'Inflation' in MPQ - some random musing

atomzed

(I originally intended this post to be a discussion on the topic of inflation in MPQ... but i realised that the issue is complex and all jumbled up. In the end, it ended up becoming a musing post. Nonetheless, since i typed it, i think i would just post it... and confuse everyone )

Inflation, in econs terms, is defined as a sustained increase in price level of goods and services. For those who play MMO, you will know that hyper-inflation is a real problem in games, and it has to be combated by good game design. (check out this 8min video on inflation in MMO http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W39TtF14i8I).

It may sound strange that i am talking about inflation in MPQ, when there are no goods, no p2p sales, no loot, etc.

While MPQ does not have a 'real economy', it does have 3 important virtual goods.

1) Covers

[list=2] 2) ISO [/list]
[list=3] 3) HP [/list]

For ISO and HP, i think the MPQ has a good system of sinks, to 'remove it away' from the game. Sinks such as levelling (470k needed for 4*), consumables (boosts and shields), they all have the effect of removing the virtual goods away from the game. It also has the added effect of making the players feel that their 'loot' has value.

Cover is the one which i'm worried about. In our current MPQ, covers are the main reason why we play (except for those X-men who are playing for bragging rights ). The covers allow us to unlock a character, allow us to get stronger roster, and allow us to place better in competition.

Lets look at how the covers 'inflation' impact on the game... of course, this is my own personal opinion.

Covers inflation

In various threads, many people complaint about the increasing number of 3* characters, the lack of 3* covers and wants the drop rate to be increased. They point to the difficulty of getting what they want, the frustration of the 2* to 3* transition. A well articulated post was from Yogi:

yogi_ wrote:

1* covers are everywhere, 2* covers are frequent enough but the 3* have just gotten even more limited, with your stealth reward changes a little while ago. To an established player with a sizeable 1* and 2* roster, there is little to no benefit in receiving these covers over and over. Thus the continued issue about receiving 2* from tokens - we've got them already and if we need more, we just do some lightning rounds or simulator or whatever. One benefit of token availability is allowing a player to experiment and try different builds - good luck doing this with a 3*.

If you want to build a new 1* character maybe days to usable, a new 2* maybe a few weeks and you've got a few usable options, but to get anywhere with even a single 3* could be months. I've built a bunch of 2*'s, sold the equivalent of many more and almost none of their covers were from Heroic Tokens.

The underlying issue is the balance of cover distribution and this rotation model is only going to make it longer as when a 2* to 3* transitioning player might get a couple of covers for their character, they may or may not be out the next season and repeat.

The transition from 1* to 2* is like walking up one stair at a time, the transition from 2* to 3* is trying to put your leg up 3 or 4 stairs at once and pull yourself up without holding onto anything - you'll get there probably but it's uncomfortable.

Many others then cry for an increased in drop rate percentage. Well, to be more specific, some argue for certain kinds of vaulting/ segregation.... but in reality, the underlying reason for the suggestion is to "gimme the covers that i want".

It would have been simple to increase the drop rates. But I argue that increasing the drop rates (too much), while it benefits the players, it have a harmful effect on the MPQ game.

Scottee said it well in this post:

scottee wrote:

I know people have a hard time thinking through consequences, but increasing 3* drop rate does have some. It's not just YOU that get more 3*'s; it's EVERYONE that gets more 3*'s.

That means more players with maxed out 166's, which means more 166's pooled at the top of the rankings. You'd see walls of 166's earlier. You'd see the top 100 or even 200 filled with 166's.

Maxed 166's are really still the end game right now. 4*'s aren't that significant of an upgrade. If everyone had 166's, EVERY aspect would be a huge grind.

This is already an area that they haven't addressed, and which I don't know if they're aware of. The only way to unclog the eventual cluster kitty at the max 3* range is to continue to open up the 4* range as a viable tier. And I'm not sure if that's in their plans.

....I maintain my statement. Every "easy solution" the forum comes up with has consequences. 166's used to only populate the top 5 of a PVP (1%). Then top 10 (2%). Now what is it, top 25? (5%). A higher and higher percentage of the player base has maxed out 166's, and that percentage will only go up. "A few percentage points" isn't about starting a trend; it's about snowballing an already existing one...

The sentences that i have bolded is the best description of the inflation effects we are observing. When so many people gotten their 13 covers, there will be more and more people with max characters. Resulting in pvp needing better characters for better placing. The inflation will just continue to increase.

And if MPQ increase the 3* drop rates, be it through more generous pvp rewards, or better % in tokens... the inflation will just get worse.

'Inflation' and Game design

So how should MPQ manage this inevitable inflation? I don't have the solution, but it definitely has to tackle the issue from multiple angles.

One thing i am glad is to see this response from MPQ.

Demiurge_Will wrote:

A couple of comments in this thread have asked why we don't just increase the rate at which we give out 3* characters. The reasons are more complicated and subtle than why we can't keep adding characters at the same total 3* odds, and it's kind of game design inside baseball, but if you're interested in this sort of thing, here goes:

If I can earn 3* characters faster, it makes the experience worse in two ways: 1) for 2* players, 2* characters become harder to get covers for, and 2) the pace of rewards slows down too fast.

1) is pretty straightforward, but 2) requires some more explanation.

