RNG revenue strategy fail

Vhailorx

I get that RNG rewards drive players to repeat content and grind for rewards. And that RNG drives player purchases and ultimately game revenue.

But it seems to me that MPQ is cutting of its own node to spite it's face. I play a fair bit of this game. I have a pretty strong roster with 5 4* champs and several more 4*s at 10+ covers. I can beat 70% or more of the 4* ddq events and regularly hit the max prog in pve.

But RNG has almost completely screwed me with 5*s. As of yesterday I have at least 1 cover for every 5*. I have more than 2 covers for exactly 1 5* (phoenix at 2/2/2). This 5* bench is almost completely useless. Phoenix is close to functional, but without more purple covers she just doesn't work in competitive play. OML is useful for grinding even at 0/1/0. Everyone else is basically just a wasted roster slot.

So RNG mission accomplished , right? I have a broad, shallow selection of characters from opening a small but steady trickle of LTs. That's to be expected, and fairly typical of f2p games. The idea is to provide a taste and incentivize players to buy more.

But that's where MPQ fails completely. I cannot buy my 5* roster out. For Phoenix, I would need to buy 5 covers at 720cp each. That's 3600 cp. Assuming I could find 30 buyer's club's that all came through, that's $3,000 dollars just to cover Phoenix. Then I would need about $600 more of iso to level her.

And I couldn't even whale my other 5*s until I got the remaining 1st covers for each cover. That would require thousands of cp to spend on LTs, just for the opportunity to spend thousands more cps buying covers. I could mortgage a house and not have enough cash for that.

It seems completely schizophrenic for a game to induce players into spending, and but then ask players to make such a massive outlay of cash to get anywhere.

What is demiurge's ideal spending path for players? The original game seemed well designed (expiring covers and essential nodes incentivze HP purchases for roster slots; new releases keep vets churning; shielding, healthpacks, boosting and direct buys for key missing covers prevent people from stockpiling too much HP) if aggressively monetized. But the 4* and 5* economies are a complete mess that just keep getting worse.

puppychow

You make a fair observation re: 5* economy. The thing is, though, there are enough wealthy players who WOULDN"T mind spending $4,000+ to max out a 5* (probably cost a lot more than that, to be honest). And so the game is now separated into a super small, elite group of players who can spend their way to max out 5s, and the rest of the players who can't afford to. I agree that it's extreme, but I assume those super whales are where D3 is drawing revenue from to keep the servers on.

Vhailorx

$4,000 doesn't even get me into the super whale tier. I would need at least 1 more 5*, which would mean at least another $5,000 (if I got very very lucky!)

What is a reasonable amount of money for a mobile game?

Xenoberyll

To me the biggest thing is that it's frustrating more and more of the competing players. Players who spend without whaling but get annoyed by the system being unfair and totally luck based, the devs ignoring their pleas while catering to the whales and coming up with obvious money grabs. Even if the whales are still spending for now, annoying and frustrating your player base can't be a good thing in the long run.

Bowgentle

Max more 4*s.

With only 5 4* champs you're not generating enough CP and LTs to get enough roulette spins to fully cover 5*s.

For comparison, I have 18 champed 4*s and only managed to draw 9 covers on OML and Phoenix, with the rest of the 5*s way behind that.

Vhailorx

Bowgentle wrote:

Max more 4*s.

With only 5 4* champs you're not generating enough CP and LTs to get enough roulette spins to fully cover 5*s.

For comparison, I have 18 champed 4*s and only managed to draw 9 covers on OML and Phoenix, with the rest of the 5*s way behind that.

Well, for a discussion about champ'ing 4*s, see my other thread today about iso. . . (https://d3go.com/forums/viewtopic.php?style=1&f=7&t=47655)

As for my 5* plight, i concede that I am partially to blame. I didn't,play much from October through champion day, and that undoubtedly hurt my OML and Phoenix, since I missed something like 25ish LTs from pve events. I also don't shield hop to 1300, so that's 3 more LTs a week that I don't get.

