Early Information on Soul Exchange Updates [Part of The Beta Beat V85]

[Maryij - Ghost Division RO]

This thread is to provide early insights and discussion on Soul Exchange Updates
Don’t get too attached

• Details from Beta, especially brand-new Beta content, don’t tend to be very reliable for actual release.
• It’s incredibly common that features are changed during Beta testing, or sometimes even after testing but before release. That is, after all, the purpose of Beta testing.
• So I wouldn’t get too attached to any of this — it’s not unheard of for entire portions of features to be removed or reworked, or for radical changes to functionality to be made.
   

Soul Exchange Updates 

• The tiers are changed from 10, 15, and 20  to 5, 15, and 50.
• You can perform now 1 trade in all tiers instead of doing a single trade during the whole event.
   

Quote of info tooltip in the game:
Soul Exchange

• The Soul Exchange allows you to trade your Legendary Heroes for a new Legendary Hero of your choice from this Soul Exchange's selection.
• Soul Exchange cannot be undone.
• Traded heroes will be lost.
• Soul Exchange can be done once for each tier.

Heroes available
Tier I - 5 Heroes Required

• Odile
• Meresankh
• Abigail
• Thalassa
• Ahmose Costume

Tier II - 15 Heroes Required

• Swiftpaw
• Silverpaw
• Iocantha
• Pophit
• Peregine

Tier III - 50 Heroes Required

• Agadh
• Iron-Heart
• Gardered
• Wu Song
• Fafnir

[Ruskin505]

I could have sworn I've seen folks requesting a higher cost tier for newer heroes for years.  But I've seen almost exlusively negative reaction to a 50 soul cost tier.  If the hero option is right, I'll gladly do it.  I'm f2p with 37 legendaries at 1/1.  It's well within the possibility (just not often).

[HootingPirate]

I think most of those asking for a 50-hero tier are really just looking to clear roster space and don't care much what they get for it.

And I think a lot of the negative energy is coming from the removal of the 20-hero tier. For most players that was probably the only tier that made sense. A decision I sure hope they reverse.

Yes there has been the odd gem at 15, and even 10. But the vast majority of 10 and 15 tier options for the last 2 years were already obsolete long before they were offered.

[Ginger]

50 is too much. Switch it back to 20. The average player won't have 50 extra heroes to trade.

[BobTheSnark]

Given my penchant for “Bob’s Brief Bizarro Budget Breakdown” looks at Soul Exchanges over the years,  I’d argue that shopping for a bargain has long been part of this event — and a welcome one — and one player’s “outmoded” is another player’s godsend.

 I mean, by construction even most, if not all, of the 20-soul choices are largely “outmoded” in the frame of reference of someone with at least some number of really-recent heroes.

One of the most fun things about Soul Exchange is that it has been an event for “the rest of us” — especially C2P and dedicated F2P who could, at least once in a while, make the decision to push a bunch of dupes and “eh” and even “maybe” heroes into the pot to get something we really want.  

Yeah, okay, SE has never aimed greatly at the biggest spenders — but it didn’t need to.  Pretty arguably a large chunk of the game, from the constant onslaught of new often hard-to-match heroes vomited forth from a panoply of portals, to anything competitive (PvP or PvE ranking), ALREADY has leaned first and foremost to those both budgeted and lucky enough to have both a deep but especially ever-refreshing fully-upgraded modern roster.

It’s one thing to *maybe* make the top tier of heroes *slightly* more expensive in order to have significantly more recent choices — though given the ever-increasing pace of hero release and power, even that’s arguable.

But FIFTY SOULS?!?

Come on.

This all but puts a literal graphic between the first two tiers and the third tier marked “PAYWALL.”  There’s already plenty of this game that already increasingly feels that way, but this takes one of the handful of the actual proletarian-feeling events in the game and slaps the majority of the playerbase in the collective face with a chiding “ah ah ah!  not for you.”

Even having a cheaper lower tier of Soul Exchange isn’t going to make up for this, especially given the bevy of already-expressed opinions that “10-soul choices [almost] always just suck.”

Soul Exchange engages much of the playerbase in a way that few other events do because it IS “for the rest of us.” Taking away one-third of that from many players to cater yet again even more to the biggest spenders is an alienating decision.

