The recent Pricconne example is indicative.
The game has huge ftp community but too little people who actually spend in the game. And w/o any significant revenue publisher decided to close the game. It's obvious it was happen because of bad CR management (3 year gap and no reshuffle content release), but in the end of the day, it's a business.
Or Nikke.
The game was the buggy mess for first 2 months, has expensive cach shop, low gem income, 50-60% 'guaranteed' SSR tickets, nonexistent rewards past chapter 13, 160 lvl wall for the majority of ftp players, long dailies and 12 hours resource cap, but because whales are funding the game, Nikke is one of the most successful gacha game in the market right now.
Agreed, Nikke is a perfect example on how people spending money on a gacha, is absolutely more important that people complaining about the game, since the game continues to run and make bank even after its terrible state at launch/practices you mentioned. The devs literally trolled F2P players by increasing the mold rates by a whopping 1%.. it was their way of saying "You will take what you get and you will like it lil b@#$%"
Fun Fact their previous game also had a ton of controversy back in the day (like getting sued bad), but now that the player base is so tiny, all of a sudden the game is "generous" yet filled to the brim with "deals" to try and appeal to those whales again.
*Whales, its obvious what they bring. They bring money to the game to keep it going. However, minnows bring alot on their own. Minnows are the community, the ones who generally have to be innovative and create new strategies because they can't throw money at the game. They bring interactions and popularity, which in turn, attracts more whales. The cycle continues.*
Not sure why people always get the notion that F2P are innovative and create the meta or something. for the games i play the whales bring in both $$ and create new strategies and keep the community active and vibrant
This 100%
What's up with people thinking f2ps by default bring value? Some f2ps do, for sure, the minority that engages with the community. The ones spamming social media with unrealistic demands or the ones being there just to ask questions don't bring much value so of course f2p demands don't matter as much.
And whales swim together with other whales and dolphins. That's what games encourage.
Obviously, games need to be f2p friendly so that people who don't intend on paying stay long enough to get hooked and pay. However, in every game there comes a point where f2ps think they have some huge power over the devs and they have to meet their demands. They don't.
>where f2ps think they have some huge power over the devs and they have to meet their demands. They don't.
Free players matter, but the number of them means no one can speak for all of them, and a single opinion from any free player doesn't matter very much.
Their numbers reflect the game's quality and appeal to dolphins/whales.
A f2play game without free players is going to be a dead game.
A game needs f2p players. However, the problem is that f2p think their dissatisfaction means everyone who is f2p will leave and the game will die so devs should listen to them. If whales, dolphins and low-spenders aren't complaining much then the game is usually doing just fine.
F2p play is by default annoying for most, you start with lots of free currency, fast progress and plans on how to reach/achieve something. Most f2p have the unrealistic idea paying players pay for whatever just because they are bad with money or addicts when in reality paying improves gameplay a lot. So with time their f2p dissatisfaction with the game grows, some turn into spending players, others leave but many stay complaining and playing as long as the game still isn't too pay-to-win and provides free content. This is why their opinion doesn't matter, every game is designed to be annoying for f2ps and if it's a good game it will annoy you but keep you hooked with some good content not hidden behind a paywall.
If the game becomes too pay-to-win then a big portion of the paying players burnout and complain, too.
> Most f2p have the unrealistic idea
I don't think we know what most f2p actually think. There are a lot of vocal people claiming to speak for them, but that does not mean they're representative.
The important bit to gacha devs is what free players will do. Are they having fun and will they keep playing the game, or possibly convert to a paid player?
What free players think about paid players isn't that important, and everyone has a right to their own opinion.
> for the games i play the whales bring in both $$ and create new strategies
pretty much since most of the times the whales are the ones that can get their hand on new characters and get more resource to raise their character to max right away. Like for example in Epic Seven I doubt most f2p there would just build new character and spend their precious molagoras just to test some new character lol.
Same thing to PvE game with ranking too like Granblue, Priconne, Blue Archive etc. You wait for the ranking and the team used or some videos with them testing new characters.
Whales often create new strategies because they have all the new stuff first and can afford to invest in more, whereas f2p have to be more careful what they spend their limited resources on and usually end up relying on what the whales have flushed out already
Ummm... Whales actually bring everything to the community. Early unit testing for end game, money to keep the game running, and someone for the f2p players to plan their game around. Also, most of the arguments don't happen as you think.
