Reward/Economy Overhaul

[SanityCh3ck]

Hello there!

Over the past week I've been having some thoughts on what I'd like a sequel to look like, and most of what I came up with could also be applied to Skylords Reborn. Back in the day, the ingame economy was designed to get people to spend real money. Since that is no longer a concern we shouldn't feel too attached to that system. These proposed changes would be codependent and quite invasive but in my opiniion they would make for a better game, so I decided to share them here for your consideration. Any feedback, also regarding potential limits of what can be done with the client, would be greatly appreciated.

Please reserve your judgment until the end as most of these suggestions only make sense in tandem. Anyway, here goes:

Upgrades:

• Display somewhere in the upgrade menu which campaign missions drop the upgrade. (This one would be nice regardless of all the other stuff)
• Have the loot generation algorithm take into account which upgrades the player(s) don't have yet, and only drop those (or strongly favor them). Card rarity should also still factor in.
• Remove ability to buy upgrades for currency.
• Remove fee for upgrade application.

Originally, campaign missions were the only way to obtain upgrades. With all the cards from later editions in the mix, this would be a huge pain which is why I propose stacking the drop probabilities in the players' favor. One consequence would be that players would now have to actually play all those missions that currently see barely any action, and displaying where upgrades drop would allow them to deliberately farm what they need.

At this point, gold would serve no real purpose anymore, but I'll get to that now.

Auction House:

• Switch marketplace to operate entirely on gold.
• If an auction with 3g buyout runs out, let there be a 25% (?) chance that the "server" buys it. (This one would also be nice regardless of the other stuff)
• Remove auction fee.
• Limit amount of active auctions to player's highest current rank.

Obviously, without further changes players would have way too much disposable gold, so let's address that next.

Gold:

• Remove campaign base reward.
• Keep (but adjust) rPvE and PvP base rewards and gold chests.
• Adjust chest/rPvE/PvP rewards to get desired average Campaign/rPvE/PvP profitability ratios  (1/2/2, perhaps 1/3/3 ?). Should account for median match duration and difficulty.
• Remove or adjust upgrade to gold conversion.
• Switch fee for changing the avatar to gold.

As you can see, the idea is to make campaign missions the way to get upgrades, and rPvE and PvP the main way to get new cards. The neccessary metrics could be collected server-side. The current system imposes an arbitrary hard limit on the progress a player can make in one day, especially since gold currently isn't much of an issue anyway. Personally, I find myself a bit demotivated once the daily quests are completed, which is surely not the point. How much gold a player can get in a given timeframe could be regulated (in code) with a global multiplier.

Wait, what about BFP?

BFP:

• Relegate BFP to serving as "booster tokens".
• Can be obtained through achievements.
• Make BFP non-transferable.

Boosters:

• For every booster, have two purchase options. One to pay with 450g, and the other to pay with 1BFP.
• Make boosters non-transferable.

Currently, many players just sell their boosters to get around the 150BFP daily limit. Since there would no longer be a hard limit that would be obsolete. Also, people would no longer get a booster every day.

The first point would solve another problem: Once edition-specific boosters are back, players could just choose what kind of booster they want when they complete an achievement.

Achievements:

• Only way to get BFP.

Eg. a PvE rank achievement could drop 1 BFP per rank. This would give new players a kickstart and could replace the daily quest achievement.  Perhaps not every stage of every achievement should just drop 1 BFP though. For example a campaign completion achievement could drop 1/2/3 BFP for the respective difficulties.

Daily Quests:

• Pretty much obsolete.

Currently they serve as the way to get BFP. In many other games daily quests are a lackluster bandaid to keep players engaged, with the unintended consequence that they only play until the quests are completed or bonuses run out. With all the other changes, there'd be no point in keeping them.

Overall, these changes should have no long-term effect on actual prices, since those are mainly determined by booster price, card drop probability, gameplay value and market saturation. The rate at which the currency can be acquired should only affect the perceived value of the currency itself. How big should the reward multiplier be? No idea, but I'll leave this GDC talk about Rewards in Video Games here that partially inspired this post (TL;DW: Fun more important than balance).

 

In closing I'd like to express my gratitude to the developers for all their hard work and dedication in bringing this game back. I've truly missed it!

Thank you for your consideration!

Edited January 29, 2019 by SanityCh3ck

[Kubik]

• Display somewhere in the upgrade menu which campaign missions drop the upgrade. planned
• Have the loot generation algorithm take into account which upgrades the player(s) don't have yet, and only drop those (or strongly favor them). Card rarity should also still factor in. that could break 4p games when one player do not have all rewards and 3 player want gold
• Remove ability to buy upgrades for currency. and how would PvP players get upgrades?
• Remove fee for upgrade application. Why?

It look like you want to switch Gold for BFP and vice-versa

Client do not even allow upgrading for gold if you are interested in that detail. 

Client do not allow buying boosters for gold.

Client do not allow to pay for avatar change with gold.

Counter argument to quests why would players play at all if they would have no goal to reach?

By looking at your number 1000s players would have every cards in the first week.

No one would bother to use AH if they would be able to run map or two to get booster.

I do not see advantage in replacing BFP with gold.