#EXP-Boosts patch 1.17.0.t

1 messages · Page 1 of 1 (latest)

orchid sonnet
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First of all, I think the pricing feels good. Keeping it on the lower end makes sense if the goal is to encourage adoption. At ~$2, it’s an easy purchase decision for most players, and that part seems well-balanced.
My main concern is the strength of the multipliers.

Right now, leveling is our only real long-term progression system. With the proposed multipliers, progression may be accelerated too much, up to the point where a casual player could effectively “finish” progression within a few months.

That raises an important design question:

  • Is the goal to level the playing field for newcomers?
  • Or to let players progress quickly and then compete over small % prestige advantages?
  • Or something else entirely?

Depending on the goal, the current numbers may overshoot.

Let’s run some rough numbers for a casual player:

  • 25 games per week
  • ~20,000 EXP per game (average)
  • 7x boost multiplier
  • 4 weeks per month

Resulting in 25 × 20,000 × 7 × 4 = 14,000,000 EXP per month

If we divide that by ~750,000 EXP (to reach level 60), that equals ~19 Illuvials leveled from 1–60 per month

Adjusting for Realistic Collection Use

If we:

  • Exclude T0 Illuvials (which don’t gain much EXP and many players don’t own)
  • Exclude Lynxes (not widely owned or played)

That leaves around 99 relevant Illuvials
Now consider that stage 1 Illuvials don’t gain much EXP and are less important since they don’t spend much time on board.

That brings us to 66 Stage 2 + Stage 3 Illuvials

Even ignoring the fact that:

  • Stage 2 starts at level 20
  • Stage 3 starts at level 40

A casual player could realistically max out their meaningful collection in about 3 months.
That’s $40 spent on EXP boosts to complete progression.

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For more hardcore players, you could divide that timeline and money spend by 4–6.

From my experience, progression systems are usually structured so that; Casual players finish progression around the time new content becomes available.

In our case, releasing a new set every 3 months doesn’t seem realistic.

If players complete progression significantly faster than new content can be delivered, we risk:

  • Reduced long-term engagement
  • Less meaningful sense of achievement

I would strongly recommend reconsidering the multiplier values. The pricing makes sense, but the progression acceleration may be too extreme given that leveling is currently our only long-term system.

Slower progression keeps:

  • Collection growth meaningful
  • Content lifespan healthier
  • Engagement more sustainable

Another aspect to consider is overall monetization. If the boosts are extremely strong, players may only need to purchase them for a short period (for example 2–3 months) before they’ve effectively maxed their progression and then they simply stop buying them. If the multipliers were lower, progression would remain meaningful for a longer time, which likely results in more consistent, long-term purchases across the player base. In other words, slightly weaker boosts could actually generate more total revenue over time, because players would stay engaged with the system instead of “finishing” it quickly and having no reason to continue spending.

Would love to hear the intended long-term vision behind these numbers.

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<@&814435151307866142> @compact glade

zenith jolt
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Thanks for bringing this up Dr.Spoon, I haven't had a chance to read it yet, but we had chatted about this in the Arena chat before. I definitely want to share my thoughts on the topic🙏

lucid kestrel
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Yep 100% way overboosted

I agree that it needs to be more accessible and achievable but thats a reach and i big hit to the ecosystem considering current max levels were achived by hundreds of hours and thousands of dollar investment

I brought it up to IMC yesterday, we will discuss this monday. Thanks for the thread spoon 👊🏽

paper nacelle
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Agreed

For some reason the base rate game is giving more XP than it should

At these numbers baseline should go back to where it was and then these boosts are fine, but would be fine at 2x and 5x as well

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Also I believe you can stack them both, they are more like +200% and +600%, if you buy both its +800%

muted parcel
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Still a big RIP to everyone who believed @unreal socket the moment he started speaking about leviathan. First believer to not get rekt for tuning in is yet to be found

lucid kestrel
paper nacelle
compact glade
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What we will be doing is keeping the XP boosters as they are, but reducing the baseline XP. Essentially, we will undo the 3x on the baseline we did a few days back.

This should put progression in a place where you feel the cadence but you have to put good effort.

keen talon
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Another wasted opportunity by selling these in a shop. Keep em coming

zenith jolt
# compact glade What we will be doing is keeping the XP boosters as they are, but reducing the b...

The XP difference between lv50/lv60 was 530k. It used to require 53k EXP farming for each lv between 50/60... after lv60, it is 726k for each additional level.

