To avoid confirmation bias, I documented power difference on every game for two weeks. Over almost 100 games, on average my enemy had +10 levels (9.9xxx). Where I am, 1 player level is 30 phobie levels. Assuming level cap growth is +2 (this lvl 30, next 32, 34, etc.), +10 is 390 phobie levels more.
It’s an average, so for a rare game that is even or acceptable (they are only a few lvls stronger), I’ll play others at a staggering difference. Those games are so ridiculously unbalanced that I’m now only going through the motions. The enemy has meta choices that don’t exist for me, and even their basic phobies are so much higher than mine that from the very beginning, they can advance and just tank my retaliations.
This is time spent doing something not fun, and not fun means bad game design.
It’s even a bad thing to quit them to tank my rating fast, because then they are not counted for the weekly requirement, which already implies a lot of playing time each day without on top abandonning 75% of the games you start because the enemy has 15+ levels more than you.
Between this and the very restrictive coffee economy (months to open one pack), I am just going to quit. I would have loved this game, but the pay-to-win bias is set too strong to make it worth staying over time.
I say this without aggressivity, but if the game is openly sacrificing my fun to milk microtransactions, I have no reason to hang on. I would have loved to be able to pay the price of a game and play honestly. Instead, they have gated all new cards and elected to require absurdly high amounts of money to access a fair, balanced experience.
Its soo early to said that just high lvl monster win games, off course that give advantage. but for me the phobie pool its more important and eventually the lvl difference will fall:
for example you have razor mouth atk.
lvl 1 new player = 300
lvl 7 consistent player right now = 354
lvl 10 donation player = 381
if you see right now its relevant the lvl but in few months
lvl 15 = 426
lvl 17 = 444
lvl 18 = 453
the lvl will be very close because you have to collect a lot of cards just for a 3% damage increase.
Obviously i understand your point that its hard to fight against donation players right now and the game needs other ways to earn money, i think that most of the people dont want that phobies become a regular p2w game. The game have really cool design and ideas then developers should study the community ideas to improve.
@Julio Let me see if I understood your point correctly:
In your opinion, most of the players you’re matching with have high level Phobies, so in this case there’s a huge gap between your opponent’s Phobies’ level versus your Phobies, thus making the matches/games unbalanced. And because they have more Phobies than you to counter your own Phobies you believe that they have more chances of winning against you?
And what do you mean exactly by “very restrictive coffee economy”? Do you mean that it will take months before you’re able to open a pack because it will also take you months to earn enough coffee beans, is that correct?
Hi @Orfe can you please elaborate on what you said here a bit further:
“for me the phobie pool its more important and eventually the lvl difference will fall”
Are you saying that in the beginning the levels of each Phobies might seem to be relevant in terms of winning but later on as they keep playing and progressing, the levels of each cards will be irrelevant as the stats are closer to each other?
Right, i dont know if exist a phobie max lvl (i hope that will be really high), but supposing that you keep upgrading phobies, at some point you will gonna need over 500cards for 1 lvl and 1 lvl only means 3% more stadistics.
Thats why sooner or later the phobie pool will be more relevant.
It’s more than this. If they don’t play like a five-year-old, there is no match at all, they win very easily.
To give you a basic example, of course my Murderwing doesn’t kill their Jar Cannon (normally that’s one of the fundamental counters), but even my Staremaster doesn’t. That’s an absurd negation of game balance. And many other similar examples.
The whole game is placing your units to punish enemy actions, and setting up good trades i.e. if you lose one phobie you eliminate another one. If the level difference is too high, those trades become ineffective and there is no game.
One unfair game here and there wouldn’t even be a subject, that’s just the game. No problem.
But here, it is 80% of the games I play. It’s not fun, and a game that is not fun is not a good game.
Also, the situation is created by the high emphasis on pay-to-win. The very core content of the game, new cards, is soft gated behind spending a month of rent on a modest little game.
Sure, waiting until I reach lvl 15+ on my units will flatten the issue as Orfe mentioned. For Orfe, I believe max level is currently 20.
Do I want to spend eight months playing hours each day with bad matchups so I can reach that point where most of my games become actually fun? No thank you.
Also, this would assume the game developers will wait for non-whale players to catch up. Given that they have chosen to release a transaction pay-to-win gatcha instead of a honest game, it would be irrational to trust that they will not move the goal post as we go to keep exploiting the players.
Strategy is far more important than card levels. Also the most efficient way of spending coffee seems to be the daily double and exp.boost if you play enough and are patient.
This is not the case, coffee comes from not just winning games, but weekly league rewards (the more games you finish the higher the reward) as well as in Jacks. You would open far more than 2 dreadful packs a year I am very sure. Higher leagues are giving more than 100 coffee per week to players, some closer to 200 Coffee per week. Many of those players in those leagues are FTP players that have worked hard to get up to those levels and got there relatively quickly. (within a month of playing).
Hope that helps with the understanding of coffee economy.
I have reached Sum of all fears at level 22 (now 25 but I levelled up afterwards).
