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Boosters' Market Value - Issues & Possible Improvements


DvDivXXX
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Would you like the market value of boosters to change?  

42 members have voted

  1. 1. Are you satisfied with the current *selling* market value of boosters (Ymens)?

    • Yes, that's fine.
      3
    • I don't care either way.
      5
    • No, this is just useless.
      34
  2. 2. Would you be interested in getting a small amount of kobans instead of Ymens when you sell boosters?

    • Yes, of course! That would make all those clicks worth it.
      28
    • Why not, but I'm concerned this might break the game's economy somehow.
      13
    • Not really. Selling those one by one is too tedious even for kobans.
      1


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Hi. I'll try to keep this as concise and to the point as possible, even though there's a lot to be said. This is also my first attempt at making a poll, so feedback is welcome, but please be gentle. ^^

As of this writing, Boosters can occasionally be earned through random drops in Arena, Pachinko and other rewards. Otherwise, they can only be purchased for KOBANS in the Market (at fixed prices, based on rarity only). That's okay and we're all used to it, but where it becomes weird is when you look at what you can actually do with them (besides equipping them, of course). I'd like to dig into that, and suggest possible improvements.

1/ Boosters can only be sold for Ymens

This makes very little sense to me. Anything else you can sell for Ymens in the Market you can also buy for Ymens. These items can only be purchased with kobans, but sold for Ymens. Why? Also, given how many of these we accumulate for free over time, and the fact that we can only sell them one by one... Getting a few Ymens for them isn't a great incentive, to say the least.

2/ Boosters have different market values based on TYPE on top of rarity

This one is really puzzling. If you want to buy a booster, the price is always the same (in kobans) based on rarity only:

  • Common: 12 kobans
  • Rare: 30 kobans
  • Epic: 60 kobans
  • Legendary: 90 kobans

But when you want to sell a booster, you get different values (in Ymens) based on rarity but also on type (with a surprising distribution):

  • Common: Ginseng Root: 234 Ymens < Jujube: 317 Ymens < Chlorella: 434 Ymens < Cordyceps: 600 Ymens
  • Rare: Ginseng Root: 700 Ymens < Jujube: 950 Ymens < Chlorella: 1,300 Ymens < Cordyceps: 1,800 Ymens
  • Epic: Ginseng Root: 1,534 Ymens < Jujube: 1,784 Ymens < Chlorella: 2,134 Ymens < Cordyceps: 2,634 Ymens
  • Legendary: Ginseng Root: 2,367 Ymens < Jujube: (?) Ymens < Chlorella: 2,967 Ymens < Cordyceps: 3,467 Ymens

First of all, why? Also, WHY?! Those differences seem completely unnecessary, and this value distribution is seemingly random. It's definitely not linked to these items' gameplay value (Jujubes are demonstrably hot garbage, for one thing, so they should either have the highest or the lowest value if this was based on usefulness), and I can't think of anything that would justify one common Cordyceps selling for more than three common Ginseng Roots, for instance.

3/ Unwanted Boosters cannot be easily disposed of

Except in the very early game, you'd be nuts to ever equip crappy boosters, because once equipped, you're stuck with them for 24 hours. For instance, this week, I've been slowing myself down in the League, so I just left my four slots empty. Why? Well, because, if at any point, I actually need a boost, I need those slots empty, not filled with garbage I can't remove until it expires by itself.

So the only way the pile of junk below is ever going to leave my inventory is if I spend the time to sell each item manually in the Market:

1837681845_HH-Boosters-IssuesSuggestions-001.png.f8a927d71afcd161408a0b766757aa5d.png

But since it's a bit of chore, I have no incentive to do it. So they just stay there. I'm sure tons of players are in the same boat.

4/ Suggestions (please see the poll)

I can think of a many ways those could be turned into something more useful than pocket change, but most of those ideas would require some UI change (for instance, making it so that you can "re-roll" them for another random booster, or convert, say, 10 commons into 1 rare, or 1 ticket, or something).

The simplest and, I hope, fairest thing I could come up with would be to simply allow us to sell them for kobans. A fixed price based on rarity would be fine by me, and also consistent with other items we can buy and sell in the Market. Basically:

  • Common: 1 koban
  • Rare: 2 kobans
  • Epic: 3 kobans
  • Legendary: 4 or 5 kobans

I wouldn't even mind just a fixed market value of 1 koban per booster, regardless of rarity or type. I mean, we generally get back something like 1-10% of the cost in Ymens when we sell other items. A tiny amount of kobans for these items that normally sell for kobans would make sense, and I don't think it would break the game either. It would just be a nice touch.

So, what do you guys think?

Edited by DvDivXXX
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I actually expected the Jujubes to be the most expensive, because they show up the least, and chlorella to be the least expensive, because they show up the most.
I think they actually never changed the order of expensiveness after they fiddled with the drop rates of them. Back in the day this was also the order of sell value (only the value of the rare ones where so high, we would basically make 90+% back of our investments on the static priced great pachinko. So what I think is that this was how they were valued way back in the day (first year or so), and they never reevaluated that.

