I have been playing this game for slightly less than a year, have worked hard and spent some money and have joined a top 50 team. I am, what I would consider the 'target market' for a game company such as this. I am not rich, though I have a decent job with a steady income. I found a game with a good overall design and would be willing to spend, within reason, to stay competitive in it, and keep the company going. I feel, and Gree may disagree with me, that players like myself make up the majority of the customer base. There is usually a top 1-5% who will spend relentlessly to stay ahead. The following 25-50% who will spend moderately to have fun (I would consider myself in this majority) and the remainder who are not in a position to spend much or are still deciding if this is the game for them to play.
Now that the background info is done with, I am making this post because I have observed some troubling trends in this game and it is my opinion that unless something is done quickly this game will eventually outrun its customer base and cease to exist. The trend I am talking about is the 'divide' that stands between the top group and the average player. The way the game is designed is to help the strong grow stronger and the weak stay weak. This is fine to a certain degree because there is obviously a need to reward paying customers. However, this becomes a major issue when the barrier to entry becomes so large, that is does not make sense anymore for new players to come into the game.
I will use a couple of the more recent examples to back up my observation. The current 'counter the insurgents' LTQ requires over 200,000 energy to complete. For a new player (or even someone playing under a year like myself with the standard energy regen time) they are able to regen 4,800 energy per day giving them a total of 24,000 for a 5 day event. In order to finish the event the player would require around 3,500 gold depending on how much energy they started with. That is a dollar amount over $200 to finish a single event. The only reason I can think of that the requirement would be so high is that the top 1-5% the 'guaranteed spenders' have many energy regeneration bonuses and thus if the requirement was much lower than 200k energy would not have a need to spend at all. The same can be said for previous epic boss event. The first raid boss allowed the top teams to farm so many units and raise their stats that in order to ensure the top 1-5% spent to finish the epic boss, the required health more than doubled.
Basically, instead of making sure the majority of players spend a little to obtain reachable goals, the game creators are pushing the goals higher and higher to ensure the top players must continue to spend. As a middle of the road player I refuse to bite on this tactic and pay the inflated prices, because of the game design. If the model doesn't stop increasing the divide between the top, middle, and bottom it will become pointless for new players to come into the game because by then it will cost $100s more per event to finish and there will still be no chance to become competitive. Without new players, no game can stay around for too long and will go under. So, I apologize for the long post but I simply wanted to get my opinion out there and I am curious to see if it has been noticed by others, or if I am alone in perceiving the trends this way.
Originally Posted by andy2
