Originally Posted by Eab1990

Okay, serious question. Has Nutaku ever given me reason to believe that a newly-created system of theirs wouldn't devolve into a whalefest?

I was critical of their first batch of sales, like the infamous Bridal Cactace step-up gacha. I stopped when they made up for it with the Bridal Oncidium gacha and basically the entire month of November. Now, even if they host bad sales, I assume they bounce back. But even back when Bridal Cactace gacha happened, I was getting brushed off with "don't like it, don't buy it" apologists. As if there wasn't reason to believe that 5* variants of 6* girls would get paywalled the same way if no one had spoken up.

Now? There's no reason for me to believe that Nutaku will handle this well, and I'm not crazy for voicing my concerns. Frankly, I'm more concerned that people aren't scrutinizing Nutaku further after last month's batch of closures.

And no, you have it wrong. A paying playerbase that has no freemium playerbase to feed off of will eventually shut down on its own. Look at games like Angelic Saga, that was a circle of whales that barely kept it afloat. Then look at current popular gacha games like Fire Emblem Heroes, which, as much as the playerbase would have you believe otherwise, doesn't neglect its F2P players and gives them reasons to keep logging back in.

I agree with at least some of your main points.
TP is a) only a grossly useful measure of actual team effectiveness, b) maximizing TP in ranking lists is probably counterproductive to putting together good teams, and c) I don't take seriously any 'competition' therein.
I personally didn't miss the old ally ranking since I don't really care, and if I ever did wonder, I am capable of adding 4 numbers together and seeing where it lists within the allies list sorted by TP.
That being said if the awards are along the lines of coins/manyus/ampies/seeds? Sure some extras would be nice but it won't make me do anything any different except maybe push ahead those last few levels on my rainbows. Exclusive girls or something similar? It'd be a very depressing move and I'd be less inclined to spend time.

At the same time Eab, for someone who didn't see the Discord argument, you're coming off with a very aggressive and off-putting tone. I mean I only have a vague idea of what KanColle is and sure that means you can't just point at it and say 'this should be like that' but it doesn't mean that discussion is pointless.

And I agree that once the game becomes sufficiently F2P unfriendly its chances become dim. I mean even whales tend to slow down on spending after a while, when they have most/all of what they want. To keep income steady you need to make sure that other people get personally invested into the game and then maybe have the chance to sell them something. If it's up front pay then that's not as attractive.

If you wanted real competition, you could come up with things that are both more interesting and less of a pure 'whale or gtfo' than a TP competition though. Just a thought or two off the top of my head, measured damage against a raid boss, limited turn count, 5 tries per player, and maybe sort players into classes based on TP or something else so that you're measuring effectiveness. Randomize damage types from week to week and it becomes at least a bit of a challenge. Maps with again limited number of tries, awards based on max number of chests gathered in a run, few RNG nodes but plenty of switch nodes and alternate paths. All this would take work though so it's just a pipe dream. (And BTW PvP in SenPro doesn't really favor whales. It favors no-lifers coordinating with other no-lifers, but whaling of only limited use).

We'll see what the rewards are. I'll probably mostly ignore competition though. I mean how do you really 'compete' anyways, other than stacking up more rainbows and more ampies, which is really not what I want to be doing.