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Can we make character crystals in raid a more realistic cost?

TerminalTerminal Posts: 789
edited August 2017 in General Discussion
I'm kind of surprised nothing's been done about this and it's most likely due to all the other issues distracting from it.. but to get all 10 crystals costs a total of 1,525,000 chips. It's 415,000 chips for the final crystal.

One and a half MILLION chips. This is nothing short of absurd and not based in any kind of reality that the game exists in.

I'm sure Kabam has access to data about how many get purchased.

Is the number greater than 0 for people who get all 10?

Who exactly is the event aimed at.. what's the purpose of it? What is Kabams goal for these types of events. What percentage of the population do they want getting more than 2-4 crystals out of this?

What's the point of even offering 10 when less than what.. 1%? 0.01%? Of the population will get it.

I'd make a pretty strong bet no one has ever purchased the 10th crystal. Probably more than that. Maybe even the last 6-10 crystals.

If no one can get it why even bother offering it. Is it encouraging extra play or pay? No, it just gets ignored.

Why would I spend more than 150 energon to try and earn character crystals after the first 2-4 crystals through raids.

The event and potential of the event is being wasted.

Make it realistic.
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Comments

  • Nick_80Nick_80 Posts: 225
    The most I have gotten was 5, I agree it's gets ridiculous there is no reason for 1 crystal to cost 415,000 chips especially when the player will most likely get a 2 star.
  • MustangjonMustangjon Posts: 1,146
    They are freebie items essentially for feature crystals .....

    That said most people get 3-4 and call it a day don't think anyone is suppose to get 20 dollars worth of crystals

  • TerminalTerminal Posts: 789
    edited August 2017
    Mustangjon wrote: »
    They are freebie items essentially for feature crystals .....

    That said most people get 3-4 and call it a day don't think anyone is suppose to get 20 dollars worth of crystals

    If no one is supposed to get it, then why is it there?

    What's the word for offering something that no one can actually get?

    Rewards need to be achievable. Having literally impossible to achieve goals doesn't do anything positive for a player base.

    There's so many intelligent ways to design something and better ways to achieve goals, whatever they might be, rather than offering things that no one can actually get.

    It's all part of a bigger picture and bigger problem. These things are symptoms, the problems are actually all connected, there was a big reaction from the top when high AM had a problem because it effected them directly. But when I look at everything else, it's not surprising how it's been handled and fits in line with everything else.

    People don't seem to have noticed all the other stuff that effects everyone else. If the top players/alliances stood up for the more general problems in the game and didn't let them get away with everything that is effecting the majority of players and stunting the growth of the game then they might get better results when one of the myriad problems falls on them.

    Having impossibly costed rewards that no one can purchase is fatally flawed and illogical. There's zero reason to defend or justify it @Mustangjon

    You should try saying something like 'yeah, it doesn't make sense and no one can achieve the goal the game has set, it should be changed'.
  • MustangjonMustangjon Posts: 1,146
    I didn't defend it, it's a freebie your missing out on, you can buy 0-15 depends how far you want to save just like when star saber was out wasn't very achievable but people could if they chose to.
  • ManthroManthro Posts: 2,752
    edited August 2017
    I'm not a huge fan either, but let's look at it more closely for argument's sake.

    Ok... The first 5 crystals are actually obtainable for absolutely free if you have a decent base (20% defense success rate) and get good choices for raid opponents. I know this because I've done it.

    After that, you need to spend some energon to earn the rest.

    So let's see how it might work...


    10 feature crystals costs 1500 in energon. It also costs 1.5 million in raid chips.. I see some parallels there...

    Assuming you have a high enough medal count, you should be getting about 10-12k raid chips per raid, I've even seen 30k won off a battle before.

    To get to the next crystal, that means you need either 4/5 complete 3 battle raids IF you don't get raided yourself. That's 12-15 hours of recharges.

    OR, you can spend energon for raid tickets to boost to it. There's a strategy to doing this... You only spend energon when you are as close as you feel you can get after multiple recharge cycles.

    It takes some patience and some luck to go this route.

    OR... buy enough shields to protect your stash.

    No matter how you slice it, getting all 10 crystals will cost you less than 1500 energon if you are smart about when and how you buy extra raids or shields for yourself.

    The first 5 are free. The next 5 are heavily discounted. That's how you should look at it, because that is Kabams intent.
  • TerminalTerminal Posts: 789
    edited August 2017
    For arguments sake, it's a fantastic theory @Manthro, but again, it's not reality. How many times has anyone gotten more than 5? How many times has anyone in the entire game gotten 10?

