This is a long thesis, broken down into two parts - 1. premise, and 2. proposal. To skip to the relevant parts, scroll to the section which would be made bold. Sections are also numbered for easy referencing.
1. Premise: We believe your typical average player should be able to pull a 10-draw weapon/soulstone chest at least every fortnight.
This is not an excessive demand as many other mobile game platforms function on a similar premise (i.e. daily rewards provide sufficient P2P currency to purchase exclusive and relevant P2P items). Understandably, a one-sided demand is trivial and dismissive. Hence we take a utilitarian argument - one that benefits both the player (in terms of game experience) and the game developer (in terms of net income). The latter arguments will come in after we have laid the foundations of our thesis.
So we need to establish a few items:
1.1) Who is the typical average player?
1.2) How many daily free gems is currently available in game?
1.3) Why we benchmark it to specifically a 10-draw weapons pull?
1.1) Who is the typical average player?
The golden question is what is the ideal F2P to P2P ratio? This question is harder to answer than it looks. Depending on the survey/study, a large proportion of game revenue is derived from a small pool of players. This number is anywhere between 46% (Ref #1) to 90% (Ref #2) of a game's revenue to 10% of the game's player population. F2P players are good because most of us test your game for free (by giving feedback), enhance gameplay experience better than NPCs, and inflate download numbers
. P2P players are good because they maintain profit, and push the boundaries of gameplay. Long story short, we believe a good proxy would be represented by a 9 F2P to 1 P2P ratio.Here, there are two markers we could use - Power and Arena ranking. Unfortunately, (for good reason) both only list the top 100 players. But we see a trend in the listings - in the power rankings, none of the top 10 are F2P; 6/20 of the top 20 are F2P; 25/50 of the top 50 are F2P; 61/100 of the top 100 are F2P [solely based on their avatar and whether I know they are F2P or not]. Similarly in the arena rankings, we have a F2P ratio of 1/10, 5/20, 25/50 and 63/100. They are similar. Plotting this data, we see a very nice Michaelis-Menten (-ish) curve. A simple conservative extrapolation, pegs this 9:1 ratio at just above 300.
That means the top 300 players of either arena or power rankings are representative of the average active player pool.
Now that we have a nice reference set, we can do proper analysis.
1.1.1 Segway point: F2P players should be able to see the VIP status of P2P players.
- This gives them incentive to see the differential between F2P and P2P, which may encourage more to spend to attain the appropriate power up.
- This also allows F2P players (which presumably are the majority) to flag accounts which suddenly make 30 pet pulls as hacking - removing cheaters more efficiently from the game.
1.2) How many daily free gems is currently available in game?
I've covered this previously (see viewtopic.php?f=48&t=18003 and viewtopic.php?f=49&t=18005&start=10#p42089) but let's do this properly.
First, we have to establish two different types of rewards: i) Repeatable gems - like renewable energy, there is theoretically no practical limit. ii) Non-repeatable gems - like fossil fuels, they will run out some day. "Free daily gems" should only apply to repeatable gems - as is the model for many other mobile games. And so, the current sources of truly "free daily gems" are:
- Log-in bonuses (Sign tab): 450 every 30 days.
- Guild cards: 20 every day (600 in 30 days).
- Arena ranks: averaging all gems rewards over the average player pool, we get 8.8 gems per person per day. Let's place this at 9.
- Heroes Hall potentially gives 100 every week. Tracking the number of Monarchs per week (actually quite easy), we can conservative peg this number at 20. So averaged out, rounded up, 1 gem per person per day.
- Sunday daily quests give a net yield of 50. So averaged out over the week, 7 gems per person per day.
Thus, currently, on average (over 30 days), an average player can get 52 gems per person per day - if he/she plays everyday.
1.3) Why we benchmark it to specifically a 10-draw weapons pull?
Many freemium games provide daily side quests giving P2P currencies sufficient for an exclusive P2P item pull - be it weapon, hero, etc. I shall not advertise other games but examples are plentiful. Here, the limiting factor are pets and weapons. First, let's discuss weapons. Weapons require 16 bases for maximal evolution. However, weapon equip was recently made complicated - each hero has 3 5-star weapon to choose from, effectively tripling the difficulty of acquiring maximally evolved weapons. A single weapon draw is bad as one is most likely going to acquire a 2-star piece of junk. A 10-pull draw guarantees one base random 5-star, but typically yields, let's be generous and say 3 random 5-stars. That means, at the current rate of 52 gems a day, your average player needs to save for a little over a month (34.6 days to be precise), for a stab at 3 random 5-stars a month - provided the player doesn't spend on anything else. Now, you have 8 heroes, 3 5-star weapon per hero, 16 bases per weapon. Eww. What if you wish to purchase a specific 5-star weapon? Well, that's a whooping 52 days worth of saving up "free gems". For ONE BASE weapon. Cue disgust.
