I was looking over some of the paid features currently present in the game relative to resource accumulation rates and noticed how bad of a return the VIP Pass currently has beyond the initial grind of the game.
The resources accumulated from the VIP pass make up for about 1 hour of grinding per day + an extra chest slot. Rare guard can be obtained in under a month, which results in the VIP pass being a 25% increase to overall chest capacity. By the 3 months mark it is likely to reach at least an epic guard, possibly even legendary, at which the increase is 20% or 16.6% respectively. This is on top of the fact that more tickets would constantly be earned as Locksmith goes higher and more keys as pets go higher, giving the 1 slot increasingly less value relative to what the player can already do without it.
Essentially, asides from spending more money, every reward the VIP pass currently yields scales further and further down the more progressed into the game the player is, essentially reducing its value by the day.
The VIP Pass definitely feels like it needs more rewards that would sustain for better longevity, otherwise by as early as next year the pass would become nearly pointless relative to the average active player’s resource accumulation rate. Some potential ideas for buffs could be:
10 crowns per day instead of 10 gems. Seen people in global chat kind of baffled that it doesn’t do this already. This would give enough crowns to keep up with the battle pass (that also needs a complete rework in rewards), while having a small amount of spares. Very few people will buy both anyways. If battle pass gets buffed with unique loot, almost no one would get the vip pass after the first season of the battle pass due to value of vip pass falling off.
Small exp bonus. Technically the tickets do this to some degree already since tickets result in exp, but they only get 3 uses. A person would get the same value from them if they played 10 minutes or 10 hours in a day. A flat exp bonus of something like 10% while the pass is active is not so high that it would be overpowered, but high enough to gain an active benefit from it.
Free revives, or at least half off. Of course the one revive limit would still be in place for battles, it would just remove/reduce the 50 gem cost for using it. There are already ways to do this for dungeons and skirmishes using the infinite free revives the coop feature has (which is perfectly fine due to how much slower it is), but this would allow people struggling with storyline and solo dungeons to get through a bit more easily. It would also allow for rng correction without having to back out of a dungeon or battle every single time the starting board is awful.
I bought the VIP after one day of playing but agree with your analysis that after you rank/level/gear up the extra slot and other goodies will be of diminished value. Added to your suggestions maybe even better items to be purchased in the shop. So far mine have been meh,…I buy them since gold is cheap in this game but why not have more enticing choices?
I purchased the VIP mostly for the extra chest slot and at its current rewards I will not repurchase. I can already “do without” the extra slot, my character is too weak to get through chapter 15 (enemies are 3x stronger) so all my slots are sitting empty.
Tacet’s revamp suggestions are great and I hope are taken into consideration.
Played the game one month without the VIP pass and 1 month with it.
Now that people are starting to get legendary and mythic guard, everything mentioned is becoming increasingly true.
As for the bullet point suggestions mentioned:
1: Almost no one bought the season pass, and most people who did found the value to be bad enough to never do it again. No reason to not give crowns when spending money. I can understand not having them F2P, but not having them while spending money on a monthly basis seems pretty bad.
2: The amount of exp the 3 tickets in the pass gives becomes increasingly smaller as time goes on. A lot of the rewards within the pass diminish as progression gets further and further into the game. Could really use a % bonus system like Gems of War has for the VIP system, but toned down a lot since those same percentages would be too strong in PQ3, but having none has the inverse effect where nothing reward-wise scales within the daily vip rewards nor have any effect for continuous play.
3: I haven’t used a single revive since 2 weeks into the game. Most people likely stop reviving at storyline completion and/or max difficulty all dungeons, both of which can be done in a month. Definitely feels like VIP could use a free revive per battle as there is almost no purpose to the revive button beyond initial completion of the game. The free revives could also be targeted to only effect the things that coop can already revive on, being skirmished and dungeons, that way storyline and future game modes would still sink gems, but the areas that already have revive via coop could have a free revive via VIP.
Just a reminder the monthly VIP pass is increasingly worse value as time goes on, especially as of version 0.35:
The extra free chest slot devalues the effect of an additional chest slot from VIP.
Nothing in the pass rewards playing the game while having the pass, as all of it is single use for the day. None of them give any resource bonus to gameplay itself. A person who plays for 10 minute a day gets the same value from the pass as someone who plays 10 hours.
Nothing in the pass scales to later in the game.
The changes done to the daily shop substantially lowers the effectiveness of having 2 more offers.
I am just waiting for mine to end since all the animatiins on the 9th chest and finding a minion for just some more stuff to salvage takes time and I’m too OCD to just leave the chests empty for days.
I’m officially not renewing my VIP because as @Tacet points out clearly, there is virtually no value there any longer: less value to the chest slot, less value in the shop because of reduced quality of deals, most rewards earned through a small amount of gameplay. There! I gave them some data to observe; not getting my money
At least there’s a really small niche, where that is the player’s first epic weapon and would be a potentially significant upgrade for that player.
I’ll raise you two equally (if not moreso) great deals:
At least, in the above case, the weapon has some use.
I’d really hate to be the player that spends $20 USD on a random epic spell and gets something near-completely useless.
Also, although I’m reasonably sure they are not in the game currently, the pricing structure seems to be setting up the inevitable “Random Legendary Thing” for $50 USD.
