Poll - What would you like to be included in a subscription?

atomzed

Nonce Equitaur 2 wrote:

With great purchasing comes great reciprocity.

I wouldn't pay for a subscription for any of the reasons listed here. There is one thing most players want.

Keeping the game alive

If Demiurge decided the Marvel license renewal cost too much in October 2014 and decided to pull the plug, this online-only game would cease to exist.

First business quarter, Oct 2013 - Dec 2013. A ton of new content and lots of forum openness from the devs.
Second business quarter, Jan 2014 - Mar 2014. A lot of new content and lots of forum openness from the devs.
Third business quarter, Apr 2014 - Jun 2014. One new event (Prodigal Sun, May 16). Added She-Hulk, Human Torch, Nick Fury, Sentry. Forum discussion drops sharply
Fourth business quarter, Jul 2014 - Sep 2014. One new event (Deadpool vs MPQ, Aug 1). Added Captain Marvel, Deadpool. Forum discussions a couple days each month.

The decline of creativity, effort, and discussion doesn't bode well for a subscription model.

I'm looking for signs that the game will still be around after Season V. If D3 was serious about keeping the game around, they would do the various balancing that they've long promised to do. They would stay engaged on the forum. If they intended to kill it in October, they would stop spending time on the forum and not bother with any sort of game balancing. They would churn gears with programming experiments useful for other games, but they wouldn't bother much with testing or corrections for this one.

Go look at the change in tone of developer messages from quarter to quarter. They barely even make official announcements now.

What would I subscribe to?

Developer enthusiasm and engagement.

So basically you think they will pull the plug on this game?

Regarding the change in tone, my experience is that this is a typical trajectory for online games.
1) Game first started, forum first started, Company has already prepared sufficient content for launch and has more time to engage the community.
2) Game reached its maturity phase, Company staff who has been doubling up as forum administrators get more busy, and it slipped off their priority list.
3) If game continues to be profitable, Company will engage dedicated community/ forum administrators (which is a thankless job since 90% of the time you are handling flames).

I actually think that D3 communication efforts have been decent.

Are there other examples of mature games that has a great communication between Dev and community, without any dedicated forum/ community administrator? Please share, i would love to hear some good examples.

Nonce Equitaur 2

atomzed wrote:

So basically you think they will pull the plug on this game?

In my collection I have ---
Marvel Superheroes (and supplements)
Marvel Super Heroes Adventure Game (and supplements). Wizards of the Coast lost the license due to insufficient sales.
Marvel Universe Roleplaying Game. Marvel stopped supporting the game due to insufficient sales.
Marvel Heroic Roleplaying Basic Game. Critical acclaim, two Origins Awards, but "didn’t garner the level of sales necessary to sustain the rest of the line".

Marvel has a reputation for cancelling game licenses, even when they're good games.

atomzed

Nonce Equitaur 2 wrote:

atomzed wrote:

So basically you think they will pull the plug on this game?

In my collection I have ---
Marvel Superheroes (and supplements)
Marvel Super Heroes Adventure Game (and supplements). Wizards of the Coast lost the license due to insufficient sales.
Marvel Universe Roleplaying Game. Marvel stopped supporting the game due to insufficient sales.
Marvel Heroic Roleplaying Basic Game. Critical acclaim, two Origins Awards, but "didn’t garner the level of sales necessary to sustain the rest of the line".

Marvel has a reputation for cancelling game licenses, even when they're good games.

Ah I see... Thanks for sharing these info. Insightful.

Does that mean that D3 need to ensure certain amount of sales or profit or some other metric to ensure they continue to get the license?

Nonce Equitaur 2

atomzed wrote:

Does that mean that D3 need to ensure certain amount of sales or profit or some other metric to ensure they continue to get the license?

I have no idea. As another example, the Deadpool game was released June 25, 2013. On January 1, 2014 Activision lost the Marvel license and all their Marvel games were de-listed and removed from all digital storefronts. The stuff gone forever from the digital realm includes:
Marvel Ultimate Alliance DLC
Marvel vs. Capcom 3
Ultimate Marvel vs. Capcom 3

Unknown

I could understand why some might not consider a subscription model attractive, I would have been less willing to entertain it in the past, but now I'd be willing to consider it: The Sony Playstation Plus subscription service convinced me of this -- I tried it on a whim and found the subscription to be very much worth it. Pay a fee for a month, half year or year subscription. Something like that.

If you consider the cost of entertainment in general, there is kind of an associated cost per hour. Books may be something like $0.50/hr. Movies are $4+ / hour. Console video games may be about 1$/hour to 6$/hour depending the type of game. I paid for the Premium Battlefield 3 subscription and played the game about 150 hours total, balancing at about $0.75/ hour of entertainment. For me it boils down to, if I can get good entertainment for 1$/hour or less, it's generally a great deal and I have no regrets whether its a book, video game or movie -- our free time is valuable too, so it's not just about money. We want the best entertainment vs alternatives for our scarce free time.

For MPQ, I've played easily over 100 hours, getting more than my money's worth -- this is a good game with lots of future potential. Personally, I'd be willing to pay extra for skins (e.g. Dale Keown Grey Hulk, Todd McFarlane Black suit Spiderman), or features to make your characters more unique and differentiated (unique buffs perhaps) or maybe even taking a max'd character back to level 1 but with special permanent buffs, like many MUDs used to do back in the day -- something to keep the cycle going. Special exclusive events for subscribers with better chances at covers would also be valuable -- I like the Buy-in events to date. I think the point where my interest in the game would decline would be when I've collected almost everything there is to collect - there is very little left to want. So I'd encourage more 4 and 5 star character lines with levels going into the multiple hundreds, or recycling characters, in the future.

Unknown

The model just sounds too much like a P2W model atm... which i can see would cause a lot of players to quit...

Also, as Nonce Equitaur 2 said, there is a chance either A) Marvel themselves could pull the plug on the game, or Demigue can run out of capital to afford to keep paying for the license to run this game...

And since i know first hand how much a Marvel license can cost (if you are making actual Marvel toys that is), i know that it is not the cheapest license to buy... although being that D3 is a US company, the license would be slightly cheaper than if it was purchased from other parts of the world...

*Side note: Do not bother asking me how much a marvel license for producing toys costs, as i cannot say anything about it, other than its most definitely not cheap...

hurcules

In order to go with a subscription model, a player has to perceive the value he/she gets is greater than the cost. Consistently.

I understand forumers don't represent the entire general player base, but how have we perceived the game in the last few months? Based on the various forum posts, I would not call it overly positive for sure.

The thing is, it's really easy to change our perception. Whan Nonce suggested about Dev enthusiasm and engagement would definitely go a long way in altering our perception of the game and company. Even if the change (e.g. TU) is unwelcomed by quite a number of people, just by staking a presence in the forum would help quiet down the flame.

Remember IceIX tracker? *sniff* Those were the days.