For those who believe every change is informed by greed

Unknown

I do think a lot of people see MPQ as F2P and then condemn it because all F2P must immediately be evil because they get people to spend money.

While MPQ is not the best, it is far from the worst. Notable example, the Life system. With a lot of 'energy' or life systems, you get 5 lives.
Worst: A. You need to use lives or currency every time you attempt any round.
B. You lose a life or currency every time you lose a round.

However, with MPQ we have a completely different system.
C.
- Your heroes lose health during combat.
- This health loss can be prevented through shields.
- This health loss depends on your skill in play.
- You can retreat to only take 1/3 damage to your heroes.
- Certain characters regenerate health!
- You can switch in different characters.
How many rounds have people played without using a single health pack? You can get to 500+ in PVP using Laken/Patch easy. There are often weeks where I don't use a single health pack.

If MPQ is the great evil some say it is, why would they have this health system?


When Demiurge/D3 makes a bad change we should and do still call them out on it, but trying to tie everything to health pack conspiracies or money grabs gets tiring, like listening to politicians who resort to hyperboles to make their points.

OP isn't targeting all of us, only the ones who engage in the evil conspiracy nuttery, unironically.

JVReal

Bowgentle wrote:

I don't think most of us old-timers think that the devs are greedy.

They have jobs, and they need to feed their families. It's ok to make a living.

What I _do_ think, and what's even more worrying, is that there is a lack of vision.

Case in point:
Start of the game: "4*s are meant to be trophies"
A year later: "4*s are meant to be god-tier, here's the promised Xforce buff and 4Thor!"
Another 6 months later: "4*s are only meant to be 33% better than 3*s! Here's the nerf!"

They introduced 4*. They adjusted their vision for how they would be used. That's an evolving game, that's actively watching the impact of the game and adjusting with it. Nothing wrong with that, it indicates an active involvement in the game dynamics because a living, breathing game is better than a stale dead one.

Also, saying "we want people to play less" and then turning the grind to PVE up to 11 with 3 hour+ end of sub grinds for 1st.

People whined about "having" to play every 2.5 hours, you begged for 8 hours. They do exactly what you asked for and how the player base react? They decide that now they "have" to play for 3 hour blocks at the end of each sub instead of 20 mins every 2.5 hours... and who do you turn and blame? The developer who did exactly what you asked. Instead of taking the blame for yourself, the person who is playing, or blaming the player base who create the "need" for the grind at the end of each sub, you blame the reward structure that caused the "need". People lack their own accountability.

Implementing shield cooldowns, which does nothing but inconvene people, but doesn't _stop_ shield hopping, and gives a massive boost to out-of-game-communication that it was suppposed to counter.

People who did not shield hop complained about those that did. Those that did hop spent money on shields for the benefit it gave them. PVP is broken. People cried about people only being able to hit certain tiers due to shield hopping, so they put a cool down on shields to make it more difficult since shield hopping was never intended to be the answer. It did as intended, and slowed down shield hopping. It was the player that decided they were going to shield hop anyway, and now "had" to buy 3 different shields for more HP than they may have been spending previously. If they make it more difficult for you to do so that you won't do it... but then you do it anyway... whose fault is that? Player not dev. Not a money grab, but responding to the player base that wanted to be able to compete without excessive shield hopping. It did fail at minimizing outside communication, but that's because the in-game communication system is terrible but not a priority.

Implementing health buffs that make each PVP match take forever, at least long enough for opponents to get one big power move off that leaves your characters crippled, leading to at least double the amount of time you need to spend on PVP.

By giving characters stronger attacks, and making more complex powers, and with stronger characters coming out, there needed to be buffs in health. Longer matches require greater strategy. Slowing people down in PVP helps out in my opinion. It should require further adjustments in how Scaling works, and should reduce levels in PVE since they do take longer. I'm sure there will be some adjustments down the road if Scaling doesn't eventually self-adjust over time.

Failing to even acknowledge if it's intentional that trying to play for T10 in both PVP and PVE takes about as much time as a full time job these days.

