VentureBeat article: MPQ's April Event Analytics

Unknown

Demiurge_Will wrote:

Re: that HBR article: one of the things that, as a designer, I love about making a free-to-play game is that the more fun your players are having, the more they value your game, and the more money you make. That's in contrast to games that you sell in a box for a flat price, where you typically get to do much less customer support or ongoing development. Developers' interests and players' are better aligned than they are when a game has a single price tag.

While you're certainly right regarding certain aspects of gameplay - the ability to design characters or events around what people are responding to - there are also undoubtedly aspects of the game that are pure monetization, offering no benefit to the player. The most egregious of these is the healing system, which comes straight out of FTP 101, but only hurts the game - it discourages risk-taking, encourages people not to play, and helps to encourage repetitious team composition. There are trade-offs between ftp and traditional game design, and while some of these allow you to better respond to players, some of these offer no benefit to players whatsoever.

Unknown

locked wrote:

Surprised no one mentioned that Magneto was named as one of the DA. Do they even play their own game?

DA tourney was a flop because these characters are mostly weak, and have bad synergy, as has been noted. You just ran Daken + maxed Ares, and Rags for a pile of HP. No strategies were needed in the first place, since Moonstone and Bullseye both plain lose to Daken.

I was confused too on reading, my recollection was no Mags in DA but overruled my memory...

Nonce Equitaur 2

The Heroic event had --
1. Mostly weak characters.
2. No healing characters.
3. No board controlling characters.
4. Strong opponents.
5. Very limited roster.
6. Scaling.

Even with a very strong roster, I was usually out of healing packs after a handful of fights. Getting through all the nodes once was challenging and a test of endurance. For anyone with less than a strong roster, it must have been near impossible. So of course it got played less.

Unknown

Nonce Equitaur 2 wrote:

The Heroic event had --
1. Mostly weak characters.
2. No healing characters.
3. No board controlling characters.
4. Strong opponents.
5. Very limited roster.
6. Scaling.

Even with a very strong roster, I was usually out of healing packs after a handful of fights. Getting through all the nodes once was challenging and a test of endurance. For anyone with less than a strong roster, it must have been near impossible. So of course it got played less.

It also had 2 identical rounds back to back. I missed the first -- fortunately, playing both would be like <censored>.

Hunt started as okay but turned sour as the second triplet started and when I realized we'll have 12 subs instead of 9? Well, it was too late unfortunately, probably wouldn't even start it at all. Especially if I knew I can have a falcon cover from PVP progression next day. Even without the glitch.

"Lock in" works to some level but with each iteration the consumer gains some important experience and learns to look for alternatives. MPQ keeps pushing its luck built on this lock-in effect but with the PVE it probably approached the full exhaustion point.

Unknown

As with any form continuous improvement model, data collection like this is only useful IF they can drive future decisions off of it. In regards to the 2 pvp events, one outlying factor and reason for people to play more/less would've been the weekend. (hence why they talked about it) They expected DA to pull more people in, have more activity and in essence make more money for them. That was not the case.

One of the greatest pieces of data they received out of these KPI's is that weekend may not be as big of a factor when it comes to raising the popularity level of an event.

They can also look at the DA event and say "why was the performance subpar to the Lazy Cap event?"

Was it bad hero selection? A bad theme? Were the hero packs %cover distribution perceived as not worth the HP to the players? Could this just be a freak occurrence that is completely out of the norm?


Fact is, one event like this will not paint a big enough picture to affect the game... However, as they collect more and more data points, they can start to hone in on what drives the player base to play more, have fun and spend money.

Again, I LOVE these articles and I really think they have it right for their business model. I hope it continues.

TLDR version
nerf spidey

Unknown

The DA tournament was unpopular because it was hard. You actually had to know how to match tiles effectively because you didn't have the usual overpowered guys bailing you out. I'm not sure why everyone thought Ragnarok was so superior to Moonstone (other than that you may not have Moonstone leveled) since none of his power can do a quick knockout which is crucial (taking out either Daken or Ares early pretty much ensures you at least won't lose). Godlike is generally worse than Onslaught for that tournament because you have no usage for cascades if Ares dies (and Onslaught is generally used to kill the opposing Ares). Thunderclap is just not very good in general unless you're hoping for extreme luck, and potentially wastes your AP that can be used on Rampage. Sure having Ragnarok instead of Moonstone allows Daken to tank purple and black instead of nothing, but DA wasn't really an attrition fight. You really need to knock out Ares as soon as possible and Ragnarok just isn't very good at doing that.

