Patch Notes - 11/13 Discussion

Unknown

why the dev becoming so deaf, and make the cover more expensive. the more slots we have, the more money we spend for collecting different covers. even if we don't play or use it. the sense of accomplishment for collection drive people spend their money like in other mobile TCG. this price hike decision is definitely STUPID!!
what about incoming new chapter with new Heroes!! should we discard our trained covers for the new ones??
many people will quit mark my words. maybe i'm gonna play plant vs zombies 2 if this continue

Unknown

One of the biggest draws of this game was collecting covers. Even if the hero was junk, it was still fun to collect it and have it in your inventory. Now people will just be deleting their worst ones and won't even bother saving (or trying to win) three star covers they have little chance in improving.

Almost every change that has happened in this game has been less and less consumer friendly. You need to look at other successful F2P games and realize the most successful ones are also the most consumer friendly. People want to reward you with more money if they feel they are treated fairly.

Unknown

So R41 makes Health Packs way more expensive. Between R41 and R42 we see lightning rounds that require more expensive covers to easily place at the top and cover slots become way more expensive. I guess we can just assume that advancing covers with HP is next to spike in price. $50 to upgrade a cover soon? Is that the big draw of R42?

Unknown

ccseifert wrote:

So R41 makes Health Packs way more expensive. Between R41 and R42 we see lightning rounds that require more expensive covers to easily place at the top and cover slots become way more expensive. I guess we can just assume that advancing covers with HP is next to spike in price. $50 to upgrade a cover soon? Is that the big draw of R42?

Another R41 change along the same path was equalizing cover upgrade prices. Before they would ramp up starting from 50 hp and going up 25 after each upgrade (skills went up to 20 at the time). This meant that it was easy to upgrade those 3* characters a bit, making them competative, and it was expensive to get the last levels. Now it's 1250 for each one and you need to have a couple for the character to be usable.

Unknown

These lightning rounds are ridiculous. They finally add different characters, then buff their most powerful character (along with 4 others, for every single tourny.) All hail the immortal Ragnarok. Looks like I'll be taking a break from playing until I don't get one shot every tourny when the computer gets a lucky red match lol.

Edit: Why aren't the lightning rounds bracketed? I feel like these would be the best to have that happen, as everyone who has won the characters are just going to have a bigger and bigger advantage in the following tournys. Shouldn't they be butting heads against each other? Just curious ^^

Unknown

i've posted some thoughts here and here already but here's a bit more

$3 for cover slots halfway through is not microtransactions
$5 to upgrade a 2 start hero is not microtransactions
$11 for 3 star heroes is not microtransactions
$12.50 to upgrade a 3 star hero skill is not microtransactions

are you seeing a theme here? it is greed. reward your player base, make us love you again so we want to give you our money. put it at <$1 so it's a microtransaction and is below the conscious threshold of budgeting.

From IceX: For the cover slot increase, I completely understand where you're coming from in that regard. However, announcing price changes is very much a double edged sword for precisely the reason you state. In changing the price, we want to see what the user reaction is. Do players still buy the item when the price is increased or do they stop at a certain point? Is that point before or after the old one? When we figure out the break points, we can figure out the point at which the most customers are still satisfied while still providing the item or service in question.

by that logic may i propose another test? sell all cover slots at 50hp. period. from slots 11-40. you will make $15 per play for 30 slots. sell cover heroic packs for $1 sell special featured heroic packs for $3 sell character upgrades of ** for $1 and for *** for $3. watch your player base love you, buy up all slots, then buy cover packs to try to fill them up. watch us tell our friends to play. i think that is a key metric likely overlooked, by optimizing what devs can squeeze out of an existing player base you alienate all word of mouth that occurs.

@devs, we're your guinea pigs, we've felt the gouge dial, try running the experiment a lot in the other direction on the trust dial, dont just dial it back a hair so that the blood drips slowly from the gouge.

Unknown

Catalyst, I don't disagree with everything you said, but you fail to take into account that they give out quite a bit of hero points, etc. for instance, I've already won 600 in the Thor tournament. While I think the new prices are a little steep, if they were 50 a piece, that would be 12 slots. So if they lowered the cost that much, the rewards would drop too.

It is all about finding a balance, which they are working on.

Unknown

Devs hear complaints about cover prices. Naturally they increase them. Yep this game is gonna last.