We used to spend approximately 5-8k fuel to take any stage 2/3 Illuvial from lv40 to 50
We had to spend approximately 20k-25k fuel to take any stage 2/3 Illuvial from lv40 to 60

Approximately 24 game hours were required to take any stage 2/3 Illuvial from lv40 to 50
Approximately 72 game hours were required to take any stage 2/3 Illuvial from lv40 to 60

calculations are subjective (they can vary from player to player and will likely increase)

Most player already know this, and I’m sorry for the rambling
As Spoon wrote, okay, sure, the costs could be lower, that’s not a problem but let's not touch the time aspect; there's really no need for that

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paper nacelle
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Matching stage cost to xp gain isnt really fair, you got a bunch of illuvials for that stage cost as well

lucid kestrel
compact glade
zenith jolt
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even so, with these bonus multipliers... it's just too fast... way too fast

zenith jolt
lean briar
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According to Kieran, illuvial burning for XP is coming up, according to the roadmap, training gyms in Zero are coming up. If we are selling XP too cheap, we devalue both of those new functions by the time they get here.

I think its good to have a cheap booster option but I would raise the price on the longer term, higher multiplier boosts.

Also, revenue generation in general need to be focused on cause I don't see anything coming up that would generate anywhere close to what the project needs to sustain itself. So no wasting of income generation opportunities, please 🙏

vast zephyr
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new calculation if reduce current exp back.
1 game = 6000-8000exp +-.
20-25 games every day.
with 800% boost, if they stack - you got 50k exp every game +-.
6 days = 1 team/14-18 illuvials lvl60.
1.5-2 month 100 illuvials at lvl 60.

still to much and fast.

lucid kestrel
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Yes for that price its still way too much

lean briar
lucid kestrel
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Maybe a 3rd tier for 100$

Make tiers unstackable (if you already paid tier 1 you can upgrade for tier2 or 3)

Tier 1 x2
Tier 2 x3
Tier 3 x5

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Lvls are currently valuable as the precedent is hundreds of hours and thousands of $ for max collection

If we start to have lvl too fast and inexpensive the market will start to be flooded by high lvls in a couple months. People wont pay for leveling anymore and the DAO will have miss out on revenue

paper nacelle
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25 games per day 😅

lean briar
# lucid kestrel Maybe a 3rd tier for 100$ Make tiers unstackable (if you already paid tier 1 yo...

I would like to see a fast option, like the current 7x. Not everyone have the time to grind 20-25 games every day, and we should give an option for people to see meaningful progression even if they have only a couple of ours to play and maybe more on the weekend. We also want to give whales an option to spend some money (and they tend not to have/want to spend too much time playing).

We could just ask 80 dollars for it instead of the current 40, or something in that range, imo.

vast zephyr
lean briar
# vast zephyr i spend much more time/money to lvl up my team.

Yes, you did spent the time but no, you didn't spend more money 🙂 I have seen your calculations you made when you put your team up for sale, but you completely ignored the value of the weekly prize money you received from the OW bounty hunt and the value of the illuvials you got from hunting.

I have also played OW and know exactly that you could basically train/build your team for free (not accounting for the time spent) while grinding OW.

And even if we spent more time on leveling our team, that does not mean we should gatekeep levi from new players. The project will only live if we have more players and we give them both opportunity and reason to spend money. Otherwise, your (and all of our's) levi team will also become worthless if the project goes down.

vast zephyr
# lean briar Yes, you did spent the time but no, you didn't spend more money 🙂 I have seen ...

most of time i grind exp in 2024-start 2025. it was no bounty hunts active.
2000+ hours in OW also cost something.
if i know - one day when leviathan tournaments come to us we got x7-9 multiplicator for exp - i'l not spend so much time for it.
for all newcomers - "Where there's a will, there's a way":

  1. you can buy team on market.
  2. you can hire people who will grind exp instead of you.

"levi team will also become worthless" - as longer i hold my team, as more i feel it's already worthless.

orchid sonnet
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I’m not convinced that letting XP boosts being staked is a good idea. It adds unnecessary complexity and doesn’t really improve the core progression design. What is actually the reasoning to make the Boosts stackable?

In my opinion, content cadence is really the main factor here. With Set 1 still ongoing and Set 1.5 far off (?), the current XP multipliers could let players max out meaningful Illuvials long before any new progression content drops. That is way more impactful for sustainable progression than looking at historical XP numbers or "i think this could feel nice and meaningful". We need new content ready when a new casual player starting of today has maxed out his meaningful collection, or we experience MAU drops and also revenue drops including the ongoing negativity of "wen new content" which would lead to a downwards spiral difficult to get out of it again.

Also as Doom already pointed out... Looking ahead, upcoming mechanics like training gyms in Zero and Illuvial burning will also influence progression (Are those actually coming?) + the MMO progression pace need to be taken into consideration. We need to account for these systems now so that boosters don’t make them feel irrelevant once they launch, lead to bad design choices that have to be made in those systems or we have to rework boost calculations everytime we release such features.

