[ 20-Jul-22 ] Golden Anniversary - Discussion

[Antimon]

8 ore fa, Pelinor ha scritto:

So what? Not to put too fine a point on this (and not saying this as a jibe to you). As a player who does spend well over $200 a month on this game I will not spend a damn dime on this event. Matter of fact, I am finding the bundles being offered much less attractive this week than in weeks past. Not saying I won't buy some of them, but this event has me very reluctant to make any purchases on the game right now. In short, the Golden Anniversary event is having the direct opposite effect the powers that be at Kinkoid thought it would for me.

Just to clarify, my post wasn't meant to say that it was ok. It was more of a sarcastic consideration based solely on what we have for sure right now. 

New bundles are more than likely to be pulled out, but we do not know how many of them we'll see during this event period, when they'll pop out in the special offer section, what exactly they'll offer and at what price.

My point was that, before they released that third bundle, by buying upfront every single thing KK pulled out (all the cards and both the few-days-lasting bundles) one still couldn't have possibly reached the amount of crystals needed to claim the 4th girl without investing (at the very least) 7000 kobans more in refills (that,in my opinion, sounds like a very bad joke)

[Liliat]

It's hard to point a specific problem with this event. I feel that except for the general idea of the event (and the girls), everything is wrong:

- The rewards balance is completely messed up. 1 Ticket? 1000 XP? Most of the slots might as well be empty

- The event doesn't appeal to any category of players:

  - There's nothing in for beginners ("Win all your pvp fights and/or spend thousand of kobans if you want to get one girl". At level 150-200? No way.)

  - There's not much for active F2P players (1 girl). The price of the second girl is higher than any other L5 girl (You can get the first one for free, so the 6k Kobans go exclusively toward the second girl). Compare this to other events, where this kind of price lets you finish the full path and get the full reward.

  - The price of the 3rd girl is super excessive. 50€ for 1 girl? That's absolutely not in-line with other bundle offers. We see much better deals all year long. Even (non-whale) P2P players won't accept this deal.

   - The price of the 4th girl is absolutely crazy. And even if you're willing to spend this kind of money, the girls aren't even worth it (gameplay-wise). Just barely above average. I'm sure some whales will buy it; but will they be happy about it?

   - The price of the final rewards (7 000 Shards = 75 000 Kobans or 140€) is so stupid that you're much better off buying 15k Kobans for 100€ and directly buy these items from the game (And 15k Kobans for 100€ is already a terrible deal, compared to the usual "2000% value bundles"). Noone in their right mind would even consider finishing the path.

- The risk of missing a reward is super high. You have to be super active in the game and not miss any day to get your target reward. Since the rewards between girls are useless, if you only reach 99% of your goal, the player frustration level will go through the roof.

So this isn't even a "P2W-friendly" event, because P2W players usually expect to trade money for time. Here, you need 3 resources to finish this event: Time, Money, and Kobans (Which I don't exactly consider money, because you can get it with either time or money).

So, even for a whale, I find it really hard to defend the format of this event. Still, some good things:

- The format is fine (Similar to PoV: do your usual game things and get rewards for it)

- The fact that you can buy the pass at any time and not miss out is nice (although it would have been even better if we knew about this beforehand. At least, if they repeat the event, we'll know what to expect)

- The girls are fine (Everyone has their favorite)

- There are a couple of interesting rewards (Although everything else is crap: spend 1000 Combativity, get 1 Combativity for free!)

What I would change:

- Give more information about the pass. At least mention that we can buy multiple passes in parallel - the more expensive passes don't include the cheaper ones, and that passes can be bought later without missing out on rewards

- Significantly increase the intermediate rewards. The current ones are a joke. Any gift code or daily free bundle is worth more than the entire trash-path. Considering the Kobans cost, the intermediate rewards should be comparable to Seasons, PoA, PoV or PoG. Maybe do not add the mythic rewards only at the end, but between each girl, too. Mythic Items aren't that great to begin with; they're just a nice small buff.

