"Top 15% get a 3* cover" - business model discussion

GuntherBlobel

I agree. 3* covers are not my chase item anymore. I may be in the minority, but I don't want to play hard and pay to get the next most powerful character. I play the characters for their fun value.

With the number of characters I have in my Roster I have more combinations to explore than I have time. I really couldn't care less for Sentry, but I'm excited to try out Beast... eventually. Colossus sounds wicked fun, but I'll get to him when I get him. With my 40+ Roster, I'm in no hurry, so I won't be chasing the 3* characters like I once did.

Plus, I pay $5 now per new character in the way of a Roster slot. MPQ should just give me the first cover. The Roster slot is how I Pay2Play.

Edit- I still don't get why MPQ is as stingy with covers as it is, except that it is somewhat more profitable to have the Top 25 fight over it and maybe drop cash doing so. Many people still love the Hulk event for its free first cover, which isn't exactly free. To me, $5 per new character release (every 2 weeks) should be enough to keep the game running. Maybe it's that Marvel license that is bottomless money pit and not really Demiurge.

DD-The-Mighty

GuntherBlobel wrote:

Edit- I still don't get why MPQ is as stingy with covers as it is, except that it is somewhat more profitable to have the Top 25 fight over it and maybe drop cash doing so. Many people still love the Hulk event for its free first cover, which isn't exactly free. To me, $5 per new character release (every 2 weeks) should be enough to keep the game running. Maybe it's that Marvel license that is bottomless money pit and not really Demiurge.

My sentiments exactly. Considering how many covers you need to actually make a character viable (as alot of people are learning with this latest PVE event) vs how many characters there are now it seems petty.

I suspect its a hold over policy from when there were only a handful of 3* characters. They now flood the game the 3's making them the majority of the game but trickle out the covers to keep the masses grinding and keep the top 25% and their whales blowing HP on shields and covers and mega packs. Brand new players gush over the game in reviews (because they don't know yet), The not-15% keep their player participation numbers up, and the upper crust keep the revenue flowing on top of all of the micro transactions the other 75% contribute.

From a cold logical business standpoint it makes perfect sense, but from the player-IRL-side it feels scummy.

atomzed

How much more generous do you want d3 to be?

It is not a sarcastic question but a genuine one. How many percent of people should be given 3* covers for you to think its generous?

Personally I think d3 is too generous. After I got my max LC and hulk my net hp expenditure on shields is always in the red. Also by saving hp I dont have to pay a single cent for a new character slot.

GuntherBlobel wrote:

Plus, I pay $5 now per new character in the way of a Roster slot. MPQ should just give me the first cover. The Roster slot is how I Pay2Play.

Edit- I still don't get why MPQ is as stingy with covers as it is, except that it is somewhat more profitable to have the Top 25 fight over it and maybe drop cash doing so. Many people still love the Hulk event for its free first cover, which isn't exactly free. To me, $5 per new character release (every 2 weeks) should be enough to keep the game running. Maybe it's that Marvel license that is bottomless money pit and not really Demiurge.

2 problems with your statement here. 1) The character release is around once every 2 months which I think is decent. 2) you don't have to spend $5 on the slot because technically you can earn 300 hp per event and that can help you pay for the slots. I have not need to spend on my slots al(after I reach 3* land) since I have been usually saving my hp.

Dauthi

If the player base were characterized as a model, it would be a pyramid. 1* players at the bottom being numerous, 2* the middle being lesser than the last, and 3* at the top being a small percentage. Considering this, 15% getting 3* covers makes perfect sense. This amount of people likely need/want those covers, and shouldn't have a hard time getting at least one if they try. To exacerbate this, as player's roster increases and the need for specific 3* characters decrease, player's will avoid needless 3* characters allowing more players to obtain older covers. This is why we see 3* rosters getting more of the newer characters (creating difficult competition for these new covers), and this is exactly as it should be.

Remember, as rosters grow the better rosters should be entitled to the covers they fight for as the covers they need become fewer, thus making progress harder. The system seems to be working fine, and I haven't seen anyone in my alliance not progress at a decent pace since they have to give events some effort.

DD-The-Mighty

"Everything is fine for me and my alliance so therefore there is nothing wrong and i don't care/understand why you are unhappy."