Again, a player blaming a developer for their desire to be the best at every aspect of the game. It's your choice to do both, it's your choice to try and T10 Both. How is that the devs fault? Pick one, or shoot lower for both. Play what you can and manage your OWN time.

Those are the kind of decisions that makes me wonder if the devs have any idea what they're doing.

I'd love to see them try to play PVE for T10 for a month and see what this requires. After that maybe they'd have a better idea of the "fun" they are promoting.
TL;dr: it's not greed that worries us, it's cluelessness.

The devs mostly know what they are doing... it sounds like the players don't know what they're doing. Why would the dev try for T10 for an entire month? T10 is as difficult as the rest of the player base makes it. The only times the devs dictate how tough a prize is to achieve is when it's progression and they control the difficulty of receiving the points. Rank is completely dependent on how zealous the other players are. When you have a base of players that are as zealous as you, that has to tell you something about the popularity of the game, not the inadequacy of the developer. I agree they need to adjust the rank rewards and be a little bit more generous with them, that or reduce the size of brackets... but none of that makes them clueless.

As a player, be accountable for your own choices and actions. You want to shoot for T10 in ALL events? Go for it. But don't piss and moan and call the devs greedy and clueless because you chose to do that.

puppychow wrote:

Excellent example of D3's greed. Normally you would think a refund means a FULL return of the money that a consumer pays out to purchase the good or service. D3 doesn't say "partial refund" which is what they are doing in reality.

A company will only give you a full refund if 1) it falls within their dictated timeframe for full refunds and 2) if you have a receipt and they will refund you what is on the receipt if the refund promised was 100%.

After Christmas when people go to the store to return gifts, without a receipt you are given the last sale price of that item regardless of what was actually spent. They have no way to verify it, so they give you what they find to be reasonable without proof that you even purchased it. On top of that, if you have used an item for 6 months, the likelihood of getting 100% refund from anywhere is very unlikely. Some places do it, some don't. Car dealerships will not give you a full refund once you drive a new car off the lot, except under very specific circumstances. I worked at a car dealership growing up and the only instance where they gave a woman a full refund was because her husband died 2 days after buying the car. Good choice by the car dealership in my opinion. I also worked at a retailer who had a very strict return policy, but on a case by case they were able to make exceptions. There was a regular woman who came into the store and bought clearance items, then come back with no receipt and having pulled off the clearance stickers trying to get the higher price back on the items. We all knew she did it, but it wasn't worth the hassle if she didn't accept our initial response of lowest sale/clearance price. She even bought a brand new pillow then put her old, brown, stained up pillow in it's packing and returned it.

D3 knows we make HP on buybacks. They know we earned 2 covers of MNMags and leveled them and sold them back for HP, but it wasn't worth the hassle to stop that because of the valid buybacks that took place too. Whether someone believes X-Force was broken or not is irrelevant, if someone used him and when they "fixed" him they wanted full "value" back, even if you didn't spend any HP directly for him... that person is that lady that wanted the money for a brand new pillow back in exchange for a used one.

I recommend taking screen shots when you buy covers so you have proof of what you actually spent in purchased covers for a character for future nerfs. Then you'll have your proof of what HP was spent. HP Spent to earn a cover as a reward doesn't count as HP spent on that cover IMO.

Pylgrim

Wonko33 wrote:

Why I think OP is wrong or misinformed:

OP applies logic from a different more traditional business model to this freemium, addiction based model.

It would be cool if your heroin pusher would be nice but does it really matter? Does anybody who goes to a casino think the owners are nice? We even went when it was well known they were owned by the mafia. Do we care that they pump oxygen in? That there are no clocks in there?

Believe me the bean counters at D3 are fully aware of this, they are telling their developers to include all kinds of addicting mechanics into the game, for example: why tokens? can't I just get my random hero right off the bat? Why not a level up one level button instead of the little meter going up? Because dopamine is released when you expect a reward, not when you get it.

these are the people who make decisions at Freemiun games companies https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NF7aJMXU_W0 - this is not some wackjob conspiracy theorist either, this talk is at GDC, he's giving advice to game makers, he is even telling game makers that think like OP that they are doing it wrong.

