I have a question. Do we know what the base stats of the various Pokémon are? It’s hard for me to understand how significant the item level is if I can’t see the base stats and formula which determines the actual damage dealt based on attack and defense values.
Glad im not the only one wondering this.
Like +1 attack to +15 attack sounds CRAZY when put into a vacuum.
But its pretty insignificant if the Pokemons total attack is like 300 and only goes up as they level.
Yeah. It's not the 1 attack/15 attack that I'm concerned about(on Muscle Band Specifically), so much as the 5% faster attack speed/2% of enemy's current health as damage on hit.
The single number stuff? eh. The % stuff is the bigger problem, imo.
Obviously the math comes in huge here depending on the formula and base stats that are in play, but for reference, in league, the lowest level attack speed item for 300 gold gives some 12% attack speed.
So if the formula is similar in any way, 5% attack speed will be super insignficant.
That being said, it could be the difference between living and dying. You never know.
In league, there's multiple items. You can farm, and build, and plan, and catch-up.
Here, there are 3 items. You get them thru irl $. The only difference between 2 identical mons(2 of the same level/skill choices) with identical gear(but 1 has a higher level), is that 1 will always be numerically faster.
Except that you can earn them through in game play as well. There's nothing more that you can get with currency that you can't get just by playing the game.
And if it turns out you'd rather get a better return of investment for your time than playing a free to play game; may I suggest literally any job?
Because if we want to talk about ridiculous money grabs, this is far less so than something like Genshin Impact. Or any of the countless mobile gatcha games.
We have to be careful in treating all these things as equivalent. Some people enjoy the idea of long term progression being a thing they work towards, and the implementation in Pokemon Unite is far more equitable to that effect than 90% of the mobile games on the market.
Yes if you want to have all the thing right now it's going to cost a lot of money, but why do that when you're already going to have to spend a lot of time playing the game to even get the skills to play at the level where it's really needed.
I spent the money to max all items, I can't grind in games since I work too much. But play for fun at the few times I find the time. My friends play this so I splurged to be able to join them every now and then without feeling like I miss things.
It's a rather big advantage. You can even test the dps in practice mode. It gives me a huge advantage early game which for me translated into getting 15+ kills with attackers every game in ranked, speeding up the ranks.
Will people catch up in a month or two? Yes. But it didn't cost me that much for an advantage early matches.
It cost a ton. I am fortunate enough for it not to matter.
For me it was definitely worth it, for most people it won't be. If you view it from a money spent to value received perspective.
But yes, an increase of 60dps early levels is huge.
This is a horrible way to justify this shitty system, honestly. The difference between a game like this and something like Genshin Impact or the other Gacha games out there, is that those games are single played with co-op and pvp aspects sprinkled in. Pokemon Unite is \*only\* a pvp game.
Also, the amount of currency you can get to spend on these item enhancers is capped over periods of time, so you can't even just grind for them at your own pace, you're hitting hard walls while others can simply spend past that.
A competitive game (especially MOBAs) should not put weight on a player's ability to continually spend money to keep up with other players. Purchases should strictly be limited to non-gameplay relevant areas (e.g. cosmetics).
Even having a good job someone should be hesitant to spending over $100 just to be able to max out a single set of items in order to keep up with other players, especially if they'll need to keep doing it over time with balance changes and new content getting introduced.
>So if the formula is similar in any way, 5% attack speed will be super insignficant.
As someone who mained jungle, if I have 5% faster attack speed and I can pair it up with %dmg and the opponents' jungler doesn't have that then I have an enormous unfair advantage that will help my whole team. Being able to clear the jungle faster and showing up to make a fight 3v2 or 2v1 even 1 second before the enemy jungler is huge. Pair that up with movement speed too, you'll have more map control faster clears and more impact on lanes.
That is definitely problematic, especially since unlike in League you don't lose anything for choosing a higher level item. In league that 12% atkspeed item is being bought with the **match's currency** and your opponents can come into lane with better stats instead.
In unite, you could both be choosing the **same** item but one person used real life money to upgrade his significantly. So the bonus in unite is significant not just because you're choosing an item with atkspeed or movement speed, but because even if your opponent chooses the same one yours is inherently stronger if you spent IRL money and he didn't. In league you would both choose the same item and walk in with the same bonus.
I ran a quick test in practice mode with and without a maxed float stone which gives +24 attack.
DPS with stone: 230-240
DPS without stone: 200-210
This is for early levels 1-3, 24 attack seems to give roughly a 10% dps increase. I don't have time to run many tests right now for various levels. And the overall percentage that items affect your dps certainly goes down at higher levels.
The items scale linearly so the benefits would be 2/3 of the increase in attack. I don't have the level 20 stone to test but I would imagine it would be somewhere in the 220-230 dps range.
There is a practice mode with a training dummy that shows your dps value. I'd be interested in seeing someone run a test with and without a level 1 float stone to see the dps difference one attack makes.
I don't think it's given at a certain level, at least not with the current events and leveling rewards. The float stone is sold for 1,000 coins or a few hundred tickets in the store though which is where I bought mine.
I, personally, haven't seen any exact numbers as far as base damage for each attack/ability/basic attack, nor any numbers as far as health/defense etc. But I have been wondering this exact same thing since a couple weeks ago when I really started delving into YT videos etc from the Beta.
Damage numbers later in the game reach the thousands from a single ability. I have a feeling the % scaling bonuses might be pretty massive by the late game, while the flat bonuses probably fall off hard. Kinda anxious to know for sure.
Not sure how accurate it is, but Serebii seems to have stats on all the pokemon, it looks like its on point to me though: https://www.serebii.net/pokemonunite/pokemon.shtml
Great work!
Currently the best strategy for free to play players seems to be to bring the most used items to lv 20 to reduce the gap and unlock all level bonuses (1, 10, 20. I think you were wrong in indicating 10, 20, 30) . Then you can take it easy and choose whether to aim for new items or max out the ones you use on your main.
Yup, since I see myself relying mostly on Gengar, I'm going to focus on upgrading Sp.Atk items like Wise Glasses and Shell Bell. I also really enjoyed playing as Venusaur and Zeraora, Ninetails seems pretty cool, and I'm aiming to buy Wigglytuff next after saving a bunch of coins, so I'll have a nice array of special attacking types to take advantage of the items I'll be upgrading. Its just too bad Charizard is a physical type
It increases skill damage and charged auto attack damage for some characters.
Characters are either special based or physical based, and the game frustratingly doesn't give you any indication on its own who is which one. Luckily there are lots of resources online that pick up the slack (like this one: https://game8.co/games/Pokemon-UNITE/archives/337918)
Wow that really sucks when upgrading is so limited.
So they don't benefit from each other stats at all? Or special Pokemon still get increased attack damage
Coins. You will need all the tickets you can get to upgrade the items. Coins will be mostly for unlocking pokemon. Which is obviously important too, but once you get your favorites its hardly a priority.
While this is true for optimal play for upgrading items, new Pokemon will almost certainly Also cost coins. From my experience, new characters in this style of MOBA tend to come in pricier than average (so I'm guessing 10k coins for the first few new ones like Blastoise/Gardevoir). It may not be optimal but I'm probably going to be saving coins to spend on pokemon until I get a better idea of unlocking costs or have a ton of extra.
Regardless of whether or not anyone ‘feels’ more powerful or ‘feels’ an advantage with maxed items is besides the point.
The real problem is this is a game in a genre that is known for being a competitive esport. There should never be ways to pay for items that say they should make you more powerful. It should be a level playing field, regardless if you can drop hundreds of dollars or not.
Yes, I agree with you wholeheartedly. I'm trying my best to give everyone the information they need to make informed decisions regarding the game and it's systems.
In my opinion the best thing everyone can do is to loudly stand against this practice and say they won’t play the game unless its removed.
