Gated freemium content making the game less attractive for non-hardcores?

[Uglesett]

EDIT: By request, I tried adding a poll that's hopefully not too biased.

 

For the last year or so, WG has seemed more and more desperate to

a) Give the hardcore players who have everything something to do

b) Wring money out of the whales

 

We see this in the increasing amount of "freemium" content that's effectively gated so that you can only obtain it if you have a lot of available game time (and often on a daily basis) or you're willing to throw substantial amounts of cash at WG. We saw this with the Benham grind, the Puerto Rico event, and now they're planning on making the legendary upgrades for T10 unobtainable for players who do not have the time to regrind lines they've already played to T10. Other content is at least partially locked behind playing specific game modes that often requires you to schedule game time in a way that not everyone can.

 

And while this may be working short-term, I doubt that it's good for long-term sustainability. They're pretty much leaving the more casual player base with the crumbs while focusing all their efforts on retaining the hardcore players who are otherwise running out of things to do, and getting the whales to spend even more cash.

 

Meanwhile, at least for me, all this is just making me less and less inclined to spend both time and money on the game. And I suspect I'm not the only one. When you feel that the developers are focusing their efforts on content that you're never going to get access to, it starts so dampen your enthusiasm for the game. And this is dangerous for the long term sustainability of the game. Because any f2p game needs a large population of casual players. Even the pure f2p players that don't contribute much directly in terms of finances are important, because the game needs a sufficient player base to give the enthusiasts and whales someone to play with and against. The game needs to retain the players who don't have time to play all the time, who don't yet have all of the lines at T10, who don't have the coal/steel/free exp to buy every new freemium ship as soon as it's released. Because these are the players that ensure that you actually get a game going within a reasonable time after pressing "Battle".

 

And while more casual players don't necessarily run premium time 100% of the time and buy all the premium ships, there are far more of them than there are of the whales. So making it more attractive for these players to spend a bit of cash each is going to generate more income than fleecing a handful of whales. But the amount of sensible cash offers seems to be declining in favour of more expensive, bundled content that will make anyone with economic sense go "Eeeeehh... never mind."

 

So yeah. WG, how about remembering that there are a lot of players who don't have time to play all the time and who aren't willing to spend all of their disposable income on a single game, but who still play and keep the servers are alive, and are even willing to throw a bit of cash in your direction if they don't feel they're being fleeced?

[wot_2016_gunner]

Can you add a poll to see how many F2P / "Paying" players there are?

[John_Mylo]

@Uglesett You say all that I’m wondering.

I’m in the same position as you are, and feel exactly the same way. 

[Uglesett]

1 minute ago, wot_2016_gunner said:

Can you add a poll to see how many F2P / "Paying" players there are?

Eeeh. Not sure how to formulate it in a good way, but I'm open for suggestions.

 

I mean, you have a lot of combinations. For example, I usually don't buy premium time, but I will occasionally if I have a few days with plenty of time to game. And then you have the players who may not pay for premium time, but spend money on premium ships (again, I have a fair few of those...)

[DanSilverwing]

Someone on Reddit was moaning (no, that's not news) that Whales were being marginalised in favour of new players. I don't think so!

Good businesses like new customers because you can sell them your existing products, whereas existing customers are either tapped out or need new products.

WG are more like a useless charity that depends on a small group of people who consistently give them lots of money, rather than go through the hassle of finding new people for mass donations.

One group is locked in, the other needs good marketing.

Which strategy is more sustainable?

[GrossadmiralThrawn]

28 minutes ago, Uglesett said:

Eeeh. Not sure how to formulate it in a good way, but I'm open for suggestions.

 

I mean, you have a lot of combinations. For example, I usually don't buy premium time, but I will occasionally if I have a few days with plenty of time to game. And then you have the players who may not pay for premium time, but spend money on premium ships (again, I have a fair few of those...)