I would still guess that I have opened more LTs that 80% of the llayerbase, maybe even more. Part of the problem might be self-made, but the biggest issues are systemic.

kidicarus

I generated 700ish CP last season from - getting to 1300pts in every pvp, placing top 10 in every pve sub, random CP from champions (all 3*s and about 17 4*s), daily resupplies and being around when someone in my alliance spent money on this game. And this is in my currently retired from competitive play free to play mode. That's a pretty decent number of 5* covers per season if you're willing to play for it.

Vhailorx

kidicarus wrote:

I generated 700ish CP from - getting to 1300pts in every pvp, placing top 10 in every pve sub, random CP from champions (all 3*s and about 17 4*s), daily resupplies and being around when someone in my alliance spent money on this game. And this is in my currently retired from competitive play free to play mode. That's a pretty decent number of 5* covers per season if you're willing to play for it.

That counts as "retired from competitive play"!?

That's top 1% results. I would likely find covering 5*s much easier if I could get those results. But 1300 in every PvP would cost me several thousand HP a season, and would suck up hours of my time every few days. Top 10 in every PvP sub takes me 2-4 hours a day. I am still about 5 weeks away from 25cp/month resupply.

Sorry kidicarus, your experience doesn't match mine. My roster isn't strong enough to support those results in a reasonable about of time given my other life obligations (and I probably have a top 20% or better roster relative to the player base as a whole). And to my larger point, should the game really require either (1) a very strong roster AND 3+ hours of play every day, or (2) literally thousands of dollars of real money purchases just to not quite keep up with the meta?

revskip

Vhailorx wrote:

$4,000 doesn't even get me into the super whale tier. I would need at least 1 more 5*, which would mean at least another $5,000 (if I got very very lucky!)

What is a reasonable amount of money for a mobile game?

The answer to that depends on two things, 1) your available disposable income and 2) how you value your time spent per dollar spent. For someone with plenty of the former and a healthy amount of play time $5000 really isn't that much, particularly if this is the only mobile game they play and they don't have other expensive hobbies.

My best friend and business partner lives a fairly spartan life so that he can skydive everyday. For him the massive money spent on skydiving is more important that driving a nicer car/motorcycle or getting a bigger house. For me not so much, I'd rather spend it on my house. I'm not dropping massive amounts of money on MPQ either (although I have dropped a couple of hundred on the game) but certainly could understand how someone who is much more well off would do the time spent analysis and not mind dropping $5k to improve their playing experience in their favorite game.

Vhailorx

revskip wrote:

Vhailorx wrote:

$4,000 doesn't even get me into the super whale tier. I would need at least 1 more 5*, which would mean at least another $5,000 (if I got very very lucky!)

What is a reasonable amount of money for a mobile game?

The answer to that depends on two things, 1) your available disposable income and 2) how you value your time spent per dollar spent. For someone with plenty of the former and a healthy amount of play time $5000 really isn't that much, particularly if this is the only mobile game they play and they don't have other expensive hobbies.

My best friend and business partner lives a fairly spartan life so that he can skydive everyday. For him the massive money spent on skydiving is more important that driving a nicer car/motorcycle or getting a bigger house. For me not so much, I'd rather spend it on my house. I'm not dropping massive amounts of money on MPQ either (although I have dropped a couple of hundred on the game) but certainly could understand how someone who is much more well off would do the time spent analysis and not mind dropping $5k to improve their playing experience in their favorite game.

I don't mean 'what is a reasonable amount of money for me?' That question requires information that I am not about to post on this forum and will vary from player to player. I mean 'as a game available to a wide variety of players, what is a reasonable amount of money to charge players?'

I am sure there will be some laissez faire forumites who think the the answer is 'as much as demiurge/d3 can/want to charge!' But I am not satisfied with that answer. It seems to me that this game doesn't offer enough to the mid tier spender, especially after the 2* level, and asks too much of the whaliest spenders. Small and medium purchases offer real value at the beginning of the game. But in 4* land and above, even thousands of dollars spent will often result in little impact on one's position in the meta (and even if one has the money to spend and the meta-game knowledge necessary to spend on the right purchases, thousands of dollars may still not be enough).

I get that people can spend their money however they want. But I also get that operant conditioning is a real thing, and humans can be manipulated into making very poor choices with some relatively simple mechanics. I know that talking about what a game or developer *should* charge is pretty squishy. But I am also pretty confident in stating that this game costs too much at the high end.