Someone asked on page 1, why are you still here then?
- I am an addict, food, alcohol, gambling whatever, this game is a pretty benign one (why I won't touch drugs and stay away from Casinos as a matter of fact)

- I like match 3 games, and this one hits all my likes : superheroes, making fun combos between abilities, love the art, nice visual effects, some competition with others, some cooperation with other too


Anyway, just my 2 cents, I don't hate D3 or the devs or anything, just some guys doing their jobs, but I think it does help to be self-aware and understand the mechanics of what is going on.

This is a good post. I am aware of the monetising strategies of freemium games, and yes, some of them sound really terrible when put on paper. However note that many of them are exploitative mechanics found in many of the lesser games that pollute the app stores and that are meant to just go viral, generate some addiction, and try to suck as much money out of people before they realise how bare-bones, derivative and ultimate mediocre experience they are being offered. Then the app simply disappears from the radar and the developers cash in big for what usually amounts to a few hours of coding on a borrowed idea and cheaply bought or stolen assets.

My point here is if you only care about the money you don't even have to try that hard. You just have to keep making short-lived mediocre apps whose short development times mean that almost any money racked in is profit. Many "mobile game companies" follow this model. I like to think from my mostly positive experience with the game that in MPQ's case, the developers are passionate Marvel fans who enjoy creating and developing this game and actually care about their creation and want to see it growing and improving rather than seeing it as a means to make a quick buck. The freemium strategies/addiction-catering mechanics that you mention already take care by themselves of most of the heavy lifting financially speaking. They do not need to minutely tinker every single thing to make sure that it will squeeze a tiny bit more money presumably to buy yet another solid-gold comb; rather, they do it to encourage growth and longevity which is a good thing both for them and us, the players who like the game enough to keep playing it for several hundreds of days and discuss passionately about it.

Also, I want to take this space to thank everybody who's tried to engage in discourse in this thread even if you disagree with my position, rather than following the facile route of dismissal and mockery.

Billigoat

El Satanno wrote:

I guess I'm in the minority here, but I'm with you 100%, Pylgrim.

Beyond just being incredibly tired, it's also intellectually lazy to bang on the greedhead drum all the time. It's easy to do, and as evidenced rather clearly by the bulk of the responses you've received, you get a lot of echo in the echo chamber here. You don't need to provide any substantive support to your claim, just "Hurr durr greedy devs" and bask in the acceptance of your peers. Congratulations.

Hahaha.... literally lol'd at this one. Hurr durr greedy devs!

Some examples I've noticed of the greed of the devs:

Gameplay problem: A viable team MUST have a healer for the player to do well. Everyone has OBW or spidey.
Solution: Remove true-healing from most characters
Result: Teams are much more diverse because healers are no longer mandatory.
Forum Backlash: The devs want us to pay money for health packs! EVIL

Gameplay problem: x-force is so OP that he's mandatory to be competitive
Solution: Nerf x-force. Offer a grace period for a percentage refund if players paid money for him.
Result: I have no idea because I'm not in 4-star land
Forum backlash: The devs intentionally nerfed him after everyone paid money to get him as a way of bleeding more money from the players! EVIL

Gameplay problem: a large amount of heroes are missing in the game
Solution: release more characters! yay!
Result: A new character every week
Forum backlash: Players who compulsively collect every character feel overwhelmed because they 'must' grind continually to keep up with the game. Others assume it's somehow a cash grab from the company, releasing more content to... make more money? EVIL

anybody have any others?

Unknown

This thread could use some downvotes...

Just saying.

easy...marc

sinnerjfl

Billigoat wrote:

Gameplay problem: a large amount of heroes are missing in the game
Solution: release more characters! yay!
Result: A new character every week
Forum backlash: Players who compulsively collect every character feel overwhelmed because they 'must' grind continually to keep up with the game. Others assume it's somehow a cash grab from the company, releasing more content to... make more money? EVIL

People don't have a problem with new characters being released. The problem is the ever-increasing cost of roster slots and the stubborn attitude of D3/Demiurge to not offer a viable solution (DDQ & doubling our measly pittance of HP that we get once in a while is not a solution). My next roster slot will be the 58th, it will cost me 750 HP. Eventually they end up costing over 1000 HP (that's roughly 10$) and they never stop costing more.

