Spiral Knights - The 3x UV system is a stroke of genius

The 3x UV system is a stroke of genius

21 replies [Last post]

Thu, 07/21/2011 - 01:32

Quasirandom

I haven't read all of the forum threads about the 3x UV system in full yet. But what I have read completely misses the point. So I'll have to explain the point in this thread.

The problem that game designers face is that different people are willing to pay different amounts to play the game. If one person is willing to pay $10/month, and a game charges $15/month, then he says, forget it, it's not worth it, and pays nothing. If another person is willing to pay $50/month, and a game charges $15/month, then he pays $15/month and is happy. But the company could have gotten $50/month from the second person. In both cases, there is revenue that the company could have gotten that they're not getting. Ideally, a company wants to get the first person to pay $10/month and the second person to pay $50/month.

But that's hard to do. If the person who pays $50/month doesn't get anything more than the person who pays $10/month, then he gets upset that the other person gets just as much as he does for $10/month. If the person who pays $50/month gets some big in-game advantages for it, then the person who pays $10/month gets upset that he's paying to be at a crippling disadvantage and not getting to play the game for real, and then he quits. Games that put too overpowering of gear in the item mall may keep the $50/month people happy for a while, but then everyone else quits, and the $50/month people aren't happy to pay that for a dying game, so they quit, too.

Furthermore, if you don't offer the $50/month people extra stuff, they might find it elsewhere in ways detrimental to your game. For example, if World of Warcraft charges everyone $15/month for a subscription, then what do the people who are willing to pay $50/month do? Some of them go to GenericGoldSellingSiteNiHao.com (I hope that isn't a real URL) and buy gold or powerleveling or whatever. Some of the gold comes from gold farmers who harass real players to protect the best farming areas. Some is looted off of hacked, stolen accounts. Some isn't actually paid, but just becomes credit card theft. All of that is detrimental to the real players of the game.

And then to try to find people to buy their wares, the gold selling sites have to spam endlessly in the game, on game forums, on game fansites, or whatever. That drives people nuts. In a game where accounts are free, banning the gold spammers doesn't accomplish anything, as they'll just create another account and be back in a few minutes.

So the trick is to set things up such that people who are willing to pay $50/month for a game see things that they think are worth their $50/month, while simultaneously convincing the people willing to pay $10/month that missing out on the expensive stuff isn't a big deal. And you want it to scale to every arbitrary price point, so those few highly valued customers who will pay several hundred dollars per month think they're getting value for their money, too. And you want people unwilling to pay a dime to at least tell their friends that it's an awesome game and they should all play it, and not be offended that only people who pay get all the good stuff.

You'd also really like to convince the people willing to pay $50/month that they should pay it directly to you, and not to GenericGoldSellingSiteNiHao.com for their shady services. Telling people "we'll ban you for buying gold", "gold sellers ruin the game", or "they'll steal your credit card information" only goes so far. Action speak louder than words, and even people with no ethical compunctions against buying from gold spammers will buy from the game company directly if offered a better deal that way.

But that leaves the question of how to actually make everyone pay what they're willing to pay, without being upset that someone who pays more gets more. And that is really, really hard to do.

Enter the 3x UV system. One problem thus far is that Three Rings hasn't really been able to harvest the money from people willing to pay hundreds of dollars per month. You can buy a bunch of crystal energy, sell it on the market for crowns, and then what? There is only so much you can buy with crowns. Even if you want to buy five star weapons with high UVs, you have to wait to get the heat yourself and upgrade from three star to four star to five star, and that takes a long time.

Hence today's update. This makes it possible for people willing to spend a fortune to buy five star weapons directly. A 4k CE unbinding cost means that the price of a five star weapon starts at 4k CE and goes up from there. So people willing to pay a fortune for the game can spend some money that way. But 4k CE is only $10.

The 3x UV system is the real meat of the update. For most players, there's the opportunity to put a UV on items cheaply, rather than being stuck with no UV. If you pay more for the UVs to roll and reroll a bunch of times, then you get more. But the benefits of doing this fall off very sharply. The cost of rerolling until you get a useful "very high" UV aren't four times the cost of rerolling until you get a useful UV. They're many times that.

