Business Side Issues

Which is a good argument to increase progression. What keeps a player in the game? The inflection point is somewhere between the feeling of going nowhere (2+ years for 1 boat) and maxing out in a few months. Then you ask yourself, is the game still compelling after maxing out? If the answer is no, then you create infinite progression (e.g., Pokemon Go). Fortnite is a game where the player is maxed out from day 1.

Based on where this game stands today, I don't think Rovio believes that Battle Bay is compelling without progression, in stark contrast with player opinions. Evidence to this is lack of desire to position any aspect of this game as an eSport, where skill is the only differentiator in a match. Instead the current focus is on a continuous stream of new boats and items each of which decreases overall progression. That's a great way to keep maxed out players interested and spending money, and potentially makes new players excited for all the options, but this does little for everyone else, 99% of the player base.

So as xArrogance states, continuing to pander only to whales is not a sustainable means to prolong the game. Once everyone else leaves, would whales have any incentive to stay? More advertising, more platform support, more progression, and equal skill events would go a long way to keep the majority of the player base more engaged than they are now.

 

quick math related to the legendary item thing I mention before
I'll use hypothetical scenario which will make it easy
I hope that this will help more people realise in how bad state is this game, that's why I spent my time typing this novel

Spoiler: disclaimer

I know that the method I used is not 100% accurate, but the things I left out (other materials) and things I idealised (100% luck in terms of colors of pieces and items you get) will somehow balance out each other (although the idealisation thing has probably bigger impact on the result) and that's why I could ignore them while doing this

Scenario

Spoiler

is absolutely hypothetical and will probably never happen due to all the luck, implausible things and devotion involved in it

• you are completely f2p (you can't spend any $ to speed up your progress)
• you are RNGesus, you'll always get set of 10 item pieces of one color as your season rewards and you'll never get more than 6 duplicates (in totall, that also involves the initial item) of each item
• you are the best player of this game (you have to be able to stay at the top of the leaderboard, even above whales with maxed legendary setup, while you have only epic items)
• you are able to be number 1 of the world leaderboard for how much you want
• we ARE counting in pieces from season rewards, because all these other sources are too RNG-based so it's too hard to take them into account (and it's also imho absolutely pointless)
  
• we ARE NOT taking any other materials (such as parts or power cells) into account, because that would be too hard and it somehow compensates (I think it rather overcompensates, but that's not what this comment is about) the previous point (no other sources of legendary items)

Data I used(items per season etc.)

Spoiler

• there are 41 items in the game (21R, 5B, 5G, 6Y, 4T)
• you need 6 item dupes to get one item to t5
• you need 246 (41×6) items in totall to get one full t5 set of certain rarity (that means all items of that quality evolved to t5)
• you will get 20 legendary pieces a month (10 per season, two seasons a month), that means 2 items a month
• you can get 24 items a year from season rewards

Results
to get all items from certain category, you'll need:

• red: 5.25 years
  Spoiler: that's how I got this result, same for every category

  you'llneed 126 items (21×6), if you keep the rate of 24 items per year (2 items per month), you will need 126÷24 years, that means 5.25 years
• blue and green are 1.25 year both (30 items required for both)
• yellow is 1.5 year (36 items required)
• teal is 1 year (24 items required)
• that means you will need 10.25 years to get all items (for this method, hypothetically)

Spoiler: what does this mean?

This means that even when you are the best (being #1 for that long time) player in this game and also RNGesus (getting only what you need and nothing more), you will need 10.25 years (!!!!) to max out all legendary items in this game.
Yes, achievements (in their current form) will give you 26 items (21 red and 5 green) to start with, but that would decrease the time by only few months and devs will definitely add at least few more items during these 10 years so you can ignore achievements (at least current form, might change in the future).
So in the end, it means one simple thing... it's impossible for f2p to ever max full legendary set due to all these progress-blocks which devs made.

 

Well it’s not impossible lmao.. I did the math a while back (before the new league and stuff) and it was like 30-40years lmao basically a lifetime. Also not too crazy for a game to hope for something like that, but it’s a bit insane on a game that isn’t seeing the popularity to warrant such long expectations. Your 10years is also way under in reality because of the need for leggy parts. (Not even gonna mentions cells) you can get 6leggy parts from scrapping a leggy piece, and that is the best value you will find imo.

