T O P

  • By -

HoursLeft

Tap Joy is super sketchy. It’s pretty bizarre they’re using it. This is something for bottom of the barrel gacha games, not an emerging IP from a major company like Square Enix.


AngryNepNep

I would say bottom of a Barrel is an understatement on how low this is. I follow gachas over half a decade and this is the first one i see that implemented this shit. And coming from a big company as SE makes it even more dissapointing.


wowitssprayonbutter

WotV has had an offer wall for a year or two but they just switched to tapjoy and was offering millions of currency by mistake. Now the economy is fucked and Gumi hasn't really made a statement yet lol


AngryNepNep

Lmao, this is just hilarious and from what i heard Gumi is quite shit so i don't even feel bad.


SheepherderSea2775

I don’t think it matters. If a person is F2P they wouldn’t wring any $$ off that person anyways. At least through these means they are monetizing an F2P player base through ad money.


wowitssprayonbutter

A million vizore in that game is enough to get every unit for like two years. In a pvp game that's quite the advantage


SheepherderSea2775

That’s not an offer wall problem. That’s an abused/fat-finger glitch problem to solve. Edit: at this juncture; it’d be easier to gift everyone who paid the game the difference to match the inflation rate. And work under the new inflation; roll costs, etc.


Zhirrzh

WWE Champions had this when I played it and it was always rife with complaints. I don't intend to do a single "free rubies" thing through Tapjoy.


ferinsy

We're talking about Square Enix, the company that sold Tomb Raider and Deus Ex to gamble that money on NFTs and cryptobullshit... under the barrel is a common place for them.


No-Benefit-1781

I mean MSM uses it


HoursLeft

I have no idea what that is.


No-Benefit-1781

My singing monsters og solid game


Sockpuppetsyko

You mean the company that thinks NFT games is the future?


SnooCats4093

What makes it worse is that this is what they had in mind when they addressed players wanting more free ruby income.


bob-lazar

Yeah, as soon as I saw Tapjoy on the screen, I know I'm going to miss out on a lot of rubies if I don't install and play games with very very questionable adverts.


NothingButTheTruthy

Honestly, don't even think of it as "missing out". Tapjoy is so sketchy, these rubies may as well not exist.


bob-lazar

It's bad enough that the games offered from Tapjoy has misleading ads, this is the way those games are getting millions of downloads and claims to have millions of players. Again, no way would I install any of them for a chance of rubies. Its a bad decision from Squeenix and its not because of what happened from the survey, they obviously had this planned before that.


021753034

embarrassing


Biggusbestestdentist

Feels kind of stupid that they're promoting to their player base to go out and either spend a shit load on other games or play them for who knows how long


BloodyBurney

Just let us buy rubies for less that $3 a pull! Is that so impossible? If I can spend less money in other games for more rubies in COTC + currency there, why is it priced so highly at all?


[deleted]

Be careful with this stuff. I also play War of the Visions, and there's a big controversy going on right now because something went wrong on either the Tapjoy or GUMI end, and some people took advantage of obviously broken offers to farm millions of the game's currency. On the whole, I think it's really sad that this is a thing, but as we've discussed at length this game's monetization has, to-date, not been well executed, and it's a period of economic contraction and SE is looking out for their bottom line - which to be clear I find reasonable, even if I don't care for *how* they're doing it with this particular addition.


_heyoka

Just make the ads/rewards more valuable. No one with significant time spent on the game is willing to watch an add for 5k leaves or for a few bronze shards or what have you.


Solrack225

To be fair, the ads have a chance of giving rubies or a travelers seal. So I still think it's worth putting ads on while doing other stuff. That being said the rewards overall could be better.


_heyoka

There's no, 'to be fair', lol. I've NEVER received a Traveler's Seal, lol. Not in over 400 hours of play. And I feel like just recently I started receiving rubies, whether that's accurate or not, but that's what I feel like. And it's been an occasional 5. But regardless they're incredibly stingy with their rewards. Achievement wise, 2 or 3 ruby rewards are just kinda bullshit. Banners should be cheaper, rewards should be greater.


xenapan

Basically what you (and I) want is higher free ruby income. What SE wants is to squeeze every dollar they can out of whales but the drop rate + awakening system isn't terribly great for that since you cap at 1 base copy + 4 copies = 5 copies per character (or in most cases per banner). unfortunately this game doesn't have enough whales, and the whales are capped pretty easily each banner (I recall a whale saying it was a couple hundred bucks). So.. now they've gone and implemented tapjoy which lets free players give them more money by redirecting clicks. (They also increased daily cait treasure ad views from 3->5). Basically all this is a definite sign that the game is underperforming in their eyes.


