Ads removed. Goodbye Free to Play???

[Travesty]

Apologies, I didn't intend to derail this topic with a debate about whether Eternium is p2w. If you start a different thread about that I'll gladly contribute my thoughts.

But I certainly agree that Eternium is also free to *play.*

I think we both agree that ad boxes were sub optimal. But make no mistake that many players relied on them to be able to enjoy other aspects of the game, such as ANB, and will leave without a suitable replacement.

And that doesn't make them bad players who didn't listen to good advice on discord or work hard enough.

[Arawn]

Travis | Support Mgr. Do you know if the devs plan on implementing their new gem fix before ANB gold? Gold has always been a gem-sink and if we don't have a way to acquire gems beforehand then I'm not sure if I (and others) will even be able to feasibly play gold this time around

[LodWig]

Some more or less random thought about this:

This game is definitely free to play. You can download it for free, and there is no paywall inside. You may decide to spend some real money to go higher, faster, but you surely don't have to do it.

You may think this game is "pay to win", but it all depends on what you mean by "to win".

The only money I spent in this game was for buying the three first season passes. I can't say it didn't help me, but consider that when I bought the first one I already had 40K+ gems, and good gear. So the gain was very small.

This small amount (33€) I spent while playing the game for more than two years...

The only "pay to win" aspect I've seen is the purchasable Glory, just before an ANB, giving the buyers an advance in unlocked recipes. I decided not to buy the fourth season pass because of that. (It was 20 paid Glory.)

This advantage buyers had is rapidly vanishing, thanks to the free Glory awarded in events. I have 50 Glory left, and nothing to unlock that could help me "win".

Learning, listening to the many good players giving good advice on Discord, trying, and putting some effort in it, will help you "win" way more than spending money for gems.

You can look at my main hero, named Anaijeh, now #32 on Hunter season LB, #121 on All Classes season LB, if you want to see what can be achieved for free (or near free, if you wish).

Granted, I'm not on the top, but I play mobile only (which is far more an impediment than the lack of gems). I think I will be in top 30 on Hunters LB this sixth Silver league (#25 now, three hour before event end), with exactly 885 gems spent. Which means I have about 800 more now than at the event start. For free. (Ads have been broken for months now on iOS, so all are from drops, calendar rewards and dailies.)

Another mobile-only hunter is now #12, with under 1K gems spent.

Also, I have 84434 gems now. Only 30K were paid for (season passes). I intend to use a lot of these (around 8K) in next Gold League, so if I don't play more out of ANBs and/or unless there is a faster way to gain more gems without "watching" ads, this treasure will surely slowly decrease. But I will blame myself.

The ad situation wasn't satisfying anyway, with PC players excluded from it, and also iOS players because of bugs (on the ad server side say the DP staff). So getting rid of it entirely will surely help the devs focus on more satisfying things for us the player (and presumably for them!). I welcome this decision. (Yes it's easier for me, since, again, it has been months since I received gems from "watching" an ad.)

[Travesty]

Some of the other posts about this got consolidated into a single thread over in Feedback and Suggestions. Check that one out when you get a moment. You're not the only one that feels this way.

[Oldandslow]

I shall be bowing out of the game after a year once this ANB Gold comes and goes. I've got just over 3k gems left, enough for one 2.5k crafing crate and one extra move leveling slot. No way I would be able to have a decent go at another for a month or two after that. I'll admit I hadn't done the boxes for months until recently, had to grind some gems for the start of this ANB.
Feels like it's pay or quit now and I'll choose to leave unless they come up with some other way of gaining gems for free in the next couple of weeks.

[Benedicto]

Honestly it never came to my mind to stop playing until this happened. I still have this amount of gems, gained through hardwork of farming everyday for years, of course it decreases because I am actively participating in every single ANB since it started. My gem pool even reached as high as 64k before the frequency of the events came. In the end of the season, I'll have 10k more. But, maybe this will be my countdown. I spend around 6k in bronze and silver, and 10k in gold. This will be my indicator to decide and accept if this is the end for me but still hoping they'll make the promised alternative before I spend my last gem.

[Easilyconfused]

I liked to farm ads during the dailies, methodically marching through the levels killing everything looking for mystery boxes while my mind wandered to other things. (especially during the ads)
Then, add a few more levels to get to 200+ gems for the day. Hard to see an alternative that benefits the developers that won't involve me forking over cash (Those exist already).
Feels like the beginning of the end to me. when I feel pressured to fork over cash to buy a legendary during an ANB, that will probably be the end. $$$ to just play, no better than candy crush. Here's to hoping the devs come up with something creative (at least hope is free).

