"You still have your chance to get free skins with ice if you are f2p as you can earn ice various ways it will just be a harder grind"
I m lvl 37. lets say i max out to 40 and have zero ice. Do you know how much ice we get per year from other quest chests lol?
Based on the amount i have recived from quest and chests since i started on average 100 for a hard grinder
Yeah barely 100 ice per year. To buy a rare skin we need like 600 ice. So i wait 6 years for a rare skin? LOL
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Yes for a free player only that is something to expect to happen in anygame they are limited in a fashion that doesn’t affect gameplay. That is also stating that as this model progress skins stay in the same system and price.
if u desire a tv and your money isn’t enough, you have to wait and saving for a certain time until you can afford the tv. what’s wrong with that?
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Well mobile games generally depend on whales for money not FREE2play players. Whales are people who invest tons of money in the game so the f2p players can play. But if SEMC has info else where that their income comes from a mix of players and not the same player’s who keep investing then your argument would be valid. But truth is I doubt people like you are keeping the game alive. The player base is important but I don’t think skins becoming ice exclusive will make players leave. If skins are the only reason you play this game you’re playing the wrong game. Majority of the top games make cosmetics either unattainable or hard to obtain but as of it’s a mix of both and the worst from each.
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And semc “screw you you’re a veteran” policy continues. Even though getting all spring bonus chests (as I paid some cash) they still screw me over with the duplicate-blueprint non-reward. So still, total number of blueprints received under the new system: zero.
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you can destroy a bp you dont want for essence…
And wait for RNGeezus to bless you with it again? 
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if you dont want the bp, why would you want to get it again?
lets say you have a legendary bp for one hero, you can now destroy all the lesser rarities you get for essence.
you only really need one skin for each hero and that at the highest possible rarity. the rest is just essence.
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You would have a point, except that people can no longer choose what to craft. That rare Glaive skin BP may be the only one you ever get. Destroying it without having a better option available already wouldn’t be clever - even if that means being stuck without Essence for months. (Because eventually you will start drawing duplicates, while there’s no guarantee for any one specific BP.)
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just because you cant choose, you dont have to craft everything you get.
but it brings one major flaw of this system to my attention i didnt see before, because i have the luxury to actually destroy a lot of the bp that i get, because i dont need them.
i just went through my skins, i own 78 and 39 skins i dont own are skins i will never want, because i already have a better/same quality skin for that hero. so i am actually only interested in 17 skins. taking out the se skins i cant get bp for from quest chests, i am left with 1 skin. there is only one bp in this game right now i am interested in getting to craft the skin.
i still have two legendary bp i want to craft, but after that i am essentially at the point were i will never craft another skin i want ever again.
this system fcks off new players, old players AND paying players (they reduce their own chance of getting an exciting bp drop with every skin they buy) alike.
semc still doesnt seem to know what they actually want to do with the skins.
are they primarily a money maker, or are they a major motivator for players and an edge against the competition? right now they do neither.
i think semc should have made one line of 3 skins with the cards for each hero, staying at a lower quality and just make se skins that can only be bought or obtained by events for specific skins. only the se skins give more than 50% sunlight bonus, so there is always an incentive to buy one and use it over the grindable skin.
havent gotten a blueprint but we all should’ve expected this.
When SEMC started all these changes I thought SEMC itself had changed. But I just realized that they’re just following the industry trend of RNG’ing everything.
At this point I’m just happy I have all the free/semi free skins I’ve got since I was never gonna fork over $50+ for a mobile game anyway (only spent $2-$3 which is what I’d normally spend). So I’m just gonna sit on my cache and expect nothing more from here on out.
The problem is that SEMC is trying to find monetization methods but their hands are tied because VG is a MOBA and most MOBA’s main sources of product are skins. (You can’t restrict heroes too much). If they want to make money they have to find some innovative new product to offer that doesn’t exist in this genre. SEMC should look at other genres and see how they do it without pissing off the playerbase too much.
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We’ll see when time comes lol.
just some ideas:
- map skins
- hero taunts
- exclusive voice lines
- add a player profile and profile pictures, sell profile stuff
- scout cam skins
- actual exp boost (outside of the game. the one we have is stupid for anyone but complete new players)
- skins for the dragons/kraken
- stuff for your guild
- let players save their own builds for quick buy (end enhance the feature to be a bit more flexible) and sell extra pages beyond the first one
- badges and bling for the vs screen
- …
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That’s a good list, there are definitely a lot of features SEMC has not developed properly yet(like guilds and profiles). People would buy those things.
I was thinking about how other games, let’s say Love Nikki(a dress up game, can’t think of other examples that I know and played which were top grossing in App Store) due to the genre, are able to continually push out hundreds of products (in this case “clothing”) with a lot less effort.
I feel like SEMC either has to create a new low effort (or able to create large amounts of) but high demand product, or pander completely to whales and pay to wins.
Idk it’s hard to explain, I just feel the genre of MOBA and how MOBAs typically make money is what is limiting SEMC. I just can’t figure out how to think outside of the box for this.
Its more that SEMC is trying to combine a mobile games style of making money with a moba style. Sadly the two don’t mix well in the way they did it. Most mobile games if I buy a special chest I’m garanteed one item with the rest being rng SEMC decided lets instead make it a 10% chance to get the special chests theme
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They need to merchandise. It seems counter intuitive, but bringing a physical brand presence outside of the game itself… into the ecosystem of the game is the best way to be disruptive (in a marketing sense) versus SEMCs competitors.
Vainglory’s biggest market differentiators are it’s touch interface and it’s solid gameplay + character design. What nobody gets though, is that a touch interface makes one of the most complex video game genres accessible to SO MANY PEOPLE who don’t play MOBAs. Thus, the initial adopters will be MOBA players, but that’s such a minority in a bigger pond of gamers, that it’s easy to become myopic about who the typical player actually is.
That’s where merchandising becomes powerful. Disney and Nintendo are masters at it, and it’s all an elaborate way to make a brand “sticky,” because it’s made to sit somewhere and subconsciously remind you of another product(s) entirely, yet owned by the same company.
Vainglory’s touch interface alone puts this game into a more Disney or Mario category of accessibility and approachability. SEMC simply needs to build some analog product lines to foster the same effect.
BONUS TIP: if SEMC wanted to be baller, then consider them releasing some free (or even paid) geometry for 3d printing folks, so the can make and share their own VG swag. It’s still merchandising, and still has the same psychological effect.
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