Core Game Strategy: A Required Guide

killawatt

        Before you get into angels, clothes, gems, and teams, you have got to understand the core money-taking the design that lies beneath. Once you understand the type of game you\'re playing, then you can decide how much you want to max your br.

        All information is quoted from these professional industry sources:
        http://www.gdcvault.com/play/1016417/-100-000-Whales-An (thanks to user danielsicko  for the link)
        and here:
        http://www.gamasutra.com/blogs/RaminShokrizade/20130626/194933/

        1)The game is not built to reward skill. The game is built to maximize money. That is why you are bombarded in every section to spend diamonds on this, and spend on that. You will not be at the absolute top of your rankings without spending $1000\'s over a few months. That is not an exaggeration. That is core game design.
        This involves putting the consumer in a very uncomfortable or undesirable position in the game and then offering to remove this “pain” in return for spending money. This money is always layered in coercive monetization models, because if confronted with a “real” purchase the consumer would be less likely to fall for the trick.

        You aren\'t be charged a reasonable progress fee to support a game a dev worked hard on. You\'re being manipulated into blowing gobs of cash.
       
        If the shift from skill game to money game is done in a subtle enough manner, the brain of the consumer has a hard time realizing that the rules of the game have changed. If done artfully, the consumer will increasingly spend under the assumption that they are still playing a skill game and “just need a bit of help”. This ends up also being a form of discriminatory pricing as the costs just keep going up until the consumer realizes they are playing a money game.

        2)The server you are on just recently launched! How convenient! They launch near every day. This creates an intense crucible of competition designed to make you want to be better than everyone else. You are expected to \'ante up\' by buying all sorts of things all the time. Or you\'ll be a loser on your server (who wants that!). This is why there are leaderboards for EVERYTHING. The top will always seem attainable, just within a few more dollars\' reach. Thanks to small servers.

        2b)These small servers are money-squeezing crucibles. People who still don\'t get it will leave their old server and be first to get on a new one and spend lots of money early on to try to secure the top spot.

If half of your players ante up to $15, the ones that don’t ante up are resigned to losing. Those that do ante up are betting that no one will ante higher, but someone always does. This triggers the “ante game” and it ends fairly quickly with someone buying the win and the others deciding they can not afford to match. Once a winning ante has been decided, players quickly lose interest in the game.

This [server] no longer produces significant revenue. The providers of ante games will then start a new server, which is the equivalent of starting a new hand of poker. They can do this every few weeks and play a series of ante games. The quality of the game really is of little consequence because this is not the game actually being played, it is the ante game.

        3)Ever wonder why they make you buy diamonds instead of just putting raw USD prices in the game?
        If real money was used (no successful game developer does this) then the consumer would see their money going down as they play and become apprehensive. This gives the consumer more opportunities to think and will reduce revenues. Having the user see their amount of premium currency in the interface is also much less anxiety generating

        4)You came here because of the pretty ads. You came because it\'s a video game. You need to be careful about spending:
        those between the age of 18 and 25 are still in the process of brain development and are considered legal adults... they are the target audience. For this reason these products are almost always presented with cartoonish graphics and child-like characters. It seems unlikely that anyone in this age range, having been anointed with adulthood, is going to appeal to a credit card company for relief by saying they are still developmentally immature. Thus this group is a vulnerable population with no legal protection, making them the ideal target audience for these methods. Not coincidentally, this age range of consumer is also highly desired by credit card companies.

        5)Are you playing the game or is the game playing you? Is your schedule and your wallet tightly revolving around the game\'s schedule and current promotions? What type of leisurely video game designs a *daily* schedule for you? The more you log in, the more you\'ll look at those diamonds and be tempted to buy stuff. The more you\'ll look at those people just above you and feel that competitive fire to win at all costs... which leads to an open wallet. Simple as that.

        This isn\'t me making silly stuff up. All information above isn\'t even mine, it\'s from industry professionals who get paid to design this stuff all day long for their livelihood. Heck, the video link is from the head of R2Games, and he openly calls customers who end up spending hundreds of thousands of dollars stupid. Yet he\'ll gladly take their money. These aren\'t nobody bloggers and youtubers with cute opinions.

