Pay To Win

First off let me say that I love this game and it is a great time killer and everything. I love the different heroes that we have and how you have to plan on who you are going to bring on your team to counter the different Orange, Blue or Green heroes. I like the people I have met so far in the game. I just think the rewards and daily missions need to be tweaked some more, like add more rewards to them, add more daily missions with gold for the reward? For example it takes a lot of gold to do things in this game and I can’t seem to ever keep the gold long enough because you spend it as fast as you earn it depending on what you want to do. I know this is a free to play game, and you make money by the ads and by people spending real money in the game to buy gold or hero’s. I don’t know about anybody else, but some people have probably spent hundreds of dollars to get an advantage and that is fine if you want to buy your gold or heroes. I have even spent a little bit of money, but we shouldn’t have to. I know that if we don’t we are going to make a slower progress, but we shouldn’t have to do the Tap joy offers either because lets face it those things are ridiculous and time consuming. Maybe add a Daily free gold limit like 50 gold or 100 gold and we would have to choose to save it all month for the 10 hero crate buy or the special crates you guys add? These are just what could make it a little better experience in earning new heroes and gold, etc. Thanks

As a free to player myself, I am contempt with the amount of gold being rewarded. Sure, it would be nice to get more, but the amount I get is perfectly fine as long as I finance it correctly.

Also, on another note, I appreciate “pay to win” players, as it allows the game to continue and survive, and everyone gets amazing experience free because of these pay to win players.

Just my thoughts on the matter.

~Nham

I’m a VIP 0: currently 83th in PvP event, 58 heroes unlocked, 415k power and I’m in a top alliance.

Not sure how this game qualifies as pay to win :slight_smile:

The only real advantage VIP players have is a 4th PvP life. The rest of their advantages are just ways to speed up progress. But I will eventually be as strong as a VIP 15.

Depending on the VIP level, some people have literally spent thousands of dollars (apparently VIP 15 costs $4800).

For the most part I think the game is pretty balanced. I think the only issue is when a really OP hero of the month comes along and then people who have played a long time, or spend a ton of money on the game can immediately get them to 9-10*. This makes it really difficult for F2P players to even compete.

Any other time though, the game seems fairly balanced. Sure higher VIP get more hero frags and PVP lives, but that’s a fairly small reward all things considered, and still something you can overcome. Just look at Wesson this month. He’s good, but no where near OP. Along with the Ifrit and Flatline nerfs last month, the game seems to be in a better place as of right now.

It’s more like pay to unlock heroes faster than you possibly can keep them all maintained.
I payed a lot and I’m nowhere close of winning anything.

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Noticed your thread here. Nice to hear you enjoy the game, but feel the game has a Pay2Slay mechanic. I’ll list you pros and cons based on this argument to get a more transparent view.

First off, let me say I personally feel the game does not have an aforementioned system in place. You may feel this way, but this may rely on your team bracket level.

Why? Let us have a look at a few things.

First up, gold.

The devs allow people to generate gold mainly in 3 ways without ever as much throwing a dime at the game:

  • daily 30 for completing a series of quests, and another 5(sometimes they double rewards)on watching ads.
  • PvP crates can reward as much as 60 on 5 tokens. Luck based but heck that’s a lot of chances if you win a lot. (Higher tier team level needed)
  • PvP tournaments. Even placing just in division one nets you usually lots of frags or 300 gold ish (Higher tier). They have quite a few of these per month.

The less common two (but still considerable) ones are:

  • hidden bonus Patrols can be gold bars as well, alliance wide!
  • Devs are feeling generous for reason x (Dev-astation, severe bug fix, etc)

A free to play gamer usually focuses on ONLY spending this dosh on hero crates, nothing more.
After a good deal of heroes have been unlocked, they usually move to stamina purchase crates to get the best out of all this gold while upgrading heroes.

But I am not done yet. Let us look at game mechanics:

  • there is not a single representable way in game to boost heroes to a point that they are more powerful than a non spending hero hunter. There just isn’t.
  • as mentioned before the only bonus spenders get is that they unlock premium content first, more gauntlet resets for cash, and at VIP 10 get a 4th life in PvP. However, none of these will affect a non-spender out there directly or too harshly. Granted it means they get more out of revives and can field a hero more often, but they die just as easy.*
  • matchmaking is based not on ranking (as many card collection games do), but on team power and strategy. It is a work in progress but a much fairer system than getting a low ranked lvl 70 team vs a lvl 35 of equal player rank. In other words, you are unlikely to face spenders, let alone realize they are spenders.

