The boost weekend is now long over. People have reboosted their dinosaurs in new and exciting ways. The boost shuffle seemed extremely well received by most players. Both more advanced and newer players alike, while frustrated at times, enjoyed the five days of craziness. This seems to lead to the question: why are boost shuffles not more frequent? The rest of this article will show the advantages of boost shuffles occurring on a more frequent basis.
The basic idea behind all of this is that seasons would start and end around boost shuffles. The current arena and tournament seasons are purely rewards based, and often the rewards are less than exciting. Using Fortnite as an example, each season would be eight to ten weeks. At the start of each season there would be a boost shuffle which could last one or more days. This allows players to use dinosaurs as they mature and gives incentive to build multiple dinosaurs. The golden example is Gorgotrebax. No one questions that Gorgotrebax is a top tier dinosaur. Most players who have Gorgotrebax have a level 26 or 27. At that level Gorgotrebax cannot quite compete with level 30 uniques and the other higher level apexes. Thus, most players have benched Gorgotrebax and have a difficult choice: save boosts and use it in three or four months or just wait 8 months for the next boost shuffle. This is not good for the game, Ludia, and the players.
The more frequent boost shuffles would have a big effect on tournaments also. In advantage tournaments, lower level players are allowed a chance to prepare and use boosts to really help. The higher level players would benefit in that suddenly many dinosaurs become viable. A dinosaur could be boosted for a season to test it out or to keep from getting bored from using the same dinosaurs over and over. In skill tournaments an entirely new concept could be introduced that actually would add more skill to the tournament. Players would have a much better understanding if boosts and shuffles happen more frequently, allowing for a skill tournament of something like a Rare All Ten Boosts per dinosaur. The skill tournament would still have everyone on equal ground, but now there are also boosts to consider. This makes skill tournaments become much more about skill. Currently the skill tournaments usually consist of everyone using the same exact eight to ten dinosaurs, and it becomes about luck and connection speed.
The arena would also benefit greatly from frequent boost shuffles. The current system makes it almost impossible to try out the new dinosaurs that are introduced. The concept is similar to the Gorgotrebax above, but for this example let’s use Entelolania. If someone wanted to use Entelolania, it would take a couple months to build. Then one would either have to save boosts or wait for a shuffle. One would then have to wait four to six months to be able to try out Entelolania. Once the opportunity to use Entelolania arrives, one has a very limited time to see if they want to commit to it for the next eight months. If Entelolania ends up not being so great after all, then one is stuck with it now for eight months. A second scenario could play out where Entelolania is doing awesome—too awesome—and Ludia nerfs it. One is now stuck with a nerfed dinosaur for months.
Ludia would actually profit more from frequent boost shuffles as well. Newer and less advanced players would be more likely buy boosts since they are much more useful. By allowing newer players to move boosts around, there is a better chance they will understand them better and thus buy them. Veteran and more advanced players would still buy some boosts as well. It would stand that each season would have the arena and 2 different types of advantage tournament rounds. In order to fully boost, three teams of eight would take over 725 boosts. I realize there are certainly people right now who have that many boosts but it has to be a very low number. The place where Ludia would easily make up the difference in sales is in the need for coins. With boost shuffles more frequent and the possibility of unique tournament rounds, many more dinosaurs become relevant. As more dinosaurs become relevant, the player’s need of dna(scents)/coins becomes a huge source of income.
The hope is Ludia will be willing to listen to the player base. Ludia does a better job than some, so it is possible that player-requested changes may occur. Introducing more frequent boost shuffles would bring the game to where so many other top games are. Seasons become important and fun, and JWA can continue to mature successfully. As boosts are seen more as a flexible commodity, the game will only grow that much stronger. Players have bought or worked hard to get the boosts and should be able to use them freely. Depending on how this article is received, another could be in the works. Perhaps the scoring system could be next, or whatever the JWA community wants, so please let concerns be known.