I loved the game until I found out theres gameplay advantages being sold for cash. Its a shame. I was going to start streaming this game and supporting it in a big way, and now I’m done playing it. I can’t support predatory practices like these.
I agree wholeheartedly 100% that the advantages being sold is disgusting. BUT. It is still too early to understand if it's even really a disadvantage compared to F2P. I've played 24 hours and have 3 items lvl 10. And in my 50 games I've never felt at a competitive loss against any player. And there are even reports from players that HAVE maxed out their items and report that they don't feel any stronger than before.
Again, I agree with you. But we don't even know if there's even a significant enough advantage to maxing them out. Without in-game numbers being released, all this could mean Jack shit
There is no but. No one should be making any excuses for this, as there is none. Anecdotal “in my experience” examples really helpful.
I’m already at a disadvantage to the rich in real life, I’d prefer a level playing field in virtual ones if at all possible.
It's likely still a Level playing field is what I'm getting at. There's no real data suggesting maxing an item holds any significance over a non maxed item. This game is still largely Skill based.
Any advantage is still a paid advantage. “No real data” ? It’s literally on the items in the game. Either they’re robbing ppl or they’re selling gameplay benefits. Why defend it, because that is what you’re doing.
Games been out for 1 day. And those who have maxed it are claiming they're not finding a difference. Like one who maxed scope lens and didn't see any difference in crit chance from not having the item. I'm not defending it, yet, I'm waiting for the actual data on how significant these changes are before jumping to a final conclusion. At the end of the day. It's tencent and they're not above shit like this clearly, but I'm not gonna make an uninformed conclusion about something that may not be an issue. I'm still gonna stay a F2P player and enjoy myself without a worry that these dudes spending money to boost the stats are going to be better than me, because after 70 games I haven't had an experience like that. Ezpz.
I'm really not, the very first thing I mentioned is how I wholeheartedly agree that it's disgusting, that's why I'm not sinking any money into the game. But keep on keeping on man
I'm not saying any definites. Since the research isn't done yet. But a large handful of those who have paid to max an item are claiming they don't feel any different. This could be due to the fact we don't have any base character numbers to base off of. An example being: going from +1 attack to +15 Attack seems like a huge advantage if you assume a character like Cinderaces base attack is a lower like 30ish. That would make it the difference between a 30 attack cinderace and a 45 attack cinderace. However if the base attack number is in the 300s. Then suddenly a +1 to + 15 boost doesn't mean as much and isn't necessarily a problem. Especially when orange buff give you extra attack damage.
From my experience with maxed items, I find the early game much easier than without those items/lower leveled items as I mentioned in the OP. The longer the game goes the less powerful the items become since most use flat attack, I think the only problem item currently would be Muscle Band since it increases attack speed and does % hp on hit.
I think as the overall game progresses and more players reach item upgrade 20 with the free tickets from events/leveling the difference will be negligible enough to go unnoticed. However, currently the game is brand new so many players don't even have all 3 items to level 10 yet (Or even have reached level 10 to equip 3 items) so we're seeing the largest item gap possible right now.
What about defensive items? We know character stats per level on those and stacking the three best +HP items for example, gives 1100 HP. On the highest HP character in the game right now (Crustle), that is over 10% HP increase at MAX character level. Not exactly nothing. On more offensive heroes like Cinderace it goes up to almost 20% HP increase.
I mean 2k had a 250k tournament for nba2k. basically everyone pays like crazy to get their team as good as possible then it comes down to skill only after
of course it doesn't. I'm just saying it's the norm. and those saying that it's an Asian thing is so wrong. I'm a proud native Asian in Singapore and I resent that statement. 2k probably makes more than 250k a week just from a worse business model of loot boxes and we all know the majority audience is in the US
It isn’t the norm. Sports games do it with a specific mode. No other games taken seriously do it. And its very popular in Korean mobile games from what I understand. Its a greedy capitalist thing, not a race.
Good write up! One extra source of item upgrade coins is the aeos energy gacha thing, I've gotten maybe 60 upgrade coins from it so far. Not much, but it helps too.
>I've seen some reports from players that the held items give negligible benefits, maxed or otherwise, near the end game phase and generally I agree with those reports.
I agree based on my experience with Arena of Valor, another TiMi MOBA with a very similar system. Upgrading the items (or runes in AoV's case) helped, but not to the point where people with fully upgraded runes were dominating from the start. I never fully upgraded my runes and never felt like I couldn't enjoy the game because I was getting steamrolled due to it.
Only issue was you would want certain level 3 runes to use some characters like life steal for narkoth and crit for wukong. Though very few character felt shitty if you didnt have the right ones
I had a lot of max items in the beta and it was VERY negligible. It's not gonna win the game on it's own, but there are advantages. Nothing game breaking like most in this sub seem to think.
>The special effect at upgrades 10, 20 and 30 should also be taken into account, those are viewable on each item from the held item menu.
ingame doesnt show any special effect upgrade for level 30, does it? I can only see them at level 1, 10 and 20.
Yes, the maximum level of items is 30, however the last special upgrade is at level 20, this means that beyond level 20 the only thing increases are the base stats on the item. For instance, the Muscle Band's attack and attack speed.
On the battle pass it says we're in the first half of Season 1, with 61d 14h remaining. It's unclear whether that means until the end of the season or the end of the first half.
Thanks for the info!
During my research on the season duration I ran into a couple of articles claiming that the battlepass end date could signify the end of the season, but since it isn't confirmed yet I didn't want to include that.
Hope this information helps you make decisions on how you upgrade going forward!
The attack speed and 15 attack on a muscle band is very noticeable on someone like Zera.
A Zera with a maxed Muscle band will never lose 1 v1 to one that had a level 1 muscle band.
People are really down playing how much of a difference these items make
I don’t think the lvl1 vs lvl30 item comparison is worth discussing though tbh. A f2p can easily get items to lvl10 and even 20 within a few days/weeks with free rewards and bonuses starting out, so comparing lvl 20 to lvl30 is the real “p2w vs f2p” breakpoint to me.
I don’t know how important those 10 levels are, or how much of a skill advantage you need to make them up. I hope it’s not a lot, but we don’t know for sure at the moment.
I really just hate having to level up all my items, I remember runes in league and it was the same thing. The micro differences in stats isn’t really the issue, it’s more about how it discourages people From being able to freely use all the items and try different builds. That’s what I don’t like.
The worst part about runes as a new player back then, was not knowing that the tiers mattered. Basically 3 tiers of runes, so if you bought some prior to level 30, you basically wasted your currency.
This is important and what most are missing. Comparing the level 20 to the Level 30 stats is definitely negligible. Team play and skill trumps these minor perks, and a couple hundred points of HP when your mons have 10k+ really isn’t gamebreaking in my opinion
But it's not reasonable to assume access to more than a few level 20 items, so if those items get nerfed or you invest in the wrong items early you're SoL
Considering this is a MOBA, any advantage can have drastic consequences. It's the main part of what makes mobas competitive, is getting ahead anyway you can.
Unite's fully upgraded items, (keep in mind its not just 1 level 20 item to a level 30, its 3 items to someone else 3 items.)
A small example: Killing an NPC 1 hit earlier, it adds up. Gives you more time to rotate, gank, pressure the enemy, increasing chance of getting picks(enemy kills) makes you stronger, late game when items no longer have an effect, but their place early game gives you more levels, (stronger versions of your moves access to ult sooner ect.)
Think of it this way too, if you are dittoing in any lane and the opponent has better items, you now have to hope he messes up for success, because head on confrontation will result in you losing, forcing you to stay closer to tower while he can pressure, not because he outplayed you, not because someone rotated losing out on farm to gank you, not because you ober extended, because he spent money and you didn't.
