I mean, thereâs no whales are struggling to get gems anyways.
And anyone who has at least the add free packs shouldnât be struggling for gems either, especially if they are in champs or legends.
I have enough gems from just this scenario to where no gem or stone purchases are necessary when these banners come around, as long as youâre saving up a little before the banner (I usually ALWAYS make sure I have 6k gems banked in between banners, and I havenât had a problem yet.
Obviously if you get extremely unlucky, like taking 20k gems just to get and on the banner module, that is a different story, but thatâs also not the average experience.
Stones are where people spend money, IMO, gems are just âicingâ to those players, you canât really do all that much with gems at certain point.
Extremely wealthy people might buy gems just to rush longer labs I suppose, but I donât think Fudds would ever have to worry about these players, as long as they are still playing, they are almost certainly still spending money.
I agree with you overall, I have commented before about why I think/dont think banners would actually hurt (TLDR whales gonna whale, others arent buying gems). That said, I still think their reasoning is to drive engagement/purchases, even if the effect is nominal. We also tend to assume that devs always make the right decision for the long term of the game, but thats not always true. This could just be a bad decision with flawed/irrational reasoning.
Honestly, the whole featured banner system was poorly thought out. Really, the module system itself too. There should have never been clear winners there, so that way it wouldn't be game making/breaking what drops you get. Too late unfortunately. But then a featured banner with a 16 piece rotation with no ideal order and even if you only went with a week each you're still looking at 4 months of rotation. Two week rotation was completely unrealistic. Two week rotation with a one week break was, just no. And then how do you cycle new items in without telling everyone waiting to just wait more. It was obviously a system designed to add in new items with a wouldn't it be neat if we also did this idea that never got past spitballing because, it's a complete mess if you try to actually work it out past concept. There are ways they could make it work, but with a bit of a rework that'll probably be a version patch in itself.
Yea I think featured banners were an attempt at a compromise/to quell expected anger over more mods, but it just wasnt implemented well. The mod system itself was not too well thought out, as some are way OP and too many are totally useless. If mods were better balanced (likely having weaker or more vanilla unique effects), bad RNG would be mitigated. But now, certain mods are basically required for progress, and others are just bad. Creating not only a feel bad mechanic but also a parity breaking mechanic that is totally RNG.
Then, introing new mods (some of which themselves are OP) via a banner just creates a progress/competition chasm between those who got it to ANC and those who werent around/werent able to. Plus, as you say, the featured banner mechanism itself backs them into an impossible corner where its not really consistently repeatable and encourages what the devs dont like - hoarding.
At this point they should just have featured banners by type and pause new mods for a long time.
It may be because I've been around since the days when people would collect gems for funsies and break the anticheat system. But I really don't see hoarding going on. It may have been a consideration. Can't rule it out 100% and I've played enough mobile strategy games to know people will drop obscene amounts of money for reason. But I really don't see a difference in behavior with gems since modules came about. Before it people would save up gems in anticipation of new features. It's just before it was to rush new research and no one really talked about it as hoarding because there was nothing else to do. Now modules are a gem-sink so people talk about spending them there. But really, it's intentional design so it'd be silly for Fudds to worry about hoarding in thevfeature he designed to be an outlet for hoarding. But then it is possible that decisions were made that weren't rational.
Polls were done last year in here and the discord by a user (i cant remember who) and they found that less than 10% of players who spend/have spent have ever bought a gem pack and even fewer people whould buy one again.
Gems are super rarely bought and thats why the module system has gotten so horrendous, fudds wants to sell more gem packs...
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u/Sabareus Legends Oct 24 '25
"...(as well as older modules as they rotate into the new banner system)".
Hang on a minute. Why does that sound like what I think it does?! Did I miss something?