- Rebalance the cost. Seriously. That's crazy. It's bad for low-level. It's bad for F2P. It's bad for active kobans-spenders. It's bad for regular medium-spenders. Only whales with unlimited budget might not see the issue here (because they probably don't care about money), but objectively, it's bad even for them (in terms of value).

- Change the Season and Ligue requirements, or add more ways to earn shards. PvP is over-represented, and requiring 80/90% wins means only lvl 450+ D3 Players may get the most out of leagues and seasons.

[Gotaku]

Ive always suspected Rosso bases his freemium ideas on Heartstone and such, eventhough Blizzard is infamous for absolutely screwing up their free-to-play models by overpricing the heck out of them.

[Boulie2]

il y a 6 minutes, Gotaku a dit :

Ive always suspected Rosso bases his freemium ideas on Heartstone and such, eventhough Blizzard is infamous for absolutely screwing up their free-to-play models by overpricing the heck out of them.

Let's get real, this is far worse than Hearthstone.  

[HentaiGuru]

2 hours ago, Liliat said:

- Change the Season and Ligue requirements, or add more ways to earn shards. PvP is over-represented, and requiring 80/90% wins means only lvl 450+ D3 Players may get the most out of leagues and seasons.

Adding like 2 crystals for every 5 Daily Goals point - good improvement itself - not talking about one-to-one exchange...

Daily goals are FFA - and have no requirements, easy to get - but can not be exploited, they are great - and may become even greater  

Think about  it!

[Antimon]

Road to 25000 crystals

Yesterday, we arrived at potentially 18763 maximum amount of crystals at the cost of 5940 kobans + 130,96€

Today's new bundle offers 1000 crystal (in the form of 900 crystals + 100 CPs) at the cost of 19.99€.

So, new total by buying every single thing available up to now: 19763 crystals for 5940 kobans + 150,95€

Still missing: 5237 crystals (~56,6k kobans in refills with no other bundles)

[EpicBacon]

5 hours ago, Antimon said:

 

I think I can confirm that the fifth one is actually a buttplug. In Silver Lupa's gh counter they show all 5 of them, which are:

- the crystal dildo

- the anal beads

- the nipple clamps

- that pasta cutter thingy I genuinly do not know what it's used for

- a buttplug

You said Silver Lupa Gh counter, with gh; do you mean gay harem? and there is a Lupa version over there?
Or does Gh mean something else that I do not know the meaning of?

In either or; can you give me a name so i can do some "research"
please don't post pictures or anything that are in violation of forum rules

Edited July 22, 2022 by EpicBacon

[Yamiray]

23 minutes ago, EpicBacon said:

You said Silver Lupa Gh counter, with gh; do you mean gay harem? and there is a Lupa version over there?
Or does Gh mean something else that I do not know the meaning of?

In either or; can you give me a name so i can do some "research"
please don't post pictures or anything that are in violation of forum rules

GH does have an overlap, the person that matches Silver lupa is Silver Lobo. 

[DvDivXXX]

2 hours ago, Gotaku said:

Ive always suspected Rosso bases his freemium ideas on Heartstone and such, eventhough Blizzard is infamous for absolutely screwing up their free-to-play models by overpricing the heck out of them.

Then you're not very familiar with HearthStone and/or you've somehow missed all of my posts in which I took that game as an example of a Freemium that does NOT get predatory with its monetization, despite being owned by multi-billion companies that are notorious for their greed and stinginess. And it's true that HearthStone is one of the least generous and F2P friendly online CCG out there, if not the least. It's also one of or arguably still the most popular and it prints money constantly. But NOT by pay-walling main content or making the player experience miserable unless you give them tons of real money. I've been playing it on and off for 7 years and I've only bought a few really good real money deals for maybe €150 total over all that time. I'm nowhere near having a complete collection, but I have the vast majority of good cards and I can still keep up with their ever-accelerating rate of new expansion releases just by playing well and regularly. When I really want a specific legendary and I don't get it from packs (their version of lootboxes slash gacha slash pachinko etc.) I can and do craft it with my hard-earned in-game currencies (gold and dust in their case). Of course there are casual whales who routinely spend well over €200 a month, and they have more cards than me overall (especially more Golden cards, interestingly) and a lot more shiny but entirely optional things than I ever will. I still beat most of them regularly in any game mode I play, and usually I only cross paths with them after reset before I climb up the Ladder out of their reach, because the game mechanics are skill-based, not collection-based.