    Your screenshot shows you only went to 4 last time... so much for that theory.

    'actually obtainable' doesn't mean reasonably or consistently or often obtainable, which, for a half way point in a reward set, you'd think it would be.

    Compare it to the mastery core event just now. What if the first core was a reasonable price and the second core was something absurd that no one can achieve?

    If even the top players aren't doing it and only go to 4, what can be expected for everyone else?

    I'm seeing this from a global perspective. If no one is completing the rewards at all, it's useless to even have it.

    @Mustangjon how many crystals do you collect? What about all the top people doing the highest diff AMs? Your network, are they all clearing it to 10 crystals?

    Who is actually doing it in reality? Forget hypotheticals, 'oh people can get star sabre so anything is possible'. Seriously, give me a break. We want the game to be better, you say most get 2-4 and 'call it a day'. Stop defending it and stand up and say it's something that needs to be improved to make the game better.

    Stop acting like everything is fine and no change is needed.

    I want the game to grow and be the best. This kind of system with impossible to obtain crystals is not going to help it grow and get more people playing or spending.
  • ManthroManthro Posts: 2,752
    My screenshot shows I only went to 4, sure. But I plan on getting the 5th again this time and I'll post just to prove it is possible.

    I have zero intention of spending energon for anything further because I prefer to use mine on alliance missions.

    However, If I were still spending on this game (I'm not after dropping 4500+ energon on the Hippocratic crystal and missing ratchet) I would definitely be targeting all 10 raid chip crystals, I could get them all for less than half the original cost overall.

    That is the only point I'm trying to make. Not once did I ever say all 10 could be had for free. The raid chip crystals were never intended to be 100% attainable without using energon, it's obvious.

    What would you do in order to make all 10 attainable for free while still making it a challenge?

    Can't just give players 10 feature crystals, that's not motivating people to spend either...
  • TrailfireTrailfire Posts: 590
    @Terminal 100% agree here. I've raised this before too.

    The first time I saw this I assumed it was accounting for future inflation of raid chips, by which I mean, ok, it's out of reach now, but in a few months we'll all be pulling 10-15k chips / raid, so very high priced items become achievable.

    But there's two problems with that.
    1. Just don't do that. It's stupid to have a deal at a price that no one can afford until the in-game economy experiences serious inflation. When inflation happens, no worries, just raise the price or provide a different deal. All deals should be relevant to the current player base, not some potential future player base.

    2. There hasn't actually been that much inflation in raid chips. There's been some, but it's gone very slowly compared with sparks and crystal shards. T1A essence prices in the raid store actually *fell* by a lot (which is deflation!) So even if someone had the crack idea to price things for future ingame economic conditions instead of current conditions, it doesn't look like we're getting to that future any time soon.

    For Jon's point that it's free. That's fair enough, I don't wanna look a gift horse in the mouth. But Kabam could encourage more players to do more raiding if they made the prices of these deals a little less insane.

    On Manthro's point about the relative energon cost to actually get them now compared with the price of buying them directly... it's also a fair point, but:
    Kabam would be better off distributing the price over a much flatter rise (even if the first one was priced higher) because it would keep more people doing more raids over the 3-4 days or whatever.

    A lot of people are scared off raids entirely, so one point of these deals is to get people raiding (that's how you get some of the critical rank up materials after all, and you need people to get the appetite for progression if you expect them to spend cash). The other point of these deals is to create some opportunities for people who don't normally get new bots to get a few. That helps build hype and stimulates the "keeping up with the joneses" kinda pressure to spend.

    The massive price gradient just turns people off. Even Jon says "just grab your 4-5 free crystals and be happy". That's the leader of the second (sometimes first) ranked alliance, and even he doesn't see the 6th crystal as affordable! Who is it marketed to?

    They don't need to be free, but they also don't need to be insanely impossible to get. If the first were 20k and each one increased by 20k, the tenth would be 200,000 instead of 450,000; it'd still take a huge effort and a certain amount of energon, but it would at least be possible for more than zero people.

    All this said, I obviously have never seen Kabam's sales data, so maybe they really are maximizing revenue here (same thing as profit in a zero marginal cost business), but I'd be astonished if that were true
  • DavienDavien Posts: 758
    Hope Kabam will read this and reduce the costs of buying them.
    @Kabam Miike
  • Drake6401Drake6401 Posts: 321
    I personally just buy the first 3 and leave it from there. The chances of them just giving another 2* is much too high to grind for. I'm currently focused on alpha sparks to finally get my 4 stars into rank 3.
  • There's good points on both sides of the issue here, but one thing that is overlooked/ignored is assuming that players are interested in doing raids, or are ok with being forced to do it to advance bots along at the same rate as everyone else.