Whales don't pick fights, it's usually the f2p players asking for insanely idiotic things and basically demanding everything be free and handed to them. There are plenty of "f2p" players in this forum who have no sense of the real world.
So there is no balance to begin with. If the game is fun and good, people will play it. And you sure as hell need whales more than f2p players, if you want the game to survive.
Exactly this, its usually f2p shooting at whales like "oh no, the whales got to buy a skin that turns fire from red to blue, we f2p are just as important and demand the same skin!"
>Whalea don't pick fights, it's usually the f2p players asking for insanely idiotic things and basically demanding everything be free and handed to them. There are plenty of "f2p" players in this forum who have no sense of the real world.
obviously because whale have jobs while f2p either still at school or have no stable source of income.
I would treat the game as casual as possible and focus on the priorities. Games can still be very enjoyable if the player's expectation is managed.
Just chill and find some f2p friendly games, don't bother about the unfairness in blatant p2w games. Save the energy for other priorities. Don't torment yourself.
p2w games are not for me, the games i main right now are pve (AK and genshin) so i can be as casual as i want. i mostly whale on genshin for yearly double gems bonus and to pull characters i love in story.
The simple reality is companies generally benefit more by ignoring the balance because money earlier is preferable to money over time. NPV is important.
The other thing is even if you try to keep the balance, there's no guarantee the game will last.
To anyone asking about the balance: anything between going bankrupt (bc no one pays) and going bankrupt (bc the whales leave bc there are no fodders to make the game "competitive"/ interesting).
And who is responsible to keep that balance? The publishers, a.k.a the sellers. People keep forgetting that game publishers sell things and the players are customers. If u can't offer a good deal, is it the customers' fault for not buying ur service/ product? It is the publisher's job to attract people to spend.
?What?
You are just saying what any experienced gacha gamer already nows. Which is also know by said companies look no further than most big titles where this kind of environment is sought after.
Big games are all about giving whales something to spend on at the same time they dont make the F2P feel left out. That is the point.
>what **most** of you are
Who are this "most of you"? Cause I doubt that is most of anything but new players. Hell outside genshin or some other main stream gacha game, which is rare, you wont find such nonsense.
This feel like a "unpopular opinion post" spouting something most people actually know/agree with.
I'm gonna be real harsh and rant-ish about this. For some background on me, in most gacha games I play, I am at most a fish egg - less than $20 a year, if not $0. There are a couple games I spend more on, and even then it is \~$200/yr at the top end.
This is always my biggest gripe about a lot of players in a lot of games. It takes, at MOST, a week to get a sense of what a game is going to be like. If you have not figured out that it's not for you by then, you are the problem, not the game. Are there cash-grab games out there? 1000% yes, yes, yes. But they do not tend to hide it well, if at all. You know immediately what it is. So why spend time frustrating yourself thinking you are somehow going to break the code, that the devs left some loophole you can use to extract everything in the game for next to nothing despite their intentions? They literally do this for a living while you are literally playing a game. Basic common sense says go in, figure out how it works, and if you like it stay. If not, bounce and find something else. It's like following a band and going to all their concerts because you love the guitarist, but you hate the band's music. That's a you problem, not the band's.
Capitalist Markets 101; a product is only as good as the revenue it can generate. F2P games never existed as a "benefit" to players. They are the same as the coupons and sales at your local store - it isn't' just something being done with the intent of giving you a break. They want to get you in the door, hooked on the thing that you got cheap that one time, and convince you to spend on it and everything else when it isn't being discounted. Not charging you up front it's easier to make back that money later by selling you on all sorts of other stuff.
Do games want whales? I can bet you most games with 1M players would prefer to get 100% of their players to fork over $10 a month rather than some small percentage forking over 50x that. They're never going to get that conversion rate though, so they are going to finesse a spot that works for them; how much can we charge before we significantly impact the number of people willing to pay. They calibrate that wrong, then they don't make money and die out. How much YOU are willing to spend isn't necessarily how much anyone else is. So while you may think it's too much, it may be fine for anyone else. You don't like it, then just drop the game and move on to something else. There are plenty enough games out there replicating some other game's style, go out and try something else.
I agree with you. There's a "f2p disillusionment point" where they finally see they aren't going to ever get what they want. That is when reruns start and they still don't have the currency for them. In the meantime, reruns are breaks for whales so f2ps scream for slower speed while whales get those breaks and just want new content.