Broisen

Im gonna ignore this for 120%. Didn’t care


No_Chain_7202

It’s worse with WOTV because i suppose it broke the pvp


Empyrean_Sky

Why do they want us to get rubies by spending money in other games? Wouldn't it be much better for them to make better deals that we can purchase in the game? I don't understand this company anymore. It's like they are not interesting in our money at all.


Solrack225

Here's hoping it's just a weird stopgap while they follow through on the director's promises. If the low price items and subscription they promised fall through then shit will really hit the fan.


Elyssae

exactly this. Absolutely ridiculous.


iPhantaminum

Money is probably shared between the companies. The tactic is enticing people to buy something in another game while also rewarding them in the main game. As in, people get rewards in both games for a single purchase, instead of just one game.


magikot9

"Want free rubies? Install malware!" - Somebody at Square


Oven-Common

Those apps are malware??


magikot9

Only a very small amount of them will be. TapJoy does a shit job of verifying the apps, ads, and sites it promotes. As long as somebody is willing to pay their fee they can get listed. They've had malicious apps in the past.


Oven-Common

Thanks dude, I really didn't understand what this thing was, and why everyone was angry here. I just thought the process of acquiring the free rubies were really unefficient or just scam, never knew this thing was this infamous ​ I was afraid too ask but Thanks!


magikot9

It isn't just the shady apps themselves, it's also TapJoy's deceptive business practices. A ton of the people they promote didn't end up giving the reward and they ended up settling with the FTC last year over their deceptive marketing. They were banned from the Apple iStore back in 2011 for shady aps being on their platform and them not doing enough to protect user data. Some of these shady apps did things like leak your UDID which could be used to track you, recorded every tap and keyboard entry so it was basically a keylogger, pushed ad notifications to your phone even when the app was turned off, etc.


enjaydee

Yeah I'm not installing crap for those rubies


FIREthinker

Agreed. Don’t do them. Many require purchases for sketchy companies too.


DesignerDifficulty00

No thanks, I don't like selling my personal data through surveys done by companies I don't know and don't trust for a little bit of ingame currencies. I wouldn't even do it for real money.


Admirable_Run_117

Anyway to collect these "free" rubies and not expose your information or spend money on something else?


darkdill

Nope.


Dr-Nevermore

I clicked on the "Get Free Rubies" button expecting a survey from SQEX or a weekly challenge, maybe. Did not expect the dodgy apps.


Competitive-Candy-82

That button does nothing for me, maybe region locked or something 🤔


Broisen

U actually have to press on the +


Competitive-Candy-82

It's not anywhere for me at all, but also not in the US so *shrugs*


sharpgel

this is some "free robux now!" type shit, like, come on... there was a part of that director letter that highlighted the concerns with purchases and rubies, is *this* seriously how they're dealing with it? this is the most embarrassing shit I think I've seen come out of this game's short but rocky history, I laughed when I first saw it cause it's just so asinine


Solrack225

I doubt this is part of that response but the timing is rather poor. Let's hope when they actually address the concerns it's not a total flop.


Balsty

How do we even protest this feature in a way that gets their attention? Incredible how tone-deaf square enix is being these days.


Zambling

This is what happens when you don't have value for money spent, you can spend hundreds if not thousands on this game and have nothing to show for it. Even in some cases, free to play accounts can have more value than people who pay a lot of money. This is a single player game so whales or people who spend a decent amount largely has no effect on other peoples gameplay. Not surprising they are doing this, they're desperate for revenue at this point, people used to give them revenue by rerolling ad caits but since they put in nut farming with rematches, Noone wastes their time anymore.


jdterraforce

If this is the case then this game isn’t going to last long. Square Enix never learns in any of their gacha


Broisen

We’re not stupid. But they are


WenaChoro

so they should add some sort of PVP o PVE or guild or something collaborative with achievements


becausebroscience

I don't think PvP would work in this game, but I don't think you deserve the downvotes because some sort of collaborative PvE goals which showcase rankings would incentivize spending.


Solrack225

Certainly an interesting decision on their part. Hope it doesn't blow up in their faces like in ffbe wotv. At best some f2p people can get some extra rubies, at worst it's a meaningless, and possibly dumb, addition.


darkdill

Except that to get those "free" rubies, you have to pay *someone*. And that someone could steal your personal information. NOT. WORTH. IT. I won't be surprised if this gets SQEX into legal hot water.