Most of us have already realized that leggy t5 is out of the question for f2p.. I would be much more interested in the time for epic.. also I am gonna be trying to do this when I have the time but only recently got the urge like you due to the nerf of stars and my mathing the uncommon crates. Will not be able to provide my full numbers til I get a chance to screenshot ever applicable level upgrade cost as I intend (and I still will be missing accurate drop rate chances from scrapping and the rates at which you will find things in shipment/raffle to decide the absolute value of all items in terms of pearls at the very least)

 

I knew that t5 legendaries are something I'll never reach, unless devs change something (and that would have to be be really big change, not just small adjustment of this horrible system). I was curious, I wanted to know how much time do we need to get full set of t5 legendary items, although I thought that it'll be much shorter, something around 5 years or so, not decades.
I know that the real time is much longer, but is there any possible way taking all parts, power cells etc into account? I mean they drop only based on RNG (it would would be possible to use only those from league rewards, but that might also change the required time to something around century)
And even more important is that I don't have access to data about leveling up legendaries so I don't how many parts do you need for example to level up legendary from level 49 to 50 but I know that it's insane when compared with f2p possibilites of getting those those parts.
And tbh, we all know that this game won't exist another 10 or more years, which means that it is impossibe. Yes you could spend that much time (probably most of/whole your life) playing this game and staying at the top but you might still be far away from completion of this. This is impossible due to lifetime of this game and maybe even due to length of our lives.

Same but with epics...that's too much RNG based for me to get somehow near the real time. RNG in this game is just...I got 0 epic dupes of few items (talking about old, not recently added items) after approximately one year and only 1 or 2 dupes of more than few items (again old, not recently added). But I also go in some cases more than enough dupes to t5 certain epic items more than once or even twice.

 

I forgot Rovio was a public company - but a quick glance at the financials would have saved me all this work ...

Spoiler: More

This was all far too late .. There's no way they're going to try to save the game now - and I don't blame them.

It would take a substantially large reinvestment in advertising and development. The risk wouldn't be worth the potential return.

BB is already the lowest performing app in their main lineup - and it's been in rapid decline for more than a year. They'll probably add it to their "less actively maintained" portion of the portfolio in 6 months.


It seems they've made the decision to refocus their efforts on the Angry Birds brand .. and I understand that too (after a bit of reading).

The (Angry Birds / Candy Crush) casual gaming segment is the largest in mobile gaming. It's incredibly competitive and the cost of user acquisition is very expensive. So, it makes sense to focus their efforts on strengthening and expanding the AB brand.


Mobile action game revenue is also skyrocketing; it'll soon overtake PC and console revenue. But the largest PC/console game developers have taken notice of FortNite's success.

Those game devs have vast resources and years of experience in creating action games .. It would be far too costly for Rovio to compete with them when they're focused on their main brand.

So, I suppose it's bittersweet.. The Bay is approaching the end, but we'll have far better and more varied options in the near future.

Anywho, I think my time would've been better spent focused on what could be changed to give the Bay a more dignified death .. for players and devs.


The first thing that comes to mind is that it would be nice to finally build up all those items I've been storing for a year.. (I could finally see if I would've liked the swift torpedo). Adding a 10x multipler on powercell drops and decreasing the cost of parts should be easy enough .. and it certainly wouldn't hurt sales.

But .. it would be nice to see a little more of all the hard work they put in on all these different items ... and give them a bit of appreciation for it.

 

any game should take max one year for decent progress . I have played other games mostly racing games and i was able to make all progress in max 6 months without spending all day . 1-2 hour per day was enough . i have finished some Need fo speed games , Grid 2 . and i used to play Respawnables and i was able make good progress in months and i reached max level in 6 months and i played that game twice from zero level it was fun . if i uninstall battle bay maybe i will try respawnables again . in Battle bay my progress is now stopped . i want to make t5 epic standard cannon and t5 epic but i only got t2 .

i don't remember exactly who said but on one form a player said Battle bay is a e sports its about skills . i don't agree with that completely is one want to climb infamy one need skills but having right level of weapons also needed . i have t5 uncommon shield and turbo . i have not got any epic shield or turbo . only t2 rare i got . I don't see my self waiting months and months to make small small progress i mean its too slow . and even if you see it by p2p point of view its a very expensive game yesterday i saw an offer of 10k tokens and 10 item box for 7 thousand India rupee . thats too much for a virtual items .