Ever-increasing cost of roster slots is plain greed, you can't deny or justify this tinykitty.

scottee

sinnerjfl wrote:

Billigoat wrote:

Gameplay problem: a large amount of heroes are missing in the game
Solution: release more characters! yay!
Result: A new character every week
Forum backlash: Players who compulsively collect every character feel overwhelmed because they 'must' grind continually to keep up with the game. Others assume it's somehow a cash grab from the company, releasing more content to... make more money? EVIL

People don't have a problem with new characters being released. The problem is the ever-increasing cost of roster slots and the stubborn attitude of D3/Demiurge to not offer a viable solution (DDQ & doubling our measly pittance of HP that we get once in a while is not a solution). My next roster slot will be the 58th, it will cost me 750 HP. Eventually they end up costing over 1000 HP (that's roughly 10$) and they never stop costing more.

Ever-increasing cost of roster slots is plain greed, you can't deny or justify this tinykitty.

I disagree that it's greed.

I'm completely F2P and I have 7000 HP sitting around. My next roster slot will cost 700 HP. I have no problem with roster slots. I spend HP on shields when I want, and every once in a while, covers I want. It can't be greed if I never give them money. Their "greed" is only slowing down my progress a little in this completely F2P game. They're getting back the digital currency that I paid nothing for.

Every bit of this game's content is free. Should a completely F2P player have access to all of the content easily? I'd say no. In some games, there's content you can't even access without paying. In this game, you can access it after hard work, or after a long time. I think this is a reasonable situation.

Vhailorx

scottee wrote:

sinnerjfl wrote:

Billigoat wrote:

Gameplay problem: a large amount of heroes are missing in the game
Solution: release more characters! yay!
Result: A new character every week
Forum backlash: Players who compulsively collect every character feel overwhelmed because they 'must' grind continually to keep up with the game. Others assume it's somehow a cash grab from the company, releasing more content to... make more money? EVIL

People don't have a problem with new characters being released. The problem is the ever-increasing cost of roster slots and the stubborn attitude of D3/Demiurge to not offer a viable solution (DDQ & doubling our measly pittance of HP that we get once in a while is not a solution). My next roster slot will be the 58th, it will cost me 750 HP. Eventually they end up costing over 1000 HP (that's roughly 10$) and they never stop costing more.

Ever-increasing cost of roster slots is plain greed, you can't deny or justify this tinykitty.

I disagree that it's greed.

I'm completely F2P and I have 7000 HP sitting around. My next roster slot will cost 700 HP. I have no problem with roster slots. I spend HP on shields when I want, and every once in a while, covers I want. It can't be greed if I never give them money. Their "greed" is only slowing down my progress a little in this completely F2P game. They're getting back the digital currency that I paid nothing for.

Every bit of this game's content is free. Should a completely F2P player have access to all of the content easily? I'd say no. In some games, there's content you can't even access without paying. In this game, you can access it after hard work, or after a long time. I think this is a reasonable situation.

Greed is a very loaded term, and kind of hard to meaningfully define for a theoretically for-profit company.

Can we at least all agree the the infinitely escalating roster slot pricing combined with the very rapid pace of new character releases is a a pretty aggressive monetization strategy? Is that term neutral enough?

It's great that scottee has managed to reach veteran status as a f2p player. I would be willing to bet, however, that he/she has spent an awful lot of time playing the game during the past 500 days to do so. And that too has value for the demiurge (even if the value is harder to quantify that $/day played).

Ducky

JVReal wrote:

The devs mostly know what they are doing... it sounds like the players don't know what they're doing. Why would the dev try for T10 for an entire month? T10 is as difficult as the rest of the player base makes it. The only times the devs dictate how tough a prize is to achieve is when it's progression and they control the difficulty of receiving the points. Rank is completely dependent on how zealous the other players are. When you have a base of players that are as zealous as you, that has to tell you something about the popularity of the game, not the inadequacy of the developer. I agree they need to adjust the rank rewards and be a little bit more generous with them, that or reduce the size of brackets... but none of that makes them clueless.