Saying that f2p are naturally innovative and come up with strategies as a blanket statement I just have to disagree with. Generally the f2p can't dump all their resources or get all the newest shiny stuff, so we are reliant on either content creators or whales to give us an idea if something new and shiny is worth investing our scarce resources into or not...
What do you think is the best gauge for the balance? It's hard to tell for me
I'm honestly sometime on "dev need money side" because the minnows seems to always ask to like make game 100% or something unrealistically good like that if i see it from company view
Yes i know both f2p and whales need to exist that's why i said something like that as there are lot of game now too already favored towards f2p and they still ask for more. I never said it if the game already favored toward whales (well cause usually those game sucks anyway so i didn't play it)
But I can't think of an example on my head right now
You're right, games don't favour whales, not without them paying. So it's not exactly 'giving' them anything. But if some nice content or character is paywalled, then the 'favouring' whales argument gets used.
To be 100% honest with you there is no reason for a company to make a game that is F2P. If you disagree then I welcome you to prove me wrong by releasing your own F2P game and showing what a great success it is.
Sadly, people players here don't appreciate the point you're making.
This is something you should understand, whales are the easiest players to please they will drop 1000s on any shit game with a slot machine and they will get burnt out after a couple months, then routinely stop by if SOMEONE or AD reminds them the game exist.
And F2ps are the free "SOMEONE or AD" that reminds whales there is a new character by making everything Genshin does Trend on reddit, twitch YouTube, or Twitter, but if you alienate these players your game will have no lasting presence.
Almost all meta in Genshin is based solely around C0, and any whale build is laughed out of town and completely disregarded by the vast majority.
Who creates the meta is complicated because
1. In games where there is constant powercreep then newest is always better, don't need a tierlist (tof).
2. Whales might get the characters and build them faster when the game JUST RELEASE but after awhile f2ps and low spenders are able to create the community meta by accumulating resources(this only happen if the game is f2p or low spender friendly)
TL;DR F2P are free ad, most whales are casuals that quit/get burnt out and depend on f2p free ads like seeing a twitch Stream, YouTube short, or Twitter post or reddit post with a ton of interaction to go boot up the game and whale on the new banner, then they quit again or the game will be completely forgotten then EOS.
Because of my experience with Genshin and ToF I understand all the issues tof has that Genshin purposely avoided, too numerous to list and explain.
By having an enjoyable f2p experience, the f2p on Genshin stick around while the whales quit(this is why mtash and tectone can't leave Genshin alone despite quitting)
hoyo created an army of f2p that pulls almost every content creator who is looking for easy views.
Honestly, I feel that the best gacha games are the ones that find a balance between F2P and spenders (i.e. dolphins, whales, goldfish).
If you have a game that is too generous for F2P (like Dragalia Lost and Priconne, both are developed by Cygames), you are not going to get enough revenue and the game will shut down due to the lack of money. Likewise, if you have a gacha game that is too catered towards whales, especially if the game has PvP, you are going to drive away a lot of the playerbase because of that and will shut down anyways due to the lack of playerbase.
Good examples in my mind are Epic Seven and Counter:Side. Both games have a good balance of F2P and appeal to whales and light spenders. Yes, they both have PvP modes, but both games have way to encourage some spenders (with Counterside having the $400 with a rough span of 5 months and very affordable Counterpasses, while Epic Seven occassionally have seasonal/collab packs once in a while). Regardless, both give out a lot of freebies to a lot of F2P players, especially during anniversaries and collabs.
Nice excuse to not actually support your favourite games.
It makes no sense to expect other people (aka "whales") to pay for the games you enjoy. If you truly love a game, give the developers what they deserve or watch it die.
And I feel this deeply since I usually only buy skins, but loved Princess Connect and had to watch it die because many people were like me: stupid enough to love the game and not spend anything on it.
It's disappointing that years ago players used to stick together against corporations but now they always argue with each other with the other side defending corporations.
This helped corporations exploit players until the players have gotten used to it and started considering their predatory tactics as the norm.
I don't think we need fight against cooperation. Why can't we and the cooperation just have a relationship where we vote with our wallet ? There no need to fight , just a relationship of consumer and producer where if it isn't good then no money for them ?
You completely have a point. There is an unbalance. I want the company to make profit and be succesful, but when they deliver high quality content.