But then you can make it more expensive yet by going with 2x UVs, which cost five times as much for each roll as a single UV. How many times would you have to roll on 2x UV tickets to eventually get something better than a single "very high" UV? I'm guessing a lot. It's entirely conceivable that someone could spend $100 rerolling 2x UV tickets and never actually get something better than a good single "very high" UV.

But what about the people who spend hundreds of dollars per month? Maybe they'll get some nice 2x UVs. How do you get more money from them? With 3x UVs, of course. A 3x UV ticket costs 25 times that of a normal UV ticket. But it doesn't offer 25 times the utility. It doesn't even offer 3 times the utility, as the probability that all three UVs will be something useful is much less than the probability that just one would be useful if you had one. People could spend thousands of dollars per month on crystal energy to sell for crowns to use for 3x UV tickets, and still think, oh, but just one more roll, as I don't have anything good on this item.

What you need to understand is that the 3x UV tickets aren't for you. If someone has a million crowns to spend on the best UVs for his gear, a 3x UV ticket is a complete waste. Maybe you try some 2x UV tickets, or maybe you just get 1x UV tickets for everything. Even with ten million crowns to spend, you're probably better off with more rolls for 2x UV tickets and hitting on something useful that way. And that's for something on the order of $500.

3x UV tickets are irrelevant to the overwhelming majority of the game. Rather, they're a way to harvest money from those very few people willing to pay huge amounts for the game. You don't get them to pay unless you give them something for their payment, and 3x UV is what Three Rings is offering.

The great thing about it is, this doesn't unbalance the game. If player A is a little better than player B--not a lot better but just a little, mind you--and player A gets 1x UVs on all his gear while player B gets 3x UVs on all his gear, then player A will still be more effective in the game. The effects of player skill overwhelm those of gear.

Furthermore, a lot of people won't get that gear isn't that important. Just recently, there was a thread from someone saying that he had five star gear and couldn't do tier 2, and therefore, five star gear was too weak. People have been conditioned by other games to believe that gear is what matters, and not what you do with it. So it's likely that rich newbies will overpay for gear, thinking that it's the way to get better. Three Rings will happily say, the game is still too hard in your five star gear? Try some 3x UV tickets!

Another important consideration is that most people have terrible intuition about probabilities very near zero or one. If I told you that on your usual route to school or work, you had a one in a trillion chance of being killed in a car wreck each day, and you believed me, your instinctive reaction probably wouldn't be the proper, "Wow, this route is really safe, then." It would more likely be along the lines of, "Maybe I should find a different route." Because most people just don't get how vanishingly unlikely a one in a trillion chance is.

So what about the odds of a 3x UV ticket returning three useful "very high" or "maximum" (depending on the gear piece) UVs all in the same roll? Vanishingly unlikely, to the degree that it will likely never happen in the whole time that the game remains up. Getting anywhere remotely near a "perfect" piece of gear is extremely unlikely.

It's not meant to be something that you see others have and envy. It's not meant to be something that you aspire to. It's meant as a phantom carrot to tell the appropriate sort of person to buy this instead of lottery tickets. It's a way for Three Rings to get a ton of revenue from a handful of players, without hurting anyone else.

To the contrary, this actually works well at every price point. To the person playing for free or nearly so, it means more crystal energy bought with US$ and sold for crowns. This means lower crystal energy prices. To the person willing to pay a lot, this means you actually get something for paying a lot, which is more than could be said before.

To the person in the middle, it means you get a lot more than the people who pay nothing, but not that much less than those who pay vastly more than you. This is important, too, as if you keep the $100/month players and the free players, but scare away the $10/month and $20/month players who are the bulk of those who pay (it's not a fluke that subscription prices are in that range for subscription games), then the company is in trouble.

The trick is that the UV system offers more if you pay more, at every possible price point, but the returns are sharply diminishing. The difference between $10/month and $0 is huge. The difference between $90/month and $100/month is inconsequential. So if someone pays $5/month and that's less than the average player, he still gets more for his money than the average player. So the people who pay $10/month and $20/month see good return on their money, without having good reason to be upset that people who pay $100/month get more.

Like I said, the system is a stroke of genius.

