VentureBeat article: MPQ's April Event Analytics

Unknown

LordWill wrote:

I disagree. Either you are in touch with your customer base and you provide the products and services they want or you don't. I am sure along the way by asking your customers what they like and don't like about your company/product/service could help you for the future. If I'm so out of touch that I don't understand what my customers want or I give them what I think they want and not listen to what they are telling me is just bad business sense.

I certainly not saying to not use the numbers but numbers by themselves doesn't give the whole picture. Asking for feedback or taking a poll costs them very little compared what they could stand to gain. I've never heard of a company that doesn't listen to feedback or invite it. We get surveys ALL the time asking "How can we do better?" they value your opinion because they can't afford not to.

Repurposed old joke wrote:

Q. How can you tell when a customer is lying?
A. His lips are moving.

Consider two restaurant managers. Each has five customers come up to him and tell him how much they love the soup and how he should take out the salad bar and replace it with a soup bar.

One manager does that right away.

Another manager goes into the books and discovers that they sell five times as much salad as soup.

Guess which one is in business a year later?

There are things customer feedback is good for; it's good for telling you things you need to pay more attention to, and it's good for giving you ideas you might not have otherwise had. But it's terrible for being used in the place of numbers to make decisions. Metrics are a huge deal because they allow companies to make decisions based on customer behavior, instead of whether or not the customer had a bad breakfast. The numbers only fail to give the whole picture when you aren't collecting the right numbers. And the solution to that problem is to collect the right numbers, not to rely on something as biased and unreliable as customer feedback. Companies like Demiurge are incredibly lucky in that they can measure pretty much everything that has to do with their business - and if they're not measuring the right things with regards to scaling, the solution is to collect the right numbers, not to conduct an opinion poll.

LordWill

ZenBrillig wrote:

LordWill wrote:

I disagree. Either you are in touch with your customer base and you provide the products and services they want or you don't. I am sure along the way by asking your customers what they like and don't like about your company/product/service could help you for the future. If I'm so out of touch that I don't understand what my customers want or I give them what I think they want and not listen to what they are telling me is just bad business sense.

I certainly not saying to not use the numbers but numbers by themselves doesn't give the whole picture. Asking for feedback or taking a poll costs them very little compared what they could stand to gain. I've never heard of a company that doesn't listen to feedback or invite it. We get surveys ALL the time asking "How can we do better?" they value your opinion because they can't afford not to.

Repurposed old joke wrote:

Q. How can you tell when a customer is lying?
A. His lips are moving.

Consider two restaurant managers. Each has five customers come up to him and tell him how much they love the soup and how he should take out the salad bar and replace it with a soup bar.

One manager does that right away.

Another manager goes into the books and discovers that they sell five times as much salad as soup.

Guess which one is in business a year later?

There are things customer feedback is good for; it's good for telling you things you need to pay more attention to, and it's good for giving you ideas you might not have otherwise had. But it's terrible for being used in the place of numbers to make decisions. Metrics are a huge deal because they allow companies to make decisions based on customer behavior, instead of whether or not the customer had a bad breakfast. The numbers only fail to give the whole picture when you aren't collecting the right numbers. And the solution to that problem is to collect the right numbers, not to rely on something as biased and unreliable as customer feedback. Companies like Demiurge are incredibly lucky in that they can measure pretty much everything that has to do with their business - and if they're not measuring the right things with regards to scaling, the solution is to collect the right numbers, not to conduct an opinion poll.

I agree that feedback IS good for some things. I think the feedback and numbers can work together. As I have said before, making some changes based on feedback is no worse than they are doing now by using a shotgun approach to generating more money. We've had the stick way, now lets do the carrot way and compare the results.

But I think when you purely look at just the numbers without regarding any feedback in the case of scaling, it has a negative impact. It was said that it was implemented to give players more of a challenge. I didn't ask for that. So by looking at the numbers they somehow determined that somehow we weren't being challenged and the game must not be fun for them and chose to ramp up enemies levels. This was strictly a metrics decision and I think its bad for gameplay. There is a difference of having fun and slogging through 10+ min fights for 20 iso. They know its not fun yet they continue to ramp up scaling to level 400 enemies. Now I don't know about your MPQ experience and if you enjoy slogging through super high level of enemies, but I can tell you I don't like it and many others do not like it. I would love to know how long any of the MPQ team has spent with those higher level enemies and if they thought it was fun.

There is absolutely no reason for community scaling. period. I have proposed a solution and will wait and see what happens.

This isn't a casual game anymore. It requires commitment and dedication. It involves hours and hours of gameplay to level up your roster. Money helps and can certainly get you there a little quicker. Of course when they change a fundamental element of the game it can basically nullify all that time and money invested, which is what scaling did in my opinion.

