(08-25-2018, 12:50 AM)Kuro Wrote: I've been pushing for something like this for a long time because the way it is causes inflation that isn't really manageable.
I think the best idea for all crates is no coins, a unique tier for each rarity per crate(I love crescent 2s for this), and dedicated sources for each crate.
There's already many coin sources and balancing would be much simpler if you only had to deal with items rather than variable amounts of coins and worrying about players' returns on investment.
The expectation when buying and opening crates should be to lose money. "I know I'm losing coins but I hope I get something really good" rather than "I'm opening crates but I hope I break even so I can keep rolling". It's literally people funding their rolling addictions rather than enjoying the content/ their time.
No, balancing is actually easier with coins than straight items. I get to control specifically the amount of return in pure coins based on the investment made into them. With items, there's no possible way for me to know how much an item will be worth in the end, but 95% of all legendary or lower items are 'worthless' to people anyways. Unique or not, it does not matter unless it's actually really good, really rare (which in turn makes the crates not as appealing to people) or used for a challenge(even then, not worth it to most). Coins make crates more 'worth it' to open.. Why? I mean, it should be clear. A crate can NOT have a good item most of the time, and what people find good, HAS to be good. Otherwise the large majority won't care. Do you want more power creep? No. Coins help you feel like you're actually getting something back from your crate, something to add up to another crate, which is another shot at a rare item, despite you actually losing money in the end most of the time. It's still draining coins, but not at a 1:1 ratio of the crate price.
Making a crate be items only, makes it so much more difficult to actually make it feel more worth it, and it's pretty much the 'top 2' weapons that make people even try to open them, or I have to do the pseudo RNG guaranteed 'godlike' system, but all the time put into the lower tier items was basically for nothing but key-fodder. item-only crates seem to work best when limited-time only. That's one of the easiest ways to get people opening them.
In my tests, the crates I rolled will result in a net profit loss anyways, if bought from the coinshop(not factoring in RNG crate perks). Most of the coin amounts people have seem to have come from Events, Djinns, Keys, Minigames, or Lucky Maps. Not coinshop-purchased crates. Removing coins from purchased crates also could have the opposite effect and actually make inflation much worse, if more people stop opening them at all, that's less coins being removed from the economy(we do not have many coinsinks. Crates are our primary coinsinks).
A dedicated source could be bad too, as the coinshop is supposed to be the primary source for crates, and it's the backbone of the entire economy. Better idea would be to make crates received from events not drop coins, while the ones you buy do. That makes a lot more sense as crates have been balanced/are continuing to be balanced to give a much lower profit margin.
Bottom line is, it's very hard to find a way to make crates feel more worth it without coins(ESPECIALLY OLDER CRATES, I don't really plan on newer crates having many coins, if any at all, but they will only be obtained through the coinshop most likely, and I have an idea to get around this entire issue I've been going on about), if I were to remove coins, I'd arguably have to make godlikes/prims from them more common. Without crates feeling more worth it, people stop buying them. We've seen it happen before when crates were like 2x their current prices, people basically just stopped opening them all together. I got daily complaints about it, and was constantly asked to lower all crate prices. Coins were not fully re-balanced to match, and that sort-of kickstarted the huge coin amount increase.