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| Thread: Reflections on boosting | |
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Brukernavn
Hero of Order
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posted December 08, 2017 03:27 PM |
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Reflections on boosting
By boosting I mean shrine and keep boosting; temporarily increasing efficiency of your buffs for 6 or 24 hours for a diamond cost. What is actually the intention behind this? For pve I can see the benefit. Say you are almost able to beat a boss in a quest or a certain tower level. Boost your buffs to pass it this one time and use quick battle afterwards. Same idea as the revive team option in questing. No problem with that. Only for this use the duration of up to 24 hours seems excessive.
Where boosting is actually used to a large extent is in pvp. Around mid-way in the challenge some people start boosting their shrines and keeps. Defences become harder to pass, and more people boost theirs to compensate. In the end I would assume the majority of top 50 in the high gold groups are boosting. It's easy to understand why this is happening, but I would argue it is negative for the game for a few reasons:
1) It encourages postponing active challenge participation as long as possible.
Let the other players accumulate juicy prestige for several days and then collect several hundreds of points for each win when you start attacking. This practice is not new, but it always came with the cost of having to refresh challenge points. However, now you have to factor in the need to boost for several days in order to stay competitive. In that case it can even be cost effective to pay for the extra CP refreshes to avoid having to boost for a longer period of time. I think this practice will be even more common when perma-shield is fixed.
2) It is straight up pay-to-win.
I don't mean p2w in a derogatory way, but I would argue it is currently impossible to place in top 10 if you don't boost (or shield 24/7). It might even apply for top 50. Before kingdom a niap player could still be competing for the top spots in challenge, as long as you had time, skill, patience and a little luck. We already have resource rush as a way to speed up kingdom progression for those that want to. That is a good implementation of an iap advantage. Continuous boosting of buffs is not, in my opinion.
3) It discourages lower ranked players from competing.
For the vast majority of players, boosting shrines and keeps for a few days will give a net loss of diamonds from a challenge event. If you don't have a realistic chance to place in the top 10% for the best rewards, it would be fooling to waste diamonds on boosting. Even multi-summons would be a better usage. Those that don't boost then become an even easier prey for those that do.
These are the main reasons I regard the option to continuously boost buffs as a negative for the game. I don't see sufficient reason to allow boosting buffs in the first place, so as far as I'm concerned it could just be removed entirely. Are there many that would object to that? Would it be better to limit the duration and add cooldown for boosts, as they plan to do for shields? Or could you limit the number of buildings you can boost in total, to at least add some strategic element to it?
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Galaad
Hero of Order
Li mort as morz, li vif as vis
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posted December 09, 2017 10:41 AM |
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Edited by Galaad at 10:43, 09 Dec 2017.
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I used to boost a couple of structures within the last six hours of a challenge if I'm around to play but ever since I got shrines at 20 I don't need to in my competitive circle and never activated them again. Shield is also cheaper. It is a pay to win feature, like others, but it is also up to the niap player to chose using diamonds for this instead of something else (ie quick battle coins).
The issue of lower level players IMO remains in the fact we have high gold and low gold instead of platinum and gold, in other words same reward for different difficulty. Which encourages tanking which I see as the major current issue of pvp. These matters are more tied to the overall reward system of pvp even if top 50 is viable, and attainable by all given you have the will, the time, the skill and good resources management. Shielding can help secure a rank if timed right and even cost less considering challenge points.
I see more the problem as in top 3 >>>>>>>>>> the rest, I personally rather rank #49 than #4.
I don't see boosting as critical issue, possibly a way for VCME to generate more income but I don't find it more p2w than massively multi-summon or buying packs in the shop, and even this doesn't guarantee anything. What is the actual impact in PvP? The dungeons that are specifically hard to beat without boosts might just stop you once boosted, so out of all the fights there is a few you won't pass anymore, is it really preventing you to get into top 50?
I am not against cooldowns in there too like they will do for shield but I doubt it would change anything, people will simply activate when it matters the most: near the end of challenge.
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Brukernavn
Hero of Order
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posted December 11, 2017 03:30 PM |
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Actually, I see boosting as very different from other paying options in the game. Buying packs in the shop or massive multi-summon is a form of accelerated progress. You can reap all the same rewards by just playing the game, it will just take a lot longer unless you are very lucky. Other pay options try to solve a problem. For instance shield was meant to prevent large prestige drops when you are asleep or not able to play. Combo dot fusion makes investments in 3 dots not go to waste when you get a 4 dot, etc. Boosting on the other hand does not solve any problems as far as I can tell (on the contrary), nor is it about acceleration or convenience, but purely a pay-to-be-stronger option. So far VCME has managed the balance between niap and iap very well, I just find boosting one of the rare exceptions. I agree that it's not a critical issue, but if there are downsides and no clear upsides, why not do something about it? There are many ways to generate revenue that also improve the game, as in some of the examples above.
I agree with the issue of low and high gold, as well as the huge difference between top 3 and the rest. Still, if you want to place in top 3 or top 10 you are as good as compelled to boost. Not necessarily from an offensive point of view, but from a defensive. By boosting you might prevent those that barely pass your defence to consistently fail it. Those are also the most important people to stop, as a win for them can cost you a few hundred points each time. As I mentioned in my previous post, I think boosting will become more prevalent when we get shield cooldown, as people will try to compensate. I'm trying to be heads-up by bringing it up now.
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Galaad
Hero of Order
Li mort as morz, li vif as vis
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posted December 13, 2017 04:10 PM |
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Brukernavn said:
Boosting on the other hand does not solve any problems as far as I can tell (on the contrary), nor is it about acceleration or convenience, but purely a pay-to-be-stronger option. So far VCME has managed the balance between niap and iap very well, I just find boosting one of the rare exceptions. I agree that it's not a critical issue, but if there are downsides and no clear upsides, why not do something about it? There are many ways to generate revenue that also improve the game, as in some of the examples above.
This is true, what I meant is the system still allows niap to boost certain structures at strategic times of the challenge if he's solid in his resources management and straight in his goals. So it's not strictly 'hand out $ or die' even if handing $ obviously makes general quality of life easier (freemiums...).
I personally don't mind it so much but you raise some coherent points.
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