We're applying a patch today that contains small balance changes, some significant changes to our reward system, and some updates regarding supported iPad devices and GBP pricing.
Reward system update
One of the hottest topics that we've seen in our various feedback channels has been about our latest reward system, or the method by which players earn in-game currency just by logging in and playing the game for free.
We addressed a lot of these concerns in a previous news post. In short, our reward system (unlike many others you may find out there) is intended to rely less heavily on your ability to win games. The bulk of gold outside of Daily Quests, Daily Logins, and Solo content related rewards comes directly from leveling up. Since you gain experience in Faeria whether you win or lose, this means you are guaranteed to continue to earn gold in Faeria even if you can't seem to win a game, preventing you from being stuck in a negative thought cycle of "can't win, can't collect."
That said, we agree there could be some improvements made to our latest system. There is a major perception issue that comes from having such relatively small win rewards that is just not being communicated properly in-game. In an effort to remedy this, we're making the following changes today:
- You now get a minimum of 30 gold per win, guaranteed. Sometimes, you will win much more, to the tune of 150g. The rate at which you receive the 150g is based on chance and is designed to be an extra bonus you get from time to time.
- Experience given by Battle and Pandora games has been increased by yet another 30%
- The average gold gained from leveling up has been increased by 50%. It will also be delivered in more readable batches of gold.
- The average value of the Daily Login rewards has been increased from 300G to 400G.
- The legendary drop rate from Battle Chests has been increased.
- Mission pack gold cost has been decreased from 4500G to 4000G.
- The 100 gold awarded for the "First win of the Day" bonus has been removed.
- In short, we found this bonus hardly had impact on player perception and was often completely disregarded when players tended to sum up "Faeria's progression system." Many people simply just forgot it existed or didn't even notice it when it was awarded. We feel taking the gold from this bonus and redistributing it elsewhere (see above) will have a much more net positive effect on a player's F2P experience.
We hope you like the changes we've made to our progression system today, and would like to thank you for all of your feedback since the latest version was released. As always, we'll continue listening.
iPad supported devices adjustment
Effective on Wednesday, March 29th, we will be locking the iPad version to iOS10 and higher only.
After much deliberation and development consideration, this is the only way to prevent the huge amount of crashes that people are experiencing with low-tier iPads. We do not want to provide a product that does not operate to our standards of functionality, and it appears there is no other path for us forward in older iPad models.
It's a difficult decision for us to make, but we hope you understand.
Our goal is to have Faeria available on as many devices as possible, but we are forced to draw the line at hardware that simply cannot support the game without experiencing frustrating crashes.
As always, we continue to look for more ways to optimize Faeria for those devices that do support it, and only look at improving performance for the future.
GBP price balancing
We do our best to continually keep our prices even across the board to all regions, countries and platform, regardless of the currency used. From time to time, this requires us to change prices in order to match the value of different currencies from region to region to maintain balance and fairness.
In light of the GBP (British Pound) fluctuation, that seems to stabilise now, both Apple and Google have adapted their automated GBP pricing in order to reflect those changes. In order for us to keep our cross-platform experience as fair as possible, we are now applying the same changes.
Pricing changes
- 250 Gems: £0.99 (was £0.79)
- 1500 Gems: £4.99 (was £3.99)
- 3250 Gems: £9.99 (was £7.99)
- 7500 Gems: £19.99 (was £14.99)
- 16250 Gems: £38.99 (was £29.99)
- 21000 Gems: £48.99 (was £39.99)
Our goal is never to increase prices from the model we have set, but only to maintain the equality across all regions. We aim to be as transparent as possible in all of these changes and hope you understand.
Balance Changes
We are also applying the following changes:
Doomsday
- Now costs 9f (was 4f)
Failed Experiment
- Now costs 1f (was 0f)
- Gives a 4f discount on the next creature summoned (was 3f)
Stormspawn
- Now is 3/3 (was 4/5)
Windfall
- Now gives 12f (was 13f)
Lord of Terror
- Now is 0/6 (was 0/10)
- Now costs 6f and 3 Mountains (was 2 Mountains)
- Now has ability "Whenever your opponent is dealt damage, gain that much Attack."
If you want to learn more about those changes, a designer's note can be found here.
Fixes and improvements
- Improvements of our notification system in case of outdated client
- Improvements of the auto-reconnection mechanism
- Fixed bug that was sometimes preventing from starting tournament lobby games
- The order of the Rapala solo missions has been updated to put the hardest Rapala mission as the last mission of that lane
- Time of Legends's effect now works as a draw and thus triggers the appropriate draw effects
- Improvement of the shop tutorial
- Addition of levels to Friendlist
- Addition of an "Online friends" counter
- Addition of a confirmation box when surrendering
- Addition of a display box when a player's opponent opponent is still choosing his cards
- Addition of crafting and disenchanting animations
- Reduction of suggest played friend to 1
- The game now reloads when the game language is changed
- Fixed a bug that caused tooltips in Pandora drafts to be displayed behind the cards
- The Faeria Team