The Death of the Solo Whale Player

Meto5000

Puritas wrote:

few points of correction

Your complaints are basically boiling down to "I want the same perks and advantages without putting the time or effort into it that other players do"

Your words carry a lot of weight as a moderator and it's troubling that this is what you got out of everything I said.

Unknown

Meto5000 wrote:

AethD wrote:

1. Again, no, you're not a whale, spending $25 doesn't make you a whale, just a paying player. The whales are the top % of people spending money, not anyone spending money. The most common purchase is the $20 HP, not everyone who bought the most popular selling item is a whale.

You have no idea what I personally spend on this game per month so don't make assumptions. I'd also like to see your data on what a whale is since you seem to know definitively. Even if the most common purchase is $20 dollars, people who purchase them once and never again are different then people who spend $25+ per month, a minimum of $300 dollars per year. $300 dollars is more than an XBOX player spends per year getting COD and all of the addons. So yes, according to me, and according to the industry data provided by EEDAR (A video game research and consulting firm) a whale is defined as what I said earlier, a person who spends on average $25 dollars or more per month.

It's also cool, how you don't really bother reading all that I've written and just post arguments based on small snippets of what I say. I do want to be part of an alliance. I enjoy the social aspect of alliances, but the forced grinding of 20/20 members to stay competitive is overly excessive. Being forced into an alliance is not fun, not being able to play with friends unless they are at the same competitive level as you is not fun. Having to play every single day without a day off 7 days a week is not fun.

Also, I'm betting I'm not such a small minority. I may be in the minority of posters here, but that's mostly because most solo players probably don't ever visit the forums --- which happen to be one of the only and undoubtedly the best place to find competitive alliances.

Okay, keep editing your posts then complaining I don't read them. You originally posted that spending $25 makes you a whale, then changed it to $25 per month. I'd agree with the latter a whole lot more than the former.

And yes you are a small minority, there mathematically can't be that many players, of the 150k+(?) or so that play MPQ, who would field a team competitive enough to place in the top 5 of PvP, but don't play regularly enough to stick in a top 100 alliance. If you spend $25 a month you're already in a tiny minority by your own admission.

*Edit* - Sorry, it looks like you edited your post before I posted, but after I'd started writing my response. I got distracted by real work in between and didn't go back to check if you'd edited anything. $25 a month is much more of a whale

Puritas

Meto5000 wrote:

Puritas wrote:

few points of correction

Your complaints are basically boiling down to "I want the same perks and advantages without putting the time or effort into it that other players do"

Your words carry a lot of weight as a moderator and it's troubling that this is what you got out of everything I said.

I know there's more to it than that, but that is the essence of your argument, and what you want changed .
The rest is rationale for why that should be possible, most of which is tied into your situation (which other players may or may not share).

So, if you want me to address this on a personal level:
Right now, my alliance is the one thing that actually keeps me playing daily, particularly because of our 3rd party team chat. As I've said, we're able to communicate effectively enough that when players need breaks they can take them (and still rack up alliance rewards, mind you).
If/when i get really burned out, I'll happily take a complete break knowing that my maxed 3 stars will still be plenty competitive when I started playing again - just like going back to TF2.
Hell, I've already done that during the 2nd/3rd runs of the Hulk/Thick as Thieves/2nd LazyThor events, and it hasn't hurt my competitive play at all, despite having unusable fotm characters like hulk/lazythor.


(also if Alliance-only covers were still a thing this'd be a little more valid, but they stopped that )

Unknown

I'd say that this game is much, much better about being able to be competitive when you return than a lot of other similar games with PvP aspects

Meto5000

AethD wrote:

Meto5000 wrote:

AethD wrote:

1. Again, no, you're not a whale, spending $25 doesn't make you a whale, just a paying player. The whales are the top % of people spending money, not anyone spending money. The most common purchase is the $20 HP, not everyone who bought the most popular selling item is a whale.

You have no idea what I personally spend on this game per month so don't make assumptions. I'd also like to see your data on what a whale is since you seem to know definitively. Even if the most common purchase is $20 dollars, people who purchase them once and never again are different then people who spend $25+ per month, a minimum of $300 dollars per year. $300 dollars is more than an XBOX player spends per year getting COD and all of the addons. So yes, according to me, and according to the industry data provided by EEDAR (A video game research and consulting firm) a whale is defined as what I said earlier, a person who spends on average $25 dollars or more per month.

It's also cool, how you don't really bother reading all that I've written and just post arguments based on small snippets of what I say. I do want to be part of an alliance. I enjoy the social aspect of alliances, but the forced grinding of 20/20 members to stay competitive is overly excessive. Being forced into an alliance is not fun, not being able to play with friends unless they are at the same competitive level as you is not fun. Having to play every single day without a day off 7 days a week is not fun.