Anyway, as soon as you suggest them to be sold for kobans, I see a big issue arise immediately; they drop from literally everywhere it is possible to get items from. These values here would have to be the Nutaku values, because every Nutaku koban = 6 HH kobans, and you can't give someone on Nutaku 1/6th of a koban. That would mean the values go up to 6, 12, 18 and 24 here in the very least. Now combine those two things, and it becomes another source of koban generation. I think we can safely assume this will never happen.

The idea might be nice, the implications are huge though. Especially since some people have saved thousands (yes thousands) of boosters, because most of them are useless.

To me it's a better idea to get some kind of exchange station for boosters; hand in other boosters you don't use to change it for one of your choice. But even that would run into problems taking the hoarders into account.

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41 minutes ago, Chthugha said:

These values here would have to be the Nutaku values, because every Nutaku koban = 6 HH kobans, and you can't give someone on Nutaku 1/6th of a koban.

That's a good point. I didn't think of Nutaku at all, honestly. And now that I think about it, that's surely why all the prices are multiples of 6 on HH. It must be 2 kobans to buy a Common on Nutaku, and so on. Damn...

Well, then maybe this could be done on HH only, and perhaps Nutaku players get Ymens with a popup saying "hahaha that'll teach you to skip all the avatars in Mythic Pachinko!" or something. :D

Edit: Alternatively (and more seriously) maybe they could either introduce decimals (let's say you get 0.6 koban for a common on HH, and 0.1 on Nutaku), or make a relatively simple UI change so that we can only exchange these for kobans 10 or 12 at a time.

Edited by DvDivXXX
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A suggestion: Acording with the text in your post, you should edit the title of the first question to:

Are you satisfied with the current selling market value of boosters?

I would be really surprised if the answers to the first question weren't a 100% of  No, this is just useless. (Edit: I am surprised after voting myself ...and seeing the results, can only attribute it to someone answering about the purchasing value and not the selling value)

In the second question should be near 100% of Yes, of course! and perhaps a small % of  Why not, but I'm concerned this might break the game's economy somehow.

@Chthugha said almost exactly what I think about the question: selling them for kobans, even for a small quantity could be a problem from Kinkoid point of view, but if it would ever implemented should be with a sell rate of 1/6 of purchase cost, as when you spend your Ymens with books, gear and affection items. But as he said, not possible with Nutaku values.

There are two logical ways to change the selling value of lower rarity boosters:

- One would be some kind of exchange of many lower boosters to get a higher one. A bit of a problem considering the change needed in the actual market interface, but of course doable.

- The other would be selling boosters for an equivalent ingame conversion of Kobans to Ymens (again selling at 1/6 of purchase price as the rest of items). The only place when you have a simultaneous buying price in Ymens and Kobans is when upgrading stars for a girl, so that could be the approximate rate, implying an important reassessment of selling value.

Edited by jelom
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1 hour ago, jelom said:

A suggestion: Acording with the text in your post, you should edit the title of the first question to:

Are you satisfied with the current selling market value of boosters?

Thanks, I've edited it now, but I don't think people can change their votes. You're right that it was potentially misleading, especially for people voting right away before reading the thread. At least one member of my club voted "yes, that's fine" because he assumed I was talking about the price in kobans for buying boosters. My bad.

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1 hour ago, jelom said:

The only place when you have a simultaneous buying price in Ymens and Kobans is when upgrading stars for a girl

You know, this might actually inspire another solution (which would also require a small interface change, unfortunately). What if they gave us a third option, next to Ymens and kobans: paying for affection points using boosters? This way they could adjust the value of each booster in how many points they give based on rarity, and the HH vs Nutaku conversions could be bypassed entirely. It might look awkward, but it might make sense: you give a girl a booster to boost her affection for you. ^^

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Since no one mentioned it - sell them for Pachinko Orbs (whenever that's going to happen), or a chance of obtaining them. Would probably still require some restriction for people stocked with hundreds of unused Boosters.

Not that any of this is going to get implemented anyway.9_9

Edited by John 1039
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4 hours ago, John 1039 said:

Would probably still require some restriction for people stocked with hundreds of unused Boosters.

Well, the thing about that (and that I forgot to mention before when Chthuga and jelom voiced the same concern) is that it would be a one-time thing. If people have hundreds or thousands of unused boosters right now, it's because they've been playing for years and the longer you play, the more of these you accumulate. So yeah, those who have hoarded these useless boosters would get a pretty significant one-time bonus compared to others once a useful way to convert or sell them gets implemented.

Once those players cash that in, though, and for the foreseeable future, everyone would be on equal footing again. It's just that instead of everyone stashing a pile of junk in their inventory, everyone would get a little bit of value from said junk.

