Pet Catcher Q & A

[PhleBuster]

Howdies,

Since there were a couple of active threads on the topic and my replies likely got lost in them without most people seeing them, I figured I'd make a new thread to quickly address some main points brought up regarding the new Pet Catcher mechanics.

On a principal level I appreciate a lot of even the most negative comments I've seen, since it's good to see a healthy dislike of paid lootboxes/gacha, which I'm strongly against myself, and I feel the overall mentality toward them is a sign of good things to come. Just feels it can be a bit misguided/overly generalized, so I'll try to clarify things here a bit.

I'll try to keep it short and simple. If other good questions come up, I'll update the post.

Q: Is this paid lootboxes? Will it be?

A: No. You earn arcade tokens by playing the game, and they cannot be bought now or in the future.

Q: Is Fruitbat Factory getting rich off the pets?

A: Well I can't say for sure before we see the next royalty report, but the publisher only gets a 7% cut of transactions, and they're no different from Steam trading card sales, which we do have a long experience with. Based on that... I expect they won't make any noticeable difference for us. There's a degree of difference to if we were selling the items ourselves, never mind selling endless arcade tokens to prey on the vulnerable (I've been known to be quite vocal about my dislike of paid lootboxes/gacha, so we've made sure there's no gambling element to our implementation), and keeping all of the sales except for Steam's fees.

Q: What are the limits on earning arcade tokens?

A: You can earn 18 tokens (6 rolls) every 3 days by playing up to 6 games. You also get 6 additional tokens (2 rolls) every week just for logging in.

Q: I'm only getting common drops, this system sucks!

A: While there's a 20% chance to get a pet drop, statistically some players will also be unlucky and go the first 3-day period or even longer without any pet drops. That does suck. We ran against a deadline in the implementation, but we'll be adding a "pity reward" system themed after the real-world UFO catchers in Japan to the game sometime soon. If you feel the RNG isn't with you, you can hold onto your arcade tokens until it's implemented (though I can't give any ETA for when it'll happen).

Q: I hate the fireworks!

A: We'll be looking at ways to make them more interesting, and will also be adding other kinds of consumable items with cool effects further down the line. But we also made them tradable now, so you can just gift them to your friend for a firework party if you don't like them.

I can never get all the items now! RIP my collection!

Our goal's never been for the status quo of the game to be one where players have everything there is in the game, but rather we've aimed to make sure nothing is permanently missable, and there's always something cool to work toward. We've played with the rates a fair bit so I'll have to double check the final figures, but by my latest count you should be on average able to get all the currently added pets and their variants (by getting all different pets directly or trading them 1:1 with others of same rarity) in less than a year - which is less than the completion rate for the challenge crates when we added them. From our perspective, it takes several months to add this amount of content to the game, so it's not a very long time frame for completion. Of course, you can expect us to add even more pets to the game, I'm just pointing out that the launch situation isn't particularly unusual.

Q: No one asked for this, so why did you add it!

A: Well, no one asks for most of the features we add to the game. We like to surprise people like that... although, in this case it shouldn't exactly have been surprise since we pretty clearly explained the inventory plans earlier. The pets themselves were a cool new idea and we spent a long time working on the most interesting implementation for them. One pet grievance we always had with adding new content is that it's not exactly secure - while VAC keeps most cheaters at bay, there will always be some who cheat endless currencies to just unlock all the content, which doesn't feel very fair to everyone else who's playing seriously. When we keep both the currency and rewards in the Steam inventory, it's a closed system and basically as secure as it can get.

Steam economy is also something Valve has recommended to us to draw in more players, since apparently games with economy support automatically become a lot more interesting to players[citation needed]. And personally I find it hard to disagree with that, when I have a $12 valued DOTA2 inventory without having paid a dime for that game. It's not like I've sold any of the items... but I could! Every time we release a new DLC, there are concerns that people will find it too much. On the other hand, we do need to make money from something, and the cheap DLC have been a pretty good method so far, in my opinion. Going forward with the Steam economy system, players could have the possibility to make enough money selling their free bonus items to cover future DLC costs and play for free forever! Well, I guess that's in a perfect world, and we can't know if the pets will even have any value or sales down the line for that to happen. If not, that's cool too.

Half of those weren't actually questions... oh well.

Updates here:

Q: How does the game determine "every 3 days"?
I'm concerned that some possibilities (such as a simple 72-hour countdown) would mean that you can't actually get tokens every 3 days but every 3-days-plus-when-you-can-next-play, slowing things down.

A: Turns out that it's a global timer, so you can get new tokens at fixed intervals (3 days for more exchange tokens and 7 days for the bonus arcade tokens). You can log in whenever during this period to claim your rewards.