Golden cards in HeathStone are actually as good an example as any of Freemium monetization done right. Whenever you open a card pack, there's a small chance for each card you find to be a golden  version instead of a regular one. If you have Elon Musk money and your cards being animated, shiny, glow-in-the-dark, and more and more gimmicks like that appeal to you, then great. You can keep the golden cards you happen to get for free, and you can craft the rest of your collection in golden for only 4 times the regular cost. If you're F2P, on a tight budget, or otherwise don't care as much for your cards being golden as you care about collecting more cards, then also great! You can destroy every golden card you get for free, and that gives you exactly enough in-game resource to craft any regular card of the same rarity you want instead. Win win. Every HS player is glad whenever they get a golden card, from the biggest whales to the purest "F2P, BTW".

Trust me, I WISH Rosso and his general(s) took inspiration from HearthStone and most other good Freemium games of any genre out there, but it's very clear they are not, unfortunately. What they seem to be looking as their "competitors", incorrectly calling "top games" and trying to emulate are clearly more and more dodgy Freemium games with clearly predatory practices (most likely kid-focused RPGs, pushy Gacha games, mobile-only Asian collection games, and 18+ bad and overpriced visual novels, among other). What they fail to understand, among many other things, is that this kind of games have an expiration date, because they come with a sour taste and a bad reputation and they can only squeeze so much money out of their player base until they don't have any left. Contrary to healthy Freemium games that can last indefinitely and keep attracting new players, and getting recommended.

[Boulie2]

il y a 6 minutes, DvDivXXX a dit :

What they fail to understand, among many other things, is that this kind of games have an expiration date, because they come with a sour taste and a bad reputation and they can only squeeze so much money out of their player base until they don't have any left. Contrary to healthy Freemium games that can last indefinitely and keep attracting new players, and getting recommended.

Maybe that's the problem.

Maybe the game already outlived the expiration date it's creator wanted it to have

[EpicBacon]

5 minutes ago, Yamiray said:

GH does have an overlap, the person that matches Silver lupa is Silver Lobo. 

I've checked it out, and you are correct, all the toys are there (included the pasta cutter thingy)
And there is said extra buttplug.
Now i don't know how the HH/GH/clicker etc versions work, if they are all part of a bigger universe or its paralelle unvierse, different timeline or whatnot.

What we can say for certain, one instance has 5 while the other depict 4.
I don't know if you are familiar with GH, but I assume the chaos toys were first introduced in HH, with Golden bunny.
Actually, if you look at the main characters face in the first affection scene with Goldenbunny;
he might allready be wearing it himself. His eyes does not look normal.

[Antimon]

36 minuti fa, EpicBacon ha scritto:

You said Silver Lupa Gh counter, with gh; do you mean gay harem? and there is a Lupa version over there?
Or does Gh mean something else that I do not know the meaning of?

In either or; can you give me a name so i can do some "research"
please don't post pictures or anything that are in violation of forum rules

Yep, GH as in gay harem, and as @Yamiray said, the counter of Silver Lupa is Silver Lobo. In detail,you'd want to check the 5th star pose, in which they show all the 5 chaos toys

[EpicBacon]

Just now, Antimon said:

Yep, GH as in gay harem, and as @Yamiray said, the counter of Silver Lupa is Silver Lobo. In detail,you'd want to check the 5th star pose, in which they show all the 5 chaos toys

yes, I indeed have, my message was posted just before yours popped in

[Yamiray]

7 minutes ago, EpicBacon said:

Now i don't know how the HH/GH/clicker etc versions work, if they are all part of a bigger universe or its paralelle unvierse, different timeline or whatnot.

Seem paralelle to me, every thing that happens in HH happens in GH more or less just with no girls.