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I often thought about this matter, and I am positive that it is quite unfair to have tens or even hundreds of boosters rottening in a player inventory without having a possible use, even selling them. Basically I would be satisfied simply by an increase of the selling market price in ymens: IMHO, should the increase be consistent enough, that would make worthwhile selling the lesser boosters without a huge alteration the game economy. As I see it, up to now the devs haven't considered that with the new features added to the game (leagues, champions) the boosters have had a change in importance that has not been reflected by the selling price. Dunno if someone has some information on this, but for one time I am more prone to think that this has been an overlooking due to the management of more relevant matters, rather than a unwillingness to rectify things. Should I be proved wrong on this, I believe I would really start to think that the devs have strange ideas about the concept of game balance (and I am not referring to the abyss between free and paying players)

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1 hour ago, Observer_X said:

the abyss between free and paying players

There's no such thing in this game, except in your head. I've played my share of actual P2W games. This isn't one of them, at all. Nothing is hidden behind a paywall (contrary to what so many mobile games do), not even cosmetics (as seen in so many popular "free to play" games). Everything can be obtained, eventually, for free, by playing the game long enough, well enough and consistently enough. And it's perfectly possible to become pretty competitive as a free player, in a matter of months (as I did), or maybe even weeks (as I'm doing right now on my secondary account) since the massive rework of the XP system they've done recently, which gives an incredible boost to new and low-level players.

We get it, you take issue with the koban currency for some reason that you and only you can make sense of, and you decided to give yourself a handicap when playing this game, even compared to other F2P players. That's fine but it's all on you. This game has no significant gap between "free and paying players", at all. It does have a pretty huge gap between long-time players and newer players, but that's just about the opposite situation in terms of fairness and intentions, and also the devs have been actively changing things around for months now to make it less intimidating and punishing for players who are late to the party. That's healthy development. Honestly, in terms of greed and unfairness towards free players, I'll take Kinkoid over Blizzard any day of the week.

I agree with everything else in your post, though, but this had to be (re-)addressed, because you keep pushing this imaginary agenda in passing, and that's not healthy. Don't project your own self-imposed struggles on the devs or the community. You chose not to use one of the main game mechanics, that's bound to be frustrating, but it has nothing to do with the actual game's balance. It's your very own balance issue, sorry.

Edited by DvDivXXX
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Since we brought it up in here, I'll ask my related question.  I just came from a game that was REALLY bent towards pay to win and had very obvious pay walls built in.  I'm just wondering if I am making the same new players mistake that I made in that game.  That is, racing through the beginning levels too fast.  I joined this game Jan 1 and I'm at level 70.  Am I pushing things too fast and too early?  The last game I was in when you went up in levels the cost of bonus things and cards increased exponentially.  In other words if you went up too fast you could not farm lower levels and if you did, you did not get that much for your efforts and time.  Am I making the same mistake here?

Thank you.

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Costs do not increase. Story will get harder to get through, but that's the same for everyone no matter the pace. The only thing you absolutely shouldn't do, is pay kobans to go through the story faster. That's a waste of kobans, and that can get you into trouble while fighting high world bosses, because then you are not equipped enough to deal with them. Getting to level 70 in a week is not that uncommon with the current pace of the game when you just started.

But please, if you have questions, don't use random threads to ask them. There is an entire section created specifically for new players to ask questions. It's the QA Questions Answers section (subsection of general discussion). I'm saying this, because you also posted some questions in general discussion. It's okay now, because you are new to the game and the forum, but try to follow the simple guidelines to this forum.

Edited by Chthugha
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1 hour ago, DvDivXXX said:

There's no such thing in this game, except in your head. I've played my share of actual P2W games. This isn't one of them, at all. Nothing is hidden behind a paywall (contrary to what so many mobile games do), not even cosmetics (as seen in so many popular "free to play" games). Everything can be obtained, eventually, for free, by playing the game long enough, well enough and consistently enough. And it's perfectly possible to become pretty competitive as a free player, in a matter of months (as I did), or maybe even weeks (as I'm doing right now on my secondary account) since the massive rework of the XP system they've done recently, which gives an incredible boost to new and low-level players.

We get it, you take issue with the koban currency for some reason that you and only you can make sense of, and you decided to give yourself a handicap when playing this game, even compared to other F2P players. That's fine but it's all on you. This game has no significant gap between "free and paying players", at all. It does have a pretty huge gap between long-time players and newer players, but that's just about the opposite situation in terms of fairness and intentions, and also the devs have been actively changing things around for months now to make it less intimidating and punishing for players who are late to the party. That's healthy development. Honestly, in terms of greed and unfairness towards free players, I'll take Kinkoid over Blizzard any day of the week.

I agree with everything else in your post, though, but this had to be (re-)addressed, because you keep pushing this imaginary agenda in passing, and that's not healthy. Don't project your own self-imposed struggles on the devs or the community. You chose not to use one of the main game mechanics, that's bound to be frustrating, but it has nothing to do with the actual game's balance. It's your very own balance issue, sorry.

