Business Side Issues

Honestly --- most of you should skip this and go to the suggestion post:

https://forum.battlebay.net/threads/a-brighter-future.24384/

... unless you're a developer and want an outside opinion on why the game is struggling ... or want a quick business lesson (or want a small window into what I do for a living).








tl;dr: Issues in the legendary pricing model have exposed BB's over-reliance on Whales. The response to falling sales has been to over-monetize every aspect of the game. This has alienated players and is causing an early demise for the game. The only successful path from here is fix the paywall issues and transition to a more balanced monetization model.



I. BATTLEBAY'S MOST SIGNIFICANT ISSUE

Falling revenue.

A. What have been the effects?

Spoiler: More

• Updates are rushed and untested.
• Bugs and Issues go unresolved.
• New items are severely unbalanced.
• Non-revenue-generating portions are de-prioritized.
• Halted advertising outside of the Rovio sphere.
• Over-monetization of every aspect.
• Alienation of the players.
• And, the creation of a reputation for only making p2w games.

II. MAIN CAUSE
The game's monetization model is reliant on Whales each spending tens of thousands - every business quarter.

Spoiler: Answer

This model worked well initially but it is not well-suited to work well long-term with the current game structure. Regardless of what new items you create, event perks you sell, it is not going to solve the issue - nor will switching ranked to HCTDM.

A. Why the reliance on Whales?

Spoiler: Answer

Presumably, less than 10-20% of players have spent real money on the game. Of those spenders, the top 10-20% have likely generated 80% of the sales or more. If so, it's not surprising to see a monetization model that focused so heavily on whales.

III. MONETIZATION MODEL
Note: How is revenue viewed by managers and shareholders?

Spoiler: Answer

On a quarter to quarter basis. It doesn't matter if the game made $10 million in the first quarter if it's barely breaking even in Q4.

The initial explosion of revenue likely created unrealistic sales forecasts for the future. When those forecasts weren't met, managers probably cut costs (e.g., reduced the staff numbers and advertising expenses).

As odd as it seems, they would be far more optimistic about a game that made $2M in Q1, $2.3M in Q2, $2.6M in Q3, and $3M in Q4 - even though that's less revenue than $10M upfront (with the time value of money).

A. What are the largest issues with the Monetization Model?

1) Whale Monetization

Spoiler: Note About Whales:

Some spend hundreds of thousands on houses, cars, boats, vacations, gambling ... and some enjoy mobile gaming .. In my experience, whales might be a bit hedonistic in their spending, but they are very rational thinkers; they simply have a larger budget for entertainment than most.

In turn for their investments, they get entertainment, recognition, a voice in game direction, and even some fans - or bit of fame for the streamers.

So, to be clear, I'm glad the game gets their support .. They drive the majority of the game development. However, it is not sustainable to rely solely on their support to remain profitable.

Why have Whales stopped spending as much?
a. Cheaper Alternatives
** MAIN REASON FOR LOSS OF REVENUE **

Spoiler: More

i) Competitive Advantage
When Whales spend large sums of money, they expect an advantage.

Legendary Event Perks offer far more of an advantage than Legendary Items ever did and for less than 1% of the cost. For a few hundred dollars spend on selected events, Whales are able to purchase this advantage while the vast majority of other players view the cost as too high (or refuse to purchase event perks on principle).

The availability of this alternative has devalued the worth of legendary items - and severely lessened whale willingness to spend tens of thousands for them.

In other words, if they can buy a massive advantage for a few hundred here and there, why would they ever spend tens of thousands on a smaller, competitively balanced advantage?

ii) Exclusivity
Whales want exclusivity for thier investment. And the (much cheaper) maxed epic versions of new items meet that criteria as it'll take years for most players to acquire a similar level item.
This obviously is another reason that lessens the desire to purchase legendary items.

b. Prohibitive Cost of Additional Items

Spoiler: Note on Legendary Pricing ...

In theory, it would cost around $60k USD for 6 legendary duplicates of all 40 items (with perfect RNG drops, including the 25 free items in achievements).

But, players also need 4000 legendary powercells to max them all. Assuming a whale had a few hundred leg PCs from epic scrapping, they would still need to scrap roughly 3800 L1 legendary items - which increases the price to over $1 million USD.

