This is a tricky one. We don't want to over-reward spenders and some would argue it's already imbalanced beyond repair, those people are not wrong but we can try to reduce the pain! So, I propose a two-pronged attack:
Make support levels better, but also add in a third pillar beyond the lineage and support ones:
Loyalty Points. LP are earned as follows -- 1 LP daily, 10 weekly, 50 monthly, 1000 yearly, retroactively added based on sign-up date, logins not necessary to accumulate LP so you can revive a 'quit' account months or years later (if we all live that long!) and get all the missing LP right away.
LP will have two functions: New Daily rewards which will stack, no need to log in it will calculate your rewards based on last logged in reward tier of LP. So if you have 20 LP and log off for a week and come back, you will trigger 7 days of 20 LP reward tier before you gain a week's worth of LP (in this case 17.) So yes, you aren't going to be penalized as far as gaining LP but you won't get as many rewards all at once, I know Ray wants to encourage activity so I figure this way you get less of a punishment for taking vacations, accumulating LP and reaching the higher reward tiers will be the most important part!
The other function of LP will be new passive boosts for your account, including:
Guild Boosts: -1% stone cost per building which would be additive not multiplicative to prevent reducing cost to 0, so if all 40 members have let's say -10% stone cost each this wouldn't be -400% stone cost, it would be the inverse proportion or in this case one fifth or 80% cost reduction. I'm not savvy enough at math to explain this with a simple formula but the math wizards out there could step in!
+1% stone gain
+1% log gain
+1% challenge damage
+1% series damage
+1% party boost (damage AND exp)
The costs and power of all these boosts is of course, up to testing and balancing!
Important note: These boosts will not be respeccable, this means if you spend LP on a particular boost you are LOCKED IN and can never get those LP back! There absolutely MUST be a confirmation popup for every single LP purchase to prevent accidents, this is not up for debate because these boosts are powerful and LP are going to be relatively slow to obtain!
For now I will leave it with just those handful of boosts, and again costs can range vary wildly based on their power. Obviously stone cost reduction for buildings would cost way more than just a 1% stone gain! Also, the costs don't have to increase linearly like they do with other upgrades.
For example, the first point of stone reduction cost could only require 5 LP, while the 10th point might cost 100 LP or more.
So, while everyone will benefit heavily from these boosts, all players can earn LP equally regardless of their spending habits and free players can heavily contribute to their guilds with these additions!
On the other side of the coin... The heavy spenders are very familiar with the upper support level tiers and we find that they are quite awful, ESPECIALLY once you reach support 15. However, I am not going to propose blanket sweep huge upgrades and encourage super amounts of spending, but rather a few smaller benefits as well as having earlier support tiers be better so that less frequent and even free players can get some of the benefits that currently require a ridiculous and unrealistic investment.
I would like to suggest that card pack tiers be bumped up for earlier support levels, specifically the daily packs. I think small, medium and even large packs be pushed back 1 to 3 tiers, to be decided by possibly...The community?! You like to do surveys, Ray, why not let the players decide what is fair? (If everyone votes for the earliest possible tier for each, then that should show you how bad support levels currently are! )
At the super far and expensive tiers, 16+, there is almost no benefit at all and the gap between tiers is so massive that it's just a wonder they exist at all. It'd be nice to see jumbo dailies for 16, that would give me and several other 'large pack boys' a reason to spend again, but obviously there's the issue of the huge amount of diamonds between tiers. Two ideas here: bigger diamond packs with greater bonuses, special packs that reward 'support points' which simply decrease the diamonds needed for the next tier by that amount, and of course there's the little issue of the AP and pet food rewards that support tiers give. These rewards don't scale well and for many players they're just worthless. I would like to suggest increasing the lower support tiers more than the upper ones of course, I'm a fan of helping low-spenders and free players more, we don't want to increase the power gap anymore than it already is. But some kind of scaling would be nice!
And of course lineage rewards are way too spread out and minimal. Just reduce the number of days between these and cap them at about 90 days. A seasonal boost that increases a little bit at a time would be perfect!