And again (didn't I told this to you before? Honestly, in this precise moment I don't remember) if you wish to think like this, you are free to do it, but it's quite evident that we see the game from two different point of views, and I will continue to believe in mine and sustain it, independently from other people agreeing with me or not. Remember that I am not trying to chastise or convince anyone. If you don't see the abyss I mentioned, my feeling is only being sorry for you and anyone else that agrees with you, and remember that I said what I said taking into account my no-koban policy. And as usual, no offense is intended. As you probably remember I already said elsewhere, if people thinks I am a moron because of my opinions, I will definitely not lose a minute of sleep on it.

See ya next week, I am having a super busy week and in the next days I will scarcely have the time to play, and probably no time to log on the forum.

Edited by Observer_X
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38 minutes ago, Observer_X said:

As you probably remember I already said elsewhere, if people thinks I am a moron because of my opinions, I will definitely not lose a minute of sleep on it.

It's not that, it's just that you persist in making a demonstrably false claim about the game in general. Of course you're entitled to your opinion, but outright claiming there's a huge gap between F2P and paying customers in a game that's actually not P2W at all is not an opinion, it's just plain misinformation (I don't think you're lying, I'm sure you believe what you say, and you'll keep believing it despite proof to the contrary, but well, proof to the contrary exists, so you are wrong in that generalization of your own experience).

All they sell for real money is time and convenience. That's how to do F2P games the right way. They don't sell power, they don't hide anything behind a paywall, they don't block your progress unless you pay, and they don't even reserve cosmetics to their paying customers. No matter what you may feel, this game is objectively not pay to win. You can progress faster and with less efforts if you spend real money on it, definitely. But that's not the same thing at all.

Have a good week, friend.

Edited by DvDivXXX
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On 1/8/2020 at 10:59 PM, DvDivXXX said:

It's not that, it's just that you persist in making a demonstrably false claim about the game in general. Of course you're entitled to your opinion, but outright claiming there's a huge gap between F2P and paying customers in a game that's actually not P2W at all is not an opinion, it's just plain misinformation (I don't think you're lying, I'm sure you believe what you say, and you'll keep believing it despite proof to the contrary, but well, proof to the contrary exists, so you are wrong in that generalization of your own experience).

All they sell for real money is time and convenience. That's how to do F2P games the right way. They don't sell power, they don't hide anything behind a paywall, they don't block your progress unless you pay, and they don't even reserve cosmetics to their paying customers. No matter what you may feel, this game is objectively not pay to win. You can progress faster and with less efforts if you spend real money on it, definitely. But that's not the same thing at all.

Have a good week, friend.

After a busy week I finally have the chance to answer. I think there is a basic misunderstanding that I would like to clear. In my book, although someone would disagree, there is a relevant difference to say "the game is pay to win" and "there is an abyss between free and paying players". Given the specific example of Hentai Heroes, this is not a pay to win game (although i think that it is dangerously near to become one, or at least something very similar, and in my opinion it has constantly approached that point ever since I started playing), but, more important, in addition to the fact that I have never seen the "proof to the contrary" you mentioned, I said what I said because I believe that is the real objective fact. Let me try to explain.

Let's try to sum up the possible uses of kobans in the game (forgive me if I forget something):
1) Girls ymens gather (nullified by Silver or Gold Monthly Card)
2) x10 villain battle (nullified by Gold Monthly Card)
3) x15 league battle (nullified by Gold Monthly Card)
4) energy refill (practically useless for any player who has collected a minimum of information about the game)
5) combativity refill (given players reports, one of the most frequent use of kobans)
6) league token refill (generally used only by rushers and players that competers for high ranks in their weekly league)
6) market restock (in the equipment page is almost worthless, in the other pages it could be useful for those who believe they need more items in the specific moment)
7) arena refresh (the only way to actively gain more experience in the game)
8) champions fight and time-cut (used only in place of tickets or to fight more often, or more quickly in the case of time-cut)
9) daily missions time-cut (as far as I can remember up to now I never heard of someone using kobans this way)
10) girls affection scenes buy (someone in the past suggested to use kobans instead of ymens in the five stars high ranks to avoid spending huge quantities of ymens)
11) last but not least, Epic, Event and Mythic Pachinko (Epic is almost essential to get more girls, Event is often tagged as a koban blackhole, and Mythic, at least to me, appears still a little controversial)

Now, 1, 2 and 3 are managed by the relative Monthly Card, which is paid with real money (I don't know if you own one, but i think that where the x10 and x15 of the Gold card are relative advantages, when one has to gather manually, four or five times per day, the ymens of over 170 girls, the difference, in my humble opinion, starts to have a certain weight). Putting aside the uses like 4 or 9 that are almost worthless for nearly any player, practically in all other cases the game mechanics enforce a rule: despite all the free kobans given in the game, no average free player will have enough of them to obtain all the girls in all the events at their first appearance, and to compete in leagues for high reward tiers and fight the champions at will. Adding to this the special offers, that are paid with real money, the result is that free players, given their due time (a time that, this is to be remembered, in this game means waiting full years) will surely obtain their results, but paying players will have already obtained the same results months if not years earlier. And it is exactly to this fact that I refer when I state of an abyss between free and paying players, despite the using of free kobans by free players.