        Before anyone chimes in and boasts about how they don\'t spend... I get it. that\'s nice. This thread isn\'t for you. This is for those hundreds of posters now and later who are opening their wallets unknowingly and getting burned. Although I will say, if you don\'t spend money, don\'t blow 5 or 6 hours of precious daily life on video games and think you\'re coming out \'ahead\'. Especially coercive ones like this. And if you\'re the type who plays for free and posts to your social networks or youtube... you\'re certainly doing great marketing work for them for free also. Maybe someone will see your stuff, come over, and dive right in wallet wide open...
       

        In GTArcade\'s (and R2Games) slight defense... I will say that apparently this version of the game is a lot less money hungry than the Chinese source material. They have made some effort to tone it down. They\'ll look at threads like this and their own balance sheet and continue to make adjustments to ensure they stay in business in the west. This is NOT saying they\'ll stop doing anything in this thread. It\'s a dirty system and it makes cold, hard cash. They\'ll keep doing it as long as people keep buying week in and week out. But you don\'t have to be an unwilling participant as they continue to test the waters.
       

        Know the type of game you\'re getting in to before you get burned by one of the many deceptive practices. THEN decide how serious you want to get about buying stuff, attending events, logging in every day, gemming, troops, and boosting that br.

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bivitar

Well said. One of the points in the video is the cultural difference where in China the players expect this and many Western players are very inexperienced in this business model and are not making informed spending choices.

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fireharti@aol.com

agree they have gone over board and it is making game unplayable.

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jigglejello

        That\'s all it really comes down to is money.
        Some people Just Dominated a game and will spend  as much money as they can on it.
        Arcane saga, Lasted for 2 months when it was released their were people that spent over 5000 dollars and wanted the money back when the games announced that it was shutting down.
        I rather pay a 15 dollar sub month than have to Constantly pay money just just keep up with.
        People have tried to sue Perfect world over the Lock box scam.
        The state of F2p Games are just meant to separate the uneducated and stupid form there money.

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wanderer

Excellent thread. You\'re right. I\'m one of the duped. I\'ve spent far more money than I ever planned to. I\'m about to quit. (But not quite yet...)

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killawatt

        To quote a good man over at r2games forums (Tajimamori):

        The only Way to Enjoy a Pay 2 Win game Is to Not care about ranking and enjoy the Game ...don\'t put too much pressure on yourself to be a high ranking member. Live by these rules when playing and it will stay fun for ya:

1. Ignore the Rankings, Don\'t Check them unless your sole purpose is to learn from the others.
2. Look at the pretty things in the event But do not Ever assume you NEED them to progress.
3. Enjoy Spending time Chatting with your community ; Don\'t just focus on part of the game Have Conversations and Have fun talking to Random people XD

        Points 1 and 2 flies in the face of LoA core money-taking strategy, which is to get you hyped up over pretty stats that cost $200-$300 and hyped up over br. But of course, they\'re always gonna make the MOST money from hype from new players falling for their tricks in the first week...

        They\'d make more money and retain more players with $25 angels and costumes but... that would require going through a high school economics class. Or at least googling \'demand curve\' geez...

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melithea

Excellent guide, every player should read this. I\'ve railed against Aeria Games on this subject and the terrible way they run their cash shop as well.

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yelhsa

        uCool\'s Tynon is much better game, you don\'t have to pay or coin to be the best there.

        The cost in diamonds for just about anything is ridiculous.. 25 diamonds just to re-spawn and 50 diamonds to revive in world boss...

        The only thing they refrained from doing is making it possible to buy gold outright.

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shadedlotus

I don\'t mind spending a tad bit of cash every now and then to support a game but you are right in all aspects. This game wants you to spend gobs of cash. Why do you think they have the events so overpriced with suck low luck level so getting the items from the event. It\'s a no brainer why they do it and is it right no... it\'s not but you have to expect it when you play a game like this that is Free to Play and the reason is really simple. If you have a Free to play game but dangle goodies and such in front of a user that will make them better than the next person they are more likely to play see the goods and buy them increasing profits for the company. If you have a game where you pay to play that doesn\'t have a cash shop like the free to play games they get less people playing them and the amount of money coming in is highly decreased, unless we are talking about World of Warcraft which is just a mega money maker because the game was well made.

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apexis

        Well world of warcraft was destroyed by the dev team that picked it up.
        I love this post though and I dont think I will spend another dime on this game.  You do have to invest quite a bit more to be successful as you get further along.

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