Is HayDay turning completely into a "pay to win" game?

[alcibiades]

It seems to me that over the last couple of years, there's been a sad tendency for all the exciting new content being hidden behind an either literal or de-facto pay wall.

The state of monetization in HayDay has always been a strange one. For the many first years, the game was almost under-monetized. Diamonds have always been the monetization currency of the game, and the game has a weird split between very-usefull-and-very-affordable uses for diamonds on one hand (unlocking new slots at 6-9-12-15 etc. diamonds, rushing boats at 5 diamonds, buying Tom at 12-15 diamonds, etc.), and then grossly-overpriced-yet-not-very-usefull uses on the other hand (from overpriced buying SEMS/BEMS/LEMS at 8-12 diamonds EACH, to the ridiculous weekly "offers" allowing me to buy 2 permits for 350 diamonds (uhm, thanx but no thanx) and the downright pointless things like buying the golden star on my feed machines for 4000 diamonds (why?)).

Also the game has always been one with an open end, so there's no "winning", which also makes the concept of rushing levels rather pointless. Obviously the developers have realized this, and that one of the only objects to work towards is cool content for customizing your farm. Over the last couple of years, we've increasingly seen this content being locked behind pay walls. Once, we got cool content like the christmas carousel for free just by finishing the season event. But for several years, all the cool seasonal decorations have been put into diamond packs that has to be paid with real money, and all we get in the events are small decorations. As case of point, look at the beautiful halloween, christmas and chinese new years decos that's been released over the last three years.

Another example of this were the custom decos, which was something that made me extremely excited when released. This was exactly the stuff I wanted in the game. But alas., after the first free instance, they have been locked behind a de-facto paywall which is ending first in champion's league derby. As a regular player with a daytime job, that's just not doable. We play champions league derby every weak, we do all-maximum point tasks, we can even do 10th task if needed, but there's no way we can win. Each weak, there is at least one neighborhood who will have finished all their task around thursday evening, at which point we are just about halfway through ours. How is that even doable without absurd amount of diamond rushing and/or playing constantly during all daytime hours?

Now we have a new monthly feature with a "free lane" and a "pay lane". Call me extremely surprised, if all the interesting stuff will not be locked in the pay lane, and the free lane will give us "exciting" stuff like some green vouchers and maybe some axes if we are lucky. I'd love to be proven wrong, but I feel the developers need to start make the pendulum swing in the opposite direction of how it's been over the last couple of years. Now custom decos have been locked away for a while, maybe start to release them as rewards in derby, valley or this new feature, and not just for the small subset of players? Maybe some of the seasonal decos from prior years should become available to buy for diamonds in the deco shop around season time, etc.

[Sooty123]

Very very well said...

[BigDaddy123abc69]

Could not agree more. I have noticed this too and OP mentioned a lot of problems that frustrate me too. Of course SC needs to make money, but my first thoughts when I saw the update were "seems like a money grab."

Just a tip for custom decorations if you're interested: you can get them by getting top 3 in any league. Add far as I know the odds are the same for custom decoration in lower leagues. Just get demoted or start a sister neighborhood, then getting top 3 in the derby is much more doable.

[pharvey11]

I hope that they fix all the issues we, players are expecting in this new update. My team worked hard for 3 bingo lines, when only 2 counted towards farm achievments.

I do feel a bit tired that the higher my level (95), the more difficult it is to get much needed items like land permits. The other players (levels around 50-70) in my NB get 2 permits every derby and more for bunny columns (no reshuffling), 2 or 3 permit offerings in the valley for 285 pink, green, and blue tokens (there or about), while I get 1 permit offering worth 850 (pick a color) tokens. My permit is usually in the last stage column, so I have to hustle to get enough tokens of that one color to get 30 diamonds. I rarely get cool decorations from the derby. I have to flock to their farm to see their cool decorations (farm envy)! And as stated, I cannot buy 2 permits worth several hundred diamonds. For derbies, it is rare to get any permits unless I use diamonds to reshuffle. For me getting 1-2 permit(s) valued at five diamonds for 1 reshuffle, is still better than 2 permits in diamond shop for 300 diamonds (+-).

That felt good,
-Trish

[Gymgirl4a]

It seems to me that over the last couple of years, there's been a sad tendency for all the exciting new content being hidden behind an either literal or de-facto pay wall.

The state of monetization in HayDay has always been a strange one. For the many first years, the game was almost under-monetized. Diamonds have always been the monetization currency of the game, and the game has a weird split between very-usefull-and-very-affordable uses for diamonds on one hand (unlocking new slots at 6-9-12-15 etc. diamonds, rushing boats at 5 diamonds, buying Tom at 12-15 diamonds, etc.), and then grossly-overpriced-yet-not-very-usefull uses on the other hand (from overpriced buying SEMS/BEMS/LEMS at 8-12 diamonds EACH, to the ridiculous weekly "offers" allowing me to buy 2 permits for 350 diamonds (uhm, thanx but no thanx) and the downright pointless things like buying the golden star on my feed machines for 4000 diamonds (why?)).