As far as I know, no one has managed to max out even half of the legendary items in the game. Most of the largest spenders likely have less than 8-10. This is an indication of a poor pricing model.

i) Lower Demand
On average (speculating a bit), it probably cost around $100k for the legendary duplicates and powercells to max out 6 legendary items - or $16-17,000 per item. Rationally, they viewed the strongest, best items as worth the expense.

However, once their favorites were maxed, the next six items - less popular, powerful items - were valued at a much lower level, so there was far less desire to purchase these items.

ii) Lower Odds
Some items were buffed and some new items were created. Whales may value a few of these items as high as the other items they purchased, but the odds of acquiring those items increase the cost far beyond where they value them - particulary since new items and a fifth item type have been added.

For instance, if a whale wanted a max legendary large bandage, it would cost nearly $67,000 USD (based on RNG drop percentages) - far more than the $16-17k they spent per item initally.

c. Future Outlook

Spoiler: More

As I mentioned, Whales tend to be rational thinkers. If they have doubts about the game's ability to remain a going concern (i.e., remain in business), they are far less likely to invest that type of money in a game that no one is playing in a year's time.

To sum all that up:

Spoiler: Answer

The pricing model only works ...

if Whales really want several upper tier Legendary Items at once,
if there is no cheaper alternative for a competitive edge or for exclusivity, AND
if they are confident in the game's ability to remain financially stable.

But, it's important to remember that Whales are similar to other spenders. They will spend considerable amounts of money over time on a game if the price is right and if the individual sums are small enough. If, however, they hit a steep enough paywall, say $50-$60k for the next item they want, they're far less likely to take that step.

2. Occassional to Moderate Spenders

Spoiler: More

Why have occassional spenders and baby whales stopped spending as much?
a. The time and resources it takes to build items is considerable. Most of the moderate spenders won't purchase more items until they've cleared space in their inventory.

b. The occassional spenders are likely stuck behind a PC paywall. These players are more susceptible to sudden paywalls (e.g., powercell paywall), and will stop spending money when they hit the wall.

c. Similiar to the issue with Legendary Items, players prioritize the best items, so building additional (less-popular, less powerful) items aren't valued as highly or prioritized as strongly.

3. F2p players

Spoiler: More

Some f2p players will never spend money on a game. Some would if the pricing was more affordable.

Regardless, these players are vital to your success. They increase the game's popularity, increase the popularity of your streamers, refer friends to the game, make the leaderboard more prestigious to climb, they watch ads and increase the amount you're able to charge for ad-spots with their view counts, and many will likely become spending customers one day.

But, they expect a reasonable rate of progression and a competitively-balance game between them and paying customers. If these players are neglected, they will depart for any number of games with a better competitive balance. Without these players, the whales will not be interested in sticking around. They want a large audience - a popular game - and aren't interested in only playing against other whales.

 

VI. ROVIO'S REVISED STRATEGY

Spoiler: More

It appears the current strategy is to monetize more things -- sell event perks (for each individual item), create several overpowered new items and ships, and dramatically increase the need for items with ranked HCTDM while only slightly increasing the level of natural progression.

A. Event Perks

Spoiler: Answer

Since Whales no longer purchase legendary items, they have decided to sell Event Perks. But, as there are only 4 perk slots per item, they decided to sell perks that only attach to one specific item, rather than classes of items (e.g., regeneration items, mortars, cannons) to increase the number of event perks you need.

B. Overpowered New Items

Spoiler: Answer

The theory is if new items are tremedously overpowered, players will be more willing to purchase them.

Max Epic items w/ epic perks:
Small Shield vs Big Shield; 2430 HP vs 3050 HP (+26%)
Small Bandage vs Large Bandage, 185 Repair vs 348 Repair (+88%)

Obviously, this is insanely overpowered. Six-hundred HPs for nearly double the regeneration. A speeder can safely regenerate over 1000 HPs by the time their explosive cannon has cooled down.

As I've said, these types of competitive imbalances will push most players away. They may encourage others to purchase some epic containers, but it is still less of an advantage than event perks - so no one is going to spend $50-60k for a legendary version. And, players will be satisfied with the exclusivity of owning the max epic version years before most others acquire a similar level.

C. Ranked HCTDM

Spoiler: Answer

The premise is if we increase the amount of items players need through ranked HCTDM, they will be more willing to purchase more items.

The premise might hold true for some players, but the end result will be the departure of half of your players or more. They obviously could not compete with players that could outfit 3-4 ships, nor could they sink enemies fast enough (regardless of their skill) to compensate for teammates dying 3-4 times in increasingly weaker ships.

