Dear Devs; Implement a VIP function and watch profits soar.

Arondite

VIP features are becoming really popular in Freemium games these days - see Z Fighters amongst a plethora of other successful freemium games.

Why is this feature gaining popularity? Because it makes both the player AND the developer happy. the developer gets to rake money in (hand over fist, in the case of Z Fighters. Seriously, mega-whales there see our MW's as Mackrel.), while the player is happy with their spending - they reap immediate AND long term rewards. You also scoop up a ton of the little fish who otherwise wouldn't spend at all.

"I can only put together 5 dollars for IAP at a time... That's not even worth spending..."

vs

"I may can only spend 5 dollars per paycheck, but if I do it every 2 weeks for the year I'll hit VIP 10 and get all these goodies!"

To give you a rudimentary idea of how implementing this properly could help you make even more money, I can lay out exactly how I would put this feature into the game.

VIP membership is permanent. Hitting Rank ___ VIP means you will always be at LEAST that Rank.

Rank 1 - Spend at least 5 dollars through lifetime transactions.
Rewards - Earn 20% more ISO-8.
Rank 2 - Spend at least 10 Dollars through lifetime transactions.
Rewards - Earn 50% more ISO-8.
Rank 3 - Spend at least 20 Dollars through lifetime transactions.
Rewards - Earn 50% more ISO-8; Earn 25% more Hero Points.
Rank 4 - Spend at least 50 Dollars through lifetime transactions.
Rewards - Earn 50% more ISO-8; 25% more Hero Points ; 10% More CP

and on and on and on and on. The people want more ISO, but your ISO pricing is... Infeasible, or at best inadvisable. But someone is buying it at that price,or else you'd have changed it long ago.

So how do you sell ISO to players who can't farm it fast enough but think your prices are unfair? Sell them the ability to farm more of it, faster. You keep the unserviceable price that some mega-spender is currently buying in bulk while selling ISO to the people who won't buy ISO from you. How much more win-win does it get?

Not only does this encourage repeat, lifetime spending, but you can also trigger bursts of purchases without even having to put a sale up. How?

Hold events with INSANE prizing - legendary tokens all around! The catch? Entry = VIP 5 or higher! (set the gate as high or as low as you want, it's your game).

Ball's in your court. Feel free to gift me a 5/3/5 Old Man Logan for making you guys so much gwap.

[Dear Malcrof, could you let this gather a few up votes and replies before moving it to Suggestions to die? Thanks.]

Unknown

whos side are you on?

Arondite

Frasaria wrote:

whos side are you on?

This suggestion helps players and devs. Sure, it helps the devs more than the players, but I'll take anuthing to help alleviate the ISO-8 shortage.

Born2DieNPvP

No please no! I despise the VIP trend. I'd rather they run 3 LR's constantly that are divided into 1-2*, 3-4*, 4-5* with prizes adjusted for each tier. AKA leagues which is something that has been begged for for a long time.

Arondite

Born2DieNPvP wrote:

No please no! I despise the VIP trend. I'd rather they run 3 LR's constantly that are divided into 1-2*, 3-4*, 4-5* with prizes adjusted for each tier. AKA leagues which is something that has been begged for for a long time.

Given the feature's profitability and popularity, it's virtually a foregone conclusion that it'll make it to MPQ. I'm just suggesting it to get the ball rolling asap, so those who plan to partake can maximize the value by getting in as early as possible.

dider152

Will this feature be retroactive, that is taking into consideration the amount of money that had been put into the game previously?

LegendReborn

There's zero reason to make it so complicated. I think having a little bonus iso going to people who have spent at least x on the game isn't a bad idea but there's been an iso shortage for a very long time. They should be bumping up regular iso income at the same time of creating the little VIP boost. Giving a 5-10% boost to the VIPs while boosting the regular income by 20-30% would go a long way without making people who don't put in money feel like they are being left behind but at the same time making people who have spent money feel a bit better about their purchases. Creating some overly complicated tiered system is unneeded.

