Tokens for gems idea

[PBJ]

I was thinking about the last bunch of competitions and I thought it could be helpful to have an option for buying tokens with gems in the token exchange “store.” The competitions seem geared towards encouraging gem expenditure anyway. Why not allow another option for players to get competition exclusive items especially when there are people who can’t or won’t play with the regularity required for placing high enough to get them? Yes, you could undermine the competition if you allowed unlimited token purchase, but you could assign a daily maximum, maybe one that doesn’t exceed the token max during play. This would be great at the end if you find yourself short on tokens and you wanted to get that TF or accessory. Or it could only be available after the competition is done during the token exchange period. There are quite a few ways to minimize the impact to the competition.

What do you think?

Topic

[datguygamer]

I actually like this idea. It would eventually make the competitions a bit more easy. If I have a stick of gems, I can very well buy tokens and get my prize and that’s good for me.

[Optimus_Pig]

It’s a good idea, which is probably why Rovio isn’t doing it.

IIRC, the Holiday competition (the one where we had the opportunity to buy Shockwave) did in fact have gems as a token exchange option. It was non-repeatable, though (i.e. you can exchange tokens for coins as many times as you like as long as you have sufficient tokens, but once you exchanged your tokens for gems that was it, finito).

[datguygamer]

@optimuspig He means buying Tokens with Gems, not the other way around. The Holiday competition gave you the chance to get Gems with Tokens whereas this guy wants to buy Tokens with Gems so that he doesn’t have to grind for the competition and thus can get the Token stuff easily.

[Optimus_Pig]

Oops, OK, my bad.

But think about it this way: you can already buy tokens with gems, albeit indirectly, by burning through gems to recharge your competition runs.

[datguygamer]

@optimuspig
True but he is suggesting a direct method that doesn’t require so many purchases. To be honest, one single day can empty your Gem counter by 1000 or even more if you wanna stay in Top 3 and if you are especially unlucky to get a competitive board. He is suggesting a method that is direct and doesn’t require so many multiple purchases.

In the actual case, we actually spend more Gems than we should in the long run. Take an example of buying Accessories directly with gems versus buying your chances with Token to get the necessary amount. You waste more Gems in the latter case.

[Optimus_Pig]

I realize that, but think about it from Rovio’s perspective: what’s the upside for them to allow what’s being suggested here?

They *want* people to use up excess gems on recharges because they want more runs to happen because that plays into their metrics of more active players spending more time playing and viewing ads.

If all of a sudden you allow gems to be traded for tokens, that undermines their entire model. Gems are somewhat meaningless anyway, since sustained and consistent farming will eventually net you a large number of gems without spending a cent on buying them. Short of taking away the free gem chests and/or gems as mission and lab rewards (which would only anger the majority of the player base even more), “encouraging” competition recharges is the best way to achieve the dual objectives of soaking up gems and increased play time.

As soon as you mitigate the “risk” of running short of tokens by allowing gems-for-tokens, that undermines the entire challenge and competition model.

[datguygamer]

@optimuspig That statement and idea of exchanging gems for token is being made from a consumer standpoint. Of course, from Rovio’s standpoint they won’t do it simply because of profit. Isn’t that given and kind of obvious? I can give an idea about the game giving us gems instead of coins from defeated nodes but it won’t happen because of Rovio’s profit. That’s why it’s an “idea”, vague emphasis on what might happen rather than being a reality. The current way is obviously geared towards Rovio themselves as they quickly realised how bad of an idea it is to give players the option to exchange tokens for gems and thus they ditched that after one event. That’s why the bots cost 6000 tokens max and sometimes accessories cost half as much of that. Why? Because they want it to.

Alternatively, of course I would like my game to be as generous to me as possible. That’s the kind of notion that people possess: “if that happens” and “if that happened to me”. It’s the reason the world goes round dude. That’s also given