I am all for Demiurge to make money, I hope they make a lot of it so they can continue to develop the game. It is free to play and if no one pays, then there isn't much incentive for them to continue to develop. However their attitude seems to be more stick and less carrot. It does affect players, especially the more seasoned players. New players will eventually learn this as they develop their roster and they will come here as some have and say the exact same thing. In fact if you look around you will see many examples of that. I guess their strategy is to not worry about that segment of the playerbase as long as they are making the money they need to, it doesn't matter.

Maybe you haven't arrived at that point with your MPQ experience. I understand. Many of us here have gotten to that point and are trying to give suggestions to make the game better. I don't think anyone is begrudging Demiurge their due. Most people want Demiurge to continue to succeed.

I don't think anyone has suggested feedback to just make the game so easy its really not worth playing or iso just falling from the sky. And I am not saying they need to act on every shred of feedback they get. However if they conduct polls, at the very least they would know what the majority of the playerbase thinks and wants, which I don't think is a bad thing.

I think there is a way for Demiurge to make what they need to make without punishing the players. I think there can be a happy medium which I am hoping they are looking for and with feedback, they might be able to find that sweet spot a little easier.

Unknown

LordWill wrote:

There is absolutely no reason for community scaling. period.

I don't think you can conclude this. I find it highly unlikely that community scaling was implemented accidentally. That means that Demiurge put it in deliberately, which means (unless they are irrational), that they had a reason to do so.

Here is one reason to implement community scaling: to counter the effect of rubber-banding. My interpretation is that rubber-banding was implemented so that people could compete in events without needing to play every single refresh cycle of a multi-day event. This, however, created a situation where it was only necessary to play the last hour of an event to place well. Community scaling, to a degree, counteracts that by making it harder to complete nodes as time goes by. However, the optimal strategy is still to play at the bell, so actually, it can be argued that community scaling isn't strong enough.

I read your solution, but it fails to address the most critical problem of all - which is that scaling is necessary. What you've done is actually to eliminate scaling and replace it with difficulty levels. The purpose of scaling is to try to create a level playing field between a relatively new player and a long-time veteran.

Clintman

ZenBrillig wrote:

LordWill wrote:

There is absolutely no reason for community scaling. period.

I don't think you can conclude this. I find it highly unlikely that community scaling was implemented accidentally. That means that Demiurge put it in deliberately, which means (unless they are irrational), that they had a reason to do so.

Here is one reason to implement community scaling: to counter the effect of rubber-banding. My interpretation is that rubber-banding was implemented so that people could compete in events without needing to play every single refresh cycle of a multi-day event. This, however, created a situation where it was only necessary to play the last hour of an event to place well. Community scaling, to a degree, counteracts that by making it harder to complete nodes as time goes by. However, the optimal strategy is still to play at the bell, so actually, it can be argued that community scaling isn't strong enough.

I read your solution, but it fails to address the most critical problem of all - which is that scaling is necessary. What you've done is actually to eliminate scaling and replace it with difficulty levels. The purpose of scaling is to try to create a level playing field between a relatively new player and a long-time veteran.

A new player and long time veteran should not be on the same playing field. The new players should be aspiring to be veteran players. Scaling sucks because it is in essence invalidating hard work put in by its veteran playerbase.

Unknown

Clintman wrote:

A new player and long time veteran should not be on the same playing field. The new players should be aspiring to be veteran players. Scaling sucks because it is in essence invalidating hard work put in by its veteran playerbase.

I understand what you're saying but it's just not a viable thing long-term. If you build your game along those lines, you're essentially telling new players "Forget about being competitive in events for the next three months. And once you've caught up, the veterans will still be three months ahead of you, so you'll still suck. But giv monies plz?"

Doesn't work.

If new players don't feel like they've got a shot, they'll find another game where they do.

The other way companies have solved this problem is to silo people into different dimensions by start-date. That could be done here as well, but I'm not sure I'd like the effects.

Unknown

I dunno, I think a meta-exp system could have solved a lot of problems this game has had over the past 6 months with MMR, PvE level scaling, reward scaling and even helping users identify cheaters.

In the end, the meta-game of this game is simply about progression. We're all following the same path with little deviation. Only money or time spent can speed that treadmill up. I would think devs could better control that progression if you had a simple, transparent system that allows the user to understand where they are or should be.

NorthernPolarity

Clintman wrote:

ZenBrillig wrote:

LordWill wrote:

There is absolutely no reason for community scaling. period.

I don't think you can conclude this. I find it highly unlikely that community scaling was implemented accidentally. That means that Demiurge put it in deliberately, which means (unless they are irrational), that they had a reason to do so.

Here is one reason to implement community scaling: to counter the effect of rubber-banding. My interpretation is that rubber-banding was implemented so that people could compete in events without needing to play every single refresh cycle of a multi-day event. This, however, created a situation where it was only necessary to play the last hour of an event to place well. Community scaling, to a degree, counteracts that by making it harder to complete nodes as time goes by. However, the optimal strategy is still to play at the bell, so actually, it can be argued that community scaling isn't strong enough.