Unknown

aesthetocyst wrote:

Frasaria wrote:

whos side are you on?

One the side of keeping the game not only viable, but vibrant and growing. To continue attracting new investment, an enterprise has to not only maintain revenue, but develop new revenue. It has to be a demonstrably 'good' investment.

If they want the game to keep growing, they need to address the fact that from a single heroic or event token it is possible to get 75 different heroes, thus 225 different covers. So if you are a new player starting in the game, chances that you get a cover for a character you already have is close to 0%. All they do is keep adding more and more characters into the same tokens, so instead of fixing this problem they only make it worse.
All of us are only left here because we are here from the start and invested so much already. For new players there is absolutely no reason at all to keep playing. It is way more difficult now than it used to be for us.

Stony

Marvel Future Fight has this and I've spent about as much in the 2 months playing that as I have in the 2 years playing this. Make it happen MPQ. And make it retroactive. There are far too many whales that have spent far too much money to have to start at the same point as everyone else.

Vinmarc43

Another idea is a iso multiplication bonus with days played, ex: after 300 days played , you get x.5 iso always, after 600 days played you get 1.0x iso etc.
Makes sense this way as your need for iso grows, you get more. Also they should without a doubt, reduce their iso prices, as is its ridiculous...

matthatter

Personally, I would pay a monthly subscription if it were purely optional. A suggestion, 10.00/month gets the 5.00 value of & plus some and maybe a heroic token.

wirius

Your argument is, "Make the game pay to win." You want it because you spend money, and it gives you a better investment for your money. Which is fine. But lets not spin this as if your first motivation was helping the developers. =P MPQ is argueably successful because it is NOT pay to win. If you change that feeling, you might hurt the game. So while it may be a good idea, it also might not.

GurlBYE

wirius wrote:

Your argument is, "Make the game pay to win." You want it because you spend money, and it gives you a better investment for your money. Which is fine. But lets not spin this as if your first motivation was helping the developers. =P MPQ is argueably successful because it is NOT pay to win. If you change that feeling, you might hurt the game. So while it may be a good idea, it also might not.

No his argument is this is a GAME RUN ON PEOPLE SPENDING MONEY. How about people besides the developers benefit from repeated purchases.

As an aside, here's a wake-up call.

THIS GAME IS PAY TO WIN.
The player who spent 50K or whatever he has spent at this point is at the top of any bracket he enters, and has characters leveled so high now that you can only sit back and look unless you fully cover all 5 stars, fully iso them and then grab 30 more of their covers, along with at least 22 of every single 3 star in existence, and 30 or so of each 4 star, and this is what, days after championing has been made available.

Pull those blinders off and realize you aren't playing a console game here. Money does replace time, that is the entirety of the free to play model and it's hard to take discourse or an opinion seriously that refuses to actually see whats already in game.

My best question for you is, what version of MPQ are you playing? Unless you mean winning individual matches by literally matching this game is literally put money in get benefits.

Their suggestion is, hey what If I CAN'T put a salary into the game, can I be thrown some benefits that will keep me spending.

Arondite

wirius wrote:

Your argument is, "Make the game pay to win." You want it because you spend money, and it gives you a better investment for your money. Which is fine. But lets not spin this as if your first motivation was helping the developers. =P MPQ is argueably successful because it is NOT pay to win. If you change that feeling, you might hurt the game. So while it may be a good idea, it also might not.

You don't know me, haha. I don't invest in this game, however if they were to implement a VIP system, I would.

Secondly, you don't know the freemium market very well if you think a VIP system is risky/chancy. It's succeeded in virtually every game it's been installed into.

Finally, you must not know MPQ if you don't see it as P2W. The only people who are capping brackets right now are 5* players. The only players who are at the 5* tier are those who have been exceptionally lucky or those who have made financial investments.

Sure, F2P veterans are at the 4* tier or 4-5 Transition, but with that amount of time invested, it's to be expected.

