The Business Behind the Changes

dkffiv

Dracodad wrote:

Big thanks to those who have clarified and expanded on my original post. Would agree completely that this business model is not new to gaming at all. In fact, it is the the norm. It is important to realize that why we as individual gamers may resent the changes (and Lord knows I am not happy with the XF nerf), we need to take this in context with the business model and to understand that what is bad for us personally and seems like a slap in the face, is driven by capitalism. It's the same as any other game that has in app purchases. Whether we think D3 is making the right moves, (and I personally believe a more incremental approach to,nerfs would,be a better model), the game changes are all driven to increase the bottom line at the end of the day. Great posts so far on this thread. Would love to hear others take on why new changes occur!

You have to remember that just because they have the desire to increase bottom lines doesn't mean they will. If that were the case no company would ever go bankrupt.

Customers are attempting to provide feedback and our suggestions always seem to fall on deaf ears. 99% sure that veterans have far more play experience than anyone on their staff and there have been many suggestions on how to help new player transitions and generally make the game more fun for everyone. More fun = more attention = more investment in terms of both money and time.

While its been well over a year since I started transitioning from 2* to 3*, I've helped a lot of members of my alliance go from 2* noobs to 1k+ powerhouses. Most veterans are not out of touch with what its like to be a new player in the current environment. Veterans may or may not invest more money into the system (I don't mind dropping $100 into something I enjoy every year) but through our interaction with new players and hopefully our suggestions on how to make the game better we can be valuable assets.

Dev: We're gonna test a new functionality or MMR systems that works like this:
Players: That doesn't sound like a good idea, you should try this and this first.
Dev: Too bad, we're rolling it out Friday. Enjoy your PvP/PvE weekend.
Players: Everything is kittied, why the hell did you push this update out.
Dev: We didn't foresee that happening. Here's a heroic token.

Stuff like this has happened so many times that its disheartening. A bunch of my friends were looking into a new game to play and I had to recommend against MPQ. Instead they all went to Puzzles and Dragons have have dropped $20+ into it. I can't be the only one with this type of reaction.

DaveR4470

I think this Gamasutra blog entry is relevant here. And Puzzle & Dragon is MUCH MUCH worse than MPQ, which is (in my experience) the most user-friendly F2P I've ever played.

To wit on P&D from that article:

[The Reward Removal] technique is used masterfully in Puzzle and Dragons. In that game the play primarily centers around completing “dungeons”. To the consumer, a dungeon appears to be a skill challenge, and initially it is. Of course once the customer has had enough time to get comfortable with the idea that this is a skill game the difficulty goes way up and it becomes a money game. What is particularly effective here is that the player has to go through several waves of battles in a dungeon, with rewards given after each wave. The last wave is a “boss battle” where the difficulty becomes massive and if the player is in the recommended dungeon for them then they typically fail here. They are then told that all of the rewards from the previous waves are going to be lost, in addition to the stamina used to enter the dungeon (this can be 4 or more real hours of time worth of stamina).

At this point the user must choose to either spend about $1 or lose their rewards, lose their stamina (which they could get back for another $1), and lose their progress. To the brain this is not just a loss of time. If I spend an hour writing a paper and then something happens and my writing gets erased, this is much more painful to me than the loss of an hour. The same type of achievement loss is in effect here. Note that in this model the player could be defeated multiple times in the boss battle and in getting to the boss battle, thus spending several dollars per dungeon.

dkffiv

DaveR4470 wrote:

I think this Gamasutra blog entry is relevant here. And Puzzle & Dragon is MUCH MUCH worse than MPQ, which is (in my experience) the most user-friendly F2P I've ever played.

To wit on P&D from that article:

[The Reward Removal] technique is used masterfully in Puzzle and Dragons. In that game the play primarily centers around completing “dungeons”. To the consumer, a dungeon appears to be a skill challenge, and initially it is. Of course once the customer has had enough time to get comfortable with the idea that this is a skill game the difficulty goes way up and it becomes a money game. What is particularly effective here is that the player has to go through several waves of battles in a dungeon, with rewards given after each wave. The last wave is a “boss battle” where the difficulty becomes massive and if the player is in the recommended dungeon for them then they typically fail here. They are then told that all of the rewards from the previous waves are going to be lost, in addition to the stamina used to enter the dungeon (this can be 4 or more real hours of time worth of stamina).

