Help me understand the "pay to win" mentality

Daredevil217

XandorXerxes wrote:

simonsez wrote:

Geez, soooo many words, when all anyone had to say is "ego".

And I don't say that disparagingly. Ego can be a healthy thing. But come on, that's all it is.

I don't even think it's that. How many Star-Lords and Invisible Women have you unnecessarily pulled? How many tokens have you opened trying to get a certain character or two - to get nothing at all? These people have enough income and enough desire to buy the covers they want that they don't want to go through umpteen Star-Lords to get their Jean Grays. Do some people do it just to have the latest and greatest, and beat on others? Sure. I'd say that's the same mentality of veterans getting angry at newbies who "want things handed to them." The reason they don't is because they don't want to give up their advantage, and probably where the whole anti-P2W mentality comes in - P2W negates their advantage instantly, so in turn people disparage it (while giving it enough face to say 'thanks for supporting the game') and try to put new level on it, such as "oh, well, I'm F2P and F2P takes skill"

@Daredevil:

The PvE scaling does negate some incentive to level guys up - but having a max 3* team or a max 4* team makes PvP significantly easier. Not sure breaking 1K is possible with a 94 team, but a 3* team can do it with shields and a good 4* team can do it regularly.

I do agree that I look at being completely free to play as being on a different level. But it's a level BELOW. I'm proud of the roster I have in part because it all came via playing. I had to toss some good covers early when I couldn't afford roster spots, had to sell off characters, etc. Making these tough choices is how I found these forums actually. Having to choose to sell my fully maxed 1* Iron Man or rostering a 2*. Do I keep a Sentry with two covers or a Spidey with three? Those were the days and agonizing was (and still is) part of the fun.

Even currently with championing I'm trying to decide on the next batch of 3* to bring up. I thought I had it figured out based on forum character rankings: Storm, Beast, Falcon, Marvel. But wait, a more recent character ranking (ironically I think it's your November poll which to my knowledge is the most recent) has Punisher and Squirrerl Girl at 4 and 5 and Beast at 6... And I've got covers expiring!

Or I could forego championing five 3* and bring Hulkbuster up to 166 and try to beat Hulk for a Legendary token.

Choices choices. If I just bought roster spots and covers and levels and never had to choose how to allocate my resources I'd have much less fun with this game.

This might not be the right thread for this, but screw it, it's my thread. I have a maxed 3* team. How do I reach 1000 points? I'm lucky if I reach 800. Once I'm at 750, I tend to lose as fast as I win. I don't quite understand how shields work, but If I shield, then isn't it true that as soon as I attack someone I lose it anyway?

Daredevil217

Wolarsen wrote:

As some have pointed out, paying would be less appealing if characters were more or less balanced. I would exchange 80% of my 30ish maxed 3* and 95% of my 4* for a Hulkbuster and a Jean Grey.

This all depends on the end goal I think. If the goal is winning, you can do that and do it well with like 6 characters. But the only thing you get for winning is more characters. It's not like you're getting money or some other fabulous prizes. The characters are the prizes. So I want more characters. I want every character in the game maxed out ideally. So there's no way I'd trade my legion of 3* for the current meta team. To me collecting comes first, winning second. While I'm aware you have to win to collect, giving up 80% of my roster would be too big of a set back for my end goal.

jobob

I think the oversimplified answer is that to be competitive, this game requires a significant investment.

That investment can come in one of two ways- time, or money (or, most of the time, some combination of the two).

So it largely depends on what "currency" you value more, or have in greater supply... your time, or your money.

If I were back in college, with plenty of free time, no full-time job (and thus less spending cash to boot), no wife and kid... I probably wouldn't spend a dime. I would grind my way through the events and win my rewards that way.

As it stands today, I have a very competitive, well-balanced (not whale level... 5 maxed 4*s, 5 covers each for JG, OML, SS... maybe 10 maxed 3*s) roster that I really enjoy playing with, because every character is at a useful level. It adds variety to the game and keeps it fun. And, I won't hesitate to pick up another Stark Salary if I see reason to. Because now I have the money... but I also have a full-time job, 2 kids, and a wife. $100 is less valuable to me than the time it would take to hit every node refresh in a 7-day new character release PVE.

jobob

Also, one other thing... this game is pretty much my "hobby" right now. Again, with a full-time job, and two small kids at home... a lot of my old (and very expensive hobbies) have fallen by the wayside. I can clear a set of PVE nodes during a nap, or after I get the kids down. It's hard to go out and play golf at 8:30 PM after the kids are asleep (I used to play probably once a week... $60 green fees, probably spend $20 on beer/snacks each round... plus ~$1000 for a new set of clubs every 2 to 3 years). I used to have season tickets at the University I graduated from (Roll Tide), which ran me ~$1000 a year and I probably spent another $100 per game by the time you add up gas, parking, and food, but it's really hard to devote a full day to traveling to & from and watching the game now. I even play fewer video games... it's much easier to whip out my phone or iPad and play a round of MPQ than it is for me to run down to the basement and fire up the big screen to play XBox or PS3... I used to buy all the systems on launch, and a couple games a month (so probably ~$1200 - $1500 a year), but I haven't even bought the XBOne or PS4 yet.