For the record, I'm at the 3-4* transition, 1,300 PvP score range. I'd purchase HP REGULARLY if they implemented a VIP system. There's a metric TON of would-be customers just like me, too. That's a lot of revenue waiting to be claimed.

Zen808

I'm fine with it if it's only ISO amplification - then I would not consider it Pay-to-win. Because at the end of the day, you still have to earn your covers.

Linkster79

Arondite wrote:

Hold events with INSANE prizing - legendary tokens all around! The catch? Entry = VIP 5 or higher! (set the gate as high or as low as you want, it's your game).

This is a seriously bad idea.

The game is already heading in the direction of pay to win, not quite heading but we'll on its way but pay to play? A step too far. I know way back when there were pay to enter tournaments but they were straight up low HP numbers and every entrant was guaranteed theit entry fee back but in the form of tokens.

Dragon_Nexus

So the basic idea is...the more money you pour into the game, the bigger your advantage is?

Can you not see why that's a horrible idea? The richer you are, the faster you can level your characters. That's already a thing, but it's entirely feasable to level up just by the ISO you get from playing for free.
But to make it so people who can pour money in can do literally the same amount of work and get more for it unbalances the game completely. You create an even larger gap between the rich and poor (in all senses of the terms). MPQ already has a feeling of the rich getting richer, it definitely doesn't need something to actively encourage it.

Punisher5784

I originally 'Thumbs Up' the OP's idea but after reading the other player's comments and looking into VIP in other games.. wish I could take back my thumbs up. While I agree that I wish the money I put into the game made me feel I bought something of value, at the same time, it's true, the game is already 'the rich get richer' so we do not need VIP.

Perhaps now that HP isn't used to buy covers, maybe they will have events you enter with HP again. It can be 1000 HP to enter but you are guaranteed a Legendary token. T10 can be any 5* you want, T100 any 4* you want, T200 any 3* cover you want, remaining ranks is any 2* cover you want.

Mawtful

The goal now is short term monetary gain before the userbase drops out of the game. A VIP system would certainly expedite both the monetary gain and the exodus of users.

I'm not sure where the tipping point lies - it may currently be better to hold off on the VIP system, since the whales are already spending big and often. As that slows down, the introduction of a VIP system would definitely provide a nice boost to spending again. I think maybe one or two VIP levels should be given out to anyone who has spent money in the past, but don't make the whole system retroactive as that's far too much of an advantage to give away when you could otherwise make them spend again.

MojoWild

Ugh, not this again. Short answer: No.

Arondite

Dragon_Nexus wrote:

So the basic idea is...the more money you pour into the game, the bigger your advantage is?

Can you not see why that's a horrible idea? The richer you are, the faster you can level your characters. That's already a thing, but it's entirely feasable to level up just by the ISO you get from playing for free.
But to make it so people who can pour money in can do literally the same amount of work and get more for it unbalances the game completely. You create an even larger gap between the rich and poor (in all senses of the terms). MPQ already has a feeling of the rich getting richer, it definitely doesn't need something to actively encourage it.

Except that's not how it ever works out in practice.

It does separate completely F2P players from anyone who has spent anuthing, but even players who buy the 1.99 HP investment will eventually hit max VIP rank.

And again - I can't reiterate this enough - it helps small spenders more than it helps big spenders, and creates small spenders out of non-spenders.

How does it help the small more than the large? As is, a small spender gets a small portion of the benefits of a larger spender. Let's take a player who spends 20 dollars a month vs a player who spends 100 dollars once a week.

The player who spends 20 dollars currently receives 3.625% of the benefits the big spender receives (2,900 HP VS 80,000 HP over the course of a month).

With a VIP System, this wouldn't be the case - the larger spender would still reap much more in His HP purchases, but both would eventually reach max VIP rank, and whoever plays better/harder/more consistently would get far more mileage out of their VIP rank.

And no, frankly, I cant see why it's a horrible idea, as it clearly is not. The only people who "lose" in this system are those cant or won't spend anything at all.