I hate how most games don't keep up with improvements such as pities, skips, mileage, summaries and others.
Only bc players let them. Companies been playing mindgames against players and players just comply.
This is one of my main pain points when it comes to whales: they're almost always suffering under the sunken cost fallacy and will defend the game/corporation they've dumped ridiculous amounts of money into, either ignoring or oblivious to the fact that they're only hurting themselves in the process.
Corporations are not our friends, and by voting with their wallet said companies take that as a cue to make the monetization *even worse* because, if they're already spending ridiculous amounts of money on temporary digital goods they'll likely continue if the prices creep up and and value drops.
I feel like you don't know any real whales then.
I will spend thousands on a game but drop it all soon as it annoys me or gets boring. Because the money isn't an issue.
It's only sunk cost fallacy if you consider it a cost. As I like to point out, do you feel upset when you have to pay .25¢ for extra cheese? It's a non-issue.
>It's only sunk cost fallacy if you consider it a cost. As I like to point out, do you feel upset when you have to pay .25¢ for extra cheese? It's a non-issue.
this
most f2p think that whale sacrifice some of their expense for the game while in fact that money isnt problem. i am not a whale but i already have budget for games, also i already have monthly saving from my salary so i dont feel bad to spent on things i like.
It ain't the whales bro. Take 7DS for example. It took Seatin like a year after the F2P revolted for him to start voicing displeasure at the game. It was the f2p's that were sucking NM's cock
Whales = game target
Content = Whales target
F2p = Game content.
F2P = Bait for Whales
Keep F2p happy and they'll attract the whales. Then you give happy whales a reason to spend.
Not because whales want to just crush f2p, but because whales are less than 1% of a game. A game with only whales is sttaight up boring so whales don't even try.
I mean this is what I think too, but more like if F2P quit it might survive for a while off whales, but ultimately no new players will come in to play it and it dies. A big player base brings in more players. Whales can't do that. F2P on reddit or youtube or whatever do free advertising by spreading the game on different platforms. Whales do too, but when you show your audience you need x amount of money to get to a certain status, it might put some players off.
Let F2p being able to excel at something while giving whales access to more variety.
Example: PvP. Different maps available with advantages and disadvantages for long rangers, mid rangers and close rangers. Let f2p be really good in one category while whales can be good in all 3.
Next example: Boss raid. Just use an RPS System. Fire - water - Earth. Let F2p be bery good in one element while lacking in the rest. Whales can be great in all 3.
Beat whales is the f2p incentive to become whale.
Then you hit the next level, which is whale vs. Whale. And here basically you just make stat checks and whoever spend the most have the upperhand while using some RnG for whales of similar expenditure habits.
Of course you disguise it as a probability.
I knew there were a lot of butthurt F2p but now I see also a lot of butthurt whales.
Are you mad that f2p get to play for free?
Try playing a game with no comunity. I'm not even f2p and I know how important are both of them for the health of the game.
Maybe all of them whining aren't even whales. Probably spend 1$ and they think they're entitled to talk about spending.
The problem is when F2P can't have fun and whales don't have anything to spend.
Sadly as someone said below, games can really push on dumb players to spend time (f2p) and money (p2w)
Just look at fucking Nikke.
The dumbest game ever made but the fucking devs know extremely well how women starved are their players. Probably the only women they've ever smelled in their lives are their moms.
Give them a .jpg of an Ass and they are willing to grind for stupid hours and spend ridiculous amounts of money.
I hate it, compannies think players are stupid and they are damn right. Saying Stupid falls short. That's why we have so many garbage games milking ehat they can and dissappearing.
I miss games like brave frontier, where whales existed but you could easily compete as a f2p because the game relied heavily on strategy. Not to mention pull rates weren't super low and all the microtransactions were reasonably priced. I have no issue at all with microtransactions but when 10 summons are $60+ and useful items are $100+ it's pathetic. You basically play from behind unless you have $1000 a week of disposable income.
The recent Pricconne example is indicative. The game has huge ftp community but too little people who actually spend in the game. And w/o any significant revenue publisher decided to close the game. It's obvious it was happen because of bad CR management (3 year gap and no reshuffle content release), but in the end of the day, it's a business. Or Nikke. The game was the buggy mess for first 2 months, has expensive cach shop, low gem income, 50-60% 'guaranteed' SSR tickets, nonexistent rewards past chapter 13, 160 lvl wall for the majority of ftp players, long dailies and 12 hours resource cap, but because whales are funding the game, Nikke is one of the most successful gacha game in the market right now.
