GraveRobberX
Platinum Trophy: Learned to Shit While Upright Again.
Loot Boxes, Chests, Supply Drops, and Packs are now the norm in games. They were supposed to be an added addition to let players get more out of the game for playing. You could pay real money and earn cosmetic items faster, but nothing to change balance. Then slowly certain games started abusing this, shoehorned in F2P tactics or pay walls to stonewall you progression.
I bring this up due to Epic Games and their lust for Greed in the 2 games their co-currently working on
Fortnite and Paragon. 1 is in "Early Access", 1 is in "Beta".
Let's take Paragon first. A 3rd person shooter MOBA that's on PC and PS4 and has cross-play.
Early Access game which players could pay $100 to earn the Master Founders Pack. It guaranteed you the first 39 Heroes free of Charge, no reason to worry about the in game currency called Reputation at all.
Game has been RESET, 2 times. Your progress remained but it shifted slightly. First was a complete abandoning of the main map Legacy, shrinking it by 50%, and adjusting the game speeds of attack/abilities. Then on August 8th they overhauled their whole card system and attack/abilities again but this time fucked progression up so bad it has the whole community reeling.
So Paragon has really been through the grinder and is now in a state is disarray after evolving to its 3.0 Form.
Before a Hero cost 75,000Reputation. The in game currency. It could not be bought with real money, you could buy coins that was $1 = 100 coins. You got the first 5 Levels free for every Hero. You even earned the rewards free of charge. Meaning up to the release of 35 Heroes, you could earn 4 rewards for each, consisting of 70 Silver Chests (Levels 2 and 4), 70 Card Packs (levels 3 and 5) total. So you could get all Heroes to Level 5 and not pay a dime doing so, but in turn earn Reputation to unlock the Mastery Challenge for Heroes which granted you Rewards (Levels 6-10 locked until then) and XP bonuses as higher your levels went. If you wanted to bypass the Reputation sink, it was 1300 coins or $13 per Hero for you to unlock Master Challenge for said Hero and not worry about it, hell Founders packs made it free as is, so Reputation becomes slightly pointless. Just stockpiled.
Soon Chests came into being and Reputation intake exploded, you were earning more and no sink to remove currency, most players had maxed out buying Heroes Challenges, even without Founders pack and the stockpiling commenced. Cards were supposed to be the sink, but when you got all 292 cards, no need for packs @10,000Reputation.
Then we got Loot Crates and Keys, 300 coins and 200 coins respectively. So 500 coins for the combo, so $5 to take a gambling spin on earning on exclusive cosmetic items, miscellaneous items (banners, Rep and xp boosts (which were taken out eventually) or chunks of coins. Once people started hitting the cap of reward Loot table within said Crate pool, the reward was supplemental to Boosts, mostly Reputation Boosts that were worth maybe $3 back in worth. Community complained and Epic changed it to a flat 45,000 Reputation supplement reward.
Now after all that refresher course, game has gone through 2 huge game changes to completely reinvent itself.
Now with v42 dubbed a New Dawn, let's see how from the old progression system to the new system Epic thinks it's going and doing the game in the right direction.
Remember that Reputation, before given away like crazy, stockpiled to making most player Repillionaires, now the deflation has set in and pay walls and time gates have stopped progression.
So for a veteran, a Hero that you leveled to 10 is now considered Rank 10 Level 10 in the new system. Before you paid 75,000 Reputation roughly 50-65 games worth of play to unlock 1 Master Challenge. In new system you have to pay Reputation every Rank. Before Rank 10 would be the highest. Now there's 99 Ranks. Each Rank cost 750,000 Reputation to unlock next Rank and it's 10 levels of rewards.
