Ok so pretty much everyone can agree that a Kroger Jewel is effectively the way of beating the game VIA your own Location, Personal Wealth, and general willingness and ability to go to a Kroger. Sense it seems that Distribution is out of the hands of KingsIsle, I offer two solutions that will be gone over.
Solution 1: The Removal of Kroger Jewels As of now, Kroger Jewels are strong due to what they automatically cast. Maycast Brace being an example here. Aura Maycasts on pets can trigger via Shielding, Blades, and Traps in my personal testing, likely others as well. Having a Tower Shield cast with a Free Brace from pet is abit to strong of a defense. Removal of the Kroger Jewels would sour people's taste that's for sure, but you cannot balance around a random chance. In a perfect world, A pet could chain cast upwards of 6 different spells all at the same time, 7 castings in 1 turn in total with involving the wizard, more if a Dark X is in play. Maycasts are abit messy as is, but they balance out due to your pet not providing stats. A jewel slot maycast cannot be balanced for.
Solution 2: The Addition of Kroger Jewels to Crown Shop Now this would likely be the better option as then everyone will have access to the jewels. Though this would still be pay to win, current Kroger Jewels are basically Pay to Win with Location taken into that problem as well. Don't live near a Kroger that sells this? Well you may have to risk it on Ebay, Amazon, or what have you just to get this. At that point you may as well just get crowns and just straight buy it.
And those are my proposed solutions to the Kroger Jewel issue. In short, they are severely pay to win, unfair, and annoying to fight against. Removal or Add them to the crown shop. I personally would prefer them being attached to a new Ultra plant, that way you can utilize your energy for gardening more often.
I understand what you're feeling and sympathize. I personally would have to drive over an hour to even find a Kroger with no guarantee of it selling Wizard101 cards. What makes me more mad is the fact that there are some people who can't get to a Kroger at all, just short of buying a plane ticket. I honestly agree with the idea of adding them to the Crown Shop. The Exclusivity Principle in this situation just puts a very bad taste in my mouth and makes everything seem very unfair. Then there's probably the mountain of people who can't get to a Kroger and have been scammed by people online trying in vain to get their hands on the Kroger jewels.
If I were KI I would work with the store chain and make it so the jewels make them available on gift cards only for a set amount of time or make it so only a specific number of gift cards are released. Once that time is up or all copies of the card have been sold, they would make that particular jewel available in the Crowns Shop for and amount of crowns that is either equal or similar to the cost of buying the gift card, that way people will still go to Kroger (keep in mind KI selling these cards at their store exclusively, likely is doing some good for Kroger as a store chain) still gets its business, KI gets some business, and people can't complain that they either paid more or less for the same item.
Then put the Kroger jewels that have made it to the Crowns Shop on a weekly or monthly rotation, so their not as readily available (a one man's trash is another man's treasure approach) and if the jewel you want isn't there you can just check back in at a later time, this would also bring people to the game. I would also say that if and any Kroger jewels become available in the Crowns Shop should be put on a limited number per character/account.
I say this because I feel another part of the Kroger Jewel problem is that people will go and deliberately buy massive swathes of these gift cards just to auction them off, sell them again on Amazon (whether legitimately or not), or pass them around to the people who can't get them by any other means. It then becomes a rather unscrupulous market for possible scammers to take advantage of people, by selling them a card who's code has already been redeemed. I understand that KI can't do anything about that but still, by releasing the jewels to the Crown Shop at a later date after each gift card's release, it would cut out the need for these people as well as circumvent the scammers who are selling phony codes. It would also help tone down the numbers of people who go to buy large numbers of cards with no intention of sharing them, because you better believe there are people out there who play this game and would go and buy large numbers of Kroger cards just so other people can't have them, or so they can have 5 or 10 of the same Kroger Jewel for their army of customized perfect pets.
Then there are the Kroger Jewels that we can't get right now, or possibly don't exist anymore, the jewels the people want or wanted but now its near impossible to get them (without risking being scammed).
I would think if these jewels are on a monthly based cycle and some of the other jewels came to the crownshop then While Kroger is selling that jewel for the month on a gift card, that same jewel shouldn't be available in the Crown Shop, meanwhile the jewels from few months (maybe a maximum of 3 months prior) ago are available.