Q: Does the "every 3 days" token allowance accumulate?

A:We're still working on the item stacking etc details, but the intent when everything's done is that the exchange tokens don't accumulate but will be capped at 6. They aren't really meant to be an item in the first place, it's just a physical manifestation of the 3-day period during which you can earn arcade tokens 6 times, necessitated by the Steam implementation.

Q: Why 3 tokens per spin, 3 per game and 6 per weekly login, and not simply 1 token per pull and 1 earned per game?

A: 3 tokens gives us more leeway for both granting varying amounts of tokens in the future, where the minimum grant isn't exactly 1 pull and anything more than that 2 pulls or more.

[Monty Sigurdson]

Good to have a few clarifications on this, however I feel this post misrepresents some of the criticism.

Originally posted by PhleBusterFruitbat Factory:

Q: Is Fruitbat Factory getting rich off the pets?

A: Well I can't say for sure before we see the next royalty report, but the publisher only gets a 7% cut of transactions, and they're no different from Steam trading card sales, which we do have a long experience with. Based on that... I expect they won't make any noticeable difference for us. There's a degree of difference to if we were selling the items ourselves, never mind selling endless arcade tokens to prey on the vulnerable (I've been known to be quite vocal about my dislike of paid lootboxes/gacha, so we've made sure there's no gambling element to our implementation), and keeping all of the sales except for Steam's fees.

1.) The most important difference to Steam trading cards is that you cannot control the prices of the cards, at least not in the way you can with the pets. You decide the rarity of the pets, the rarities of the cards are fixed. You cannot add new trading cards, but you can add new pets, so the economy is a lot more unstable. Rarer or newer pets will sell for more money, at least initially, and your cut will be bigger. And you can add new pets and new rarities whenever you want to drive up the prices if you choose to do so. So please don't act like this is in any way similar to trading cards because that's not quite the case.

It's still early but I think the pets will have quite some value each simply because there's so many variants of them.

2.) I agree that it's not YOU who's preying on the vulnerable, at least not directly. Instead, it's the people who sell rare pets for outrageous prices on the market to those with bad spending habits. However, you do still get your cut even from these ripoff transactions and you implemented the grindy system that drove people to the market in the first place.

So is this any better than paid lootboxes? ... I guess? Maybe? But like I said earlier, it's still a system designed to prey on those with loose credit cards. In a way, letting the players influence the prices of the pets is even worse because then greasy investors can come in and buyout/resell certain items at ridiculous prices. I've seen that happen in Artifact with the 20$ Axe cards. Well, maybe OJ is not quite high-profile enough for that to happen, but I wouldn't know. It's a very real possibility though.

Originally posted by PhleBusterFruitbat Factory:

Q: I'm only getting common drops, this system sucks!

I can never get all the items now! RIP my collection!

... Said nobody ever. This is just strawmanning. Moving on...

Originally posted by PhleBusterFruitbat Factory:

Q: No one asked for this, so why did you add it!

A: Well, no one asks for most of the features we add to the game. We like to surprise people like that... although, in this case it shouldn't exactly have been surprise since we pretty clearly explained the inventory plans earlier.

You didn't explain anything there. You just said you'd add tradeable items, not that you'd artificially drive up the prices of certain pets by making them rare via the gacha machine. The post was vague enough that I was hoping this would just turn out to be a harmless feature where people can buy items for a few cents from each other (like missed event items or certain crate items and stuff), but unfortunately that wasn't the case.

Originally posted by PhleBusterFruitbat Factory:

The pets themselves were a cool new idea and we spent a long time working on the most interesting implementation for them.

Now this is just corporate talk. It's just more cosmetics but this time you want to make some extra money, too. Can't see what exactly is especially "cool" about the pets or how the current implementation is "interesting". Well tbh for me it's "interesting" in much the same way a train wreck is "interesting", but I digress.

Originally posted by PhleBusterFruitbat Factory:

One pet grievance we always had with adding new content is that it's not exactly secure - while VAC keeps most cheaters at bay, there will always be some who cheat endless currencies to just unlock all the content, which doesn't feel very fair to everyone else who's playing seriously. When we keep both the currency and rewards in the Steam inventory, it's a closed system and basically as secure as it can get.

Honestly, I played this game for 800h online and I've never encountered someone whom I suspected of having unlocked all items via cheats. So even if people do it, it's not something I could recognize and/or get jealous over. I find this literally a non-problem.

Originally posted by PhleBusterFruitbat Factory:

Steam economy is also something Valve has recommended to us to draw in more players, since apparently games with economy support automatically become a lot more interesting to players[citation needed].

