Discount on boosters

[PrincessKenny]

Hello. Even at survey there was a question "how long do you play daily" with answer "I quit after making my quests and getting discount" (or something like that).

In fact there is nothing to do after making quests and grabbing discount. BFP reserve is SOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO SLOOOOOOOW...

So. Little ideas how to fix that problem:

1. Max reserve 400 and boost amount of getting it.
2. One more quest daily (3 in total).
3. Discount counter of 45 min. Make it repeatable. After buying booster 45 min bar could reset.
4. As I mention on discord new lobby with selected (by staff) community maps which would give same rewards as campaign or rpve maps.

[Cocofang]

Giving no huge advantage to disproportionate time investment was one of the big considerations when creating the current system.

A repeatable discount would directly translate to an additional 100 BFP value generated every 45 minutes.

At the same time the current lay of the land in gaming is that there are countless games all demanding the players attention and time. There is constant pressure to continue engaging because otherwise you miss out on rewards. That's exhausting and I don't feel like territory this project should wade into deeper. It's really tricky to solve.

[PrincessKenny]

Timer can be longer each time. Players are NOT equal. Someone will always be better than others.

By being scared about that people who play hour daily will be poor and people who play 8 hours daily will be rich devs have created system that encourage quitting after 1 hour play. And that's not good.

100BFP every 45mins is not reward that can put pressure to someone who actually can't play longer but will reward people who play longer and get basically no rewards at all after Daily Boost runs out.

[Majora]

Fair suggestions, and something that probably does not have a perfect solution. I'll share some thoughts, but keep in mind im not one of the game designers. Please rest assured a lot of thought went into the economy of Skylords Reborn, and it still comes up for healthy discussions as well. Which is also the reason I added the question to the survey in the first place 🙂 . 

Since Skylords Reborn does not have any microtransactions, it does not use the good ol' free to play formula, where everything can either be grindy and free, or purchase-able if you dont have much time available. That results in a system where you have to carefully balance how much rewards you hand out over a period of time. Too much, and the players will unlock everything so fast they leave the game too soon. Too slow, and people dont feel motivated to keep playing.

Imagine we had the extreme of every minute you play, you get BFP. It would probably result in you grinding the game in the omg-skylords-is-awesome phase. Then when things slow down, you already have so many points available that there is not much else to do. And you might leave. 

Make things too hard, and the opposite happens. You can't get the cards you want, and get bored out by the game before you even unlock cool stuff.

The extra factor that comes into play is the catch-up for newer players. This is kind of a two sided sword though. One one hand, by limiting the procession players have (by locking the BFP you can gain on a daily base), players cant get super far ahead. However, the game is now out for 2 years, so at this point they are. At the same time, that very system is preventing newer players from catching up. 

The reason the current system was put into place, was to reward a concrete point (play 45 minutes), but also reward playing for a bit longer. Cant play today? No problem! Tomorrow you can catch up by using the reserve you saved from yesterday. The system is not perfect, but it was carefully tested during beta, and we have not had many complaints about it since release. The biggest complaints is often how hard it is to get Ultra Rares, which is why we released reforging (and might change numbers if the data requires it). 

There have been idea's like a daily login bonus, or moving some of the discounted-booster-progress towards the next day. But nothing concrete has been decided yet. We did add new achievements to increaes the new player experience lately though. Increasing quest could also be an option. 

Edit: one more thing to note would be that we saw a drastic effect on the economy once we had the monthly 100-BFP discount on boosters, in combination with Reforging. Tweaks to the economy can have huge ripple effects that can take months to properly observe. 

[Cocofang]

1 hour ago, PrincessKenny said:

Someone will always be better than others.

That's irrelevant here because there is no payout for skill. Not right now and not with your proposals.

But there is for just sinking time in. And at this point you also have to consider that you create extra incentive for afk-farming by rewarding playtime even more. If you want to prevent that you'll instead have to dabble in potentially convoluted restrictions, further complicating what should be an intuitive, very general progression system.

Additionally, the BFP boost, daily discount and quests are not the only ways to make progress. There are also achievements, offering milestones all the way from the beginning until expert level. And the great thing about those is that they can be completed at a players own pace, without time pressure and FOMO breathing down the neck.

And there is also trading, which generates much more BFP than even a super buffed daily system with all of the proposed points would.

[PrincessKenny]

2 hours ago, Cocofang said:

That's irrelevant here because there is no payout for skill.

"Better" in terms "more wealthy".

2 hours ago, Cocofang said:

And at this point you also have to consider that you create extra incentive for afk-farming by rewarding playtime even more.

Every system can be abused and I mean EVERY. 1% players abusing it doesn't mean that rest should get punished.

2 hours ago, Cocofang said:

There are also achievements, offering milestones all the way from the beginning until expert level. And the great thing about those is that they can be completed at a players own pace, without time pressure and FOMO breathing down the neck.

They are also one time only so if someone will do them then that's it. No further sense to play above 1 hour.

4 hours ago, Majora said:

Imagine we had the extreme of every minute you play, you get BFP. It would probably result in you grinding the game in the omg-skylords-is-awesome phase. Then when things slow down, you already have so many points available that there is not much else to do. And you might leave.

That is why it's important to don't overdue. There are not a lot of players who gather boosters for sell. Mostly new players are doing that. People who play longer just open them so discount timer shouldn't hit economy as much. In my opinion it would create more cards to market/forge with.

[Kubik]

7 hours ago, PrincessKenny said:

100BFP every 45mins is not reward that can put pressure to someone who actually can't play longer but will reward people who play longer and get basically no rewards at all after Daily Boost runs out.

simply said it would encourage multi-accounting to get 3200 BFP multiple times each day.

[PrincessKenny]

1 hour ago, Kubik said:

simply said it would encourage multi-accounting to get 3200 BFP multiple times each day.

Isn't this forbidden already?

[Dutchy]

Doesn't mean people don't do it. So we shouldn't encourage it too much 😛

[PrincessKenny]

Ok but to get booster You need to play. Multiaccounting now have more sense than after change like this. Now every hour new account. If counter would reset it will require to run multiple clients at once. Too much efford in my opinion.

Hard to do anything after that 1 hour daily but that's Your choice. I'm not GM 😛

[Kubik]

well right now you can get 100 BFP from this system per day.

But if it would be per each hour, you can get it 24 times per day. And that would be much higher reward for same risk, and would increase risk of people building farms of PCs faking to play BF to gain maximum rewards.