Also the game has always been one with an open end, so there's no "winning", which also makes the concept of rushing levels rather pointless. Obviously the developers have realized this, and that one of the only objects to work towards is cool content for customizing your farm. Over the last couple of years, we've increasingly seen this content being locked behind pay walls. Once, we got cool content like the christmas carousel for free just by finishing the season event. But for several years, all the cool seasonal decorations have been put into diamond packs that has to be paid with real money, and all we get in the events are small decorations. As case of point, look at the beautiful halloween, christmas and chinese new years decos that's been released over the last three years.

Another example of this were the custom decos, which was something that made me extremely excited when released. This was exactly the stuff I wanted in the game. But alas., after the first free instance, they have been locked behind a de-facto paywall which is ending first in champion's league derby. As a regular player with a daytime job, that's just not doable. We play champions league derby every weak, we do all-maximum point tasks, we can even do 10th task if needed, but there's no way we can win. Each weak, there is at least one neighborhood who will have finished all their task around thursday evening, at which point we are just about halfway through ours. How is that even doable without absurd amount of diamond rushing and/or playing constantly during all daytime hours?

Now we have a new monthly feature with a "free lane" and a "pay lane". Call me extremely surprised, if all the interesting stuff will not be locked in the pay lane, and the free lane will give us "exciting" stuff like some green vouchers and maybe some axes if we are lucky. I'd love to be proven wrong, but I feel the developers need to start make the pendulum swing in the opposite direction of how it's been over the last couple of years. Now custom decos have been locked away for a while, maybe start to release them as rewards in derby, valley or this new feature, and not just for the small subset of players? Maybe some of the seasonal decos from prior years should become available to buy for diamonds in the deco shop around season time, etc.

I agree with you, I have been playing for around the same amount of time and the trend is very obvious. It is relatively recently that I have purchased some of the decoration packs because there is no other way of getting the decor.

Could not agree more. I have noticed this too and OP mentioned a lot of problems that frustrate me too. Of course SC needs to make money, but my first thoughts when I saw the update were "seems like a money grab."

Just a tip for custom decorations if you're interested: you can get them by getting top 3 in any league. Add far as I know the odds are the same for custom decoration in lower leagues. Just get demoted or start a sister neighborhood, then getting top 3 in the derby is much more doable.

I did just this. Started a baby farm just so that we had a NH in which to do the derby at a lower league. There are three is us who have temporarily left our usual hood to derby and hopefully get the custom decor. We have been finishing first. It has been two derbies and one decor tree so far. We are planning to persist. We opted out this derby so we will drop back a league.

[MommySnooks]

I agree with you, I have been playing for around the same amount of time and the trend is very obvious. It is relatively recently that I have purchased some of the decoration packs because there is no other way of getting the decor.



I did just this. Started a baby farm just so that we had a NH in which to do the derby at a lower league. There are three is us who have temporarily left our usual hood to derby and hopefully get the custom decor. We have been finishing first. It has been two derbies and one decor tree so far. We are planning to persist. We opted out this derby so we will drop back a league.

The OP has some fair points, I agree. I don’t have much of a budget for games/entertainment so I am generally reluctant to spend real money on a virtual decoration in a game. (Although I did recently because I usually get a pass for Clash, but maxed there before the last update and have been playing HD regularly for a while now, so I put my few $ to the HD side instead and got a few cute decos.)

But like.... In Clash they have added a lot of things (paid, and non-paying options) so that new players can “catch up” and enjoy playing with long-time players at higher levels. The pass options still make it worthwhile for me & my goals in that game. (And I’m a long-time player, from about a year into the game start.) I’m hoping the road (even the non-paid one) is “worth it” for many for HD.

I know the two games aren’t competitive in the same way, so we’ll see how it works out once it arrives.

But the idea of playing daily for *years to get to a really nice-looking farm layout if you don’t have spare $$$ is kind of...? I do what I can with what I have, then I seen a really nice design and realize I could play for 10 years and not be able to come close to replicating it. At least with Clash, people know they can get to the same place, paid or unpaid, eventually (with the exception of a few missing deco items from not playing in previous years, but at least those aren’t central to the game).

So the idea that in HD people now feel a need to get demoted in order to make it easier to get the deco they really want, is...“meh”. It reminds me of the complaints in Clash of high level experienced players/clans, *purposely losing to drop leagues and get easy wins against newer/lower level clans, who are then thoroughly frustrated because they can’t compete. Idk if that’s exactly a fair comparison between these two games because they operate differently, but it came to mind.