I'd suggest:
1) Plays completely F2P, no useage of money

2) small amount of Money used for premium time, a couple of dubloons and/or maybe the odd prem ship in a year

3) medium amount of Money used for premium time, doubloons and/or multiple premium ships in a year

4) huge amount of Money used for premium time, doubloons and/or a lot of premium ships in a year as well as skipping missions for ships or similar stuff that could be gotten in A REASONABLE WAY in game

5) exceptional amount of Money used for everything, Long premium time, doubloons, premium ships, skipping the grind for "free" ships that can be earned

[Panocek]

34 minutes ago, Uglesett said:

So yeah. WG, how about remembering that there are a lot of players who don't have time to play all the time and who aren't willing to spend all of their disposable income on a single game, but who still play and keep the servers are alive, and are even willing to throw a bit of cash in your direction if they don't feel they're being fleeced?

Well, its clear they are no longer main audience of the game

[Uglesett]

Just now, Panocek said:

Well, its clear they are no longer main audience of the game

Sad, but probably true.

[GulvkluderGuld]

Excellent post and one I've wanted to write myself but been too lazy.

 

Change the Title to World of Grindships 2019 and allow me to expand a bit and you have the reason I've taken multiple breaks from the game and are close to quitting entirely.

I don't like grindy games, and with all the recent psychological tricks and changes, WG has turned from casual relaxing game into something more akin to MMO levels of grindiness.

Let me contrast the first 3 years of WoWs with the last year:

 

The first 3 years of Warships saw few freemium ship rewards (usually low tier (5-6) and behind then-monstrous grindwalls - easy by 2019 standards) and a grand total of 2 legendary captains.

Free premium time and doubloon rewards were incredibly hard to come by.

Directives and daily missions did not exist (or were inconsistently used)

Game was a breeze to be played on demand, whenever, without a worry about missing out or sataying competitive.

 

2019 saw options to earn

- free tier 6 premium (testserver) along with 3-4 freemiums and 3 free legendary captains.

- Requirements to earn said "free" content requires hardcore play and sometimes that is not even enough and additional doubloons must be thrown at the prize.

- Daily missions containing free 1 day premium time and even doubloons.

- Various tokens that could be exchanged for substantial amounts of premium time or doubloons on demand.

Meanwhile, the rewards for "just playing" like containers and anniversary / snowflake rewards have gone down substantially, but the amount of events have increased to compensate.

- Daily missions and extremely tight timegated directives have been added to reward hardcore play (if you dont play hardcore, sorry, but that is not enough to obtain the rewards)

- Requirements to complete missions have gone up.

 

 

Conclusion:

The amount of content has increased. Keeping up requires a lot more time.

Very casual players can earn doubloons and free premium time to be spent at their leisure as never before.

Meanwhile all the major content is locked behind hardcore grindwalls and sometimes paywalls as evidenced by PR despite WG trying their best to wiggle out of it.

In other words, there are no events or rewards catered to the midrange casual players who occasionally take part in events.

The message from WG to a large part of the player base is clear: either turn hardcore, pay up or f*ck off.

[SamuraiShakaViking]

Yep

 

Wows so stubbornly obsessed with grinding

 

And with biases to unicums,  instead of incentives attracting new players to grow the playerbase., or casual players to be a bit competitive against the best players with their boosts.

 

Do they want no new players, no new recruits, and no part time or casual players? Possibly..

 

 

If as the RB/NTC, or  PR geared for the minority of unicums and whales, they want this to no longer b a free2play mp MMO? (The RB/NTC was supposed to give free premium consumables to all.. conveniently forgotten

 

credit sink fallacies or selling "free" (!!!) Xp , demolishing the playerbase with more erosion.

 

Cv re-rework , some contributors actually expressed that they hoped RTS cv mains would just leave.. cv was gonna be dumbed-down to low skill level arcade playstle, to make it "more accessible".. cvs were never broken, but graf zeppelin-gate (premature sale of a non functional premium vehicle ) gave a convenient excuse to rework the class , so they could bring wowp in, effectively removing cvs as warships, since the "year (and counting) of the cv"

 

so they converted cv warships over to planes (?!?).. doubtless salvaged from their costly implosion of WoWp; and the ship is a bot ai that cannot even autopilot.

