That currency output rate

(Vacant) #1

I’ve seen some F2P games be stingy with their currency to encourage people to drop money on the game, but this takes things to a whole new level.

Played the first game after being in the temporary betas, ranked up to Level 2 and got 12,000 credits. Figured this game wouldn’t be that bad, and that I would be able to use the Obsidian Loadout I rolled for Sawbonez fairly soon. I was able to unlock two extra mercs during my relatively short time in the last beta, so I figured the full game would follow suit.

Then I got 85 credits for playing and winning a full objective game. That’s a joke. At this rate it will take me 200 or more games to grind out the remaining 18,000 points - assuming I win all 200 - just to use the loadout that was supposedly a reward for helping test the game. Couldn’t even be bothered to allow beta testers one character unlock, could you? Not even a 7-day trial just to test out our “reward”?

I doubt I’ll be sticking around for the 30 missions I’d have to do in order to grind out that 18k, much less 200 matches. Yet another F2P game that punishes people who want a bit of variety without waiting for rotations or dropping $6 on a character with one unique mechanic and a bargain-bin attempt at personality.

At this point, you might’ve just been better off making the game buy-to-play. It’s barely worth the $20 you’re selling the “starter pack” for, certainly not the $40 the Steam page says it’s “valued at”. That’s the language of some guy trying to sell you collectible coins on an infomercial.

Have fun being the new Blacklight, maybe I’ll come back when all your DLC is selling for $2 each on a Steam sale 6 months from now.

(srswizard) #2

I think that the rewards from playing matches should be a little higher to actually feel like rewards, but at the same time, the game has to make money somehow.
They’re probably testing the ice with the current system, and some things will surely change by the time the game gets released.

I’d prefer higher rewards for playing, and much smaller bonuses for leveling up, and I don’t like having mercs in different price tiers (fragger at 50k, and rest of the current mercs at 30k), that’s just silly, and the general assumption is gonna be, that the more expensive mercs are more powerful, which in fragger’s case is actually true.

That said, I’m not gonna get overly negative about it yet, I’ll just wait and hope that they do the right thing, based on our feedback.

(Vacant) #3

I wouldn’t be as negative about it if this was a problem in the last beta test before they were accepting real money; but in my mind, once a company starts taking real money, even in closed beta, they’ve committed in a real way to their payment model and are invested in making their choices work. So I fear we’re going to continue to suffer basically the same currency output rate, as I’m sure there’s some yuppies in Nexon’s accounting department who put plenty of time & effort into figuring it out.

The way to make money in a F2P game is to try to figure out how to create a currency that (a) drops enough to keep players playing who don’t want to spend real money, and (b) drops infrequently enough to make players drop money on at least one thing to bypass the grind. Rely too much on the former and you make no money, rely too much on the latter (as Nexon are doing), and your game dies except for the subset of players who dropped money on day 1 and keep playing to justify their purchase. But it’s not enough to keep the game running. As it stands, this game will die out. Dirty Bomb isn’t filling enough of a niche to keep it alive with this payment model.

(Szakalot) #4

I’d prefer a progressive payment system, where each new merc requires more $$$.

This way you can first pick mercs that suit your playstyle (based on free rotation), but you really have to put effort out to get those last few rare mercs/loadouts what not

(Amerika) #5

The main thing I see that is screwed up is that this game could make a lot of money selling gun skins, character skins etc. similar to CS:GO and TF2 but instead they are doing this card thing, that is tied to abilities, and it just doesn’t work. Tying money to upgrades is always going to set wrong with people no matter how minor the upgrade. You will simply be “pay2win” in their eyes and there isn’t any cure for that.

The best idea I’ve seen kicking around the forums is make the cards unlockable how they are but you tie no money to them. Make thing something players go for. You can then keep the reward system similar to how it is now with maybe a bit of a boost. You then keep mercs purchasable the same way they are now. That makes cards something that people go for and are invested in (and have a shortcut through a microtransaction if they choose) while making sure that you aren’t pay2win.

Then introduce skins for everything. This game has style and you can get away with people wearing just about anything. I’m OK with shooting a Santa Fragger if it keeps people interested and invested in the game. Especially if this stuff is tradeable and uses a drop system like CS:GO.

Would this be borrowing from some of popular FPS and MOBA games? Yup. Steal it all as far as I’m concerned. There is a reason beyond just gameplay why so many people play them and put money into them.

(charmingMist) #6

I played a cool game called Nosgoth the last few weeks, and I think that game had a more interesting and fair system.
In Nosgoth every 5 levels you get a character unlock token, so you can unlock any character you want with it. Then you can use all the currency that you gain from matches to unlock or “rent” cool new spells, abilities and weapons, perks or xp boosts for the characters than you already own.
And then the game offers tons of cosmetic options for paying customers including awesome costumes for all the characters.