D. Success of Revised Strategy?
Not great ... why?


V. OVER-MONETIZATION
Turning everything in your game into in-app purchases has the inverse effect on revenue generation.

A. P2W Trifecta

Spoiler: Rivalries, Ranked, and Events

1) Guild Rivalries - P2W

Rivalries are clearly spend-to-win with superboosts and VIP subscriptions.

If this were the only p2w portion of the game, I do not believe players would mind. The rewards are related to progress and paying for progress isn't typically an issue.

2) Ranked Matches - Increasingly P2W

The longer event perks are sold, the more this becomes a p2w ladder.

If HCTDM is implemented, there will be no competitive balance left in the game.

3) Events - P2W

Events are clearly p4p (pay for perks).

Coins do not roll over; Legendary event perks are guaranteed at 800 coins, while epic event perks have an RNG chance averaging 750 coins per perk; and it takes hours and hours to grind out the chance at a single perk - and all those hours can easily amount to zero progress.

Given that 5 legendary event perks can be purchased for $200 and that perks offer more of a competitive advantage (more effectiveness, more power) than legendary items, this is balance-breaking, game-destorying and the very definition of p2w.

B. Alienation of Players

Spoiler: More

If players enjoy a game and see value for thier purchases, they're much more likely to spend money.

If, however, they see everything requires in-app purchases to win, they'll fell alienated. They will feel as though you're milking them for money rather than allowing them to forget the business-side and simply enjoy the game.

This applies to whales and occassional spender alike. They would rather suffer with weaker items or refrain from playing than contribute to the Rovio "cash cow." The over-monetization will "sicken them to the point of considering quitting."*

*I spoke to a BB whale for thier perspective. That was an actual quote. It's a bad sign to be viewed as greedy, especially if you're struggling with sales.

 

VI. A BETTER STRATEGY ...

A. De-alienate players / Consolidate Monetization

Spoiler: More

Developers can generate reports that detail the sales made in each category of in-app purchases, but there is no report than will show the amount of lost sales (e.g., every time a player would have spent money but did not). Player alienation is only one of many possible reasons.

But .. if you focus monetization primarily in one area (e.g., progression, items), your players will be far less alienated and you'll earn far more over time.

And, you can refine this one area. You can see the effects of specials and deals, or small changes in pricing, rather than losing sales and having no idea which part of the game is cause.

1. Remove PayWalls in favor of PatienceWalls

Spoiler: More

All players are susceptible to abrupt PayWalls. When players hit a significant enough PayWall, they stop spending - and there is no way to monitor those lost sales.

For example, the Epic PowerCell PayWall is about $200. If you are out of epic PCs and want to build one more epic item, you have to purchase $200 in pearls in order to purchase two 12,800 pearl epic PC daily deals.

Leveling that one epic item has a sudden, abrupt PayWall price-tag of $200.

Many players will stop spending at that point. But, it's not a one-time PayWall. That PayWall is staring you in the face every single time you want to level one more epic item. Obviously, this has been a massive net loss in revenue.

This PayWall is especially bad considering they've already leveled their favorites - so these items are far less valuable in the player's mind. And, it creates a negative impression of the game in their mind.

For Whales, many are willing to spend $50-60k for several legendary items, but they're not willing to spend $50-60k+ for one more legendary item. This is a PayWall that your whales are obviously susceptible to.


On the other hand, a PatienceWall encourages players to speed their progress with in-app purchases for items they would have naturally earned over time (with patience). Rather than feeling forced to pay the PayWall toll to continue progression, they want to make these types of purchases. They get excited about the prospect of what lies in the next box.

2. Remove PressureWalls

Spoiler: More

Events are an example of a PressureWall.

If you're not grinding out Legendary Perks or buying them, you're falling behind .. you're becoming weaker than the competition.

This alienates players because it's forced. You're forced to play the events for the OP perks offered for hours on end. Rather than playing as much as you want for as long as you enjoyed the game, you have to play. You've given players virtual homework - or busywork. Coins and perk progress starts over after each event, so you can't save up for the ones you need. Epic event perks are only slightly less difficult (based on percentages) than Legendary perks.

Events used to be the best part of the game - the more you played, the more you progressed (minus the no-life grinders that took advantage) - but now they're the biggest cause of alienation (and the biggest cause of lost revenue).

