Why I'm Upset (Update = Niantic Greed)
This is long, so skip to (***) for why I'm upset, #6 is my favorite ?
I can understand the frustration from the higher level-older members of PoGO. The new update has destroyed everything you have accomplished in the past year (or less). The building up of +10 defensive mons, and prestige teams, for your 100coins/5000dust a day. That is (was) hard work, and a lot of grinding, to be swept away. Only to please the lower level trainers, who couldn't get their spot in a gym, but also didnt want to grind as hard, or spend the TIME it took you to get there. And yes, I got my first Muk a month ago, grinding, and getting lucky enough to have enough candy to evolve my grimer I hatched last Halloween. But now, you can "pay" for an already evolved Muk, with high IVs... oh for the love of the "participation trophy." I know, it's Muk, but also, a paid pokedex entry.
And that brings me to "Why I'm Upset."
***This whole update is an obvious, in your face, "F-you fans, we want your money."
Things noticed while playing:
1) you have to scroll through all x3 Incubators before getting to your infinite incubator. They want you to use the bought ones first, and or hope you slip up. (Pre/post update)
2) 50 coins max (obviously <100)
3) raids = 100coins a pop (after free one) thats two days of collecting the max amount, but theres a badge for raids... in order to get gold (1000 raids) with free play, that's 2000 days (5.5 years!) of max coin collection ?
4) more items = the need of more storage. Which also means a possible increase in max storage, which also means more coins from everyone, not just those who have not maxed our yet.
5) Niantic new that only a certain population was paying to play, the lower leveled trainers who couldn't get into/stay in gyms. The higher level trainers who could stay in 10 (+1,-1) gyms, didn't need to pay, and earned that right, from either already paying or grinding harder than the average. With this gym update, it "forces" evem higher level trainers to pay. With 50 coins a day, having to get your mons back each day, or maybe go a day with no coins... whatever.
6) the real reason I'm pissed... the dust. An "easy" 4-5k a day. Now, i see people posting about feeding berries gets dust ? "awesome guy!" But did you know that in the 5 hours it takes you to get 5k from feeding the pokemon, that want to go home with coins, you could park at walmart for less than a hour and catch 50 pokemon ?
Muk Niantic and Muk you update fans,
Level 34 jayburn202
Answers
That's not right. Niantic sells rights for e.g. sponsored pokestops. The money they get for it from e.g. sprint depends on the playerbase. Sprint doesn't mind if you pay2win or play4free. They just want people to see their logo. So since they don't have higher costs (kk maybe more server power) through free players, infact they profit from everybody.
So if it comes to game success and with it niantics turnover.. probably not the best idea to "do what they want"
Aaahhhh, but prices were not increased ?
This is more like your boss pays you half for more work, while the things you need in life stayed at the same cost as before, but now more items were added that you need in order to stay afloat... while also burning all of your hard work, so you have to start from scratch with the other new employees.
Get out with that nonsense, i can change my own oil. Also, I've just been trolling kristophian, and you fell in, the real convo is when you scroll down a bit
Things in the shop doesn't actually cost Niantic anything. Its a piece of data. Of they want to make money all the need to do is run regular sales on select items like they have been doing.
Instead of pulling a fast on on trainers and offering the incredibly shady "premium" raid pass. They could switch up their sales regularly. By slashing lucky eggs a lot of people who normally wouldn't drop money on this game did.
The same can be said for when gen 2 launched and storage was half off.
Raise the threshold of items in your bag. Great. Discount that A.D. I know I would have spent money to max the bag out. I'm not the only one.
I'm not against Niantic trying to make money. We the players however, deserve better. Don't cut our freebies and then jack up half a dozen other things. Its just rude. I think there would be significantly less backlash if the free coins were still at 100. It is further disrespect that it was 100 ... For a day. I'm extra salty because for some reason my coins are now stuck at 99, 149, and tomorrow, likely 199.
Its just data. I dilly understand they have costs and need to make money. That being said selling 200 pokeballs in a shop costs them zero zip zilch. Although lucky eggs and incubators are not available for free there is no cost involved in that either. These pieces of information don't need to be packed or shipped.
I'm not saying they shouldn't make money. They've made a lot and could have easily continued to do so without being shysty. Introduce seasonal items to the store for a limited time only. Discount others that are always there. There are dozens of better ways to go about doing it.
Again. I understand employees need to be paid and servers require upkeep. I will not relent on items in the shop. The code is written. Please elaborate how selling pokeballs which are free items you can get by spinning has a cost.
Value. Sure they have a value. Its about 2 dollars for a hundred or something. I don't know. Ive never bought them. They are worth something and they can be used to make money. How ever they're quite literally selling nothing but a piece of data that can be copied infinitely with zero effort now that the code is in place
Lord have mercy. Elaborate?
Cost of employees. Taxes. Advertising. Programming. Taxes. Paying platform owners. Taxes. More employees for cheater elimimination. Taxes. Then taxes. Then Apple. Then Google. Then taxes again.
