MPQ Community Video - June, 2015

zonatahunt

Well, besides a hiccup in roster spot prices that was a very welcome set of answers. I still believe $7 or so for a character slot is way to expensive, bug at least a cap is a start. Thanks for all the other awesome and welcome changes.

atomzed

Wow! Awesome positive changes! I am especially happy with the health pack changes. With 5 I am already managing it very well. With 10,I probably can play for half a day continuously!

D3, I will purchase a Logan Loonies in the next sale! Like phaserhawk said, you are in it for the long haul so thanks!

PuceMoose

Awesome! I was impressed how direct this Q&A was in comparison to previous Q&A videos. I'm interested to see what the "alternate way to acquire roster slots" turns out to be. The vault sounds quite intriguing - will it be an additional node that you can play every day in the DDQ that nets you one pull from the vault? I hope this change hits the game soon.

Great job, oh bearded ones (though again, only Kabir is allowed to have a drink - quit bogarting the hooch, big K!)

Heartburn

Still not sure if I will continue to play. May stick around to see if upcoming features are any good. Roster slots still failed 1000hp is too much for just a place holder. And am septical about the vault. It will only increase your likely hood not guarantee your pull which can Translate into we added .001% to that .01% draw rate, good luck. Will need to wait and see what they mean.

Unknown

Additional questions that come to mind. What happens when you get all the items out of the vault? Is there anything left to win afterwards? OR are the odds of that happening so low that it would take opening something like 1000 tokens to achieve?

Unknown

I agree with everyone else: 1000 HP for roster slots is ridiculous. The cap should be lower than that.

CaptainFreaky

Hi -- re-watching the video - I'm not 100% clear if you will be able to EARN a 4* in DDQ by actually winning a node (eg like you can the 3* with the Big Enchilada) or if you can only WIN a cover with the new Taco Token Vault thingy with 4* covers added as prizes. It would be nice to get a clarification - it sounds like it must be fairly close to launch so hopefully these details have been worked out and a Dev can share.

As to general feedback that's top of mind:
POSITIVE
(1) COMMUNICATION - As always, I appreciate the communication. It is ALWAYS so helpful to hear from the people who are designing & managing the game as to what they are working on and what they are changing.
(2) SUSTAINABILITY - I agree with Phaserhawk that this update shows that, while the pace of change is SLOOOOOOOWWWWW, there is a general concern that keeping existing players interested is important and they are making changes in an attempt to do that. They seem to at least grasp the 4* transition problem, even if they are moving so incredibly slow to do something about it (I hope players can hang in there long enough to see how things change).
(3) HEALTH PACKS INCREASE! Yes - super helpful. This will have impacts on the end of events for sure (as people will be able to grind PVP & especially PVE even more as events expire), but on balance a positive development.

NEUTRAL
(1) I love how Will had to catch himself and refer to PVE as a "Story" event rather than using the shorthand naming that we use. It's ironic that "Story" is about as far from what we get as possible (see below).
(2) Community Scaling turned off in PVE - I think the bigger issue is personal scaling, but will reserve judgement until I can get my hands on this one
(3) Not the topic for this Q&A, but I think it would be fascinating to post another video every month featuring various developers talk about what they are doing in the game with their IRL accounts. Basically, it would be great to hear what teams Miles is using, or that Will has started over and is working on leveling his new Moonstone or whatever. Give us players a since as to where the developers are in their progression of having to actually play the game with real, resource limited accounts like the rest of us. Again, not a substitute for the Q&A, but a request for a separate video each month.....

NEGATIVE
(1) STORIES....No word on new stories, and no real looking back at what went right...and wrong....about the last new "story" (if you can call it that) that was added - Age of Ultron. I want the devs looking forward, so I don't fault them for avoiding Ultron, but it would be nice to hear they have new Stories "in the pipeline" even if they can't say exactly when they'll drop.
(2) ROSTER PRICES - capping at 1K is barely a cap at all, effecting a scant number of players (many but not all of whom have duplicate characters already in their rosters). I'll take this over nothing, and realize you mention "more to come" - but this was about as minimal of a bone as could be thrown to avoid Forum riot/meltdown if the #1 voted topic wasn't addressed at all. I get a sense that they realized the riot that would ensue if they did nothing, so they did the one thing that would basically allow them to "escape alive" while not materially effecting anything (including their revenue stream, which I can appreciate).
(3) VISION (not the Avenger) - I'm not really expecting an elaborate vision or mission statement in a Q&A video, but the business side of me still wants to understand where they are taking this game, and the elements from which they plan to increase or decrease their revenue streams. I would chalk this up more as disappointment than a Negative I guess, but I'm feeling less and less connected to this game & where it's headed, which doesn't pull me into playing as much as other games where I understand the path the developers are charting a bit more.