Unknown

Misguided wrote:

So if they lowered the cost that much, the rewards would drop too.

Conversely, you would expect that if they increased the costs of things (which they have), the HP rewards would increase (which they haven't). Further, you would expect that if you were to buy HPs, you would get more for your dollar (which you don't).

Unknown

Reading a lot of the comments all around, it seems like the issue that paying customers have isn't that the cover slots have higher HP cost, exactly, but have a problem with what that translates into in dollars. It seems like an eventual solution might be to lower the $ cost of HP. F2Pers will be incentivized to consider spending money because of the steeper cost of cover slots, but less hesitant due to a smaller $ amount (microtransaction!). Already paying customers will be appeased, though maybe miffed that they paid more in the past.

As a F2Per myself, I can say that I'm not comfortable spending money for HP to use on random cover draws. That's a gamble. But when necessary to make room for new characters I've unlocked, or when I deem it worthwhile for a character I've already unlocked, I would have less hesitation to spend $ for HP on fixed items - cover slots and power upgrades. Because I've been in since near the launch, I already have 24 slots and I'm only using 21 of those, so it's not likely I'll be spending any $ soon. But as more characters arrive, if the cost to add a cover slot is small, $1 - $2 at most, I'd probably consider paying that rather than grind to try to get high enough in a tourney to score 500 HP.

I'll probably continue to hoard HP for cover slots for now, but if the arrival of characters that interest me outpaces my ability to acquire slots to hold them, that's when I have interesting decisions to consider. I was in that very place not too long ago, throwing away Daken, Yelena, Juggernaut, and maybe some Bullseye covers, and it encouraged me to work harder in the tourneys to score HP when I knew I was going to win a new cover like Mk.40 and Moonstone.

Unknown

Agreed. I bought a few heroes early on, but have been using HP primarily for slots.

Unknown

I agree with the posters who suggest that rather than spending $ to pay for overpriced cover slots you will see people deleting covers we have been keeping around just for the sake of collecting them (e.g. The Hood is in my collection but if it is a choice between deleting him and paying $3.50 for a slot he will be toast). I think you could monetize the cover slots situation easily since it really does not impact balance and rather than going for a few big spenders try to entice the majority of people with a lower price.

Unknown

Just came in to post that I'm also not really happy with the cover space increase, or the heal price increase from a little while back.

If D3P isn't going to budge on dropping the price of cover space, would it be feasible to reward players with a little more HP more often?

More regular PVE events that gave 50 here and 50 there, and more regular cycles of HP in the daily rewards will keep us logging in more frequently and keep us playing more regularly, and might help take some of the sting out of the price.

It's very hard for me right now to justify buying more cover space. However, if I knew that there were enough free heroic PVE and free daily rewards lined up between now and, say, next week for me to afford it, I would be a lot less irked about the issue.

I realize that changing the regular supply of HP is probably a whole other discussion about in-game economy or somesuch but it's just a thought.

mytisbrewin

greggray24 wrote:

I agree with the posters who suggest that rather than spending $ to pay for overpriced cover slots you will see people deleting covers we have been keeping around just for the sake of collecting them (e.g. The Hood is in my collection but if it is a choice between deleting him and paying $3.50 for a slot he will be toast).

I agree with this, there is a however though.

I understand wanting to make changes to see what works best for them, but if you change things too much then people will lose faith in the economy of the game. There are some characters that I don't care that much for that I would be prepared to delete for a new character. However, if things then change so I could have kept that character and they then get used in a tournament with a potential reward that I am interested in then I am not going to be very happy about it. Personally the HP now look like very poor value for money to me.

Hunter328

So I wrote in a week or so ago saying I thought 125 coins for cover slots was a bit much. It seems my thoughts weren't agreed with. The charging for and price of slots is my only gripe with this game. Too often I'm forced to sell off characters I'd like to be able to develop because I can't afford more slots for covers.
This wouldn't be as big of an issue if there was a way to train powers of characters you already have using covers in your cache. Having to either buy a slot or sell a cover in order to move a cover out of your cache that will only need that slot for the few seconds it takes to train a power doesn't make sense to me.

Unknown

mytisbrewin wrote:

greggray24 wrote:

I agree with the posters who suggest that rather than spending $ to pay for overpriced cover slots you will see people deleting covers we have been keeping around just for the sake of collecting them (e.g. The Hood is in my collection but if it is a choice between deleting him and paying $3.50 for a slot he will be toast).