Thu, 07/21/2011 - 01:47

Thoranhippo

Genius or not, this is a huge

Genius or not, this is a huge gain of goals in game. I can finally spend my crowns on something worth it. I wouldn't try to think further about it, I expected anyway that one day there'd be more than one UV available per equipment. I've played other F2P games in the past which works in the exactly same way; meaning Spiral Knights content will keep expanding and welcoming more players, that's a great thing!

Thu, 07/21/2011 - 01:48

Repair

I love this update.

Thu, 07/21/2011 - 05:05

Thelemon

Legacy Username

i just kept myself at 1 UV as

i just kept myself at 1 UV as a 10$ monthly spender, and got a very high on my tier 4 item soon to be tier 5, and im happy. im sure OOO will get a lot of things from this update

Thu, 07/21/2011 - 06:16

Muduku

Legacy Username

chances

well one question i have: is it possible to roll the same kinds of UV's? Like one low fire resist and one medium. I have been checking the AH and i havent seen one, so my guess is no. The reason why this is relevant is because it increases the probability of getting a better UV.

This is because after every roll for an UV, another branch of possibilities is eliminated. So After two UV's the chances for getting a better third is increased significantly.

Thu, 07/21/2011 - 06:35

Bong

all will be more expensive yet again.

my bet the CE price will eventually go on the rise again in 2-3 weeks time. probably even higher then before the patch.

Thu, 07/21/2011 - 06:39

Metaphysic

Legacy Username

I think the most interesting

I think the most interesting part of the 3 UV system is that you can't actually get 3 good UVs on an item. The only good weapon UVs are CTR and ASI and the only good bomb UV is CTR.

The only reason to get 3 UVs is for armor, but since armor is fairly irrelevant at higher skill levels it's a bit of a waste.

The 3 UV system really is a genius idea since it will remove massive amounts of money from compulsive min/maxers while knowledgeable players are completely unaffected.

Thu, 07/21/2011 - 06:41

Algol-Sixty

Let me summarize what

Let me summarize what Quizzical wrote: OOO is using the same micro-payment techniques for the same reasons as when they introduced it into Puzzle Pirates about 5 years ago.

Thu, 07/21/2011 - 06:59

Splinter

Part of gaming is a business.

Part of gaming is a business. but what it also does is give those of us who have nothing better to do, a bit of a task to accomplish. I was in the middle of collecting a whole new set of 5 star gear to be a gunner. Now I've gone back to my original build and am focusing on getting UVs (3x) for all for the fun of it. Hard to knock something that gives the game more play value and gives me a reason to do jelly runs for massive crowns.

Thu, 07/21/2011 - 07:31

miojoxhl2

Legacy Username

1- Jelly runs don't give

1- Jelly runs don't give massive crowns anymore.

2 - 3X UV's is a stroke of stupidity if you're the buying side.

It's probably the chance of throwing a coin and it start floating in the air, not landing anywhere at all.

I'd pay 375k for 3 very high UVs that I could choose from.
Like:
Shadow Defense
Normal Defense
Elemental Defense

Now paying 375k and have a HUGE chance of getting:
Poison Resist Low
Stun Resist Low
Sleep Resist low

I'm never paying for that and I'm willing to spend as much as $200 a month on the game (have been doing it so far).
Whoever spends money on that has gone bonkers, IMO.

Thu, 07/21/2011 - 07:55

#10

Sunless

I'm never paying for that and

I'm never paying for that and I'm willing to spend as much as $200 a month on the game (have been doing it so far).
Whoever spends money on that has gone bonkers, IMO.

Good. It's not meant for you.

Thu, 07/21/2011 - 08:02

#11

Splinter

$200 /mo vs 375k crowns /3xUV

$200 /mo vs 375k crowns /3xUV ? Hmmm

Also lets not forget there's a chance to get 2 or 3 UVs from crafting items as well.

Thu, 07/21/2011 - 08:57

#12

Dogrock

well one question i have: is

Your hunch on "no" is correct. Nick stated back in the Merchant Update thread that doubling up on the same UV is not possible.

Thu, 07/21/2011 - 09:08

#13

KinkyPenguin

Legacy Username

Yeah its called gambling...

Thu, 07/21/2011 - 10:15

#14

Shrinkshootr

You wrote a huge wall of text

You wrote a huge wall of text on essentially the basic fundamentals of a microtransaction game.

And the only point of doing this was to tell us how ingenious it is...I don't want to rain on your parade or anything, but this system is just like most other F2P microtransaction systems, or a gambling game. Pay however much you want.