I'll edit this if I have more thoughts later.

Unknown

WolfmanX25 wrote:

I agree with everyone else: 1000 HP for roster slots is ridiculous. The cap should be lower than that.

Somewhere between 600 and 800 looks fine, more than that, not so much.

lukewin

Isn't this technically the May Q & June A or will there not be a June Q&A?

Colognoisseur

My speculation on The Vault is it will be like a PvE node. During a given five day period the vault will have 30 possible prizes for each Vault token you earn. You earn two Vault tokens per run and as you take out moonstones and ares you up your odds of getting the better prizes. By the end of the five day period you will get ten distinct prizes without duplicating every five days.

stochasticism

Colognoisseur wrote:

My speculation on The Vault is it will be like a PvE node. During a given five day period the vault will have 30 possible prizes for each Vault token you earn. You earn two Vault tokens per run and as you take out moonstones and ares you up your odds of getting the better prizes. By the end of the five day period you will get ten distinct prizes without duplicating every five days.

With possible purchasing of extra Vault tokens if you don't get what you want from the Vault tokens you can earn would be my guess.

Unknown

ShionSinX wrote:

WolfmanX25 wrote:

I agree with everyone else: 1000 HP for roster slots is ridiculous. The cap should be lower than that.

Somewhere between 600 and 800 looks fine, more than that, not so much.

Myself, and many more like me I assume, are right at 850-900 per roster slot, having every 3* and 4* available and a handful of 2* and 1* options. I am totally fine with 1,000, 1,000, 1,000, 1,000, 1,000 for those 5 roster slots instead of 1,000, 1,100, 1,200, 1,300, 1,400. That's 1,000 HP I won't have to spend just on the next 5 characters, and it was only going up from there.

Would I prefer 500, or 800, sure, but 1,000 is a perfectly fine cutoff. In fact, I am wagering they looked at the number of 3* and 4* characters they currently had, and made the roster price cut off the next round number above the cost of a slot for those guys, which makes total sense since this way they A) don't have to deal with a lot of refund issues for people who have already paid over X for a slot and 2) can keep releasing characters forever, which seems to be their goal, without it having a negative impact on roster slot costs. Those two things together basically mandate the cost be 1,000.

TheOncomingStorm

I do not get why 1000 hp per slot is a big deal. If you have that many roster slots that you are paying 1000 hp per slot, you should be able to pull 1000 hp (probably more) from the game every two weeks.

If you feel like playing so casual you cannot get 1000 hp every two weeks, I'm not sure that should be placed at the feet of mpq.

udonomefoo

My favorite part of the video was hearing them both refer to purple as purple. Now everyone can stop calling it pink! (I know you won't)

Unknown

I like most of what I heard here, thanks guys. Agree that 1000 HP is a laughable cap for those of us who aren't willing to throw lots of money at a mobile game. Even at 550 right now and being in a good alliance that helps earn extra HP I'm earning way more characters than I can get slots for. I'm sure that's sort of your intent to try to get a few extra bucks out of us, so whatever, but I don't know anybody whose slots are 1000 yet and most people complain about the price at a much lower point.

My other concern is around scaling. I know you guys have a delicate balance to deal with here so I appreciate attempts to do something different, and not during important events. I do agree with another poster that personal scaling seems to be the bigger problem for many of us. The best way I've heard to mitigate that problem is NOT level your guys as high and as fast as you can, but instead try to keep your guys around the same level so you don't have an enormous challenge just because a couple of your favorites are maxed out. I think this kind of scaling really sucks, to be frank, especially since it's so nebulous nobody can really determine how to best level guys. To me, leveling guys shouldn't be something you have to think about, except in where to spend the ISO when you get it. I won't presume to have the answer to that issue, but the goal should be that every level means something good for the player, otherwise what are we playing for?

