Decided to gamble 20$ for a chance at 4* Thor.

Unknown

NorthernPolarity wrote:

http://venturebeat.com/2014/05/15/marvel-puzzle-quests-road-to-the-mythical-1-arpdau-part-8-card-store-overhaul-redux/

Many of us figured that the entire value of the 10-packs of cards was that they included a guaranteed character in them, but we were fairly unusual in our design here, so we decided to adjust the system. This change went live prior to the visual overhaul, and the results were phenomenal. The first event to feature this new design was a huge success despite having relatively simple content and no new character on sale. We’re not sure why players preferred this system, but we suspect the answer is a simple one: the uncertainty of opening packs is part of what makes them fun! If, in World of Warcraft, the boss was guaranteed to drop the loot you wanted, I suspect the game would be less engaging overall.

I hadn't seen that before. The audacity of having that written down for publication is amazing.

I like their game on the whole, but that is just treating your customers like dribbling idiots. Mind you, I guess when people buy 10-packs, maybe we are?

kalex716

hermanbloom wrote:

NorthernPolarity wrote:

http://venturebeat.com/2014/05/15/marvel-puzzle-quests-road-to-the-mythical-1-arpdau-part-8-card-store-overhaul-redux/



I hadn't seen that before. The audacity of having that written down for publication is amazing.

I like their game on the whole, but that is just treating your customers like dribbling idiots. Mind you, I guess when people buy 10-packs, maybe we are?

This works out just fine actually. A solid chunk of their customers are dribbling idiots.

Just think about how dumb the average person walking around this earth is, then realize half of them are dumber.

IamTheDanger

Has anyone bought a 10 pack and actually gotten a Thorette cover?

Just wondering if anyone has actually pulled a 4* Thorette from a 10 pack or not. I hate admit it, , but I bought a 10 pack. Didn't get a single gold. . You would think that someone that's been playing MPQ as long as l have, that I would know better. .

Well, like the saying goes, "A lesson learned the hard way is a lesson truly learned."

CNash

Two points:

1 - I used to collect Yu-Gi-Oh cards, buying them in 10-card booster packs. Each pack had a guaranteed "rare" card in it - in actuality, you were guaranteed a card from the least-rarest tier of rarity, with specific odds of getting a card from a higher rarity tier. Having a guaranteed rare - even if in the grand scheme of things it wasn't "rare" - kept customers coming back to buy new boosters.

2 - McDonalds runs a Monopoly game every year. To win, you need to collect all the properties in a set. One or two of the properties will be very commonly found - the other, to complete the set, will be very rare. A large amount of people play this game, some of them choosing to eat at McDonalds when they wouldn't ordinarily just so they can "roll the dice" on finding that last property and winning a car or whatever.

With both of these points in mind, why not re-establish the guaranteed 3* cover in 10-packs, but make it so you're only guaranteed the unpopular or least-desirable abilities? Of course, this would require D3 to admit that some of the abilities they've designed are "less desirable"...

Dayv

CNash wrote:

Two points:

1 - I used to collect Yu-Gi-Oh cards, buying them in 10-card booster packs. Each pack had a guaranteed "rare" card in it - in actuality, you were guaranteed a card from the least-rarest tier of rarity, with specific odds of getting a card from a higher rarity tier. Having a guaranteed rare - even if in the grand scheme of things it wasn't "rare" - kept customers coming back to buy new boosters.

2 - McDonalds runs a Monopoly game every year. To win, you need to collect all the properties in a set. One or two of the properties will be very commonly found - the other, to complete the set, will be very rare. A large amount of people play this game, some of them choosing to eat at McDonalds when they wouldn't ordinarily just so they can "roll the dice" on finding that last property and winning a car or whatever.

With both of these points in mind, why not re-establish the guaranteed 3* cover in 10-packs, but make it so you're only guaranteed the unpopular or least-desirable abilities? Of course, this would require D3 to admit that some of the abilities they've designed are "less desirable"...

I think simply guaranteeing at least one 3* or better would go a long way towards making 10-packs less painful while keeping the chance element strong.

scottee

kalex716 wrote:

hermanbloom wrote:

NorthernPolarity wrote:

http://venturebeat.com/2014/05/15/marvel-puzzle-quests-road-to-the-mythical-1-arpdau-part-8-card-store-overhaul-redux/



I hadn't seen that before. The audacity of having that written down for publication is amazing.

I like their game on the whole, but that is just treating your customers like dribbling idiots. Mind you, I guess when people buy 10-packs, maybe we are?

This works out just fine actually. A solid chunk of their customers are dribbling idiots.

Just think about how dumb the average person walking around this earth is, then realize half of them are dumber.

People have more fun at the casino than at the bank or department store.

Unknown

kalex716 wrote:

This works out just fine actually. A solid chunk of their customers are dribbling idiots.