Side note, before we were on an exponential XP system and a curve that first 5 levels were gained fast and the next 5 were the true grind in scaling xp wise. Example level 9-10 in the old system was like taking 3 Heroes from level 1-5 xp wise in that time frame. Took you roughly 200 hours total to hit cap. Now we shifted to a linear xp model. Each Rank has 10 Levels, 9 of them being rewards, so 6000 per level, for 54,000XP needed per Rank Up. So 540,000 XP needed to reach cap. In turn 2 hours per level, 20 hours per Rank, 200 to hit old cap, but with 99 Ranks now, 2000 hours required.
Back to topic at hand if you have a capped Hero as a veteran of Rank 10, Level 10 it's asked you pay 750,000 Reputation for next Rank, it being 11. Then when you hit the cap again, pay 750,000 again, repeat till Rank 99.
Let's see how in the old system Reputation was given, most was earned through Chests. The better Tier the chest, the more amount the Rep could be paid out. Bronze giving you the least, Silver second, Gold the second most, Diamond with its Tier having you give the most at a cap of 11,250Reputation as a reward. Mind you each chest could award 4 rewards and Chests could give you all Reputation, so a Diamond giving you 45,000Reputation was feasible.
Now Reputation is removed from Chests. Only way you earn Reputation is through playing matches which reward roughly 2500-4000 per game, a little bump up of 200℅ from the old system. You also earn 100,000 Reputation every 5 days or so from logging in Daily and earning that. Then you have Daily Quests which give every 3 days or so a chance to earn an extra 20-25,000Rep.
So the Devs mindset at the moment is 200,000-250,000Rep from them by the way of time gates is fair and the rest you should get on your own. So you need to cover 500,000-550,000Rep by playing matches. So now just to Rank up 1 Hero requires you to grind like a madman every week or wait out 2 weeks and get 250,000, you know 100 matches within those 2 weeks to earn said Rank amount.
All that bullshit I wrote could be passed away, How? With coins Silly, Real Money to PROGRESS!. Why in the old system we let you try out and earn stuff up to level 5 for free for each Hero. If Reputation sink was too much, pay $13 in coins and forget about.
New system asks you pay 500 coins, $5, PER RANK. So 10 Ranks = $50 for a SINGLE HERO. 99 RANKS = $500 TOTAL for a Hero and there's 35 Heroes at the moment, 36th coming next week.
You can't earn enough Reputation within 2 weeks to cover next Rank and are capped within say 3-4 days of playing said Hero XP wise and all that extra xp is wasted and not added to the players next Rank.
Now this is a veteran looking at it, now think how a new player coming into this game must feel. I haven't even mentioned the cockblock on cards/Gems the rarity or different stats on Gems that most veterans and new players feel, that would be to much info overload.
New players are locked into 3 Heroes, their Ranks requiring 1/3rd to 1/2 the asking price of a Veteran for just Rank 1. Then the Rank prices start increasing. Some new players that joined that paying $5 on Heroes meant they were good for 10 Ranks. Epic did so many convoluting answers with no defined answers plastered in the game anywhere, that people thought, hey $50 for 10 Heroes to Rank up to 10 and not worry about this Rep Grind and Rep Sink felt the burn, once they hit Rank 2 and were requested to pay 500 coins again to progress. What new players read from blog posts Epic made that veterans who had already purchased Mastery Challenges for Heroes before v42 dropped would get the Rep Rank fee waived off until Rank 10 Level 10. Rank 11 750,000Reputation being the time/pay gate. So to them, hey me dropping $5 and being in line with those veterans is not bad, but they had to spend $50 on one single Hero, just level it up till Rank cap, pay $5 and repeat. 200 Hours of the same Hero and they would hit the same cap of the old system.
TL;DR, before game currency was cheap and in abundance, now game currency is at a premium and time walls and pay walls halt progression.
Before Heroes cost $13 total. Now $50 to Rank 10, up to $500 if you want to reach Rank Cap in this new system FOR ONE FUCKING HERO!, 36 Hero Roster...
_____________________
Let's take a look at Fortnite
This game is literally F2P Cancer Mechanics refined to such a state that Chemotherapy in the way of progression would not be a fighting chance. Taking away the pain.