    I, for one, dislike raids and have no interest in doing them at all and I bring this up because its statistically impossible that I'm the only one that feels this way. Second, I even more dislike the idea of having to do raids on a (semi-)regular basis to get things like the alpha spark essences to rank up my bots unless I want to fork out cash. For me, the thing that makes the game fun and interesting is the main story and the special missions. Arenas are hit and miss for me, mostly I enjoy them until I get burned out on them, then take a break and skip a cycle or two. And I always skip the Mod arenas because the mod stuff is tied into the raids.

    So far, I've gotten along with some amount of raid chips from away missions, but that is a pitiful amount compared to doing the raids. I don't play 100% free, I've forked out $$ for energon packs, the cards, or one or two of the class bundles when I wanted them without having to do the grind, but how about coming up with an alternate currency comparable to raid chips, so casual/semi-frequent players aren't forced to do something they have no interest in?

    I get that raids have been reworked after they bugged out, but that doesn't create any desire to do them. To me, raids are just a lesser-detailed version of Clash of Clans and that does nothing for me. If I was interested in that, I would have just played Transformers Earth Wars.
  • DirculesDircules Posts: 509
    Sorry Manthro, as someone who spends most of his time raiding the top 10, the average raid chips you win is maybe 7k-8k, not 10-12. There is only 1 player who hoards chips like a maniac to give that huge payout you're talking about.
  • ManthroManthro Posts: 2,752
    edited August 2017
    Dircules wrote: »
    Sorry Manthro, as someone who spends most of his time raiding the top 10, the average raid chips you win is maybe 7k-8k, not 10-12. There is only 1 player who hoards chips like a maniac to give that huge payout you're talking about.

    Are you counting just the bulk reward that shows on the selection screen or adding in the smaller amounts you win for each battle as well?

    I stand corrected on the math, but it is definitely possible to get that 5th crystal for free if you really want it.
  • Stitch626Stitch626 Posts: 286
    edited August 2017
    Lets say you had the absolute best luck in the world, and every single raid you did was worth 15k chips. Even in that HIGHLY unlikely scenario, in order to get all 10 "free" crystals, you would have to do over 100 raids in less than 5 days. Thats 25 raids a day, or 8 full rounds of 3 raids each, +1.

    This also does not take into account that while you are raiding x25/day you are also getting raided yourself. And the more chips you are saving up, the more chips people can steal from you. I cant even imagine how many chips you would loose if you had a horde of 400k+ saved up...probably enough for whoever raided you to buy the first 3 crystals. Realistically, one would probably have to raid around 50-100 times a day to earn enough chips to purchase all of these crystals...which would mean you would be required to spend energon. And if you are spending energon to raid more, and you recharge more than 30 times, you are already spending more energon than what the crystal was originally sold for.

    Things in the game should be realistically achievable. My suggestion is to either make the maximum number of crystals you can get 5, instead of 10, or add another form a currency to the raid store that can be purchased through chips, and use that currency to be able to purchase crystals also. For example, they could add a "Golden Chip" to the store that costs 25k chips each, and when purchasing more than 5 crystals, the cost of the crystal switches from Raid Chips to "Golden Chips". Perhaps the 6th crystal costs 5 Golden Chips, and the 10th one costs 20 or something. That way people can purchase the "Golden Chips" whenever they want and save them up for when events like this happen, and it will allow them to purchase the crystals, without having to raid 24/7 for 5 days during the event.
  • Hey Everybody,

    So, I'm just gonna weigh in a little here with the thought process behind the Crystals in the Raid Store, but welcome you all to continue giving your feedback, because it's very constructive and the team will definitely see it.

    The Raid Event is not meant to be the main way for Commanders to collect Crystals. These are not meant to be an easy pickup either. Yes, the first few are relatively easy to obtain with just a few Raids, and the next few are definitely more of a commitment, but they are just bonus items in the Raid store.

    It is up to you to decide how much time or effort you'd like to put in, in exchange for those Crystals, and the final few are always going to on the more hard to obtain side. They are not all a sure thing.
  • Stitch626Stitch626 Posts: 286

    The Raid Event is not meant to be the main way for Commanders to collect Crystals. These are not meant to be an easy pickup either. Yes, the first few are relatively easy to obtain with just a few Raids, and the next few are definitely more of a commitment, but they are just bonus items in the Raid store.
    .