3. Remove Sales Conflicts

Spoiler: More

In order to give more value to VIP subscriptions and ad-watches, battle rewards were nerfed. And, they've been increased since then, but it is hardly enough.

It takes players entirely too long to build the items they have stored (even without powercells). As I've said, when a player runs out of things to build, they want to buy more items. But, they have to play thousands of matches to earn the gold for parts to build a single item, so there's no desire to buy new items.

For the players that can play 10 hours a day and have no job, they can build their items with ease, but they're not making in-app purchases. For the players with full-time jobs with limited time to play, they aren't buying more items because it'll take a year or more to play enough matches to build the items they currently have.

This is where I would typically have internal data to analyze. I have no clue what the value of ad-watches and VIP subs are, nor how important they are to the bottom line. If they were not a significant contributor when things were going well, then this is a good example of how over-monetization can cause companies to lose sight of what's hurting their sales.

4. Remove Alternatives

Spoiler: More

Increasing the availability of epic versions of new items would reduce the exclusivity that Whales currently enjoy with maxed epics. I'll discuss the best way to do this in my suggestion post.

However, selling Legendary Event Perks (1% of the price for 10x's the benefit) has devalued Legendary items to such an extent that I do not believe the damage to their perceived value can be recovered. I'll discuss the solution to this in the next post as well.

B. Shift to a More Balanced Monetization Model

Spoiler: More

As I've discussed, the legendary item pricing model is preventing whales from spending as much money as they otherwise would .. but, even after that's fixed, you have to find a way to monetize the rest of your players without alienating or pushing them away.

How?

Create several different price points - $1, 7, 15, 30.
Sell cosmetic items.
Create more social engagement.

I'll explain these in my suggestion post.

Note About Cosmetic Items:

Spoiler: More

Because of games like FortNite, players are starting to expect games to profit more from selling cosmetic items (e.g., skins) than from selling a competitive edge for in-game purchases.

Even Supercell (the p2w-king of game devs) is adapting to this strategy.

Why?

The stigma of spending money on f2p games is fading away - as it should. (There is absolutely nothing wrong with spending money on a game that gives you hundreds or thousands of hours of entertainment)! And, as the number of players willing to make in-game purchases increases, many developers have responded by shifting towards a more balanced monetization model.

Would selling cosmetic items alone work for BattleBay?

At this moment -- not a chance. There simply aren't enough players.

But, it is important to start implementing cosmetics - discovering what players want and what pricing models are most effective - because the time is quickly approaching where your game's popularity (and success) will depend on how well you monetize items that give no competitive edge.

And, for individual developers, it certainly looks good on a resume if you've had success in this area.

("Looks good" - a phrase which here means that future employers might be willing to pay more for your expertise).

 

This thread is gold, very nice of you to put it all together. I read most of it and agree with almost everything. In a perfect world devs would read it with some thought and it would change things but because this is not a perfect world I doubt it's going to happen. Or even if they read it, they will have some reason to ignore it completely.

Sadly it feels that gaming companies (not just Rovio) often seem to handle customer feedback as if it all just "fan post" from kids that don't know anything about the business side. But tbh, many players are educated and smart individuals. It's ironic that Rovio could seriously hire a business consultant to increase Battle Bay revenue and his answer could look pretty much like your two threads. But it would come with a price tag of several thousand euros..

But because this is freely available on a "fan forum", they can't use it because it's "not professional" creation.

 

I had to post this one answer from Discord too, because it fully summarizes their attitude. So here you see: better leave the monetization talk for the expensive consultants. It's nicer to listen when it costs something. Feels more professional that way


Here's the link to the original Discord question where this answer was given. I removed the question from the image because it wasn't relevant.

 

So this game is dead on its feet and I should immediately stop spending the little money I do spend. Got it.

 

Might want to read "A Brighter Future..." Thread before getting too depressed

 

@xArrogance great stuff here man

 

the thing is they are not willing to hear anything , they just do what they wana do to kill this slowly over the time . things are too expensive in this game and wait is to long to have copies of items and powercells . its look like they think people will wait months to get copies and powercells of same item . at one point people will just leave the game .

if prices were affordable maybe more people think to buy stuff but look at this 40 rare powercells cost 2400 perls .


and idea of skin i was also thinking about but in a different way . i was think what if they put crew as pilot on boats . just like their trailer of the game you can see crew sitting on boats . Rovio have done it in Angry birds go , they have put brids on driving seats so why not in battle bay . it will give more story to the game .