The question is: What kind of "players"? The kinds of scummy investor types who are/were quite abundant in Artifact and don't even really play the game? The little kids who stole Daddy's credit card and wanna have all the shiny items they can get their hands on? I think we can live without those in 100% OJ.
I suspect Valve recommended it to you solely because they'd get to make profit from it as well, but oh well, guess that's just me.

Originally posted by PhleBusterFruitbat Factory:

And personally I find it hard to disagree with that, when I have a $12 valued DOTA2 inventory without having paid a dime for that game. It's not like I've sold any of the items... but I could! Every time we release a new DLC, there are concerns that people will find it too much. On the other hand, we do need to make money from something, and the cheap DLC have been a pretty good method so far, in my opinion. Going forward with the Steam economy system, players could have the possibility to make enough money selling their free bonus items to cover future DLC costs and play for free forever! [...]

1.) Yes, getting stuff for free is good and making some money out of it is even better... if you're one of the lucky ones who get the rare stuff or invest enough time that might've been better spent elsewhere. Am I gonna feel good if I get to pay new DLC with money made off an ultra-rare pet? Maybe, but then I remember how much of my life I wasted to get said pet and feel bad about it. I made quite a bit of money when I sold my DotA2 inventory, too, but I've wasted so much of my life filling that inventory that it wasn't even worth it in the end. Nobody should ever play for money. If you need money, get a job. That's some life advice right there.

2.) I've never seen anyone say this game has too much DLC. Granted, it might look intimidating on the store page but you could always make a bundle or a complete edition or whatever at a discounted price (if that is profitable or feasible, I wouldn't know).

___________________________________________________________________

To reiterate, the main problem I have with the current pet system is that people might get ripped off on the market for whatever reason, be it future SSS-tier ultra-rare pets or greedy investors or whatever else. I very much would have preferred more DLCs over this, even stuff like cosmetic DLCs or Campaign DLCs (at reasonable prices) or whatever. The pet system just doesn't sit well with me for the reasons I've stated above. I suppose I'm just very uncertain about where this whole thing will go, right now I really have quite a lot of doubts that sadly were not appeased in any way.


Well, guess that is all, I don't wanna write a dissertation about 100% OJ pets here....

[Miraglyth]

Thanks for pinning all the answers from previous posts in one place.

This is an opportunity to give further clarification on a couple of points:

Originally posted by PhleBusterFruitbat Factory:

Q: What are the limits on earning arcade tokens?

A: You can earn 18 tokens (6 rolls) every 3 days by playing up to 6 games. You also get 6 additional tokens (2 rolls) every week just for logging in.

It appears that the "every week" begins on a Sunday or Monday, as some of us have received 6 more tokens in the last day or so.

Q1: How does the game determine "every 3 days"?

I'm concerned that some possibilities (such as a simple 72-hour countdown) would mean that you can't actually get tokens every 3 days but every 3-days-plus-when-you-can-next-play, slowing things down.

Q2: Does the "every 3 days" token allowance accumulate?

On the first login after this update, we received a Steam Inventory item with a capped allowance of 6/6 that was consumed at the end of each online game. Once it was used up, it was deleted from our inventories.

If we wait 3 days we will presumably receive another one. Is there a limit of one of these items, or can we receive multiple? If the former, then if we do not play the game for 6 days we would lose out on 18 tokens. This would likely lead to feeling compelled to play the game regularly to keep up, in turn leading to burnout.

Q3: Does the "less than a year" estimate assume using every token possible, or close to it?

Following on from Q2, if the token allowance cannot accumulate and a player plays only on the weekends, they would only be able to make 8 spins per week instead of 16 if they played every third day. Unless there is leeway built into the collection estimate, this would then mean the one year estimate would become a two year estimate.

Edit:

Q4: Why 3 tokens per spin, 3 per game and 6 per weekly login?

This should be fairly self-explanatory. Everything is multiplied by 3. Wouldn't it be simpler for players if it were 1 token per spin, 1 per game and 2 per weekly login? Then the number of tokens they owned would be the number of spins they could make, rather than having to work it out. What was the motivation behind the scale used?

[PhleBuster]

Originally posted by Miraglyth:

Q1: How does the game determine "every 3 days"?

I'm concerned that some possibilities (such as a simple 72-hour countdown) would mean that you can't actually get tokens every 3 days but every 3-days-plus-when-you-can-next-play, slowing things down.

The cooldown is actually a little under 72h (I believe we went with 70h) so that it doesn't keep getting pushed back for those who really obsess over maximizing the gains.

Originally posted by Miraglyth:

Q2: Does the "every 3 days" token allowance accumulate?

