I hope VIP isn't a sign of MPQ's death.

Leugenesmiff

I'm just guessing and could be way off, but this VIP thing is so far from every other development thus far and other ways the devs use to generate income that it makes me wonder if the game is at a point where sales are way down, maybe to the point of becoming unprofitable. That last change that made it hard for whales to buy covers seemed weird to me from a money making standpoint. I wonder if this is in hopes to compensate for that.
VIP is nothing that I'd ever spend money on, but I also wouldn't want to see the game end, so I hope its successful for the devs.

tizian2015

Leugenesmiff wrote:

I'm just guessing and could be way off, but this VIP thing is so far from every other development thus far and other ways the devs use to generate income that it makes me wonder if the game is at a point where sales are way down, maybe to the point of becoming unprofitable. That last change that made it hard for whales to buy covers seemed weird to me from a money making standpoint. I wonder if this is in hopes to compensate for that.
VIP is nothing that I'd ever spend money on, but I also wouldn't want to see the game end, so I hope its successful for the devs.

It could be a sign, that revenues are not good. The problem of many fremium games is, that players need to spend thousands to be competetive. Some will, regardless they can afford it or not. But in most cases these are players from the beginning and when they drop out (boring, broke, etc.) not enough new whales come into the game to compensate this whale-loss. the high distribution-rate of chars is another sign, if renevues are going down, the company tries to drench the last whales, which leads to high distribution rates of whatever costs the player money. But this will lead to a burnout of the broader playerbase and the game dies.

wirius

I doubt it. Vaults and CP farms likely rake in the money. Subscription "lite" models are popular in other modern freemium games, its just catching up to the times. Its a good way to get those who still resist buying in, to actually buy. Its a way to NOT cater to whales, and if they make enough money off of it, can focus on just making the game fun instead of whale bait.

supergarv

Yeah, the signs are not too good, I think. This grindfest on the PVE testing is not something to look forward for.

There are so many things that need addressing:

* You get swamped with new and/or random covers, but you cannot really properly cover the characters you really want (hello XFDP, PX and Hulkbuster, I'm looking at you)

* Small bugs like too early victory animations, wrong round counters

* Laggy and slow animations, tedious fights against board-shaking goons

* All the same PVE nodes against Rags, Juggs, Daken, Moonbewbs all the time, I can't stand those fights anymore

I'd probably pay 10$ a month just to have the devs actually care for this game and enhance it, rather than spewing out more tokens, more grinding. You can tell by this board, that they are out of touch with their players. There's simply no communication.

Chrono_Tata

Another freemium game I used to play introduced a similar kind of "subscription" payment a couple of months before their last ever content update, which was almost a year ago now. So yeah I guess it is slightly worrying lol.

However the content update schedule of MPQ still seems to be on point (for better or worse), so I don't think they are wrapping up the game yet. If they are, I'd expect to see either a slow down of content release, or a big content dump.

mpqr7

Well, if they stop updating the game then that'll be a great excuse for me to finally stop playing. I'll be sad but I'll probably be quite happy as well, lol.

GrumpySmurf1002

Leugenesmiff wrote:

That last change that made it hard for whales to buy covers seemed weird to me from a money making standpoint.

Championing took buy clubs into the stratosphere. And as long as 5* characters are still released, the Ultra-whales will continue to race to champion/maxing them.

I'd be surprised if things were down before this. There's no question this is a money grab, but I think it's to supplement existing income, not to sustain profitability.

I'm basing that on nothing of course, but that's my gauge on it.

smkspy

I see it as an attempt to lure the free to play people in, cause the whales are already in, p The psychology is "oh, I won't pay $100 at once for whatever little iso and 7 cp, but $10 a month for a 13 month year doesn't seem bad." Problem is the free to play crowd don't like the current values, so I doubt this one will appeal to many of them either.

It's a rental agreement and we're renting a studio apartment for the price of a condo.

Instead of constantly scheme ways to milk cash out of us, if they'd just focus on making the game fun; i.e. less grindfest, turd scaling, new content, easier leveling of characters and access to covers it'd do so much more to raise profits than this overpriced daily resupply will ever do.

BlackSheep101

It adds another price point to their purchases, and it hopefully produces a smoother cash flow. From a business perspective, it makes sense.

In one of Cthulu's posts he mentions that this isn't the only new thing they're rolling out, so I guess we just have to wait and see what else is in store.

firethorne

mpqr7 wrote:

Well, if they stop updating the game then that'll be a great excuse for me to finally stop playing. I'll be sad but I'll probably be quite happy as well, lol.

I know exactly what you're saying. And, some parts of the game seem to be falling apart. It's strange, because they're things that have worked for ages. From the new lag between firing skills, banners, and making moves, to the now frequent "no events available" messages coming out of matches, things that were never broken now mysteriously seem to be deteriorating.

When the 3* transition was a problem, they added DDQ, giving us a free 3* cover a day, on a set rotation. And now that 4* is the problem, they think the solution is to make us pay $10 for two or three covers, at random, per month? Back in the day, multi-packs even had a guaranteed character. Then they removed that, starting a long run of customer unfriendly decisions.

Anyway, think I've been sufficiently alienated now by the out of touch money grabs. I've set a loose drop the game deadline for myself. I'm going to finish championing all 3*s (9 left), do one final evaluation on the state of things, and call it finished. I might still come back for DDQ any Titan, but I won't do this new 15 clears per node PvE hell, and I can't compete with the 5* Pvp show. Finishing my 3* champs will at least allow we a final sense of accomplishment.

mrflopwelligan

firethorne wrote:

I've set a loose drop the game deadline for myself. I'm going to finish championing all 3*s (9 left), do one final evaluation on the state of things, and call it finished. I might still come back for DDQ any Titan, but I won't do this new 15 clears per node PvE hell, and I can't compete with the 5* Pvp show. Finishing my 3* champs will at least allow we a final sense of accomplishment.

