I saw a few grumblings on this issue in one post but I just wanted to make a dedicated post about it.
My Girlfriend is really into this game but has lost a few vaults and had to restart. I believe that it is a good idea to have a fail state in this game as it definitely gives the game some form of risk which is exciting. So my girlfriend spent 3.99 on 5 lunch boxes. She got some things that would help her but for the most part it was resources and stuff. Fine luck of the draw. Then she wakes up, and everyone in the vault is dead. When she goes to start a new vault, she does not get those 5 lunch boxes or the resources that she already paid for. This is a problem. When you buy lunch boxes they remain attached to the Vault and not tied to the account. You can literally just throw away money.
I understand there are games that do similar things such as Candy Crush ( extra turns, in game power ups) but these are used in a game that is already extremely monetized and has short game length.
The best part of this game was how you never felt like you had to pay money. It truly felt like a free to play game where you could pay for more fun or to support the developer. This just feels like a waste for the consumer.
There are a few ways that you could change this.
- Attach the amount of lunch boxes to the app store account so that when a new game is started you start with that amount of unopened boxes.
I guess this could be "exploited" by starting new games and opening up all the lunch boxes you payed for hoping for better rolls. As this is a singleplayer game I don't see why this would matter and might add some fun for people.
- If you want to avoid the exploit, you could also just start every new vault with all of the resources already obtained by opening lunch boxes and those would remain static. I feel that this would add more burden on the servers, not a lot but some, of things to track for clients.
Also speaking of servers, I know this game was made to be played anywhere and offline and I understand that checking for IAP of the account could create some issues for this. A suggestion around this would to be only track the account when attempting to buy more lunch boxes or when someone creates a new vault, to see how many boxes\resources you should start with.
I am not angry about any of this, and I am sure someone is out there say "get gud" but seeing as how this game already seems to be a goodwill towards the fans I don't see allowing either suggestion would jeopardize the game as a whole. Thanks.