Season 16: Less Atoms & final Ticket Prices
Now we know the final rewards that we can earn in Season 16 starting March 26th, 2024. Based on this, we can now complete the ticket price calculations without estimates.
Tickets
The table for the tickets now contains the final prices without estimates. In this table you can see the total prices for rewards per page of the new season. I added up the normal rewards and the Fallout 1st rewards separately and added them again in the 4th column as a total. The level column shows which rank is intended for reaching the respective page. You will receive 25 tickets per rank. Accordingly, the sum of the earned tickets on the 1st page is, for example, 7x25 = 175. In each line, the earned tickets and required tickets for all rewards on the page are added together. The "Diff" column is the difference between the tickets you have to pay for all rewards on a side versus the amount of tickets you get from higher ranks in the season. The difference is between +40 and -35 tickets, so there should be no problems claiming the rewards with the tickets.
Atoms
The three back columns for atoms are new. Here is a total of how many atoms you can get per side. There are now a total of 1000 normal atom rewards on all sites.
If you have the Season Pass or Fallout 1st, you will receive a total of 1000 additional atoms. In total you can get up to 2000 atoms from the season.
The price of 1500 atoms for the season pass has already been compensated for by 2/3. However, you will ultimately only receive 500 Atoms for the season if you calculate the cost of the Season Pass alone (1500 Atoms) against the rewards from Atoms (2000 Atoms). So if you don't care about the 1st rewards, you will receive more atoms without a season pass than if you unlock the 1st atoms of the season.
On the other hand, it makes more sense for most people to subscribe to Fallout 1st and receive 1650 atoms for a month from the subscription PLUS the 2000 atoms from the season.
2000 Atoms is also the sum of Atoms that could be earned as rewards in previous seasons, but without having subscribed to 1st. Now only half of the atoms can be obtained without a 1st or season pass.
Another problem with Atoms lies in the bonus pages. Atoms cannot be earned on either bonus page 1 or bonus page 2. Previously, every season after rank 100 you could increase your atoms by continuing to play. Every 10 additional ranks above 100 gave you 100 atoms. As things stand, that is not possible this season. So if you played up to rank 150, you were rewarded with 2500 Atoms without a 1st subscription until Season 15. From season 16 onwards you only get 1000 atoms in the same calculation.
Causes?
One reason for this decision is certainly to reward paying players more than others. And ultimately get everyone to buy either the Season Pass or Fallout 1st (also if just for a cerain time). However, the season pass isn't really attractive either. It is currently not entirely clear to most players in which case the season pass could be attractive.
The reason for removing the atoms on the 2nd bonus page could be that the rewards do not only reload when the entire page is unlocked. You can probably claim one of the rewards over and over again. This would mean that you could get atoms again for every 75 tickets (3 ranks). If that is the reason, it is still questionable whether the complete removal of the atoms was really necessary.
Whether this decision made any sense remains to be seen. It is also possible that Bethesda will backtrack at the start of the season with one or two decisions based on feedback.
Feedback
What do you think? What should Bethesda change so that the new season is fair to players.
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