And? To be honest? A player who summons so much that they have fifty spare 5* heroes to throw in, much less four times a year?  Is actually unlikely to benefit much from ANY POSSIBLE Soul Exchange.

Cheesing off a large chunk of the playerbase to cater to the already-most-catered-to part instead -- in a way that won’t even help most of the latter much if at all? Sounds like a really bad trade to me.

 

[Bruce]

I really really like this idea ! Finally I can use a lot of old unusefull heroes to get one of the newest ! And in parallel I can free my roster ! Good !

[Gargon]

I like the change. I think it could be further improved, but this version is better than what we currently have.

The 50 is tough, but the heroes are worth saving up for. I would rather pick one of those than 2 or 3 of the ones we get offered at 20.  I also like the 5, because it makes the budget deals a) affordable to basically anyone and b) so cheap they actually become an option to pick, while I would pass on them for 10. Like in this case for example Thalassa or Odile. At 10 I would not recommend picking them if you can get a better hero for 15. (Only 50%more) But 5 is nothing. And now the better option costs 200% more. So the cheaper options gain value.

I also like that picking multiple heroes is an option, especially combined with the new 5 soul category. Before the lowest were usually excluded because better heroes were picked, but now it’s possible to pick a little niche hero up on the side.  like I was very happy with Silverpaw last time, but if this SE had been available I could have picked Silverpaw and Odile as well as a Bearnie counter or Ahmose for rush etc. 
 

As to what I don´t like: I don’t see why it is necessary to get rid of the 20 category. They could have just kept it or maybe upped it to 25 for the symmetry of pricing and then added added the 50 category. I guess they didn’t want to change the gamecode to add another line of heroes or something like that? Or maybe they figured, people would complain if they upped the price by 5 souls, so instead they went to change it completely, which I guess will produce fewer complaints as it is harder to compare new and old versions. People always complain when there is an easy target to complain about: "Oh they increased the cost from 20 to 25, SG is all about money" (duh!) Vs now people have to value better heroes at a higher price which isn´t as black and white and well we all know much people like judging grey scales... But I am drifting off into sales psychology for no good reason...

Anyway overall I would be more interested in this version than the old one.

[Gargon]

4 hours ago, BobTheSnark said:

Yeah, okay, SE has never aimed greatly at the biggest spenders — but it didn’t need to.

"Need to" from a players perspective I agree. 
"Want to" from SGs persepective though. SG is happy to keep FTPs happy if it doesn´t cost them anything, yes. But if they have the option to get paying customers interested at the same time? The only thing I wonder is: why not earlier? What (especially cheap or free) players want and what SG want is not often the same thing and since they make the rules...

People already struggle with rosterspace, it´s one of the main arguments when one reads comments about SE. Now people can spend a max of 70 souls per SE compared to a max of 20 souls before. The big spenders that are now attracted more to SE, so far only had to keep 20 roster spaces for SE (if any at all, the biggest ones may not even have bothered at all)  have to buy an extra 30 (if only the 50 category is a goal) to 50 (if they want to pick all 3) roster spaces. At big roster sizes that is a considerable amount of money.
 

4 hours ago, BobTheSnark said:

This all but puts a literal graphic between the first two tiers and the third tier marked “PAYWALL.”

I think that´s a bit exaggerated. All of this money spending is on a sliding scale. The step from 20 to 50 isn´t a new dimension, not even an order of magnitude. If there´s a paywall now, it has been there before, it just moved a bit down the scale. If there hasn´t been one before, there still isn´t. So sure less people will do 50 every time than did 20 every time before. Nobody says you have to do top category every time. But if 20 was an option before you can just save up for 2 or 3 rounds to get to 50. If 20 wasn´t an option, 50 still isn´t. It´s not like we go from everybody going every time, to nobody going ever.

I think the change from 10 to 5 in the lowest category is much more significant to a lot more people than the change from 20 to 50. Now the lowest category is a serious alternative, when previously it was a "skip it, save up for better" recommendation in 95% of cases. On the old pricing you had to choose between 3x10er heroes vs 2x15er heroes, which the 15ers would always win. Now it is 3x5er vs 1x15er hero, that is much better matchup for the 5ers. Not only can a lot more people afford these heroes and if we are talking about people struggling to find 10 heroes we are in a group of players who should be able to find useful heroes in that category. But I personally will be a lot more open to actually recommending heroes as a good value deal.