Other In Response to Spring Rift Battle Update

[Pepperlunatic]

At this moment to make an optimal rift battle team, you must have a good amount of good characters, essence for evolve, many right move with right stat, enough canopies to upgrade both moves and characters, enough gold and diamond keys. To new players,both F2P and non-F2P, this is an overwhelming amount of things to gather. Well does cabinet solves or at least levitates the issue? I personally think not. Sure, you still have choice but the selection is still random so you still need to pray for RNGesus to get the right character, right move, right key, and right essence at the right time when you actually have enough rift coin(spending canopy is not logical imo considering how much it is required to develop a decent team with decent upgraded moves). If you miss something that you need just because you don't have 10 extra rift coin needed to buy something, too bad you have to wait again till you see that.

Now if we add Catalysts which has bronze, silver, and gold, into the equation, it just gets even worse. Now new players have to pray to get the right gold catalysts as well as the ones that I mentioned above. Considering that purchasing microtransaction does not guarantee the access of an optimal team, it is not just some F2P guys' problem but everyone's problem.

Lets just look at hearthstone. To have an optimal experience, you must have numbers of decent decks to play. Each deck has 30 cards and there are 5 cards in a cardpack. Each card pack costs about a dollar and a purchase of 100 bucks should be enough to make one or two optimal deck. Does RNG is involved in these items? yes but there is also a way to make a card that you want by dusting the useless cards to make anything that you wish as long as you have enough dust. Now if someone spent 100 bucks on SGM, can you make an optimal team that has the right characters, the right move with right stats, the right gold catalyst, and the right essence? Probably not and here are the two reasons, there are so many DIFFERENT conditions that must be met and there are no ways to use useless items to make something that you need. Sure you can sell moves and use characters to evolve but you can't use that to get a bio-exorcist or Pummel Horse with %atk %health %def that you don't have. The shards that you get when you get character is helpful but it still has chance to give something that you don't want.

Now what would be the real solution for this? Two things:
1. Lower the number of conditions that is required to make an optimal team like removing the hassle to gather good gold catalyst. This game already has so much things to collect and just having more pesky and unremarkable things to collect will only make both F2P and non-F2P unhappy. That is the main reason why I am against the idea of catalyst: it is so difficult to make them interesting thanks to the extra power restriction it has and will make additional things to grind for when there are so many thing to grind. Not only just that, it will also worsen the negative PR it has gotten from the failure of rift battle if this fails as well.
2. Have some ways to get something that you want that does not involve with RNG at all like how hearthstone uses the dust system to allow players to get what they need. Calling Cabinet of Curiosity as a solution is just pure laziness and you guys shouldn't expect some "e" for effort. Here is how I would solve this issue: When you open a relic of any kind, you get Aeon's sand. This currency can be used change your character to another character of same tier or change one of your move's stat to whatever stat you want. It is also important to make the S-tier characters like bio-exorcist or wulfsbane more expensive than lower tier characters like Immoral fiber or Raw Nerv. Basically you should be able to change a move stat after opening 1000 theonite worth of relic and 2000 theonite worth of relic for changing into non s-tier character and 3000 theonite worth of relic for changing into s-tier character. That way, this insures that players can be satisfied with their purchase and make this game feel less RNG-reliant than it was.

I know I have criticized hard about this system but this is because I have high expectation on this game and want this game to not make the same mistakes that other games have made. I understand you Hidden Variable devs are working hard to make this game right but still that is no excuse to make such amateur mistakes like this catalyst reveal in a completely wrong time. I hope this post helps out on making this game better and keep up the good work

 

[Cellsai]

Just a quick note that Hearthstone and Skullgirls Mobile are quite different game models.

In Hearthstone they release 100+ cards every few months. At the same time they also remove 100+ cards as old cards cycle out of season. In this way it doesn't matter if the player is able to buy the specific cards they want because eventually those cards will become mostly useless for competition. The player will always be encouraged to buy more and more new cards at a very quick pace.

In Skullgirls, characters aren't going anywhere. It also takes a LONG time to release new characters, and when new characters release there's very few versions of them. If you allow the player to buy exactly the character they want at any time then they will very quickly have no incentive to buy any relics ever again. Why would I bother opening relics once I had my optimal Rift Team?

 

[Pepperlunatic]

Just a quick note that Hearthstone and Skullgirls Mobile are quite different game models.

In Hearthstone they release 100+ cards every few months. At the same time they also remove 100+ cards as old cards cycle out of season. In this way it doesn't matter if the player is able to buy the specific cards they want because eventually those cards will become mostly useless for competition. The player will always be encouraged to buy more and more new cards at a very quick pace.

In Skullgirls, characters aren't going anywhere. It also takes a LONG time to release new characters, and when new characters release there's very few versions of them. If you allow the player to buy exactly the character they want at any time then they will very quickly have no incentive to buy any relics ever again. Why would I bother opening relics once I had my optimal Rift Team?

The main reason why i compare hearthstone with sgm is because of the similarities like how they both use some sort of gacha and they have this safety net system like the shards and dusts. Shard system is a decent system that rewards player for putting effort or money into the game regardless of luck. That sounds lovely until you realize that these safety net against bad luck relies on luck because there are some terrible golds and diamonds. Dust system, on the other hand, does not rely on luck and thus bring more satisfaction and hope for completing the optimal build (though considering how much dust is needed for a deck, it is wise to see it as a mere safety net rather than a quick easy way to get everything)

The dust systems that i suggested are a simple silver lining and a safety net that rewards player for opening relics not give free bio exorcist for everyone (of course bio exorcist being too good is another issue). Though the value i said above is just an example and should be thought more carefuly, this does exactly what the shards are supposed to do. Also completing the optimal team also give more opportunities for players to experiment on different non meta characters and compositions just like how hearthstone players with bunch of meta decks do once they have the meta decks. But what if everyone gets what they want? Tbh dust system’s main purpose is hope not charity. It should be designed to take a year of nonstop f2p experience to actually get everything. And if you play this game for a year, whether you have the optimal team or not, bored player will get bored regardless and others will just continue to play. Also, year is enough time for hidden variable teams to make many new contents to grind and spend money or effort for. Also, it is important to not that just because you get the character or a move you want, you still need lots of additional resources like canopy and evolve materials to complete the optimal team and you still need to buy bunch of additional relics to get one of the many things that you need to make the optimal team. So asking why would I bother opening the relic if i have the optimal team is like having afraid to use life tap while playing warlock just because you are worried about the long term effects of it.

You must also remember that the dust(or sand) system that I've suggested requires you to buy relic. That means is that players will most likely be trying to buy more relics using theonite and thus potentially increasing revenues while satisfying and keeping the customers. On the other hand, what we have now will only make players dissatisfied for having bunch of raw nervs and thats all folks and make some of them quit.