A huge part of whether or not an RPG is fun and satisfying comes from the interlocking rhythms of rewards. In a game with an ongoing life like MPQ, one that I can play as a hobby for a really long time, because there isn't infinite stuff, the rate at which I get interesting new things necessarily slows down as I progress. The shape of that curve of cool new stuff vs. time is really important. Getting more 3*s sooner makes that curve steeper - it causes me to completely skip over a chunk of the 2* game and hop into the slower-paced 3* game sooner. In a sense, there would be less total fun in the game.

As the game evolves,that reward curve can get a little steeper and accelerate people's progress into later parts of the game and be okay. For example, that happened with the 1*->2* portion of the game when characters were added to the Versus mission rewards. But that needs to keep pace with how the power cap in the game rises, quite slowly, or I hit the wall too soon.

A common mistake among inexperienced designers is to believe that giving out more stuff faster, making the numbers go up faster, will make the game more fun. We've all had the experience of a sudden increase in power being really exciting and fun, and we generalize from that and think faster is better. But actually that sudden increase is only fun because of its suddenness relative to the shape of the power curve on either side.

Sort of related, but not quite the same thing: giving out 3*s more liberally lowers the value of a 3* and the excitement of getting one. The value of everything in a game is related to how scarce things of comparable power are.

The response shows that D3 is looking at MPQ from a holistic perspective. While they can always make the players happy by succumbing to their requests, some request are actually harmful to the game longevity.

Unknown

"Sometimes I thank God for unanswered prayers"

Great song and wise words.

trewiltrewil

I like the way you are looking at the problem from an economic standpoint, and I agree that many of the complaints in this forum are more about the "I want the covers I want" issue. But I actually think there are two deeper issues at play in the meta game.

ISO scarcity

I would argue that rather then focusing on cover distribution, it would be more meaningful to focus on ISO supply. I know that as a regular player of the game who is far past the 3* transition that the limited amount of ISO available is the reason that I convent specific covers so much. In a perfect world I would like to spread my ISO out leveling all of my characters, this is the way I played until I made the 3* conversion; I would level my 2* as they were featured in events and experiment with them. The scarcity of ISO and the cost of leveling 3* makes it impossible to play this way in the end game. Now I hoard covers until I can get a character at or near max level then dump ISO into them for weeks on end to max the level. That way I have a handful of strong characters and a ton of useless 3* 60's.

It's not that I am short 3* covers, I feel the game gives out plenty of covers. It's that I don't want to level the covers I get because I want to save my ISO for the covers I need. That to me is not fun, that is work.

You can't spare ISO to level each individual character as they are powered-up because ISO is too precious, and there is an argument to be made that the developers want you to buy ISO, but ISO is far to expensive to purchase in this model. I would cost several hundred dollars to move my entire 3* line-up past level 120 (which is where they really start to be fun in my opinion).

Now it is difficult to solve a problem of this nature. You could up the amount of ISO distributed, say for instances you start giving out twice as much ISO. But this then has the same result of condensing the 2* game outlined above. I think you could address that by bumping the level cap on the 2*s and raising the cost to max those last ten levels, I think this would persuade players to stay with the 2*s a bit longer and also allow them to be more competitive and earn 3* covers early to ease the 3* difficulty curve.

Free Market Covers

The issue with segmenting and vaulting covers is that it stops the progress for people who are working on collecting the covers that get vaulted. For example, right now I have ten covers for Patch. Well because of the cost of ISO we were talking about above I tend to not level characters till I have at least 11 covers. Now you are removing him from rotation and preventing me from completing him for at leas the next month. That's not fun.

Now I like the random nature of token pulls, I'm from Vegas so I can understand the draw of the big flashy gold showing on the screen and the dopamine receptors that stimulates. But one thing that makes a good RPG hit just the right notes is not only the progression as you find new rarer rewards, but also the choice of how you apply them. Why not still use token pulls, but rather create sets of tokens within those pulls, so there may be a 2% chance of having a gold reward pull that gives you a choice of Green Patch, Blue Beast, or Yellow Magneto. While another may give you chances for Hulk, IM, and Punisher. The featured character in a pack could give you a choice between two covers of even all three covers. That way it minimizes the chance of a wasted pull, gives you some choice, and doesn't eliminate the high you get by getting that one last cover you need that would otherwise be vaulted.


Anyways just my thought on the subject.

renfox

Like all economies, market players, market pressures, and law makers interact.

I've gone in and out of playing MPQ because of 'economy' changes. When the economy isn't very balanced, I just go into a market depression, only logging in to play the daily bonus. But I know there's an update around the corner. Any adjustment to the game will get the economy flowing again. This current issue with 3* pulls is one that will get more problematic and then they'll make a change.

Sometimes the game/market seems fair, then there will be some exploit that effects the value of the marketplace. For example, this most recent Sentry Bombing exploit creates a very stratified situation; those with, and those without a viable Sentry. This gives to the rich and takes from the poor in a way. I wonder how many new people leave the game out of poverty, and how many people don't spend real money because they got into the market and road to the top during an exploit.

The Developers are incented to balance the economy so that, we the players can play from the beginning, enjoy the game, make progress, and all the while feel pressure to spend real money to enhance our game experience. Speaking for myself, with a few ups and downs, I have done just that; I've enjoyed the game, played for longer than any other game, made slow progress, and spent real money.

It would be nice if they created more balance soon so that the 2*/3* transition is less depressing.