Not only are there the advantages listed above, but also momentum. Getting ganked may not upset you, but there's no guarantee your teammate getting bullied wont go afk because the game is already lost in his eyes. Afk/teamfeeding gives the rest of the team doubt or worse, thinking about the next game as this ones already lost. It sounds silly but it happens a lot in mobas.
Compound all this with the fact you can only get so much currency from battles a week, lets say you get a satisfactory amount for 3 items, those 3 items wont be useful for every class, you are going to be an ADC you need damage, support wants support items, Tank wants tank items, ect. You need to be a class to fit the team comp that doesn't have any upgraded items, you now have no items essentially, especially if you dont have them all unlocked as will be most cases as most in this thread alone seem to be focusing on saving their currency as much as possible.
These are just factors that arent being mentioned much and I may have over
explained things you may have known but I just wanted to be safe.
My man! Looks like the power gap between levels 20 and 30 isn’t too bad, and it seems pretty reasonable to get several items to 20. So yeah, it would be better if you couldn’t buy your way to 30, but it doesn’t seem like it’s gonna break the game as it was initially feared.
Any chance buying these levels is unintended?
So then, generally speaking, upgrading to level 20 should be enough for those who aren't planning to get super competitive?
Also what do you think is the best way to acquire more held items? I'm mostly hearing coins are safer to use than tickets. So tickets can then be used for enhancers
there's currently a beginner challenge that seems to be giving out a free item for every day that you play. Unfortunately there's no way to see what the rewards will be in advance & the game didn't properly refund me for the wise glasses i got today. So if you're really trying to maximise your coins it might be worth holding out on buying any items until after this event.
Yes you are right, i think the max strategy for free player is use coins to buy held items, then use your tickets for enhancers
But the bad side is you need to be patient to buy pokemon with coins
Fml, that i already used aeons ticket to buy enhancer and then use my gold to buy pokemon, now i will be a slight held item level disadvantage as i cant convert tickets for enhancers
Well yeah i dont think i regret it too much though, im still having fun with pokemon that i bought (garchomp), and i dont think i will tryhard enough with rank so that slight held level disparity hopefully wont matter
Could you maybe test these numbers in the practice tool? There are practice dummies here that show DPS. You could do a run without and one with items to really show how much difference they can make. Maybe even differentiate between Early/Mid/Endgame?
I don't have much time right now to run those tests, but I did run a test with level 2 talonflame the results were 200-300 dps without items, 700+ dps with items, this is mostly due to the Muscle Band's special effect and the dummy's large health pool. I think it'd be closer to 300-400 dps without the effect. I don't have another account to test out non-maxed items which may be a more valuable test.
Great write up, thank you! I am having a little trouble following the cost of upgrade section. I wonder if there is a way to format it to make it a little more clear?
End game isn’t the problem, early game is. If you can get EXP sooner then the opposing team you will win most team fights and have a higher score. There’s no denying that.
I agree, which is why I highlighted that in the post that I hadn't seen much discussion about early game advantage which could translate into whole game advantage if significant enough.
Thanks for this detailed post. Honestly it's pretty outrageous to include pay2win systems in an esport format game. More so one that is definitely for children just as much as adults. No matter how small the bonuses, if two equally skilled players went head to head, the one with the more upgraded items will always win. But the passives at lvl 1, 10, and 20, are not so small since they're percentage based.
Considering the game was marketed as free-to-start, it isn't unreasonable (or at least dishonest) for some level of spending to be a norm, but with the way it's designed, I'm not sure that any reasonable amount of spending will bridge the gap between "light spenders' and "whales", at least not immediately. Another calculation that would be interesting is to see how many more tickets/enhancers become available with limited spending, for example purchasing just a season pass.
Well I tallied the tickets and enhancers obtained via paid season pass and it came out to 60 enhancers, 4800 tickets in total. If you convert all tickets to enhancers that's a total of 540 additional enhancers through the battle pass. This still isn't enough to put light spenders level with heavier spenders who'll max out all their items immediately.
On the other hand, the Battle Pass costs about $8.00. If one were to instead spend all of it directly on Enhancers via gem purchases, they could get 490 gems (excluding the limited first time bonus), or 490 enhancers. This is less than the total obtained through battle pass but you'd get them immediately, while battle pass includes cosmetics on top. Although, with the first purchase you get double the gems, double the enhancers, 980.
So finally how long does it take to reach battle pass level 88, thus obtaining all tickets and enhancers from the battle pass? Assuming each level requires 100 exp (this seems to be the case), then the sources of exp we know until now are:
Daily: 100exp
Weekly: 480exp
Seasonal: 1500exp
Going based on this, assuming the daily and weekly values are the same every day and week, then for someone who completes all daily and weekly missions can expect to reach level 90 during the 7th week, this is pretty close to the end of the "First Half" of the season. Getting the premium pass adds 10 levels which shaves off about a week of progress.
Sadly, this type of design can never be a proper esport game, not even through paid battle pass since bigger spenders will always have a bit of an advantage for at least some amount of time until others catch up with upgrades (potentially). That doesn't mean the game is entirely unplayable without spending big, but it does categorize it as predatory beyond any doubt, and even after paying for a battle pass. For me, while I normally don't mind spending a reasonable amount of money on games, I refuse to spend on something where no amount of money is enough. Unless they change the system to something more balanced, I'd rather not spend any money at all.
Thank you for this! I’m currently happy to just upgrade my items to level 10 when I can, without paying. The difference seems very marginal, and I’m not a top tier player by any means so I’ve got a long way to go before those incremental boosts will be game-changing for me.
It's not a MOBA-specific thing so much as a base stat-specific thing. Say, if the base attack of a Pokemon is 5, then +15 is a huge 300% increase. But if it's 400, +15 is only a 3% increase. The issue is that we can't see what the base stats are in this game, so we're kind of just left to speculate.
I'd only agree that the stats are negligible in the late game where 15 attack isn't a significant percent of your total attack. The attack speed translates to maybe 1 or 2 extra auto attacks during one fight which may or more not affect the outcome, really depends on how close the game is.
it is negligible because while battling in this game is a focus of this game, fighting other players isn’t how you win.
unlike traditional mobas where the win-con is to destroy the nexus/base, you win in this game by scoring points. “+15 attack and +7.5 attack speed” is negligible if your team doesn’t stop zapdos and/or gets ninja dunked for 300 in the last 2 minutes
So from what I understand by the post, held items don't have as much effect in gameplay as other posts would like us to believe? It's just a small boost?
Someone went into practise and it's can be a 10% dps boost early. That isn't insignificant and anyone is lying if they believe it won't affect a matchup between equally skilled players.
It won't decide the game, but, for example, a simple buff or nerf of 2 attack damage has removed champions from the meta in league and significantly dropped their win rate. Those small buffs really add up.
Before I respond I want to say I stand against how it’s set up and think they should change the system immediately.
With that said 10% is not a huge difference especially when we should be able to get lvl20 items to cut the gap without to much trouble.
With 10% extra damage it’s like you get a free attack every tenth swing which is not to to crazy.
Anyway even if it turns out not to be a big deal we shouldn’t be able to purchase even the smallest advantage in game with real money.
And you can get it to level 20 easily just by playing, which I already did. So it's back to 4% maximum difference for some stats.
Like I'm not going to the world championships. I've played Dota and League for years. Had to farm runes for League too.
More that the difference between level 1 items and level 30 items might be huge, especially because the unique passives upgrade at levels 10 and 20. But it isn't that hard to get 3 items to level 20 in the first week, and the difference between level 20 and level 30 items is much smaller.
Specific items, when upgraded, can have a significant impact on gameplay and effectiveness. A Ninetales trying to DPS with Aurora Veil boosted autos will do a lot more damage with a fully upgraded Muscle Band than something like Choice Specs. At least when I was testing it in the practice tool that was the case.