The game has so many time gates, pay gates, and Loot traps that would make the most F2P whale even go Holy Shit, this game is sucking away money from me left and right. When a whale becomes aware of your tactics, you know you've fucked up.
The game has everything locked behind Loot llamas. All Heroes, Traps, Survivors (your buffs), Defenders (your AI buddies), Schematics of Weapons and Traps, Hero XP, Survivor XP, Schematic XP
Then there are tiers to this from Common Gray, Uncommon Green, Rare Blue, Legendary Orange and the Tan/Yellowish Mythic.
Now as you read all that, take Overwatch's Loot Boxes of Dupes galore, ramp that bitch up to 500% more Dupes and you get Loot llamas to a tee.
Oh by the way did I forget to mention that Loot llamas are tiered too.
You can go from Basic to Silver to Gold to "Jackpot"
There's also Mini llamas as a small pittance to keep the pavlovian neutrons firing.
Going higher tiers on llamas gives you more Loot, but thats all RNG. If basic gives you 6 rewards, next tier adds on 1-2 more, with Gold or better guarantee of at least Epic or better item within it
This game is literally RNG on RNG with more RNG on the side and for taste, a little more Sprinkle of RNG to get that RNG flavor just right.
They are asking $40 for this soon to be F2P by end of 2018 title, $60 for the legit edition and it's still in early access mode.
I got it free by trading digital codes with a GAFfer and feel ripped off, I feel for those that put real money into this.
There's great thing the game does right, but they're bogged down by such an archaic model of fuck you, pay us to have the privilege of playing our game as a QA tester.
________________
As you can see some mindshare is taking place at Epic Games, where once a great F2P title that rewarded you for investing time, you in turn rewarded back with money and keeping that synergy going now has shifted to pay and time gates cause the data has shown to them, that squeezing out money out of players is the right course to letting them progress, is the best solution to keeping the "lights on". Even though Founders Editions for both have been paying those light for awhile
Funny how tactics from one that got streamlined in Alpha and is in Early Access are now infesting another game of theirs in Beta
Sorry for the long essay
I bring this up due to Epic Games and their lust for Greed in the 2 games their co-currently working on
Fortnite and Paragon. 1 is in "Early Access", 1 is in "Beta".
Let's take Paragon first. A 3rd person shooter MOBA that's on PC and PS4 and has cross-play.
Early Access game which players could pay $100 to earn the Master Founders Pack. It guaranteed you the first 39 Heroes free of Charge, no reason to worry about the in game currency called Reputation at all.
Game has been RESET, 2 times. Your progress remained but it shifted slightly. First was a complete abandoning of the main map Legacy, shrinking it by 50%, and adjusting the game speeds of attack/abilities. Then on August 8th they overhauled their whole card system and attack/abilities again but this time fucked progression up so bad it has the whole community reeling.
So Paragon has really been through the grinder and is now in a state is disarray after evolving to its 3.0 Form.
Before a Hero cost 75,000Reputation. The in game currency. It could not be bought with real money, you could buy coins that was $1 = 100 coins. You got the first 5 Levels free for every Hero. You even earned the rewards free of charge. Meaning up to the release of 35 Heroes, you could earn 4 rewards for each, consisting of 70 Silver Chests (Levels 2 and 4), 70 Card Packs (levels 3 and 5) total. So you could get all Heroes to Level 5 and not pay a dime doing so, but in turn earn Reputation to unlock the Mastery Challenge for Heroes which granted you Rewards (Levels 6-10 locked until then) and XP bonuses as higher your levels went. If you wanted to bypass the Reputation sink, it was 1300 coins or $13 per Hero for you to unlock Master Challenge for said Hero and not worry about it, hell Founders packs made it free as is, so Reputation becomes slightly pointless. Just stockpiled.