Yet when they ran Ultron, they made it to where alliance members locked out other members of their alliance from receiving top progressions rewards during the first run without letting us know that it would happen. Then during the second run only TWO alliances out of the thousands of alliances in existence completed it due to how perfectly they had to play and because the devs left ambiguity (to put it kindly) as to whether or not the second run would be tougher than the first.

The devs have even admitted they only work in roughly 2 week increments in terms of game development, making me believe that they react on the fly to a lot of the issues that come up in the game instead of working towards a greater vision.

scottee

Vhailorx wrote:

Greed is a very loaded term, and kind of hard to meaningfully define for a theoretically for-profit company.

Can we at least all agree the the infinitely escalating roster slot pricing combined with the very rapid pace of new character releases is a a pretty aggressive monetization strategy? Is that term neutral enough?

It's great that scottee has managed to reach veteran status as a f2p player. I would be willing to bet, however, that he/she has spent an awful lot of time playing the game during the past 500 days to do so. And that too has value for the demiurge (even if the value is harder to quantify that $/day played).

Agree that greed is a very loaded term.

I also agree that they're trying to monetize pretty aggressively, but I disagree because I don't think it's actually succeeding. I think they're doing ok, but other mobile games monetize way more aggressively. There are games where you can't ever compete unless you've paid. There's games where the "pay wall" hits much sooner and much more severely than MPQ.

MPQ is doing what a good game is supposed to do:
-Create good content.
-Player has fun playing through content.

It's the playing that's the fun part. I think most players have the notion that "getting the content faster" would make the game more fun. I'm actually getting bored with this game now, because there's not much left to do, especially after the 4* nerfs. Before, it was work towards XForce, then work towards 4Thor. Now it's, work towards my 21st maxed 3*? Work hard to get 3* Bullseye?

Maxing 3*s right now is the end game. After you get a stable of 8-10 usable 3*s, there's nothing left to work towards but trophies. Max out a new character faster than others. Get more maxed 4*s than others. Win a first place. Get a high season rank. These are all cosmetic and have no affect on your ability to compete in the game. I'm working to max ProfX and Hulkbuster next, but do I need them to compete? No.

People want to accelerate their progress in the game as if they were paying, but without paying. Just go buy some PC game with great content on a steam sale for less than $10, and have fun playing through it for 80 hours. I've had many more hours of fun than that from MPQ, and haven't paid a dime. What more do people want?

Vhailorx

DuckyV wrote:

JVReal wrote:

The devs mostly know what they are doing... it sounds like the players don't know what they're doing. Why would the dev try for T10 for an entire month? T10 is as difficult as the rest of the player base makes it. The only times the devs dictate how tough a prize is to achieve is when it's progression and they control the difficulty of receiving the points. Rank is completely dependent on how zealous the other players are. When you have a base of players that are as zealous as you, that has to tell you something about the popularity of the game, not the inadequacy of the developer. I agree they need to adjust the rank rewards and be a little bit more generous with them, that or reduce the size of brackets... but none of that makes them clueless.

Yet when they ran Ultron, they made it to where alliance members locked out other members of their alliance from receiving top progressions rewards during the first run without letting us know that it would happen. Then during the second run only TWO alliances out of the thousands of alliances in existence completed it due to how perfectly they had to play and because the devs left ambiguity (to put it kindly) as to whether or not the second run would be tougher than the first.

The devs have even admitted they only work in roughly 2 week increments in terms of game development, making me believe that they react on the fly to a lot of the issues that come up in the game instead of working towards a greater vision.

I don't disagree with respect to the Ultron event. There were some pretty significant problems with the rollout (as admitted by demiurge), and the adequacy of the compensation is something for another thread. But I wouldn't take too many inferences from the "two-week development cycle" stuff we have heard from the devs. I think that just means that they are using an agile (or similar) development process in which they try to design and complete individual tasks in shorter increments (typically 2 weeks). It doesn't mean that they have no long-term vision for the game.

