I’m having a blast with this game, from the introductory puzzles / tutorials to tactical depths to the creature and map design with all the fun little details, everything is well thought out and put together. But man does the p2w aspect get overbearing at times.
Someone who spends a thousand dollars essentially gets creatures that always take an extra hit and need one hit less to take sth down, on top of a much wider selection of counters to their opponent’s moves, which are incredible advantages. Matches can ofc still be lost if they blunder 7 times and you don’t more than once, but for me it doesn’t even feel good to manage such a win. Just wasted a lot of time and effort to methodically grind down a person whose self-control issues are being exploited (spending 1000$ on a video game, come on).
The fun matches are, well, all the other ones essentially, where both sides can set up (somewhat) equally effective attacks and counter-attacks. And players having fun = more revenue in the long run, no?
My 2 suggestions to help alleviate the problem (if the devs even see it as such, which I merely hope they do) would be:
Reduce the stat gain per level up from 3% to 2%. I think competitive people would still enjoy leveling their phobies even then and it would go a long way towards making matches feel less rigged.
Increase the damage from panic points to the heart. At currently 235 damage per turn and point you hold more than your opponent (in the highest league), I found it very rarely makes a difference in the end who took and held these points more effectively. You just take over the ones in reach at the start so you don’t get rushed and from there your main concern is always how best to engage the opposing phobies and what engagements/ board positions to avoid. Which means creature advantages such as being overleveled matter more than they would if pure tempo plays were a viable option. Maybe that’s by design and you only want these points as a mild impetus to break stalemates, but even then said breaking of stalemates could be sped up a little imo.
Easy there, some of us just make enough of a salary that spending that amount is not really an issue. I’m over 1.1K now and at level 70, 96 Phobies. (my issue actually now is that the drop rate for new Phobies is too low)
I made it to 5th before I ever spent any money (or not a whole lot), I have a public screenshot on Steam of that. I was at level 41 at the time. Money didnt really help me win against good players either and I guess my level advantage is not that great (most of my units are aroud level 8 to 10, with the exception of a few that are 11 to 15. Money did make it easier in that I don’t have to spend as much thinking about what I will do and can take more risks.
That said, Now I do agree that against a “Whale” that has everything level out to max, (or almost), it does make it really hard/annoying. Mostly when playing against someone that has all the ultra-rares at near max level. E.g: Vladjimir. Now I’ve beat him 3 times lately and lost once against him. But yeah, matches againts him really take time and I really can’t allow myself to make mistakes.
As someone who has spent a fair amount of money. I dont want what I purchased to get reduced/worsen. Not fair to me, or anyone who already spent money.
IMO I think a real solution however, is that they should remove the caps for free players. That way free players can actually grind their way to the same level. It’s not perfect though, someone who has the time to play all day long will get the levels from grinding it up faster than most.
Edit : Actually with the game population increase over time, you will be less likely to play against the same people that often, and playing against a whale will become a lot less common. That said, there will be more and more skill players into the mix, and what is the top 100 currently, will actually be the top 1000.
I’m new to Phobies–started last week–but I have a lot of background in turn-based strategy games and turn-based PVP. I’m currently level 14 with a score of 2535 (rank 2073), which means that 80% of my matchups are against people with more meta Phobies, at obscene levels (7~10) while I’m running on little more than the starter set at level 3~5.
When I get a map with a lot of obstacles, I pray that the opponent won’t realize that my only projectile options are Jar Cannon and Heavo. I would kill for the 6-key egg-throwing bird guy and a phobie-pulling spider.
I appreciate that, per Seb’s post, this might not be purely a “pay” to win problem, because over time I expect that I’d earn the resources to catch up most of the way. But it is a really frustrating experience, because it feels like I’ve been punished for winning too consistently and overcoming smaller disadvantages by having a brick wall of disadvantages thrown at me. I wish that matchmaking would try to avoid creating matches between people with too great a resource gap.
ETA: It’s been another week, and I’m rated 2877/rank 637 at level 19, have only bought the starter pack, still winning slightly more often than I’m losing.
I have to give the devs credit for designing a game where this is possible. I had to build my collection for years in Hearthstone before I could be competitive.
It is still really frustrating to get matched against Beauty+Alastor on the mazelike map with clusters of 3 pillars–I think that map has the worst odds against players with fewer flying, projectile, and trap options. But I’ve come to appreciate that there’s a wealth of options for counterplaying most things on most maps.
Well… until I run into players who are both really smart and really invested like Seb, anyway.
I couldn’t agree more with the original post. Pay to win is absolutely game breaking in this game. I was fine, even winning about 70 percent of my games, until getting over 3k. Now I win maybe 50% close to 60? This is day in day out grinding games consistently getting 2 jack boxes done a day and I still get beaten by people who make mistakes after mistake just because they can bully me with phobies 8 levels higher than me. They don’t need to think, just be aggressive. Your 1 keys do as much work as my 3 keys. IMO? Put people that spend a certain amount of money in their own bracket. The top guy on the leaderboard, is actually terrible, just carried by deep wallets. He loses to people that are better, but usually just overwhelms people with pay to win BEEEEs Let’s put all these people in their own bracket, or would that lose you money, because letting these people that have nothing better to spend their money on feel good about themselves, and if they didn’t have level 20+ phobies to pick on people’s level 12s, they wouldn’t play because they’d realize they were terrible. Either way I’m basically forced to stop playing anything but arenas for a while and maybe just do those to get my jacks done, because it’s not worth it to me to grind out wins against no lifing pay to win peeps. When I hit that pay wall in arenas, I guess I’ll just stop playing, cancel daily doubles subscription, and stop spending 20 dollars here and there like I otherwise would, which is likely what will happen to most players when they realize how they can just lose to braindead people with cash dollars.