological aspect of the design could be argued.
I'm not saying that we shouldn't make requests. Just that as free players, we sometimes need to step back and see that if the game were a quick and easy thing to get through, most would have absolutely no reason to spend money, which directly contradicts the point of the game being designed and released.
While some paying players feel they deserve some sort of kudos for falling into the F2P money trap; I applaud the Dev Teams instead, for not only giving me yet another free game to play, but for managing to convince other people to fund a game for the masses, when the same people wouldn't give a dime to actual people in need.
*unless it was like a dollar or something.
Secondly, the energy refill for Cantina is way too high. I do two 50 crystal refreshes for LS/DS and then that's it. It is disappointing really because I need to farm shards and cantina rewards to star two of my top 5 heroes.