Obviously a LOT of number discussion to be had before any of this can even be considered, but right now it's a huge issue for both the average player and heavy spender alike!
Make support levels better, but also add in a third pillar beyond the lineage and support ones:
Loyalty Points. LP are earned as follows -- 1 LP daily, 10 weekly, 50 monthly, 1000 yearly, retroactively added based on sign-up date, logins not necessary to accumulate LP so you can revive a 'quit' account months or years later (if we all live that long!) and get all the missing LP right away.
LP will have two functions: New Daily rewards which will stack, no need to log in it will calculate your rewards based on last logged in reward tier of LP. So if you have 20 LP and log off for a week and come back, you will trigger 7 days of 20 LP reward tier before you gain a week's worth of LP (in this case 17.) So yes, you aren't going to be penalized as far as gaining LP but you won't get as many rewards all at once, I know Ray wants to encourage activity so I figure this way you get less of a punishment for taking vacations, accumulating LP and reaching the higher reward tiers will be the most important part!
The other function of LP will be new passive boosts for your account, including:
Guild Boosts: -1% stone cost per building which would be additive not multiplicative to prevent reducing cost to 0, so if all 40 members have let's say -10% stone cost each this wouldn't be -400% stone cost, it would be the inverse proportion or in this case one fifth or 80% cost reduction. I'm not savvy enough at math to explain this with a simple formula but the math wizards out there could step in!
+1% stone gain
+1% log gain
+1% challenge damage
+1% series damage
+1% party boost (damage AND exp)
The costs and power of all these boosts is of course, up to testing and balancing!
Important note: These boosts will not be respeccable, this means if you spend LP on a particular boost you are LOCKED IN and can never get those LP back! There absolutely MUST be a confirmation popup for every single LP purchase to prevent accidents, this is not up for debate because these boosts are powerful and LP are going to be relatively slow to obtain!
For now I will leave it with just those handful of boosts, and again costs can range vary wildly based on their power. Obviously stone cost reduction for buildings would cost way more than just a 1% stone gain! Also, the costs don't have to increase linearly like they do with other upgrades.
For example, the first point of stone reduction cost could only require 5 LP, while the 10th point might cost 100 LP or more.
So, while everyone will benefit heavily from these boosts, all players can earn LP equally regardless of their spending habits and free players can heavily contribute to their guilds with these additions!
On the other side of the coin... The heavy spenders are very familiar with the upper support level tiers and we find that they are quite awful, ESPECIALLY once you reach support 15. However, I am not going to propose blanket sweep huge upgrades and encourage super amounts of spending, but rather a few smaller benefits as well as having earlier support tiers be better so that less frequent and even free players can get some of the benefits that currently require a ridiculous and unrealistic investment.
I would like to suggest that card pack tiers be bumped up for earlier support levels, specifically the daily packs. I think small, medium and even large packs be pushed back 1 to 3 tiers, to be decided by possibly...The community?! You like to do surveys, Ray, why not let the players decide what is fair? (If everyone votes for the earliest possible tier for each, then that should show you how bad support levels currently are! )
At the super far and expensive tiers, 16+, there is almost no benefit at all and the gap between tiers is so massive that it's just a wonder they exist at all. It'd be nice to see jumbo dailies for 16, that would give me and several other 'large pack boys' a reason to spend again, but obviously there's the issue of the huge amount of diamonds between tiers. Two ideas here: bigger diamond packs with greater bonuses, special packs that reward 'support points' which simply decrease the diamonds needed for the next tier by that amount, and of course there's the little issue of the AP and pet food rewards that support tiers give. These rewards don't scale well and for many players they're just worthless. I would like to suggest increasing the lower support tiers more than the upper ones of course, I'm a fan of helping low-spenders and free players more, we don't want to increase the power gap anymore than it already is. But some kind of scaling would be nice!
And of course lineage rewards are way too spread out and minimal. Just reduce the number of days between these and cap them at about 90 days. A seasonal boost that increases a little bit at a time would be perfect!
Obviously a LOT of number discussion to be had before any of this can even be considered, but right now it's a huge issue for both the average player and heavy spender alike!