Moreover, in this last period I have come to use the word "abyss", but the situation has evolved since I started playing two and a half years ago. At that time I would have simply talked of a gap, but in time, with the introduction of new features in the game, the gap has progressively enlarged until recently it reached the point where I found the word "abyss" adequate to express my mind.

People agreeing with me or not, the above is the reason I state of an abyss in this game between free and paying players, and will continue to do so when I feel it is the case.

One more time, I give my excuses for this long off-topic.

Edited by Observer_X
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9 hours ago, Observer_X said:

1) Girls ymens gather (nullified by Silver or Gold Monthly Card)
2) x10 villain battle (nullified by Gold Monthly Card)
3) x15 league battle (nullified by Gold Monthly Card)
4) energy refill (practically useless for any player who has collected a minimum of information about the game)
5) combativity refill (given players reports, one of the most frequent use of kobans)
6) league token refill (generally used only by rushers and players that competers for high ranks in their weekly league)
6) market restock (in the equipment page is almost worthless, in the other pages it could be useful for those who believe they need more items in the specific moment)
7) arena refresh (the only way to actively gain more experience in the game)
😎 champions fight and time-cut (used only in place of tickets or to fight more often, or more quickly in the case of time-cut)
9) daily missions time-cut (as far as I can remember up to now I never heard of someone using kobans this way)
10) girls affection scenes buy (someone in the past suggested to use kobans instead of ymens in the five stars high ranks to avoid spending huge quantities of ymens)
11) last but not least, Epic, Event and Mythic Pachinko (Epic is almost essential to get more girls, Event is often tagged as a koban blackhole, and Mythic, at least to me, appears still a little controversial)

1) It is, in my opinion and in my experience, by far the biggest advantage from taking a monthly card. I bought one the first two months of playing (and I also bought a couple of really good bundles early on), but I've been F2P since then (you could argue that I'm forever P2W because I put even a bit of money in the game, ever; many players unfortunately have that toxic philosophy in other games, where they'll call you P2W like it's an insult even if you bought the 5 buck welcome bundle or something, but I hold you in higher regard than that).

Of course, the larger your harem, the more effective Ymen gain you get from this convenience, because it's clear that ever since I've stopped having the blue button to collect instantly for free, I've lost a certain amount of Ymens per day. Still, this is mostly a QoL advantage, as earning, say, 20 to 25% more Ymens from your harem than you would without the card isn't that big of a power boost. The more you advance in the game, the less it actually matters (even though the Ymen gain itself becomes bigger), because from the mid game on, you generally gain more Ymens from other sources than your harem income anyway. But still, that's really good, and well worth buying the 3 buck monthly subscription if/when you can afford it, in my opinion (I currently can't, but I might take it again in the future).

2) and 3) are ridiculously small perks compared to 1) in my eyes, and 3) can even be a disadvantage if you play really seriously in the league. I think the €10 monthly card is simply not worth the price difference, even taking the extra kobans into account, compared to the €3 one. Technically a time and convenience advantage overall, but a really small one, and the extra kobans are a small power boost, but way too expensive for its actual impact in my opinion.

4), both 6)s, 7), 8 and 9) don't really exist. Players who use any of those (except maybe league token refills under very specific circumstances) just shoot themselves in the foot, so they're definitely not gaining any advantage from doing that (exactly the opposite).

10) is a bit of a grey area. In general, it's not worth it, but in the very early game, I'm one of those who think that it is. From the mid game on, most probably not (it took me over a month to get my Mizuki to 5 stars, and I'm still working on Keiko's 5th star, but I prefer that to burning kobans for this task). In the late game, from what I've heard from every veteran ever, Ymens are no longer an issue at all, in many cases players (including F2P) even accumulate so much that they unironically burn millions on seemingly dumb things like winning one contest, so by then it's definitely not worth burning kobans to spare Ymens. So, all in all, it's not 100% a no-no like the above, but very close to it, and being F2P or not doesn't change much here.

11) is relevant (only the x10 Epic Pachinko, and maybe when the stars align a Mythic Pachinko once every blue moon, though; Event Pachinko is a trap, period) but not in a meaningful way in this "abyss between poor F2P and rich P2W whales" argument. Sure, if you throw a ton of money at the game, you can afford to spin those regularly, and you'll gain an advantage from it, but I can't really imagine someone doing that and still having fun playing this game in the long run. At the very least, I wouldn't. For "normal" players, this should be a very occasional feature to use only in the late game when you have a strong koban reserve, as a little bit of a guilty pleasure. It doesn't really change that much in terms of sheer power, though. Your harem level boosts your stats, but not as much as your battle team, your raw hero stats, equipment and boosters. There are also definitely players who burn way too many kobans on Pachinkos, way too early and/or too often, and not just on the good ones either. Those players end up being short-stacked for events, so they play with fire and burn themselves regularly.