Nothing revolutionary here.

Thu, 07/21/2011 - 10:29

#15

Diggidy

Legacy Username

It was very long, but I read it. That says it all.

I really enjoyed Quizzical's post. I thought it was fun to read, and I think I learned a bit. Good show.

Thu, 07/21/2011 - 11:19

#16

Algol-Sixty

I thought it was fun to read,

I thought it was fun to read, and I think I learned a bit.

Then you might be interested in reading more detailed/accurate explanations, such as price differentiation and Economic surplus.

Thu, 07/21/2011 - 13:04

#17

Quasirandom

"Let me summarize what

"Let me summarize what Quizzical wrote: OOO is using the same micro-payment techniques for the same reasons as when they introduced it into Puzzle Pirates about 5 years ago."

The first 40% of the post is roughly that. But the 3 UV system is fundamentally different in the details.

"Then you might be interested in reading more detailed/accurate explanations, such as price differentiation and Economic surplus."

That depends on whether you want to read about general economic theory or this game in particular.

-----

This post is not fundamentally about how microtransactions in general work. Rather, it is about what makes the 3 UV system fundamentally different. I've never before seen anything analogous to it in any other game. In particular, neither the Puzzle Pirates business model nor Spiral Knights as it existed 24 hours ago have anything remotely similar to it. Even if you were to take exactly the same system but cap it at 2 UVs rather than 3, that would still be fundamentally different.

I'll need some calculations to illustrate my point. The basic problems of trying to model UV probabilities are that we don't know the probabilities, and people would disagree on which UVs are better than which others and by how much. So I'll use the time-honored modeling method of ignoring this and producing a model that is easy to do computations with.

(Note: If you don't understand the next paragraph, you can skip it, as it's just background details for results later, in case someone wants to check my computations.)

Let's suppose that the distribution of how good a random UV is is an exponential random variable with mean 1. This gives us a probability density function of e^(-x) on x > 0. Let's also suppose that if you get multiple UVs, they're independent and each from the same distribution as a single UV. A bit of calculus gives us that a 2 UV roll has a probability density function of (x+1)e^(-x) and a 3 UV roll has a probability density function of ((x^2)/2 + x + 1)e^(-x).

There is also the question of how much a person is willing to spend. Let's suppose the way you buy UV tickets is that you pick a threshold for how good of UVs you want. Then you keep rolling until you get something at least that good. A higher threshold means you'd expect to need more rolls. You can set the expected number of rolls to be whatever you want, by picking the suitable threshold. The question is, for a given budget, are you better off going with 1 UV, 2 UV, or 3 UV tickets?

Let's suppose that you want the expected amount of crowns that you spend to be 750k. That will get you 50 1 UV tickets, 10 2 UV tickets, or 2 3 UV tickets. That corresponds to a threshold of 3.91 for 1 UV, 3.89 for 2 UV, or 2.67 for 3 UV. You're actually better off going with single UV tickets here, as that lets you pick the highest threshold of how good the UVs are. There is actually a case for going with 2 UV tickets, as when you go over the threshold, with a 2 UV ticket, you'll tend to go further over. But 3 UVs are a disaster, as the threshold has to be something that you'll go over half the time. And this is if you're spending 750k crowns per item that you want to upgrade.

So let's suppose that you're willing to spend 1.875 million crowns per upgrade. This gives you a choice of 5 3 UV tickets, 25 2 UV tickets, or 125 1 UV tickets. Now you actually get to wait for a relatively decent 3 UV roll. But still, you can set a threshold of 4.83 with 1 UV, 5.01 with 2 UVs, or 4.28 with 3 UVs. Going with 3 UV rolls is still by far the worst here. This is enough that 2 UV tickets can beat 1 UV.

Let's say that you're willing to spend 15 million crowns per upgrade. Now you have a choice of 1000 1 UV tickets, 200 2 UV tickets, or 40 3 UV tickets. The respective thresholds of how good of UVs you hold out for are now 6.91, 7.43, and 7.22, respectively. You're still better off going with 2 UV tickets rather than 3 UVs, though 3 UVs is no longer a disaster.

