Had another club member quit the game yesterday... can't seem to stop the bleeding...
Hopefully we don't have any more members decide to cut the cord with Glu… Two big contributors now gone for good.
The good news is, I seem to be the front runner for CvC MVP in our club now lol.
From Wentz he came, he shall be returned!
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Several VIPs in our club have already essentially shut down their apps 4-5 days a week. They'll open it to see if there's any reason to play. 9 times out of 10, they just shut it right back down. One with close to a billion personal club points in the last month has only played one full event in the last week.
I'll reiterate just in case any of the GLUbots actually check out what people are saying about their product online.
Monday (Walk Off): Farcical pitching. Unrealistic and unhittable curves starting in Level 4 for some people. By the end of Level 5, when players with stacked teams can spend hours hitting weak grounder after weak grounder using batters that are boosted 80-100 points higher than the pitcher. No one minds a hearty challenge. That challenge should be winnable though, especially when you've taken the time to acquire and build a great roster.
Tuesday: The rewards for the Prime events aren't anywhere near "prime". To compete with any realistic chance of finishing well, you need to get both players of the week, build them to your level, and hope you have enough gold left to use them throughout the event. In the end, those players of the week are usually going to get benched or traded in once their bonus and boost expires. For all of that effort, you're probably not going to finish in the top 3 of your bracket because too many other clubs have either figured out cheats or are spending hundreds of real dollars for a Tuesday event. Even if you do finish well, you're only going to get a token amount of XP and some draft picks that are worth even less XP.
Wednesday: Same issue really as Monday for many players. Nothing wrong with a hearty challenge. But, Slugfest is simply unplayable for a lot of people above a certain level. Even with a roster stacked with Prime Sluggers maxed out, players often get "glu'd" on Level 6. After hitting hundreds of consecutive bombs over 500 feet, their maxed Prime Sluggers inexplicably swing and miss at batting practice pitches on the last bonus ball when they are ahead. Either that or they bomb out 10 straight homers again only to lose a tie round over 5900 points because the computer somehow posted a 580 foot homer to close the gap in the last 3 balls.
Thursday: Bonus Games are a joke. Guys only play if they have bonus players left over from Tuesday, a bunch of Bonus Game boosts from Monday, and tons of blue cash. Even the best teams playing against teams with half their team strength will lose 4 out of 5 bonus games some weeks.
Thursday CvC: Same issues as walk off when it comes to hitting. Batters with double and triple the pitchers rating will hit more weak ground balls than homers. Seemingly the only way to really succeed is to use club boosts for batting and the multiplier for every round. Then, use autoplay to get your best starting position before actually playing the game.
Weekend: See Tuesday. Add in the ridiculousness of the box odds for newer versions of players we already have.
I think these are all fixable issues. Personally, I don't have all of them. I routinely beat modes others struggle with. But, I can see why just hang it up.
When I don't have any of the named bonus players for a weekend event, I'm probably not going to chase the ridiculous box odds to get one or more. I'll wait for a free box or two to come my way. If they don't, I simply sit out.
It makes no sense to me to spend all weekend dropping gold to build streaks just so I can score about a million points over the course of the event. That's especially true when I know that other players are scoring a million points in a handful of games because they did get the super colossal big fat boss baby reward player for that event. I'm not going to waste all weekend just trying to score what others are scoring in one energy cycle or less.
However, if I have 3 of the lower level bonus players on my roster somewhere, that might change a little bit. If I'm getting 1k per hit for players from a small handful of teams, I might be able to score 5-10k worth of bonus points per round instead of just the base points. When that happens, I'm much more likely to try to go on that 25-30 game streak that costs me 400-500 gold bars per streak. If I hit on 10 of those streaks throughout the weekend, which isn't really that hard to do, I might put up 10 million points. Heck, I might even take a couple stabs at the box knowing that even if I fail, I still have players to fall back on.
I know cognitively that this doesn't matter. Everyone else is going to have these players too. It simply represents a baseline shift in the scoring results. But psychologically, it does matter. I don't feel as though I'm playing my butt off all weekend and getting nowhere.
At the same time, they really shouldn't be putting these 3.5-5 star rated normal players in the boxes. The only thing worse than getting 850 XP from a box directly is getting 96 XP indirectly. It simply isn't worth the resources necessary to level up these players to the point they are worth playing. You're only going to trade them in after the event in which they're going to hit an anemic .217 in place of a 425 Prime player on your normal roster.
Gentlemen, the "worth it" argument can go in the trash. This is a gambling game and the instincts that drive the spending are as primal as sex. People literally get hooked on this game; that's why there is the phenomena of the VIP club of players who have spent 800 bucks or more in real money on this. It is not about value or reasonable odds; in fact the more unreasonable the odds are the better since it makes being a "winner" a more exclusive designation and as I said in another post, sweetens the rush of winning vs. the despair of losing. If the game were "reasonable" the rush would be muted and you wouldn't have people lining up to spend what they do on this and the purchase of tangible intangibles that are associated with gambling. The game is what it is; they don't really try to hide that. The fact that IOS requires GLU to display odds on the boxes only further underlines what this game is all about since that rule in the Apple Store was originally made to apply to casino gambling apps, but now encompasses games such as this one .....the amount of real money that changes hands should tip everyone off that there is something to this app that runs much deeper than just a one handed baseball game.
@bigvivec that is a good argument. It is a type of "gambling" as you said and the only payout is the momentary satisfaction you get of winning or being the top dog in your club. I realized that going into the 18 version and had no problem with it as it is something that occupies my free time.
What I do have a problem with recently, and I think most other veterans of the game do as well, is the recent changes that have tilted all the odds in GLU's favor. They have taken the "fair gaming" aspect of it out of play and now there is much less value for those tangible intangibles you spoke of. I wish they would be classified as a gambling app so that at least they would be monitored and have to be certified for fair gaming.
Well put @Houmy
@Houmy that is a great point. They should be monitored and certified for fair gaming due to the gambling aspect and poor odds. And there is no monetary payback potential. It is just going in their pocket and you get that moment of Glory in your club for being top dog and/or ranking high enough to get 1/10th of the resources you used back as "reward" (and that is a generous estimate lol).