Evaluating Promotional Offers

Evaluating Promotional Offers

If you read the forums, or the comments on Facebook (and I suggest that everyone should at least glance at them), you will see a constant clamor for “a promo.” Yet, when one happens, there is grousing about how it’s not a good promo, and within a couple of days the din continues.

Promos are discount sales. If a company is happy with their income, they ignore the clamor, and there are no discounts offered. But when you see them, you can rest assured that the company believes that they will make more money than if they didn’t offer a promo.

EQUIVALENT FP

There is out out there today (12 June 2014). Let’s look at it. The offer claims to be a 320 FP Value Pack, including the following:

• 2 crate rolls (those would cost 30 FP each if you bought them on the favor page)
• 500 class coins (there is no price for these, because you can’t buy them). I’m arbitrarily assigning them a value of 60 FP, but you might think they are worth 100 FP. I wouldn’t argue over it.
• 4 recombinators. In theory, you get 1 of each level (common, uncommon, rare, and epic). It would be great if we could buy recombinators. They are worth 1/3 of an LT, if you think that you can get an LT to level up by adding one. So I’ll give them the arbitrary value of 10 FP each, and call this 4. In truth, if you already have 20 of them and can’t use them, they are worthless to you. But for this exercise, I’m saying 40.
• 10 FP. Pretty easy to convert THIS one to equivalent FP, no?
• 1x “Ariel” LT. I like Ariel. At Level 1, I think she adds 5% to your property income. You can get her from a 30FP crate roll (except you might get someone else). I put 30 FP on the LT in the promo, but you could make a case for 40 or 50 since you know which one you’ll get.
• 5x Income property. I give these a zero value. They never represent much property income, and you can’t buy the 6^th, 7^th, and so on.
• 3x Energy Pack. Energy refills are 10 FP each, so this is 30.
• 3x Stamina Pack. Also 30 FP.
• 50 Chat tokens. I’ve never bought a chat token. I think you can use them to create a private chat room, and to post your army code in World Chat. I put a value of zero on these. Perhaps you like them more. You can’t possibly like them less.
• $6.4 million in game money. I also put a zero on money. I know that you can buy money with FP, but I get money with Property and by doing Jobs. At level 500, 10 FP will buy you $1 million, so they might be evaluating it at 60 or 100 FP. I use …. Zero.

When I add those numbers up, I get between 150-200 FP. To get that extra value, you have to buy 125 FP, at a cost of $20 US. You’d get 137 FP or so, because they give you a 10% bonus for FP purchases.

The bottom line on this offer is 300 FP for $20 US. Is that a good deal, or a bad deal? In general, if the “free stuff” is worth less than the stuff you have to pay for, I think it’s a bad promo. In this case, 150 > 125 so it is better than the minimum. But is it good enough? Maybe. Between 100% and 200% you have to think about it. Above 200%, it’s a really nice deal, and I’d put a BUY on it. So, how about this one? Yes or no?

If you are really hurting for CC, it might be great. I can get the CC in 3-4 days of empire games. I can get the cash in a day, but lower level players will need more than a week to get $6.4 million. If you don’t have much property income, Ariel won’t be worth as much to you as if you have a lot.

Remember that you can fuse Ariel up, and that the benefit is even greater if you have a 2* or 3* LT. At 6 stars, she gives a 17% bump to property income – when she’s seated. If she’s not seated, you get … zip. Bupkis. Nada. Rien. Ze-ro. Nothing.

BOTTOM LINE IT FOR ME

If you don’t have a lot of property income, I think this offer is probably not for you. I have a lot of property income (more than $250,000 per hour) and I can live without it.