[Travis | Support Mgr.]

I really like the idea of an alternative that encourages game play.

So do the devs. Not every decision we make is driven by revenue. No one is looking to get rich off of Eternium. We just want to put out a fun game and get paid while doing it.

[Arawn]

I don't think we'll see a replacement for ad gems until after Gold, and probably not until after season 4 because they want to see if eliminating ad gems increases microtransactions during Gold and the end of Season 4 rankings push.

I suspect it won't. The whales will continue to spend but those that cannot afford to are not suddenly going to start spending more.

I've always hated the ads but they were the largest source of gems for my ANB events so I tolerated them. Now that they are gone I am really feeling it...I doubt there's going to be a way that I can really participate in the events now.

I'm all for removing the ads if they really don't generate any income for the devs, especially since, depending on location, some players hardly receive any ads, as long as there's some sort of alternative. I really like the idea of an alternative that encourages game play.

[Travesty]

Thinking about this over the last couple of days I have a few random thoughts. In no particular order:

Giving away 250 gems/day is probably not a sustainable business model for a game this small.

With revenue from ads down across all online platforms during the current pandemic, I suspect that the reduced revenue from ads was not enough to fund even a single developer position to maintain the software infrastructure required for the ads.

I think revenue from p2w microtransactions during ANBs is the studio's most promising source of revenue, but is currently over priced.

Expecting players to pay as much for a single ANB as they would for, say, Wasteland 3 is probably not a viable long term model for a game with this little content and this small of a player base. Some will, of course, and maybe enough to keep the lights on, but probably not enough to add enough significant content to retain players.

I don't think we'll see a replacement for ad gems until after Gold, and probably not until after season 4 because they want to see if eliminating ad gems increases microtransactions during Gold and the end of Season 4 rankings push.

When we do see a replacement I doubt we'll see anything that comes close to replacing 250 gems/day. Probably something more like increasing daily gems from the monthly sub by 10 or 20 gems a day, or daily login gems of 10-20 a day.

I think the trend of fewer players in ANBs will continue. The first ANB had 40k bounty hunters, the current has less than 4k. The value proposition just isn't there. Too repetitive, too grindy, too expensive, stale content.

The drop off in both forum activity and discord posts is a negative indicator, especially during the pandemic when gaming activity is up overall.

[kurtcabage]

We are working on adding new "daily activities with gem rewards".

That's from other post. .
let's wait and see what devs will offer us in the next update

[Asad Butt]

My two cents on ad boxes: I don't think the ad box system was fair to begin with. I almost never received more than 4 to 5 ad boxes a day, most of the time, I didn't even get that many. I think this had to do with my location. Most people in the so called "first world" will have many advertisers wanting to show ads to, but in a less developed country like Pakistan, where people are not considered heavy spenders online, most advertisers are probably not eager to show ads to. I used to hear that people are getting like 50 ad boxes a day, and I would follow all the directions - clearing cache, resetting ad id - but never receive more than 4 to 5 ad boxes. I didn't begrudge you guys getting so many ad boxes a day (okay, maybe a little), but I'm not going to miss them.

I've been doing story mode gem farming for years now. Recently, I've stopped purchasing even the $4 a month subscription and only buy the season pass. At one point, I had about 57k gems, I'm now down to about 42k (will get another 10k when the season ends).

[wesker]

I think you guys have just headshot yourselves... Unless you guys got some great idea for 200/300 free gems per day that ppl can farm without spending a single $ on it

[Sleepy Dragon]

New player here, started playing this season. A bit over a month playing.

I agree with Arawn, the devs should have prepare the alternative way to get free gems before removing the ad options. I am not a totally free player but the gems from ads did support me especially to build my side BH and mage character i play for fun. If there are no development on this issue like what Benedicto concerns about, i probably will also quit at the end of this season. Even though i will have a 10.000 gems to start that season from my season pass. Probably i should burn that gems on one last ANB then quit LOL..

[Benedicto]

My routine in ANBs is to push on the last day of the event. I reforge my exp stat on all my gear, and my average gem usage is 1000 gems. Luckily I have enough before the ad removal. Now what if there are other players that only ad box dependent and gem poor now...