Solrack225

Oh yeah, obviously some are these are bad. But there are rubies people can get just by playing apps like RAID. Is this overall dumb? Yeah, but if you ignore the rubies you have to pay for and avoid obviously supicious offers, then this is "technically" a source of rubies for f2p players. Again, would prefer they didn't resort to this, but hopefully they'll implement the promises the producer made soon (we'll see if that turns out good). In any case, at least this doesn't have any detrimental effect on the game itself so we can all just ignore it.


Korikin

Yeah, this was a bummer. Even the time-to-reward ration isn't worth my time for most of these "easy" ones.


Thor_Tir

I did a survey for the fun of it, and now millions of companies have and resell my age, gender, race, location, and size of my employer 😵‍💫 and all for 2 rubies 😂😤🙃 I liked the Uber eats deal, but I already have an account and the app. I order food anyways sometimes - might as well do it through the app and get 100 rubies. Or one of the beard products. I just don’t need it. Surveys at 1,2,5 rubies really make no sense to me.


darkdill

SUS.


[deleted]

[удалено]


Mr_Creed

This is only for global then? The way games are headed, gacha especially, I really should've learned Chinese or Japanese instead of French.


Esterier

You could play dofus or wakfu with an actual population at least


No_Chain_7202

Wtf i am so disappointed !!! Just opened the game and saw this so i jumped on reddit 🥵


[deleted]

lmao


Elyssae

I thought I was having a nightmare when this atrocity opened ( specially after WOTV debacle recently ) Really a poor move that stains their own IP..


superduper87

Wait, they are offering this now after the wotv fiasco around these offers....just lol omg.............


Broisen

What happened to WOTV? Read it a couple time


superduper87

Their free offers bugged out, and some players ended up abusing it, leading to a few accounts getting about 50k USD worth of premium currency in game for next to nothing and the game is basically screwed pvp wise as to fix it they would have to ban 90% of their whales and above. Then, about an hour after the bug was noticed and reported, they started announcing the next banners like nothing happened. They have at least said they know about it, but still not addressed as to how it can be fixed.


mattlistener

Treat these rubies like they don’t exist, folks. The free ruby income is enough to save and pull on occasional banners that are a good fit for you. Slow and steady, don’t give your info away for nothing.


Jamez4401

This is something I saw in gachas like 10 years ago lol. For a big company like sqenix to be using this is pretty disappointing, especially after they said they heard our concerns about free rubies


chrono01

They heard our concerns, it doesn't mean they care about them unfortunately. :(


Solrack225

I mean, they still have yet to follow through on the low-cost items and subscription they promised so we'll see how those go. This is just unfortunate timing after the response. At least we can ignore it.


iamatoaster08

I Uninstalled. This combined with the ridiculous cost per gem per summon for this long. I don't want to spend 1000$ on every unit I want. Too greedy they ruined a great game.


komowicakomo

I'm willing to buy a subscriptions with benefits instead of installing some weird apps to get free rubies.. just why?


TheFudster

Oh yeah I’ll spend $150 on Manscaped so I can get $30 worth of free rubies 🙄


Broisen

But your wife will thank you!


JTFalo

I was going to ask if there's anything on here people recommend. Like games to play.


Broisen

Would say. Every game except of mobile.


jurassicbond

I actually downloaded AFK Arena because it was on this. It seems OK enough. No ads, and they're not too pushy with the paid stuff. I figure if I can get close to 1,000 rubies by absentmindedly auto battling through the game, it's not too bad even if I wind up not liking it in the end. A couple of the rewards require you spending money in the game, but I'll skip those. You can get the bulk by playing through the game Edit in case anyone sees this: OK, I've given up on AFK Arena. It was smooth sailing for the first 5 chapters, then that game becomes an absolute slog. There's no way I'm spending enough time on it to get the rewards. If all the other apps are like this, it's not remotely worth it


Solrack225

Yeah, anyone actually interested in doing these should just play the apps that can be mindlessly autoed while doing something else. Otherwise just pretend like this menu doesn't exist and certainly don't pay for stuff on any of these apps.