On the first login after this update, we received a Steam Inventory item with a capped allowance of 6/6 that was consumed at the end of each online game. Once it was used up, it was deleted from our inventories.

If we wait 3 days we will presumably receive another one. Is there a limit of one of these items, or can we receive multiple? If the former, then if we do not play the game for 6 days we would lose out on 18 tokens. This would likely lead to feeling compelled to play the game regularly to keep up, in turn leading to burnout.

We're still working on the item stacking etc details, but the intent when everything's done is that the exchange tokens don't accumulate but will be capped at 6. They aren't really meant to be an item in the first place, it's just a physical manifestation of the 3-day period during which you can earn arcade tokens 6 times, necessitated by the Steam implementation.

Originally posted by Miraglyth:

Q4: Why 3 tokens per spin, 3 per game and 6 per weekly login?

This should be fairly self-explanatory. Everything is multiplied by 3. Wouldn't it be simpler for players if it were 1 token per spin, 1 per game and 2 per weekly login? Then the number of tokens they owned would be the number of spins they could make, rather than having to work it out. What was the motivation behind the scale used?

3 tokens gives us more leeway for both granting varying amounts of tokens in the future, where the minimum grant isn't exactly 1 pull and anything more than that 2 pulls or more.

[Miraglyth]

Thanks for answering!

If it's a 70-hour cooldown, that means every player has six cooldown timers; one for each of the six tokens they acquire? I'm assuming it's not just a single cooldown because that would dramatically reduce the earning potential if they play, say two games per day (on day 3 they would reset the cooldown to replenish the tokens the spent on day 1, meaning they wouldn't get those ones back for 5 days instead of 3).

[PhleBuster]

Originally posted by Miraglyth:

Thanks for answering!

If it's a 70-hour cooldown, that means every player has six cooldown timers; one for each of the six tokens they acquire? I'm assuming it's not just a single cooldown because that would dramatically reduce the earning potential if they play two games per day.

Sorry, I'm not entirely sure what you're asking , so hopefully I'm answering the right question. It's a single item grant that gives you 6 exchange tokens at once.

[Miraglyth]

Originally posted by PhleBusterFruitbat Factory:

Sorry, I'm not entirely sure what you're asking :htshocked:

My apologies. I'll try to explain better, but it'll make the question longer. Please bear with me.

Presently, the flow of logging in, receiving the token allowance and earning tokens looks like this:

The player logs in and receives an allowance of 6 token sets.
They play game 1 and receive token set 1.
They play game 2 and receive token set 2.
They play game 3 and receive token set 3.
They play game 4 and receive token set 4.
They play game 5 and receive token set 5.
They play game 6 and receive token set 6.
They play game 7 and receive nothing because the allowance is exhausted.

If there is just one 70 hour cooldown, when does it get reset? After they receive their allowance, after game 1 (the first game to give tokens), after game 6 (the last game to give tokens) or after game 7 (the last game played)?

If the cooldown starts when they are given the allowance or after game 1, that gives them a 70-hour time limit to play six games before the allowance is reset and any tokens not earned are lost potential. This is the best possibility.

If the cooldown resets after game 6, then if it takes them 2 days to play 6 games, They will only get a new allowance every 5 days rather than 3, meaning they receive less tokens than players who can play all 6 games in one sitting.

If the cooldown resets after the last game played, then anyone who has received 6 tokens should immediately stop playing online, because the act of doing so would actually mean they have to wait longer to get another token allowance. This would be quite bad!

[PhleBuster]

Originally posted by Miraglyth:

Originally posted by PhleBusterFruitbat Factory:

Sorry, I'm not entirely sure what you're asking

My apologies. I'll try to explain better, but it'll make the question longer. Please bear with me.

Presently, the flow of logging in, receiving the token allowance and earning tokens looks like this:

The player logs in and receives an allowance of 6 token sets.
They play game 1 and receive token set 1.
They play game 2 and receive token set 2.
They play game 3 and receive token set 3.
They play game 4 and receive token set 4.
They play game 5 and receive token set 5.
They play game 6 and receive token set 6.
They play game 7 and receive nothing because the allowance is exhausted.

If there is just one 70 hour cooldown, when does it get reset? After they receive their allowance, after game 1 (the first game to give tokens), after game 6 (the last game to give tokens) or after game 7 (the last game played)?

If the cooldown starts when they are given the allowance or after game 1, that gives them a 70-hour time limit to play six games before the allowance is reset and any tokens not earned are lost potential. This is the best possibility.