Fair enough. I'm glad you're enjoying the MPQ experience to its fullest. That still doesn't change the fact that there is disturbingly bad progression dead zone in this game. and not even anywhere close to the "end game", for anyone with even a modicum of foresight, it looks like a slow march toward pointlessness. Are you really that surprised that players are not happy about it?

The design could be better. Simple as that.

SunCrusher

As part of this last PvE showed and my own experience showed, it wasn't 15% based off of ability or working hard and that is part of the reason I really dislike this argument about how the 15% should win.

For me, it boiled down to which Essential characters I did or did not have and NOT skill or ability and I was clearly ready to have 'earned' my Black Panther cover given that I fought my way through at least some of the Deadly nodes of the Finale and was able to complete all nodes but 1 Essential BP node in Heroic on a timely basis with room to spare.

I'm not a beginner who has no real use for a 3* and this was a genuine opportunity to expand my roster.

I put in enough effort to have earned the cover fair and square and THE ONLY THING keeping me from it was the lousy artificial 'pay to try and pull a Black Panther to continue!' wall.

If we want to talk about 15%, then let's be honest here - especially in light of how The Gauntlet played out.

It isn't just ability or people earning or deserving the 3* covers - it is also about money and being willing to cough up money to pull characters from a blind grab bag and a literal case of haves and have-nots.

IF EVENTS WITH NON-REPEATABLE NODES DID NOT ARTIFICIALLY WALL OFF PLAYERS BY USING ESSENTIAL CHARACTERS then it might actually be about ability, skill, time invested, etc and earning the 'right' to the covers.

I have paid into MPQ but I refused to pay to play the 'let's see what I can pull!' lottery given how bad my Token pull RNG tends to be.

Wolarsen

by babinro » Mon Sep 22, 2014 9:16 am

Here's a thought on how to balance progression rewards in PvP for all player types:
- Replace progression 600 reward with a mediocre 3* cover. This would be intended for 2* players who are breaking into 3*. This cover would typically be helpful for that player but not exactly useful to seasoned player. (LThor Green, Pun Black, IM40 Yellow, BP Yellow)

This was more or less my thoughts; maybe it would be good to create a "low tier" of 3* covers (for example Storm-Spiderman-Psylocke-Daredevil), to be offered kind of broadly (600 points in PvP, mid-way in PvE). Newcomers would have a chance to farm a starting roster and veterans would get 500 ISO.
Moreover, they could split the despised current heroic tokens into "2* or low tier guaranteed" (same 2* chance as current, increased low-tier 3* chance) and "3* guaranteed"

loroku

atomzed wrote:

Personally I think d3 is too generous. After I got my max LC and hulk

This is why you think they are generous: you're already past the hard part.

DD-The-Mighty

Wolarsen wrote:

by babinro » Mon Sep 22, 2014 9:16 am

Here's a thought on how to balance progression rewards in PvP for all player types:
- Replace progression 600 reward with a mediocre 3* cover. This would be intended for 2* players who are breaking into 3*. This cover would typically be helpful for that player but not exactly useful to seasoned player. (LThor Green, Pun Black, IM40 Yellow, BP Yellow)

This was more or less my thoughts; maybe it would be good to create a "low tier" of 3* covers (for example Storm-Spiderman-Psylocke-Daredevil), to be offered kind of broadly (600 points in PvP, mid-way in PvE). Newcomers would have a chance to farm a starting roster and veterans would get 500 ISO.
Moreover, they could split the despised current heroic tokens into "2* or low tier guaranteed" (same 2* chance as current, increased low-tier 3* chance) and "3* guaranteed"

Pretty much. most good rpg/mmo's will have entry level "upper tier" armour/weapons that can be made relatively easy and tide them over until they can make some proper gear. there are more than enough 3*s now to tiers off some of them to smooth out the entry into the 3* realm. Thor and Ares can only drag you so far.

atomzed

loroku wrote:

atomzed wrote:

Personally I think d3 is too generous. After I got my max LC and hulk

This is why you think they are generous: you're already past the hard part.

True. As I said, personal opinion.

How ever, the original post about the 15% is not based on my experience but based on the stats and facts.

1) Covers needs to be scarce.
2) There is a need to differentiate who to give the covers to.

