For players who spend money on the game

370$$!?!. You must have some nice money cause I spent 10 dollars on the game so far and I would say I'm doing decent. Might be a little over board for me but that's your money.

I hate freemium...

"In fact, many players exploit that by never paying anything for the game, which is not right, either."

What are you even saying? All players should pay for this game?

Yes.

Do you work for free? I certainly never did, except for one internship. That's the way the world works. You provide something of value, people pay you for it. Everyone deserves to be rewarded for their hard work.

Pixonic is not a charity. They don't give us hours of entertainment just for the warm feeling it gives them in their hearts.

Now, the caveat: I strongly support acts of piracy against companies that actively try to exploit people.

For example, movie studios that pay some silly actor $20 million for six months' work, then turn around and gouge customers at the box office, at home through PPV, and at the store with $25 DVDs. Or, an insurance company that gladly takes hundreds of dollars a month from you, but when your kid needs an MRI, claims it isn't medically necessary and refuses to pay.

I do not feel that Pixonic falls completely into that category, though.

While they do use the shady freemium model, the company does make a concerted effort to balance that with in-game rewards such as daily gold and events that lavish players with free gear. They also put considerable effort - regardless of their mistakes - into making the game a great experience for the player.

We all get a lot of entertainment value from the game.

So, yeah, I think we should all be paying something for that value. That's not unreasonable at all. It's just a matter of how much.

But that is simply my personal opinion, and we all know how much value opinions have.

No, actually I'm a broke-「bum-bum」 living on a small pension. I really shouldn't be spending that kind of money on anything, let alone a frickin' game. If my GF knew I'd been doing this...well, God help me. It's possible I might have a wee bit of an addiction. Cheaper than heroin, I guess. But not by much.

I'm pretty sure I've spent close to $500 since I started playing nearly six months ago.

My original plan was to simply hash out $20 every payday for 2500 Au. But then the 3rd Anny event came along, and then the daily side deals. But I pretty much ignored the 4th of July event. I'm still picky about what I'd want to buy though. Not gonna buy another something I already have. And the WSP weapon deals are just garbage.

My long term game investment now lies ultimately at a crossroads - either get my first Galahad, or wait for the Korean bots. (Which is safe to assume at this point that they will cost less than 14K Au.)

This game could not survive without players. The so-called "shady freemium model" allows for a wide base of nonpaying players to keep the population of the game up while others pay for additional enjoyment.

There is nothing wrong with enjoy this game for free.
There is also nothing wrong with paying money to enjoy this game.

Some folks on each side try and look down their nose that the other side, but this is silly. The game needs them both.

no, there is nothing wrong playing this game without paying.  non-paying players also do service to developers, by providing the mass of players vital for this kind of game.  plus, if they talk, write, review (, and rant) about the game, they contribute to expanding the playerbase, etc.   

and paying for this game certainly bring a lot of advantage already to the play.  and the developers, I think, have been doing a decent job creating an environment where both paying and non-paying players can survive and enjoy.  I have payed so far ~$250 (gambling and upgrade...) and plan to continue buying premium (for silver) for my first account, while I spent 0$ for my second.  I enjoy playing both accounts, both stabilized and slowly advancing in different leagues, especially after the Punisher/Molot buff.  they do make updates and changes that I don't like, but I don't have much to complain about their business models.

I am against further bumping up the reward for cash, especially sth like "unlimited upgrade(?)" for cash.  that will right away destroy the balance of the game, reduce the player base, and only much smaller numbers of paying players would survive.  I feel the premium account already serves well, without which it would be almost impossible to go beyond level10+, 

Not looking down my nose at anybody for not paying. That's you giving your own meaning to my words.

While I don't think it's right to play the game without ever paying anything, not thinking it's right does not equal feeling superior to those who don't. It doesn't even mean I think everybody should see it the same way I do.

As for the idea that free players make the game...no.

This is not a chicken-or-the-egg thing. Without paying players, the games wouldn't exist in the first place. Game developers create games for the purpose of making money. If they thought no one would pay for the game, they wouldn't make it.

Saying the game needs them is just a way for free players to justify not paying. It's disingenuous and yeah, that part irritates me some.

Look, if someone can't pay for the game because they can't afford it, or won't pay for the game because of certain principles they have, OK, fine. I have zero problem with that, trust me. I'm not a Lannister; I don't 「dookie」 gold or dollar bills. And like I said above, I'm all for piracy against companies that exploit their customers. Firetruck 'em right back.

But saying you're paying for the game by playing the game is silly. C'mon. That's like eating at a restaurant every day and saying you pay for the food you eat by eating the food you eat.

Again, as I made sure to mention in a previous post, this is my own personal opinion about this. If somebody sees it differently, that doesn't make them wrong, or me wrong, or Justin Bieber wrong. Wait, no...yeah, that guy is always wrong. But just him.

Meanwhile, on the freemium thing, I'm a little more firm.

(Note: Quit reading here unless you give a 「dookie」 what I think about how freemium games work. The tl;dr is Freemium games bad, Rocky Road good.)