If the cooldown resets after game 6, then if it takes them 2 days to play 6 games, They will only get a new allowance every 5 days rather than 3, meaning they receive less tokens than players who can play all 6 games in one sitting.

If the cooldown resets after the last game played, then anyone who has received 6 tokens should immediately stop playing online, because the act of doing so would actually mean they have to wait longer to get another token allowance. This would be quite bad!

The cooldown is based on when you receive the tokens. You can spend them whenever you wish during the 3-day window.

[Miraglyth]

Originally posted by PhleBusterFruitbat Factory:

The cooldown is based on when you receive the tokens.

The tokens? Not the token-allowance inventory item?

If so, that means that anyone who plays one game per day would only get their tokens replenished once every eight days instead of every three. That would be really bad.

[PhleBuster]

Originally posted by Miraglyth:

Originally posted by PhleBusterFruitbat Factory:

The cooldown is based on when you receive the tokens.

The tokens? Not the token-allowance inventory item?

If so, that means that anyone who plays one game per day would only get their tokens replenished once every eight days instead of every three. That would be really bad.

The exchange tokens, that is. It's every 3 days.

[Matihood]

You also get 6 additional tokens (2 rolls) every week just for logging in.

Every week? But I've been getting them every day now...

[Miraglyth]

Oh, they're called exchange tokens! Since the item disappeared from my inventory I couldn't check!

Thanks. I think I understand now: When a player logs in, they receive 6 exchange tokens and that's when the 70-hour countdown starts. After the countdown ends, the next time they are logged in, the exchange tokens are restored to 6 and a new 70-hour countdown begins.

[Bluflare1]

Why isn't there a timer for the tokens? I mean that should be simple to implement right? I kind of want to know when I can spend my tokens so they don't just up in vanish give us a timer please.

[Gleam Aria]

So, let me see if I get the whole exchange token thing.

When a player logs in to Steam, they receive their exchange token, and from any point after that they may play the game to convert that to arcade ones. If the 70h cooldown expires but they haven't got all of their arcade tokens yet, they receive the new exchange token while the old one still remains in inventory and can still give out arcade tokens? And this keeps happening until the player reaches 6 exchange tokens in inventory, at which point they can no longer receive more until they convert at least one?

So, in theory, a player may take a break from the game for up to 18 (or 20?) days and not worry about missing on any tokens, so long as they make sure to fully consume at least 1 exchange token before day 21 comes?

[Miraglyth]

Originally posted by Gleam Aria:

If the 70h cooldown expires but they haven't got all of their arcade tokens yet, they receive the new exchange token while the old one still remains in inventory and can still give out arcade tokens?

I'm not sure about this part. If you have, say, a "4 Exchange Token" item in your inventory, it might get replaced with a "6 Exchange Token" at the next refresh. If so, you'd lose out on 4 token exchanges.

[BenTheBean]

I still have a couple of general questions regarding this new system and the update in general

1.) When using the pet exchange, is the colour you get also random or is there a selection to choose from. Not exactly simple for the average player to check for themselves at the moment.

2.) In an earlier thread (think it was the version update announcement) you said that you guys would be eliminating redundant currencies. I assume with the introduction of the wreaths this means candy canes and candy. Will the items currently unlocked by these curencies be exclusively unlocked by the orange bags in the future or will there be alternative ways or unlocking them.

3.) Along the same lines, does this mean that the wreaths will be disapearing once the winter event ends since they're "redundant" for most of the year? I know personally that a lot of players seem to stockpile them, not for future events but to buy the costumes for DLC characters they don't yet once they finally get them.

(Edit: After rereading the OP it looks like you said adding new pets and not adding new pets to the arcade specifically, so if you meant just more pets added in like Rein then the following is pretty irrelevant. Still.)
4.) You've mentioned in this QnA that you plan on eventually adding more pets into the arcade system. Do you plan on just dumping them into the current poll, or creating new "machines"/pools for newer pets. I don't think most people would have a problem with something more useful getting added in alongside common fireworks, but when it comes to the much rarer pets it seems like adding more would make some pets a lot more valuable than others since it'll be statistically harder to pull any single specific NEW pet compared to any specific pet when the original set was released. The problem exacerbates the rarer the pet gets due to the rates.

I feel like I've been a little hard on you guys and this update, so I'd like to apologize. Thanks to you consolidating everything here I can see that you guys wanted to do something nice for the players, even if I'm really not a fan of the arcade system at all, so thanks.

Edit: It's worth mentioning the winter event this year is also really fun! One more question I though of the second I hit the post button is whether or not you guys plan to rerun more events like you did for 2017's Christmas earlier this month. Do you plan to rerun all previous events in similar, limited timeframes in the coming year?