The Real Problem with Shadowverse: Worlds Beyond

Worlds Beyond's launch has been one of the most impactful controversies I've ever seen in the videogame industry - not that they are uncommon, these days, even Mario Kart seem to create an uproar - but this one picked up my interest fast.

The game soon got to second worse reviewed game on Steam - which is a quite impressive feat, if you ask me, considering that the card game aesthetics, voice over and gameplay are polished all around.

The problem lied within the monetization system, they say, but mostly, they quintupled the amount of rupies needed to buy a single pack - and going from 100 to 500 doesn't look good to anyone, as long as one can read numbers.

Another point that got under the aim of the reviewers was the new crafting system, that doesn't allow to "scrap" dupes for resources, unless you already have a 3-copy - which, of course, is not too easy to achieve for the rarest cards you may not be interested in, in the first place.

3 is not less than 3, by the way..! But still not enough to liquefy, on that we agree.

After 27.6 hours of recorded playtime on Steam, I got to the conclusion that the problem is neither in the rupies costs, nor in the new crafting system: both are more annoying, but the pack system now has a pity that allows you to have a guaranteed legendary card every 10, plus the crafting system can still rely on finished packs to only generate dust, if you want.

The real problem with Shadowverse: Worlds Beyond is that it's a play-to-play, win-to-win game. Yes, you heard it right: it's not a pay-to-win, or, at least, not directly.

Play-to-Play, Win-To-Win: Why It's a Hassle

The game's main paid resource deal is the battle pass, and to complete it, you need the usual 50 levels. The problem with the levels is that the missions that boost your points are all about winning games. And the problem with winning games, is that you need cards. Even if you have everything you need at game's launch, considering the large amount of free packs we got, this doesn't need to be true in the future - especially if you take a break from the game.

You can get up to 10 levels if you win 100 times... but it's not a little endeavor!

On top of that, wins give you 1/4 of a level, while losses give you only 1/10 of a level, slowing down your progression considerably. In the terrible hypothesis you lose all your games, you're going to need 500 games to complete the battle pass - which look quite many!

There are also limited-time missions, that give you some extra BP level, but they also require wins. The one that I got was about obtaining chest rewards, that you do get only on won games.

Some dailies are easy to complete, while others...

Even daily missions, that give you around half of a pack, are worth decent rewards when they are win-based.

The real problem with Shadowverse: Worlds Beyond is that it's a play-to-play, win-to-win game.

The problem with this is: if you don't have a solid deck, and a decent strategy, the game's core progression will go very slow. So the question becomes: is there any workaround for that?

When it comes to the dailies, you can reroll the win-based ones, if you don't have time, but they aren't usually too demanding. The real problem with dailies is the habit formation mechanism that asks you to go back play - for that, I still don't have an answer.

Let's talk about the Battle Pass: to complete it, you need to grind games. There's another issue in the fact that you can't have more than 10.000 points per week (10 levels), making it even more tight-knit to actual constant time investment.

The actual solution to the battle pass is the BP + points pack, which costs double the amount of the base one, but doesn't require you to rush it as much as that, while also allowing any player to achieve level 30 without too much effort. After all, you can buy it after you get there, or even when the period is about to be over.

Moreover, the new expansion releases will have double the time we have now, making things twice as easy. I don't know, though, if twice as easy will be enough to get 50 levels total in two months - 60 days are better than 30 though, especially if we still get limited time missions as for this one. I find it strange we don't have any for this week, though, and I wouldn't rely on them.

The "healthy" cost of the battle pass, all things considered, is to be considered about 25€, being that the only healthy way to avoid the play-to-play mechanism to take over the player.

With that, you get:

• 20 packs

• 1 legendary pack

• 1 craftable legendary card

• 1 leader

• Some extra cosmetics

If we want to simplify all of that, we can imagine that we're buying digital card packs at 1€ each, and a legendary card for about 2€, with a free leader in the bundle. That's not too great, considering we're talking about digital packs.

If you want to consider the base, super-grindy battle pass, half the cost is not gonna be much better, unless you actually like the game so much that playing that many games is not an issue - it is for me, especially because you don't have the resources to play many decks, you need them to be at least decent to be fun enough.

Conclusions

The problem within Shadowverse: Worlds Beyond is not in the monetization of pack bundles - it is a problem, it's just not the main one - it's on the reward system, that's based on playing many games to get to the easiest source of rewards, which is the battle pass, with the added malus of needing to win to get much better progression, which makes the slope be even more slippery if you play the game casually.

I am surprised nobody ever used the "play-to-play" nor the "win-to-win" lingo to describe those problems, which can be a real hassle in many, many games.

TZERØ MVQ Recap

F2P

Play-to-Play	Bad	The game requires the player to spend a lot of time grinding
Win-to-Win	Bad	The game rewards wins much more than losses, giving a very slow progression for players who play the game casually.
Pay-to-Win	Bad	The only F2P-accessible resources are locked into logging in, playing the game quite a lot, regularly, and having a strong deck to win games, which may be unviable.
Habit Creation	Bad	The game requires the player to log in and open one pack per day, plus the paid one too, if they opt in, plus dailies need to be completed for extra resources you need for core gameplay.
Game Loops	Okay	The game loop is the core gameplay. You are forced to use the decks you have built, though, so variety is slowed down. Still okay, though!

If you want to play the game without spending, the game is really bad overall. The game is not great at all for F2P players on three of the four quality axes.

Overall rating: 4/10 - unacceptable

Paid (BP + Points Workaround)

Play-to-Play	Acceptable	Buying the BP + points makes this problem lighter, but it does double the base cost of the cost tier TZERØ recommends. It should also get better with longer releases.
Win-to-Win	Acceptable	As above: the workaround does make the problem a little lighter. It should also get better with longer releases.
Pay-to-Win	Decent	Even with the Premium BP + Ponts, the costs can be acceptable, even if they get worse.
Habit Creation	Bad	This is still bad: all the core free resources are on a daily basis, there's no workaround.
Game Loops	Okay	The game loop is the core gameplay. You are forced to use the decks you have built, though, so variety is slowed down. Still okay, though!

Overall rating: 5/10 - barely decent

Even with spending money and following the (costly) workaround to avoid too much play-to-play, win-to-win mechanics, there is no way to make this game good on all the four MVQ axes, regardless, as habit creation for key resources you cannot ignore is still there.

If you still want to play it, check out the guidelines on the axes that you accept to be "Bad" to know what consequences you risk incurring in while playing the game!