Is the game dying?

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  • acescracked
    acescracked Posts: 1,197 Chairperson of the Boards
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    You guys are hilarious, last PvP a bunch of players had 4k scores, more with 3k and so on. PvP scores being "down" is slice dependent.

    As players our view into the game as a whole is very narrow. We see just our 20 alliance mates (more, if an alliance family). The pve/PvP brackets we are in and that's it.  Hardly enough data to form an is mpq dying or not conclusion.

    Sure, older vets have quit or slowed down. But how many games can people play constantly 3+ years straight and not get bored. 
  • astrp3
    astrp3 Posts: 367 Mover and Shaker
    edited April 2017
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    GrumpySmurf1002 said:
    Not sure forum usage is the best way to determine game health, considering how limited a portion of the player base makes comments here.

    Using self-reported data is probably also a bad way to draw sweeping conclusions, even about the community on here. It could be that there were always seasons/slices/brackets etc. where event points were down for a spell or where alliances had trouble recruiting, but no one had any reason to notice or post about it. With the recent changes, it's easy to notice something you wouldn't have before and attribute it to them or fall prey to confirmation bias. Kind of like the Seattle windshield pitting epidemic of the 1950s or saying "I was thinking of someone and they called me, so we must have a psychic connection."  

    I have also cut back on reading posts here (though not on posting) for similar reasons - though for me, I was more sick of the 8 million "It's all a money grab!" posts. We should just shorten it to IAAMG to save time and maybe just set it as an auto-reply anytime D3 makes an announcement in the General section.  

  • Jarvind
    Jarvind Posts: 1,684 Chairperson of the Boards
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    bbigler said:
     That's completely illogical.  First you say that they're greedy, then you say they're trying to kill the game.  This game is their job, so they want it to last forever.  That should be obvious to everyone.

    I mean, if you're a dev that manages multiple intellectual properties (Demi does) and one is making significantly less money than the others, it might make fiscal sense to just wring it for everything it's worth and then jettison it. Return on investment and all.

    I'm not saying that's definitely what is going on with MPQ, just that it's in no way an inconceivable scenario.

    Then again, Adventure Time PQ is still around and from my brief experience with it, it was a confusing, buggy, user-unfriendly disaster with very few good reviews, so I'd assume MPQ still has plenty of life in it.
  • BoyWonder1914
    BoyWonder1914 Posts: 884 Critical Contributor
    edited April 2017
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    I haven't dialed back by my playing hours by any means, but I've gotta admit the lack of transparency is very off-putting. Brigby has been doing a fantastic job, but there's a big difference between getting information from someone who's told what to say, as opposed to hearing it directly from the developer's mouths. That form of information delivery is just fine for most things, but when it comes to things like Vaulting, these new Hero for Hire "deals", and Clearance Levels 9&10, we want to directly question someone who's right in the thick of things, not a delegate. 

    If this were a completely free-to-play game, with no in-game purchases, I wouldn't be nearly as outraged at the questions that they refuse to give us straight answers to. But given that this is a game that a lot of people have sunk money into at some point, we are essentially stakeholders in the company's future as well. The PLAYERS fund this game, not them, even if it's not 100% of us that play it. Personally, most of the time I'm fine without even getting a direct answer, I'd just be happy with some kind of acknowledgment that our issue is being heard/addressed. But rarely, if ever do the devs give any kind of indication that they are listening to us, let alone care. 
  • JVReal
    JVReal Posts: 1,884 Chairperson of the Boards
    edited April 2017
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    There is always a decline in forum members, veteran players, and noticing a lul in game participation after a big nerf like OML.  It happened after Hood & Sentry, it happened after XFW & Lady Thor, and it's happening after OML. (I guess it happened after True Healing as well but that was before my time)

    The reason there are so many bad choices happen all at once is likely to get them all out at the same time, if they are going to lose players, might as well just get all the crud out there at once.  If I'm making a run to the dump where they charge me by the truck load... I might as well clean house and load up the truck.

    The game will bounce back.  New players will join and be blissfully unaware of the changes since it will be the new norm, those that stay through it will become the new veterans and adjust, and when whales leave, there will always be people who will jump up to take the lead now that there is an opening.  It's the infinite loop (instead of circle of life) of freemium gaming.
  • NewMcG
    NewMcG Posts: 368 Mover and Shaker
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    Jarvind said:
    bbigler said:
     That's completely illogical.  First you say that they're greedy, then you say they're trying to kill the game.  This game is their job, so they want it to last forever.  That should be obvious to everyone.