Unless someone can come up with a proposal to specifically give covers to 2* to 3* players, the situation would remain. Until they decouple the chase rewards as covers.

And you also missed my point that the 166 wall is very high.... I didn't deny that

GuntherBlobel

DD-The-Mighty wrote:

Wolarsen wrote:

by babinro » Mon Sep 22, 2014 9:16 am

Here's a thought on how to balance progression rewards in PvP for all player types:
- Replace progression 600 reward with a mediocre 3* cover. This would be intended for 2* players who are breaking into 3*. This cover would typically be helpful for that player but not exactly useful to seasoned player. (LThor Green, Pun Black, IM40 Yellow, BP Yellow)

This was more or less my thoughts; maybe it would be good to create a "low tier" of 3* covers (for example Storm-Spiderman-Psylocke-Daredevil), to be offered kind of broadly (600 points in PvP, mid-way in PvE). Newcomers would have a chance to farm a starting roster and veterans would get 500 ISO.
Moreover, they could split the despised current heroic tokens into "2* or low tier guaranteed" (same 2* chance as current, increased low-tier 3* chance) and "3* guaranteed"

Pretty much. most good rpg/mmo's will have entry level "upper tier" armour/weapons that can be made relatively easy and tide them over until they can make some proper gear. there are more than enough 3*s now to tiers off some of them to smooth out the entry into the 3* realm. Thor and Ares can only drag you so far.

Excellent idea! And like most good ideas, this now seems terribly obvious. This should have happened long ago. I can actually imagine a new player chasing that somewhat difficult 600 pt progression.

In any case, I think the 1yr Anniversary is a good time to designate some of the older 3* characters as 2.5* or "legacy" characters. The idea is that they can compete decently at the 3* level, but they can be earned as almost as easily as a 2*. The vets won't care because they quit using those characters months ago.

This might even liven up PvP a little. You might actually run into an IM40/cStorm team amongst the mnMags/cStorm masses.

Unknown

I think this is being thought too hard on. The best solution IMO is a simple one

Restore guaranteed 3* or have gold tokens have a real high percentage chance at a 3*

"Oh no! But if you do that, too many people will get all the covers devaluing the 3*"

Nope. One of the big problems right now - its almost a first world problem, is the growth of characters - almost all being 3* or better. This has really watered down the percentages that were already low, so I keep getting spoon fed my maxed punisher and maxed hulk, as well as my IM40 with max covers and Psylocke with max covers, while Daken has 3 covers, and Sentry has 3 covers, Steve Rogers only has like 5 covers - and I'm a 'solid' performer. But I look at say my alliance and I have LOTS of people in there who have lvl 43 3*s with lots of slots, because they don't have the covers to grow them and through team work get the alliance awards, but don't rank high enough to cover-up a 3* themselves.

By adding it back into the game - at least modified - it helps to offset the additional new characters, it increases the pool of people who can grow their roster, etc. I've said several times "I wish I could donate my covers to the alliance" - I'm one of the top 3 in the alliance and so "I" get multiples of covers, often or sometimes - for characters I don't need, while my wife just settled on making a second Modern Storm". I'm working on a second Patch, because I keep getting those covers, when only one other person in my group has a max 3*

Instead of the rewards for less than top 100 being 2*s that everyone already has, give'em tokes that have a 50% chance of being a 3*...at least 25%
- Unreall

_RiO_

Dauthi wrote:

If the player base were characterized as a model, it would be a pyramid. 1* players at the bottom being numerous, 2* the middle being lesser than the last, and 3* at the top being a small percentage. Considering this, 15% getting 3* covers makes perfect sense.

The cover population, however, is the inverse of that pyramid: 1* covers at the bottom cover a small percentage; 2* covers do not fare much better; and a disproportionately large number of the cover population resides in the 3* and 4* range. Are you saying it is OK that the top 15% of the player population can source their roster progression from a good 80% of the cover population, whereas the other 85% of the player population have to be content with a meager 20% of the cover population to build with? There is no balance there at all.

GuntherBlobel

_RiO_ wrote:

Dauthi wrote:

If the player base were characterized as a model, it would be a pyramid. 1* players at the bottom being numerous, 2* the middle being lesser than the last, and 3* at the top being a small percentage. Considering this, 15% getting 3* covers makes perfect sense.

