[Suggestion] Pizza Loot?

But other games don't do it.. and by the same argument they would do it if not doing it was losing them money! [It is also known that according to all standard economic theories, it is impossible to find money on the ground.]

I think Blue Manchu might be wary of setting a challenge to earn all content from random pizza drops! As you say, with some of these games giving away some premium content keeps the rest of the premium content locked.

 

Giving away content which was previously pay-for makes sense, for some games. Especially when those games have been around for quite some time and/or when the amount of premium content has been growing too much. A number of different models and approaches have been experimented throughout the years, as f2p is not exactly that much a novelty anymore.

Most of the times, developers will just let you pay to access content while it is still brand new. This is very common with new level packs and, in the case of TCGs, expansion/booster-packs.

Specifically for TCG, giving away booster-packs you normally would give out in exchange of money is actually a pretty efficient model. A bunch of cards (most of which will likely be common/uncommon ones) out of a pool of several hundreds is like a drop in the ocean. You're also teasing the player, because you're letting him give a glimps at what might be in there for him if he buys more packs.

As already stated, some developers lets you pay for exclusive, early access to brand new content, only to give the same content for free to all players after a few days/weeks/months. This is very often seen in mmorpgs and the like. Newly released areas (well, at least a chunk of them) will usually be pay-to-access. Some players will very eagerly pay for those, the ones who are starving for more content as well as those those who want to get an advantage over non-paying players (premium areas often come with better drops, better XP, perks like exclusive fashionable gear, etc). If that's the case, devs will almost always remove the premium perks from the area (balancing it towards the rest of freely available content) before releasing it to the general public.

Lastly (for those who might think "why would devs release premium content for free?") you can't expect paying users to buy every item out of the <insert big number here> premium ones you've in stock. Releasing this sort of stuff for every player increases the amount of content available for free, making the game more enjoyable for everyone and improving user retention and possibly luring in more users.

Which brings us to Card Hunter.

As of right now, pizza only lets you buy perks, rather than actual content suitable for consumption. Items are already given out equally to all users. The Club membership does make you get more loot, but no item in the game is exclusively obtainable via pizza purchase.

Figures are vanity items serving no functional purpose. I guess BM might give out a few of those for free (but again, I would prefer them to do that via contests rather than random drops/lotteries/whatever).

Decks are little more than a convenient way for a player to get a bunch of decent cards and jump right into MP without having to play the campaign first.

Treasure Hunts are special. This might look like content suitable to being given out for free to a few lucky users. But honestly, I guess these are one among more than a few good reasons why a player might want to spend $$$ on the game (possibly making him grab the Basic Edition taking full advantage of the offer). THs are the only instance, as of right now, of content exclusively reserved to paying customers (and even then, you can afford a bunch of those with the free slices you get as you play the game). I still think it's fair to non-paying user, as the guaranteed epics can be found via gameplay regardless of p2w mechanics anyways.

Ultimately, CH has been released a couple weeks ago only. This is not the right time for the devs to give out pizza/premium content for free. Further down the line maybe (when they have a lot more stuff to offer) letting lucky, non-paying users take a more substantial taste at what experiencing premium content feels like might be a good idea.

This is leaving aside community contests offering pizza and premium content as prizes. Those are great and I feel BM is taking the right approach to it.

If, say, BM decided to offer early access to a future expansion as a premium purchase, would you welcome the idea? I guess not. Would knowing that said premium-only expansion would eventually be released for free make you change your mind? Again. probably not.

People don't usually mind if real money can buy you vanity-items or allows you to accelerate your progress through the game, but they suddenly go mad as soon as access to portions of the actual game (new adventures/items/cards) is reserved for paying users only. The insta-scream P2W all over the place.

So yeah, you can't always get the best of both world. Even if I wan't paying customer, I would much prefer no pizza being given out for free (meaning I have no hope of ever getting premium content w/o spending money) if I knew money can't get people exclusive access to content which gives an unfair advantage (items/cards) to paying customers.

 

Glade to see a good discussion around this.
I do see adding more perk content in the future, but that could be another thread on that.
I feel the pizza loot was more for the goal of adding more "excitement" to the loot. It adds another variety (beside useful items and treasures) to the chest opening experience.

One thing didn't fully address is how much slice go be given. I expect it to be 1 slice for uncommon, and 3 slices for rare (something like that). Small amount.
And keep in mind that pizza can still be traded for gold, so they can still be treated as Treasures for those who don't need them.

And then there is the issue of farming. I could see that creating problem, so could always add a daily cap to it. (like you might only be limited to 3 pizza max daily before it stop dropping, and 6 slice if you are club).
In all, I see it less about giving more freeibes, but more of adding more loot "carrot" (or additional reason to keep player playing)

 

On a slightly different subject, I think adding pizza as a drop would also act as an incentive for people to use automated software specifically with the purpose of grinding the game to get more slices.

I'm sorry to say this, but I honestly can't see a valid reason for pizza to be handed out via loot. You make it too scarce/rare and only abusers (namely, botters) would actually benefit from it. You hand out too much, and it hurts BM's income too much.

If the only purpose of such an idea would be that to tease people into buying premium content, there are much better ways to do that without handing out random amount of pizza.

If the purpose is to let players who play a lot to get some premium content without spending actual money, there are better ways to do that too without hurting BM's income.

The game is incredibly fair to non-paying user as it is, and premium content is explained/teased in a very effective way already.

So okay, I get it, pizza drops. But seriosuly, why?