Why as a VIP12, I don't see the value in spending any more, and how to easily change that.
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Problem Statement: After about 6 months of playing with just the monthly card, I rapidly accelerated from VIP 2 to VIP 12. I bought lots of premium packs and event packs, had fun building up a pool of purple and gold crew, but now, 1 year into playing, no longer see value in buying packs or spending money and I want to share why and how you can get me and people like me to buy a lot more as I believe I represent the large, mid level spenders that you want to retain.
A little about my crew: Through competing in events, buying packs, dilithium, etc, I now have 52 Legendary Crew. Excluding the “free” crew (Queen/Kortar/T’kumva/Picard/Guinan), I have 47 legendary crew, and out of a possible 235 stars, I have 69. That means to immortalize my crew, would take another 8,300,000 honor, that is roughly 22 years of playing or 8,300 packs.
Why I don't see value anymore: You may begin to see the issue, with the large number of super rare crew I have immortalized thanks to playing and spending, many times I buy a premium pack, I get no crew of value. Even if I get lucky and get a Legendary Behold, I inevitably get 3 new crew, none of which I can add stars to. Unfortunately you need to add at least 2 stars to almost any legendary crew to make them usefull. The result is that I have begun airlocking legendary crew just for the roster space, Legendary Crew now have negative value.
Give me value for packs and I will spend: If airlocking crew yielded a LOT more honor, it wouldn’t devalue your crew, it would cause so many to spend much more because it would actually increase the value of your crew. If 10 - 10 packs yielded enough honor to consistently get a legendary star, I would buy more packs (that is a 5-fold increase in honor), I would have the hope of immortalizing crew. This would lead me to competing harder in events, buying more packs, and trying to achieve more. I almost never do the $25 double deal because it is worthless if I can’t finish the crew. If completing crew was achievable, I would start doubling more crew. Ideally, even having a choice for a citation as on option in a behold would be huge.
Why doing this will not devalue your product: I know you are worried about devaluing the event offers and the whale spend, but they purchase and compete to win events, to be the first to immortalize, etc, this wouldn’t impact them. And think about it, I need 8,300,000 honor not even counting new crew coming out. You could give me 4,000,000 honor and I would still need 10 years of playing to accumulate that much. Basically demand is so far exceeding supply that even tripling supply wouldn't begin to touch demand.
TL;DR: Allow players that want to spend 30-40 a month actually have a chance to immortalize their crew and we will spend more. Improve honor for dismissed crew, give out citations in portals and we will keep striving to enhance our crew. Keep things as they are and I just have no reason to spend anything, another 1/5 legendary just takes up crew space. Even the 10X10 offers just don’t interest me anymore. The choice is yours.
edit: Edited for clarity that I was recommending getting 50,000 honor from 10 packs of 10 (a 5x increase in honor), not 50k honor from a 10 pack (a 50x increase).
A little about my crew: Through competing in events, buying packs, dilithium, etc, I now have 52 Legendary Crew. Excluding the “free” crew (Queen/Kortar/T’kumva/Picard/Guinan), I have 47 legendary crew, and out of a possible 235 stars, I have 69. That means to immortalize my crew, would take another 8,300,000 honor, that is roughly 22 years of playing or 8,300 packs.
Why I don't see value anymore: You may begin to see the issue, with the large number of super rare crew I have immortalized thanks to playing and spending, many times I buy a premium pack, I get no crew of value. Even if I get lucky and get a Legendary Behold, I inevitably get 3 new crew, none of which I can add stars to. Unfortunately you need to add at least 2 stars to almost any legendary crew to make them usefull. The result is that I have begun airlocking legendary crew just for the roster space, Legendary Crew now have negative value.
Give me value for packs and I will spend: If airlocking crew yielded a LOT more honor, it wouldn’t devalue your crew, it would cause so many to spend much more because it would actually increase the value of your crew. If 10 - 10 packs yielded enough honor to consistently get a legendary star, I would buy more packs (that is a 5-fold increase in honor), I would have the hope of immortalizing crew. This would lead me to competing harder in events, buying more packs, and trying to achieve more. I almost never do the $25 double deal because it is worthless if I can’t finish the crew. If completing crew was achievable, I would start doubling more crew. Ideally, even having a choice for a citation as on option in a behold would be huge.
Why doing this will not devalue your product: I know you are worried about devaluing the event offers and the whale spend, but they purchase and compete to win events, to be the first to immortalize, etc, this wouldn’t impact them. And think about it, I need 8,300,000 honor not even counting new crew coming out. You could give me 4,000,000 honor and I would still need 10 years of playing to accumulate that much. Basically demand is so far exceeding supply that even tripling supply wouldn't begin to touch demand.
TL;DR: Allow players that want to spend 30-40 a month actually have a chance to immortalize their crew and we will spend more. Improve honor for dismissed crew, give out citations in portals and we will keep striving to enhance our crew. Keep things as they are and I just have no reason to spend anything, another 1/5 legendary just takes up crew space. Even the 10X10 offers just don’t interest me anymore. The choice is yours.
edit: Edited for clarity that I was recommending getting 50,000 honor from 10 packs of 10 (a 5x increase in honor), not 50k honor from a 10 pack (a 50x increase).
