Beyond - Change to Wave Structure

[jaunty solar]

Illuvium have built an addicting Album collection game in Beyond.

It’s brilliant - however.

I CAN’T COMPLETE MY ALBUM 🤯

I used to buy premier league football stickers in the panini albums. You bought your packs and newsagent, excitedly opened them and filled your book. We’d always get 95% there, whether by trading with friends in the school playground or going to the end of season swap shop at Old Trafford.

The fun for me was opening the packs in order to get as close as possible to completing the album. Only the last few percent we’d get at the swap shop if we really couldn’t find them anywhere.

I repeat - most of the fun is getting the card in the pack.

Wave Structure.

Problem I have with Beyond is that the cost of the disks and the rarity of the medium and higher tier illuvitars means I’ve spent a LOT of money and I’m not even 50% of the way to completing my album.

I understand why you did the wave structure, because you weren’t able to do the artwork for every illuvial initially in one go, but why can’t you just add a new wave of illuvitars to the old ones.

It feels pointless buying more in wave 3 now because I’ll never be able to complete my album now anyway.

I think it’s more important to let people complete their albums than it is to get people competing on a leaderboard..

[lone sandal]

You've triggered a lot of good memories there, I used to love collecting those and swapping with friends at school during breaks. I can still smell the packs now 😊 .

I definitely understand where you are coming from, but I don't think I ever managed to complete a single set and it didn't take the fun away, you just do the best you can.

When you looking at Pokemon booster boxes now for example, usually around $100 for a new set, you only get 36 packs, yet there are hundreds of cards in the sets these days. Chances of completing them are extremely rare now without spending a small fortune. Yet the popularity continues to grow and the amount of cards they print also continues to grow.

I don't believe illuvium are too far away with their current model. Could there be room for slightly less expensive packs and slightly reduced drop rates, possibly, but I personally don't see a glaring problem that needs immediate attention. Maybe many will disagree though, I don't know. Will be good to see what others think.

[jaunty solar]

Ok change to my thinking.

Why don’t we have two different modes.

One is gated to album sticker collectors only.

They pay $1.50 per pack for 5 digital stickers.

They can’t use these towards leaderboard points/bonding and therefore not towards the current reward set up. They also can’t use them towards any future TCG game.

So current collector’s illuvitars values are maintained.

These people can open a disk and find any of the illuvials from previous waves in them, meaning they can fill in their albums, in the same way they would have done with their old sticker albums.

If you complete the whole album or parts of it there unique battle board prizes or cosmetics on offer

[stray saddle]

A future set may have different portraits based on the same illuvials like Rhamphires and such. But they will not be in the same "set" and "wave".
I.e. you may get a Dark Atlas, who looks different from the current atlas, but can be slotted in the Common Expression Atlas slot. In that regard you will still be able to complete 90% of your album, but not with the set 1 illuvitars. You would remain unable to finish "set 1" specific collections like Set 1 or Set 1, wave 1-5.

That's my current understanding of the Beyond Album.