They were so close. So, so close…
Introduction
I’m not here to litigate about the quality of the vehicles. I’m not here to litigate whether or not the Kungstiger is a bad prize or if the 40 mm Beaufighter Mk. I is worth it or if the PT-76-57 is too OP to be in a Battle Pass or if the Sholef V1 was butchered beyond recognition. All of those things are true in my opinion (except the Sholef one, that is an objective fact), but I’m not actually here to litigate that because that is an argument that no one can ever win and opinions are illegal on the internet anyway.
But I am here to discuss the fact that the Battle Pass is objectively lower value than it used to be. That is an undeniable fact. Let’s talk about that [insert Good Mythical Morning into here].
Battle Pass shrinkflation
The BP has objectively dropped in value. They keep filling it with new air in an attempt to replace the lost content, but the actual substance has diminished.
We started with 4 vehicles, all of which were coupons, with a rank 5 top prize. Then we moved to 4 vehicles with the top 2 being coupons and a rank 5 top prize. Then we got 4 vehicles with the top 2 being untradable coupons and the coupon upgrade system needed along with a rank 4 prize. Then they just straight up removed the lowest of the 4 vehicles and replaced it with a laughably small 10 days of premium account that you cannot choose when to activate. And now, with season 16, they removed another vehicle, kinda.
With Battle Pass season 16 “Skilled Marksman,” (which by the way is an awful name for a season when they could have called it “Hammer of God” or something to that effect), the naval prize has been removed and replaced with this new trophy where you can get an old naval vehicle that was not available as a coupon. This trophy system is actually fantastic. I love using the Battle Pass as a way to bring back old event vehicles and only ones that were not coupons, with you being guarenteed to get one you don’t already own, and the trophy rotating so it is not just naval vehicles. That’s one of my absolute favorite things. I’ve wanted it for so long and adding it to the BP is great because it gives a much more guarenteed alternative to the gambling boxes they bring around 4-or-so times per year. The trophy system would be great, if only they didn’t replace one of the unique prizes (yeah yeah I know they were mostly copy-paste anyway). The issue here is that if you don’t care about any of the old vehicles, you have nothing new-ish to look forward to, and if you own all of the vehicles in this trophy crate, you just get goddamn SL which means you have just lost out on a new vehicle you could have gotten. SL is not proper compensation for a lost vehicle. Furthermore, even you like the vehicle in the crate, you are still getting less out of it. For this season, the prizes in the trophy are the Z25, the MTB-422, the PT-658, and the TKA-106. That means that you have a 1/4 chance of getting a fully useless rank 1 when you could have been guarenteed to get a rank 3 before. For a veteran player like me, I have all of those except the TKA-106 which means I am now guarenteed to get a rank 1 instead of a rank 3. I’ve wanted the TKA-106 for a while so I’ll take it, but I could have gotten a new premium vehicle with guarenteed greater functional value instead.
How can this be fixed?
We’d all love them to make all of the prizes coupons again and for there to be 4 vehicles again, but that’s never going to happen and we all know it, so let’s not even focus on that. Let’s talk about this trophy system. The first step to fixing it is to keep it. It is a fantastic system and I really do love it in a vacuum. But it can’t replace the naval prize. Think of it this way: these vehicles in these trophies are not coupons and never have been, so Gaijin loses no money by just adding this into the BP at a different level. This should be in the BP, but as an extra prize. Maybe an extra prize at like level 90, it perhaps it could replace that laughable 10 days of premium account. I even like the idea of it being a naval prize one season, an air prize the next, and a ground prize the third, so it’ll all rotate. That’s good. I like it. But making the BP worse like they have in this season disincentivizes people buying it. If they did not add this, revenue from the BP would stay roughly the same. So why not instead add this as an extra thing to give the BP more value and incentivize more people to buy it. That way Gaijin can increase their profit because these vehicles never have been on the market to begin with so they are not losing out on that, and the BP now has more value and so people are more likely to get it.
Conclusion
The BP has gotten worse over the years. That’s an objective fact, but not an unavoidable one. Proposed here is a method for increasing profit through increasing the BP’s value without losing out on any value that would have existed in other places. The fact that Gaijin is doing this, giving the BP less value and disincentivizing people to buy it, instead of the proposed method is positively baffling to me, but we need to keep calling out this type of greedy behavior because calling out greed is the way it changes. If you let it go silent, it is not fought and just spreads. But if you stand up and call it out consistently, it puts pressure on them to change their practices for the better.