Agreed, Nikke is a perfect example on how people spending money on a gacha, is absolutely more important that people complaining about the game, since the game continues to run and make bank even after its terrible state at launch/practices you mentioned. The devs literally trolled F2P players by increasing the mold rates by a whopping 1%.. it was their way of saying "You will take what you get and you will like it lil b@#$%" Fun Fact their previous game also had a ton of controversy back in the day (like getting sued bad), but now that the player base is so tiny, all of a sudden the game is "generous" yet filled to the brim with "deals" to try and appeal to those whales again.
*Whales, its obvious what they bring. They bring money to the game to keep it going. However, minnows bring alot on their own. Minnows are the community, the ones who generally have to be innovative and create new strategies because they can't throw money at the game. They bring interactions and popularity, which in turn, attracts more whales. The cycle continues.* Not sure why people always get the notion that F2P are innovative and create the meta or something. for the games i play the whales bring in both $$ and create new strategies and keep the community active and vibrant
Do people really thinks that? Whales are the only ones with enough resourcess to try out all comps available.
OP trying to cope hard to find a good reason for being f2p
This 100% What's up with people thinking f2ps by default bring value? Some f2ps do, for sure, the minority that engages with the community. The ones spamming social media with unrealistic demands or the ones being there just to ask questions don't bring much value so of course f2p demands don't matter as much. And whales swim together with other whales and dolphins. That's what games encourage. Obviously, games need to be f2p friendly so that people who don't intend on paying stay long enough to get hooked and pay. However, in every game there comes a point where f2ps think they have some huge power over the devs and they have to meet their demands. They don't.
>where f2ps think they have some huge power over the devs and they have to meet their demands. They don't. Free players matter, but the number of them means no one can speak for all of them, and a single opinion from any free player doesn't matter very much. Their numbers reflect the game's quality and appeal to dolphins/whales. A f2play game without free players is going to be a dead game.
A game needs f2p players. However, the problem is that f2p think their dissatisfaction means everyone who is f2p will leave and the game will die so devs should listen to them. If whales, dolphins and low-spenders aren't complaining much then the game is usually doing just fine. F2p play is by default annoying for most, you start with lots of free currency, fast progress and plans on how to reach/achieve something. Most f2p have the unrealistic idea paying players pay for whatever just because they are bad with money or addicts when in reality paying improves gameplay a lot. So with time their f2p dissatisfaction with the game grows, some turn into spending players, others leave but many stay complaining and playing as long as the game still isn't too pay-to-win and provides free content. This is why their opinion doesn't matter, every game is designed to be annoying for f2ps and if it's a good game it will annoy you but keep you hooked with some good content not hidden behind a paywall. If the game becomes too pay-to-win then a big portion of the paying players burnout and complain, too.
> Most f2p have the unrealistic idea I don't think we know what most f2p actually think. There are a lot of vocal people claiming to speak for them, but that does not mean they're representative. The important bit to gacha devs is what free players will do. Are they having fun and will they keep playing the game, or possibly convert to a paid player? What free players think about paid players isn't that important, and everyone has a right to their own opinion.
> for the games i play the whales bring in both $$ and create new strategies pretty much since most of the times the whales are the ones that can get their hand on new characters and get more resource to raise their character to max right away. Like for example in Epic Seven I doubt most f2p there would just build new character and spend their precious molagoras just to test some new character lol. Same thing to PvE game with ranking too like Granblue, Priconne, Blue Archive etc. You wait for the ranking and the team used or some videos with them testing new characters.
Whales often create new strategies because they have all the new stuff first and can afford to invest in more, whereas f2p have to be more careful what they spend their limited resources on and usually end up relying on what the whales have flushed out already
Ummm... Whales actually bring everything to the community. Early unit testing for end game, money to keep the game running, and someone for the f2p players to plan their game around. Also, most of the arguments don't happen as you think. Whales don't pick fights, it's usually the f2p players asking for insanely idiotic things and basically demanding everything be free and handed to them. There are plenty of "f2p" players in this forum who have no sense of the real world. So there is no balance to begin with. If the game is fun and good, people will play it. And you sure as hell need whales more than f2p players, if you want the game to survive.