Except for proper whales of course, assuming there are any in this game (why not, there are in most games), but we're not talking about those. You're saying that there's a massive gap between F2P and paying customers in general. Most paying customers just have a monthly card and take a bundle here and there, I'm pretty sure. At least the average paying customer must be closer to that profile than to someone who throws a hundred bucks a month at the game.

5) Finally, we come the big one. Yes, that's where it's at, for the most part, but strategy and proper planning have more impact in the long run than how many kobans you earn. As mentioned above, tons of players throw kobans away on useless things all the time, and it doesn't matter if those guys earn twice as many kobans as I do, because one of my kobans has a much bigger impact than one of theirs. Of course, if you're a good player and you put money in the game regularly, you'll advance faster and more efficiently than a good player who's strictly F2P. But that's pretty fair. And yes, there's a natural gap between these two profiles, but neither is representative of most players, me thinks.

You actually forgot one important point:

12) Purchasing Boosters. Now, IIRC, you greatly underestimate the usefulness of this koban investment, but it still exists. I have mixed feelings about this practice now, however. I used to boost myself almost all the time, and to maintain that I had to sink a significant amount of kobans into it. I've completely stopped a couple of weeks ago, and I'm better off this way overall (although Arena losses are still an issue; Mojo goes down way slower than it goes up). But that's mostly because I'm in D1, and I finished the key parts (for my class) of the Champions hassle. In D2 and definitely in D3, boosters are absolutely a necessity if you want to compete, and in those leagues only, you can end up with a net koban gain thanks to the great rewards of the higher tiers, even spending a lot of kobans on boosters. That's true for both F2P and paying customers, though. I'm pretty sure there are pure F2P players among those topping their D3 regularly, they're just veterans and they play well, which is enough to succeed even at this level of competition. In the mid game to early late game, however, and most definitely in the early game, using and especially purchasing boosters does more harm than good over time, I'm pretty sure. Because once you start, you need to keep it up, otherwise you'll lose more than you gained while you were boosting yourself, from having raised your Mojo to the stratosphere and reached leagues that are actually too tough for your regular power level.

So, all in all, time and convenience, a significant but not overwhelming power boost (assuming someone who spends a reasonable average vs someone who doesn't spend at all), and tons of opportunities to waste money on stupid stuff if you're not a knowledgeable and serious player. Where's the huge gap, let alone the abyss you're imagining? I really don't see one.

12 hours ago, Observer_X said:

One more time, I give my excuses for this long off-topic.

Bah. Only 26 people have voted at all and the main discussion I hoped to start never took off anyway. Might as well have a long off-topic discussion with you at this point. ^^

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On 1/16/2020 at 3:10 PM, DvDivXXX said:

Bah. Only 26 people have voted at all and the main discussion I hoped to start never took off anyway. Might as well have a long off-topic discussion with you at this point. ^^

I don't like do off-topics, (especially if they are long), but unluckily in the past I found myself quite often in the situation. Often I don't have much time to write on the forum (the last post took me over three hours to write and correct, and I still made errors and forgot things, although it was over 3:00am when I posted and I was already a little sleepy) and read all the answers (in fact many times I found myself skipping long posts like the papyrs of Zorba after few lines), so I try to avoid it if I am able.

Regarding the matter at hand, a long time ago in one of my oldest posts I wrote my opinion on the so-called freemium games: without prejudice to the right of developers to make money with their games, my opinion is that the main difference between free and paying players should be a reasonable amount of time to reach game results. Obviously the key word (or, if you prefer, the bone of contention) is "reasonable", or, differently said, what players find reasonable. I also consider obvious that different players give different weights to that "reasonable", and given what you wrote in your last post, I think we might agree that your measure of that "reasonable time" is probably quite longer than mine: that's why I state of an abyss between free and paying players while you say

On 1/16/2020 at 3:10 PM, DvDivXXX said:

Of course, if you're a good player and you put money in the game regularly, you'll advance faster and more efficiently than a good player who's strictly F2P. But that's pretty fair. And yes, there's a natural gap between these two profiles, but neither is representative of most players, me thinks.