    Can you tell us if anybody has actually gotten all 10 crystals before? Things being hard or difficult to achieve is one thing. Things being impossible to achieve in a realistic way are a whole other story.
  • MustangjonMustangjon Posts: 1,146
    Why does it matter if others got final one or not? If your not going to either way
  • Stitch626Stitch626 Posts: 286
    edited August 2017
    Mustangjon wrote: »
    Why does it matter if others got final one or not? If your not going to either way

    Well, first, I never said just the last one. I asked if anyone has gotten all 10. Based on how much they cost, I would be shocked if even the whales bought any crystals past 7.

    Second, if no one is purchasing them, that might be a good indicator that they need to reevaluate.

    Last, just because I will probably not go for it doesnt mean that I cant give my opinion on this. You have been commenting in this thread on the other side of the argument since the 3rd post, and im guessing you haven't purchased all 10.

    FYI - Star Saber isnt even available in the game anymore. So, for you to use that as an example pretty much falls in line with exactly what my point is.
  • tekkn1kaltekkn1kal Posts: 430
    I hope they remove the last 5 crystals so you guys will just get over it :lol:
  • removing the last 5 crystals so there were only 5 in the store would definitely push me more to get all the crystals available. WIth the prices the way they are, I hit the first 3 then give up.

    If you put the time spend raiding to get the higher crystals into the arena instead, you'll earn enough energon to buy the crystals instead with a lot less stress. Buying the top crystals in the raid store is a waste of time and effort.
  • ManthroManthro Posts: 2,752
    edited August 2017
    Well now they are going to completely remove feature crystals from the raid store.

    This should make you all happy... A totally realistic cost.. 0.

    :neutral:
  • Stitch626Stitch626 Posts: 286
    Manthro wrote: »
    Well now they are going to completely remove feature crystals from the raid store.

    This should make you all happy... A totally realistic cost.. 0.

    :neutral:

    I'm sure the entire decision to do so was based of this thread, and the half dozen people who posted in it. I'm sure it has nothing to do with the obvious flaw in the system in general.
  • ManthroManthro Posts: 2,752
    What flaw is that? The one where you can get 4-5 feature crystals for free, easily?

    Now there is no avenue for free players to score a feature 4* bot whatsoever.

    Adding a direct purchase 3* is a good idea. Removing feature crystals as a trade off is not.
  • Stitch626Stitch626 Posts: 286
    My issue, along with everyone posting in this thread, isn't with the first 5 crystals. It's with having items in the game (which would be the last 5 crystals) which are unrealistically obtainable. Not impossible, but so far away from what any real player would want to spend the time or resources to get.

    But the fact remains, this thread had 0 influence on those decisions as implementing those changes would take weeks to prepare. So your snarky post is misdirected, as nothing suggested in this thread is even close to what the new system is going to be.

    And since the system is changing, this thread is done.
  • TerminalTerminal Posts: 789
    edited August 2017
    Manthro wrote: »
    Well now they are going to completely remove feature crystals from the raid store.

    This should make you all happy... A totally realistic cost.. 0.

    :neutral:

    Not quite sure what your point is.

    If you're unhappy with a change Kabam has made, you should take it up with them directly and start a relevant thread.

    If you think a 2 day old thread about unrealistic raid event costs is the cause for a complete overhaul to the to the raid system, I'm flattered, but it's obviously not the case as these things would take weeks or months to plan.

    I really don't know what you're trying to add to the discussion or what your actual point is. It just looks like a person who is upset and frustrated and lashing out wherever they can. I hope you feel better soon.
  • TrailfireTrailfire Posts: 590
    Thanks for sharing the thought process behind this decision Mike.

    You framed it a little differently than most of us by raising the idea of the "main way to get crystals" and saying raids were never intended to be that.

    Obviously now things are different. I actually like all the changes that were announced today, except the decision to completely remove featured crystals from the raid store.

    I think a lot of people liked having that option there. Personally, I'd chase a guaranteed 3* over 3-4 featured crystals any day. But others have different views and I don't see the reason not to do both. It's not like crystals cost anything to produce, and the store isn't exactly so crowded people can't find what they're looking for...

    The comments here were all about the crazily step price escalation, which honestly isn't limited to the raid store, although I think many instances of it have been replaced with something better already. no one implied they didn't like the crystals - quite the opposite I think

    Anyway, looking forward to seeing how the new system works I guess

  • DavienDavien Posts: 758
    tired of raids.. they should fix the system instead of forcing us to drop our medal count. hope the next raid patch will improve things.
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