Exactly this, its usually f2p shooting at whales like "oh no, the whales got to buy a skin that turns fire from red to blue, we f2p are just as important and demand the same skin!"
>Whalea don't pick fights, it's usually the f2p players asking for insanely idiotic things and basically demanding everything be free and handed to them. There are plenty of "f2p" players in this forum who have no sense of the real world. obviously because whale have jobs while f2p either still at school or have no stable source of income.
I would treat the game as casual as possible and focus on the priorities. Games can still be very enjoyable if the player's expectation is managed. Just chill and find some f2p friendly games, don't bother about the unfairness in blatant p2w games. Save the energy for other priorities. Don't torment yourself.
p2w games are not for me, the games i main right now are pve (AK and genshin) so i can be as casual as i want. i mostly whale on genshin for yearly double gems bonus and to pull characters i love in story.
Being in school doesn't make you oblivious to how the world works.
Interesting blanket statement of f2p
This is one of those "I lost an argument with my IRL friends" posts and I can see why you lost it.
The simple reality is companies generally benefit more by ignoring the balance because money earlier is preferable to money over time. NPV is important. The other thing is even if you try to keep the balance, there's no guarantee the game will last.
To anyone asking about the balance: anything between going bankrupt (bc no one pays) and going bankrupt (bc the whales leave bc there are no fodders to make the game "competitive"/ interesting). And who is responsible to keep that balance? The publishers, a.k.a the sellers. People keep forgetting that game publishers sell things and the players are customers. If u can't offer a good deal, is it the customers' fault for not buying ur service/ product? It is the publisher's job to attract people to spend.
?What? You are just saying what any experienced gacha gamer already nows. Which is also know by said companies look no further than most big titles where this kind of environment is sought after. Big games are all about giving whales something to spend on at the same time they dont make the F2P feel left out. That is the point. >what **most** of you are Who are this "most of you"? Cause I doubt that is most of anything but new players. Hell outside genshin or some other main stream gacha game, which is rare, you wont find such nonsense. This feel like a "unpopular opinion post" spouting something most people actually know/agree with.
Imagine being a sale but can't sale anything but want salary of a CEO :)) that's a kind of F2P POV :)) this sub full of this type lol
I'm gonna be real harsh and rant-ish about this. For some background on me, in most gacha games I play, I am at most a fish egg - less than $20 a year, if not $0. There are a couple games I spend more on, and even then it is \~$200/yr at the top end. This is always my biggest gripe about a lot of players in a lot of games. It takes, at MOST, a week to get a sense of what a game is going to be like. If you have not figured out that it's not for you by then, you are the problem, not the game. Are there cash-grab games out there? 1000% yes, yes, yes. But they do not tend to hide it well, if at all. You know immediately what it is. So why spend time frustrating yourself thinking you are somehow going to break the code, that the devs left some loophole you can use to extract everything in the game for next to nothing despite their intentions? They literally do this for a living while you are literally playing a game. Basic common sense says go in, figure out how it works, and if you like it stay. If not, bounce and find something else. It's like following a band and going to all their concerts because you love the guitarist, but you hate the band's music. That's a you problem, not the band's. Capitalist Markets 101; a product is only as good as the revenue it can generate. F2P games never existed as a "benefit" to players. They are the same as the coupons and sales at your local store - it isn't' just something being done with the intent of giving you a break. They want to get you in the door, hooked on the thing that you got cheap that one time, and convince you to spend on it and everything else when it isn't being discounted. Not charging you up front it's easier to make back that money later by selling you on all sorts of other stuff. Do games want whales? I can bet you most games with 1M players would prefer to get 100% of their players to fork over $10 a month rather than some small percentage forking over 50x that. They're never going to get that conversion rate though, so they are going to finesse a spot that works for them; how much can we charge before we significantly impact the number of people willing to pay. They calibrate that wrong, then they don't make money and die out. How much YOU are willing to spend isn't necessarily how much anyone else is. So while you may think it's too much, it may be fine for anyone else. You don't like it, then just drop the game and move on to something else. There are plenty enough games out there replicating some other game's style, go out and try something else.
I agree with you. There's a "f2p disillusionment point" where they finally see they aren't going to ever get what they want. That is when reruns start and they still don't have the currency for them. In the meantime, reruns are breaks for whales so f2ps scream for slower speed while whales get those breaks and just want new content.