 

Just fyi - I didn't post all that to show anyone up or put anyone down .. It just seemed like they could use a different perspective.

Obviously, these two posts were just the start of a roadmap, but I think they could use them to save the game - and even make a franchise out of it.

But, to be perfectly honest, it's their game .. they can run it into the ground and make sure no one downloads another Rovio game if they want. That's their right.

My only issue is event perks.. Make the epic versions 4-5 times easier to get and I'll shut up.

At least there would be one area of the game that isn't completely tainted.

 

Same here. Event perks are a tremendous advantage to the players who use it and a huge disadvantage to players who don’t have the 10 hours to grind for them. I’m just happy that I made it to NML before everyone had a Stun on their RGs or a crit and frost boost on their BCs and ECs.

 

I don't see it.

 

Link is at the top of the first post.. or you can find it in “suggestions and ideas” or whatever the other part of forum is, it’s not in game discussion.

 

@TheAntiSnipe maybe a Dev will see this post if it was put in the special MVP discord.

 

Finally their Q4-2018 Financial Statement is here: http://hugin.info/174482/R/2234992/879691.pdf



To be honest, I expected the drop in Q4 to be even worse.

 

I didn't bother to look up the financials, but that seems to confirm my thoughts on how they're doing ...

"Battle Bay continued to decline due to shrinking daily active users, even though the games monetization has been improving"

That's business speak for the game is dying but they're getting more money out of the players still hanging on ... it's not surprising. People want to win. And they're selling the ticket.

It's a strategy adopted from Supercell ..

Supercell has been kicking off a new p2w game every year or two lately. Oddly enough, each consecutive game attracts fewer users and makes less money. So, it seems that a poor reputation is something companies might want to avoid.


And this is seriously how easy consulting is ..

Hmm, I understand you have been pursuing this failing Supercell model ... but I'm going to suggest something crazy here.

Rather than bleeding your remaining (and most loyal) customers dry and cementing this poor reputation for Rovio ... let's see what successful companies are doing and try that!

It seems like it might be more valuable to figure out a monetization model that works and keeps players happy than to lose all future revenue from those players (and everyone those players talk to).

 

It remains interesting to me how other game studios seem to recoup their multi million dollar AAA game expenses at $30 per copy, while Battle Bay is bent toward whale economics.

There are many solutions to the problem, but a declining player base is priority #1. There's a lot of potential in porting to other platforms like Switch as perhaps the most ideal next move, as multi platform support has proven to be a boon to other game franchises, and it is an excellent way of getting new players, and reinvigorating the old.

 

The business model for this game never loosened up after global launch is what killing the game. The trainings and ship costs of the global launch should be reducing, not increasing. Games make money from new contents, not increasing old ones. What is the point of making end game materials unreachable even by extreme whales? If people can have 2-3 T5L load outs after 2-3 years, then just create another rarity for more income. Right now, many can’t even fill out 1 ship with T5E playing since global launch.

The devs in this game forgot that this is a game and people are paying for virtual items that will be going away when this game dies. I am guessing it costs about $500k to get every item T5L. People wouldn’t even spend that kind of money of a Ferrari that will disappear in 3-4 years. We are talking about a game here.

Due to this greed, the game has never been that competitive. There are very few elite players in this game because of the imbalances in power. The number of YouTubers for this game is very low because they don’t have many good things to say about the game so why make videos daily.

The last 4 updates had been killing this amazing P2P game. Yet the devs kept acting dumb to squeeze as much money from the whales as possible. Why would they be spending now when the game is dying. I even canceled my VIP when I saw the recent promotion for $20 for 60k raffle tokens - that’s if you have a full guild.

Asphalt 9 launched 6 months ago and it has at least 20X the fan base here. Their most expensive package cost $60. Their $10 promotion is better value than $200 spend here on promotion. Yet, they still have 10X the revenue here.

My 2 cents, create an update with fixes, balances, and few features requested by your community. Asphalt 9 already did 1 such update and it’s only 6 months old.

 

having T5E can take year . don't how they think people will stay that long on this game . i mean most of the people don't keep any game this long and wait for having some progress .

 

I have not read most of the recent announcements so something might have changed thus my post is probably not 100% accurate.