    I mean, if you're a dev that manages multiple intellectual properties (Demi does) and one is making significantly less money than the others, it might make fiscal sense to just wring it for everything it's worth and then jettison it. Return on investment and all.
    I believe they mentioned that they've made over $100M on MPQ. If it's making "significantly less" than any of their other properties, they're a WILDLY successful publisher.
  • Jarvind
    Jarvind Posts: 1,684 Chairperson of the Boards
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    New McG said:
    Jarvind said:
    bbigler said:
     That's completely illogical.  First you say that they're greedy, then you say they're trying to kill the game.  This game is their job, so they want it to last forever.  That should be obvious to everyone.

    I mean, if you're a dev that manages multiple intellectual properties (Demi does) and one is making significantly less money than the others, it might make fiscal sense to just wring it for everything it's worth and then jettison it. Return on investment and all.
    I believe they mentioned that they've made over $100M on MPQ. If it's making "significantly less" than any of their other properties, they're a WILDLY successful publisher.
    That was kinda the point of the second half of the post, which you deleted.  :/
  • Marine8394
    Marine8394 Posts: 301 Mover and Shaker
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    GrumpySmurf1002 said:
    Not sure forum usage is the best way to determine game health, considering how limited a portion of the player base makes comments here.

    Personally, I'm posting less these days not because of interest in the game, but because the new format here is IMO god awful, and it makes it unappealing to 'reside' here as I would tend to. 

    Plus one can only read so many "OMG WHY DO YOU HATE US?" threads before finding something better to do with ones time.
    And the hammer hits the nail directly on the head. Literally groaned when I saw another. This game is dying thread. After three years I believe the only forum complaint thread that rivals this one is the old standby. Scaling sucks.
  • NewMcG
    NewMcG Posts: 368 Mover and Shaker
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    Jarvind said:
    New McG said:
    Jarvind said:
    bbigler said:
     That's completely illogical.  First you say that they're greedy, then you say they're trying to kill the game.  This game is their job, so they want it to last forever.  That should be obvious to everyone.

    I mean, if you're a dev that manages multiple intellectual properties (Demi does) and one is making significantly less money than the others, it might make fiscal sense to just wring it for everything it's worth and then jettison it. Return on investment and all.
    I believe they mentioned that they've made over $100M on MPQ. If it's making "significantly less" than any of their other properties, they're a WILDLY successful publisher.
    That was kinda the point of the second half of the post, which you deleted.  :/
    Except for where you say it "isn't an inconceivable scenario", which it is. They've made over $100M in 3+ years, and that isn't just the forum player base sending them most of that. They aren't going to "wring for everything it's worth and jettison" something that's making millions of dollars every month. The game is doing fine.
  • carrion_pigeons
    carrion_pigeons Posts: 942 Critical Contributor
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    And that, right there, is exactly the thing that makes the game so sad.

    Here we have a game that's obviously a moneymaker.  It's good gameplay set in a popular franchise; it has a TON of draw.  And what do they do with their golden goose?  They leave it constantly underdeveloped and feature-poor, and put almost zero effort into customer retention.

    This game could have been a billion-dollar thing.  The fact that it's merely a hundred-million dollar thing when it's mismanaged so heavily isn't something to be impressed about.  It's something to be *DE*pressed about.
  • NewMcG
    NewMcG Posts: 368 Mover and Shaker
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    carrion pigeons said:
    And that, right there, is exactly the thing that makes the game so sad.

    Here we have a game that's obviously a moneymaker.  It's good gameplay set in a popular franchise; it has a TON of draw.  And what do they do with their golden goose?  They leave it constantly underdeveloped and feature-poor, and put almost zero effort into customer retention.

    This game could have been a billion-dollar thing.  The fact that it's merely a hundred-million dollar thing when it's mismanaged so heavily isn't something to be impressed about.  It's something to be *DE*pressed about.
    This may be the most oversimplified post I've seen in quite some time. "This game should make a billion dollars by default, and the fact that it hasn't is the fault of the poor development" is a ludicrous statement. Particularly for a game that falls into way more niches, in terms of general audience, than something more broad and thoughtless, like Candy Crush.
  • thedarkphoenix
    thedarkphoenix Posts: 557 Critical Contributor
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    Its not worth it to go all out anymore.


    very single character or combination that is strong gets nerfed. Why whale or drop large cash when 9 times out of 10 the character will be nerfed at some point in the future.


