Why some people delete this game

palenoue

I recommended this game to several friends and three downloaded it. After a week all three deleted the game and gave it one-star reviews at the app store. Why?

Two quit because they were matched up against opponents they had no chance of beating. In order to have even the slightest chance of surviving they would have to grind away hours for weeks, and they just can't do that. They have a life with family and jobs. Your system of making matches based on rank rather than levels made it impossible for them to compete, much less keep up.

The third quit when she realized the content was made to played once then discarded. You go through the adventures once with your three main characters and then you have no reason to go through it again with other characters. You get 20 points per victory regardless of who you're fighting and there's no way to tell which fights you've done with which characters.

Free-to-play games make money when people keep playing. These are the two biggest reasons people stop playing.

Unknown

palenoue wrote:

The third quit when she realized the content was made to played once then discarded. You go through the adventures once with your three main characters and then you have no reason to go through it again with other characters. You get 20 points per victory regardless of who you're fighting and there's no way to tell which fights you've done with which characters.

Sorry but this isn't accurate. Each of the PVE maps has 4 potential rewards, so even if you've beaten each one once, there's still plenty of reason to go back and re-play each one until you get the other rewards. Several of them have very good character cards that drop, including Thor, Wolverine, and the dreaded Classic Storm. Those rewards drop for free, no purchase required. You just need to get that particular one to drop, which admittedly requires a few replays. But even that was improved. Now (apparently) with any mission that you haven't gotten a specific reward on yet, there's a 50% chance you'll get a reward, and only 50% you get the 20 ISO. That means it's still possible to play the same mission and get 20 ISO multiple times in a row (you basically flipped a coin and it came up heads a couple times), but it's way better than what it used to be, when reward chances were much lower.

Like Zathrus said in your other thread, you're going to want to amass some purple ISO and level up your characters to be competitive. You get 3 excellent starter characters about 5 minutes into the game (Iron Man 35, Modern Storm, Modern Widow) and even better 2-star characters for free in mission drops (Thor/Wolvie/C. Storm as mentioned, plus Daken and Venom, who are more useful than people give them credit for). But that will take some time, and for a lot of us, part of the fun is developing characters and strategies over time and seeing them eventually take shape in later matches once we've leveled up our characters and unlocked skills to a certain level.

Even though this is a match-3 style puzzle game like Candy Crush, it is not a lightweight, "5 minutes a day and you're done" casual game. It's way deeper and yes, if you want to make serious progress, you have to make a serious time commitment. However, most of us gladly make this commitment because this style of game appeals to us.

Maybe you're just looking for something more casual with a lighter time commitment? There's no shortage of good casual games on mobile devices these days. Plants vs. Zombies 2, Clash of Clans, Angry Birds (pick a version)...the list goes on and on.

Unknown

Well said someguy.
(though I gotta say, though apt to a certain degree, I always bristle at the comparison of MPQ to Candy Crush )

To add:
I would suggest not immediately jumping into PvP unless there are some low-level progression awards worth grabbing (do the lighning rounds to 50pts - this requires you to win only 2 matchs and will get you a bunch of recruit tokens and ISO).
Work through all the PvE missions first and collect ISO and rewards. Use these to level up IM, Storm and Widow.
Then start with SHIELD PvP arena, skipping any team you think is too hard. Farm ISO and level up the Thor/C.Storm covers you got from the PvE missions... And from there you should be well on your way...

As someguy said though, it'll take some time (the above took me a week and a bit...)...

palenoue

The problem is my friend kept playing the battles until she won all the prizes then moved on, which it seems all my friends did as a way to build up their characters so they could compete in PvP. It would probably be better if players could form new teams and go through the content again but with only two prizes for each battle instead of four. Or you only get one prize per battle but can repeat that battle with new characters as often as possible.

Thing is, they put so much time, effort and money into making those levels, it's a shame to waste them.

And as for PvP those two friends tried it once, were slaughtered in every match, spent a few days building up their main characters, then tried again and were massacred even worse (after blowing through the initial few wimpy teams). To you players in these forums this might be a worthy challenge, but for the majority of people who try this game it's a major turn-off. I'd say 999 out of 1000 will delete this game after their first unrealistic match-up, and most of the rest will quit after days of being slaughtered.