 

The logic and marketing confusing.. the bizarrely  obvious and blatant disregard and disrespect with this rude offensive insulting attitude to the community and playerbase.. must/ can only be deliberate.

 

is all this to reduce the PC playerbase, except the whales , so they can try to match the competition , on other platforms?

 

With especially so many alpha and beta testing 'veterans' quitting, how sustainable can the title remain on PC, and  why do they insist on sabotaging their own title?

 

I guess wows with just unicums could be e-sport on PC, and they can then grow it on console and mobile? Possibly planing to merge wowp more into wows ?

 

But to become a real MMO they need to stop segregation of regions, to catch up  and go global like other MMOs, eg on steam type platform.

 

Just trying to understand whats really going on with their business model and (apparently counter productive ) decision making.

 

(It's now opposite of what WoT has been doing, apparently positively, to rescue and salvage itself.. eg reducing grindiness (!) drastically, making crew training much easier to catch up, reducing many Pay2win options, levelling the matchmaking - levelling the playing field).

 

Wows going to more grindiness, and strong unicums and rich minority , more gambling, more rng, more reworks fixing stuff that ain't broken.. which nearly sank wot and did sink wowp.

 

Whatever s going on in the background which we can only speculate on, not sure purchasing anything in wows would keep it's virtual value.

 

Like the alpha and beta testers quitting, not sure how welcome we are .. the title is not being changed around for oriented to the present  community.

 

Also communication seems to be only one other fora, eg Reddit, not their own fora... And are contributors banned from comments in this forum in their 'nda's'

[Uglesett]

8 minutes ago, GulvkluderGuld said:

Change the Title to World of Grindships 2019 and allow me to expand a bit and you have the reason I've taken multiple breaks from the game and are close to quitting entirely.

I don't like grindy games, and with all the recent psychological tricks and changes, WG has turned from casual relaxing game into something more akin to MMO levels of grindiness.

There are grinds and there are grinds.

 

I don't mind the basic tech tree grinds, because they can be completed on your own time (and sped up with cash). Campaigns are also grindy, but you can take them at your own pace. Leave the game alone for a month because life happens, and you haven't lost anything. Heck, most of the individual tasks in the Puerto Rico directives would have been perfectly alright as campaign tasks, and it's been a while since we've had a new permanent campaign added to the game.

 

The legendary module missions are also fine as long-term grinds. You can play the ship in question when you feel like it, and eventually you'll get it. Or you can speed it up at least a bit with premium time and earning boosters.

 

It's the time-gating that requires you to play the game a lot and during specific time periods that gets my goat.

[Uglesett]

Gave a try at adding a poll. I don't think it's too biased.

[GulvkluderGuld]

37 minutes ago, Uglesett said:

It's the time-gating that requires you to play the game a lot and during specific time periods that gets my goat.

Yeah that is one of the major culprits, but not the only one. I direct your attention to the words "psychologial tricks".

Old-style grinds as you point out are fine. If all WG did was add more of those without timegating, lootboxes or any of the other BS they bundle every reward of 2019 into, I wouldn't be whining here.

 

 

There are multiple additional tricks layered on top of time-gating which make the game events a pest to play due to time-pressure and uncertaincy.

- Patch/time gating is the basic ingredient.

- Add events that cannot be completed without logging in every damn day for the daily missions (several including Benham)

- Add time-gated directives that must be completed in 1 week before patch ends, no matter what you did the rest of the patch.

- Add sunk-cost fallacy: Events like Benham that cannot be completed (but almost) without the use of Doubloons

- Add gambling schemes with major rewards in random Lootbox XX out of YY which is statistically created to place rewards in the last few boxes for the majority.