...In summary, I think that if you have the money available... a lot of it comes down to what stage of life you are in and what other hobbies you have the time for. I value my time with my kids a lot... I don't want to be doing things that take me out of the house for hours on end. MPQ is perfect for me because I can play it anytime, rain or shine, in short bursts. So that's where most of my "fun" money goes.

morph3us

Daredevil217 wrote:

This might not be the right thread for this, but screw it, it's my thread. I have a maxed 3* team. How do I reach 1000 points? I'm lucky if I reach 800. Once I'm at 750, I tend to lose as fast as I win. I don't quite understand how shields work, but If I shield, then isn't it true that as soon as I attack someone I lose it anyway?

It's your thread, so I think you're entitled to derail it a little bit

So... a couple of concepts. Firstly, your equilibrium point is the score in PvP where you can float, and more or less maintain a stable score (also known as your "floating point"). This used to be the point at which your defensive wins = defensive losses, but with the recalibration in point scoring, it's the point at which your team is scary enough for the point value that you're more likely than not to get skipped. From the sounds of it, your equilibrium point is probably somewhere in the 600s. In order to score above your equilibrium point, you must shield hop.

Secondly, shield hopping. Shielding, as you are probably aware, temporarily protects your score for the duration that your shields are up. The second thing that shielding does is remove you from being able to be queued as a target by other people within your PvP time slice. It does not remove you from any queues you may currently be in. The idea is that you push to your equilibrium point, then when you're ready, push as high as you can before dropping your first shield. From the sounds of it, your first shield is probably going to be dropped in the low to mid 700s. After you've shielded, you need to give yourself time to be cleared from any active queues (which is usually in the order of an hour or so). During that time, you need to line up some high value targets. When you're ready, drop your shields, and play 1-3 matches. There's going to be a certain latency time before you start appearing in queues again, and before players have the opportunity to finish matches against you so you start losing points. Usually, you don't want to be unshielded for more than 5 minutes. Speed is critical when you're shield hopping. You're likely to be a juicy target, so you want to minimise the window within which you're exposed. 3 matches is risky, 1 is very safe, 2 is usually doable. Shield as soon as you're done. Rinse and repeat. You may need to take into account shield cooldowns when you do this, you don't want to run out of shields. Essentially, you're using the shield to (a) protect your score, and (b) provide you with a "safe" window to finish some matches to climb to a higher score.

Buret0

There was a point beginning around a month or two before Surfer and lasting until about OML where I was spending WAY too much money on this game.

You are right. There is almost no satisfaction in opening a new pack, because 95% of whatever was in the pack was sold off for ISO. I'd open a 40 pack, close the game, reopen the game, buy a 40 pack, close the game, reopen the game, then open my 2 LTs and scroll through the 80 covers to see if anything of value had popped up. If I was buying heriocs, the chances of a single needed cover appearing was 0% and there was only a 5% chance of getting a Surfer and a 5% chance of getting OML.

I would then hit sell all and see how little ISO that purchase had netted me.

Oh, and why was I closing my game after buying a 40 pack? Because it takes too long to review 40 covers and you risk accidentally buying another pack if you keep clicking the same spot over and over to clear the covers. That's how bad it was.

There was nothing to collect except ISO and one new character every couple of weeks. I probably spent $2,000 on this stupid game over the course of those four months. It wasn't that I couldn't afford it... it was just that I'd rather do something else with $2,000 and I knew I would just keep buying token packs to keep up with the other players who were maxing the new characters at their launch PvP and I knew that if I wasn't an early adopter in 5*s that I would get destroyed by others who were. Turns out, if I had waited for CP bonuses to come along for making purchases, my whole alliance would have been swimming in CP.

So instead of trying to keep up, I took some time off. I turned off in app purchases and made the code a random four digit number so that I couldn't undo it and get my hero point fix. There have been so many times where I probably would have spent money on ISO in the last two weeks because I had covers to add to legendaries, but didn't have the ISO to max the characters.

The game is getting more fun for me again. I'm not walking around with maxed out versions of the last six 4* releases. I'm slowly earning the new 4*s through LTs. I can win every 4* DPD, up until RHulk through Miles, so there's a long stretch coming up where I'm going to win LTs from those (I've got XFW through to 4clops) (though my LT pull rates have been garbage since going F2P).

So in the end, if you can afford to waste thousands of dollars on this game, I guess it makes it so that the rest can play for free. I hate that business model, but you can't deny its success or the top games in the world for the last few years wouldn't have been F2P. It is a good game, but I am no longer chasing the new shiny, I'm back to just enjoying playing the game without caring about placement or progression.

If you've never won a match using PX/SL/DD, you are missing out on one of the joys of playing this game. If you've never taken on a goon node with a high level 5* + SW + 1* Spiderman, you've never seen how insane crit damage can get.

Get back to finding the joy in playing the game, because chasing that next shiny is never going to make you happy if you don't enjoy the actual puzzle battle match 3 nonsense that takes place between opening cover packs and holding down the training button for fifteen minutes.

Unknown

Part of the fun of having something is acquiring it and part of the fun is using it. People who whale the game probably put more emphasis on the later and are willing to pay for it.

Really, it's not a bad way to go in my opinion. You get the rush of getting new covers but you get it now and you avoid the many hours of meticulous grinding to do it. Then you can turn around and immediately use your new power to kick butt and win more covers and/or glory. Seems like a pretty sweet deal if you're able and willing to spend the money.