Re: (Nutaku) Milenium War Aigis (English Version)
This isn't too wrong however, because I've spent money this is a almost a month long break to me, I'm bored stupid and don't want to spend any money on the game anymore. I'm not stupid enough to lie to myself and say I will quit but I will wait till it turns around and does more than a couple shitty events back to back before I consider doing more.
IF others who spend money feel the same as me then there is a very real problem, there even would be a possibility of the game shutting down if it went on too long.
You are blowing this way out of proportion here. First of all we did not have a month long break, that is simply false. Even if you had most of the units form the gold rush, the duplicates are still useful AW fodder, that otherwise you had to spend actual money on to get them efficiently. You finding the event useless doesn't mean that there wasn't an event. And there is a break in the Japanese MWA as well, so it's not like we are getting screwed with the lack of events specifically. Granted, they have boosted drop rates for a week and we don't, but we are talking about events here, and increased drop rates is hardly an event.
As for the game shutting down, yeah no. We are talking about the most popular adult free to play title on DMM here (last time I checked at least). The Japanese side gets more free SC than ours (way more), yet they don't seem to be threatened by bankruptcy or anything. I've been playing a LOT of F2P games in the last few years (mainly because my old toaster can't run any core games past 2009 properly), and the biggest issue everywhere is the turnover rate. People start to play, they stick around and then comes the paywall. In most of these games there comes a point where successfully playing on as a free player becomes unsustainable and you either drop some cash, or get diminishing returns for your efforts to the point where eventually you'll just leave. Because of this, players come around, play until they hit the paywall, then leave for one of the other myriad of f2p titles out there. And as the game becomes older, less people come around and paying customers start to realise that there's hardly anyone to form a community with and the game just dies.
MWA is very cleverly built up in this regard. It plays fluently early on and gives you access to some of the best units in the game for simply playing (Karma, Anya, Rika, Solano), doesn't have the stupid fusion phenomenon, where you'd need multiple copies of the same unit for limit break, so the units you get are truly yours, they don't have their full potential locked behind a paywall. The events can be difficult, but are doable by free players, giving incentive to new players to stick around. The events also make power progression much more visible, which gives a sense of achievement.
Another positive aspect is the very slow power creep. I've seen games where the once new and shiny super elite premium units became obsolete 4-5 months down the line. MWA managed to mostly avoid this trap because the game is surprisingly complex for its nature. There are a wide variety of stats and combinations, so instead of going for the easy route and spewing out stronger versions of the same units, they make new classes and niche, situational units. This, instead of making them mandatory for everyone and making the older units that you've upgraded with a lot of effort obsolete, opens up new tactical options for the ones who get them.
This is appealing to players and give them an incentive to stick with the game. And if you've been playing for a year or so, it's much easier to rationalise spending money on it. Having a lower player turnover than your typical f2p title is a profitable tactic on the long run, but only on the long run. Having a solid paywall a few hours in will result in more cash right then and there, but since people are nowhere near as invested, as they would be several months the line, they might still drop. And seeing the nature of the paid content and the amount of free crystals given out on the Japanese side, it see to obvious to me that MWA is going for the long term profits instead of trying to make a quick cash right now. And considering the success of the game, it seems to work.
Don't get me wrong, every one f2p game have "whales", but solely relying on them for profit is unsustainable in the long run. I've seen games doing that and failing spectacularly time and time again. MWA is very cleverly planned to avoid that.
Ever heard of confirmation bias? Nobody is drowning in blacks without serious monetary investments. What you have is people being happy when they get something good. When I burned 30 SC and got nothing but silvers and a single gold duplicate to show for it, I was disappointed and felt that I was stupidly wasting away SC, so I didn't started to tell that "damn, I was stupid for doing that" to everyone. A bit later I pulled Thetis, one of the best platinums from the gold summon. That was my first lucky pull ever and I was VERY happy about it. I immediately came up here and posted about it and I still feel like a very lucky mofo whenever I see her profile picture in my unit list. What you have from this, if you don't actually do the math and just rely on your intuition, is a lot people, who are happy about their lucky pulls while hardly anyone who shares their lack of luck. Which, again, can give you the hunch, that if so many people are this lucky, you will have to be this lucky as well, while in reality, that is not the case. If you actually tally up how "everyone" is so lucky, you'll see that they are actually in the minority. The amount of people pulling blacks and plats left and right are very, very low.
As for wasting your money, well... you knew that you have a low chance to get really good stuff when you went in. If not, that is your fault and your fault only, since the summon rates are clearly spelled out in the game. You have a 3 percent chance to get a black unit. Yes, that means that you get one in every 33 summons
ON AVERAGE. So if you make thousands upon thousands of pulls it is going to roughly give a black unit for every 33-34th pull. However, if anybody would do that I can pretty much guarantee that there would be section, where no black or platinum shows up for over a hundred pulls, while on another section you'd have a whole bunch of plats and blacks back-to-back. 3% is 3% even after a hundred pulls, it doesn't magically increase or become a guarantee at any point. So I treat it as Ii treat gambling in general: if I have some surplus money that I can accept loosing, then I drop a moderate amount on it. If you actually wasted that money in the sense, that you would've needed it elsewhere, then you shouldn't have gambled it away in the first place. And as far as SC use goes, you'd have been better off using it gradually on refills, maxing out event units, levelling your team and so forth and maybe only gamble away a smaller chunk of it.