I agree with this, there is a however though.

I understand wanting to make changes to see what works best for them, but if you change things too much then people will lose faith in the economy of the game. There are some characters that I don't care that much for that I would be prepared to delete for a new character. However, if things then change so I could have kept that character and they then get used in a tournament with a potential reward that I am interested in then I am not going to be very happy about it. Personally the HP now look like very poor value for money to me.

Yea - I wonder how many people will hoard their HP hoping they will reverse this rate hike for slots. I for one bought slots as soon as I gathered the HP so I have a few open. I will not be spending HP again until the dust settles from this experiment or until I have a pressing need.

Unknown

This change has put me on the brink of moving on. This has been a fun game and has potential, but there are too many broken and frustrating things about it that need to be fixed before you start raising prices and devaluing things. I might stick around to see what the next rollout brings, but if the past couple of weeks are any indication, things don't appear to be headed in a direction I can be excited about.

I don't understand why I should have to "pay" for rewards I win in game. If I win a cover and have no room or enough HP for it, what is the point of playing? I'd love to setup a carnival game and tell people it's free to play... break the balloon with a dart and you win a prize. Great you broke it and a prize is yours, you just need to give me $5 to take it off the rack for you. Come back tomorrow, and if you win again it will cost you $10 for your prize. What??

I would have announced it 5 days in advance. I'm sure you would have saw an influx of cash from people who wanted to get things "on sale" or cash out before the price hike. Anyone who didn't would have at least been notified. You surely would have seen an influx of immediate cash and still been able to explore the effects of the price hike afterwards. Now, I fear you've risked getting much cash at all and driving away certain players who would have paid you before.

Ugh... so much to say, but this is just a game, and there are thousands of others out there.

Unknown

Edited: I decided to erase my original post and just make the simple statement: I am very upset by what appears to be the continued price increases for an aspect of this game that is NOT something anyone wants to pay for; it's all well and good that there are ways for some players to earn enough HP for some cover slots but nobody wants to spend HP on cover slots and it is, quite frankly a stupid concept that hurts everyone: gamers & developers; this isn't Marvel Coverslot Quest. Quit charging us for storage! Until then, my wallet is closed.

Unknown

Complaining about a cost increase and how you don't like it, it's greedy etc? Doesn't matter. Decisions of that sort are not going to be changed based on complaint, but by revenue. If the decision is so unpopular that it makes people stop paying or leave the game entirely and revenue goes down, it will likely be reconsidered. If revenue stays about even or even shows an uptick? Complain as much as you want, but nothing will happen.

If you have a little hot dog stand and one day raise the price by $1 apiece, you are definately going to get some complaints. Now if at the end of the week and hundreds of complaints, threats to never return, insults, etc you show a profit increase of $500, are you going to change it back? Maybe if you have a very thin skin and go home crying each night. Otherwise that increase stays. This is a business. It's number #1 goal is to make money. The price of most things is always going to be what the market will bear.

Going on here to complain about how the game plays may actually make a difference as IceX is pretty active on here. Coming on and badmouthing is counter productive. If he is anything thing like me, that just pisses me off and makes me want to argue the other side, no matter what my view might have been beforehand. I have never been positively swayed by that.

For the record, I don't like the increase. It's annoying. I will still play the game. I like it. There. My opinion is voiced. Will it make a difference? Of course not. On something that effects the bottom line, only money talks.

I was kind of

Unknown

Lord_Jadem wrote:

Complaining about a cost increase and how you don't like it, it's greedy etc? Doesn't matter. Decisions of that sort are not going to be changed based on complaint, but by revenue. If the decision is so unpopular that it makes people stop paying or leave the game entirely and revenue goes down, it will likely be reconsidered. If revenue stays about even or even shows an uptick? Complain as much as you want, but nothing will happen.

This is conjecture on your part unless you actually work for MPQ and have direct insight into the goings on within the company. It's true that some companies appear to be run this way and perhaps MPQ is, too but just to make that kind of blanket statement doesn't make it true.

Lots of companies respond to a vocal customer base as customers tend to get vocal before they start voting with their wallets and most companies don't want to wait until "after" the money goes away to make changes.