Furthermore, I think demiurge kinda feels the same way. Everything they said pre 5* release suggested that they really didn't expect or intend 5*s to whale-able.*** But when LTs and 5*s went live, I think everyone was a bit surprised by just how much the mega-whales spent. And now I think demiurge feels trapped by that revenue; they can't figure out a way to fix the problems that doesn't also risk losing all that money.


***I suppose it's possible that they made all their various statements about the un-whale-ability of 5*s in bad faith, and really meant to induce people to spend tens of thousands of dollars. But I prefer not to assume that level of duplicity when human error is a plausible alternative explanation (humans tend to be more fallible than straight up evil. . .).

kidicarus

Vhailorx wrote:

kidicarus wrote:

I generated 700ish CP from - getting to 1300pts in every pvp, placing top 10 in every pve sub, random CP from champions (all 3*s and about 17 4*s), daily resupplies and being around when someone in my alliance spent money on this game. And this is in my currently retired from competitive play free to play mode. That's a pretty decent number of 5* covers per season if you're willing to play for it.

That counts as "retired from competitive play"!?

That's top 1% results. I would likely find covering 5*s much easier if I could get those results. But 1300 in every PvP would cost me several thousand HP a season, and would suck up hours of my time every few days. Top 10 in every PvP sub takes me 2-4 hours a day. I am still about 5 weeks away from 25cp/month resupply.

Sorry kidicarus, your experience doesn't match mine. My roster isn't strong enough to support those results in a reasonable about of time given my other life obligations (and I probably have a top 20% or better roster relative to the player base as a whole). And to my larger point, should the game really require either (1) a very strong roster AND 3+ hours of play every day, or (2) literally thousands of dollars of real money purchases just to not quite keep up with the meta?

PVE is time consuming yes and those hours are about right but it's also ISO and HP which adds up that I can use for stuff.

I spend about 2 hrs on average per pvp (which is very uncompetitive play), I don't use a BC though and I climb alone stopping wherever an 3+8 or 8+3 shield strategy will get me. For you, if you need to spend thousands of HP, the HP for PVE will help and just supplement that with a logan's loonies or whatever. Maybe get involved in one of those BCs I hear so much about or a better alliance to help you get to 1300.

So yeah that about sums it up - you either play more, play smarter or spend a few 10s of dollars.

Another thing - don't spend the CP on a single cover. $4,000 is 5600CP with buy club help. That 280 pulls - 42 covers at 15% pull rate, should be enough to get you 3-4 decently covered 5*s. That's a big impact. You'd probably use that HP for I dunno tacos and vaults? so that's more LTs and more 4* covers and 3* covers for championing. I don't think buying mother lodes is a good idea.

revskip

Vhailorx wrote:

revskip wrote:

Vhailorx wrote:

$4,000 doesn't even get me into the super whale tier. I would need at least 1 more 5*, which would mean at least another $5,000 (if I got very very lucky!)

What is a reasonable amount of money for a mobile game?

The answer to that depends on two things, 1) your available disposable income and 2) how you value your time spent per dollar spent. For someone with plenty of the former and a healthy amount of play time $5000 really isn't that much, particularly if this is the only mobile game they play and they don't have other expensive hobbies.

My best friend and business partner lives a fairly spartan life so that he can skydive everyday. For him the massive money spent on skydiving is more important that driving a nicer car/motorcycle or getting a bigger house. For me not so much, I'd rather spend it on my house. I'm not dropping massive amounts of money on MPQ either (although I have dropped a couple of hundred on the game) but certainly could understand how someone who is much more well off would do the time spent analysis and not mind dropping $5k to improve their playing experience in their favorite game.

I get that people can spend their money however they want. But I also get that operant conditioning is a real thing, and humans can be manipulated into making very poor choices with some relatively simple mechanics. I know that talking about what a game or developer *should* charge is pretty squishy. But I am also pretty confident in stating that this game costs too much at the high end.

The entire model of free to play games is based on the idea that the developers need to create an obsessive compulsion to advance and that the majority of the money they make will come from less than 1% of the player population. Are there people who spend well beyond their means because of this, absolutely. When the very design of your product encourages addictive behavior you will have people who do massively stupid things due to that addiction whether it is gambling, gaming, jumping out of airplanes or obsessively collecting cars (yeah that's right Jay Leno I'm looking at you).