There are properties that do what Ariel does – they are the Stock Markets that you can buy after you get a Fortress. Admittedly, a Stock Market increases property income by 1% for each Stock Market you get, up to 10 of them – less than Ariel gives if you star her up. But Stock Markets work all the time. Ariel works when she’s seated. If she’s not one of your 5 strongest LT’s, you’ll have to weaken your toon in order to use her. I like to seat her overnight, but sometimes I don’t remember. Truth be told, swapping LT’s is a huge pain in the neck for me. I forget, it takes time, some of my devices time out or take a long time … I get an attitude. But every day that you don’t use Ariel is a day that you get no benefit from the featured LT in this promo. (Someday, they’ll give you a quick way to switch LT sets. That will be a great day. The sun will shine and everyone will say please and thank you. The lamb will lie with the lion. All wars will cease, and hunger will not be found on earth.)

This time I’m passing, but maybe it’s just the promotion you’ve been looking for. I hope this exercise helps you evaluate a promo next time.

The Daily Player

The Daily Player

Some people don’t have the opportunity or the inclination to play the game more than 1 session a day. Here is a short guide to becoming a Daily Player.

A MORALITY TALE?

The game gives you several resources based on the passing of time. They are:

• 1 Energy every 5 minutes. That’s 288 per day.
• 1 Stamina every 5 minutes. That’s 288 per day.
• Hourly property income. You get 24 of these a day.

If any of those resources won’t fit into your “bucket” it will be wasted, and will not help you. It’s like throwing away food or money, your parents will yell at you. Your friends will look at you like they think that you are not to be trusted to borrow their car. Don’t waste resources, in the game or real life, so you can be likable and live a long and happy life.

STATS

Many players advise beginners to get their E and S up to 100. That’s fine advice, if you’re going to check in every 8 hours and burn down these supplies. “Burn down” is a slang term, meaning to use them up, preferably in some constructive manner. But if you’re a Daily Player, you will only get 100 of the 288 available stam every day. The other 188 will splash out of your bucket and trickle down the street. Don’t be that guy.

Get E and S to 300. Waste not, want not. If you do this to start the game, it will take you until about level 125, which takes frequent players about 3 weeks. Whether you want to be strong and level up slowly, or weak and level up quickly, you should wait to act on this decision until you have a bucket big enough to match your playing style. The daily player needs a big bucket.

PROPERTY

Once your property fills your safehouse, you only get 10% of your property income until you collect it. Let’s say that you get $10,000 per hour in property income. In 24 hours, you’d get $240,000. But if your safehouse only holds $150,000, you’d stop getting $10,000 at that point, and only get $1000 for the next 9 hours, or $159,000. That’s a loss of $81,000 (or 1/3 of the potential cash for the day).

Get a 25-hour safehouse. Or a 30-hour safehouse. You have to do some math. Some milestones:

Income of $5,000 / hour requires Safehouse Lvl 3, which costs $240,000 and protects $150,000. You should buy this just as soon as you can afford it. When you reach $5,000, start working on Safehouse Level 4, which costs $960,000 and protects $320,000.

EMPIRE

Some empires want you to play several games a day. But there are plenty that don’t stress it if you are playing at least once a day. Look around for an empire that suits your playing style, once you know what your playing style is.

GIFTING

How hard would it be for you to send out gifts once a day? You’re gonna want to start a Skull King boss someday. Wouldn't it be nice if you had friends who sent you gifts? Gifting is broken, but it still helps to try.

THE DAILY CHECKLIST

1. Join an empire battle. When you’re out of ammo, leave the battle and …
2. Burn down your energy. You may need to shuffle your LT’s, to level up the right ones, get the benefit of their skills, etc.
3. Burn down your stamina. I do boss jobs, but you can battle if that’s your thing.
4. If you level up, return to step 2.
5. Collect your property income.
6. Donate to your empire. If you have Victoria, seat her first.
7. Buy new property, if you have the money.
8. Buy lots of FP, use it on Crates, Scratchers, and Refills. I skip this step.
9. Put the balance in the bank. If it’s more than a million dollars, seat Charmaine first.
10. Pay respect to the faction of your choice.
11. Set up your LT’s for battle. Return to the empire battle. Use up all your tokens.
12. Return to your happy Real Life.

There isn't anything the Constant Player does that a Daily Player can’t do. You might get there slower, but Daily Players are nothing if not patient.  