I'd like to add that 15 million crowns is really a lot. At 5k crowns per 100 CE, that's 300,000 CE. It costs $750 to buy that from Three Rings. And even someone willing to spend $750 per item to upgrade is still better off with 2 UV tickets rather than 3 UV tickets in this model. And this is $750 for a single item, not $750 total for everything.

Now, 3 UV tickets do eventually win out, of course. Make it 150 million crowns per item to upgrade and the respective thresholds are 9.21, 10.01, and 10.12.

The exact crown expenditure at which 3 UV tickets win out is an artifact of the model, of course. But something like this result will hold under any reasonable valuation of UVs. Someone willing to spend "only" several hundred dollars on UVs should do so on 2 UV tickets, not 3 UV tickets. The 3 UV tickets are only there for a few people willing to spend really outlandish amounts.

Furthermore, look how big the difference in expected utility of the UVs is. In this model, the person willing to spend $7500 per item only gets about 2.6 times the utility of someone willing to spend $37.50 per item. Even that is probably bigger than the actual advantage that the person gets in-game. This doesn't really unbalance the game.

At this point, one could stop and say, in that case, why would anyone spend $7500 on 3 UV tickets that aren't really that great? I'd answer that with, why would anyone spend $7500 on a game item at all? A handful of people out there have a ton of money that they're willing to spend on games. Note also that under the new 3 UV system, such people also get more for their money than they did 24 hours ago, when there really wasn't much to buy with all those crowns.

But Three Rings manages to make it tempting to people of a suitable personality to spend the money, in the same sense that buying lottery tickets is tempting to people with the right personality. Lottery tickets are actually a horrible way to gamble; Vegas will give you much better odds. But people overestimate small probabilities and think that they have a meaningful chance of winning, just like people will think they have a meaningful chance of rolling a 3 UV ticket and getting three good UVs all at once.

And Three Rings will probably end up getting the same sort of free advertising for their 3 UV system as state lotteries do. If 55 million people buy a PowerBall ticket and one wins, that one makes the news. The rest of the 55 million do not make the news for buying a lottery ticket. That leads people to say, hey, he won, so maybe I could win, too. Likewise, sooner or later someone will get a very lucky 3 UV roll and we'll hear about it on the forums. People will think, hey, if he rolled that, then maybe I could roll something just as good. And maybe even on my very next roll.

Thu, 07/21/2011 - 15:09

#18

Algol-Sixty

OK, I'll skip over the

OK, I'll skip over the problems with your equations (UVs aren't independent, it is a discrete process not continuous, etc.) since you are just throwing it out there to make calculations easy. There are more important problems with this "genius idea", such as the vast majority of people are not even going to come close to doing these calculations, and therefore won't be able to guess that if you have 15million crowns, it is somehow better to try to use 3 UVs. Honestly, this is going to be viewed as a lottery by almost everyone and not much different than the black box lottery on puzzle pirates.

Thu, 07/21/2011 - 17:25

#19

Ailea

This is called Price

This is called Price Discrimination. It's the reason movie theaters offer discounts to seniors.

Thu, 07/21/2011 - 17:52

#20

Gospel

i have a suggestion

i might post it on suggestions forum later...

there should be a UV+ trinket available, raising the rating of UV's...

4* trinket raisies the rating of all UV'ed equipment the user has by 1
(meaning all low UV items will have an actual effect of medium UV, medium to high, etc)

a 5* trinket raises by 2

this is darn good now that multi-UV's are available..
BUT WITH A VERY LARGE PRICE

===>
or instead of a trinket, a timed upgrade like an extra weapon/trinket slot or the heat amplifier...

Thu, 07/21/2011 - 19:34

#21

Eradicats

Legacy Username

Seems like a very good

Seems like a very good analysis to me. While it's true that a discrete probability model would be closer to the true distribution, the exponential model works as well and is easier to work with, especially considering confounding factors like differing utility from each player for the same UV... etc.

I would like to know more about the probability of getting specific UVs or even UV ranks (given that you get a UV in the first place), so that we could create some probability distributions with less guesswork (rather than assuming 1e^(-x) and independence of the 3 distributions, due to non-overlap of UV type), but your general theme that it takes more money than most people are willing to pay before 2 UV tickets (and 3 UV tickets) become worthwhile is pretty accurate, and also insightful.

Search

The 3x UV system is a stroke of genius