Right now Dirty Bomb forces you the save up a ton of in-game currency to finally be able to buy a character, but the currency is also used to buy loadouts. So if you enjoy a character and want a loadout for him you’ll have to buy crates, but then you won’t have enough for a new character. And if you want a character you can’t buy crates. Imagine how long it will take to unlock all characters when there will be 20 of them.
And because the game lacks any cosmetic options, they want paying customers to pay for the characters, which means non-paying customers have to grind for everything.

They should give us a free unlock every few levels and let us spend our currency on those lovely crates.
And don’t let the business model depend on people buying characters, let us buy cosmetics !
Unique costumes, skins, gun camos, taunts, banners, portraits, they don’t affect gameplay and people will buy them ! Don’t punish non-paying customers !

(Vacant) #7

I appear to have been granted another 12k bonus points at level 4; so I’m pretty close to having Sawbonez unlocked, though I’m stuck waiting for tomorrow’s dailies to come up before that can happen. If I get 12k every two levels, then I’ll happily retract everything I’ve said, but I have a feeling that’s going to taper of pretty soon, though some clarity from the devs would be nice.

I like your Nosgoth idea, charmingMist, and I’m with Amerika on the introduction of cosmetics. The game doesn’t really have much personality to it, cosmetics could be a way to inject that, still make money, and not need to gate characters so severely.

(APRenpsy) #8

What is currency earned based on? Kills, Objectives, Assists? That is a question I want answered first.

(B_Montiel) #9

Well that’s a good question. SW seems less rewarding than objective mode per amount of time. Yesterday, I did a game on white chapel 6vs6 stopwatch. Enemy team got g-banged, then we did our round in 6 to 8 minutes. Got around 12k points, 33/8 KdR, and i received… around 40 credits. Meh…

(FaeFaux) #10

A little addition/expansion on this:
Getting a loadout card for a specific merc typically costs 3500 (1000 credits each for three crates to get 3 lead cards to make an iron card of your choice). I’ll admit that the rng means you may not want the card and heck, you may get a bronze card for some other merc opening those three crates. But assuming you get 3 lead cards it means that just getting a “decent” loadout card costs an extra 3500 credits from the get go.
In general, credits are just given quite sparsely considering their value is incredibly high and they’re used for mercenaries, loadout cards, and then trade-ins for higher tiers.
In all honesty I don’t have a problem with the trading up of cards but the rng on the weapons and abilities on them can make you feel like you’ve wasted a ton of credits when you get one for a merc you enjoy playing, but don’t like the loadout because it no longer fits the play style a previous loadout had.

(Nail) #11

iirc, revives give the most followed by ammo and med packs, objectives then kills and assists

(MissMurder) #12

Hey guys- we are actually looking into the credit rates right now. They may very well be too low…taking all feedback into consideration. We will keep you updated on this!

(Eox) #13

Glad to read it ! I also though that the credits earned may become too low.

Make our skill rewarded in game ! The more points you get, the more credits you earn ! Like before ! It will be awesome ! :slight_smile:

(Calynth) #14

had a match were i got 10,000 XP! guess how much credits I got? 79 in total

(INF3RN0) #15

I think it’s probably a bit too steep for the average player. I think something like 12 hours of game play for the average player should be enough to unlock a new merc (1-2 weeks of casual play). Access to new mercs is most important, so you could just make the cases more spendy if anything.

(The99thProblem) #16

What you guys must take into account is that this is a fairly new adjusted system. Not to take the side of the devs, but when they realize a factor of the game is ludicrous they will rectify the situation when possible. Every good development accepts criticism, but what is not necessary is sarcasm, name calling, assumptions, etc. But currently, yes I do agree the credit (or whatever the virtual currency is called) income is relatively miniscule when placed in juxtaposition to in-game performance.

(spiffyMollusk) #17

Imho, creditz rate are way too low. Especialy since youve raised the credit cost of the hero.

(LiNkz) #18

It doesn’t take a genius to work out that getting ~120 credit on average per game is going to take for ever to unlock mercs + buying loadouts.

Yes, you get 600 per quest and some bonuses which give like 12k? but that’s like one merc and then you grind 3 million years for next.

(charmingMist) #19

It would be nice to also be able to “rent” mercs for a smaller fee, so you can try them for a few days or a week before making a full purchase.

(Szakalot) #20

please no rental service.

There is ‘free rotation’ of mercs meaning that you will get to play with every single one for limited time, for free