And making baby farms to get the deco? I don’t know how people do it, lol, but I simply will not create a bunch of emails to make a bunch of accounts I don’t have time to keep track of so that I can collect and store items in order to make playing the one *main account more enjoyable? (More power to those who can, and thanks for your generous help, as well. You know who you are.)

But then, if you get the custom decor, it’s on the baby farm and those item can’t be transferred, so...your baby farms will become the main ones, then, over time? Doesn’t that feel like essentially starting over? Because *those ones won’t have the older, no longer available special items.

Idk. I just have this repeated nagging thought that it seems like there is something fundamentally wrong when you feel like you need to do things like that to get where you want to be in a game. Wherever “there” is in HD. Fancy farm, I guess, haha. There are some really beautiful ones out there.

(On another note...yes, one-account: HD please just stop giving me XP for a couple of years until I can expand my barn enough to make & store more products, k? That, or finally add the currently ruled-out extra dairy, sugar, honey, toolshed, etc.)

[Gymgirl4a]

The OP has some fair points, I agree. I don’t have much of a budget for games/entertainment so I am generally reluctant to spend real money on a virtual decoration in a game. (Although I did recently because I usually get a pass for Clash, but maxed there before the last update and have been playing HD regularly for a while now, so I put my few $ to the HD side instead and got a few cute decos.)

But like.... In Clash they have added a lot of things (paid, and non-paying options) so that new players can “catch up” and enjoy playing with long-time players at higher levels. The pass options still make it worthwhile for me & my goals in that game. (And I’m a long-time player, from about a year into the game start.) I’m hoping the road (even the non-paid one) is “worth it” for many for HD.

I know the two games aren’t competitive in the same way, so we’ll see how it works out once it arrives.

But the idea of playing daily for *years to get to a really nice-looking farm layout if you don’t have spare $$$ is kind of...? I do what I can with what I have, then I seen a really nice design and realize I could play for 10 years and not be able to come close to replicating it. At least with Clash, people know they can get to the same place, paid or unpaid, eventually (with the exception of a few missing deco items from not playing in previous years, but at least those aren’t central to the game).

So the idea that in HD people now feel a need to get demoted in order to make it easier to get the deco they really want, is...“meh”. It reminds me of the complaints in Clash of high level experienced players/clans, *purposely losing to drop leagues and get easy wins against newer/lower level clans, who are then thoroughly frustrated because they can’t compete. Idk if that’s exactly a fair comparison between these two games because they operate differently, but it came to mind.

And making baby farms to get the deco? I don’t know how people do it, lol, but I simply will not create a bunch of emails to make a bunch of accounts I don’t have time to keep track of so that I can collect and store items in order to make playing the one *main account more enjoyable? (More power to those who can, and thanks for your generous help, as well. You know who you are.)

But then, if you get the custom decor, it’s on the baby farm and those item can’t be transferred, so...your baby farms will become the main ones, then, over time? Doesn’t that feel like essentially starting over? Because *those ones won’t have the older, no longer available special items.

Idk. I just have this repeated nagging thought that it seems like there is something fundamentally wrong when you feel like you need to do things like that to get where you want to be in a game. Wherever “there” is in HD. Fancy farm, I guess, haha. There are some really beautiful ones out there.

(On another note...yes, one-account: HD please just stop giving me XP for a couple of years until I can expand my barn enough to make & store more products, k? That, or finally add the currently ruled-out extra dairy, sugar, honey, toolshed, etc.)

In my case it is one baby farm and I had another email address anyway so that was fine. The Baby farm is not going to derby but merely provide a hood so that I and anyone else who wants to join from my main farm’s hood can derby. I will get the baby farm to town level so that the eggspress comes and there are townies to pick up but that is it. No boats. It is purely there as a hood leader to accomodate others.

[Ataturk007]

Hayday has made by a company, if you get updates that means people are working on it .. so they need pay them and we players pay them by buying some diamonds ..

And yes, i play this game for 7 years and i bought for +1000 euro diamonds .. That's just going to eat out 10 times with my girlfriend. But i spend it to enjoy on sunday to play hayday for 7 years!

[SanketN8]

everything said is right and also the other aspect is right that SC needs earning also but if you deliver things to players for what they are asking they will willingly pay for good stuff. Before starting hay day again i used to play brawl stars and the pass thing came to it few months back and i stopped playing as it removed the fun from it as you need to pay for good stuff else you will get the usual stuff just put under the name of free pass

[Mrlk]

The op makes some fair points however the actual question the op asks is hayday becoming a pay to win game ? for me the answer is no its not . As far as i can see all parts of the game is still very achieveable for the f2p players to take part in and complete at thrir own pace. Yes its clear supercell will look for ways to make money and theres absolutely nothing wrong with that at all since they are still making the game doable for those that wont or cant spend real money on a game so in short nope the game isnt a pay to win game