At this point the user must choose to either spend about $1 or lose their rewards, lose their stamina (which they could get back for another $1), and lose their progress. To the brain this is not just a loss of time. If I spend an hour writing a paper and then something happens and my writing gets erased, this is much more painful to me than the loss of an hour. The same type of achievement loss is in effect here. Note that in this model the player could be defeated multiple times in the boss battle and in getting to the boss battle, thus spending several dollars per dungeon.

That honestly doesn't sound that different than MPQ. If you fail in a battle your characters are down and you need to buy kits. If you don't you risk losing ranking. In a competitive PvE if you wipe out early during a grind down you could be throwing away days worth of perfect rotations, PvP wise if you end your climb early you won't be anywhere near the reward tier you want. From what I've heard my friends say, they usually clear the dungeons they expect to and know the risk of going into a dungeon that's above their weight class.

Unknown

dkffiv wrote:

That honestly doesn't sound that different than MPQ. If you fail in a battle your characters are down and you need to buy kits. If you don't you risk losing ranking. In a competitive PvE if you wipe out early during a grind down you could be throwing away days worth of perfect rotations, PvP wise if you end your climb early you won't be anywhere near the reward tier you want. From what I've heard my friends say, they usually clear the dungeons they expect to and know the risk of going into a dungeon that's above their weight class.

In MPQ, you can have a backup roster to try again, and throw your team B or C at the node.

I'd say Puzzle Pirates had a less P2W feeling than MPQ, though MPQ is one of the better F2P out there. I did throw $20 at this game after DDQ.

DaveR4470

I actually think it's very different than MPQ, dk. Imagine if MPQ locked you into playing all of the Thunderbolt Mountain nodes, including the big one at the end, consecutively, and if at any point you failed a node, you had to pay $1 to not lose all your points for the event. That's the P&D dungeon model. MPQ allows you to do the nodes at your own pace, and never holds you hostage and makes you pay to retain something you've already earned. That's more friendly to players.

Vankysher

daibar wrote:

dkffiv wrote:

That honestly doesn't sound that different than MPQ. If you fail in a battle your characters are down and you need to buy kits. If you don't you risk losing ranking. In a competitive PvE if you wipe out early during a grind down you could be throwing away days worth of perfect rotations, PvP wise if you end your climb early you won't be anywhere near the reward tier you want. From what I've heard my friends say, they usually clear the dungeons they expect to and know the risk of going into a dungeon that's above their weight class.

In MPQ, you can have a backup roster to try again, and throw your team B or C at the node.

I'd say Puzzle Pirates had a less P2W feeling than MPQ, though MPQ is one of the better F2P out there. I did throw $20 at this game after DDQ.

I think the more appropriate comparison is getting a cover for a new character and not having the roster space.
Covers used to expire within 7 days (now 14) and having that ticking clock on the "reward" is supposed to motivate you to buy HP to spend on a roster slot.

NorthernPolarity

Honestly I'm not sure what to make of this post. At first I thought it was one of those conspiracy theory threads where the original poster was going to complain about the changes to the game aiming to increase health pack sales, but instead what I read something that takes all of the changes that MPQ has made, and essentially twists it into something that paints Demiurge as a company that is out to make money, with complete disregard or care for the playerbase. Some of your examples just go way too far in terms of painting Demiurge as a big, bad evil corporation, and frankly just end up sounding completely ridiculous as a result.

Dracodad wrote:

5. Buffs: I've noticed that poor old Bagman isn't getting a buff. Who is? Why, it's characters that no one spends any ISO on., but are 3* (as they cost more ISO and HP to cover and level than poor old Bags) One certain way to increase player ISO spending is to make the characters many people have already maxed useless (as the income potential of those characters has been significantly reduced) while buffing those characters that are so useless that no one spends any money on (in order to make them more profitable). Continue adding powerful new characters for people to go crazy about (like Ultron will almost assuredly be), track their profitability, and then nerf them when too many people have them maxed, or they are allowing too many wins without using health packs. It is simple economics and marketing, but done in a way that would make any Fortune 500 company proud.