I realize that I am guilty to haven't been clear on this detail, but when I state about the abyss between free and paying players, I am not referring to paying players in general (like the slice of people that only owns a monthly card and maybe once in a while buys a special offer) but to regular paying players (people that for one thing or the other put more than the gold monthly card fee in the game every month, probably more than one time every month), which I think are a consistent slice of the total (I think this way because if it were not so, almost certainly the developers would not have had enough incentives to continue with the development of the game for so long). To that slice one could add the game whales, but that would make a little difference, as game whales could probably be counted in the first few pages of the leaderboard. Anyway, in total I don't agree with you when you say that the two profiles are not representative of most players: although no one (me included) has official data in hand, my impression is that the player complex is composed by a relatively small number of whales, two relevant slices (making numbers, I would say 35-40% each), one of abitual paying players and one of free players, and the rest with a behavior halfway between these two. If the share of free players was not so relevant, there would be no explanation for the fact that for the past two years many of the new implementations in the game had features that discouraged free players from continuing the game. Moreover, there is a small fact that in my opinion is too often overlooked, i.e. that often the free players are more than people thinks because the category is divided into three subtypes: the willing, that play the game because they like it but not enough to put money in it, the forced, that alike play the game because they like it but they don't have enough allowances to be paying players, even to buy a monthly card, and the mixed, that similarly to the forced don't have enough allowances to contribute, but despite the fact that they like the game enough to continue playing it, they wouldn't put money in the game even if in the future they will have the chance. Apart the possibility of redefining a little in some minds the entity of the free player slice, I think that this consideration (or reminder, if you prefer) could also influence a little the thoughts of some people regarding some of the latest matters discussed (no precise thought about this, again it is only an impression I was willing to share).

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8 hours ago, Observer_X said:

Anyway, in total I don't agree with you when you say that the two profiles are not representative of most players

Well, agree to disagree. I think you missed an important keyword in my description of these two profiles, though:

On 1/16/2020 at 3:10 PM, DvDivXXX said:

Of course, if you're a good player and you put money in the game regularly, you'll advance faster and more efficiently than a good player who's strictly F2P. But that's pretty fair. And yes, there's a natural gap between these two profiles, but neither is representative of most players, me thinks.

Most players are NOT good at the game, sorry to say. And that's a great thing for the game overall: the sharks need the fish, and the fish find their fun in other things than playing efficiently or competitively. I certainly wouldn't have progressed as well and as fast in most aspects of the game if most players were good, so I'm thankful for it.

And to put it more clearly and elaborate just a bit: between a bad player who puts some money in the game regularly, and a bad player who's strictly F2P, differences are negligible. And these two profiles cover 2/3 of the player base, easily. That's why there's no "abyss" to speak of between those. There is however an abyss in terms of progress between good players and bad players, whether they're F2P or not, but good players are a relatively small portion of the player base (and not just veterans, a lot of veterans are really bad at the game too).

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13 hours ago, DvDivXXX said:

Well, agree to disagree. I think you missed an important keyword in my description of these two profiles, though:

Most players are NOT good at the game, sorry to say. And that's a great thing for the game overall: the sharks need the fish, and the fish find their fun in other things than playing efficiently or competitively. I certainly wouldn't have progressed as well and as fast in most aspects of the game if most players were good, so I'm thankful for it.

And to put it more clearly and elaborate just a bit: between a bad player who puts some money in the game regularly, and a bad player who's strictly F2P, differences are negligible. And these two profiles cover 2/3 of the player base, easily. That's why there's no "abyss" to speak of between those. There is however an abyss in terms of progress between good players and bad players, whether they're F2P or not, but good players are a relatively small portion of the player base (and not just veterans, a lot of veterans are really bad at the game too).

Given what you wrote here, my impression is that we judge the player base with two completely different yardsticks. In truth i caught the "good" you evidenced, what escaped me is that you believe that most players are not good at the game. Given the game mechanics and the disadvantages some players face (due to having a bad timezone compared to the fact that many people have a life to live out of the game), as far as I have seen of the players playing this game, I would define already a good player the one who dedicates enough time to the game to know well enough how it works, makes his best to obtain girls and keep them upgraded enough, and plays regularly the leagues and against the champions (and obviously in the arena). If I understood well (correct me if I am wrong) apart what I just wrote in your book the same player must also be competitive in all those activities to be defined a good player. It may be only my impression, but I think there is a substantial slice of players that is consistent with my definition of "good player", and they are the ones I refer to when I use my stating of "abyss between free and paying players". Using my yardstick, I would use at least the expression "very good players" if not "exceptionally good players" to match your description (posed my hypothesis above is correct). On one thing I agree with you: the number of players that matches your description (see previous brackets) is quite limited, although I would find quite hard to make some numbers about it: after all, we can only share our impressions here based on other players reports on the forum and our own gaming experience, but obviously only the devs with the server logs would have the possibility to extrapolate some real and pertinent data (and in that case I don't think they care to share it with the players, unless they did it on Discord, in which case I couldn't know: sometimes I ask myself why the hell this forum is still in existence when the devs favored channel of communication is Discord)

About the bad players, my opinion is exactly opposite as yours: when a bad player is strictly free, he hardly obtains any results in the game, but a bad player who puts enough money in the game could be able to force the RNG to give him that results, so the difference between the two becomes far from negligible. Moreover, I don't think that a bad player that put a good deal of money in the game without obtaining results, will remain a player for long, and posed that the devs are not completely stupid, this last one is the "scenario to avoid at all costs": otherwise, in a couple months Kinkoid would be trampled not only by bad advertising, but maybe even by scam sues.