Also, I'm betting I'm not such a small minority. I may be in the minority of posters here, but that's mostly because most solo players probably don't ever visit the forums --- which happen to be one of the only and undoubtedly the best place to find competitive alliances.

Okay, keep editing your posts then complaining I don't read them. You originally posted that spending $25 makes you a whale, then changed it to $25 per month. I'd agree with the latter a whole lot more than the former.

And yes you are a small minority, there mathematically can't be that many players, of the 150k+(?) or so that play MPQ, who would field a team competitive enough to place in the top 5 of PvP, but don't play regularly enough to stick in a top 100 alliance. If you spend $25 a month you're already in a tiny minority by your own admission.

*Edit* - Sorry, it looks like you edited your post before I posted, but after I'd started writing my response. I got distracted by real work in between and didn't go back to check if you'd edited anything. $25 a month is much more of a whale

Yep, edited right away, so you must have hit reply really quick. So, my bad also for jumping to conclusions - I didn't read what you quoted.

And there are definitely allianceless multi 141s that I run into (read: avoid) regularly on the PvP ladder. Maybe, I'm wrong, maybe these people are fine with winning less than they used to before alliances.

A few things that I think most people agree with me on is that being in a top 100 alliances encourages super grindy play in each and every event. Yes, as Puritas pointed out, players are able to take time off and still be competitive, but only if all other players pick up the slack and play even harder. Also, I feel like some people think I want SHIELD style awards handed out to people who aren't putting in SHIELD style effort. That is just not the case. All I am saying is that if a solo player puts in SHIELD effort and tops an event or multiple events, why are they punished because they couldn't find 19 other people with the same goal set. If they don't know about the forums, it'd be hard for them to even FIND 19 other people as competitive as they are.

Edit: I'm not even asking for these solo players to get the SHIELD type rewards even if they are putting out top effort. All I'm asking is that there be a way for top tier solo players to get the third cover in the events where they choose to put forth humongous amounts effort without having to be matched with 19 other people that all play the same way. They don't need the extra iso, or the extra HP. Just the cover would be enough.

Meto5000

AethD wrote:

I'd say that this game is much, much better about being able to be competitive when you return than a lot of other similar games with PvP aspects

The returning thing was mostly in reference to Alliances. If you're not active, there's no extra space so you're likely going to be kicked by the time you come back. Most alliances can't afford to be 19/20 and still compete without forcing the remaining players into overdrive. I think this, more than anything, is the reason to have only the top 80% of your roster account for 100% of your alliance score.

Unknown

I'm an Old old player...been here since the beginning. I suggested to Electroblast to introduce hats. They said they think about it. It would be hard to compete with hat fortress...they need something new. like masks.

Unknown

Meto5000 wrote:

AethD wrote:

I'd say that this game is much, much better about being able to be competitive when you return than a lot of other similar games with PvP aspects

The returning thing was mostly in reference to Alliances. If you're not active, there's no extra space so you're likely going to be kicked by the time you come back. Most alliances can't afford to be 19/20 and still compete without forcing the remaining players into overdrive. I think this, more than anything, is the reason to have only the top 80% of your roster account for 100% of your alliance score.

Yeah I agree with you, having people depend on you does make it more difficult to take time off, even if your team is just as competitive individually as it ever was. I think having something like the top 80% of your alliance's score count would make sense, but then you're going to run into drama about who gets to take time off etc.

Meto5000 wrote:

And there are definitely allianceless multi 141s that I run into (read: avoid) regularly on the PvP ladder. Maybe, I'm wrong, maybe these people are fine with winning less than they used to before alliances.

This has more to do with your MMR and other factors, also who knows how many of them are spending money. I'm not saying that they don't exist, but I'm saying they're statistically a small minority. For them to make up even 1% you'd have to run into thousands of them.

Meto5000

Saint Matthew wrote:

I'm an Old old player...been here since the beginning. I suggested to Electroblast to introduce hats. They said they think about it. It would be hard to compete with hat fortress...they need something new. like masks.

Imagine how much money D3 would make, if they introduced cosmetic covers for your characters. People like me, would be literally throwing fistfuls of money at them if we could modify our normal characters with oldschool 1970s comic cover art.

Unknown

Meto5000 wrote:

Saint Matthew wrote:

I'm an Old old player...been here since the beginning. I suggested to Electroblast to introduce hats. They said they think about it. It would be hard to compete with hat fortress...they need something new. like masks.

Imagine how much money D3 would make, if they introduced cosmetic covers for your characters. People like me, would be literally throwing fistfuls of money at them if we could modify our normal characters with oldschool 1970s comic cover art.