Yes, the freemium model is shady. If you haven't already, I suggest you do a little background reading on it.

Mobile gaming companies hire social psychologists to design aspect of the games specifically to exploit quirks of human behavior so people spend money they normally would not. They're the same behavioral experts who came up with the manipulative tricks used by casinos, such as pumping in oxygen-rich air to make players giddy and not having visible clocks so players become time-disoriented.

That's why so many freemium games, War Robots included, use some form of gambling such as opening chests. Because they are based on that same principle of stimulating the VTA portion of the brain to release dopamine. Every time a player gets a reward from the game, dopamine is released, giving the player a feeling of happiness and well-being.

Players will return time and again to get more of that feeling. And to get it, you have to slowwwwlllyyy accumulate game currency. Many players are content to wait. But for players whose brain chemistry tends toward compulsive behavior - comprising a smaller but significant portion of the base - devs are only too happy to offer quicker dopamine fixes through the spending of cash.

Because those are the real targets of freemium games...the ones most likely to become addicted to some degree. If you look closely at most freemium games, you'll see that just about every aspect of gameplay, in ways subtle and not-so-subtle, focuses those players on the path to a purchase.

For example, Hothead Games, makers of Kill Shot Bravo, offers its premium weapons, which become obsolete within one or two levels (maybe three days of game play), for prices ranging from $40 to $70 worth of game currency. Most players are unwilling to pay those prices because of how quickly the weapons lose their value.

However, Hothead also puts those same premium weapons into chests that players can open for about $5 worth of currency. Well, obviously that's a much better deal. Except that the drop rates are so low, you usually don't get a premium weapon until the 20th chest, which is a guaranteed winner. Even then, it will be one of several "premium" items, not necessarily the one you wanted, so you might have to continue.

Yet, knowing it's an obvious scam, players still hit those chests over and over, looking for that dopamine release.

And Kill Shot Bravo is not even the most egregious example. Players have reported spending $500 a week on games like Mobile Strike and Clash of Kings, which focus on building bases. Upgrading bases takes so long, players can spend months or years waiting to reach a competitive level, or, as the game constantly reminds them, they can buy packages that cost hundreds of dollars and level much more quickly.

Kings, especially, requires so much expensive game currency, it's spawned its own Chinese gold farming market.

The reason for all of this is that the mobile gaming industry nearly tanked because people refused to pay for games. Developers had to scramble for a way to recoup their investments and decided to try the in-game purchase model. They soon found that only about 2% of players would pay, but that 2% would really pay, especially when psychologically manipulated.

Making a tidy profit wasn't enough. It became an industry-wide practice to squeeze players for every possible dollar. And while some of them will try to justify it in interviews and at conferences by saying it's wealthy sheiks and whatnot who are paying most of it, that's bull「dookie」.

The reality is, most of the money comes from regular working people who intend to spend $20 and end up spending $200.

It's one thing when a game is straightforward about purchasing, as War Robots is for the most part. But it is something else entirely when the game disguises itself as entertainment, but in reality is nothing more than a psychological process for extracting money.  Especially when that game is cynically and specifically crafted at every stage to exploit people's weaknesses.

And that is predominantly what freemium games are. The mobile gaming industry itself acknowledges this. And yeah, it's shady AF. Actually, sleazy is probably a better word.
 

in my opinion with rockets as powerful as they are a Galahad is a waste of gold at this point...I'm saving for Korean bots

Might be the wisest thing to do at this point. I'll probably just keep saving Au then until the Korean bots actually arrive, so we all know their Au price, as well as META probability.

For me, working hard and completing missions is much more satisfying than buying Au. Since War Robots has such little variety of bots and weapons, I would like to take my time grinding and enjoying the game rather than buying Au.

I get what you're saying, and you're right. That's why I kind of expected the response I got.

Guess I was not reading into this particular message so much as the system that allowed it.

With good customer service, when a paying customer makes a complaint like that - concise, specific, and not foaming at the mouth - there is a procedure in place to escalate it up the chain. Low-level reps are trained to recognize messages that need further attention for the sake of customer retention.

They forward them to someone who receives a much lower volume of complaints and who does have the time to craft a personal response at least acknowledging the customer's frustration. Maybe even make a symbolic gesture...in this instance, I dunno, hey, here's 100 gold to help make it better. Something that doesn't really fix the issue, but at least makes it look like they care.

Last week, I complained to my ISP about frequent outages we've been having. Few days later, a "customer advocate" called and told me she was crediting my account for the days we were down. Only cut my bill by about $25, but it impressed the hell out of me.

I know Pixonic doesn't have those kind of customer support resources.

But it does seem significant to me that there's apparently nothing in place to even pretend they are actually listening to customers.

Oh noooo, that's not condescending at all. Thanks for your thoughtful input. It was invaluable. Really.

Can't wait to tell the GF that I got called 'sweetbuns' by some crotchety internet rando. She'll be so jelly.