Edited by Observer_X
forgot last paragraph
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12 hours ago, Observer_X said:

Given what you wrote here, my impression is that we judge the player base with two completely different yardsticks.

Indeed, we do. What I call a good player has more to do with their overall approach and understanding of the game, their willingness to acquire knowledge about it, and their ability to form a sound strategy based on how the game works, what resources they have at their disposal (including time), and how well they stick to that strategy over time.

What I call a bad player is anyone who fails in one or several of the checkpoints above. And of course, I don't have global stats or anything, but all the indicators I do have tend towards bad players being the overwhelming majority (at least by my standards).

Most players who post on the forum are at least pretty bad at the game, showing a lack of understanding, knowledge and/or strategy in what they talk about (even more so, what they complain about). A decent amount of players in my club are pretty bad at the game, too (for some, I can tell from what they say in chat, for others, from how little they progress over time compared to good players next to them, and from yet others by simply checking their profiles). The vast majority of players in any given League I've ever been in range from pretty bad to outright terrible at the game, otherwise I wouldn't have been able to beat most of them despite having half their level, collection, often a weaker battle line-up and, for the past few weeks, not using any booster. You come across as pretty bad as well in my book, if only for your refusal to use kobans, which are an essential part of the game, and also the fact that you insist on hanging on to lame excuses for your lack of results, like the drop rates not being good enough, or the game favoring "paying players", instead of questioning your own poor strategy. I don't mean this to be rude, just honest.

12 hours ago, Observer_X said:

About the bad players, my opinion is exactly opposite as yours: when a bad player is strictly free, he hardly obtains any results in the game, but a bad player who puts enough money in the game could be able to force the RNG to give him that results, so the difference between the two becomes far from negligible.

I strongly disagree with you on that, because the bad player first and foremost lacks the understanding of what's worth spending kobans upon and what isn't. In many cases, they also lack basic knowledge like the calendar cycle of the game, the different event types, etc. So even when they put money into the game, they tend to burn away their kobans on nearly meaningless stuff. They don't force anything to get good results, they just do the same inefficient things as the bad player with less money, but they do more of it. See the guy who proudly posted about his results in freaking Event Pachinko and how he burnt away 30K kobans to get all girls in the Foreplay event in the least sensible way possible (he did get ridiculously lucky, if the numbers he posted are true, but he's not even aware of it, or of how risky and unnecessary all his spending on this subpar event actually was). Also, see the couple of brand-new players who recently joined my club and proceeded to burn away all their kobans on one Epic Pachinko (x10 at least) as soon as they could, despite being kindly advised not to do that and to save for events instead... and then proceeded to whine about not dropping a girl during the very next event... The list of examples is endless.

You need to know how to use resources to your advantage in order to really benefit from getting more resources. Bad players don't. So, unless they are freaking whales who throw so much money at the game that it no longer matters that they don't know what they're doing (just like the guy I linked to in the previous paragraph, I'm fairly sure), it doesn't matter all that much how many resources they have, because they'll use them poorly anyway, and a good player will do better than them over time even with much fewer resources.

In any case, I'm sure I come across as intolerant, pretentious, perhaps even a bit mean, here. That's not what I want, and that's why I decided to cut way back on advising or criticizing others in this game from now on. It hurts me more than it does them. I'm just a bit frustrated after reading so many things that make me roll my eyes. I'll focus more on my own case, and try to share my opinion on the game itself rather than commenting others' opinions I disagree with.

Thanks for this exchange (and others), and please keep up having fun in this game regardless of what an obsessive try-hard min-maxer such as myself may think of your approach. ^^

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So in the end, it appears I was right on the yardsticks. I find obvious that this means that continuing to compare our opinions on the player base would be quite pointless.

3 hours ago, DvDivXXX said:

You come across as pretty bad as well in my book, if only for your refusal to use kobans, which are an essential part of the game, and also the fact that you insist on hanging on to lame excuses for your lack of results, like the drop rates not being good enough, or the game favoring "paying players", instead of questioning your own poor strategy. I don't mean this to be rude, just honest.

[...]

Thanks for this exchange (and others), and please keep up having fun in this game regardless of what an obsessive try-hard min-maxer such as myself may think of your approach. ^^

Despite I agree with you about you being more harder than usual, remember what I said in the past: I am not the type that loses sleep on bad judgements. Moreover (as it should be obvious by now) regarding the first quoted part, I disagree with you. I appreciate people that states their negative judgements and at the same time are capable to abstain themselves from stating (or even worse, boasting) how is great the dumbness of this of that particular player (or if they do someting alike, at least have the education to honestly say that no offense was intended). As you may remember, in the past I said that I have almost come to ignore those players judgements. Luckily, up to now your case has shown different.

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5 hours ago, DvDivXXX said:

I'll focus more on my own case, and try to share my opinion on the game itself rather than commenting others' opinions I disagree with.

🤣🤣🤣 You forgot to mention that your posts will be shorter ... :D

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