Yes, I am one of them. You become an idiot when you are addicted.

scottee

arktos1971 wrote:

kalex716 wrote:

This works out just fine actually. A solid chunk of their customers are dribbling idiots.

Yes, I am one of them. You become an idiot when you are addicted.

Which is why drug dealers are rich while store workers playing by the rules are in poverty.

Unknown

While Yugioh or MTG had a guaranteed rare in a pack, the rest of the pack is also guaranteed to not be a rare so disappointment can kick in after your first card wasn't anything particularly exciting. The math works out that you get around 1.5 3* per 10 pack. Back when it was a guaranteed 3* you have 100% chance of pulling a 3* on first and roughly 50% chance you'll pull a 3* on the next 9. Now it's spread out at 15% per token. Studies with slot machines show people like to be positively rewarded at somewhat random intervals (that's how slot machines work, after all). Having one guaranteed win followed by a very high chance of 9 duds is likely not as exciting as having 10 equal chances of getting something good.

Keep in mind the total number of 3* you get per 10 pack is a number controlled by D3 regardless of the format. If you look at the draw rate there's no way a 10-pack would ever guaranteed a 4* because the chance of getting a 4* is less than 10% per token. Now could you have a guaranteed 4* on a 42 pack? Sure, but again you've the same issue. Let's say it's 3% per draw so it's about 1.2 4* per 42 pack. If you have the guaranteed in the first one, then you have an extremely high probability of 41 duds in a row since they can only have a 20% total chance of getting a 4* to preserve the average. If it's just 3% per pack, while you could in theory do worse with 0, on average you won't have as long a string of duds and that matters a lot for whether someone will buy again.

Unknown

This section from the linked page above is quite offensive.

In previous events, our card store featured a pack of 10 cards for about $20 USD that was guaranteed to drop the featured character for the event. That’s unusual for card battlers. Typically, this is the newest, most exciting prize for players. In this latest revision of the store, we removed the guarantee while keeping the expected number of featured characters about the same. For many developers at Demiurge, this was a crazy idea. Many of us figured that the entire value of the 10-packs of cards was that they included a guaranteed character in them, but we were fairly unusual in our design here, so we decided to adjust the system. This change went live prior to the visual overhaul, and the results were phenomenal. The first event to feature this new design was a huge success despite having relatively simple content and no new character on sale. We’re not sure why players preferred this system, but we suspect the answer is a simple one: the uncertainty of opening packs is part of what makes them fun! If, in World of Warcraft, the boss was guaranteed to drop the loot you wanted, I suspect the game would be less engaging overall. Theoretically, you could apply the same principle to card battlers.

People paying cash for something they want and getting it is most definitely better than just a chance at getting the thing you're trying to buy.

The fact that they imply players prefer this is just obscene and asinine

Many people buy these packs because they couldn't participate in the event where that featured character was first released and the characters are required in a future event if you want to do well.

It's one thing to say, we feel these guys are too easy to acquire but it's blatantly wrong to lie and say players prefer to only get a featured character in 1/4 of the 10packs you buy as opposed to at least 1 in each 10 pack you buy.

Thats why everyone who has common sense and has played for a decent amount of time shouts how bad a deal the 10-packs are.

Unknown

There's a total of 6 articles or 8, they are quite interesting, and give a better understanding of what they think about the development of MPQ...

KillStormFirst

Pylgrim

arktos1971 wrote:

kalex716 wrote:

This works out just fine actually. A solid chunk of their customers are dribbling idiots.

Yes, I am one of them. You become an idiot when you are addicted.

Wait are you finally admitting that this state of matters may be the outcome of your (and others like you) weakness of resolve and not the fruit of diabolic machinations by D3? You know that if it weren't because people like you, spending hundreds of dollars in a lottery, they would never have got the skewed, almost absurd impression that players prefer randomness with low odds than certainty of positive outcome. You really cannot blame them for following the numbers when the numbers seem to contradict common sense. Common sense is subjective but numbers never lie.

Unknown

Pylgrim wrote:

You know that if it weren't because people like you, spending hundreds of dollars in a lottery, they would never have got the skewed, almost absurd impression that players prefer randomness with low odds than certainty of positive outcome.

... and many people could not play this game, because they are strict F2P.

lukewin

arktos1971 wrote:

Pylgrim wrote:

You know that if it weren't because people like you, spending hundreds of dollars in a lottery, they would never have got the skewed, almost absurd impression that players prefer randomness with low odds than certainty of positive outcome.

... and many people could not play this game, because they are strict F2P.

Very unlikely. The game was developed before any customers spent money on it. Yes, the money brought in has not only sustained it, but helped it to grow. Pretty sure the multitude of microtransactions outweighs the money whales have brought into the picture.

Unknown

lukewin wrote:

Very unlikely. The game was developed before any customers spent money on it.

Yes, that is called an investment. Many companies do that you know.

lukewin wrote:

Pretty sure the multitude of microtransactions outweighs the money whales have brought into the picture.