This way everybody gets what they want, sort of. Kroger still gets its foot traffic from people who want the current monthly jewel, KI gets activity from the people who want the previous months jewels, and the jewels that were once the wanting heartache of thousands of players are finally available to them. With the jewels on a monthly cycle in the Crowns Shop, behind a REASONABLE paywall, and on a limited number of copies per character (I would say if by some chance you accidently shattered the jewel, your number of copies would go down and you could repurchase it when it became available again) or account, we can still preserve the rarity somewhat while bringing some balance to the situation as well as the game.
I understand what you're feeling and sympathize. I personally would have to drive over an hour to even find a Kroger with no guarantee of it selling Wizard101 cards. What makes me more mad is the fact that there are some people who can't get to a Kroger at all, just short of buying a plane ticket. I honestly agree with the idea of adding them to the Crown Shop. The Exclusivity Principle in this situation just puts a very bad taste in my mouth and makes everything seem very unfair. Then there's probably the mountain of people who can't get to a Kroger and have been scammed by people online trying in vain to get their hands on the Kroger jewels.
If I were KI I would work with the store chain and make it so the jewels make them available on gift cards only for a set amount of time or make it so only a specific number of gift cards are released. Once that time is up or all copies of the card have been sold, they would make that particular jewel available in the Crowns Shop for and amount of crowns that is either equal or similar to the cost of buying the gift card, that way people will still go to Kroger (keep in mind KI selling these cards at their store exclusively, likely is doing some good for Kroger as a store chain) still gets its business, KI gets some business, and people can't complain that they either paid more or less for the same item.
Then put the Kroger jewels that have made it to the Crowns Shop on a weekly or monthly rotation, so their not as readily available (a one man's trash is another man's treasure approach) and if the jewel you want isn't there you can just check back in at a later time, this would also bring people to the game. I would also say that if and any Kroger jewels become available in the Crowns Shop should be put on a limited number per character/account.
I say this because I feel another part of the Kroger Jewel problem is that people will go and deliberately buy massive swathes of these gift cards just to auction them off, sell them again on Amazon (whether legitimately or not), or pass them around to the people who can't get them by any other means. It then becomes a rather unscrupulous market for possible scammers to take advantage of people, by selling them a card who's code has already been redeemed. I understand that KI can't do anything about that but still, by releasing the jewels to the Crown Shop at a later date after each gift card's release, it would cut out the need for these people as well as circumvent the scammers who are selling phony codes. It would also help tone down the numbers of people who go to buy large numbers of cards with no intention of sharing them, because you better believe there are people out there who play this game and would go and buy large numbers of Kroger cards just so other people can't have them, or so they can have 5 or 10 of the same Kroger Jewel for their army of customized perfect pets.
Then there are the Kroger Jewels that we can't get right now, or possibly don't exist anymore, the jewels the people want or wanted but now its near impossible to get them (without risking being scammed).
I would think if these jewels are on a monthly based cycle and some of the other jewels came to the crownshop then While Kroger is selling that jewel for the month on a gift card, that same jewel shouldn't be available in the Crown Shop, meanwhile the jewels from few months (maybe a maximum of 3 months prior) ago are available.
This way everybody gets what they want, sort of. Kroger still gets its foot traffic from people who want the current monthly jewel, KI gets activity from the people who want the previous months jewels, and the jewels that were once the wanting heartache of thousands of players are finally available to them. With the jewels on a monthly cycle in the Crowns Shop, behind a REASONABLE paywall, and on a limited number of copies per character (I would say if by some chance you accidently shattered the jewel, your number of copies would go down and you could repurchase it when it became available again) or account, we can still preserve the rarity somewhat while bringing some balance to the situation as well as the game.
What do you guys think?
The detail went in for you was quite high there, Lorekeeper, fully explaining every issue in its entirety and offering a potential way to bring them in as a monthly crown shop item gave me an idea. I shall make a separate post for it.
As for Adamlin, it would be simpler to do it that way, but everyone has some amount of crowns laying about. Or hoards of gold.