This is not good for a Free-To-Play game that requires a lot of people playing it to be profitable.

Unknown

The skip button is your friend. Admittedly, it could be called out better during some sort of tutorial.

Unknown

palenoue wrote:

The problem is my friend kept playing the battles until she won all the prizes then moved on, which it seems all my friends did as a way to build up their characters so they could compete in PvP. It would probably be better if players could form new teams and go through the content again but with only two prizes for each battle instead of four. Or you only get one prize per battle but can repeat that battle with new characters as often as possible.

It sounds like you're trying to compare this to a traditional MMO like World of Warcraft or something, where repeatedly running an instance always gives the same XP and roughly the same amount of loot. Unfortunately, this game just isn't WOW. It's a totally different game. (It's a totally different game that I personally like, but that's up to personal preference.)

In this game, you don't get XP for winning fights. Instead, you earn ISO and that is what's used to level your characters. Coming from a traditional RPG/MMO frame of reference (like I did) it's weird to wrap your head around but once it clicked with me, it clicked.

Again, you can get 4 different rewards per battle, and you have a 50% chance of getting them with any team, so long as you win. It meets some of your criteria, but not all, because it just isn't that type of game.

palenoue wrote:

Thing is, they put so much time, effort and money into making those levels, it's a shame to waste them.

I don't work for the company and I'm not trying to be a white knight or anything, but I don't feel the PVE content has been wasted, if that's what you're referring to. I've been playing since the game came out and I haven't even finished all the PVE missions because of all the tourneys and other events. Also, one thing D3P has been doing is offering limited time, "Heroic" versions of the prologue PVE maps. They did Heroic Juggernaut a couple weeks ago and just finished Heroic Venom. So Heroic versions of the Oscorp and Dark Avengers missions are probably coming soon.

Not sure if you had a chance to try them, but D3P has also run at least one other separate PVE event, Red ISO, which had competitive brackets but was not PVP (it was against a bunch of Dark Avengers characters and HAMMER/Maggia goons). They've already re-run that event once and I'd be shocked if we didn't see it again sometime in the near future.

I'd say D3P is getting enough mileage out of the content it has created so far. Just IMO.

palenoue wrote:

And as for PvP those two friends tried it once, were slaughtered in every match, spent a few days building up their main characters, then tried again and were massacred even worse (after blowing through the initial few wimpy teams). To you players in these forums this might be a worthy challenge, but for the majority of people who try this game it's a major turn-off. I'd say 999 out of 1000 will delete this game after their first unrealistic match-up, and most of the rest will quit after days of being slaughtered.

This is not good for a Free-To-Play game that requires a lot of people playing it to be profitable.

That's the nature of a level-based competitive game, unfortunately. Once the game starts maturing, you start seeing competitors who are way higher level. As other folks have mentioned, there are ways to find easier opponents in PVP, but at a certain point, no, a level 30 team of 1-stars is going to run out of gas against level 100+ teams of 3-stars. Which, if you think about it, is exactly how it should be. The people who are trucking around with these crazy level 100 teams spent tons of time (and yes, maybe some money) developing their characters. Like I said, I've been playing since pretty much day 1 and not even my main team is close to 100. If you want to be able to compete with such players, then you're going to have to also put in the time. I realize you feel it's unfair that you can't seem to beat people with more developed teams or rare characters, but on the flip side, if new players who had spent relatively little time in the game could somehow waltz right in and smack down the longtime level 100 players, I'd think the longtime players would also find that unfair.

In any case, newer players like yourself have a path to competitiveness built right into the prologue missions. Again, start with Iron Man/M. Storm/M. Widow and transition to Thor/C.Storm/Wolvie ASAP. Thor/C.Storm/Wolvie is a very competitive team, especially when leveled high enough. Unfortunately, the current game doesn't exactly make this path to success very clear, but hopefully that'll be something D3P works on in the future.

I will say that no matter what, unless you're looking to spend tons of real $$ on ISO and hero points to instantly level up your guys, you're going to have to put in the time like everyone else did if you want to be able to compete with them. Whether that's too much of a burden on your schedule is going to be up to you. Like I mentioned, there are plenty of other games with much smaller time commitments...maybe something lighter might be a better fit for you, I dunno.