[Boulie2]

I just realised something

Rabbi is HC, and Hari is KH instead of their usual line up  

[Antimon]

3 ore fa, EpicBacon ha scritto:

I've checked it out, and you are correct, all the toys are there (included the pasta cutter thingy)
And there is said extra buttplug.
Now i don't know how the HH/GH/clicker etc versions work, if they are all part of a bigger universe or its paralelle unvierse, different timeline or whatnot.

What we can say for certain, one instance has 5 while the other depict 4.
I don't know if you are familiar with GH, but I assume the chaos toys were first introduced in HH, with Golden bunny.
Actually, if you look at the main characters face in the first affection scene with Goldenbunny;
he might allready be wearing it himself. His eyes does not look normal.

In my understanding, GH and HH are parallel universes (in some affection scenes they joke about that), while clicker world is another parallel universe, but more strictly entangled with the hh universe. 

Chaos toys were relesed with Golden bunny, yes, but their releases in HH/GH were simultaneus (nowadays all the counterparts releases are simultaneus, in the past, gh had few artists working on guys, hence some counterparts came some time after, in the last year they released all the first year of HH's events counterparts, to make an example). 

That said,  I'm afraid that continuing with this conversation might be a little off topic, here ^^"

(just not to add another "OffTopic" post, I'll add it here, @EpicBacon: I double checked, and other than Silver Lupa's counterpart last pose, the buttplug compare in two of Golden Bunny's gh counterpart positions, that are the second one and the last one, and in both Golden Bunny's and Silver Lupa's GH counterparts' first two affection scenes all the 5 toys of chaos are shown. Why they chose to "hide" the 5th in the HH version is actually a mystery to me)

Edited July 22, 2022 by Antimon

[EpicBacon]

5 minutes ago, Antimon said:

In my understanding, GH and HH are parallel universes (in some affection scenes they joke about that), while clicker world is another parallel universe, but more strictly entangled with the hh universe. 

Chaos toys were relesed with Golden bunny, yes, but their releases in HH/GH were simultaneus (nowadays all the counterparts releases are simultaneus, in the past, gh had few artists working on guys, hence some counterparts came some time after, in the last years they released all the first year of HH's events counterparts, to make an example). 

That said,  I'm afraid that continuing with this conversation might be a little off topic, here ^^"

Indeed, while this has been interesting; I've learned things here that i woudn't othervice
It might be a good idea to close the topic on the chaos toys, as this is not really the place and time for it.
If anyone were inconvenienced by this while thing; It was not my intension.
Just a... distraction from said other thing happening around here. 

[jelom]

7 minutes ago, Antimon said:

might be a little off topic

with so many posts, it deserves to be branched to his own thread

[Liliat]

il y a 2 minutes, EpicBacon a dit :

Indeed, while this has been interesting; I've learned things here that i woudn't othervice
It might be a good idea to close the topic on the chaos toys, as this is not really the place and time for it.
If anyone were inconvenienced by this while thing; It was not my intension.
Just a... distraction from said other thing happening around here. 

Technically, this is not off-topic, since you're discussing the girls of this event, or the theme (whereas everyone else discusses the event format, which would probably be more appropriate in its own topic 😛 )

[EpicBacon]

4 minutes ago, Liliat said:

Technically, this is not off-topic, since you're discussing the girls of this event, or the theme (whereas everyone else discusses the event format, which would probably be more appropriate in its own topic 😛 )

While you might be right here, I think the majority of people coming to this thread is more interesting in how bad said event is; and what is going to be done to change it, instead of if the chaos toys presented here is compatible with the allready established chaos sex toy lore.

You can make an argument both ways; but I am completely fine with letting this one go. 
While this is kind of interesting; the bigger issue is the event, and all the ramification of said event if this becomes the new norm, and if it will impact events coming in the future. (It will have an impact, we just don't know wich way it will go)
So yeah, lets drop this "side quest" and return to the main topic

[DvDivXXX]

13 hours ago, Pelinor said:

As a player who does spend well over $200 a month on this game I will not spend a damn dime on this event. Matter of fact, I am finding the bundles being offered much less attractive this week than in weeks past. Not saying I won't buy some of them, but this event has me very reluctant to make any purchases on the game right now. In short, the Golden Anniversary event is having the direct opposite effect the powers that be at Kinkoid thought it would for me.

