The Gods Unchained (GU) team surprised us all with the announcement of a new important game feature that wasn't part of last year's Roadmap (and we still don't have one for this year!). We're now going to have a Battle Pass (BP) this month, which is a very common monetization strategy in other games, including for digital TCGs. Most details are in this blog post and more information is expected before going live.
Last year I posted a few ideas about how a GU BP could look like, as part of a series of posts detailing improvements I would like to see added to the game. To me it's interesting to see if any of those ideas get implemented, as the BP matures and new features are added over time 😀.
You can read the details about the BP in the official article I linked above. In this post, I will assume you already know what the BP is about and I will focus on commentary and analysis instead.
The 3 tiers system seems good and makes sense. The BP progression system itself provides a framework for daily objectives / fun quests. We don't know exactly what those quests will look like, but I collected ideas that could fit the purpose in this other post.
Paired with a reward track that would last for the entirety of the BP duration, a BP would stack incentives on top of Daily Play & Earn (DP&E) (the two game features are independent) for players to come back regularly and thus help with retention.
BP is a recurring monthly subscription
The BP is valid for 28 days and we had confirmation in Discord that the plan is to have recurring BPs every month. This is a huge departure from the previous business model of selling a lot of expansion packs in 2 bursts per year and then collecting royalty fees from trades on the secondary market throughout the year. And Sealed tickets as well. It could be a significant boost of revenue for the GU team if they manage to pack enough value in the BP to justify a recurring monthly payment.
The question then becomes, is there value in the BP for the player?
Can you go infinite with the BP rewards?
The Premium tier is quite affordable and with 90% cashback upon completion, it's not hard to find the other 10%, even if it comes from DP&E (instead of selling some BP rewards, which are going to be cards, at least for now).
Of the 3 tiers, the top Shiny tier is where the value is at. At $40 (or $30 with discount) the final reward is a Shiny pack, which should contain at least one Legendary card of Shadow Quality or better. If this is enough to cover the $20 necessary to go infinite (since the BP completion also yields $GODS worth 50% of the BP cost) is not clear, if we go by the current prices for the last 2 expansions:
We also don't know if the discount will be available in future months, and that will surely play an important role in the calculations.
Apart from the contents of the Shiny pack, there doesn't seem to be anything else of reliable value to help cover the BP cost. Of course, if the new cosmetics were minted NFTs the value proposition would become far more attractive.
Sealed tickets could potentially become a thing of value if they are made tradable, but for the moment there is no indication that will ever be the case.
If a player wishes to spend their DP&E $GODS towards covering the expected $20 difference every month, a reasonably attainable daily average of 5 $GODS @ $0.15 equals $22.5. A partially shined up deck played at ranks Solar and above can comfortably reach these values. So it could also be possible to go infinite without spending money by tapping into the DP&E rewards.
However any player opting for this route would be consuming all or a significant part of their DP&E income just to maintain a BP at the Shiny tier every month, and it would also probably require an extremely regular playing schedule with few daily gaps.
How long would it take to earn all rewards?
There isn't much to go on at the moment, but winning with decks with high Quality cards - a shiny deck - will make the task significantly quicker. It seems some additional matches may be necessary to complete side quests, beyond the 10 DP&E matches (at ~50% win rate) we are used to now, to comfortably attain the 7500 XP points required to claim all rewards.
This also means anyone playing just a few hours a day will have to keep a really regular schedule with few missing days to reach the end as well, unless they play with super shiny decks. But someone who already plays every day to complete the 10 DP&E matches could probably complete the BP on time without adding a lot of overhead.
An engaged player with a lot of free time and a very shiny deck will be able to reach the end of the BP in just a few days.
More details especially on the impact of shiny cards are necessary to make better estimates.
Untradable cosmetics?
One thing I would change is making the cosmetics tradable NFTs. To keep them as a flex for BP buyers, they could be minted after 1 year for example, giving people the freedom to sell them if they wish, as with any other cosmetic asset. This would be an adaptation of the exclusivity approach by KARDS.
Another valid approach taken from Parallel is that rewards claimable via the BP require paying a fee. Adapting this principle to the GU account-bound cosmetics would mean the BP owner would be able to always enjoy the cosmetics in their account, but if they wish to sell them they'd need to pay a fee in $GODS, to the Forge for example. There could also be a time limit - the forging process would only be available for the duration of the BP that awarded the cosmetic. This approach would provide further utility to the $GODS token and put an interesting floor on the value of these cosmetics, which would be printed in lower numbers due to the restrictions and hopefully appreciate in value in time, as an out-of-print rare collectible.
Borb trinkets were awarded a few years back to recognize players who were helpful to the community, but at the end of 2022 the team decided to mint them as NFTs. There was a bit of discussion in Discord at the time, you can check the conversation starting here for example
https://discord.com/channels/457152051239976961/457152051239976963/1045066117376376932
Or here
https://discord.com/channels/457152051239976961/463940647968309259/1045593447760928778
So even if something that was distributed to very few players to reward and recognize their individual contribution to the game was made sellable, there is really no logical reason to keep something acquired with money like the case now for mana wheels and God portraits to remain account-bound (non-NFT).
Limits on Shiny packs purchases and potential bot abuse
Strangely we still don't have official confirmation on whether it will be possible to purchase more than one BP per account - and thus claim multiple Shiny packs at the end. But my expectation is that this would result in too many discounted Shiny packs being distributed, which would certainly impact the value for everyone purchasing a single BP, so probably not.
On the other hand, it is not clear if these conditions create a vector for abuse via automated bots. Even if no XP is awarded for losses, bots can still abuse the system at low ranks. There doesn't seem to be anything preventing bad actors from setting up bots playing with really cheap full Diamond decks in ranks 7 and below and still accrue XP.
While reaching the 500 XP daily cap from matches, it takes 15 days to earn the 7500 XP necessary to claim the Shiny pack. Then there is the question of how good is the bot detection and how reliable the value from the Shiny pack is going to be. Perhaps during the first month this won't be an issue but it may become a problem if the expected reward value is consistent and above cost.
Discord role for BP holders would be great
The BP could come with a Discord role as well, but there was nothing announced about this possibility. It would be cool if it would add a custom role icon in front of the user name corresponding to the BP tier (like the GU team members currently have). I suppose a custom-made verification bot would be necessary, similar to the bots we see in every web3 server checking for NFT ownership.
GU team member role with role icon source
In this case though, the simplest approach would probably be to find if the user has a valid BP the same way as the launcher will be able to. The bot would also need to link a player ID to the Discord account, or the GU backend database would need to keep a record of the user's Discord handle as well.
I'm usually for giving a lower priority to this sort of secondary enhancements, considering all the urgent things needed to be implemented in the game. But if the BP is going to generate income, it makes sense to hire an additional pair of hands to implement this feature, because bragging rights and flexing are a powerful motivator to drive sales.