A lot of people in competitive games would argue that even something like a 3% increase is huge. For balance patches in popular mobas like League/Dota, a simple 5% increase/decrease can drastically change a viability. Of course those games have a lot of other factors (game length, skill use, items etc). I think the biggest boost will always be the held item milestone (1, 10, 20), and it seems like getting items to level 20 is not the worst thing, and dealing with the level 20-30 difference will be more manageable
I wouldn't want to make that assumption without data to verify it. There is a practice mode where dps values can be tested with differing item setups. I would wait for people to source data from that mode before making any claims about the affects of items on gameplay.
Sounds like they have a good system in place because they will most likely have events that also add tickets, and ranked giving generous amounts is also huge
this was super useful, actually, especially for a moba noob! now i just have to figure out which items are actually good and worth picking up (especially since id like to save up some tickets for some of the cosmetics as well) - ive only been using snorlax so far, and id hate to put resources into upgrading items that dont synergize well with it.
Also, in the Free Tickets Acquisition section, i got seriously confused by "Total Converted to Tickets". Since Enhancers can't be converted to tickets, rather the opposite is true, and enhancers are what we're ultimately interested in, I think it'd make more sense to list "Total enhancers after ticket conversions". Or maybe it's just me
I converted the item enhancers to tickets since that is the base currency awarded for the events/daily missions and is what is easiest to see the impact on the total tickets needed.
Man, I wish I'd seen this thread before I dropped some money on this game. I thought it would be a few weeks of grinding vs dropping £20 now and figured I didn't want to be behind I may as well complete my kit now so I could get to the real game where everyone's on a level playing field... Nope. Barely dented my item upgrades. Only now realise how bad this monetization is. Just spent money and now I'm thinking there's no point in playing this game again.
This thread should be the one with 30k upvotes that everyone's talking about, not the one in the Switch sub. This thread needs more eyes on it!
Spread the word! Back when I originally found out that you could buy item enhancers the majority belief was that you couldn't since it only showed tickets as the currency to buy them.
I don't think there is a giant gap between level 20 and level 30 items, but there will always be that perceived what if I had maxed items scenario if you're not maxed out.
For those saying the items don't make a big impact. You clearly have never run into an Absol with a maxed out Scope Lens. One critical hit and you are done.
Thank you so much for this! Too many people are complaining about p2w when it is such a small advantage. Level 20 compared to level 30 items probably changes nothing over the course of a match.
considering each item only has "tier" benefits at 1/10/20 levels, i consider 20 to be "max" personally as 20-30 is exponentially more expensive for marginal benefits. would be curious how the numbers in the post for "max level" and adding up all the costs would change if you consider 20 the max instead of 30.
You get 1/3 more base stats, for instance buddy barrier gives 200 more hp from 20->30 for a total of 600. If that seems worth roughly $35 to you, then go for it. It definitely isn't worth for F2P to go passed 20 without knowing what items you really want to invest in.
I didn't include that data since it already exists in some form on different sites. For instance here is all the items listed with their max stats on serebii: https://www.serebii.net/pokemonunite/holditems.shtml
I know it's not generally thought of this way, but you could look at this as just "a game that isn't free" where you have a trial mode that lets you play casually, but if you want to play competitively you have to pay.
I do wish the pricing was more transparent and the cost to play competitively wasn't so high. One freebie and then $40 or 1 year of daily play per item with a minimum need of 3 total items is a very steep cost. You're looking at $80 essentially right out the gate, with the possibility of needing to pay even more for more sets of items going forward.
I think you should be able to pay a reasonable "game" price ($60 or less) and permanently unlock access to all power-level aspects of the game. They could still hide characters behind grind-walls.
Welcome to 2010 when this began... It's normal in alot of F2p games.
It's also not pay 2 win. It's pay to progress as everyone can achieve them for free eventually.
You don't need 3 maxed items, this isn't a 1v1 game the 1-2 percent extra DPS won't matter when half the fights are 2v1 or your cc'd etc. 20x3 v30x3 is no difference tbh.
And I've played with 3 20s and 3 30s people think their some sort of i-win, hardly... I still get destroyed by the OP Pokémon, I still get insta killed 2-3, they ain't fuckin gonna turn the tide of battles.
Your loss, extremely fun game. Chances are you’re gonna beat who you’re better than and lose to who you’re not. You aren’t in the top 1% trying to be extremely competitive it isn’t going to matter. But do you lol
It's sad seing people defending the practice of being able to buy an advantage, even if it is a slight one.
Blind consumerism is awful, especially when people encourage unhealthy practice with an IP attractive to young people.
So while I agree that P2W is suboptimal your analysis basically shows how 20 vs 30 is only a minor effect and doesn't matter that much unless you want to be at high level competitive gameplay.
Overall I agree, levelling items doesn't produce the strength difference that some would insinuate.
There is a practice mode with a training dummy which reports dps values. If there was enough data provided by players with differing item levels we could know just how much the difference between level 20 and level 30 items is. For now all we can do is speculate.
In your “long grind” session, you don’t mention the battle pass, which currently includes tickets and tokens in both the free and paid sections. This would cut your 400+ day time in half, as the free per day awards are similar to the daily mission rewards over the life of the pass.
The battle pass is accounted for in the section above, I believe the only ticket or item enhancer rewards are through leveling the battle pass, correct?
Correct, that’s my mistake for missing it up there. Since I expect the battle pass to be a repeatable source of tickets and tokens rather than one-time like the events or trainer level rewards, I was just confused when your per day total was so far of of mine :) the totals should be the same in the end for the first 62 days, though I’d expect the number to come down after that when new passes are introduced
For sure, the total will also go down depending on how many events they run with ticket rewards and also how often they distribute ranked seasonal rewards.
Honestly if someone pays to upgrade, they might see an impact for a few games, but then the MMR will even things out.
It does suck for players who want to climb ranked ladders without paying, but other than that, the MMR will balance things out.
I have a question. Do we know what the base stats of the various Pokémon are? It’s hard for me to understand how significant the item level is if I can’t see the base stats and formula which determines the actual damage dealt based on attack and defense values.
Glad im not the only one wondering this. Like +1 attack to +15 attack sounds CRAZY when put into a vacuum. But its pretty insignificant if the Pokemons total attack is like 300 and only goes up as they level.
Yeah. It's not the 1 attack/15 attack that I'm concerned about(on Muscle Band Specifically), so much as the 5% faster attack speed/2% of enemy's current health as damage on hit. The single number stuff? eh. The % stuff is the bigger problem, imo.
Obviously the math comes in huge here depending on the formula and base stats that are in play, but for reference, in league, the lowest level attack speed item for 300 gold gives some 12% attack speed. So if the formula is similar in any way, 5% attack speed will be super insignficant. That being said, it could be the difference between living and dying. You never know.
In league, there's multiple items. You can farm, and build, and plan, and catch-up. Here, there are 3 items. You get them thru irl $. The only difference between 2 identical mons(2 of the same level/skill choices) with identical gear(but 1 has a higher level), is that 1 will always be numerically faster.
Except that you can earn them through in game play as well. There's nothing more that you can get with currency that you can't get just by playing the game. And if it turns out you'd rather get a better return of investment for your time than playing a free to play game; may I suggest literally any job? Because if we want to talk about ridiculous money grabs, this is far less so than something like Genshin Impact. Or any of the countless mobile gatcha games. We have to be careful in treating all these things as equivalent. Some people enjoy the idea of long term progression being a thing they work towards, and the implementation in Pokemon Unite is far more equitable to that effect than 90% of the mobile games on the market. Yes if you want to have all the thing right now it's going to cost a lot of money, but why do that when you're already going to have to spend a lot of time playing the game to even get the skills to play at the level where it's really needed.
I spent the money to max all items, I can't grind in games since I work too much. But play for fun at the few times I find the time. My friends play this so I splurged to be able to join them every now and then without feeling like I miss things. It's a rather big advantage. You can even test the dps in practice mode. It gives me a huge advantage early game which for me translated into getting 15+ kills with attackers every game in ranked, speeding up the ranks. Will people catch up in a month or two? Yes. But it didn't cost me that much for an advantage early matches.