Exactly. And you're at least the second well-established whale I know to have this reaction. Even though you guys routinely spend just about what they decided this specific couple of L5 girls would cost, this is not a good deal even in your situation. And even though you could afford it, you're not tempted to, on the contrary. Funny, huh? Who would have thought that twisting someone's arm wouldn't make them want to be even nicer to you?

7 minutes ago, Boulie2 said:

Maybe that's the problem.

Maybe the game already outlived the expiration date it's creator wanted it to have

I hope not. And everything else seems to strongly indicate that Kinkoid in general and even Rosso in particular want to stick around and for their game(s) to thrive. It's just that they're going the wrong way about it in some areas and at certain times in particular, like this one. And I think this could be greatly improved by having a larger, more cohesive vision and role distribution in the company. Big business decisions should be taken by big business specialists, based on facts and proper data analysis. Big design decisions should be up to expert designers. This Golden Anniversary (and beyond that, this new Seasonal Event format), highlights inconsistencies and contradictions in how both areas are handled. It's bad business and bad design (speaking of the format, reward track distribution, pricing etc. not the theme and art, which are both awesome).

Just like the removal of Dating Tokens last year: it was absolutely evident by all accounts that this was a personal and emotional decision, based on Rosso's feelings and beliefs instead of a rational and calculated decision based on facts about the game, its player base, its market, or its actual competitors for that matter. And it's pretty rare to hit the nail on the head when you can't see the nail and you're swinging your hammer in the dark.

And it's true that, for monetization and business strategies in particular, Kinkoid doesn't seem to learn from their mistakes. That's because they (he, mostly, as I understand it) keep making it up as they go along without looking back, left or right. Only forward. To infinity and beyond. That's the only sane explanation as to why a game currently celebrating its 6th anniversary now has up to 5 simultaneous layers of "events" or time-limited features (Rosso doesn't consider "things like KC" as "events", as he said in Q&As) and keeps adding more and more and MORE... and yet there are still dozens of basic design, user interface and daily routine elements that are only made practical and viable in the long run by a community script made by players for players, while the game on its own is barely playable at this point. The focus isn't on improvements, balancing or evolution. It's on adding new things constantly. That's not good for business, as it keeps adding costs on their side and ours, without making the game more fun or worth paying for.

Anyways. It is what it is. If there was a way to help Rosso improving his business without offending him, we would already have found it by now. Only Rosso can help Rosso. And, in turn, save the game.

[Bobick]

16 minutes ago, Liliat said:

Technically, this is not off-topic, since you're discussing...

The discussion, which discussion is off-topic, might be off-topic, though, on a meta-level.

P.S.: Sorry for this off-topic interjection.

Edited July 22, 2022 by Bobick

[Boulie2]

il y a 3 minutes, DvDivXXX a dit :

I hope not. And everything else seems to strongly indicate that Kinkoid in general and even Rosso in particular want to stick around and for their game(s) to thrive. It's just that they're going the wrong way about it in some areas and at certain times in particular, like this one. 

That's exactly my point. It started going mad when the game went into all direction, added more thing to try to stay longer, etc.

From where i stand, it all started... When they tried doing something new. Something not planned.

...

Because the game wasn't supposed to stay that long

 

Well, anyway, i feel like the last Game Designer left with the Dating Token  

(Not a fact tho, at least i hope, but Daily goal aside i don't see any influence from a GameDesign stand point that could make me change my opinion)

[F-L-K]

3 hours ago, DvDivXXX said:

and viable in the long run by a community script made by players for players

I think this is the main thing keeping a lot of players around, me included. Feels like the scripters are doing more to the game than the devs in KK 

[Mr.S]

So their plan is to wait us out and hoping we buy all these new bundles of crystals.

Yeah let's see how that goes.....