Originally Posted by
4thstooge
There are a few things that are necessary to keep us involved. I'm not the heaviest gold spender but I did drop four vaults during the last big event to get the +4 energy helicopter. That said, I don't like that you're now adding these mega items that only the big spenders will be able to get. This means that you end up with more of a tiered system of those who have and have not that's broader than it is today.
A few suggestions including thoughts on your suggestions:
Keep this in mind. You may get a lot of money from a few guys but if you cap what they can gain in an event and then nickel and dime everybody else, you'll make more money. People have to feel like they can compete and when some dude with 5 million attack rolls all over me, that sucks the fun out of my game because I know I'm not going to be able to spend the money it would take to compete with him.
Inventory Management
I seriously don't know why this hasn't happened before. Nickel and dime us again. We should be able to see what our bottom units are that will be used in battle so we can target replacing them with something slightly more powerful. Nickel and dime us. If our lower is 42/50, we'll spend a little for each unit to pick up 60/70 units. A lot of people will do this if we know that the next guy isn't going to pick up some 125K attack unit because he dropped $500 on the event. Wrigley made millions of dollars selling cheap sticks of gum over and over. We'll buy the gum if you make it tasty.
Quit screwing with us
I spent a lot of time and effort in staging the new personnel units you added to the game and you just removed some of those units. That really sucks and makes me want to retire. There are other things I could waste my time and money on and this kind of thing makes me want to find a new game.
Make free gold attainable
Not asking for huge amounts. Even the 10 blocks we get for prizes now still suck. My faction has more blocks than we'll ever use. Give me 3 or 5 gold. It's not much but we look at it as money and it's great. It's like crack. Give us a taste and we'll keep buying it. You gave away gold a few times and I never spent money on gold before that. Give us a little taste.
Killer units for cash - Indestructible for big money
Somebody else mentioned this and it's a great idea. Nobody really buys cash units unless they have to have them to attack something. They're worthless. You'll sell cash for real money if people can buy indestructible units. Put a timer on it to level the playing field so that you can only buy one every 24 hours. You could offer a boost unit to reduce that time by 15 minutes. It gives us something attainable but doesn't give a huge benefit to people who spend huge money. Nickel and dime us but make things attainable.
Cash for Gold
Limit us to how much we can get in a day but it gives us a reason to upgrade buildings because we have a need for the cash. Again, keep the playing field level.
Limited time bonus items as prizes
What if I had an item that I could use for only 5 minutes but it increased my attack by 150k? You know that a person with this event would buy gold and spend it as fast as he could for that 5 minutes. Cool for us and it'll pay off for you. Same thing, make me invincible for 15 minutes with a unit. There are lots of things we could do. Make building upgrade half price with the use of one prize item. It adds some fun randomness to the game that people will like. Limit the use to one or two a day.
Scroll through all allies
So your friend Bob is an ally and has been for a long time but he's at the bottom of the list and it takes forever to find him. Let us scroll through the whole list. Cache it locally on our machines if you have to.
Fix the stacking
Several of us were screwed by mistakes in the past with non stacking units. We spent real money to get them. In once case, we got 300 gold back but we spent more than that to get them. In the end, we spent a LOT more gold because we didn't have their benefit so we got screwed. We have a long memory and we hate being burned. I know it was an honest mistake but it sucks. It makes me not want to spend money.
In game notifications that are meaningful
If something is going to be delayed, send it as an in game message. I rarely come to this forum except to see the walk-through of an event. Send it to us like any other message we get with our news.
Hacker alert tag
Easy to manage. If you see somebody that's a hacker, give us the ability to tag the hacker. You don't have to track them all down. Use basic statistical analysis. You know higher ranked players will be tagged most often so they will have a higher standard of deviation. Higher than normal reports of a player with a score based on the deviation and report rate will give you the culprits and we'll report fast. You should provide objects that you will only ever use one time and periodically scan inventories and somebody who has more than one is a hacker worth investigating. With a little tuning, you'll have hackers pop up statistically with the reports regularly. If you have some high ranked guys who spend lots of money that you've investigated and you know he's legit, just tag him in your system as not being a hacker and he falls off the radar
Increase Vaults
I produce over $150 million a day now. A $90 million vault is a joke that doesn't really do anything for me. I don't actually use it now. I know I'm going to lose about $15 million a day in attacks. It's just a tax for me. You should let us increase our vaults and trigger it with income per hour rates. Give us something to work toward. If you're letting us get gold with cash, give us alternate things to spend cash on so we have to use strategy. That's more fun! It'll force us to make decisions and spend real money on gold sometimes.
Throttle the big spenders some
Seriously, it's taking the fun out of it. I'm level 215 now with 1.5 million attack and 2.2 defense. I get rolled over by some guy who takes $30 million from my base because I had a meeting and couldn't pick up my stuff. Let's limit the number of base hits on an attack. It spreads the wealth. Penalize me for not picking my stuff up but don't let one dude clean up. Same with weapon increases. There's this sudden inflation in the game where it took a long time to pick up 1000 attack before and now I can do it almost instantly. It lessens the value of anything when you increase inflation. You're getting short term benefits but the long term economics of this are that you cheapen the game and we sell our stuff off, donate the cash to our faction, and abandon the base. I see a lot more abandoned bases these days. Gree is the cause of most of this. Again, nickel and dime all of us, don't try to clean up on the elite big spender. You'll make more money in the long run getting $20 to $50 each out of us instead of going for $300 out of very few. Gucci sells some expensive watches to a few fat cats but Timex makes a LOT more money.
More on-screen information
Ever go to Vegas and play one of those digital slot machines that give you all of the pay tables? Do that for things. You're not giving away secrets. We're all guys that spend money on this game so we're above average to have the dough to spend. Some of us a pretty smart. We do in-depth analysis of the game and build a strategy. Give us the information on a base unit and what the upgrade and pay tables are based on boosted and unboosted values. Give us lots of information and we'll develop plans on how we want to build our bases. We like this kind of stuff and it keeps us interested. Feed numbers to the dorks. We'll respond with our money.
Multiple building upgrades
Would be a killer one time use bonus item. Let me upgrade a second item. Think of it as Community Chest in Monopoly. Who doesn't like getting something random. Maybe it's $1 million, maybe it's 20 gold, maybe it's a unit that gives me mega power for a few minutes and maybe it's one time use card that lets me upgrade another building while the first is upgrading or maybe it lets me complete construction. Put your minds together and there are lots of things you could come up with and it would be fun.
I could go on. In the end, you're trying to knock one into the bleachers with every swing. A few will keep dropping a few hundred bucks every month for mammoth prizes but the inflation will drive the rest of us away. Throttle it back, put limits on growth and give weaker guys a chance. Give us reasonable little tastes of gold and things we can do with it and more people will spend. A kid can get away with dropping $9.99 on a game because his aunt gave him a gift card. Better yet, work up what tax would be and drop it based on gift card sizes so he doesn't have to beg mom to spend real money on tax. Be smart about it and make it easy for people to spend little bits to get little things and we'll keep spending for a long time.
Thanks,
Fourth Stooge
The Darkness
Changes to game?