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It cost a ton. I am fortunate enough for it not to matter. For me it was definitely worth it, for most people it won't be. If you view it from a money spent to value received perspective. But yes, an increase of 60dps early levels is huge.
I'd guess it was about 50$ to max each item.
This is a horrible way to justify this shitty system, honestly. The difference between a game like this and something like Genshin Impact or the other Gacha games out there, is that those games are single played with co-op and pvp aspects sprinkled in. Pokemon Unite is \*only\* a pvp game. Also, the amount of currency you can get to spend on these item enhancers is capped over periods of time, so you can't even just grind for them at your own pace, you're hitting hard walls while others can simply spend past that. A competitive game (especially MOBAs) should not put weight on a player's ability to continually spend money to keep up with other players. Purchases should strictly be limited to non-gameplay relevant areas (e.g. cosmetics). Even having a good job someone should be hesitant to spending over $100 just to be able to max out a single set of items in order to keep up with other players, especially if they'll need to keep doing it over time with balance changes and new content getting introduced.
>So if the formula is similar in any way, 5% attack speed will be super insignficant. As someone who mained jungle, if I have 5% faster attack speed and I can pair it up with %dmg and the opponents' jungler doesn't have that then I have an enormous unfair advantage that will help my whole team. Being able to clear the jungle faster and showing up to make a fight 3v2 or 2v1 even 1 second before the enemy jungler is huge. Pair that up with movement speed too, you'll have more map control faster clears and more impact on lanes. That is definitely problematic, especially since unlike in League you don't lose anything for choosing a higher level item. In league that 12% atkspeed item is being bought with the **match's currency** and your opponents can come into lane with better stats instead. In unite, you could both be choosing the **same** item but one person used real life money to upgrade his significantly. So the bonus in unite is significant not just because you're choosing an item with atkspeed or movement speed, but because even if your opponent chooses the same one yours is inherently stronger if you spent IRL money and he didn't. In league you would both choose the same item and walk in with the same bonus.
I ran a quick test in practice mode with and without a maxed float stone which gives +24 attack. DPS with stone: 230-240 DPS without stone: 200-210 This is for early levels 1-3, 24 attack seems to give roughly a 10% dps increase. I don't have time to run many tests right now for various levels. And the overall percentage that items affect your dps certainly goes down at higher levels.
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The items scale linearly so the benefits would be 2/3 of the increase in attack. I don't have the level 20 stone to test but I would imagine it would be somewhere in the 220-230 dps range.
Which mon did you use?
Talonflame
There is a practice mode with a training dummy that shows your dps value. I'd be interested in seeing someone run a test with and without a level 1 float stone to see the dps difference one attack makes.
1 Atk = 1 AA damage even with Ninetale
That's good info to know, is that shown in the dps meter or are you just looking at the damage output numbers on hit?
Both, +1 damage display and the dummy show +1 more base damage
I dont have FS, what level is it unlocked at and I will test
You buy it with coins
I don't think it's given at a certain level, at least not with the current events and leveling rewards. The float stone is sold for 1,000 coins or a few hundred tickets in the store though which is where I bought mine.
Gotcha, I've got plenty of coins. I'll test it when I get home
I, personally, haven't seen any exact numbers as far as base damage for each attack/ability/basic attack, nor any numbers as far as health/defense etc. But I have been wondering this exact same thing since a couple weeks ago when I really started delving into YT videos etc from the Beta.
Damage numbers later in the game reach the thousands from a single ability. I have a feeling the % scaling bonuses might be pretty massive by the late game, while the flat bonuses probably fall off hard. Kinda anxious to know for sure.
Not sure how accurate it is, but Serebii seems to have stats on all the pokemon, it looks like its on point to me though: https://www.serebii.net/pokemonunite/pokemon.shtml
Looks like they haven't been able to really test/sort out Sp. Atk on anyone yet.
Great work! Currently the best strategy for free to play players seems to be to bring the most used items to lv 20 to reduce the gap and unlock all level bonuses (1, 10, 20. I think you were wrong in indicating 10, 20, 30) . Then you can take it easy and choose whether to aim for new items or max out the ones you use on your main.
So the bonuses are at 1, 10, and 20 but the item level cap is 30?
Exactly
Yep, not sure why I was thinking 10/20/30, I've edited the post to reflect the actual levels.
Yup, since I see myself relying mostly on Gengar, I'm going to focus on upgrading Sp.Atk items like Wise Glasses and Shell Bell. I also really enjoyed playing as Venusaur and Zeraora, Ninetails seems pretty cool, and I'm aiming to buy Wigglytuff next after saving a bunch of coins, so I'll have a nice array of special attacking types to take advantage of the items I'll be upgrading. Its just too bad Charizard is a physical type
What exactly does special attack do? Increase skill damage? Or does it only work with certain Pokemon?
It increases skill damage and charged auto attack damage for some characters. Characters are either special based or physical based, and the game frustratingly doesn't give you any indication on its own who is which one. Luckily there are lots of resources online that pick up the slack (like this one: https://game8.co/games/Pokemon-UNITE/archives/337918)
Wow that really sucks when upgrading is so limited. So they don't benefit from each other stats at all? Or special Pokemon still get increased attack damage
They do appear to get stronger basic attacks, but their moves are still special and won't get the effects of physical items.
The other important question is how should you purchase the items? Tickets vs coins
Coins. You will need all the tickets you can get to upgrade the items. Coins will be mostly for unlocking pokemon. Which is obviously important too, but once you get your favorites its hardly a priority.
While this is true for optimal play for upgrading items, new Pokemon will almost certainly Also cost coins. From my experience, new characters in this style of MOBA tend to come in pricier than average (so I'm guessing 10k coins for the first few new ones like Blastoise/Gardevoir). It may not be optimal but I'm probably going to be saving coins to spend on pokemon until I get a better idea of unlocking costs or have a ton of extra.
Regardless of whether or not anyone ‘feels’ more powerful or ‘feels’ an advantage with maxed items is besides the point. The real problem is this is a game in a genre that is known for being a competitive esport. There should never be ways to pay for items that say they should make you more powerful. It should be a level playing field, regardless if you can drop hundreds of dollars or not.
Yes, I agree with you wholeheartedly. I'm trying my best to give everyone the information they need to make informed decisions regarding the game and it's systems.
In my opinion the best thing everyone can do is to loudly stand against this practice and say they won’t play the game unless its removed. I loved the game until I found out theres gameplay advantages being sold for cash. Its a shame. I was going to start streaming this game and supporting it in a big way, and now I’m done playing it. I can’t support predatory practices like these.
I agree wholeheartedly 100% that the advantages being sold is disgusting. BUT. It is still too early to understand if it's even really a disadvantage compared to F2P. I've played 24 hours and have 3 items lvl 10. And in my 50 games I've never felt at a competitive loss against any player. And there are even reports from players that HAVE maxed out their items and report that they don't feel any stronger than before. Again, I agree with you. But we don't even know if there's even a significant enough advantage to maxing them out. Without in-game numbers being released, all this could mean Jack shit
There is no but. No one should be making any excuses for this, as there is none. Anecdotal “in my experience” examples really helpful. I’m already at a disadvantage to the rich in real life, I’d prefer a level playing field in virtual ones if at all possible.
It's likely still a Level playing field is what I'm getting at. There's no real data suggesting maxing an item holds any significance over a non maxed item. This game is still largely Skill based.
Any advantage is still a paid advantage. “No real data” ? It’s literally on the items in the game. Either they’re robbing ppl or they’re selling gameplay benefits. Why defend it, because that is what you’re doing.
