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Unknown

OnesOwnGrief wrote:

CoolB76 wrote:

MrGame004 wrote:

D3 and company are not here to offer us a product. They are here to offer us entertainment. And for small percentage of whinny people here on the forums, they are not here entertain just you. They need to make money by appealing to the masses. That can't be done if there's one character to rule them all. There's no fun in that. So sorry "vets" but this isn't about you. It's about D3 making that dough, and if isn't coming from you anymore. It will come from players like myself who want continue to be entertained by a Marvel license puzzle game.

Make your mind up. Is it an entertainment service or a game? Are you sure what your paying for?

A game as a service. One of those newfangled ideas that has surfaced recently. If it was just a product, it would be done and out the door and on to the next one. It was also a topic of discussion at GDC 2015 back in March as well.

I'm not going to amalgamate the two just because some people with dollar signs in their eyes want us to. They may have found sheep to buy into their ideas but it doesn't mean everyone will. My PC gaming days pretty much ended once subscriptions became the new thing.

Vankysher

Lirisisk wrote:

Why you and others Affirm that veterans kept the game running? There is a lot of new guys buying 42x packs, roster slots and wasting money in stupid things like many ppl at the start.

I'll have to disagree with this statement.

Doing a cursory search for "f2p whales" will unearth some illuminating articles regarding those that financially support games like MPQ that use micro-transactions:

Does this sound like a new player to you? One thing that came across was this concept of 'whales' was really framing how developers and our marketing folks were thinking about what drives high-value spenders. [The assumption was]it's impulsive, more irrational, kind of hedonistic behavior," Yee said. "What we found was almost the exact opposite. Instead of being impulsive, they were long-term thinkers, cool-headed, methodical, and they really supported the game." It turns out the heavy spenders weren't spending money on impulse purchases. They valued long-term learning and mastery of the game, so they focused their purchases on new gear and items to help them master different aspects of gameplay, try new tactics, or unlock new classes to become proficient at.

Just how valuable are whales?They're hugely important to the mobile, free-to-play gaming business. Bandle says that some of npnf's games, such as Ærena and Galaxy Battle, see most of their revenue from the top 50-100 spenders, and that some will spend six figures on a game in as little as three months. Npnf is not nearly as big as the most successful mobile developers, but it also helps other developers create and monetize virtual goods with its proprietary APIs.

I posted this before but from 2014 we have this tidbit of information: About 0.15 percent of mobile gamers contribute 50 percent of all of the in-app purchases generated in free-to-play games.

And now we have some updated numbers for 2015: However, the amount of revenue being generated by big spenders is even higher this year -- according to Swrve, the top 10 percent of players who spent money on IAP (the right-most bar in the graph below) accounted for 64 percent of all (measured) F2P game revenue for the month. Last year, the top 10 percent of spenders only accounted for an estimated 50 percent of total revenue. Combine that with the claim that only 2.3 percent of players spend money at all, and you get a heady figure: less than a quarter of one percent of F2P mobile game players are responsible for the majority 64 percent of those games' IAP revenue. For developers in this field, chasing the whales seems more important than ever.

Based on how these articles describe a "whale", your claim regarding new players is a bit specious especially if they are not here on the forum. The veterans here, in my opinion, reflect the words of the researcher in the first quote. Analytics /metrics are just raw data which can be misinterpreted especially if you are NOT engaging with your customer. This very forum gives them a valuable window to what their customers are thinking about their entertainment SAS along with a means to actually interact with them. While the devs here do take some advantage of this forum, they do not do it enough.

Like I've stated before (and noticed a lot more people stating the same in numerous other threads), I am not spending any more money on this game. The prologue sucked me in, I liked what I saw and I financially contributed a meager $55 within the first 2 months. After those 2 months? The constant chase of new characters, dreadful draw rates, escalating roster spot costs and the utter lack of interesting content have eventually soured me on this game. Do I still play? Yes, mostly for my alliance, but I see my own engagement in events continually trending downward in terms of placement and time spent. One takeaway that stuck with me from the 2014 article is that companies like D3 only identify "whales" after-the-fact when those metrics and revenue numbers come in; if so, the converse will happen as well, when their "whales" disappear they will only see it after-the-fact.

Unknown

Vankysher wrote:

Lirisisk wrote:

Why you and others Affirm that veterans kept the game running? There is a lot of new guys buying 42x packs, roster slots and wasting money in stupid things like many ppl at the start.