Or, you know, maybe the 3* metagame is more important because that change impacts the majority of their players. The end-game is the 3* / 4* level, and is it a money grabbing sin to focus on aspects of the game that will have the most impact on the players? How many people would even care if Bagman saw a buff? You could spin it as that "they're picking the decision that makes the most money", or you can spin it as "they're not wasting their time focusing on aspects of the game that hardly manner". It turns out that sometimes the path that makes the most money and the path that considers the players best interest is actually the same path taken, and that just because a decision makes the most money doesn't necessarily mean that it's evil.

Dracodad wrote:

3. Deadpool Daily Quest: what a nice gift from the developers you thought? More like an astute business move. Why not make a mini game that gives great rewards (just not ones easily useable by veterans who have covered most of these characters). However, the mini game allows rapid acquisitions of multiple under covered characters for transitioning players. How cool would it be as a CEO to watch the cash flow in as these players suddenly need new roster spots on a daily basis. And the slowness of the cover acquisitions virtually assures that a large number of these players will pony up to buy their last couple of covers in order to finally complete their black panther, for example. In addition, all those veteran players who deleted their 1* and 2* characters to make roster space for all the new releases? Hello! Welcome to Deadpool Daily Quest where you NEED to return those characters back on to your roster. Speaking of which...

This is really the point that jumps the shark. Lets suppose that Demiurge one day messed up and decided to give everyone a free Kingpin cover to compensate. I wouldn't be surprised if I saw a post from you saying "Is Demiurge really sorry? Or is this an astute business move to make the players happy so that they can sell us more roster slots and covers!" Or hell, lets say that Demiurge decided to increase the reward tiers in PvP from top 100 to top 500. "Goodwill? Or an astute business move to make more players able to progress and make them more money?". You can literally take ANY change in the game that gives out more awards to the players, and twist and turn it into an abomination that is rationalized by "Demiurge is an evil business that is out to make money".

Yes. Demiurge is a business and are trying to make money. But the key point that this post is missing is that making the game better as a whole and making money sometimes go hand in hand. Deadpool Daily is a perfect example of that, and I think it's insane to argue otherwise. And if this is the case, why is making money a bad thing (which your post is clearly making it out to be).

Here's another spin on the X-Force and LadyThor nerfs. One could say that Demiurge could be nerfing overpowered characters to get people to buy more of the other characters, or one could argue that making that useless IW in your roster more relevant and playable because X-Force has been nerfed makes the game balance better, and the game as a whole better. That's the real problem I have with these types of posts. A challenge: give me an example of a balance change that makes the game balance better and can't be twisted into a "Demiurge is evil and out to make money post".

Nerf a character? Demiurge is trying to make money by making us play other characters.
Buff a character? Demiurge is trying to make money by getting us to buy the now buffed characters.

Or put in a another way, "Demiurge is trying to make money by making the game more balanced", and that seems like a very silly thing to be complaining about.

I'm not trying to argue that the X-Force / 4or nerfs were well done, but accusing everything Demiurge does as a money-making scheme just does not contribute anything meaningful to the conversation. Focus on how the nerfs could have approached in such a way that makes the playerbase happier as a whole, as opposed to rationalizing every single decision they make as pure business. It turns out that other ways to approach the nerf could have been better for the playerbase AND have made Demiurge as much, or more money, so why not do something constructive and talk about a solution that benefits all parties involved instead?

Unknown

Hmmmmm. I think you entirely missed the point of these posts. They are not a complaint. They are an explanation for everyone out there saying "D3 is trying to get me and they are ruining the game". My point is that they are a company, and that while individually we may not like the changes, they are being done in order that the company makes more money. Everyone knows that if a company makes a better game then it is good for all. My point is that even what is negative for the veterans is good for the company's bottom line, and in converse, what seems like benevolence is merely marketing strategy. Not good, not bad. Just impersonal. Like just about every other company out there. Read my entire thoughts and I think you will agree with the gist, although I may not have phrased it as well as I should at times. I