Question for the Devs - Why SHOULDN'T I horde honor for sales?
Blast Hardcheese
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in The Bridge
In the timelines talks, it was mentioned that the preferred use of currency is spending it evenly. I do understand the point of view from the business side.
But does the business understand the point of view from MY side? Why should any of us consumers willingly and repeatedly relinquish the best bang for our finite bucks?
What incentive exists for me to spend currency evenly that is strong enough to equal, let alone counter, the incentive of waiting for a sale?
(This is all vaguely reminiscent of saying voyage revive tokens -- which should have been something more in-universe like "antimatter pods," but that's a separate issue -- were not intended to be used as a commodity, despite saving up two sets of 30 of them being the only reasonable way to collect even just one of each of the the 3-part dilemma crew.)
Collecting crew or even just tracking down a specific crew is VERY HARD given how stuffed the portal is. So if you want us to make it EVEN HARDER for ourselves, we're going to need a compelling reason.
How do you intend to sell us on being inefficient? Because randomizing the sale dates isn't a compelling argument.
But does the business understand the point of view from MY side? Why should any of us consumers willingly and repeatedly relinquish the best bang for our finite bucks?
What incentive exists for me to spend currency evenly that is strong enough to equal, let alone counter, the incentive of waiting for a sale?
(This is all vaguely reminiscent of saying voyage revive tokens -- which should have been something more in-universe like "antimatter pods," but that's a separate issue -- were not intended to be used as a commodity, despite saving up two sets of 30 of them being the only reasonable way to collect even just one of each of the the 3-part dilemma crew.)
Collecting crew or even just tracking down a specific crew is VERY HARD given how stuffed the portal is. So if you want us to make it EVEN HARDER for ourselves, we're going to need a compelling reason.
How do you intend to sell us on being inefficient? Because randomizing the sale dates isn't a compelling argument.
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There is another easy fix. No more honor sales at all.
It‘s funny, just because they did something 2-3 times, we take it for granted and expect it to happen regulary, regardless it was never said so.
Comment removed. ~Shan
Essentially I'm saving them for either the next power card, someone I really like, or for a FTM run.
Part of the reason some people had such high expectations for it is the significant problem of honour debt in the game.
The hoarding reflects the game's imbalance in that respect, and the inadequacy of options to address it outside the honour sale.
If TP do not want such hoarding, they need to provide better options to address honour debt. I am hopeful that the foreshadowed new features will go some way to doing so. Failing that, other measures should be considered. A recalculation of the honour gained for airlocking crew and/or buying cites, for instance.
Same with crew slots; slot sales are desperately awaited because they fill up fast and are very expensive outside of sales.
As Automaton 2000 noted on a Timelines Talks episode, “there is no putting that genie back in the bottle”. A lot of folks who’ve horded honor would rage quit if honor sales ceased entirely. Making the honor deals permanent would work, I think. In addition to everything else they’ve done to ease honor debt: 390 and 490 packs, the paid tier of the campaign, honor in skirmishes, and whatever they’re planning with premium packs, that additional step would be appreciated (by me anyway) given the number of golds in the game. I don’t think it would break the game, either: it would just spread out what people are getting through the honor sale anyway for the most part. It would make the Honor Hall exclusives look ridiculously expensive: those would probably need to be permanently discounted as well (wouldn’t help me: I’ve got all of them already).
On one hand, people would stockpile their honor for those sales to maximize their return. On the other hand, people would essentially be choosing to forego 6-12 months of potential benefit by not purchasing citations and/or beGolds. I fail to see this as a problem, since there is a clear opportunity cost that comes with stockpiling for a long period of time.
This approach would also avoid the blowback on something that should universally be considered a good thing by players, which always happens when an unexpected, unannounced surprise catches players off guard, resulting in the "I just spent all my honor yesterday and missed out on the extra value" complaint.
That's why a set schedule for common things in the game would go a long way towards managing player expectations and improving confidence in the developer:
- honor sales
- portal updates
- collection updates/additions
- honor hall updates
- gauntlet updates
- crew slot sales
Dropping them without a word would really tick off players, but that doesn't mean they're captaining the Kobayashi Maru. They could cap the amount of honor you can spend during a sale (200-400k?) so that players can carry on normally during the year while also getting that celebration hit from a sale. Or if they do stop the current honor sales, make that clear to players and do some other kind of impromptu, varied options for honor from time to time to keep players interested.
But from what I understand, WRG doesn't want to A. let players know specifics about when sales/deals are coming B. have players sit on stockpiles waiting for unspecified sales/deals. Those two things seem to be at odds, currently.
I've loved the last couple honor sales, but I'm not sure that it's worth making the rest of the year kind of boring. Either the player feels bad for missing out on some great value, or they feel bad for not progressing their roster much in the meantime. Sure, you could expect every player to budget accordingly and be responsible for their own enjoyment, but I think this one is on the company to solve.