I'll have to disagree with this statement.

Doing a cursory search for "f2p whales" will unearth some illuminating articles regarding those that financially support games like MPQ that use micro-transactions:

Does this sound like a new player to you? One thing that came across was this concept of 'whales' was really framing how developers and our marketing folks were thinking about what drives high-value spenders. [The assumption was]it's impulsive, more irrational, kind of hedonistic behavior," Yee said. "What we found was almost the exact opposite. Instead of being impulsive, they were long-term thinkers, cool-headed, methodical, and they really supported the game." It turns out the heavy spenders weren't spending money on impulse purchases. They valued long-term learning and mastery of the game, so they focused their purchases on new gear and items to help them master different aspects of gameplay, try new tactics, or unlock new classes to become proficient at.

Just how valuable are whales?They're hugely important to the mobile, free-to-play gaming business. Bandle says that some of npnf's games, such as Ærena and Galaxy Battle, see most of their revenue from the top 50-100 spenders, and that some will spend six figures on a game in as little as three months. Npnf is not nearly as big as the most successful mobile developers, but it also helps other developers create and monetize virtual goods with its proprietary APIs.

I posted this before but from 2014 we have this tidbit of information: About 0.15 percent of mobile gamers contribute 50 percent of all of the in-app purchases generated in free-to-play games.

And now we have some updated numbers for 2015: However, the amount of revenue being generated by big spenders is even higher this year -- according to Swrve, the top 10 percent of players who spent money on IAP (the right-most bar in the graph below) accounted for 64 percent of all (measured) F2P game revenue for the month. Last year, the top 10 percent of spenders only accounted for an estimated 50 percent of total revenue. Combine that with the claim that only 2.3 percent of players spend money at all, and you get a heady figure: less than a quarter of one percent of F2P mobile game players are responsible for the majority 64 percent of those games' IAP revenue. For developers in this field, chasing the whales seems more important than ever.

Based on how these articles describe a "whale", your claim regarding new players is a bit specious especially if they are not here on the forum. The veterans here, in my opinion, reflect the words of the researcher in the first quote. Analytics /metrics are just raw data which can be misinterpreted especially if you are NOT engaging with your customer. This very forum gives them a valuable window to what their customers are thinking about their entertainment SAS along with a means to actually interact with them. While the devs here do take some advantage of this forum, they do not do it enough.

Like I've stated before (and noticed a lot more people stating the same in numerous other threads), I am not spending any more money on this game. The prologue sucked me in, I liked what I saw and I financially contributed a meager $55 within the first 2 months. After those 2 months? The constant chase of new characters, dreadful draw rates, escalating roster spot costs and the utter lack of interesting content have eventually soured me on this game. Do I still play? Yes, mostly for my alliance, but I see my own engagement in events continually trending downward in terms of placement and time spent. One takeaway that stuck with me from the 2014 article is that companies like D3 only identify "whales" after-the-fact when those metrics and revenue numbers come in; if so, the converse will happen as well, when their "whales" disappear they will only see it after-the-fact.

You are a little confuse here my friend, vets and whales are not the same thing.

You can be a veteran if you play this game since d3 launch, but that doesn't mean you are a whale.

Whales are rich players, they don't care if the new character its gonna be good or bad, they just buy and max everything only because they have money.
I really don't know how they can enjoy this game, I only have 4 3* characters fully covered one of them its gamora, she is the prize in Thor event, and I really dont see how I can enjoy play pvp for something that I already have.
My point here is whales will be there even if they nerf all characters in game, they are real fans from MARVEL not from MPQ.
Real whales don't care about how the game goes.
If yoU are a whale just buy and max the next best character and you will keep that title, "whale".

Unknown

Lirisisk wrote:

My point here is whales will be there even if they nerf all characters in game, they are real fans from MARVEL not from MPQ.
Real whales don't care about how the game goes.
If yoU are a whale just buy and max the next best character and you will keep that title, "whale".

This is very far from true, and that's the whole point. If you are driving away your .15% of customers who pay 50% of your bills that is probably not a good strategy. Several of the more vocal big cash spenders are taking either a "wait and see" approach to current changes or have flat out quit. The current business model of nerf balance and 4* uber rarity for very little gain is driving away vets and whales who are vets alike, all in the name of new customer friendly cuddles who might get tricked into thinking a 42 pack is a good investment.