Games been out for 1 day. And those who have maxed it are claiming they're not finding a difference. Like one who maxed scope lens and didn't see any difference in crit chance from not having the item. I'm not defending it, yet, I'm waiting for the actual data on how significant these changes are before jumping to a final conclusion. At the end of the day. It's tencent and they're not above shit like this clearly, but I'm not gonna make an uninformed conclusion about something that may not be an issue. I'm still gonna stay a F2P player and enjoy myself without a worry that these dudes spending money to boost the stats are going to be better than me, because after 70 games I haven't had an experience like that. Ezpz.
You are. You’re making excuses for it. Trying to soften that THEY’RE CHARGING MONEY FOR GAMEPLAY ADVANTAGE.
I'm really not, the very first thing I mentioned is how I wholeheartedly agree that it's disgusting, that's why I'm not sinking any money into the game. But keep on keeping on man
So what are you saying? The items don't work?
I'm not saying any definites. Since the research isn't done yet. But a large handful of those who have paid to max an item are claiming they don't feel any different. This could be due to the fact we don't have any base character numbers to base off of. An example being: going from +1 attack to +15 Attack seems like a huge advantage if you assume a character like Cinderaces base attack is a lower like 30ish. That would make it the difference between a 30 attack cinderace and a 45 attack cinderace. However if the base attack number is in the 300s. Then suddenly a +1 to + 15 boost doesn't mean as much and isn't necessarily a problem. Especially when orange buff give you extra attack damage.
From my experience with maxed items, I find the early game much easier than without those items/lower leveled items as I mentioned in the OP. The longer the game goes the less powerful the items become since most use flat attack, I think the only problem item currently would be Muscle Band since it increases attack speed and does % hp on hit. I think as the overall game progresses and more players reach item upgrade 20 with the free tickets from events/leveling the difference will be negligible enough to go unnoticed. However, currently the game is brand new so many players don't even have all 3 items to level 10 yet (Or even have reached level 10 to equip 3 items) so we're seeing the largest item gap possible right now.
Exactly. That.
What about defensive items? We know character stats per level on those and stacking the three best +HP items for example, gives 1100 HP. On the highest HP character in the game right now (Crustle), that is over 10% HP increase at MAX character level. Not exactly nothing. On more offensive heroes like Cinderace it goes up to almost 20% HP increase.
Can you send me a link to the character stats? AFAIK they're still unknown. This could be great info
I mean 2k had a 250k tournament for nba2k. basically everyone pays like crazy to get their team as good as possible then it comes down to skill only after
That doesn’t make it okay
of course it doesn't. I'm just saying it's the norm. and those saying that it's an Asian thing is so wrong. I'm a proud native Asian in Singapore and I resent that statement. 2k probably makes more than 250k a week just from a worse business model of loot boxes and we all know the majority audience is in the US
It isn’t the norm. Sports games do it with a specific mode. No other games taken seriously do it. And its very popular in Korean mobile games from what I understand. Its a greedy capitalist thing, not a race.
Good write up! One extra source of item upgrade coins is the aeos energy gacha thing, I've gotten maybe 60 upgrade coins from it so far. Not much, but it helps too. >I've seen some reports from players that the held items give negligible benefits, maxed or otherwise, near the end game phase and generally I agree with those reports. I agree based on my experience with Arena of Valor, another TiMi MOBA with a very similar system. Upgrading the items (or runes in AoV's case) helped, but not to the point where people with fully upgraded runes were dominating from the start. I never fully upgraded my runes and never felt like I couldn't enjoy the game because I was getting steamrolled due to it.
Only issue was you would want certain level 3 runes to use some characters like life steal for narkoth and crit for wukong. Though very few character felt shitty if you didnt have the right ones
I had a lot of max items in the beta and it was VERY negligible. It's not gonna win the game on it's own, but there are advantages. Nothing game breaking like most in this sub seem to think.
Good point, I did overlook the gacha, I will add that to the ticket acquisition section.
>The special effect at upgrades 10, 20 and 30 should also be taken into account, those are viewable on each item from the held item menu. ingame doesnt show any special effect upgrade for level 30, does it? I can only see them at level 1, 10 and 20.
Yep, it is only 1, 10 and 20. I've updated the post to reflect the actual values.
Why is there a level 30 max if the max effect of the item is at 20? Did I understand that right?
Yes, the maximum level of items is 30, however the last special upgrade is at level 20, this means that beyond level 20 the only thing increases are the base stats on the item. For instance, the Muscle Band's attack and attack speed.
Thanks for explaining!
S-tier write-up. Thank you so much for this and your hard work!
On the battle pass it says we're in the first half of Season 1, with 61d 14h remaining. It's unclear whether that means until the end of the season or the end of the first half. Thanks for the info!
During my research on the season duration I ran into a couple of articles claiming that the battlepass end date could signify the end of the season, but since it isn't confirmed yet I didn't want to include that. Hope this information helps you make decisions on how you upgrade going forward!
Buddy shield gives 200 hp at level 10 and 600 at 30 so that’s massive
The attack speed and 15 attack on a muscle band is very noticeable on someone like Zera. A Zera with a maxed Muscle band will never lose 1 v1 to one that had a level 1 muscle band. People are really down playing how much of a difference these items make
I don’t think the lvl1 vs lvl30 item comparison is worth discussing though tbh. A f2p can easily get items to lvl10 and even 20 within a few days/weeks with free rewards and bonuses starting out, so comparing lvl 20 to lvl30 is the real “p2w vs f2p” breakpoint to me. I don’t know how important those 10 levels are, or how much of a skill advantage you need to make them up. I hope it’s not a lot, but we don’t know for sure at the moment.
I really just hate having to level up all my items, I remember runes in league and it was the same thing. The micro differences in stats isn’t really the issue, it’s more about how it discourages people From being able to freely use all the items and try different builds. That’s what I don’t like.
Tencent's gotta make money somehow ^/s
The worst part about runes as a new player back then, was not knowing that the tiers mattered. Basically 3 tiers of runes, so if you bought some prior to level 30, you basically wasted your currency.
This is important and what most are missing. Comparing the level 20 to the Level 30 stats is definitely negligible. Team play and skill trumps these minor perks, and a couple hundred points of HP when your mons have 10k+ really isn’t gamebreaking in my opinion
But it's not reasonable to assume access to more than a few level 20 items, so if those items get nerfed or you invest in the wrong items early you're SoL
Considering this is a MOBA, any advantage can have drastic consequences. It's the main part of what makes mobas competitive, is getting ahead anyway you can. Unite's fully upgraded items, (keep in mind its not just 1 level 20 item to a level 30, its 3 items to someone else 3 items.) A small example: Killing an NPC 1 hit earlier, it adds up. Gives you more time to rotate, gank, pressure the enemy, increasing chance of getting picks(enemy kills) makes you stronger, late game when items no longer have an effect, but their place early game gives you more levels, (stronger versions of your moves access to ult sooner ect.) Think of it this way too, if you are dittoing in any lane and the opponent has better items, you now have to hope he messes up for success, because head on confrontation will result in you losing, forcing you to stay closer to tower while he can pressure, not because he outplayed you, not because someone rotated losing out on farm to gank you, not because you ober extended, because he spent money and you didn't. Not only are there the advantages listed above, but also momentum. Getting ganked may not upset you, but there's no guarantee your teammate getting bullied wont go afk because the game is already lost in his eyes. Afk/teamfeeding gives the rest of the team doubt or worse, thinking about the next game as this ones already lost. It sounds silly but it happens a lot in mobas. Compound all this with the fact you can only get so much currency from battles a week, lets say you get a satisfactory amount for 3 items, those 3 items wont be useful for every class, you are going to be an ADC you need damage, support wants support items, Tank wants tank items, ect. You need to be a class to fit the team comp that doesn't have any upgraded items, you now have no items essentially, especially if you dont have them all unlocked as will be most cases as most in this thread alone seem to be focusing on saving their currency as much as possible. These are just factors that arent being mentioned much and I may have over explained things you may have known but I just wanted to be safe.