 

 

[NothingButTheRain]

At

 

Quote

3. Events

• I grind during events, trying to get rewards only by playing
   
   10
• I grind during events, and purchase containers/premium ships or use doubloons to speed up the grind
   
   4
• I don't play out of the ordinary during events
   
   4

I grind trying to get the free rewards, but I do sometimes pay my way out to have it easier. Examples include buying the PEF last year and buying 6 of the black containers just last month or so (and I would have bought 1 and maybe 2 of the boosters if the PR would have been not so much of a #$%^&* grind because this grind is f#$^@^@ insane!).

 

 

[invicta2012]

2 hours ago, GulvkluderGuld said:

Old-style grinds as you point out are fine. If all WG did was add more of those without timegating, lootboxes or any of the other BS they bundle every reward of 2019 into, I wouldn't be whining here.

The thing is... People aren't really used to long-term grinds in Wows. Not any more, at least. WG release a new line of ships and Boom! there's loads of Tier Xs around, the day after release. Who works their way up the line anymore? Where people might have played five or six ships in each release, now they play three, or less. 

 

People seem to have vast stocks of resources, and they're more than happy to drop them on whatever is new. And WG are more than happy for them to do that, because it creates FOMO in other players, who then rush to the cash shop to try and keep up. Flags, doubloons, whatever it takes.  

 

As to the efficacy of long term grinds... I wonder how many Shinonome's have been given away recently? For a free Tier VI, that's quite a Campaign to grind out that level of reward (probably worse than the Gorizia one). 

[Kiwi1960]

Once my premium runs out in about 20 days, that is it. No more.

 

On a lighter note... I plugged in my new gaming keyboard and ma usi9ng it now... pretty colours below the keys so i can see them in the dark, and the letters etc are also lit up...

 

from left to right... TAB, q, w, e, r are in GREEN
T y and U are in yellow... I O P {  } are in red...

Enter, the arrow keys are in purple... the key pad is in blue.... its actually once I got second hand as I wear them out fast... only paid a few Euros for it...

 

When I stop playing WoWs so much, I want to see what its like on War Thunder and some other games... not so much WoWs... I'll see if I can find a photo of it.... sadly, I missed out on the mouse... 55 Euros they want for a new one....

 

Been posting negative stuff of late, wanted to change the tone of my posts...

 

 

[Karasu_Browarszky]

I've never really liked time gated content, especially if it involves rewards and especially especially if it involves a temptation to use money to skip stages... Oh, wait....

[Uglesett]

2 hours ago, invicta2012 said:

The thing is... People aren't really used to long-term grinds in Wows. Not any more, at least. WG release a new line of ships and Boom! there's loads of Tier Xs around, the day after release. Who works their way up the line anymore? Where people might have played five or six ships in each release, now they play three, or less. 

 

People seem to have vast stocks of resources, and they're more than happy to drop them on whatever is new. And WG are more than happy for them to do that, because it creates FOMO in other players, who then rush to the cash shop to try and keep up. Flags, doubloons, whatever it takes.  

Well, they could start by not making it possible to skip straight to T8 by grinding/buying loot boxes every time they release a new tech tree line...

 

But while you are right that there probably is a fair amount of players who have a ton of stuff and can skip through lines willy-nilly, all the ways they're trying to get those players to spend those resources just make the game far worse for the players who are not in that "old fart who's already got everything" category.

[GulvkluderGuld]

1 hour ago, invicta2012 said:

The thing is... People aren't really used to long-term grinds in Wows.

You mean the monetized new line releases eg: early access to ships in lootboxes paid by doubloons?

Or the free prem time, doubloons and free lootboxes with lower tier ships of new lines?

Yeah WG is baiting the new playes in with all their free gifts, getting them nicely hooked. And getting them used to having their wallets fleeced good and proper along the way.

Not that getting a tier V or VI really matters much compared to grinding from tier I for the game economy - it's only some 50k free XP to get there and you can grind that, convert it, or have WG throw it at you in various lootboxes.