Soon Chests came into being and Reputation intake exploded, you were earning more and no sink to remove currency, most players had maxed out buying Heroes Challenges, even without Founders pack and the stockpiling commenced. Cards were supposed to be the sink, but when you got all 292 cards, no need for packs @10,000Reputation.
Then we got Loot Crates and Keys, 300 coins and 200 coins respectively. So 500 coins for the combo, so $5 to take a gambling spin on earning on exclusive cosmetic items, miscellaneous items (banners, Rep and xp boosts (which were taken out eventually) or chunks of coins. Once people started hitting the cap of reward Loot table within said Crate pool, the reward was supplemental to Boosts, mostly Reputation Boosts that were worth maybe $3 back in worth. Community complained and Epic changed it to a flat 45,000 Reputation supplement reward.
Now after all that refresher course, game has gone through 2 huge game changes to completely reinvent itself.
Now with v42 dubbed a New Dawn, let's see how from the old progression system to the new system Epic thinks it's going and doing the game in the right direction.
Remember that Reputation, before given away like crazy, stockpiled to making most player Repillionaires, now the deflation has set in and pay walls and time gates have stopped progression.
So for a veteran, a Hero that you leveled to 10 is now considered Rank 10 Level 10 in the new system. Before you paid 75,000 Reputation roughly 50-65 games worth of play to unlock 1 Master Challenge. In new system you have to pay Reputation every Rank. Before Rank 10 would be the highest. Now there's 99 Ranks. Each Rank cost 750,000 Reputation to unlock next Rank and it's 10 levels of rewards.
Side note, before we were on an exponential XP system and a curve that first 5 levels were gained fast and the next 5 were the true grind in scaling xp wise. Example level 9-10 in the old system was like taking 3 Heroes from level 1-5 xp wise in that time frame. Took you roughly 200 hours total to hit cap. Now we shifted to a linear xp model. Each Rank has 10 Levels, 9 of them being rewards, so 6000 per level, for 54,000XP needed per Rank Up. So 540,000 XP needed to reach cap. In turn 2 hours per level, 20 hours per Rank, 200 to hit old cap, but with 99 Ranks now, 2000 hours required.
Back to topic at hand if you have a capped Hero as a veteran of Rank 10, Level 10 it's asked you pay 750,000 Reputation for next Rank, it being 11. Then when you hit the cap again, pay 750,000 again, repeat till Rank 99.
Let's see how in the old system Reputation was given, most was earned through Chests. The better Tier the chest, the more amount the Rep could be paid out. Bronze giving you the least, Silver second, Gold the second most, Diamond with its Tier having you give the most at a cap of 11,250Reputation as a reward. Mind you each chest could award 4 rewards and Chests could give you all Reputation, so a Diamond giving you 45,000Reputation was feasible.
Now Reputation is removed from Chests. Only way you earn Reputation is through playing matches which reward roughly 2500-4000 per game, a little bump up of 200℅ from the old system. You also earn 100,000 Reputation every 5 days or so from logging in Daily and earning that. Then you have Daily Quests which give every 3 days or so a chance to earn an extra 20-25,000Rep.
So the Devs mindset at the moment is 200,000-250,000Rep from them by the way of time gates is fair and the rest you should get on your own. So you need to cover 500,000-550,000Rep by playing matches. So now just to Rank up 1 Hero requires you to grind like a madman every week or wait out 2 weeks and get 250,000, you know 100 matches within those 2 weeks to earn said Rank amount.
All that bullshit I wrote could be passed away, How? With coins Silly, Real Money to PROGRESS!. Why in the old system we let you try out and earn stuff up to level 5 for free for each Hero. If Reputation sink was too much, pay $13 in coins and forget about.
New system asks you pay 500 coins, $5, PER RANK. So 10 Ranks = $50 for a SINGLE HERO. 99 RANKS = $500 TOTAL for a Hero and there's 35 Heroes at the moment, 36th coming next week.