 

It's honestly a damn shame that people on this forum are putting so much thought into a game that is either so close to dead it has a skeleton crew working on it, or is being run by people who literally could not care less about game quality.

 

Very true. This forum is still very active before the Gatling Gun update. Since then, each update is another wave of players leaving. Heck, the devs themselves left the forum for dead. They rather announce fix on discord now. How stupid is that?

 

This game has turned into an experiment to see how far pay to win can go

 

When I refer to the eSport potential in Battle Bay it is always in the context of an equal gear Event.

What are other mobile action P2W games? I've always been put off by play wall games like CoC, but I'm sure others here are familiar with games in the same vein as BB which are primarily P2W focused.

 

Best post I’ve read in this forum. There’s a really pessimist sad tone to it and the commentaries. It’s sad to finally realize that a game I’ve liked and played so much may be really dying, but’s more sad to see that devs don’t care about that happening (this is a feeling that I’ve had for years about then tho).

I wish we all are wrong and this game will raise again (dreaming costs no pearls after all...)

 

Do you know War Robots? That's insanely p2w game...you can pay hundreds of $ to get the new op bot and weapons and then, after a month or so, devs add new bots and new weapons which are even more op. At least it worked like that before I left (which was few months ago).

 

That's a terrible way to run a game... glad you left.

 

But you can get anything in that game and it won't even require your whole life

 

I played mobile strike for a long time and it died because it was so expensive.

I was in shock when I realized that the epic power cells have slowed so much, drastically.

I have a great guild but people are leaving the game so fast I can’t keep my guild full half the time.

What games are more balanced for small to medium spenders?

 

I think that The Battle Cats is balanced for small to medium spenders and also f2p players, you can pay there to progress faster or you can play for free, you'll progress slower but you can still get everything even as a f2p
but it's not online multi-player game
as for games similar to Battle Bay, I think that World of Tanks Blitz is balanced for small-medium spenders
I just got awesome offer in WOT Blitz...50% discount on decent (not the best, but still very good) premium tank, it didn't cost much of premium currency so even f2p can afford after some time and small-medium spender can get it immediately for like 20€ or something like that (dunno the exact price due to the fact that it might vary in different countries)

 

That’s actually not a bad way though. That’s how Asphalt 9 is running the game. F2P players will be able to catch up to P2W players in a very short time. Paying is only meant to get you a head of the curve temporarily. New contents in A9 only cost $200 to $1k to get, not like here. Old contents are quickly achieved to guarantee competitiveness. Events are using 80% old cars so skills is more important than power most of the time. Keeping everyone engaged. That’s how games live for a long time.

 

Clash Royale was a lot of fun .. The game mechanics were perfect - pixel perfect. You knew exactly what a card would do if you dropped it in the right spot .. If there was an issue, it was fixed within a day or two.

The balance and interaction between cards was great at first .. and the balance changes were often and slight enough to switch metas without wrecking old lineups.

But, they made new cards constantly.. and they made them overpowered. It started costing a few hundred a month to keep up .. and with that amount of cards, there were too many hard counters to a deck. Skill couldn't overcome the counters.

Then the ladder was insanely corrupt with win trading. And the events were all blatant money grabs ...

I suppose I'm grateful that I got a few years out of BB before it got to that point.

 

I would have no problem paying $10/month for a game, but when keeping up requires a monthly car payment, I have philosophical issues with it. The video gaming industry seems to be taking queues from the casino gaming industry, but video gaming lacks the prize potential for the massive amount of investment.

 

I completely agree, and miss the days when the forefront of gaming was always exciting and only cost 50$ for litterally any game with no add ons at all. I completely understand that those games were susceptible to hackers overtime and that newer games have developers staying on to continue updating games.. I’m fine with either vip or expansions with an upfront price tag, but paying for items is something I despise in a game, even if I do understand some players don’t have the time to upgrade items, and choose to pay to unlock things.. It makes me almost hate the system of leveling items at its core.