Nope, in the mobile industry 1,8 % of the players, called whales, bring in 80 % of the incomes.

lukewin

arktos1971 wrote:

lukewin wrote:

Pretty sure the multitude of microtransactions outweighs the money whales have brought into the picture.

Nope, in the mobile industry 1,8 % of the players, called whales, bring in 80 % of the incomes.

If that was the case for MPQ and not the mobile industry, your argument might have more validity. And 80% of the income, doesn't really mean that the whales are entitled to demand anything from the devs. You fork over the money and get what you pay for. You can threaten to stop forking over money and stop playing, and maybe they'll listen. But you have threatened to quit, and didn't, so your bluff got called, and your threats and constant whining on the forums just gets old and loses more and more validity every time another complaint is made. Even to the point of trying to twist every forum post, into what is wrong with the game.

Unknown

The 'whales' don't have as much power as they think they do despite being accountable for a very significant portion of the money. This is pretty much similar to politics how very little money is spent on getting the votes who are diehard voters of your party because you know those guys aren't going to leave anyway, and if they did it's likely over something completely irreconcilable. MPQ is in a relatively niche genre in the sense that I can't think of a game in the mobile/F2P that's got the same depth while having similar mechanism. That is you can say Hearthstone is a better game but Hearthstone and MPQ really has nothing in common so if someone stopped playing MPQ and went to Hearthstone you would just write that off as a lost cause because MPQ isn't going to somehow transform itself into a CCG. Of course the devs should care about what the whales have to say but it has to be something credible. If you say you're going to quit the game because Sentry is going to be nerfed or that you spent $100 on 2 42 pack and didn't get Thor, the devs will just call your bluff. If you say you're quitting the game because it's stale, maybe that's legitmate, though it's hard to see that as a legitmate complaint given the recent OpPayHarder event or that Rocket & Groot obviously had some crazy amount of engagement despite being a fairly ordinary event simply because it offered Thor as a prize.

If a score of 800 consistently wins the 'busy' time shards I'm sure devs will pay attention to player demands since that implies a very low amount of activity and that's a cause for alarm, but as long as people are complaining about 2XXX scores being too high, that means the game is clearly doing pretty well in terms of player engagement.

Unknown

lukewin wrote:

arktos1971 wrote:

lukewin wrote:

Pretty sure the multitude of microtransactions outweighs the money whales have brought into the picture.

Nope, in the mobile industry 1,8 % of the players, called whales, bring in 80 % of the incomes.

If that was the case for MPQ and not the mobile industry, your argument might have more validity. And 80% of the income, doesn't really mean that the whales are entitled to demand anything from the devs. You fork over the money and get what you pay for. You can threaten to stop forking over money and stop playing, and maybe they'll listen. But you have threatened to quit, and didn't, so your bluff got called, and your threats and constant whining on the forums just gets old and loses more and more validity every time another complaint is made. Even to the point of trying to twist every forum post, into what is wrong with the game.

If you read closely at what is being said on the forum, I pretty say the same, nothing really new, but expressed in other words you probably don't like. Fair enough.

My rage quit post was quite clear. You read and chose what you wanted to remember of it.

I would say you are partial, but I will refrain, as you would tell me I'm twisting your post.

Unknown

Phantron wrote:

The 'whales' don't have as much power as they think they do despite being accountable for a very significant portion of the money. This is pretty much similar to politics how very little money is spent on getting the votes who are diehard voters of your party because you know those guys aren't going to leave anyway, and if they did it's likely over something completely irreconcilable. MPQ is in a relatively niche genre in the sense that I can't think of a game in the mobile/F2P that's got the same depth while having similar mechanism. That is you can say Hearthstone is a better game but Hearthstone and MPQ really has nothing in common so if someone stopped playing MPQ and went to Hearthstone you would just write that off as a lost cause because MPQ isn't going to somehow transform itself into a CCG. Of course the devs should care about what the whales have to say but it has to be something credible. If you say you're going to quit the game because Sentry is going to be nerfed or that you spent $100 on 2 42 pack and didn't get Thor, the devs will just call your bluff. If you say you're quitting the game because it's stale, maybe that's legitmate, though it's hard to see that as a legitmate complaint given the recent OpPayHarder event or that Rocket & Groot obviously had some crazy amount of engagement despite being a fairly ordinary event simply because it offered Thor as a prize.

If a score of 800 consistently wins the 'busy' time shards I'm sure devs will pay attention to player demands since that implies a very low amount of activity and that's a cause for alarm, but as long as people are complaining about 2XXX scores being too high, that means the game is clearly doing pretty well in terms of player engagement.

Agreed. My major complaint in the ragequit post was about our health and sleep mostly.

When I put such a big amount of money anywhere, I am buying a service. And therefore, if I have complaints, I voice them out. And that is normal, I am a customer.

I would not think Lame Thor would be featured so quickly in a PvP and in the current PvE, which makes the situation even worse for those who chose to sleep.