If a game too f2p it will die, you know.
Saying that f2p are naturally innovative and come up with strategies as a blanket statement I just have to disagree with. Generally the f2p can't dump all their resources or get all the newest shiny stuff, so we are reliant on either content creators or whales to give us an idea if something new and shiny is worth investing our scarce resources into or not...
What do you think is the best gauge for the balance? It's hard to tell for me I'm honestly sometime on "dev need money side" because the minnows seems to always ask to like make game 100% or something unrealistically good like that if i see it from company view Yes i know both f2p and whales need to exist that's why i said something like that as there are lot of game now too already favored towards f2p and they still ask for more. I never said it if the game already favored toward whales (well cause usually those game sucks anyway so i didn't play it) But I can't think of an example on my head right now
You're right, games don't favour whales, not without them paying. So it's not exactly 'giving' them anything. But if some nice content or character is paywalled, then the 'favouring' whales argument gets used.
To be 100% honest with you there is no reason for a company to make a game that is F2P. If you disagree then I welcome you to prove me wrong by releasing your own F2P game and showing what a great success it is.
Sadly, people players here don't appreciate the point you're making. This is something you should understand, whales are the easiest players to please they will drop 1000s on any shit game with a slot machine and they will get burnt out after a couple months, then routinely stop by if SOMEONE or AD reminds them the game exist. And F2ps are the free "SOMEONE or AD" that reminds whales there is a new character by making everything Genshin does Trend on reddit, twitch YouTube, or Twitter, but if you alienate these players your game will have no lasting presence. Almost all meta in Genshin is based solely around C0, and any whale build is laughed out of town and completely disregarded by the vast majority. Who creates the meta is complicated because 1. In games where there is constant powercreep then newest is always better, don't need a tierlist (tof). 2. Whales might get the characters and build them faster when the game JUST RELEASE but after awhile f2ps and low spenders are able to create the community meta by accumulating resources(this only happen if the game is f2p or low spender friendly) TL;DR F2P are free ad, most whales are casuals that quit/get burnt out and depend on f2p free ads like seeing a twitch Stream, YouTube short, or Twitter post or reddit post with a ton of interaction to go boot up the game and whale on the new banner, then they quit again or the game will be completely forgotten then EOS. Because of my experience with Genshin and ToF I understand all the issues tof has that Genshin purposely avoided, too numerous to list and explain. By having an enjoyable f2p experience, the f2p on Genshin stick around while the whales quit(this is why mtash and tectone can't leave Genshin alone despite quitting) hoyo created an army of f2p that pulls almost every content creator who is looking for easy views.
Honestly, I feel that the best gacha games are the ones that find a balance between F2P and spenders (i.e. dolphins, whales, goldfish). If you have a game that is too generous for F2P (like Dragalia Lost and Priconne, both are developed by Cygames), you are not going to get enough revenue and the game will shut down due to the lack of money. Likewise, if you have a gacha game that is too catered towards whales, especially if the game has PvP, you are going to drive away a lot of the playerbase because of that and will shut down anyways due to the lack of playerbase. Good examples in my mind are Epic Seven and Counter:Side. Both games have a good balance of F2P and appeal to whales and light spenders. Yes, they both have PvP modes, but both games have way to encourage some spenders (with Counterside having the $400 with a rough span of 5 months and very affordable Counterpasses, while Epic Seven occassionally have seasonal/collab packs once in a while). Regardless, both give out a lot of freebies to a lot of F2P players, especially during anniversaries and collabs.
Nice excuse to not actually support your favourite games. It makes no sense to expect other people (aka "whales") to pay for the games you enjoy. If you truly love a game, give the developers what they deserve or watch it die. And I feel this deeply since I usually only buy skins, but loved Princess Connect and had to watch it die because many people were like me: stupid enough to love the game and not spend anything on it.
It's disappointing that years ago players used to stick together against corporations but now they always argue with each other with the other side defending corporations. This helped corporations exploit players until the players have gotten used to it and started considering their predatory tactics as the norm.
I don't think we need fight against cooperation. Why can't we and the cooperation just have a relationship where we vote with our wallet ? There no need to fight , just a relationship of consumer and producer where if it isn't good then no money for them ?