    The change to a 5 star oml was pretty pointless. He's a 5 star, and it comes off as D3 finding him to useful in vets not spending money.

    If that's not the case they should say that, if it is..well the smart thing to do would be to drop a 5 star that hard counters him and or start making events that are harder for him to be useful in....


    When I started playing this game 3 years ago, I was fighting Ares, juggs and moonstone. i'm still fighting ares, juggs and moonstone.


    they really need to shake things up, stop nerfing and provide end game content where you can use your hard earned powerful characters and feel like you have an advantage instead of barely holding on or having to use 3 out of 3o
  • Ralph-Wiggum
    Ralph-Wiggum Posts: 175 Tile Toppler
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    I actually just deleted the game from my phone a few days back (about 3 days shy of the 1,000 day mark). I don't know that it was any of the recent changes that made my decision, more that I just started losing interest in playing. I think my main problem is just the lack of new things (events, game modes, etc); I've been playing the same PvE events in a loop for almost three years. There certainly have been an enormous amount of improvements in the game since I first started (DDQ, boss battles, champion levels, etc.), but most of those big improvements are pretty old by now.

    In any case, I enjoyed my time and I can't think of any other game that I've ever played daily for three years, so that's a pretty high compliment. Perhaps after so long losing interest in just inevitable. I'm sure I'll keep  checking the forums occasionally and if some big new game mode or event comes along, maybe I'll reinstall. But if not, it's been a good run.

  • Wumpushunter
    Wumpushunter Posts: 627 Critical Contributor
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    Dying no, but I think certain mid level folks have been targeted for removal. Non paying people in the 3 going on 4 star range seem to be getting slapped around the most.  It feels like a purge of the people who never spend any at all on the game is in progress.
  • KinDM
    KinDM Posts: 72 Match Maker
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    Every mobile game I've ever played eventually gets crushed under its own expansions. Since we know that a large amount of money made from your average player is on roster slots, new characters need to keep coming out, or revenue drops. The more characters there are though, the bigger the barrier to entry for new players. If they make covers easier and cheaper to get to make new players more readily competitive, they risk alienating the older players (in the best case scenario). Keep it too hard, and you're running a long game where new players can't compete for months or years and are less likely to keep interest in the game. It's a very bad place for a game to be, but it's good that there have been signs that they are at least AWARE of the problems. I'm not sure what the answer is (loaners for essential nodes? More diverse events and tiers of play? Buying a license to expand into other Disney owned properties?), but hopefully they'll hit on it. Some turnover is definitely expected, but it does seem to be a biiiiit on the high side lately.
  • Skrofa
    Skrofa Posts: 388 Mover and Shaker
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    KinDM said:
    Every mobile game I've ever played eventually gets crushed under its own expansions. Since we know that a large amount of money made from your average player is on roster slots, new characters need to keep coming out, or revenue drops. The more characters there are though, the bigger the barrier to entry for new players. If they make covers easier and cheaper to get to make new players more readily competitive, they risk alienating the older players (in the best case scenario). Keep it too hard, and you're running a long game where new players can't compete for months or years and are less likely to keep interest in the game. It's a very bad place for a game to be, but it's good that there have been signs that they are at least AWARE of the problems. I'm not sure what the answer is (loaners for essential nodes? More diverse events and tiers of play? Buying a license to expand into other Disney owned properties?), but hopefully they'll hit on it. Some turnover is definitely expected, but it does seem to be a biiiiit on the high side lately.
    For me, the answer to your question is quite simple! 
    Remove placement rewards for pve. Keep the pve element pure and new players will have a target to hit before going to the pvp stage of the game.

    Pve is supposed to be the fun/casual part of a game and the pvp part for the more hardcore.

    At least in my mind
  • whycantwesyncpc
    whycantwesyncpc Posts: 188 Tile Toppler
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    Syleye said:
    Change never happens if people remain silent, I know there are people who will bite their tongue, other than to tell others to stop complaining and go on, but it's a company and if they want their product to survive they need to have better communication. 

    Brigby tries their best but it would be nice to have more than what the devs feed in ( which is actually very little).

    I have scaled back on play, I no longer spend money here, and while I think the game is not dying and I don't think there is intention to drive it under, I think there is a disconnect that needs to be addressed.
    I feel bad for Brigby, he really deserves to work for a better company

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