Unknown

Moonstone is fun and versatile. And while I only ever control-shifted a single Sunder tile, I pew-pewed a lot of dark avengers to death and gravity warped away more than a couple of opposing strike tiles. She isn't Thor or OBW, but she isn't nearly the albatross around you neck (MHAWK...) that some people seem to think.

Unknown

Moon 17 wrote:

Moonstone is fun and versatile. And while I only ever control-shifted a single Sunder tile, I pew-pewed a lot of dark avengers to death and gravity warped away more than a couple of opposing strike tiles. She isn't Thor or OBW, but she isn't nearly the albatross around you neck (MHAWK...) that some people seem to think.

The ubiqitous presence of Daken greatly reduced the effectiveness of Gravity Warp, but getting 3 red is still pretty useful since Daken usually dies to Rampage + another move from Ares, and killing Daken or Ares early usually assures, at worst, a messy victory, which is actually saying a lot on an event you have no guaranteed of winning every match.

over_clocked

stop saying 'guaranteed' instead of 'guarantee', it's driving me crazy

_RiO_

ZenBrillig wrote:

LordWill wrote:

Pretending to know what makes your player base happiness going off of the metrics is a sure way to remain clueless.

They don't care if you're happy. They only care if you're playing (or paying).

There's a reason why companies love metrics - it's because customer feedback is wildly unreliable. At the end of the day, you don't care what your customers think, or how they feel, you only care about what they do.

"There are lies, damn lies and statistics" comes to mind.
Statistics can be bent to mean whatever you want them to mean and if you go into analyzing them with a preconceived notion of any kind, then you are bound to end up misinterpreting them at one point. Blindly placing faith in metrics is stupid. Metrics should be a tool to validate customer feedback, and make sure you got reliable feedback instead of nonsense submitted by trolls.

scottee

Metrics held counter the vocal minority.

Don't let your critics become your coaches. Leadership 101.

Unknown

_RiO_ wrote:

"There are lies, damn lies and statistics" comes to mind.
Statistics can be bent to mean whatever you want them to mean and if you go into analyzing them with a preconceived notion of any kind, then you are all but bound to misinterpret them. Blindly placing faith in metrics is stupid. Metrics should be a tool to validate customer feedback, and make sure you got reliable feedback instead of nonsense submitted by trolls.

I totally understand your thought process. IF you go in with preconcieved notions, it's possible statistics can be used in a way to support the most wacked out theory....

But really, a person who does this, won't stay in business very long. In fact, I would say that this is NOT the case from Demiurge.

In my 2 months of playing they have shown through these articles as well as their design and patching of the game, that they are trying to increase the level of fun, replay ability, and hype with a very sharp eye on maximizing their profits.

We all tend to think companies are supremely evil and are out to steal our monies. That's not true. Sure they want to profit. Sure they want to increase sales and expand. But they also have to take into account their player base.

I like their business model. I like their data collection. I would really like to hear what type of system they use to "process the data" and put it into action.

Do they use a online KanBan system for task completion? Do they use a push method for character generation and event creation or is it a pull system?

I never thought of Lean Manufacturing or Six Sigma or whatever version of continuous improvement method you want to abide by would apply to online app creation and game development. I think this is brilliant stuff!

Puritas

In my opinion, the Dark Avengers tournament should have been way more engaging — players need to compose a team of some of the less commonly used characters such as Magneto, Daken, and Venom, and that encourages new and interesting strategies.

locked wrote:

Surprised no one mentioned that Magneto was named as one of the DA. Do they even play their own game?

DA tourney was a flop because these characters are mostly weak, and have bad synergy, as has been noted. You just ran Daken + maxed Ares, and Rags for a pile of HP. No strategies were needed in the first place, since Moonstone and Bullseye both plain lose to Daken.

I was just about to post this same thing

LordWill

scottee wrote:

Metrics held counter the vocal minority.

Don't let your critics become your coaches. Leadership 101.

And a closed mouth doesn't get fed either...I would rather speak up than say nothing and let my silence count as approval.

Unknown

I'm of the opinion that yours user don't know what they want but they also know what they don't want. By 'do not want' I mean if you implement a change and half of the people quit, that's an indication of 'do not want'. Asking your user is pointless because they pretty much never want anything that's remotely negative. Thus having metrics helps you know if you have something that people actually do not want (retention goes way down) or just something people claim they do not want.

LordWill

Phantron wrote:

I'm of the opinion that yours user don't know what they want but they also know what they don't want. By 'do not want' I mean if you implement a change and half of the people quit, that's an indication of 'do not want'. Asking your user is pointless because they pretty much never want anything that's remotely negative. Thus having metrics helps you know if you have something that people actually do not want (retention goes way down) or just something people claim they do not want.