The related issue with scaling is that right now this game very much feels like a job, if you want to do well, and I already have a job (and a life, and a family...). I don't mind a bit of grinding required, playing the game is fun, but having to do it on a set schedule sucks, even when there are various schedule slots, the result right now is that you still have to play at certain times of day if you want to do well. Yesterday I took my wife out for our anniversary and even though I was able to get a couple hours of gaming in before bed, since those hours were not earlier in the day, the result was worse. I feel like a game like this should be about strategizing your best guys and your best moves, not about having to carve out specific hours to play it.

The increased Health Pack maximum will be awesome for letting people play longer, but it also means that those with no lives will be grinding the points up a lot more and those who don't play quite so much of the day will be at a disadvantage. I guess there's no solution for that so it'll just have to be the new normal, but as it is the only way to compete in PVE is to give it a good... 4 hours of gaming a day, throughout the day. If this is increased naturally by giving more health packs, it's going to greatly benefit people with no other priorities but MPQ, which is kind of a shame. I would like a game where my results are based on quality of performance, not quantity, and if that means some people can destroy the game in an hour a day because they're actually good... well good for them.

Anyway these are just my thoughts and some of them may be ludicrous. Maybe I'm still lamenting the fact that the game was a lot more fun for me in the first month or so, when there was a fixed game that I could play at my leisure, whether that be for 5 minutes on the toilet or all day while sick in bed. I suppose the existing events still work for that with the progression rewards, so I look forward to seeing the change to the shield simulator and deadpool daily, as those sound like they're going to be lucrative enough to play casually and still have a good time if competition becomes even more based on quantity of hours put in.

Thanks again for all the answers!

David [Hi-Fi] Moore

lukewin wrote:

Isn't this technically the May Q & June A or will there not be a June Q&A?

Technically, I guess you can call it the "May Q & June A." We needed to get our planned ducks in a row before we talked about them and released them into the pond...so to speak.

Apologies, but this video covers both May & June. Our next Community Video is planned for July.

Unknown

Haven't seen the video yet, but some guys summed up in the chatroom.

Many positive changes. Once again, they listened to us. A bit late, but better late than never.

The only thing I am scared of now is the "two steps backwards".

Each time we've had good news and regained hope, we soon were getting terrible news right after.

So, please devs, just keep the positive aspects for as long as you can.

And let us enjoy the new good changes before implementing less good ones.

Unknown

TheOncomingStorm wrote:

I do not get why 1000 hp per slot is a big deal. If you have that many roster slots that you are paying 1000 hp per slot, you should be able to pull 1000 hp (probably more) from the game every two weeks.

If you feel like playing so casual you cannot get 1000 hp every two weeks, I'm not sure that should be placed at the feet of mpq.

I'm not at that level but I get the sense that those people who are that high up find it necessary to use HP for other things, like shields, in order to get the top rewards.

BillyBobJoe

I understand capping the roster slots problem is kinda like kicking the can down the road. With releasing a new character every 2 weeks, it'll still be pricey by capping it.

I also understand that they don't want the cap so low that people have dupes and trips of every character in order to play longer.

May I humbly suggest (if the devs read this at all), that the cap on the roster slots be directly tied into the number of playable characters.

Ex/ if there are 60 available characters to play as, the first 60 roster slots are 500hp. After three months and 6 characters are added to the pool, then the first 66 roster slots are 500hp. Anything after that can be 1000 (or even 1500) hp, just to dissuade people from abusing the system.

Vhailorx

It sounds like the vault is a limited pool of tiered rewards. And the probability of a top tier reward increases every time you DON'T pull a top tier reward. This is a mechanic seen in other freemium games, meant to reduce the low-side risk of random rewards (so players will never go too long without a good reward).

Will have to see exactly how it works, but it may be a good innovation.

I agree with others that 1k cap for roster slots is basically the bare minimum that demiurge could do. Looks like roster slots are a main source of revenue and demiurge is loathe to say a reasonable cap in the the 500-800 range. Will have to see what else is done.