I'm not saying that this get aren't making huge bank. Read what I typed. But "X costs them nothing" is a statement most 12 year olds should be able to refute because it's silly and wholly untrue.
Now, if we want to talk about what we fund versus our returns as players that's a real discussion. But we cannot start that out on an outrageous lie told for impact by idiots. The value of whatvtge sell is what they sell it at. We decide whether to purchase or not and their costs are their own.
How many players did and do they have? Ingress has never played a big role.
Only Pokemon Go and the hype last year made them successful worldwide. How many million players do they have now? How much did they spend over the last year? Come on, the force now to spend more money is not needed at all. They arent't a firm short before becoming insolvent. ;-)
They have costs and make plenty of money. Who knows if its true but a while back i read online that starbucks, sprint, mcdonalds, and other sponsored stops pay them a few cents every time their stop is spun.
They're holding real world events that cost admission. Many many players have spent money for gym coins.
Sure there are costs but no body is saying everything should be free. People are saying its wrong to cut back the supply of benefits and then up the demand. Giving away 50 or 100 free coins daily doesn't cost them anything. It may cut back on their profits, true.
Alienating and disenfranchising a portion of the player base might do the same though.
Lol "Muk Niantic," I like it! I feel you man. Which is why I had originally taken a 6 month break away from the game. It's not going to perfect, in fact it's far from perfect but things will change. Originally came back cause my friends who were newer players got into this game recently (they're now lvl 24), and with all the recent events, Easter, Grass, Adventure, and Solstice, it's been fun. If you're not feeling it, take a break, and check back once in a while once the update has ironed out.
You seem to forget that the high level trainers of today never had to cope with higher level trainers than themselves at any point in their career.
When I started last September, high level meant 25-30. There was no contest in gyms until level 23, and now I am level 31 and still hard to win against level 34-39 who kept mobbing up level 10 gyms full of 2500-3500 CP mons.
- I agree about your Muk story. Same with events, all of a sudden the rare ones you walked 100 km for are coming in dozens for everybody, and now ready in Raids for city players.
. - Your egg incubator amounts indicate you had ridiculous gym income the other 99% of players cannot even dream of. Think about what that means for competition chances in the entire community.
That's all well and good but if you aren't selling some kind of advantage to players that pay it all falls apart. When the players that pay say to hell with it the end is near.
How can one complain about the advantage folks bought that paid for them to play the game for free? It's a silly argument. They are supposed to be better and you're supposed to strive to be on their level.
In online games all you pay for are instant benefits. Your money gives you an advantage at that moment in time.
When I played Need for Speed World a few years ago, you could buy cars (best ones $20-$50) or upgrade packs. But EA nerfed some cars that were popular to be superceded them with others, etc. In the end EA just gave everything for free for all players and then permanently ended the game, not even your personal garage you could keep.
When you spend money in an online game you have to be aware that it is worth something for weeks at best, and then you get screwed.
Good for those idiots. I'm sure if they run their model like the one you sited they are dead too. To be sure, moron management as expected crap we should prepare for is silly.
Other games have walked this line with better success.
This is like "well 98% of people saw gains in energy stocks and the folks that got f'd in other stocks deserved it because Enron"
Lulz
No, i think that this greed may very well be a huge downfall for Niantic, which is also a downside to those that enjoy playing the game. I know some wont pay out of spite, some cant afford to pay into this game on a constant basis (outside of maxing storage, and discount items). And like you said, eggs may very well be dead. I havent used an incubator since the update, have 8 left over from before, and wont use them unless something changes with eggs, or a x2 event for hatching etc... i think someone posted about takong a gym in the evening/night, and by morning, if it's kicked out, theres your 50 cap, stagnant gyms everywhere during the day
Right.
And for that reason I'm not going to jump off the greed ledge.
I think they tried to balance the game between the spenders and the slackers. Because we cannot grt coins for attacking they fell short (among other problems). I don't think calling it greed is true. They did some things that were just stupid and won't be long term revenue producing ideas. They've tried to incentivize other things to compensate like dust but that isn't going to do it. It's a bit unfair and just too simple to be a dude at a protest that calls any company greedy or such just because it sounds impactful but isn't even really the case.
In fact this game just became cheaper to play. Period. There is no argument to have so lol at greed.
That said I hope you bear with it all Jay you're a good poster and we've shared a shit ton of advise. For what it's worth I'm not spending but not out of protest but because there is no real advantage for me to buy. And I was a whale by any measure. A blue whale if you will. So how'd that greed work out for them?
Yeah, i guess i liked incubating a lot of eggs at once, then jackpot, all hatch at once. Nice surprise, even when it's 10 duds ?
I will probably end up saving my coins. I think this post came out because of how it looks. And it looks like Niantic turned their backs on those that have played for the longest, and actually made them relevant, to please the new comers... not just talking about money, but also the time/effort since the beginning.
I got a question for you...
