User blog:AKFrost/State of the Game, HW3

"First they came for the Socialists, and I did not speak out— Because I was not a Socialist.

Then they came for the Trade Unionists, and I did not speak out— Because I was not a Trade Unionist.

Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out— Because I was not a Jew.

Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me."

Honestly, when Dojigiri Summer came out I was kinda rooting for it. Made sense at the time. The gold total stat standard was 28k, the state of the first line bells Murasaki, Tsukuyomi, March Hare, Shisa. If you hit 10 bells at this time, unless you chose particularly poorly, it was generally not possible for you to not have a full purple conq. Of course, I was still relatively new then and didn't know any better, but I thought zynga was being kind to the players, allowing us lowly mortals who can't hit bells to reach that high water mark. At the time I wasn't a bell owner so I didn't really care that they got screwed. It's natural for humans to assume those with more money will miss it less, even though for the most part it's the opposite that's true.

I was ignorant then, and apparently, so was most of the playerbase.

Now, there are people who quit over this, no doubt about it, but there's just as many crazies who rsed the hell out of that limited. The record was 1300 sixes. You read that right, 22 grand down the drain in a matter of two weeks, by a particularly crazy player who got 10 of them, 5 of which was skillcapped. (Without 5* sellings then. this runs up to exactly 5*6*40=1200 + 5*40 = 1400 apples, so I'm assuming she pulled at least a few.) Anyways. More importantly than the sheer amount of money that went into this was a signal to zynga that this kind of harmful inflation actually gains sales, because the playerbase are either too ignorant or indifferent to the ramifications of this kind of thing. The game hitherto never had a single non-bell at 28k+, so for better or worse, that was a soft "rule" which zynga would attempt to follow, like they are with the "no 6*" thing despite that 5*s are worlds apart now.

Now, you might think zynga doesn't listen to the players, and you'd be wrong. for the simple reason that they can only sell their product if the players think it's worth buying, and changing a virtual product is a ton easier than a physical one. This is why jack version 2 was changed back to anima, and why alice 357 kept flipflopping skill. Zynga didn't do this because their engineers were on a power trip, it was because ultimately a greater part of our playerbase wanted it that way. We the customers dictated that it's unethical to change the skill after people have spent apples specifically to get alice, so that change was reverted. Jack was more nuanced, because I know there's just as many willing to accept a divina jack and already bought waters with that understanding. Ultimately, the change happened. Zynga decided that its customers voted for the change to anima. They'll listen when we make noise, but if we don't complain when the need arises, then that becomes a blank check to do whatever they want.

'by welcoming instead of protesting dojigiri summer, and thus throwing bellers under the bus, we handed zynga its permission to drive the game into this hyperinflated state.''

By allowing zynga to devalue bell, we have given zynga permission to devalue rare summon, especially limited daemons. Now rare summon is almost never worth the trouble. You'll get a 15 skill for almost the same cost as a skillcap event anyways.

By throwing bellers under the bus, we have now the situation where 280k-290k stats cq teams are all over the place, which in turns drives zynga to push up conq beast stats, thus screwing the players not quite there yet, and turning acquiring new cards from a fun activity to an -upkeep- where you spend money to get back to where you were.

By this rampant inflation, we now have newbs who don't know better sneeze at guilds that can't make 51 and cards that barely break 14500. Why shouldn't they? And thus, this halloween SCQ is going to be hated like circus, and zynga will probably not hit their sales target, thus making inflation a self-fulfilling prophecy in that they have to inflate stats significantly too to make money.

The ultimate consquence is an ever increasing speed of inflation and quitting, until this game collapses on itself.

and there was no one left to speak for us, the customers.