Shop Talk 0.36 Edition - Thoughts on Daily Deals, Limited Offers, and Currencies

[Sibelios]

On another long running thread I have constantly expressed my concerns that the inability to target Relics was going to be a problem. With the release of 0.36 I acknowledged that the Shop Deal appearance of Relics was potentially a good thing:

@Sibelios

What about the concern that Relics would be locked behind a “drip” system and there would be no way to acquire them outside of that system which would render doing non-event content less rewarding? Indirectly, I think they took a good step to addressing that as well. I had originally assumed when they confirmed that Relics would show up in Daily Deals that they would be priced in gems/crowns currency only. Given the “conversion rates” previously calculated I was not optimistic about the gems prices. However, much to my surprise, the majority of Relic offers in the Daily Deals so far seem to be denominated in gold and at reasonable values per rarity. Given that gold is an infinitely farmable resource, this goes part way to addressing this concern; the ability to “farm” for Relics outside the event system. Is it ideal? No; I still think rates on relics should be increased from Dungeon completions as a way to be more targetable (especially in light of the changes to “Difficulty”). But I appreciate this approach and helps to not only provide additional Relics from “farming” (non-Event/Challenge play) but also provides a reasonable use for gold which was absent pre-0.36.

How does Shop availability of Relics stack up particularly in light of the supposed change made by this announcement:

@OminousGMan

Hey there adventurers!

We have made a couple of changes which will come into effect today and tomorrow!

Today we have made some changes to the Chests earned in Dungeons :

• Wooden Chests will no longer be given as rewards from Dungeons
• You will now get higher rarity Chests from Dungeons
• There is an increased chance to find Relics and Crystals from Dungeons
• Iron Chests from Dungeons will now drop Runes, Scrolls, Relics and Crystals. Iron Chests earned outside of Dungeons remain unchanged.

My comments about the Relics in Shop Deals were originally positive and to some extent still are, but having now tracked over 200 total Shop refreshes my enthusiasm is somewhat lessened. Let’s look at the stats:

Given that Evolutions to Rare only need 1 Lesser Relic, not much of an issue there. Lesser Relics are in abundance in all currency types and that’s even accounting for a large percentage of gold offers being VIP only. Greater Relics are somewhat less than 50% likely to be encountered compared to Lesser Relics but you need twice as many. It gets really stingy as you move to Major Relics; the combination of lack of availability here, minimal appearances in Daily Challenges, and extremely rare chances of Glyphs showing up in Shop Deals or in Drops makes Legendary Evolve out of reach for some time. Superior Relics are virtually non-existent as Deals.

So as I anticipated, the Shop is a nice way to get those early Relics to get you going, getting items upgraded to Rare and providing a nice boost for beginning players (once you start earning enough gold and gems to pay for them). But after that it gets exponentially less useful, particularly if you are not a VIP since a significant number of gold deals are locked behind the two VIP daily slots.

This is why it’s so important to provide a targetted way to get evolve materials even if the chances are small (and my definition of small would be 1-2%). Putting everything behind pure RNG “drip” is just demoralizing; there is no sense of purpose. There is nothing to drive for except log on, do some dailies, refresh the shop a bunch, and hope for something that can be useful in 6 months when you find more of the same useful items through more pure RNG.

So! it was good news when they said they had increased the chance to find Relics from Dungeons. But now it appears that all they did was change the chest denominations (no wooden chests) and chest contents (Iron chests now have a chance to drop Relics). There does not appear to be an actual increased drop rate, just a manufactured “increased chance” of a virtually negligible chance before.

At some point there has to be a concession to allow players to actually play for something and not just play the match-3 equivalent of scratchers. Evolutions to Legendary and Mythic are already painfully locked behind Glyph availability. The lack of sufficient mid-range shard quantities (and the inability to use higher value shards for lower upgrades) already makes numerous Epic Evolutions an unrealistic possibility. There is no reason to continue to make Relics so hard to come by. The shop Deals are a good supplement to Relics availability, but ultimately until they make Relics targetable and actually viably earnable, it’s all just window dressing.