You can't earn enough Reputation within 2 weeks to cover next Rank and are capped within say 3-4 days of playing said Hero XP wise and all that extra xp is wasted and not added to the players next Rank.
Now this is a veteran looking at it, now think how a new player coming into this game must feel. I haven't even mentioned the cockblock on cards/Gems the rarity or different stats on Gems that most veterans and new players feel, that would be to much info overload.
New players are locked into 3 Heroes, their Ranks requiring 1/3rd to 1/2 the asking price of a Veteran for just Rank 1. Then the Rank prices start increasing. Some new players that joined that paying $5 on Heroes meant they were good for 10 Ranks. Epic did so many convoluting answers with no defined answers plastered in the game anywhere, that people thought, hey $50 for 10 Heroes to Rank up to 10 and not worry about this Rep Grind and Rep Sink felt the burn, once they hit Rank 2 and were requested to pay 500 coins again to progress. What new players read from blog posts Epic made that veterans who had already purchased Mastery Challenges for Heroes before v42 dropped would get the Rep Rank fee waived off until Rank 10 Level 10. Rank 11 750,000Reputation being the time/pay gate. So to them, hey me dropping $5 and being in line with those veterans is not bad, but they had to spend $50 on one single Hero, just level it up till Rank cap, pay $5 and repeat. 200 Hours of the same Hero and they would hit the same cap of the old system.
TL;DR, before game currency was cheap and in abundance, now game currency is at a premium and time walls and pay walls halt progression.
Before Heroes cost $13 total. Now $50 to Rank 10, up to $500 if you want to reach Rank Cap in this new system FOR ONE FUCKING HERO!, 36 Hero Roster...
_____________________
Let's take a look at Fortnite
This game is literally F2P Cancer Mechanics refined to such a state that Chemotherapy in the way of progression would not be a fighting chance. Taking away the pain.
The game has so many time gates, pay gates, and Loot traps that would make the most F2P whale even go Holy Shit, this game is sucking away money from me left and right. When a whale becomes aware of your tactics, you know you've fucked up.
The game has everything locked behind Loot llamas. All Heroes, Traps, Survivors (your buffs), Defenders (your AI buddies), Schematics of Weapons and Traps, Hero XP, Survivor XP, Schematic XP
Then there are tiers to this from Common Gray, Uncommon Green, Rare Blue, Legendary Orange and the Tan/Yellowish Mythic.
Now as you read all that, take Overwatch's Loot Boxes of Dupes galore, ramp that bitch up to 500% more Dupes and you get Loot llamas to a tee.
Oh by the way did I forget to mention that Loot llamas are tiered too.
You can go from Basic to Silver to Gold to "Jackpot"
There's also Mini llamas as a small pittance to keep the pavlovian neutrons firing.
Going higher tiers on llamas gives you more Loot, but thats all RNG. If basic gives you 6 rewards, next tier adds on 1-2 more, with Gold or better guarantee of at least Epic or better item within it
This game is literally RNG on RNG with more RNG on the side and for taste, a little more Sprinkle of RNG to get that RNG flavor just right.
They are asking $40 for this soon to be F2P by end of 2018 title, $60 for the legit edition and it's still in early access mode.
I got it free by trading digital codes with a GAFfer and feel ripped off, I feel for those that put real money into this.
There's great thing the game does right, but they're bogged down by such an archaic model of fuck you, pay us to have the privilege of playing our game as a QA tester.
________________
As you can see some mindshare is taking place at Epic Games, where once a great F2P title that rewarded you for investing time, you in turn rewarded back with money and keeping that synergy going now has shifted to pay and time gates cause the data has shown to them, that squeezing out money out of players is the right course to letting them progress, is the best solution to keeping the "lights on". Even though Founders Editions for both have been paying those light for awhile
Funny how tactics from one that got streamlined in Alpha and is in Early Access are now infesting another game of theirs in Beta
Sorry for the long essay