You missed the point. See my earlier post. If you give them two bad choices to begin with, how is that even helpful? It makes the metrics meaningless.

People do know what they want from a game, entertainment. They want fun.

Demiurge does a lot of things very well, I would never say they don't. They have outstanding customer service and have made a GREAT game. I understand they aren't perfect. I'm simply trying to say that its fine to collect feedback, but by polling customers, it may take out some of the guess work out of the equation. It will get them to where they want to go quicker than taking the scenic route...They have said from the beginning this is by trial and error. We feel the trail and error side more so than they do.

Another way to put it is like this...

If you go to the doctor and he starts poking you and saying "does it hurt here?" You answer "Nope", He picks a new spot, saying "does it hurt here?" You answer "Nope". This could go on for quite awhile until he comes upon where it does hurt. Instead he could just cut to the chase and ask you "Where does it hurt?"

If they conducted a poll and said for example, would you spend money on custom skins for your characters? Yes or No and found that 68% of 100,000 customers would buy that, THEN you can say hey its worth spending some dev time on it...

Then they could just scrap scaling and focus on more on the features that will actually make them money.

Unknown

Phantron wrote:

I'm of the opinion that yours user don't know what they want but they also know what they don't want. By 'do not want' I mean if you implement a change and half of the people quit, that's an indication of 'do not want'. Asking your user is pointless because they pretty much never want anything that's remotely negative. Thus having metrics helps you know if you have something that people actually do not want (retention goes way down) or just something people claim they do not want.

One of the most common fallacy of a system analyst (right after wishful thinking) is not considering the delayed effects. And go fanatic with those metrics are the best tools to get blind to them.

It's like sea navigation measuring depth not reaching the level of the spine. When you register the hit you already sank or shored. And might only use it to jump in the first boat.

Wise people try to *prevent* a disaster rather than take snapshots until it is captured for good.

Unknown

Unless you got someone who is a visionary you're not going to know what changes that may sound bad that will actually improve the game, and what changes that may sound bad that are actually bad. That's why you need metrics. The problem with metrics is that they can easily be manipulated to show whatever you want so you can't just block out the metrics that makes you look bad, which is what a lot of people do.

For example the change to boosts was received badly but was needed for the game, though it probably doesn't require a visionary to tell that boosts were seriously distorting how the game is played. For more recent issue like scaling, it is far less certain to say whether it's good or bad overall. It's certainly not all good, but it's not all bad either. This isn't something I feel anyone is qualified to say whether it's good or not whether seeing all the data available. While data themselves do not tell you everything, it's pretty much impossible to draw any conclusion without them.

Unknown

for the record the main uproar around boost changes was not the action but method it was dumped on community -- issuing an event that depleted everyone's stocks then changed the prices overnight without telling anyone and not even bothering with confirmation.

Then little later IceIX announced another change and said it will NOT be a price hike, but when it came live it was another 2x.

And the store cap is still the same despite the requests.

Yes, the ubiquitous boosting was not good and cutting it back helped the game -- but the method of introduction was more than terrible. And I see no technical or other sanesible reason why it was not possible to get announced 2 weeks ahead with all details.

Unknown

pasa_ wrote:

for the record the main uproar around boost changes was not the action but method it was dumped on community -- issuing an event that depleted everyone's stocks then changed the prices overnight without telling anyone and not even bothering with confirmation.

Then little later IceIX announced another change and said it will NOT be a price hike, but when it came live it was another 2x.

And the store cap is still the same despite the requests.

Yes, the ubiquitous boosting was not good and cutting it back helped the game -- but the method of introduction was more than terrible. And I see no technical or other sanesible reason why it was not possible to get announced 2 weeks ahead with all details.

Sure they had problem with the way they implemented the change, especially with how there was no warning to guys who chug down AP+3 all boosts like drug attacks, but I'm sure you'd still have plenty of ragequit posts even if it was known ahead of time.

The problem is that a lot of these changes are likely unpopular but good for the game that are also poorly implemented, so it's hard to say if it's actually good for the game but they sure will be unpopular. If you go by popular opinion we'd still have fights that begin with 6 AP of 4 colors every time so that was needed. The fact that it was implemented rather poorly doesn't change the fact that it's still needed. Now, on the subject of scaling, I think it's implemented badly enough, or at least perceived that way, that it's hard to tell if it's actually good for the game. It'd be best if they actually release the formula used to determine the scaling so people don't have to come up with all these weird ways to try to beat the system. Either there's a way to beat it and every knows it, or if there is not, at least you don't have to worry about if that guy ahead of you in your bracket just happens to know some trick about the system that you do not.