Free to play and freemium gaming has a very dark side to it for some, hopefully those people who are whaling here are not endangering their own well being but some very well might be.

Vhailorx

revskip wrote:

The entire model of free to play games is based on the idea that the developers need to create an obsessive compulsion to advance and that the majority of the money they make will come from less than 1% of the player population. Are there people who spend well beyond their means because of this, absolutely. When the very design of your product encourages addictive behavior you will have people who do massively stupid things due to that addiction whether it is gambling, gaming, jumping out of airplanes or obsessively collecting cars (yeah that's right Jay Leno I'm looking at you).

Free to play and freemium gaming has a very dark side to it for some, hopefully those people who are whaling here are not endangering their own well being but some very well might be.

I don't think that answer is good enough. Why just shrug and say 'bad stuff happens. . . oh well' when we could do something about it? Even if that something is as trivial as complaining about overly aggressive monetization on these forums.

And circling around to my original point, MPQ's monetization model has failed relative to me because there is quite literally nothing for me to purchase that I could (1) afford, and (2) would make a significant impact on my play experience. even if the game design had gotten me addicted, it isn't offering me any outlet for that addiction.

revskip

Vhailorx wrote:

revskip wrote:

The entire model of free to play games is based on the idea that the developers need to create an obsessive compulsion to advance and that the majority of the money they make will come from less than 1% of the player population. Are there people who spend well beyond their means because of this, absolutely. When the very design of your product encourages addictive behavior you will have people who do massively stupid things due to that addiction whether it is gambling, gaming, jumping out of airplanes or obsessively collecting cars (yeah that's right Jay Leno I'm looking at you).

Free to play and freemium gaming has a very dark side to it for some, hopefully those people who are whaling here are not endangering their own well being but some very well might be.

I don't think that answer is good enough. Why just shrug and say 'bad stuff happens. . . oh well' when we could do something about it? Even if that something is as trivial as complaining about overly aggressive monetization on these forums.

And circling around to my original point, MPQ's monetization model has failed relative to me because there is quite literally nothing for me to purchase that I could (1) afford, and (2) would make a significant impact on my play experience. even if the game design had gotten me addicted, it isn't offering me any outlet for that addiction.

Sure but outside of the government forcing free to play dev teams to post warnings similar to those posted by casinos for those with gambling problems or alcohol companies to drink responsibly what do you expect will be done? Casinos are still going to look for ways to get people with gambling problems into the casino, Capt. Morgan is still going to sell booze to alcoholics and even the most altruistic of game companies is still gonna let whales spend big to get ahead.

As for their monetization model failing for you it is supposed to. 50% of their money comes from about 0.15% of the player base. The rest of the player base spreads the other 50% out much more widely, if you've ever spent a few dollars here and there on HP you are part of the 99.85% that donates only half their revenue.

atomzed

revskip wrote:

50% of their money comes from about 0.15% of the player base. The rest of the player base spreads the other 50% out much more widely, if you've ever spent a few dollars here and there on HP you are part of the 99.85% that donates only half their revenue.

I thought the percentage was way more skewed? 80% of the earning comes from the top 0.2% of the player base?

revskip

atomzed wrote:

revskip wrote:

50% of their money comes from about 0.15% of the player base. The rest of the player base spreads the other 50% out much more widely, if you've ever spent a few dollars here and there on HP you are part of the 99.85% that donates only half their revenue.

I thought the percentage was way more skewed? 80% of the earning comes from the top 0.2% of the player base?

The percentages I quoted are from a somewhat dated (2014) study done by the app marketing company Swrve. Without knowing some very specific data that the developers would never give out no one can really know exact figures and I'm sure more recent studies are available but for the sake of simplicity I used the data points that study provided. The general gist is the same, most of the revenue coming in comes in from a very tiny minority of players.

acescracked

Vhailorx wrote:

kidicarus wrote:

I generated 700ish CP from - getting to 1300pts in every pvp, placing top 10 in every pve sub, random CP from champions (all 3*s and about 17 4*s), daily resupplies and being around when someone in my alliance spent money on this game. And this is in my currently retired from competitive play free to play mode. That's a pretty decent number of 5* covers per season if you're willing to play for it.