You don't think whales might migrate to games with better development? Or clearer long term strategy goals?

Unknown

Now the problem here is to think that the forum users are a yhe majority of the game thats actually wrong just to see at the quantity of downloads on the store you can see that, so we are the 5-10% I myself have around 20 pals on line from wich 1 or 2 just read the forum for updates and no more, so to thinkt he game must help the forum users just because "they pay the bills" well in this theory if D3 is so worried just about money then why dont they keep the "whales" feeded, in this theory and if its true they know that the players here sure adds money but maybe the true cash spending players are not in the forums, we cannot hope to build the game being just a 5-10% maybe the matchmaking has helped more people than just us and d3 knows and for so they intend to keep it, maybe this has raised the ammount of players that are playing pvp, maybe qe cannot know bc the forum. Have too little player fanbase but theyre the devs they have those numbers, myself i like the changes for the first time in my life and ive been playing for a year iam ranked 20 on my season total, i have done good on events reaching a 600-700 steady points, sure takes long but im not even hardcore im more than a casual, i have 3 or 4 153 fully covered 3s some 2s and some 3s that can be used at 130 140 lvl just one fully leveled 3 and no 4, i face some 4s but mostly 166 to 130 lvl, the changes have given me a lot of chances to rise up and speed my 3 transition i have finiahed 3 more 3 stars since season started with the help of ddq and pvp, now maybe what im experiencing its the truth for the majority of the player base, and the people here whining on the forums are the ones who are suffering, im not saying that there isnt a way to make it better for everyone, like eliminating the essential nodes on pve and keeping the buffed chars, that should encourage players not to get every character in game just those who they need and focus the transitioners of instead buying slots buying covers to reach a playabe roster faster rather than a unplayable roster with too many characters, also keeping the current mathcmaking and downgrading the points needed for big rewards making less of a pain to grinding, simple solutions sure but when you are doing a game for thousands of players not a few hundreds you have to take on account everyone, vets have enjoyed the game more than newcomers for a looot of time having fully covered 4s and 3s be able to take advantage of every buff, farming 2. For about 500 almost free points, be able to get to those sweet combos like winfinite, partchneto, spidy, etc, when most players simply cant or couldnt reach that on time, lets take another game wow nerfs and buffs their classes from now and then they get tons of whining because now theyre character is bad but they cant simply listen to everyone, either way give it a time Nerfs to xforce and thor were bound to come everyone knewt there will be new kings and quens of pve until they are nerfed and vets will still be able to use those vs the majority who wont, the benefits in game are still into vets favour.

Stanley71

Punisher5784 wrote:

PVE Scalings needs to be reasonable: We want real answers as to why scaling is too high. We don't expect matches to be easy but they need to be beatable without us looking for exploits.

That's very important!
I'm allways really angry and wondering why players with very weak rosters leads the PVE uncatchable!

Vankysher

Lirisisk wrote:

You are a little confuse here my friend, vets and whales are not the same thing.

You can be a veteran if you play this game since d3 launch, but that doesn't mean you are a whale.

Whales are rich players, they don't care if the new character its gonna be good or bad, they just buy and max everything only because they have money.
I really don't know how they can enjoy this game, I only have 4 3* characters fully covered one of them its gamora, she is the prize in Thor event, and I really dont see how I can enjoy play pvp for something that I already have.
My point here is whales will be there even if they nerf all characters in game, they are real fans from MARVEL not from MPQ.
Real whales don't care about how the game goes.
If yoU are a whale just buy and max the next best character and you will keep that title, "whale".

Nope no confusion.

The inference is that a veteran on this forum is most likely going to represent a disproportionate amount of the "whales" in the game since they are the most passionate and involved.
From the first article I linked, the researchers found that most "whales" are not as how you describe them and that what you are stating is simply a widely held assumption.
If their research is right, then most "whales" really do care about a game's direction.
Just because you don't understand how a "whale" enjoys this game doesn't mean they should have zero say in what happens.
IIRC one of the articles gave an average annual spend for a "whale" being ~$22 - it may have been a specific game used as an example - so if that classifies one as a "whale" then I'm a bloody high-rolling "whale" having dropped $55 in MPQ for my 6+ months and nothing more since.