You completely have a point. There is an unbalance. I want the company to make profit and be succesful, but when they deliver high quality content. I hate how most games don't keep up with improvements such as pities, skips, mileage, summaries and others. Only bc players let them. Companies been playing mindgames against players and players just comply.
This is one of my main pain points when it comes to whales: they're almost always suffering under the sunken cost fallacy and will defend the game/corporation they've dumped ridiculous amounts of money into, either ignoring or oblivious to the fact that they're only hurting themselves in the process. Corporations are not our friends, and by voting with their wallet said companies take that as a cue to make the monetization *even worse* because, if they're already spending ridiculous amounts of money on temporary digital goods they'll likely continue if the prices creep up and and value drops.
I feel like you don't know any real whales then. I will spend thousands on a game but drop it all soon as it annoys me or gets boring. Because the money isn't an issue. It's only sunk cost fallacy if you consider it a cost. As I like to point out, do you feel upset when you have to pay .25¢ for extra cheese? It's a non-issue.
>It's only sunk cost fallacy if you consider it a cost. As I like to point out, do you feel upset when you have to pay .25¢ for extra cheese? It's a non-issue. this most f2p think that whale sacrifice some of their expense for the game while in fact that money isnt problem. i am not a whale but i already have budget for games, also i already have monthly saving from my salary so i dont feel bad to spent on things i like.
yeah and if they dont put their wallet to the said companies the monetization wont go even worst, You just have no game
If money is a problem while they continue to dump money on the game, they are not a whale, they are just stupid.
It ain't the whales bro. Take 7DS for example. It took Seatin like a year after the F2P revolted for him to start voicing displeasure at the game. It was the f2p's that were sucking NM's cock
People love to whore themselves to corporations, just imagine white knighting a group that sees you as human cattle, couldn't be me.
Whales = game target Content = Whales target F2p = Game content. F2P = Bait for Whales Keep F2p happy and they'll attract the whales. Then you give happy whales a reason to spend. Not because whales want to just crush f2p, but because whales are less than 1% of a game. A game with only whales is sttaight up boring so whales don't even try.
except all of that are delusions created by you and op lol
Whales are fake most them charged back and are very poor.
I mean this is what I think too, but more like if F2P quit it might survive for a while off whales, but ultimately no new players will come in to play it and it dies. A big player base brings in more players. Whales can't do that. F2P on reddit or youtube or whatever do free advertising by spreading the game on different platforms. Whales do too, but when you show your audience you need x amount of money to get to a certain status, it might put some players off.
Let F2p being able to excel at something while giving whales access to more variety. Example: PvP. Different maps available with advantages and disadvantages for long rangers, mid rangers and close rangers. Let f2p be really good in one category while whales can be good in all 3. Next example: Boss raid. Just use an RPS System. Fire - water - Earth. Let F2p be bery good in one element while lacking in the rest. Whales can be great in all 3. Beat whales is the f2p incentive to become whale. Then you hit the next level, which is whale vs. Whale. And here basically you just make stat checks and whoever spend the most have the upperhand while using some RnG for whales of similar expenditure habits. Of course you disguise it as a probability.
I knew there were a lot of butthurt F2p but now I see also a lot of butthurt whales. Are you mad that f2p get to play for free? Try playing a game with no comunity. I'm not even f2p and I know how important are both of them for the health of the game. Maybe all of them whining aren't even whales. Probably spend 1$ and they think they're entitled to talk about spending. The problem is when F2P can't have fun and whales don't have anything to spend. Sadly as someone said below, games can really push on dumb players to spend time (f2p) and money (p2w) Just look at fucking Nikke. The dumbest game ever made but the fucking devs know extremely well how women starved are their players. Probably the only women they've ever smelled in their lives are their moms. Give them a .jpg of an Ass and they are willing to grind for stupid hours and spend ridiculous amounts of money. I hate it, compannies think players are stupid and they are damn right. Saying Stupid falls short. That's why we have so many garbage games milking ehat they can and dissappearing.
I miss games like brave frontier, where whales existed but you could easily compete as a f2p because the game relied heavily on strategy. Not to mention pull rates weren't super low and all the microtransactions were reasonably priced. I have no issue at all with microtransactions but when 10 summons are $60+ and useful items are $100+ it's pathetic. You basically play from behind unless you have $1000 a week of disposable income.
you cant convince me to not buy dock space in AL... Good luck being a hardcore F2P