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As for the Whale aspect, I think it's very dangerous setting boosters up especially for those in regards of a healthy ingame economy in regards of all the unknowns we have with when the next set drops and/or the upcoming MMO and would rather like to revisit a whale option when things get more clear around that topics. Especially since there are other options for whales such as

  • Illuvidex
  • Hiring grinder
  • Buying complete collections

After more consideration i feel after going back to that 7k per game as Nil suggested, a very affordable 2x multiplier and a more expensive 4x (maybe 5x) multiplier (not stackable) could make sense for a solid foundation without overshooting to much but give spenders the access for a meaningful progression, considering the positive feedback about the current progression we have in arena since the exp got boosted by 3x roughly a month ago.

lucid kestrel
orchid sonnet
# lucid kestrel Well said, What do you think of the 3 tiers i suggested with X2 X3 X5 100$

Not sure a mid tier is needed, i guess it depends on the exact pricing.
Why do you think it would increase spending having a mid tier?

But also, generally speaking... The team should know when they can release new content (next set or similar progression systems), we do not.
So actually the team should come up with a number that makes 🙂
We can just make good or bad guesses. 5x might still be way too high... who knows

lucid kestrel
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because the difference between 2x and 5x is big i thought adding a 3rd middle tier might cater to more people. cheap option, middle and expensive but is it better to extract profit, maybe not. perhaps having only 2 forces more people to make the jumpm and commit to the higher subscription

Thinking more about it now, perhaps the main problem is the time lenght, 3 months is huge in crypto and its a big commitment

I think having only 7 days or 1 month could be better. This way we could have a reasonable price that people can commit to for the month on the max multiplier. something like ~40$ for 1 month x5 seems really good, im sure people would pay it as much as the 3 months x7

blissful flare
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I think a model like this could also work...

X2 - first game of the day - free

X2 - two options 7 days around 200 fuel and 30 days around 600 fuel
X5 - two options 7 days around 1500 fuel and 30 days around 4000 fuel

Later we should have options to get XP from ILZ Gyms, and possibly a burn mechanics as well. so don't want to go to crazy with XP boosts with this option, without knowing what the others will look like.

The one free XP boost a day will be good for retention of casual, and should not be significant enough to actually matter that much. (the free daily multiplier can stack with the two boost options)

(might need to increase the fuel prize a bit.. it's just an example)

orchid sonnet
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I like the 1 game daily freebie, to give Players a taste

blissful flare
# orchid sonnet I like the 1 game daily freebie, to give Players a taste

I think its important to give some sense of progression that dose not require you to spend, for new players. and with one daily "freebie" they can see the effect it will have if you spend 2$ to get this boost for a week. (plus the extra in the first game). the xp gain is also much more visible pr. game at the low levels, so you actually feel it matters... where it's not really that significant when you need to level something from 50 to 60.

lucid kestrel
thin jasper
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Good topic) But over the years I've realized one thing, that the project simply doesn't care about its regular and old players) Remember how we crafted weapons and Drone Upgrade, Kirean said that they would think of a way to compensate us for this, and that's all) Therefore, the conclusion is one, there's no need to strain yourself)Atlas_Thug

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At that time, 3 upgrades to the t5 s3 drone cost me $300, it was the first weeks of Overworld, don't worry, be happy.

compact glade
inner haven
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Leveling up quickly shouldn't be a problem. The fear of leveling too fast to me feels like another symptom of having "nothing to fight for". I personally like the current plan. There wouldn't be an issue if:

  1. There were tournaments actively happening that the early investors/players could be earning on while everyone is catching up.

  2. "Prestige" should mean something with some sort of cosmetic to show off to push players to keep gaining exp on their best Illuvials. (Something simple like make the background behind the Illuvial when you right click it sparkly or different designs after every level of Prestige)

  3. Ranked had a purpose outside of just leveling.

I don't know how players are hitting over 20 games a day. But if you are dedicating that much time into the game where leveling to 60 is easy, am I wrong thinking that you can level up multiple Illuvials to 60 and sell your extras for a premium? I'd certainly take advantage of it "wow that's an expensive Illuvial but it's stats are great, it's level 60 already, and it was raised by insert competitive player here? I'm sure it's a good one!"

hearty knot
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I like xp at current rates as a base! It makes you feel like you are progressing and getting something from each match.

The proposed boosters would be to much on top of that.

Maybe a 2x and a 3x option would be enough if you keep the current base rate.

And yeah as others have said, let's not totally devalue training gyms before they are even released

river bobcat
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I think that 3x was a bit too much but reverting it isn't ideal either, 2x or 2.5x seems like the sweet spot with 2x and 3x boosters