The cover population, however, is the inverse of that pyramid: 1* covers at the bottom cover a small percentage; 2* covers do not fare much better; and a disproportionately large number of the cover population resides in the 3* and 4* range. Are you saying it is OK that the top 15% of the player population can source their roster progression from a good 80% of the cover population, whereas the other 85% of the player population have to be content with a meager 20% of the cover population to build with? There is no balance there at all.

Exactly, and what's more, it becomes increasingly likely that your favorite character is being denied to you longer with each new character release. What is the point of this game, if not to play your favorite characters. It's important that most, if not all, of the game is accessible is some fashion.

I take no issue with being locked out from the three 4* characters, but If there were 20 of them, I would go find something else to play.

MaskedMan

The question is isn't that the game needs a 15% reward rate the real question is:

How does the poster define the "Top 15%"?

If it is the highest rated players then all rewards will go to the players with 166 teams. They are be definition the Top 15%. The problem there is there is no incentive for new players to compete (or even play).

Personally I think they have been running their games completely backward if they are trying to encourage players with lower rosters. Adding 50 levels to garbage characters (characters with 1 or 2 covers so their power damage/effect is still rotten) results characters that are little better than they started and the entire competition is determined by the other 2 characters for lowbies who still run into 166 wall. Real solution is to have competitions for lowbies where level is limited to 94 and all 3 star characters are limited to 2 covers. That will certainly balance things out. Then run a regular PvP event at the same time and give lesser rewards to lowbie event (only hero cards or something) so most high level players won't see competing as worth their time.

That is the tough part of rewarding lowbie players - keeping the high level players out. You could enforce some arbitrary limit like you can't compete in lowbie events if you have more than 5 100+ characters, but the moaning and whining probably wouldn't be worth the trouble.

They has to be a method for new players to complete besides spending $1,000 on covers just to be able to finish 75th. While that may be an attractive business model I doubt it would last long.

Unknown

One thing I disagree with most of people is that "New players have no reason to compete" thing. And I will elaborate on why.

New/middle range players are the ones that have the most reasons to compete. As it currently stands, those who have maxed their rosters or already have 3-4 3* maxed, they are the ones that get the biggest disappointments in this game. I mean the rewards for them are starting to become mediocre. The recruit tokens are a bad allergy to every veteran player. The only thing for them to compete for is that 4* cover at the 1st place. And this is why you see crazy results 1300+ pts every PVP.

That being said, when you are on your way to 3* land it's the time where you get some of the best times in the game. Especially when you start to push higher in the ranks, recruit tokens give you 3* covers etc. These are all gone in 3* land. High ranks are just $$$ for shield hops and 3* pulls from tokens are multiple 500 ISO.

People that should be really "complaining" are those that have maxed their roster and they have nothing to fight for anymore. Sure you will say that they passed the "difficult" part, but what is after that part? What do you compete for if not for covers? I guess it is that feeling of accomplishment mixed with guilt for spending all that time and money that keeps you going. Just for the sake of the huge investment that you did. You can also call it an end game or a "win" and uninstall the game and move on with your life.

There is no real reason to "feed" us with more and more 3* covers and speed up our transition. It will happen one way or another. And do not forget that they also need money to keep this game running. So making it a bit "difficult" to get there is what brings them $$$ at the end of the day. I would like to see more 4* characters to be released instead of 3*. I want to see a 3*->4* transition exist.

Speeding up the path to end game is not fruitful for anyone. Extending the end game is always something to hang in there.

EDIT:
Check this topic to get an idea of how mid-maxed or maxed 3* land feels like:
viewtopic.php?f=7&t=16732

GuntherBlobel

I agree that rushing to complete the collection is not a great idea. But 3* characters now come with 4-6 month timers on them before they are even payable. In the meantime you are supposed to pay HP in a Roster slot and then wait. For new player, its a bad deal.

That's not how it was for me when I started last year. It's a balance, but I think it's gone too far in terms of delayed gratification.

SnowcaTT

Someone brought this up for season rewards, I would like to see the percentage for alliances raised - it seems they have more alliances in than ever, and the reward % hasn't changed.

Giving away a few more covers shouldn't be a problem: one a day would make about a year before you were fully covered (assuming you didn't get many repeats!) As many say in many places, heroic token pull percentage should be modified - that might make up for it. I wouldn't mind seeing a 25% two-cover possibility, especially due to the killer brackets that we've seen through much of S5/6.