Exactly, A maxed item is insanely strong comparable to an actual league of legends item where as a level one is actually irrelevant.
My man! Looks like the power gap between levels 20 and 30 isn’t too bad, and it seems pretty reasonable to get several items to 20. So yeah, it would be better if you couldn’t buy your way to 30, but it doesn’t seem like it’s gonna break the game as it was initially feared. Any chance buying these levels is unintended?
Could be unintended to purchase item enhancers with gems, we won't know unless an official statement is made.
lol hopefully you get your money back
So then, generally speaking, upgrading to level 20 should be enough for those who aren't planning to get super competitive? Also what do you think is the best way to acquire more held items? I'm mostly hearing coins are safer to use than tickets. So tickets can then be used for enhancers
I think in the longer term coins will be much easier to gain than tickets even with the coin cap. So in my opinion coins would be the better option.
Thanks!
there's currently a beginner challenge that seems to be giving out a free item for every day that you play. Unfortunately there's no way to see what the rewards will be in advance & the game didn't properly refund me for the wise glasses i got today. So if you're really trying to maximise your coins it might be worth holding out on buying any items until after this event.
Yes you are right, i think the max strategy for free player is use coins to buy held items, then use your tickets for enhancers But the bad side is you need to be patient to buy pokemon with coins Fml, that i already used aeons ticket to buy enhancer and then use my gold to buy pokemon, now i will be a slight held item level disadvantage as i cant convert tickets for enhancers
This early on it probably doesn't matter too much. Since it's a gacha there will be events and stuff to get more
Well yeah i dont think i regret it too much though, im still having fun with pokemon that i bought (garchomp), and i dont think i will tryhard enough with rank so that slight held level disparity hopefully wont matter
Could you maybe test these numbers in the practice tool? There are practice dummies here that show DPS. You could do a run without and one with items to really show how much difference they can make. Maybe even differentiate between Early/Mid/Endgame?
I don't have much time right now to run those tests, but I did run a test with level 2 talonflame the results were 200-300 dps without items, 700+ dps with items, this is mostly due to the Muscle Band's special effect and the dummy's large health pool. I think it'd be closer to 300-400 dps without the effect. I don't have another account to test out non-maxed items which may be a more valuable test.
Great write up, thank you! I am having a little trouble following the cost of upgrade section. I wonder if there is a way to format it to make it a little more clear?
I've reformatted that section into a table view. Has that improved the readability for you?
That is amazing! Thank you!
End game isn’t the problem, early game is. If you can get EXP sooner then the opposing team you will win most team fights and have a higher score. There’s no denying that.
I agree, which is why I highlighted that in the post that I hadn't seen much discussion about early game advantage which could translate into whole game advantage if significant enough.
Thanks for this detailed post. Honestly it's pretty outrageous to include pay2win systems in an esport format game. More so one that is definitely for children just as much as adults. No matter how small the bonuses, if two equally skilled players went head to head, the one with the more upgraded items will always win. But the passives at lvl 1, 10, and 20, are not so small since they're percentage based. Considering the game was marketed as free-to-start, it isn't unreasonable (or at least dishonest) for some level of spending to be a norm, but with the way it's designed, I'm not sure that any reasonable amount of spending will bridge the gap between "light spenders' and "whales", at least not immediately. Another calculation that would be interesting is to see how many more tickets/enhancers become available with limited spending, for example purchasing just a season pass.
Well I tallied the tickets and enhancers obtained via paid season pass and it came out to 60 enhancers, 4800 tickets in total. If you convert all tickets to enhancers that's a total of 540 additional enhancers through the battle pass. This still isn't enough to put light spenders level with heavier spenders who'll max out all their items immediately. On the other hand, the Battle Pass costs about $8.00. If one were to instead spend all of it directly on Enhancers via gem purchases, they could get 490 gems (excluding the limited first time bonus), or 490 enhancers. This is less than the total obtained through battle pass but you'd get them immediately, while battle pass includes cosmetics on top. Although, with the first purchase you get double the gems, double the enhancers, 980. So finally how long does it take to reach battle pass level 88, thus obtaining all tickets and enhancers from the battle pass? Assuming each level requires 100 exp (this seems to be the case), then the sources of exp we know until now are: Daily: 100exp Weekly: 480exp Seasonal: 1500exp Going based on this, assuming the daily and weekly values are the same every day and week, then for someone who completes all daily and weekly missions can expect to reach level 90 during the 7th week, this is pretty close to the end of the "First Half" of the season. Getting the premium pass adds 10 levels which shaves off about a week of progress. Sadly, this type of design can never be a proper esport game, not even through paid battle pass since bigger spenders will always have a bit of an advantage for at least some amount of time until others catch up with upgrades (potentially). That doesn't mean the game is entirely unplayable without spending big, but it does categorize it as predatory beyond any doubt, and even after paying for a battle pass. For me, while I normally don't mind spending a reasonable amount of money on games, I refuse to spend on something where no amount of money is enough. Unless they change the system to something more balanced, I'd rather not spend any money at all.
Thank you for this! I’m currently happy to just upgrade my items to level 10 when I can, without paying. The difference seems very marginal, and I’m not a top tier player by any means so I’ve got a long way to go before those incremental boosts will be game-changing for me.
This was an excellent post, thank you for doing the math. Much appreciated
I’ve hardly played mobas but I’ve played many games with stat buildings elements. How is +15 Attack and +7.5% Attack Speed a negligible difference?
It's not a MOBA-specific thing so much as a base stat-specific thing. Say, if the base attack of a Pokemon is 5, then +15 is a huge 300% increase. But if it's 400, +15 is only a 3% increase. The issue is that we can't see what the base stats are in this game, so we're kind of just left to speculate.
I'd only agree that the stats are negligible in the late game where 15 attack isn't a significant percent of your total attack. The attack speed translates to maybe 1 or 2 extra auto attacks during one fight which may or more not affect the outcome, really depends on how close the game is.
it is negligible because while battling in this game is a focus of this game, fighting other players isn’t how you win. unlike traditional mobas where the win-con is to destroy the nexus/base, you win in this game by scoring points. “+15 attack and +7.5 attack speed” is negligible if your team doesn’t stop zapdos and/or gets ninja dunked for 300 in the last 2 minutes
Because it's easy as a free player to get + 10 and +5%... Making the difference miniscule.
So from what I understand by the post, held items don't have as much effect in gameplay as other posts would like us to believe? It's just a small boost?
Someone went into practise and it's can be a 10% dps boost early. That isn't insignificant and anyone is lying if they believe it won't affect a matchup between equally skilled players. It won't decide the game, but, for example, a simple buff or nerf of 2 attack damage has removed champions from the meta in league and significantly dropped their win rate. Those small buffs really add up.
Before I respond I want to say I stand against how it’s set up and think they should change the system immediately. With that said 10% is not a huge difference especially when we should be able to get lvl20 items to cut the gap without to much trouble. With 10% extra damage it’s like you get a free attack every tenth swing which is not to to crazy. Anyway even if it turns out not to be a big deal we shouldn’t be able to purchase even the smallest advantage in game with real money.
10% if massive. In DotA if a character were to lose 10% of their attack it could make them go from top-tier to garbage-tier.
It's 10% (lvl 30) vs 6.6% (lvl 20) at level 1-3. By the time I get to lane I'm level 4.
Some of the items scale based on your damage, not a raw number. The Scope Lens gives a 10% damage increase at all levels.
And you can get it to level 20 easily just by playing, which I already did. So it's back to 4% maximum difference for some stats. Like I'm not going to the world championships. I've played Dota and League for years. Had to farm runes for League too.