(and to veer slightly off topic, if you want to criticize the development process, I think the easy target right now is figuring out how the "turn to smoke" bug in R76 passed quality control. It really doesn't take more than a few games against teisatsu (sp?) to see that something is wrong. And fixing the functionality of "turn to smoke" was a stated goal in the patch notes. . .)

JVReal

DuckyV wrote:

JVReal wrote:

The devs mostly know what they are doing... it sounds like the players don't know what they're doing. Why would the dev try for T10 for an entire month? T10 is as difficult as the rest of the player base makes it. The only times the devs dictate how tough a prize is to achieve is when it's progression and they control the difficulty of receiving the points. Rank is completely dependent on how zealous the other players are. When you have a base of players that are as zealous as you, that has to tell you something about the popularity of the game, not the inadequacy of the developer. I agree they need to adjust the rank rewards and be a little bit more generous with them, that or reduce the size of brackets... but none of that makes them clueless.

Yet when they ran Ultron, they made it to where alliance members locked out other members of their alliance from receiving top progressions rewards during the first run without letting us know that it would happen. Then during the second run only TWO alliances out of the thousands of alliances in existence completed it due to how perfectly they had to play and because the devs left ambiguity (to put it kindly) as to whether or not the second run would be tougher than the first.

The devs have even admitted they only work in roughly 2 week increments in terms of game development, making me believe that they react on the fly to a lot of the issues that come up in the game instead of working towards a greater vision.

Yes, that was a very big blunder. I'll give you that. And the passive powers going off slightly contrary to their descriptions was annoying. Besides that, I think it was a pretty neatly designed event completely different from what we had experienced before. Bugged, and lacking the forethought of proper score thresholds, but not clueless.

sinnerjfl

scottee wrote:

I'm completely F2P and I have 7000 HP sitting around. My next roster slot will cost 700 HP. I have no problem with roster slots. I spend HP on shields when I want, and every once in a while, covers I want. It can't be greed if I never give them money. Their "greed" is only slowing down my progress a little in this completely F2P game. They're getting back the digital currency that I paid nothing for.

Every bit of this game's content is free. Should a completely F2P player have access to all of the content easily? I'd say no. In some games, there's content you can't even access without paying. In this game, you can access it after hard work, or after a long time. I think this is a reasonable situation.

Look, they can cap the cost at 700 - 800 (thats fairly high since i can get full-fledged indie games for that same money) and I wouldn't care as much. The cost that keeps raising and the pace of release for characters is... aggressive monetization, fine, let's go with that. It's just a lot of money to unlock a space for a character in a freemium game.

The unwillingness to cap the cost is what bothers me the most. It feels under-handed to me especially when they won't stop releasing characters and making them essential the next week. Just cap the damn cost, people will still pony up and they won't go bankrupt.

Wasn't this game making like $20,000/day or something?

Wonko33

scottee wrote:

It's the playing that's the fun part. I think most players have the notion that "getting the content faster" would make the game more fun. I'm actually getting bored with this game now, because there's not much left to do, especially after the 4* nerfs. Before, it was work towards XForce, then work towards 4Thor. Now it's, work towards my 21st maxed 3*? Work hard to get 3* Bullseye?

this is exactly where they lost me and turned me into a casual player- after 4* nerf there is nothing for me to strive for. I had the good ones that got nerfed and I have no faith that getting the other new shinny ones will mean anything once they nerf eventually nerf them too. So that was a short term profit (people who did not slow down to get the new 4s instead) at the cost of a long term one in my opinion ( i was spending a certain amount a month and now the amount is zero)

Mawtful

sinnerjfl wrote:

The priority of D3/Demiurge is having a revenue stream. That comes first and it's perfectly normal since it's a freemium game. The user does not pay any money upfront so of course they want to make you spend money.

They have always been about making money first, design and gameplay second.
http://venturebeat.com/2014/04/08/marvel-puzzle-quests-road-to-the-mythical-1-arpdau-part-1/

We really need a link to that series of articles to be stickied somewhere as recommended reading for newcomers.

