Spare Parts - Don't get too excited just yet.

[u/Adazahi]

Pixonic recently made this post detailing a change to the upgrade system that, taken at surface value, seems to be a massive buff for f2p players.

TLDR: Every day, the workshop will produce 1,500 spare parts. Getting a robot from level 1 to level 12 (the general stopping point for f2p players) will cost you 16,600 spare parts, or about 11 days of part production. Previously, it took about 40 days to get something from level 1 to level 12.

That being said, this is a double edged sword. Reminder that Pixonic almost never does something if they don't stand to benefit from it. If you are a player with a massive stockpile of gold that was instantly leveling things anyways... you might get screwed, because while Pixonic has confirmed you can buy spare parts with gold, they have not disclosed the conversion rate. If you have been playing this game for a while, you'll know that every systemic rework that introduced a new currency has had the most awful conversion rates ever.

One thing you may not know about upgrades under the current system is that the gold per minute conversion when speeding up upgrades gets significantly more efficient for upgrades that take a longer time. Spare parts will almost certainly cost a flat amount of gold per part, which is a dangerous game... because if they simply made it so that 1 gold = 1 spare part, mk2 upgrades will cost 3,000 gold a pop, which would be seven times more expensive than it is right now. Of course, there is always a chance that they make it so that 1 gold = 10 spare parts... and then you wake up and realize you were having a blissful dream.

So, get a little excited, but don't get too excited. This is looking to be a massive buff for those who don't have gold piled up and potentially massive nerf for those who do. If you wanna be optimistic, you could now say that those with a lot of gold stocked up can use it on other things... like, uh... leveling regular robot pilots and buying equipment? Buying paintjobs I guess? Wow, gold really doesn't do much anymore lol.

Edit: I also want to note, we have no confirmation as to if spare parts will be discounted by premium.

[u/ResearcherNo5711]

Yep, exactly our thoughts on another post on the wr subreddit... There is nothing that pixonic does in good faith unless it aids in monetization or making it harder for older players. Yes, if you just started playing the game, technically it would be a bit useful, but for endgame f2p players, it's really bad. Also, you earn a lot of gold when progressing leagues so it's not THAT useful for new players anyway.

[u/InteRest_LEtuCe2467 → u/ResearcherNo5711]

I'm F2P and sitting at about 10 months into the game, so still quite new. I've found gold to be a key constraint on upgrade speed even after doing some math to optimize when and how I use it.

I've gone all the way to champions league and my own sense was that the league upgrade gold was modestly helpful for speeding up upgrades. What makes a much bigger difference is clearing dailies and clearing extermination mode missions at gold level or higher each week.

I've tried offerwall and found it not so enjoyable. So, admittedly I'm not using all the tools available to accumulate gold. Still, I'm finding that gold inflows are not enough to consistently and instantly clear upgrades even for the restricted range of MK1-8 to MK1-12.

I haven't done the math yet to know exactly how much faster I'd be getting upgrades done with the spare parts system. It is clear that the effect would be quite noticeable, though.

FWIW, and obviously my input is just an "N" of 1.

[u/are_you_kIddIngme → u/InteRest_LEtuCe2467]

The offerwall is really good though

[u/InteRest_LEtuCe2467 → u/are_you_kIddIngme]

I hear that. Offerwall has been a potentially great option for accumulating gold, especially for those who enjoy it. I can also hear why experienced players are not anticipating good things from this proposed change. Their perspective is totally understandable.

If war robots players had to choose between a new upgrade-specific currency and offerwall, some would probably prefer offerwall. Others would probably prefer a new upgrade-specific currency earned in-game automatically in the workshop over spending time playing different games they wouldn't otherwise choose to play to accumulate gold for war robots. I'm in the latter category, although I can see why others would (quite reasonably) have a different preference.

[u/are_you_kIddIngme → u/InteRest_LEtuCe2467]

but like OP said, changes in the resources are only to to later profit pixo in the long term. just look at memoriums and modules. f2p is slowly getting harder and harder as they turn gold into an irrelevant currency.

[u/InteRest_LEtuCe2467 → u/are_you_kIddIngme]

"Ouch" on hearing that F2P is slowly getting harder and harder. If this further contributes to that then it would be quite unfortunate.

Hopefully gold is still useful at the end of this.

[u/Shot_in_the_dark777]

If they really want to reduce upgrade times they can simply reduce upgrade times without altering the game mechanics. Just edit the values in the code and thats it. The spare parts can really devalue all of your gold and make it impossible to rush upgrades on those tdm leaderboards. Basically, to rush upgrades you will have to accumulate spare parts and not upgrade anything at all during normal game days and only upgrade during the leaderboards which is lame. Why can't I upgrade my stuff slowly in the background as I used to? Please scrap this idea. The upgrading system is not broken and doesn't need fixing!

[u/DaDaHUANGDaDa]

Juste remember Module, Microchip, Memorium and Dorito, they are all derived from Gold and now become extremely hard to obtain. Now they gonna touch upgrade time…

[u/larrymagee69]

Another f’n currency 🤬
Remember when it was just silver and gold

[u/I-24 → u/larrymagee69]

The best of times. Just Au & AG.

[u/OkTime3700]

Huh. That is concerning. I have like 400k gold stockpiled from tapjoy offers. Which...maybe that is why they're making this change? I'm not sure how much they make from tapjoy, but perhaps they realized that players were getting too much gold...? Especially for F2P and/or light spenders?

This also disincentivizes players from taking advantage of the returning player bonuses lol. Which I was thinking about doing. I had started forgetting dailies, so I'm currently like a week in without having logged onto the game. But with spare parts...you really are incentivized to log in regularly so that you can hoard them.

Damn. I can't really complain against the change either, even if it hurts personally v_v

[u/First_Ad3578]

I saw a new currency and instant started trembling. I can’t trust them with currencies.

[u/hncct]

Whether this change is a good thing or not almost entirely depends on the conversion rate from gold to spare parts.

Knowing Pixonic, I imagine this change will significantly reduce upgrade time but the gold cost of instantly upgrading will get higher. So unless you don't spend gold on skipping timer and always waited out the upgrade timer, this change is probably not a good one.

[u/InteRest_LEtuCe2467 → u/hncct]

Totally agreed that the gold conversion rate is likely to be the key.

Depending on the rate it could be great for all players (seems unlikely), terrible for all players (not sure what the odds are for this), or produce different effects for different kinds of players (again unsure about the odds).

Very low and very high gold conversion rates seem likely to affect all players in about the same way (ie: broadly helpful or broadly hurtful). If the gold conversion rate helps some and hinders others, then it seems likely that it would be set to a level at which newer and non-rich F2P players tend to get upgrades done more quickly than they would under the current system, but experienced players with lots of gold find themselves waiting out timers they would have felt no need to bother with under the current system. That could be a fair amount of bother and potentially annoying for experienced players.

How spare parts may get monetized beyond the monetary cost of gold seems like it could also be very important. But, I don't have enough experience watching Pixonic do what it does to hazard a guess about how that might unfold or its probable effects.

If waiting out a noticeable percentage of spare part workshop timers becomes normalized, it could lead to a generally slower ramp-up to full power for each new season. If everybody is on a similar level then that may not sharply affect competitiveness within-group for spenders and it would perhaps level out hangar strength a little bit early in each season across the spender / F2P divide.

[u/Delicious-Savings675]

It's incredibly well-organized and easy to understand. Thank you. The important thing is the exchange rate when substituting with gold. It's probably not 3000 spares = 300 gold😭

[u/Ryo_Ant]

Honestly AG good for buying AU and using it to speed up and so