Agreed, I bowed out of aggressive playing months ago. I logged in played a DDQ level for my daily reward and left. I would come back for the alliance events. Those events I enjoy, but the rest is just a slog to get through. Recently however I do find PVP to be enjoyable again. But, again, I don't get caught up in it like I used to: calculating out shield drop times, cycling through matches that gain more than 38 pts - that whole crazy deal.

I enjoy the alliance events, but PVE is just a drag. I mean, with alliance events I feel like I'm accomplishing something, but PVE just boils down to whoever can grind, grind, grind the most. Where's the challenge in that? That's not challenge, that's just scheduling.

babinro

I don't think VIP is a concern as much as the state of the game.
We are quickly approaching that magic number of 40 4*'s.

Where do we go from there?

Do you think people will be happy with 5* releases every two weeks until we have 40 of them?

Are we introducing a 6* tier that's actually more rare and time consuming than 5*?

The game feels like it's reaching a natural end of it's lifespan. I'm very curious to see what the next major shift is going to be assuming there is one at all.

smkspy

Which brings up the point of why invest in something that you feel is going to end soon.

It'd be different if I saw some changes that promoted more customer friendly gameplay to go along with this, but all this says to me is gimme gimme more of your money fast.

SnowcaTT

smkspy wrote:

Which brings up the point of why invest in something that you feel is going to end soon.

It'd be different if I saw some changes that promoted more customer friendly gameplay to go along with this, but all this says to me is gimme gimme more of your money fast.

I swore off any investments after the multiple "mini-payments don't matter" banners were waved (introduction of 5*'s, introduction of LT's, introduction of CP's).

Many said 5*'s were the sign of MPQ's death...and I'm still not sure those prophets were wrong. It didn't immediately implode the game, but they seem to be dragging it into a long goodbye.

GrumpySmurf1002

babinro wrote:

Where do we go from there?

The natural order would be to stop with the new releases (or keep releasing 5* once a month) and re-focus the talent used to create characters on creating more features/gameplay modes/whatever that breathes life into the characters of all tiers.

Since they've said a few times that they have more new things coming, with luck they understand that. Without luck, they keep with their tunnel vision of where they think the game is versus where reality lies.

David [Hi-Fi] Moore

Hi,

The game is doing very well and planning is already in the early stages for Halloween and our third anniversary, as well as additional quality of life improvements and new features. There's no need for "sky is falling" worries because a VIP mode has arrived.

Enjoy the game and have fun (that's what we're all here for after all). MPQ isn't going away. Thanks!

stochasticism

"David wrote:

Moore"]Hi,

The game is doing very well and planning is already in the early stages for Halloween and our third anniversary, as well as additional quality of life improvements and new features. There's no need for "sky is falling" worries because a VIP mode has arrived.

Enjoy the game and have fun (that's what we're all here for after all). MPQ isn't going away. Thanks!

Please bring back 20 person LRs with 2x iso in them. Do this and I don't care what else is in the anniversary as it will be the biggest win ever.

Thanks for the communication, glad to hear things are being planned early.

smkspy

Honesrly, I'll believe it when I see it. "Quality of life improvements" seem to come about as either a way to get more cash out of us or roarly screw up something within the game that previously was fun.

I love this game to death, but 5 stars (and the refuse to fix scaling for them), no real 4 star progression, ddq 4 star, command points, penalization for leveling your roster, raising pve progression points with every event, and even LT tokens have done nothing but make the game harder, progression even more frustrating while dividing the game community into groups of haves and have nots.

Maybe you guys should focus on that quality of life improvement before rolling out the next new toon that only whales can cover or next cash grab if the game is doing so well.

I may sound overly critical but it's only because I WANT to keep playing, but everything put forward seems like a deterrent to that.

Redrobot30

supergarv wrote:

Yeah, the signs are not too good, I think. This grindfest on the PVE testing is not something to look forward for.

There are so many things that need addressing:

* You get swamped with new and/or random covers, but you cannot really properly cover the characters you really want (hello XFDP, PX and Hulkbuster, I'm looking at you)

* Small bugs like too early victory animations, wrong round counters

* Laggy and slow animations, tedious fights against board-shaking goons

* All the same PVE nodes against Rags, Juggs, Daken, Moonbewbs all the time, I can't stand those fights anymore

I'd probably pay 10$ a month just to have the devs actually care for this game and enhance it, rather than spewing out more tokens, more grinding. You can tell by this board, that they are out of touch with their players. There's simply no communication.

There does seem to be an increasing amount of these bugs that are popping up. I really do hope the game is able to take off in a better direction because it does seem like the boat is slowing sinking in the middle of the ocean right now.

GuntherBlobel

Maybe it's just about giving players more options?

My budget for this game is $10 per month and I'm sticking to it. I enjoy MPQ and want to support it, but because there is very little value in the current $10 options, I actually spend less than my budget allows.

The VIP mode intrigues me (and probably many others) just because the price is right.

DarkWalkerWP

supergarv wrote:

You can tell by this board, that they are out of touch with their players. There's simply no communication.

I don't think they are hurting for their bottom line. But you hit it spot on. No news is worse than bad news. D3 absolutely needs to be better about responding to their players. At a minimum, keeping them informed.

I have been playing online games heavily fir over 20 years. Never have I ever invested in a game so much that kept their player base in the dark as much add this one.

Honestly it is the worst part of this game. The lack of communication. It's horrible. What they really need to do is hire someone like me to be their fun coordinator....

~DW