Puzzles and Dragons
- Thread starter Fazana_sl
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Guest, it's time once again for the massively important and exciting FoH Asshat Tournament!
Go here and give us your nominations!Who's been the biggest Asshat in the last year? Give us your worst ones!
Ishad
Ahn'Qiraj Raider
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Yea, the more I think about it, dark physical with bonia/lucifer leads seems really damned nice if you have the correct subs... 2x hp/5x rcv/3-3.5ish atk seems like it could theoretically be an amazing descend team. Assuming you have the correct subs to support it. Although the heartmaker being able to benefit from only either lucifer (Drawn Joker) or Sonia (parvati) kind of dimishes it a little bit, I wouldn't mind trying it if I had either of those leads.
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Grimmlokk
Ahn'Qiraj Raider
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The guy sounds like an expert on f2p monetization, then he implies that the primary way PAD makes money is people continuing dungeons to keep their mid-dungeon drops.
I might be horribly mistaken, but the vast majority of the money has to be from people rolling or refilling stamina.
Gamasutra: Ramin Shokrizade's Blog - The Top F2P Monetization Tricks
Zynth
N00b
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Meh, TL;DR game companies want your money so they trick you into buying premium services/currency/junk so you dont get butthurt about them wanting your money. Made me think of Marvel Heros more so than PnD
I don't think where PAD's money is made in the model would change how PAD fits the model.
FTA:The purpose of a money game is to promote Boost sales. Boosts that have an instant one-time effect are "soft" Boosts. Those that stick around either forever or until they are converted to something else are "hard" Boosts. The $1 "un-defeat" button in PaD is a soft Boost, as are all of the power-ups sold in Candy Crush Saga. The obvious advantage of soft boosts is that you can keep selling them as long as the player stays in the money game.
"Hard" Boosts include things like the random rare creatures that are sold in PaD for $5 each. Having these in your stable effectively lowers the difficulty of the game enough to allow you to get a little bit further with each purchase. A technique that is very popular in Asian games with hard Boosts (PaD included) is to allow hard Boosts to be "merged" to allow for even bigger hard Boosts. This makes the math involved in figuring out exactly how expensive a very high quality hard Boost will be, daunting. It may even be completely invisible to the consumer due to the various drop %s being hidden. Thus the best hard Boosts in these games typically cost thousands of dollars, a fact that is hidden to the user until they are already invested for at least a few hundred dollars. This puts the consumer in the difficult position of giving up and losing the equity already purchased, or going "all the way" and spending some unknown large amount to get the top Boost. Some of these techniques, sometimes called "kompu gacha", are already facing regulation in Asia due to their excessive layering and lack of transparency.
Yeah, that part of it isn't news. But I still find it interesting to read how deliberate it is in gaming. I should be smarter about it. I also find it interesting to apply outside of gaming. Consider the entire US higher ed system in the coercive monetization model.zynth_sl said:
If you are dead-set on running the top tier super-high end IAP teams (dark metatron/Satan, row enhancement shiva, any of the sonias except maybe green) you'll probably have to spend a few hundred on the game. But the game "is" completely beatable as a non-iap player, some people view it as an additional challenge, like a hardmode. Even if you "only" drop 60-100 bucks on the game you're pretty much guaranteed to be able to field a viable team or 3 within a few months. I do actually think of Puzzle and Dragons is the best way to do IAPs, the fact they give away the equivilent of 10 bucks or so of in-game currency a month helps too. It's a complete luxury buying stones, not at all like the shit that EA tries to do, or Square Enix for that matter.
It's a blog post from June of last year. The author designs skill games but seems concerned about the ethics of money games. If you read it all, he mentions kompu gacha in the article.
Ishad
Ahn'Qiraj Raider
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Almost a year played and still kicking it Non-iap. While PAD is coercive, they definitely hand out a significant amount of in game currency. Their strategy excels because single purchases fuel other purchases .
Roll a sweet leader? Why don't you roll some more to get sweet subs? Done rolling a bunch of monsters? Why don't you spend some stones to level them up quickly? New monsters and their EVO mats choking your box? Why not buy some more boxes? How about adding some friend slots to get more people with the same leader? Want to skill up that monster? Why not spend some stones to grind this limited dungeon that might not return for months?
Vorph
Silver Baronet of the Realm
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To me PAD's system is exactly the opposite of what a game would have to do to get me to be an IAP player.
I got a bunch of gold eggs from PC godfest, but not what I wanted, so I bought some stones. I did 5 or 6 more pulls and got an Orochi and nothing else of value. Since then I've used all my free stones on godfests and haven't gotten a single gold egg. The fact that that is even possible will ensure that I never give them another penny.
I got a bunch of gold eggs from PC godfest, but not what I wanted, so I bought some stones. I did 5 or 6 more pulls and got an Orochi and nothing else of value. Since then I've used all my free stones on godfests and haven't gotten a single gold egg. The fact that that is even possible will ensure that I never give them another penny.
I never noticed the rank 20 gift a friend thing. Is that something I can still do as rank ~30? Does anyone want to swap if I can?
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It's available at rank 20 until you use it. It gives you and your "friend" a roll at the starter dragons (including the light and dark versions). I think they come out at +3 now too.
Dyvim
Bronze Knight of the Realm
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