I don't even use Daredevil now... but I could not use him while he wears his original yellow costume. That would be swell.

Unknown

Meto5000 wrote:

Puritas wrote:

few points of correction

Your complaints are basically boiling down to "I want the same perks and advantages without putting the time or effort into it that other players do"

Your words carry a lot of weight as a moderator and it's troubling that this is what you got out of everything I said.

I'm getting this same thought in a thread in the suggestions forum. Remember, we're regular forumites like you. Nothing we say means more or less than anything that other people say. If we're deserving of a downvote, do it. Nor should you upvote us just for our green names. Our green names mean nothing as far as the content of our posts go.

The only thing we do as moderators is clean up kitchen spam and keep threads organized (and occasionally edit IceIX's threads for laughs... j/k ).

Spoit

Correct me if I'm wrong, but didn't the alliance reward come out of the top 5? In which case if you were a top 10 player, you would only rarely be hitting it anyway?

Unknown

Spoit wrote:

Correct me if I'm wrong, but didn't the alliance reward come out of the top 5? In which case if you were a top 10 player, you would only rarely be hitting it anyway?

Yeah, which is why there are more covers being given away now than ever before, just to different people (in general).

Nemek

Spoit wrote:

Correct me if I'm wrong, but didn't the alliance reward come out of the top 5? In which case if you were a top 10 player, you would only rarely be hitting it anyway?

Yeah, it's definitely an error in the post.

HailMary

Meto5000 wrote:

Imagine how much money D3 would make, if they introduced cosmetic covers for your characters. People like me, would be literally throwing fistfuls of money at them if we could modify our normal characters with oldschool 1970s comic cover art.

Oh goodness, anything to make Shieldbro look less like a SS hitman and make GSBW look less invisible.

j12601 wrote:

I don't even use Daredevil now... but I could not use him while he wears his original yellow costume. That would be swell.

If the ability animations get reskinned as well, though, would you really want to see SUN CROTCH!!! when someone actually manages to trigger his trap?

Unknown

Riggy wrote:

You need to add a "TL;DR - add a rewards bracket for non-alliance people". I think that's the gist of your suggestion.

Honestly though, as others have quoted in other threads, the article in VentureBeat says that D3 is going to focus on alliances and alliance play - that's where they believe their bread and butter for long-term players is going to be.

And that's why they'll likely lose a customer like me who's been playing this game for 6 months.

Unknown

pasa_ wrote:

I'm seriously considering to drop all PVE play after the recent one. Unless there is significant change (fat chance) to the structure. It requires excessive amount of time, strict timepoints of play for success and most importantly waaay too BORING repeating the same battles over and over with only "twist" to add insane scaling outside the design parameters. That is not fun either only painful.

Truer words have never been spoken.

Unknown

Meto5000 wrote:

Your words carry a lot of weight as a moderator and it's troubling that this is what you got out of everything I said.

Please note that we moderators are just regular forumites who have offered to sticky threads and delete spam posts. Our words should not be weighed differently than any other person because our name is in green.

Unknown

MikeHock wrote:

Riggy wrote:

You need to add a "TL;DR - add a rewards bracket for non-alliance people". I think that's the gist of your suggestion.

Honestly though, as others have quoted in other threads, the article in VentureBeat says that D3 is going to focus on alliances and alliance play - that's where they believe their bread and butter for long-term players is going to be.

And that's why they'll likely lose a customer like me who's been playing this game for 6 months.

That's a real possibility, and there are probably others like you. I'm not saying D3 is right or wrong for this, but from their mouths, they've said that alliances are their key to player stickiness and they feel they'll retain more people than they'll lose.

Unknown

Riggy wrote:

MikeHock wrote:

Riggy wrote:

You need to add a "TL;DR - add a rewards bracket for non-alliance people". I think that's the gist of your suggestion.

Honestly though, as others have quoted in other threads, the article in VentureBeat says that D3 is going to focus on alliances and alliance play - that's where they believe their bread and butter for long-term players is going to be.

And that's why they'll likely lose a customer like me who's been playing this game for 6 months.

That's a real possibility, and there are probably others like you. I'm not saying D3 is right or wrong for this, but from their mouths, they've said that alliances are their key to player stickiness and they feel they'll retain more people than they'll lose.

I understand you were just sharing what D3 spoke about. Being forced to be in an alliance (a TOP alliance) to remain competitive is totally not my thing. Me and my 5 player alliance, Raining Blood, will never win an alliance cover reward. The writing in on the wall for me. I've got a competitive team after 6 months, but I'm done grinding every day for minimal cover rewards since they've been scaled back signifigantly.