29
Comments
The premium pull setup is the worst spending stopper in the game.
You go from spending money, and dilithium is money no matter what in game currency language you want to use...to flushing the toilet with everything you just bought. No money. No useful crew. Not enough honor to do a dang thing with. It’s so easy 16-17 months in to give up on n premium pulls...
Perhaps there is merit in looking into the honor points for dismissed crew again?
Consider participating in civil discourse, understanding the Tardigrade, and wandering with the Subspace Eddies.
Only we don't get to really even win anything. Everything that drops, win or lose, goes back to the house. We might just get to borrow whatever we win for a short while before giving it back.
Well, not everyone is feeding their money into the slot machine.
An accurate metaphor would be that this is game machine that runs for free, but many people prefer to just keep feeding money into the part of the game machine that looks like a slot machine.
In February 2017 I decided to give it another whirl. A former co-worker (and current squadmate) told me the game had improved. In many ways it had, and still is improving. Now, well I'm VIP 14 twice over. But DB remains, in my estimation a company that is the poster child for one step forward and two steps back. And there is still very little value in what we're spending on. Value of course being entirely subjective.
The game is fundamentally flawed. The writing on par with what I'd expect from kids in junior high school, the communications with fans/customers still in need of dire improvement and some of the game/event decisions by DB border on incomprehensible... unless Jon Radoff has the famous quote attributed to P. T. Barnum framed on his wall and views all of DB's players/customers as such. Then it would all make perfect sense because the mistakes DB makes... They're so easy to avoid and quite a few of us here on these forums could do a far, far better job running Timelines.
The only thing that keeps me playing this game is the fact that I'm the proud leader of one of the finest fleets and enjoy the camaraderie. That's why I still play and my fleet is why I spend money... competing in the weekly events, getting decent crew to share, etc, etc,. But if I could have every dollar I've ever spent on this game refunded... I'd delete the app and never look back.
This wall would disappear and (in addition to some other changes) I would be interested to keep spending if:
- purple & gold crew in premium pulls come in the form of beholds
- no FF beholds, or give 1/3 of a citation as a 4th option, not 1/5 or even 1/4
- far better rate of dismissal for 4* and 5* crew, at the very worst at 1/10th value
Allow spenders to fill in the gaps in their collection. Don't penalize them for supporting your product.
More or all beholds instead of drops, and better dismissal rate = more choice = complying with the long advertised "Assemble a crew of your favorite characters."
~· Fly with the Subspace Eddies! ·~
I disagree with airlocking legendary crew. I get that there is more value at 2 stars but it is better to immortalize as many super rares as possible than airlocking a legendary. In long run you will get the second star. I have 175 crew slots right now and 37 of my spots are filled with legendary characters. Even if I keep the minimum crew for cadet missions I should have plenty of space to keep legendaries without causing issues (right now). In short run I am in worse spot but I fully expect to start getting more repeat legendaries.
Now I fully agree with basically everything else you stated...
With the constant expansion of new crew members it is impossible to catch up and fully fuse so many without spending tons of money. It does create a disincentive to spend because of this and I have made that point myself to DB. I do disagree with your 10 packs for a legendary star. I do think that is asking for way to much. 50000 honor more than legendary behold. Never going to get that from DB. I believe that if DB gave out doing about 50000 honor in a month of logging and fleet work that to me seems completely fair. 1 legendary star is not a lot especially when some months 4 new legendary characters are offered.
Honor values need to be changed and I get DB doesn't want to change value. Then instead of offering a ton of training items in voyages offer a ton of merits. Merits can at least be exchanged now for crew but this will only help slightly. If I could get 750 merits per 6 hour voyage I would probably spend it on the crew pack. Worst case I come away with a few hundred extra honor so we not talking about a lot.
Purchase packs definitely becomes less and less valuable as time goes on and dilithium becomes more valuable. At least with event packs I generally have a much better chance at getting new crew. As you stated changing the way honor is given to airlocked crew would help this issue. DB obviously feels at this time it isn't financially worth it for them and I feel it is shortsighted. DB will drive out more players who are devoted but get frustrated as you are.
I see the concern Nero84 had with the idea of enough honor from a 10x to do a legendary star.. I however don't think getting 1/3 Citations is an answer (if you mean a rare citation) but if it takes 2 or 3 10x packs for a legendary citation I think that's reasonable so long as 10x10s are more readily available and the odds of a 5* within don't get any worse then they already are.
Proud Former Officer of The Gluten Empire
Retired 12-14-20. So long, and thanks for all the cat pics!
I spend about 50-100 on ~5 steam games (on sale) per year and they are still pretty darn goods even though they are 5 yr old games.
