Prices are fine: A Theorem

halirin

1. Games are cheap. You can buy many fully featured, no microtransaction games on Steam or the App Store for $5-20 and have an awesome time.

2. Progressing in MPQ by buying stuff is expensive. $20 of HP gets you a couple roster slots and some shields, one 4* power. $100 of HP lets you almost cover max a 4* (for now). To buy the ISO to max level that character you would need $200+ (or more? It's too expensive for me to know).

3. Buying ISO in MPQ is a poor value compared to what you can earn naturally. $100 of ISO is what you would get from something like a couple weeks of DDQ and some casual playing.

4. Money does not (at least where I live) grow on trees.

5. Don't even get me started on the costs of whaling CP.

6. Given 1-5, most players reasonably conclude that spending enormous sums to make quick progress in the game is a poor use of their money at these rates and prices. Half of the people in the poll said they would buy ISO if it were cheaper.

7. We still have a handful of mega whales and plenty of players who are willing to spend $100 several times a year.

Conclusion: Thank god (Loki?) for the bad prices! Given 6 and 7, it seems quite likely that if the price to progress was "reasonable," then the competitive game would be way more of a nightmare for everyone who can't or won't pay ~$20-50 here and there. Sure it'd be nice to be able to treat yourself to a maxed character now and then, but if prices were lower, you would feel like you *have to* to play anywhere near the level you're currently at.

wirius

Agreed. I believe that was their goal, and they seem to have succeeded in it. There are many people who do not feel this game is pay to win, and that's good.

Unknown

wirius wrote:

Agreed. I believe that was their goal, and they seem to have succeeded in it. There are many people who do not feel this game is pay to win, and that's good.

Yep. The issue on these forums is that all the vets are used to pay2win, and the semi-vets like me with about a year in-game who have been swimming upstream towards a 4* transition through the deluge of new 4* releases are just downright pissed off that our only viable avenue towards useful 4*s has been removed with the HP bait-n-switch.

I suspect this'll all be good for the game, but it sucks for me just as I was tasting 800+ in PvP. And I do hope they continue to revamp rewards and do things to help players progress in terms of ISO. Maybe just removing the 20 ISO **** would be enough to help farming rates...

kalex716

Sundance2112 wrote:

wirius wrote:

Agreed. I believe that was their goal, and they seem to have succeeded in it. There are many people who do not feel this game is pay to win, and that's good.

Yep. The issue on these forums is that all the vets are used to pay2win, and the semi-vets like me with about a year in-game who have been swimming upstream towards a 4* transition through the deluge of new 4* releases are just downright pissed off that our only viable avenue towards useful 4*s has been removed with the HP bait-n-switch.

I suspect this'll all be good for the game, but it sucks for me just as I was tasting 800+ in PvP. And I do hope they continue to revamp rewards and do things to help players progress in terms of ISO. Maybe just removing the 20 ISO **** would be enough to help farming rates...

I'm in your boat. A solid 3 star roster, and tons of 4 stars most in the 1 - 6 cover range. Its taken me a long long time to get used to the idea that the best way for me given my playstyle to break into the 4 star scene seriously would be to drop 100 bucks and Whale a top contending 4 star up. Seems inane, but I've warmed to it. I bought in with the last sale with the intention of maxing hulkbuster.

Unfortunately... With a combined total of 105 4 star covers, I have yet to get all 3 colors of Hulkbuster, JGrey, Red Hulk, or even Iceman/Cyclops. I think that avenue is going to be closed down on me before I ever even have a chance to go down that road.

For now, I'm staying positive. The champion feature so far has been very cool, and even if 4 star play is a long way off for me, at least in the meantime I can leverage 3 star drops a bit, and start conservatively lining up my play to get key covers over time.

udonomefoo

The only valid argument against this that I've seen is that it's quite late for this change. It should have been done before they started releasing so many 4s and absolutely should have been done before releasing 5s. They basically allowed some people to pay-to-win and then closed the gates. Those at the top can now sit at the top knowing that no one can catch up for a very long time.

atomzed

halirin wrote:

Conclusion: Thank god (Loki?) for the bad prices! Given 6 and 7, it seems quite likely that if the price to progress was "reasonable," then the competitive game would be way more of a nightmare for everyone who can't or won't pay ~$20-50 here and there. Sure it'd be nice to be able to treat yourself to a maxed character now and then, but if prices were lower, you would feel like you *have to* to play anywhere near the level you're currently at.

Agree with you. The ridiculous pricing of ISO is really a key reason why the game is much less P2W than other mobile games.... so the high pricing means that most players cannot whale the game.

SnowcaTT

udonomefoo wrote:

The only valid argument against this that I've seen is that it's quite late for this change. It should have been done before they started releasing so many 4s and absolutely should have been done before releasing 5s. They basically allowed some people to pay-to-win and then closed the gates. Those at the top can now sit at the top knowing that no one can catch up for a very long time.

This is what I've been thinking about as well. I think the age of mega-whaling comes and goes this week (which may be the biggest whaling week we've ever seen) - any new whales will pretty much never be able to catch the whales that came before them.

Unknown

SnowcaTT wrote:

I think the age of mega-whaling comes and goes this week (which may be the biggest whaling week we've ever seen)

I've definitely received more +3 and +7 CP rewards from alliance purchases the last 2 days than I have in the last 250+ days of playing. And the week ain't over yet...

GothicKratos

aesthetocyst wrote:

halirin wrote:

7. We still have a handful of mega whales and plenty of players who are willing to spend $100 several times a year.

Several times a year? The whales in this game drop $100+ several times a month.

Sometimes even a week.

Unknown

I think if you would get more bang for your buck like 75,000 hp for dropping a 100 would make more sense? But then again beware the whales...

Raffoon

They've said they don't want people buying a lot of ISO for the health of the game. So, given that aim, the price of ISO is fine, I agree.

The rate that ISO is given by playing the game should probably be about 3 times as much, though.