Now, for the sake of completeness, let's list all the possible ways to get a 5-star weapon:
i) Guild war battle random drop: Never heard of anyone getting one.
ii) Devil run reward: Never heard of anyone getting one.
iii) Relic hunt rewards: Never heard of anyone getting one.
iv) Heroes Hall 5-star challenges: I'll peg this at 5% per battle [feel free to correct me dev]
v) Heroes Hall 5-star chest redemption: I've never gotten one, I'll peg this at 5% too [feel free to correct me dev]
vi) Guild war rewards: Happy bidding in auction~
vii) Guild ranking rewards: Happy bidding in auction~
Do these options look particularly encouraging?
Ok, let's talk pets. Pets require 64 bases for a maximum evolution. However, pet equip is straightforward - any hero can use any pet. Furthermore, one has the option of acquiring pet pieces through rescues and raids - so kudos - give credit where credit is due. The typical average player can acquire pets relatively easily. The higher-tier player however, has difficulty pet raiding for pieces. Because, i) at higher tiers, a smaller pool of players are competing for the same pieces; ii) at very high tiers, raid success decreases as opponents are of lower power. But for the sake of the utiliarian argument, let's leave it as is.
I think weapons vs pets, we have an obvious winner here.
2. Proposal: We list below some suggested ways to increase the flow of "free daily gems".
To hit the target of a 10-pull weapons draw every fortnight (129 gems per day), we have a shortfall of about 77 gems per day. You could:
2.1.1) Add gem rewards to bounty/relic hunts. [Coding difficulty: Easy]
2.1.2) Add more sub-daily quests with NET gem rewards [Coding difficulty: Medium]
2.1.3) Remove inactive players from arena by refreshing it every month [Coding difficulty: Easy]
2.1.4) Increasing arena ranking rewards [Coding difficulty: Easy]
On a related note, you could also increase the 100% 10th weapon pull from 4 to 5-star [Coding difficulty: Easy], increase the 4 and 5-star weapon probability of 5-star heroes hall redemption chests [Coding difficulty: Medium] and increase the number of item rewards to guilds based on the number of active players in that guild [Coding difficulty: Challenging].
2.2. Now, let's talk the developer POV. What's in it for you?
2.2.1) Player retention
2.2.2) Player renewal
2.2.1 Player retention
You have a serious player retention problem. In a typical freemium game, one needs a decent sample size of players with three-month retention to calculate lifetime value (LTV) and assess game profitability (Ref #3). Now that you are in your third month, I do question that sample size given the observed attrition rate amongst top players. Here, I speculate that many players quit your game due to the following reasons:
i) Immature storyline development
ii) lack of upgrading opportunities/inability to remain competitive
iii) lack of competion at the top
iv) gameplay bugs and incomplete comprehension of gameplay mechanics
While (i) and (iv) cannot be addressed here, we touched upon (ii) and (iii) in this very long post. Hopefully, you can intuit the obvious - by providing more gems, you allow the greater player population to become competitive, thereby addressing both (ii) and (iii).
2.2.2 Player renewal
To be honest, your current player pool is tiny. This is evident from the active users in this forum, as well as those in the game rankings/chats themselves. Perhaps the easiest way for this to happen is to retain a larger proportion of first time players. Here, you guys did a relatively good job on the badge quests starting out. But here's the kicker, it becomes painfully obvious that certain items (such as weapons) are prohibitively expensive very early on the game, and some badge quests are nearly impossible to attain even in the long term future. You need a bridge of hope for these players. Due to the lack of transparency, the new player doesn't know how many exhaustive gems he/she could potentially farm - but he/she can quickly figure out how many "free daily gems" are available. Simple math, cost-benefit analysis.
References:
1. http://www.recode.net/2014/4/9/11625416 ... -exclusive
2. https://intelligence.slice.com/hardly-p ... purchases/
3. http://www.gameanalytics.com/blog/golde ... -apps.html