Update 1.75

This week there was an update. The main changes, according to the app store:

• Game Center
• LT Skins coming soon
• Properties page polishes
• Lots of minor improvements and bug fixes
• As always, more FREE updates to come!

A bit more information based on a day of play and some forum posts:

The apple GameCenter is now used to transfer characters. You can switch from one character to another, for up to 5 characters on a single device. There is a 2-hour cool-down period. This doesn't mean that you can create many characters on a device. You can't have more characters than devices. But once you've created them, There is apparently a way to play multiple characters on a single device. I want to know a lot more details, and I'll write about it as soon as I know the relationship between a character, a game-center account, an appleID, and an email address. 

LT Skins is curious - apparently you can change the appearance of your LT's. Are we going to be dressing them in matching clothes?

Properties page polishes refers to a change in the top of the page. Some people think that it's not underworld enough, that it looks too clean. A briefcase shows up and fills with money. Kind of cartoony. But I can say this - if you're playing on an iPhone 4, it's way faster than before. 

Which brings me to my favorite change - they added settings to support turning off some graphics and animations. Overall, that really helps on the older iPhones. I turned it off on everything, because after I've seen the cool graphics and effects a couple of dozen times, I'm only interested in how it plays, not how it looks. 

But that's not all. There are two new "secret jobs" in the Westside district. Financial Center and The Docks will each give you a crate roll for completing them. And in the process, you get 40 SP from each one. These are "cheap" SP, too. In some parts of the game, a star costs 1000 energy. In this area, there are stars for 200 SP and less!

On 13-March, PA mentioned an upcoming event (an "Ultimate Boss"), new LT's, items, and bosses. Some of the LT's are from the newest district, Mexico. But there are other LT's pictured that we haven't seen in the game yet. Speculation about the timing of this event has been constant. I predicted it would be two weeks, so I'm almost a month past my guess. Others suggested "Tax Day" which has also passed. Perhaps, this big holiday weekend, we'll have some kind of promo / event starting up. 

I can't wait!

Filling the Inner Circle of Lieutenants

Filling the Inner Circle of Lieutenants

There are 5 seats in the inner circle. Here’s how you add them.

1. RIGHT HAND. You get the Right Hand seat at the beginning. It’s only metaphorically a right hand seat, the chair is in the middle of five of them. It’s your “right hand man” so to speak. This is the only seat that can level up. It gets no seat bonus.
2. ENFORCER. You get the enforcer when you complete the “No More Talk” job in Midtown. The enforcer gets a seat bonus of 10% of attack. For example, if your LT has 53 attack, they get 53+6. You can see this on the LT page.
3. CAPTAIN. You get the captain when you complete “Calling the Captain” in the Downtown district. The Captain gets a seat bonus 100% of defense. So, if your LT has a 53 defense, they get 53+53. You can see this on the LT page.
4. ASSASSIN. You unlock the assassin seat when you reach level 100, if you have the CAPTAIN seat open. The Assassin gets a seat bonus of 100% of Attack.
5. UNDERBOSS. You unlock the UNDERBOSS seat when you reach 500 allies, if you have the ASSASSIN seat open. The Underboss gets a seat bonus of 50% of attack and 50% of defense.

Maximizing your seat bonuses

A forum post by Voodoo Jester contains a simple process for assigning these seats.

1. Put your highest attack at Assassin.

2. Put your next highest attack at Underboss.

3. Put your highest remaining defense at Captain.

4. Put your next highest attack at Enforcer.

5. Put your next strongest LT in the right hand seat.

This is a fine way to load them for empire games. You have to use some common sense. The idea is to max the seat bonuses, and sometimes you might have to try things a couple of ways before you find the best combo. 

But empire games aren't all you do in UWE. You might want to have some other setups.