My personal opinion is that D3/Demiurge have a delicate balancing act since "whales" and "non-whales" are equally important to the health of their business but how they go about it really needs to improve.

dkffiv

babinro wrote:

Nerfing and buffing characters are both POSITIVE game changes.

If characters were buffed to the trivial game play power level of Patchneto, XF, and Sentry bombing then you'd be left with an exceptionally easy and boring game. One that is actively harmful to EVERYONE for being overly casual and mindless.

It's not healthy to make matches that are decided on turn 3 the expected norm. Players will have a lot of fun feeling like they are breaking the game but that's not going to build a lasting experience.

Games need to offer challenge.

Creating 'counter' characters to these kinds of tactics would either degenerate to hugely niche characters or just a rock-paper-scissors game. The current version of the game has a lot more depth than that and we're better for it. Even though established vets are giving up SOME of their competitive advantage to get there.

Note: While I disagree with your points on nerfs and scaling the others do very much appeal to me as areas of improvement. I'm not sure I see a lot of people quitting because of those things mind you. Nearly all quitting seems to stem from nerfs.

All of these changes feel negative. I decided not to start the Thor PvP event until after the Xforce nerf and its the least fun I've had in a very long time. I've wiped out twice and ran out of kits before hitting the 500 mark and its due to how messed up they've made the game. The increase in health and boosting has made match damage mostly irrelevant. A 290 Thor takes around 85 turns worth of match damage to down. This means the only meaningful way to kill anything is with abilities. Even with AP boosts it still takes a massive number of abilities to kill things. Targeting Thor specifically takes 28+ AP to kill, something that's nearly impossible to do without getting hit by several abilities yourself. Every time I've lost its due to the AI eventually getting an insane cascade for 30+ AP in a single turn and eating ability after ability the subsequent turns. I could spend hp on health kits (which everyone seems to be denying was the reason for all these changes) but I'm against that in principle. "Pay to keep playing" feels a lot dirtier than "pay to shield hop."

GiantKiller2p

Completely agree with the OP here. I'm sad I can only award one point of rep per post.

Heartburn

Lidolas wrote:

Punisher5784 wrote:

Each week we receive more negative changes overall that affects the long-time customers.

I disagree with your opening statement. You may feel that they are negative changes. Most of the forumites might agree with you. But those are opinions. I'm certain the devs has enormous amounts of data that we don't have that they use to base the changes on. I'm almost certain that they do it for the health of the game and benefit of the players as a whole. They don't want this game to die. Have you watched the Q&A videos? They are as big or bigger comic nerds than most of us on the forums. They love their jobs. Yes, they probably have strings being pulled by Marvel, Disney, Sega, etc. But they have balanced it very well, in my opinion.

The recent changes definitely change the game, but not necessarily negatively for long-time customers. I understand that it is natural to resist change and embrace the status quo. But it is also boring. The devs are keeping the game alive by switching things ups with buffs, nerfs, gameplay, etc.

how many people are they willing to shed to make the game slightly better in their eyes. they haven't explained where they are going with these changes, how do know you are going to like it when you get there?
their track record shows that when things they make are too powerful they hammer it down mercilessly and offer you a fraction of its cost. it is like they only have one tool to balance. the big hammer. true healing- caused buy OBW being the only healer in 2*, did not reduce her heal did not make more healers so that there is a choice. destroyed healing system OBW stayed the same. shield hopping with sentry bombing Doc Oc to the rescue wait nope failed powers too expensive to keep up with a 7 cost power. nerf sentry into the ground, 4 thor nerf all 3 powers, Xforce greatly nerf 2 powers. pvp separate players in event but not the rewards? it would be nice to know where we are going so that we can suffer the change better with a goal in mind. as of right now it looks like we have been abducted and are heading to crazy... want to come?

Vinmarc43

Tons and tons of things they could do with this game, the potential is there and yes, they have done some really good adjustment and some not so great. One easy fix to help with 3 to 4 star transition is bringing the chance % of tokens to 3-4% instead of .03%, i mean most of the time we have the cover that we win anyway or have a 4 star token has event prizes. Even event rewards could be changed every events or do a few random reward on the way up, put a special tile on the board when playing that gives you a token,iso, whatever, would be fun and different. After 500+ days, it's still the same thing.
If they don't change events, people just get bored and when you are bored, you know what happens, you get a divorce.