You summarized the issue well, but

Spoiler: how this all kinda started getting worse and why

Yes, this game was heavily oriented towards whales before too, but it wasn not that bad.
Isn't this whole situation also caused by some players? Maybe.
Events were not p4p initially. They offered great way of getting low tier legendary items for free after some time (few updates), which made the difference between veterans and newer players a bit smaller.
And that made angry one group of players (especially some of those who were playing for very long time and thought it was unfair because it was before significantly harder to get t1 legendary items) so they started saying that it's game breaking and that legendary items and perks should be much harder to get.
Well...devs did what these players asked for and they increased the prizes of boxes and removed legendary item pieces from events completely etc etc.
They kinda (only kinda because they went too far, much further than what some players wanted) did what some players asked for, so it's imho unfair to say now that this is only fault of devs/ROVIO/whoever else but you have not mentioned players at all.
as for f2p players:
It's often not even worth it for them to get any legendary or too many epic items because these items are somehow too hard to upgrade/evolve.

Spoiler: my personal experience

I was lucky and got legendary blast cannon, which helped me a lot, because it was significantly stronger than rare one (that was before they reduced the difference between item rarities). Then I got second one from the achievement.
That might sound as a good story about f2p player who was lucky enough to get dupe for legendary item he wanted so much, but...
the first blast I got is still only lvl 8 due to legendary parts shortage and if I ever manage to evolve it to t2, I won't have enough legendary power cells to evolve any other legendary items anytime soon. That doesn't really matter because I don't have any other legendary items and I'm not even close to them.

I have inventory full of item dupes and I'm sure that I'm not the only one in this situation, you may ask why.

Spoiler: this is the reason

That's because there are too many barriers which are making upgrading and also evolving items overcomplicated even if you have all dupes you need (which is hard enough by itself), all these parts (you need up to 4 different part rarities for just one item), power cells (again different rarities, you have tons of lower rarities but almost no or literally no of the ones you need), sugar, gold, captain level (you need high enough captain level in order to be able to store enough sugar/gold). Why so many barriers in normal progress?

There are several problems related to the previous point.

Spoiler

While I was (past tense because I don't play anymore) waiting for materials for upgrading my items, those willing to pay or no-life this game (to get resources faster, obtain more random legendary perks etc.) were getting more and more ahead of me (that would be ok, if it was in normal extent, not like in this game). What will happen if this goes on for too long? Casual player's progression will eventually stop due to the fact that his opponents will be getting stronger every day, while this casual player would be slowly crawling behind them. This casual player will be getting less and less rewards per per battle (theoretically) because infamy is relative and that means the difference between his and p2p and no-life players will be growing bigger thus casual player's infamy would decrease due to his infamy and also infamy related rewards decreasing.
In the end, f2p will sooner or later leave this game due to slow/none progress once he reaches certain point. And why are leaving f2p players bad? They're the majority of playerbase, if there are not enough f2p players, then whales will eventually start fighting only against themselves and that's not what they payed for.

Also reaching absolute end of this game (by this I mean at least one setup of maxed t5 legendary items, because maxed everything is even more absurd) is imho absolutely impossible for f2p, EVER. Why?

Spoiler: see why (I will add more to this in my next comment)

The amount of all of these parts, item dupes and power cells you need and also time required to obtain them is just absurd. 6 dupes per one item, tens of power cells per one item to get to t5 etc, you can name it.
It would probably require substantial part of his life to get every legendary item maxed without spending $ and that's not time any multi-player mobile game can survive (probably). That's just absurd (I know I said this multiple times but I dunno how to describe this situation in any other way).
And in order to get everything to lvl 50 legendary, you'd need to scrap a ton of legendary items...dupes you'll eventually need for evolving items.
And they're making this situation much worse every time they add new item.

New ship-upgrading system is imho not helping anything, it makes it even worse.

Spoiler

Thiy "new" ship-upgrading system is somehow worse than the previous one. Yes, you now have every slot available once you buy the ship but price per level is too high. Gold you now need for few levels would give you one tier before, which gave you much more than just a little bit of hp and nothing else. As for me, I have not bought a single ship level since they released this system (except for the guardian, which I wanted to try so I leveled it up a bit, to level 8 or 10 approximately).

To summarize it..."recent" changes made angry many f2p and also p2p players, because these changes usually only caused that it's now even harder (and more expensive) to progress than it was before.
these are my 2¢ about this