I like the idea of capping purchases, just like they already do for lots of other offers. That seems like the easiest solution. Keep the honor sales, keep them unannounced, but limit them to 2, 5 or 10 purchases.
Not wanting players to stockpile seems ridiculous to me. If there's any chance that a particular sale/offer might come along in the future, at least some players will always save indefinitely. What's next, telling players not to stockpile premium pulls in advance of a long awaited portal update? Or telling players to use shuttle rental tokens daily, rather than stockpiling them for faction events?
Wow, you must really want to see the pitchforks come out. Imagine the reaction from players who have hoarded vast quantities of honour being told they can only make limited purchases. If they are going to do that, it would be wise to have the next honour sale run as normal and then advise of a limitation for all future sales.
The limit was 10 times per day in the last honor sale and 1 timer per day for the 10k legendary behold.
They did. But the sale lasted long enough that I never came close to the max for the entire sale, and I had (iirc) approx 1.5M honor so the limit was essentially non existent.
As opposed to never having those sales again at all? I think you missed the earlier part of the conversation that provided the context behind my comment that you must have missed.
I dropped about 700k honor in the summer and have another 400-500k saved up, so I am one of those players you were referring to.... and totally agree with your assessment!
This to me is the crux of the entire point being talked about. I will attempt to explain this as I understand it both to try and help the players refine what it is they ask for, but also to the developers to help them understand exactly what is happening vs what it is they apparently want to happen.
I will take it as truth that Ben made some comment to the effect of that the expectation from TP is that players not hoard resources/currencies, and that we use them up as we earn them on a steady basis. This is the textbook definition of the Fixed Ratio Reinforcement Schedule; after a predictable number of occurrences, a predictable reward is provided. To frame this for STT, after a predictable number of daily activities and crew dismissals, a player earn enough Honor for a 5* citation and buys it. Unless I am missing something, this seems to me to be what TP expects us to do with our Honor. (Or replace 5* citation with a 5* begold ,you understand the point, they expect us to earn Honor steadily and use it on items with set prices).
However, over the last several years the company has provided unannounced/unscheduled Honor Sales where we the players have been given staggeringly awesome discounts and special LTOs with which to spend our Honor that offer a significantly greater reward/value than the standard prices/items in the Honor Hall. This is the textbook definition of the Variable Interval Reinforcement Schedule; after an unknown amount of time, reinforcement is provided. To frame this for STT, we never know when the next Honor Sale is coming or how much Honor we will need to take full advantage, so most players simply do the minimum every day to make sure we are still generating Honor and then refuse to spend any. This seems to be the part that TP is missing assuming they do want to get us all on a schedule where we regularly spend our Honor rather than saving it up.
As you can see, assuming I have this correct, the expected schedule and the schedule in practice are 180 degrees different. IMO this needs to be addressed first before any further discussion about spending Honor can take place.
Would it be a bit of a bummer to not be able to drop this monster stockpile all on a special sale?
Yeah, but knowing what the limit is would help me make smart choices about where and when the excess should be spent, which would be a net benefit for my enjoyment of the game.
They announced on January 6th that something was coming in a week and gave you a hint to hold on for seven days. This is not a "change your behaviour" request and everyone knows it.
And to top it, they say they want us to spend honor as we get it, but then tell us to save portal pulls? Isn't this a contradictory request?
Dear Developers,
Your problem here is that you do not have specific plans people know about. I cannot predict what you will do, and therefore I save. I save dilithium for crew slots and I save honor for the sales. I will continue this practice until I hear definite facts I can predict. Sorry if that is not what you wanted.
David
One wrinkle that I think will make it harder for the company to solve regarding caps: how do they keep the revenue? There's got to be some bigger spenders out there who buy up those honor offers. I think someone said $100 gets you 10 citations and 9 beholds. The company will be hard pressed to get that kind of revenue if a cap were put in place.
I don't see how they stop or cap honor sales without losing revenue.
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They wouldn't get rid of it without letting us spend it first. Worst case scenario we buy a bunch of citations with it.
But what I suspect is that they will introduce a new way to use honor as well as the new currencies. They may want us to have a reason to spend honor instead of hoarding so much of it.
What if the dabo sale uses honor? At what price point would you buy out the dabo wheel with honor? If 10 dilithium was equal to 10 honor (for dabo only, and for the limited sale only) would you buy out the wheel?
I forget the exact number of dil crystals required to clear the wheel but it’s somewhere in the neighborhood of 14-15k. 15,000 honor is easier and cheaper to acquire than 15,000 dil, by a wide margin, so yes...I bet I would buy out the wheel multiple times if the numbers were the same but the currency was changed from dil to honor.
Now I would be surprised if they actually did this, but it being such a good deal, about 15 or 17k honor to buy out the wheel basically 17k honor for a legendary of their choosing (similar to the 10k honor begold daily during the honor sale) would be a good way to get people to use up some honor for a week of this special dabo sale like never before. Then we would all have less honor during an eventual honor sale.
Its just a far out theory that may make people very happy with them. And would go along with turning off the ad warp to balance it.