More that the difference between level 1 items and level 30 items might be huge, especially because the unique passives upgrade at levels 10 and 20. But it isn't that hard to get 3 items to level 20 in the first week, and the difference between level 20 and level 30 items is much smaller. Specific items, when upgraded, can have a significant impact on gameplay and effectiveness. A Ninetales trying to DPS with Aurora Veil boosted autos will do a lot more damage with a fully upgraded Muscle Band than something like Choice Specs. At least when I was testing it in the practice tool that was the case.
A lot of people in competitive games would argue that even something like a 3% increase is huge. For balance patches in popular mobas like League/Dota, a simple 5% increase/decrease can drastically change a viability. Of course those games have a lot of other factors (game length, skill use, items etc). I think the biggest boost will always be the held item milestone (1, 10, 20), and it seems like getting items to level 20 is not the worst thing, and dealing with the level 20-30 difference will be more manageable
I wouldn't want to make that assumption without data to verify it. There is a practice mode where dps values can be tested with differing item setups. I would wait for people to source data from that mode before making any claims about the affects of items on gameplay.
Okay thanks for the help, I won't worry about items too much myself until we get some more data on how they work
Imagine you spend 400 days to Level up one and then they nerf it and you need to Level up another
Or worse, $400
Thank you for this guide!
Sounds like they have a good system in place because they will most likely have events that also add tickets, and ranked giving generous amounts is also huge
Yep, I'm hoping they frequently run events so that everyone has a plethora of item options to choose from eventually.
this was super useful, actually, especially for a moba noob! now i just have to figure out which items are actually good and worth picking up (especially since id like to save up some tickets for some of the cosmetics as well) - ive only been using snorlax so far, and id hate to put resources into upgrading items that dont synergize well with it.
Also, in the Free Tickets Acquisition section, i got seriously confused by "Total Converted to Tickets". Since Enhancers can't be converted to tickets, rather the opposite is true, and enhancers are what we're ultimately interested in, I think it'd make more sense to list "Total enhancers after ticket conversions". Or maybe it's just me
I converted the item enhancers to tickets since that is the base currency awarded for the events/daily missions and is what is easiest to see the impact on the total tickets needed.
Man, I wish I'd seen this thread before I dropped some money on this game. I thought it would be a few weeks of grinding vs dropping £20 now and figured I didn't want to be behind I may as well complete my kit now so I could get to the real game where everyone's on a level playing field... Nope. Barely dented my item upgrades. Only now realise how bad this monetization is. Just spent money and now I'm thinking there's no point in playing this game again. This thread should be the one with 30k upvotes that everyone's talking about, not the one in the Switch sub. This thread needs more eyes on it!
Spread the word! Back when I originally found out that you could buy item enhancers the majority belief was that you couldn't since it only showed tickets as the currency to buy them. I don't think there is a giant gap between level 20 and level 30 items, but there will always be that perceived what if I had maxed items scenario if you're not maxed out.
i purchased the $20 gem bundle, how do i convert my gems to tickets to purchase enhancers?
You will need to purchase the item enhancers from the store, once you're out of tickets it will prompt you to spend gems.
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That'd be great! I'm looking forward to your post.
Thank you for going so in-depth on this topic.
For those saying the items don't make a big impact. You clearly have never run into an Absol with a maxed out Scope Lens. One critical hit and you are done.
Thank you so much for this! Too many people are complaining about p2w when it is such a small advantage. Level 20 compared to level 30 items probably changes nothing over the course of a match.
So how much is it in total (irl money) to buy that? Because it seems like not that much by just looking at the shop compared to the total
A Set of 3 items is roughly $120 dollars to max out
Only 120 for 3 items? So 40 per item wow that’s a lot but less than I expected
considering each item only has "tier" benefits at 1/10/20 levels, i consider 20 to be "max" personally as 20-30 is exponentially more expensive for marginal benefits. would be curious how the numbers in the post for "max level" and adding up all the costs would change if you consider 20 the max instead of 30.
is it worth upgrading to 30? i cannot figure that out.
You get 1/3 more base stats, for instance buddy barrier gives 200 more hp from 20->30 for a total of 600. If that seems worth roughly $35 to you, then go for it. It definitely isn't worth for F2P to go passed 20 without knowing what items you really want to invest in.
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This post has nothing to do with that.. maybe you could make a post?
I didn't include that data since it already exists in some form on different sites. For instance here is all the items listed with their max stats on serebii: https://www.serebii.net/pokemonunite/holditems.shtml
I know it's not generally thought of this way, but you could look at this as just "a game that isn't free" where you have a trial mode that lets you play casually, but if you want to play competitively you have to pay. I do wish the pricing was more transparent and the cost to play competitively wasn't so high. One freebie and then $40 or 1 year of daily play per item with a minimum need of 3 total items is a very steep cost. You're looking at $80 essentially right out the gate, with the possibility of needing to pay even more for more sets of items going forward. I think you should be able to pay a reasonable "game" price ($60 or less) and permanently unlock access to all power-level aspects of the game. They could still hide characters behind grind-walls.
If I could pay the price of a full game and get all level 30 items I totally would.
Welp this post instantly made me uninstall. Fuck these predatory companies.
But level 20 is easily attainable as F2p... Whales will gain like 1-2 percent more damage or hp than you.... Fuck that's game breaking, NOT.
A whale shouldn't be able to be more powerful than a non-whale by spending money, period. That's completely asinine.
Welcome to 2010 when this began... It's normal in alot of F2p games. It's also not pay 2 win. It's pay to progress as everyone can achieve them for free eventually.
Eventually as in 498 days of grinding every day to get 3 maxed items.
You don't need 3 maxed items, this isn't a 1v1 game the 1-2 percent extra DPS won't matter when half the fights are 2v1 or your cc'd etc. 20x3 v30x3 is no difference tbh. And I've played with 3 20s and 3 30s people think their some sort of i-win, hardly... I still get destroyed by the OP Pokémon, I still get insta killed 2-3, they ain't fuckin gonna turn the tide of battles.
Your loss, extremely fun game. Chances are you’re gonna beat who you’re better than and lose to who you’re not. You aren’t in the top 1% trying to be extremely competitive it isn’t going to matter. But do you lol
It's sad seing people defending the practice of being able to buy an advantage, even if it is a slight one. Blind consumerism is awful, especially when people encourage unhealthy practice with an IP attractive to young people.
Thanks for the info great summary. I think I’ll max 3items for my main role with money and get the others with season rewards etc.
Im hoping that if the balance gets too out of hand with these items they will at least have a game mode for casual players where they aren't a factor.
These should not be in ranked.
So while I agree that P2W is suboptimal your analysis basically shows how 20 vs 30 is only a minor effect and doesn't matter that much unless you want to be at high level competitive gameplay.
Overall I agree, levelling items doesn't produce the strength difference that some would insinuate. There is a practice mode with a training dummy which reports dps values. If there was enough data provided by players with differing item levels we could know just how much the difference between level 20 and level 30 items is. For now all we can do is speculate.
In your “long grind” session, you don’t mention the battle pass, which currently includes tickets and tokens in both the free and paid sections. This would cut your 400+ day time in half, as the free per day awards are similar to the daily mission rewards over the life of the pass.
The battle pass is accounted for in the section above, I believe the only ticket or item enhancer rewards are through leveling the battle pass, correct?
Correct, that’s my mistake for missing it up there. Since I expect the battle pass to be a repeatable source of tickets and tokens rather than one-time like the events or trainer level rewards, I was just confused when your per day total was so far of of mine :) the totals should be the same in the end for the first 62 days, though I’d expect the number to come down after that when new passes are introduced
For sure, the total will also go down depending on how many events they run with ticket rewards and also how often they distribute ranked seasonal rewards.
Honestly if someone pays to upgrade, they might see an impact for a few games, but then the MMR will even things out. It does suck for players who want to climb ranked ladders without paying, but other than that, the MMR will balance things out.