The biggest problem I have is the same cover for individual and alliance rewards. If someone can't get into the top percentages for two covers they are forced into multiple copies of one - this is just making the already difficult 2*-3* transition even more time consuming, as you have a higher likelihood of throwing away covers you don't need.

Dauthi

Okin107 wrote:

That being said, when you are on your way to 3* land it's the time where you get some of the best times in the game. Especially when you start to push higher in the ranks, recruit tokens give you 3* covers etc. These are all gone in 3* land. High ranks are just $$$ for shield hops and 3* pulls from tokens are multiple 500 ISO.

People that should be really "complaining" are those that have maxed their roster and they have nothing to fight for anymore. Sure you will say that they passed the "difficult" part, but what is after that part? What do you compete for if not for covers? I guess it is that feeling of accomplishment mixed with guilt for spending all that time and money that keeps you going. Just for the sake of the huge investment that you did. You can also call it an end game or a "win" and uninstall the game and move on with your life.

There is no real reason to "feed" us with more and more 3* covers and speed up our transition. It will happen one way or another. And do not forget that they also need money to keep this game running. So making it a bit "difficult" to get there is what brings them $$$ at the end of the day. I would like to see more 4* characters to be released instead of 3*. I want to see a 3*->4* transition exist.

Speeding up the path to end game is not fruitful for anyone. Extending the end game is always something to hang in there.

Thank you Okin, and that is exactly the point of making it slow to get 3* covers. It is end game. Like I said those who are transitioning, if they put enough effort into the game and find a decent alliance can move up and a brisk pace. It really isn't that hard to get top 100 if you try, especially for older covers.

Think of it this way, once you hit the 3* bracket you will jump for joy when you are able to receive a single new cover of progress in any event (which is why events for new characters are chaotic). Meanwhile, 2* and 2* transitional rosters can always progress at least 1 cover+ per event. Enjoy it while you can.

_RiO_ wrote:

Dauthi wrote:

If the player base were characterized as a model, it would be a pyramid. 1* players at the bottom being numerous, 2* the middle being lesser than the last, and 3* at the top being a small percentage. Considering this, 15% getting 3* covers makes perfect sense.

The cover population, however, is the inverse of that pyramid: 1* covers at the bottom cover a small percentage; 2* covers do not fare much better; and a disproportionately large number of the cover population resides in the 3* and 4* range. Are you saying it is OK that the top 15% of the player population can source their roster progression from a good 80% of the cover population, whereas the other 85% of the player population have to be content with a meager 20% of the cover population to build with? There is no balance there at all.

That makes perfect sense when a 3* roster needs a single color cover to progress while 2* rosters can take any cover to progress. It should be noted that this is only likely to happen for newer characters, 2* transitional rosters are much more likely to absorb most of the covers in events with older characters. In newer events however, 3* rosters deserve most of the covers as they have likely been deprived any progress for a long time. Perhaps in this respect progress evens out, and that is why the developer is consistent in releasing new characters.

Unknown

This is an interesting conversation. I would like to contribute but I can only give my experience and viewpoint as input. I have played and contributed financially to a number of games over the past few years. If I like a game I will pay for it, for nothing more than to experience more of the game, eg use more characters, have a more diverse experience.

I feel that with MPQ if you pay , you are not getting 'value' unless you are prepared to spend a fortune. ( I bought $200 of hp and spent it on roster slots and cover packs) So having learnt from my experience in buying hp, I decided I would not spend another penny on this game, for me the value wasn't there. I had more covers and characters but they are essentially worthless as I can't use them. So now I am just trying to get covers and ISO from pve and pvp. I have 2 maxed 2*s from playing consistently over the last 2 months. I did one round of this new heroic and now the levels are too high for me ,I'm also at 350 ish in the ironman pvp and all I can fight is 166's. My incentive to play is 0 as I can't realistically win anything useful, the only thing keeping me going is that I want to get some value from the $200 I spent.

The whole 15% model is like, D3 will retain their players who have progressed with the game, but to a newcomer, it's a brick wall. The 15% isn't going to contribute much financially as they can just play to get all the new rewards. Can d3 survive like this?