Introduction
So not quite back-to-back, but the second iteration of the Gods Unchained Battle Pass is upon us. Predictably, its content structure is a fair bit different from the previous one, and the expected value got a serious adjustment downwards. But - is it still worth it, though? Let's find out.
In this post, I will lay out the differences, highlight the perks, and analyze the expected value from the public information available at this point. The BP goes on pre-sale next Monday.
You can find the official blog post with all the known details here. Note: the language in the blog post is a bit hazy regarding the 3rd slot. My original interpretation of the contents was incorrect and I have edited the post to reflect the correct information.
What's different, and what's not
First of all, there are no expansion packs. There are two paid tiers again, but no information on a free tier. The pre-sale period with a discount was reduced to just 24 hours, and only applies to the top tier.
Then, the prices are similar, as well as a significant cashback from playing through the BP. There is a significant boost in Flux rewards, in line with feedback discussed in Discord.
There is a new Promo card, and this time we get a tradable card back, but both are behind a gacha box RNG, so not guaranteed items for every buyer. For the first time in the game, we will have Core cards of rarity higher than Plain being printed directly from packs (shiny, in fact).
There are still complementary Sealed tickets and more account-bound cosmetics, which this time are for Deception.
What you get
The cheapest tier, 'Cosmetic', is priced at $19.99 / 200 $GODS with no available discount. It includes a few account-bound cosmetics, 2 Sealed tickets, Flux, and 165 $GODS cashback.
The top tier, 'Collectors', is priced at $34.99 / 350 $GODS ($29.99 / 300 $GODS during pre-sale with a 15% discount). It includes all the cosmetics from the Cosmetic tier, 3 Sealed tickets, even more Flux, 258 $GODS cashback and 10 Promo Packs that function like gacha boxes with 3 slots, 2 containing a shiny Core card and the third containing either another Meteorite or better Core card, a Meteorite or better Sanctum Raiders Promo card or the Raiders card back.
Where is the value?
In the Cosmetic tier, there is nothing readily available to sell. To cover the 35 $GODS difference, the most you can get from your 2 Sealed runs is 2 x 17 = 34 $GODS for 7-win runs. The current cards (from DA expansion) and most cosmetics you can get from Sealed are too cheap to make a big difference here, unless you're really lucky. Of course, if you care about the exclusive cosmetics there is plenty of value, but not readily convertible to currency - at least for now.
In the Collectors tier, you would need to earn 42 $GODS to break even, but in this case there are several possibilities:
You will get at least 20 shiny Core cards. Depending on your luck, this alone could cover the difference. The current cheapest Shadow Core card sells for ~0.3 $GODS, but the average price is ~6 $GODS and the median price is ~3 $GODS. So 20 median Shadow cards total ~60 $GODS, but you should expect the prices to fall quite a bit as players are likely to dump the cards as they mint them, if the past experience is any guide. Many of these cards will have a low trade volume, which should also contribute to depressing prices even further.
3 Sealed tickets, yielding a maximum of 3 x 17 = 51 $GODS for 7-win runs.
There is an unknown chance at Promo cards of all Quality tiers, but at this point it's impossible to estimate how much they'll be worth, and they are not a guaranteed drop anyway. We don't even have the drop chances at the moment.
There is an unknown chance at a Raider card back, but at this point it's impossible to estimate how much they'll be worth, and they are not a guaranteed drop anyway. We don't even have the drop chances at the moment.
Although more expensive, the Collectors tier offers more opportunities to generate enough value to break even. The shiny Core cards alone could accomplish this, and obtaining card backs or Promo cards would make this proposition even more achievable.
The other risk here is that the price of $GODS is on a downward trend, and it may happen that by the time the next BP comes around, if priced the same way in USD, the amount of $GODS you earned from this BP will not be enough to cover the cost of the next one.
To turn this situation around, we need more people playing the game. And a regular Battle Pass is a good step in that direction.
What is missing?
One of the good ideas that came out of the Discord feedback was a system of infinite levels past the main reward track, yielding more Flux and Core packs, for example. It doesn't seem this iteration will work like that. So we don't know if the progression will end abruptly once the rewards are collected, or if there will be a system to keep players engaged and avoid this slump in the number of played games and active players once they're done with the BP rewards:
Number of matches / unique players per day source
The cosmetics are still account-bound, which doesn't really make sense in light of the Nature Borbs having been minted a while back - which was a mistake in my opinion. In any case, there is no good reason to keep this sort of generic, paid cosmetics untradable.
A cool reward for the top prize would be a new board. However, we don't know if offering a new board with every BP is feasible due to potential financial or time-related constraints. A tiered board and boosted rewards for the other perks would be a great opportunity to start implementing a simple form of collection rewards.
We don't know if there is going to be an adjustment to the pace of progression - daily XP limit and maximum XP to claim all the rewards.
We also don't know if there are going to be any adjustments to the Missions, in order to make some of them less awkward and less time-consuming to complete in competitive game modes.
All images were sourced from https://portal.godsunchained.com/blog/battle-pass-season-2
I hope you found this analysis useful and interesting. Thanks for reading!