So I can say the picture you are painting is very ideal. It’s not false, but it only applies in a very restrictive case.
The situation you are describing is 42 games finished in a top league.
It’s a strict minimum of 6 games fully finished per day, never missing a day. That’s a lot of playing time, several hours a day.
You are talking F2P, so you are going to be matched against players 15, 25, 45 levels higher than you in those leagues. Those games are not winnable if your opponent plays carefully and just methodically rolls you with the huge power difference. Basic counters don’t work and they have access to mechanics you don’t.
Some are winnable if your opponent makes a lot of mistakes, but then they usually last very long. Really a lot of playing time each day.
And remember that abandonning a pointless game (where you really tried something in the beginning) doesn’t advance the weekly total.
Also, “some closer to 200 Coffee per weak”. Sum of all fears 1 gives you 135/week in the best case (fully finish 6 full games per day). There are only two leagues higher than this. So the statement is misleading, because your “some closer to” is either the 1 or 2 highest leagues, not more.
What you are saying probably applies to less than 10 players in reality. Please don’t present it as a argument for the whole player base. It’s misleading.
And for the reality check, playing often and high enough to reach Sum of all fears, I am still hundreds away from being able to open my first dreadful pack with coffee (and there is no reason to open a lower pack since this is the highest yield, it would be silly). I feel it’s very fair to say your economy is really not F2P friendly.
I second what Julio said. I did the math, even after adding the win cap in it’s still 2 dreadful packs a year. You can make claims all day but were not complaining for no reason.
If I’m lucky enough to get into a match I need to hope the enemy’s around my level. There’ve been too many games where the enemy had a plethora of ultra rares and or higher leveled units resulting in an obvious one sided match. If I quit the match (cause it’s pointless to play it) than I lose whatever reward I could’ve gotten; normally 1 coffee, 130 tears and some exp? Big whoopty doo.
I like this game, which is why I’m waiting around for the results of that meeting NekoRei spoke of. Otherwise I’da been gone, cause truly I’ve lost the will to play. I don’t bother quing anymore cause it’s rare to get in a match, and when I do I can’t win it, so what’s the point?
Like I said before if y’all ain’t gonna make this game fair for all y’alls player base than just let me know so I can move on. Simple as that.
I’ve been playing almost daily since the Beta, but don’t have any experience with other mobile games (or gaming generally). It’s insightful to hear about the Phobies gameplay philosophy in contrast to others in such an educated manner.
So just yesterday i made a thread about my thoughts on the game as a new player.
The thing is, as i mentioned in that thread, new phobies are extremely difficult to come by. I see this is a common complaint, which goes to prove that something must be done about it.
Today again i opened another Uneasy pack, and no new phobie. I’ve been playing the game for 5 days, opened 5 Uneasy packs, only got a new phobie in the first one.
I’ll say it again: it is frustrating, it is no fun. A game which is no fun is no game at all. I need to counterpick, i need to have options when playing. I dropped some cash when i started playing 5 days ago, and im beginning to regret it.
You need to improve a lot the new phobie rates. I dont play to feel dissapointed, i play to have fun, dont gate phobies behind paywalls, games that do that kind of predatory business practice die quite fast.
I play from 2 accounts namely - ‘Nihiem’ -----‘Haildred’ , for my first account (F2p) i grinded for week and opened many terriifying pack and scary packs and a Horrific pack ,and got upgrades and a phobie named Jill , currently i am at sum of all fear reached at lvl 23 ( currently 26) with my mvp phobie lvl 3 heavo 2.0, facing opponent above lvl 40 , I started playing few weeks ago.
so what I am trying to say is that after opening multiple high grind req packs i only have 30 phobies , and you opened uneasy pack with the lowest of low chances for a new phobie .
Add an upgrade card shop that allows us to buy upgrade card for our collection phobies with exp, don’t even use Bean, its hard to get (like in brawl stars).
This feature can make all Players competitive. So soft spender and free player can still compete with their favorite/counter phobies level.
Make beans farming more fast.
Your game Will be developing. There Will be more new phobies and new featuresx . So why don’t you make beans farming more fast and easy?
its a major handicap to paywall units. considering its a strategy game that requires having access to picks and counter picks to even bother playing.
im glad i quit. and people are slowly realizing that not having access to units is a major issue.
and only the hardcore whales or super lucky rng people are going to stick around.
but enough people will install, blow $5+ the first week. to keep this company in a stead stream of $$… so they have no incentive to actually fix or change anything.
i guess its a mobile game,. no one should have expected anything else.
I think a solution to this would be to open a new league for the arena,that or making the difference between leagues much bigger (and so their rewards,hopefully) there’s only a 200 point difference between tiers,so in total,600 points per league,so its not hard at all to reach high leagues for new players,but once there,the game just becomes incredibly unfun because of all the unfair matches
I’ve only been playing the game for three weeks now,and I’m already at primals II,and i can already see how the unfair matches outnumber the fair ones