Board Thread:Game Discussion/@comment-31526827-20191113035115

I posted this comment on Reddit in response to a new member who asked for such a thing (among all the groans of “oh no not again”). I just tonight I’d share and ask, right?

“ You need to understand how the game is designed to keep people around.

At first it’s totally free to download and play. With barely any effort you can play for hours and earn enough in game currency to buy cars, upgrade them, service them and race them. If you are just a little smart you can find ways to earn while spending little, make some careful choices on what to buy and how far to upgrade and stay ahead of the curve, even start building a GC bank. All of this while not spending a penny of real money.

Once addicted you reach a point where you start wanting cars/upgrades faster than you can earn (assuming you don’t trade your helmet for coveralls, and your car for a tractor and start farming) and you might be tempted to make an IAP. And, it’s not too bad. Buying R$ is relatively cheap, you might even see the deal that the R$+GC combos offer and bite. So you spend a very small amount of $ for an IAP. If you are better at money management, impulse control and have learned some strategies from the Wiki, for example, you’ll never need to buy R$ ...

At some point, unless you are one of the 1%, you’ll need more GC then you can earn in a timeframe that fits your patience. Either you turn off your brain and farm relentlessly/pretend to watch endless ads (resetting your advertiser ID over and over) or flat out cheat (hack the game files) you’ll be pushed to dramatically slow down your acquisition of new cars and upgrades (which will quickly cause you to no longer be able to meaningfully participate in online competitions) ooorrrrr you’ll make an IAP for GC. The more you spend, the better the return. You’ll justify it saying, it’s only once and it will also stop these lame automatic mandatory ads popping up. Or you can easily afford it and the game entertains you so you don’t mind supporting its continued development.

At this point you either never make another purchase again, or you do. If you never make another purchase and play for a while longer then quit, EA is still totally ahead and has done its job already. You gave them some money. If you forever play for free they are still doing fine. Their cost to support you is trivial. Some server/bandwidth costs. It doesn’t cost them anything extra when people who play free download and race month after month. They don’t really expect people to just keep buying IAPs forever (even addicted folks like myself eventually tire and stop buying), their single focus is: get new players to make one or a few IAPs (yes, and some ad revenue too). So long as they see approx 300,000 active players a month, if only 1% of them make a small IAP, they are making good money. And, don’t forget the occasional whale who shows up and dumps thousand$.

What would be the value of offering a R$ to GC sale? Make some players briefly happy? In what meaningful way would that manifest itself? People with a small amount of R$ would get a very small amount of GC, use it up, smile, race a little and be right back to where they are now. People with a lot of R$ would just do more of the same. And then, we’re right back to where we are now. EA didn’t earn anything (lost potential income actually). A few brief smiles. All it would do is briefly slow IAPs. And, frankly, it’s fair to say EA is not a company that gives a frack about its players.

TL:DR - There is no incentive for EA to do this.” 