Meanwhile I already spend more than a 1000 for a year playing this game and have been getting craps for majority of my $$$. (We have more ppl spending a lot more obviously)
So I think I feel this is an issue to me mainly because I spend money on this. So I’ll go F2P until they make some good changes for the players!
https://forum.disruptorbeam.com/stt/discussion/2662/new-year-resolution-make-players-happier
Check out our website to find out more:
https://wiki.tenforwardloungers.com/
I have too many crew and not enough space anyway so their is really no point me opening the packs I have until I have iced some. Constant Galaxy events (or Galaxy hybrids) of late also mean I have no Chronos to level Crew and free space to buy new packs.
Jim
1) Games like this are designed to keep giving you less and less so that they can give you just enough to get your money. It's the same all over the mobile gaming world and in almost every aspect of this game. The fact that you are only now getting frustrated with it (and each person will get frustrated at a different point) means that you are only now hitting your reservation point, the point at which you are now thinking of not spending cash. They can still get your (and my) money via special offers etc. If you are even losing interest in special offers, you are probably too expensive to cater to, because giving you more value means giving everyone more value and those players (including me) are still willing to pay more for less than you.
2) Tradeoffs are a necessary part of the gameplay experience. If you can have anything you want then the game would get boring fast. You are supposed to be making choices. For those of you with loads of crew to level and also want to play Galaxies you pretty much have to buy chrons to do that effectively. If you don't want to, that's fine, but then you have to accept that you can't have your cake and eat it. There are supposed to be bottlenecks, that's pretty much the point, it's not like there is any other real gameplay here... (though I love the levelling stuff and voyages myself - ah that false sense of accomplishment, love it).
Anyway, this whole thread boils down to, we want more value, and yep that would be nice, but to give anyone here more value they have to give everyone more value and they don't want to do that. A scarier notion with the randomised deals is that they will be able to learn to tailor offers to each individual to get them to pay for the absolute maximum that they are willing to pay for any offer!
(another note, this forum is mostly full of the very dedicated players who are likely a tiny minority of players actually playing the game. Thinking that you are 'like' the majority of the players is another likely fallacy. But maybe not, only DB knows.)
Totally!
You and I have the same problem, I think. We just approached it differently. Until recently, I bought crew slots. I still level crew. That means I have no chrons to be competitive in galaxy events.
Sad, but true. I basically enjoy the game, but the dev seems to want people like me (us?) gone. I get it, but I don't get it...
Yups, I don´t have the exact number in my head anymore, but when Nod was still around he said a tiny amount of the userbase is also in this forum. Think he mentioned less than 1% even...
The question is not what percentage of the players are here, but what percentage of the high payers.
I actually try to make that point that I disagree with the view that giving more value is somehow a negative or some zero sum game where more value to the customer is a negative to the company. I am a brand manager myself, Increasing value to drive increasing revenue should be the goal. This was proven, since increasing the value through 10 pack offers and honor moved me from a monthly card player to spending. That these offers keep going out should be evidence that they are probably working effectively in doing that for other people too. I believe that increasing value would drive improved revenue based on how I view (and assume they view) the behavioral segments:
Pay to win (whales): They are playing to win, to own everyone, first to immortalize, etc. Probably fairly static, small numbers, hard to recruit, likely already playing, can be viewed as an annuity with proper management. Adding marginally more value should have virtually no impact on their spending
Pay to Collect: Should be the goal of the company. Very few people will move to the whale category, but moving people into a pay to collect from monthly card and keeping them there should be the primary revenue goal. I am in the pay to collect segment as I imagine the bulk of the people above VIP4. It was exactly the increased value that moved me here and increased my spending almost 10 fold. I believe a little more value will keep people here and move people here.
Monthly card: Enjoy playing, don't want to/cant spend significant money, but see the value in daily dilithium for Dabo wheel, Voyages, shuttle bays, etc. Adding more value could more effectively move people to the pay to collect catagory
Free to play: Derive value through ads, awareness and network effects of a large player base. Moving them to monthly card is the goal, but adding more value probably wouldn't impact them.
Proud Former Officer of The Gluten Empire
Retired 12-14-20. So long, and thanks for all the cat pics!
Playing DB's advocate here:
I feel, this is the group most profitable for the developer. The thing is, that even this group cannot spend infinitely to gain an infinite advantage. Once a 5* is maxed, it is maxed. Once all the cards are obtained, there is a negligible advantage in earning and maxing extra copies. So there is a hard limit on spending money on this game.
DB has put a price tag on a 5*. According to the faction stores and other approximate measures, this would be 15,000 dilithium or 50,000 honor. However ludicrous that may seem. More honor would make citations more attainable, which in turn would make the need to buy extra copies of 5* cards with dilithium less pressing. In essence, lowering the hard money ceiling.
It totally becomes a net revenue question and I can't answer it without the data they have. But I can't imagine there are more than say 200 people in this camp. Even if it pulls their spending down by $20 a week, that is $4,000 per week. 1,000 collectors each spending an extra $10 a week is $10,000. Only DB knows for sure, but based on my squad, and how we compete and rank, I am pretty sure more of their total revenue is coming from people spending $10-20 a week (avg) then $100+.
I think SilverRose's point is the appropriate counterpoint to your devils advocacy.