That counts as "retired from competitive play"!?

That's top 1% results. I would likely find covering 5*s much easier if I could get those results. But 1300 in every PvP would cost me several thousand HP a season, and would suck up hours of my time every few days. Top 10 in every PvP sub takes me 2-4 hours a day. I am still about 5 weeks away from 25cp/month resupply.

Sorry kidicarus, your experience doesn't match mine. My roster isn't strong enough to support those results in a reasonable about of time given my other life obligations (and I probably have a top 20% or better roster relative to the player base as a whole). And to my larger point, should the game really require either (1) a very strong roster AND 3+ hours of play every day, or (2) literally thousands of dollars of real money purchases just to not quite keep up with the meta?

Let me login to your account for a season. I'll hit 1300 every PvP for you playing probably 3-4 hours each PvP (spread over 2 days each PvP). Leave me 2k HP and you'll get your account back with the same or more HP plus all the new CP.

To hit 1300 each PvP requires a medium strength roster and 3 to 4 hours of time per PvP. Or a weak roster double the time and a bit of line communication. If you are not getting the same results then you are playing wrong. This game isn't really that difficult.

With regard to 5* covers don't play their game. Since 5*s have been released I've basically hoarded cp and just enjoyed the 4* game. Though, at the end of this season I'm opening it all.

wirius

5*'s at this point aren't an intended transition. They're for only the most committed, hardcore buyers or players. If you're not a whale, expect about a year and a half to max out one 5* cover if you play religiously and have average luck.

They're carrots on a stick to keep you always having something to work for. If you're still playing and want one, well, mission accomplished.

Vhailorx

acescracked wrote:

Let me login to your account for a season. I'll hit 1300 every PvP for you playing probably 3-4 hours each PvP (spread over 2 days each PvP). Leave me 2k HP and you'll get your account back with the same or more HP plus all the new CP.

To hit 1300 each PvP requires a medium strength roster and 3 to 4 hours of time per PvP. Or a weak roster double the time and a bit of line communication. If you are not getting the same results then you are playing wrong. This game isn't really that difficult.

With regard to 5* covers don't play their game. Since 5*s have been released I've basically hoarded cp and just enjoyed the 4* game. Though, at the end of this season I'm opening it all.

I agree that 3-4 hours played in each PVP gets to 1300. For my roster it generally takes 2-3 hops. though I can (and do) sometimes do it in one when I can field a particularly strong team, or for new 4* release events). top 10 in PVE subs is also just a matter time/endurance on those final grinds. I'm not suggesting it's impossible, just that I personally don't have the kind time necessary to do it (and I suspect that lots of people are in my position and don't have 28-40 hours a week to dedicate to a single game).

As for HP rates, I find that hopping more than once per PVP is HP negative for me. Not sure how you will avoid that (unless you also play pve subs for top 10 every time).

Vhailorx

wirius wrote:

5*'s at this point aren't an intended transition. They're for only the most committed, hardcore buyers or players. If you're not a whale, expect about a year and a half to max out one 5* cover if you play religiously and have average luck.

They're carrots on a stick to keep you always having something to work for. If you're still playing and want one, well, mission accomplished.

Carrots on a stick are what original xforce and IW were: nice trophies that could be chased and didn't really affect the meta.

5*s come out once every 4 weeks and completely define the meta. If the goal is make a trophy tier, then they failed. If the goal is provide a premium purchase tier where everyone gets a few covers, and has to spend a ton of cash, then they suceeded so well that most of their player base can't afford to even think about premium purchases.

That's my point, the current system is the worst of both worlds. 5*s are too powerful to be trophies, and too expensive to be a premium tier.

simonsez

Vhailorx wrote:

What is demiurge's ideal spending path for players?

They're not looking at a spending path for players. They discovered that there's a small group of players who:

a) have so much money that dropping $50k-$100k on a mobile game is no big deal
b) compulsively max out their credit cards to feed their habit
c) are scamming cc companies and/or the digital storefronts

Until they ride those ponies into the ground, there's no focus on "players" as a whole.