FreeXP is probably the most inflated ressource in the game.

 

It's probably wishful thinking to want the oldstyle grinds back without time gating. Armory and coal seems to be the new campaigns - with higher prices of course!

If the monetization didnt provide direct gameplay advantages I probably wouldnt care. But it does. And that means WoWs isn't free to play anymore (if ever it was). It really is pay2win since 2019.

 

 

 

[Hedgehog1963]

Once I realised that I didn't want all the content in this game I became a happy little player indeed.

[DFens_666]

6 hours ago, Uglesett said:

EDIT: By request, I tried adding a poll that's hopefully not too biased.

 

I think there is missing an option with the premium account. I basicly never purchase premium, only did it a couple of times with doubloons (which i got 4 free^^) to get more out of +200% first win bonus.

 

If you play for several years, you can get a nice amount of stuff even while using no money (i only bought cossack for 89cents, but i have like >50 premium/special ships by now). But i agree what WG has been doing: This constant Event marathon this year is annoying. Its one thing right after the other, Clan battles, Clan Brawl, Ranked, Ranked sprint, new line every 3-4 months, special gamemodes also every couple of months. Timegated grinds which only last 1 month...

[Uglesett]

4 minutes ago, Hedgehog1963 said:

Once I realised that I didn't want all the content in this game I became a happy little player indeed.

But what happens when there is content that you do want that's not available to you?

 

E.g. I don't really give a  about the Puerto Rico or even the Benham, because I already have more ships than I have time to play. But it will greatly annoy me to have legendary modules that I actually want locked behind the research bureau (that I'm never going to make use of, because screw that, it takes me far too long to grind a line to T10 for me ever to want to do it again).

[Kiwi1960]

1 minute ago, Uglesett said:

But what happens when there is content that you do want that's not available to you?

 

E.g. I don't really give a  about the Puerto Rico or even the Benham, because I already have more ships than I have time to play. But it will greatly annoy me to have legendary modules that I actually want locked behind the research bureau (that I'm never going to make use of, because screw that, it takes me far too long to grind a line to T10 for me ever to want to do it again).

And when WoWs figures that out, they will change it back... this will never end... they said the wouldn't do this, now they are.

 

Its no longer pay to play... not even play for free... its "do as we say or you get nothing"...

 

Russian arrogance....

[Hedgehog1963]

24 minutes ago, Uglesett said:

But what happens when there is content that you do want that's not available to you?

 

E.g. I don't really give a  about the Puerto Rico or even the Benham, because I already have more ships than I have time to play. But it will greatly annoy me to have legendary modules that I actually want locked behind the research bureau (that I'm never going to make use of, because screw that, it takes me far too long to grind a line to T10 for me ever to want to do it again).

 

Nothing is stopping you from gaining Research Bureau points except your attitude.  Hardly "not available to you."  You're just not prepared to put in the work.

[ForlornSailor]

7 hours ago, Uglesett said:

We see this in the increasing amount of "freemium" content that's effectively gated so that you can only obtain it if you have a lot of available game time (and often on a daily basis) or you're willing to throw substantial amounts of cash at WG.

 

I think, its a huge loss for the game in the middle- / long-run, that every event completly vanishes off the face of the earth once its done. And its a shame, that those directives this years gave a lot of useless premium ships like the Siroco (which is just way worse then the silver T5 french DD, same applies for the Hill and Genova). So those ships are neither overpowered nor are they going to bring much cash into WGs pockets in the future (since beeing T5 and, well, bad).

 

So I dont understand, why those directives instead couldnt have been campaignes, that stay forever in the game. A new player, that joins in 2020, 2021 or whatever point in the future, just has SO much more content to play for (without any hassle for WG) and they can get some premium ships to grind - which are, as mentioned, not good, but for new players helpful anyway to train captains, get some credits etc pp. This would help with another problem: easing up the way into the game for new players, which gets constantly harder.

 

Those are just my 5 cents and why I think, these time gated events are particulary bad for the game.