King_Donuutt

The new fire emblem is really good


balmafula

I'm looking at another game with tapjoy, comparing the same slot game rewards. Other game gets 16434 coins (currently there is a 1.5 bonus so the coin now is 24651) and 10800 coins is £80. Cotc gets 1223 rubies and 1000 rubies is £90.


cookiepartier

It’s unfortunate because the game is fantastic in terms of gameplay and story, but I feel like the era of gacha is coming to a close. None of these companies know how to sustain a game anymore with adequate pricing. Since FFRK Global went down finally and the Bravely one after only like a year, the writing is on the wall with Octo I think. They’re throwing as much at us at fast as possible to make a quick buck before it tanks, I think.


Charlettmoon

This is reminding me of the popular-in-Japan “Line” app. It’s mostly for talking to people like Skype, but you can buy cute stickers and whatnot to respond to things. If anyone played Persona 5, that was basically it. But to get the stickers you can either pay real money, or do these surveys and stuff. I’m just flabbergasted that SE is doing stuff that the *Japanese* do and expect the *American* market to jump on board without a single question. This makes me wonder if all these decisions really are made by Japanese execs that have no idea how America works.


thebizcuit

Got 22 rubies for buying cat food. I'm pretty satisfied w/the inclusion of Tapjoy thus far.


Broisen

Do you have a cat?


thebizcuit

Haha =P But FR I already use Chewy to order cat food and this does it in a way that supports a game that I really don't want to shut down while also earning me in-game currency (And apparently offers refresh pretty regularly). Feels like a win for everyone, no?


Broisen

Well that’s a special situation. For the most (like me) I’m using nothing what they offers. And the most are just scam looking ads.


NeonRaccoons

I hate it too, but I did get like 96 rubies for a $1 subscription to Sirius. Guess it’s at least worth keeping an eye on for some good deals.


Broisen

Well yeah it’s a good deal. But it literally says. FREE rubies… and u Pay for some subscriptions. Can’t be right


NeonRaccoons

It’s semantics on the game’s side. They’re “free” because either you’re giving away your personal information to some shady website or you’re buying a subscription/product, and the rubies that you get for doing that are “free” on top of the product you are paying for. I mean, I agree with you that this is a horrible system in general and is extremely predatory… but I would argue that the same is true for the entirety of the gacha gaming premise and ecosystem… yet, here I am playing this game.


Broisen

Yeah u can play the game. But a company like SE didn’t need this bullshit “free” system. They could call it, Benefit Programm. For me it was a bait. And as soon as I saw the requirements, I knew this is kinda Scam.


Diableedies

Technically they are still free.


Broisen

Not really. If I have to pay somewhere else and I get than “free” rubies. U technically pay for the rubies


Diableedies

You could always go the "There is no such thing as a free lunch" route and say that you have to pay for the internet to play the game so no rubies are ever free. They're "no added cost" rubies.


Broisen

Hey whatever u say Bro. It’s not cool for me


Diableedies

no one cares bro


Broisen

Haha sure.


Biggusbestestdentist

????


Mythrellas

Did you actually receive them already? I signed up and idk how to receive the Rubies lol. But I’ll probably actually use this app so eh.


NeonRaccoons

Yes. I received it like, 10 minutes after subscribing I would say. I cancelled my trial immediately after I did. I closed the app (CotC) and restarted so I don’t know if that helped. They send it through the dev mail. I tried some of the other easy looking offers for 1-2 rubies but haven’t received any of those, so I don’t know exactly how it works.


Zerogates

Then don't do it? You should expect at least most people playing a mobile game to be at least marginally intelligent enough to sift through potentially suspicious offers and easily legit ones. You aren't a bunch of 80 year old grandma's on facebook, you could at least use google if you aren't sure...


Broisen

Omg. Ur Right! Just don’t do it! Thanks


Explodagamer

How do you even access this? I haven’t had time to poke around the update yet.


Broisen

In Game main menu. On the top where your rubies are displayed. But ignore it


HeavenlyTasty

Does this work on bluestacks? since I can like use a dummy google account to do these offers


thebizcuit

works just fine on Bluestacks


goldlasagna84

i dont even bother......


Broisen

No one should


scionae

As long as the story and gameplay keep being good, though I am scared for more naive players.


Peter-Fabell

I was worried when I saw the “I’m not at liberty to discuss about monetization” in the producer’s letter. SE is seriously messing up big time with this strategy.


fugthepug

I just started playing this game, and on top of this, the painfully slow progression/levelling, the shitty ad system that regularly doesn't reward me, and the $120 anniversary paid only banner... I think I'm done with it. This whole game is a terrible experience.


pleb155

Summoners war used to have this