Dauthi

Vhailorx wrote:

scottee wrote:

sinnerjfl wrote:

Billigoat wrote:

Gameplay problem: a large amount of heroes are missing in the game
Solution: release more characters! yay!
Result: A new character every week
Forum backlash: Players who compulsively collect every character feel overwhelmed because they 'must' grind continually to keep up with the game. Others assume it's somehow a cash grab from the company, releasing more content to... make more money? EVIL

People don't have a problem with new characters being released. The problem is the ever-increasing cost of roster slots and the stubborn attitude of D3/Demiurge to not offer a viable solution (DDQ & doubling our measly pittance of HP that we get once in a while is not a solution). My next roster slot will be the 58th, it will cost me 750 HP. Eventually they end up costing over 1000 HP (that's roughly 10$) and they never stop costing more.

Ever-increasing cost of roster slots is plain greed, you can't deny or justify this tinykitty.

I disagree that it's greed.

I'm completely F2P and I have 7000 HP sitting around. My next roster slot will cost 700 HP. I have no problem with roster slots. I spend HP on shields when I want, and every once in a while, covers I want. It can't be greed if I never give them money. Their "greed" is only slowing down my progress a little in this completely F2P game. They're getting back the digital currency that I paid nothing for.

Every bit of this game's content is free. Should a completely F2P player have access to all of the content easily? I'd say no. In some games, there's content you can't even access without paying. In this game, you can access it after hard work, or after a long time. I think this is a reasonable situation.

Greed is a very loaded term, and kind of hard to meaningfully define for a theoretically for-profit company.

Can we at least all agree the the infinitely escalating roster slot pricing combined with the very rapid pace of new character releases is a a pretty aggressive monetization strategy? Is that term neutral enough?

It is a strategy that focus' on the short term rather than the long term definitely. The longer they leave the roster slots situation rampant, the more players they will lose affecting long term profits, however while it is in place short term profits go up.

Any business will go under if they push a short term strategy too much, but here we are at year 2 and MPQ is still going strong. This is because they implement long term strategies that keep the player base too, such as lowering character costs across the board (good for short and long term) or taking the time to balance characters (good for the long term only as there will be some players who quit after the change).

TLCstormz

I can't be bothered to read through all of this madness (especially with people in here on my blocked list), but I just wanted to say :

Turn To Smoke
Bullseye triggering multiple times
"Refunds" which aren't even FULL refunds
Bait And Switch
Algorithms
Luck / Chance Odds
Etc etc etc

It's okay to be a fan of something, but is not okay to continually give problems to those who speak up about issues that they have with the thing that you are a fan of.

Unknown

Pylgrim wrote:

orionpeace wrote:

Pylgrim wrote:

I am so, so, so tired of hearing the ridiculous theory that...what are you doing here? Staying and parroting this absurd theory only makes you look like the kind of disingenuous mark...

Also, it is inappropriate to tell people they cannot hold a particular opinion just because you either disagree or are tired of hearing it.

You even go so far as to vilify the people who hold such an opinion. Not cool man.

Also, I'm not telling people they cannot hold an opinion; I'm showing them that said opinion is illogical (and toxic). Neither am I vilifying them; just showing how that opinion reflects poorly on themselves.

Topic aside, I see this pattern a lot. People make a new post complain/ridicule about other people complaining, then other people proceeds to calls out the poster for not allowing other people to have a different opinion. The poster then proceed to deny that he/she is not allowing other people to have a different opinion.

Of course, the poster didn't explicitly say that other people are not allowed to have a different opinion. It's just that the poster made every attempt to belittle and ridicule opposing opinion.

puppychow

sinnerjfl wrote:

Billigoat wrote:

People don't have a problem with new characters being released. The problem is the ever-increasing cost of roster slots and the stubborn attitude of D3/Demiurge to not offer a viable solution (DDQ & doubling our measly pittance of HP that we get once in a while is not a solution). My next roster slot will be the 58th, it will cost me 750 HP. Eventually they end up costing over 1000 HP (that's roughly 10$) and they never stop costing more.

Ever-increasing cost of roster slots is plain greed, you can't deny or justify this tinykitty.

My 82nd slot cost me 1,050 hp to keep vision. I expect to pay another 1,050 hp for 3* bullseye.

Arondite

Where do you get the idea their motivation isn't money?