For doing district jobs, you want:

• Penelope,
• Michael if you’re buying weapons,
• Blade if you’re wanting some cash.
• Baron, to save you some clicking

At Level-up time, you might want:

• Tagg, for more energy
• Caine, for more stamina
• John, for energy
• Shun, for energy
• Fang, for stamina

When doing Boss Jobs, you might want:

• Hector or Lucas for extra boss damage
• Stacy, to save on healing costs
• If you’re a sniper, Blink or Pain for criticals

When you’re going to be away a while, you might want:

• Ariel, to add to property income.
• Your best defensive players, to help when you are attacked.

They really should let you set up these groupings and switch them all at once, but for now you have to do it one at a time. And don’t forget to seat Victoria when you are donating to your empire!

New Property - Bar

This week Kabam added a new revenue property to the game: the Bar. It costs about $2500 and pays $250 per hour - that's a 10-hour payoff. There is nothing so good among the previously available properties. Oh, and the buildout takes only 30 seconds. I don't know what that is in metric, but it's fast.

You are only allowed to buy 3 (well, you buy one, and upgrade it twice). Every player, especially every beginner, should get these three as quickly as possible. $750 of income per hour in a couple of minutes, for 7500? Run, don't walk, to your device and buy them.

Another unusual thing about the Bar is that the image changes as you upgrade it. As if you bought a run-down bar and spruced it up. I suspect that the bar was used as an example of how this graphic adaptation might be used as a general feature of properties. Over time, I expect more bar upgrades, and more graphic changes in other properties.

This is how the bar looks when you buy the first one. Barrels stacked high. 

27 more seconds til it's ready!

After you have two, no barrels

So you buy it ...

Now it looks more like a night club. So fancy your original customers don't like it anymore. 

At Paradise cove, the merchants change every 3 or 4 levels, and the ships about the same. UWE may eventually use 3-4 images to show the progress for properties through 10 levels as well.

In Hay Day, houses start at level 1 and go to level 4. Each level is visually different from the others. If you saw them side-by-side, you could tell the differences.

It's common to give visual feedback about the status of your progress in leveling up properties in several games, and it appears that UWE is about to become one of that group of games.

Some users will complain that they wanted something else for Christmas, so to speak. I'm not trying to suggest that introducing the bar this week was the best thing that Kabam could do, but just to describe what has happened, and how you might use it in your game.

The Great Wiki

One of the best reference resources for the game is the wiki [link]. Squiffle and his minions do a great public service describing the game.

If you find things that aren't right, or are missing, just volunteer. There are instructions on the home page. If you can help make it better, then be a good scout and just do it.

Help make the UWE world better.

Seven surprising things that happen in UWE

Some things in the game just pop up and you say, "Why in the heck did THAT happen?"

• Sometimes you level up, and click on stamina/bosses, and you have zero health. Leveling up refills your health. Where did it go? It went to some boss, who was pounding on you when you weren't even in it. If you join a boss fight, your health is on the table at all times. Which is cool. You only need it while you're hitting them. And if it's zero the rest of the time, people can't attack you. 
• Sometimes you look at your achievements (that trophy icon in the upper left of the screen) and if you scroll through them, you find one that you have earned but not collected. 
• The game gave me the achievement for $200,000 in hourly property income, when I only had 194,000 in property income. Apparently, just starting the next Caribbean Island was enough. 
• Sometimes you look at your profile and you find that you have a scratcher that you haven't used. 
• If the turn you take to level up puts you over the XP target for your current level, the extra XP is applied to the next level. Playing this angle makes it possible to level up repeatedly at the low levels. Some players will shuffle different lieutenants into the inner circle to maximize this effect by increasing the max Stam and Energy for the next level.
• The Personal Armory property adds +1 attack to each of your lieutenants. If that LT is seated, and gets a bonus such a double attack, the armory point is doubled, too. The same goes for the Boxing Gym and LT defense. If you buy all 10 of each, you'll be adding 10 attack and 10 defense to every LT, and if you have all five seats open, an additional 26 attack and 15 defense to your seat bonuses.
• Sometimes, when you have an alt, and you get to an EvE game late, they don't have the same number of tokens. What made one of them wake up sooner? Getting shot.