But wait, there is more:

  • Hunters are given a chance to unlock most new heroes given they are high enough lvl. A lvl 70 COOP raid usually nets 5 per win. If you missed out on them, because a) you weren’t powerful enough yet or b) did or could not play at the time, bear in mind they will be rolled into the hero chest as well, and then you can use element frags to give them some stars.

Negative points, I just have a few but then I really have to try. They are not exactly negative in nature to begin with.

  • Vip chat is much more powerful and helpful a chat than global
  • Certain quick win and the 10x crates are hidden behind VIP, which means a VIP 1 has a few bonuses and spends 2700 gold vs 3000 gold and gets a guaranteed 5 star. **

In short, keep these things in mind when judging a game pay to win, when these devs quite clearly (NOT ENTIRELY, but much more than most other mobile games I know of) show interest in supporting f2p as a player base model, but want to entice people in making sure they meet their own quotas. Dev has gotta eat, too.

*edit: agreed on what @GTSaiko mentioned about having 4th life. A really good buff and not too unfair for a VIP 10 bonus. That kind of patronage deserves a few more goodies were it up to me. (I am no way near 10 yet btw)
** edit: thanks for the correction @GTSaiko. Also raised a valid point in turn to at least go VIP 1. Save that visit to MCDonalds one time and get more heroes!

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@Duke_Zergem, you explained it amazing, we have quite a few players in our alliance that are strong and below vip 5, also above that, but once you have enough hero’s and start to win more in PvP you’ll change to energy and raid resets

Autoplay in all game modes has been unlocked for everyone, VIP 0 included

The quick winx10 option is locked for non-VIP players, but that’s a minor quality of life upgrade, so it’s not a big loss for non paying players. No real advantage here

And yeh, the x10 bundle is a VIP +1 thing, so a VIP 0 can’t get a guaranteed 5* hero unless there is some event crate (like Oracle’s crate when she was released)

So the only advantages VIP players have in gameplay terms are the possibility to get a guaranteed 5* and an extra PvP life (while you say this won’t affect free users, if I have 25% less lives than others player, I’m likely to get 25% less score)

So maybe players than rank higher than me in a PvP event performed worse but are higher thanks to that extra life.

And the guaranteed 5* is not that big of an advantage once you unlock heronium and alliance stores (I unlocked Odachi from heronium store this month, for example)

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I think people are down playing the VIP bonuses and how much impact higher power heroes have, how more of them effects game play, and how getting them quicker helps out.

It’s like money. Everyone can eventually become a millionaire if they save enough, long enough, at a decent job. Does that mean they are on equal footing with those that are already millionaires because they will get there eventually? Certainly not. Having millions of dollars at your disposal RIGHT NOW means you can invest it and make more money, you don’t have to charge stuff and pay more in interest, etc.

The same is true in Hero Hunters. Sure I may get a ton of 10* heroes eventually, and everyone will get a hero 10* and platinum rank. However, getting more heroes there faster has some big advantages. You have an easier time ranking in PVP events, which means better rewards. You can get more heronium to sink into new heroes or rank up with equipment. You can participate in events for said heroes and get bonus rewards.

Right now there is only 1 person I know of with all heroes at 10*. People who have been playing for a year and a half with no VIP are only at roughly 15 heroes that are 10*. Getting heroes leveled up takes a long time and doing it faster has big advantages, even if we all end up 10* in the end.

Having an extra heart in PVP is a big advantage. If someone with VIP 0 has a 70% win ratio they will win 7 out of 10 matches. That is 700 PVP gems. The same person at VIP 15 could have the same win/loss ratio, but because they get an extra heart they can win 8 out of 11 matches. That’s an extra 100 gems per day. Over a month that’s 3000 extra gems, are 30 extra frags.

Combined with the extra 15-20 frags from Gauntlet resets and the seemingly “small” rewards start adding up. Having a couple extra 10* heroes for PVP or bounties or what have you just means even more resources and rewards. It has a domino effect where the small bonuses in the begging really start adding up over time. Of course, none of this is to say you can’t still be extremely competitive at VIP 0. It just takes extra work.

So, play some less pvp, work some over hours, pay a bit once every month and you’re vip 9 or 10?

That’s how I pay bills and study at the same time anyway

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