I read your solution, but it fails to address the most critical problem of all - which is that scaling is necessary. What you've done is actually to eliminate scaling and replace it with difficulty levels. The purpose of scaling is to try to create a level playing field between a relatively new player and a long-time veteran.

A new player and long time veteran should not be on the same playing field. The new players should be aspiring to be veteran players. Scaling sucks because it is in essence invalidating hard work put in by its veteran playerbase.

I tend to see MPQ as 2 separate worlds: PvE and PvP. In PvP, its clear that veteran players have a huge advantage over lowbies, and since thats where most of the rewards are, new players must care about performing well in PvP. As a result, I'm okay with them being on more equal footing in PvE since it'll hook them into the game, as long as they aren't trivially winning matches that we're struggling with, and they need to fix scaling to handle this case.

Unknown

I think part of the issue is where and who is the money coming from? Is it coming from new players or established players?

I would think scaling would be friendly to new players and less friendly to experienced players who could have more factors influencing their individual scaling and therefore more factors that could potentially increase their scaling. So if scaling is friendly to newer players and that's where the money is being made, then that might be why there haven't been any changes.

Unknown

The biggest problem is that with the current event architecture (no skill tiers), you cant effectively make game design decisions that improves the game for everyone at the same time.

MPQ has a really tiny user base (2mil+) compared to many games that are making the same amount of money. They've said it before that they get a lot of people that come in and then leave within a day or two. They probably figure if they can improve that, then their revenue will increase along with it. That means giving more opportunities to 1* and 2* teams and not making them feel like it's useless to compete. Unfortunately this it at the expense of all us veteran players (lol, I'm a veteran after only playing for 3 months). Although I'm not so sure that being a 2* is much easier because of the number of people complaining about how hard the 2* to 3* transition is lately.

I don't agree with this way of thinking. MPQ is not candy crush, it's not clash of clans, it's not a game that has a 500 million install base. What it does is it provides an awesome experience to a niche user base (compared to candy crush) and does a really good job at monetizing those users. The article itself talks about how MPQ is getting close to a $1 ARPDAU. Compare that with Candy Crush which has a $0.23 ARPDAU.

So if you push at broadening the userbase at the expense of the veterans you might be able to increase the number of 1 and 2 stars. but you are going to lose your whales, and those 1 and 2 stars will drop out eventually because the end game is so hard now compared to the rewards. The feedback on PvE scaling is almost unanimous, and now that rewards and ISO are being reduced I really don't understand how any of us are going to be able to level a nick fury when we finally do get our hands on him. I have to admit I wasn't paying that much attention to the rewards in the sim subs but when I won 1st in both, I expected to have enough ISO to add a couple levels to my Psylocke. I was shocked when I realized I only won 2k ISO total for 2x1st place.

The next question is wether MPQ has the potential to be mass market like Candy Crush of Clash of Clans. I don't think so. To me it feels like a game somewhere between Steam and the app store. I've tried to evangelize the game amongst my indie friends as well as my non gamer friends and I've run into a lot of resistance. MPQ doesn't have the mass market art style of Angry Birds, Candy Crush, etc. Also it's a fairly complex game. There is a lot of information to digest when you start. The match three tiles have symbols in addition to their shape and color, and it's not very friendly to someone who doesn't like complexity. But happily, there are a lot of people who like this complexity who are willing to spend money on a game they enjoy.

No one is asking for a free ride, or that Demiurge appeal to us veterans at the expense of growing your revenue. We are simply asking that you find ways to not harm the end game in the process of growing your revenue. I think there are some assumptions that can be made about the experience we are all looking for.

We all want a sense of progression. It doesn't feel good to sit and spin your wheels or even worst feel like progression is out of your reach.

We want to feel like we are kicking butt. We don't want to be heavily damaged by EVERY single match or even worse, feel like we need to damage ourselves in order for the game to be playable. and yes, taking 30% damage on every match is heavily damaged because you can't afford to go into your next match with only 60% health.

We want to feel like our time is worth something. In order to be good at this game you need to invest a TON of time. In order to get 1st in a PvE you need to spend 6 or more hours per day (more for the hunt). It's a real kick in the nuts to get 1k iso after investing 10 hours total on a sub, when you could have just ground a PvE for 6-10 quick matches total.

If the rules are changing and effecting the most loyal users in the game. You should talk to us. IceIX does a great job, but he hasn't been that active in this last week and I don't think anyone from Demiurge has responded to all the negative feedback concerning scaling, reduced rewards, and reduced ISO. Even when information is given to us, it comes in cryptic batches. and many times it doesn't address the biggest elephants in the room. If you are tying to get us to play in a certain style, tell us what that style is, the long term players have grinding all day and night ingrained in their personalities. From my perspective It seems like you are trying to get the hardcore players to play less. but you are doing it by making it painful to play at all. The game is very competitive and we are very competitive people. The big draw is that we can get sucked into the game and it's addictive, that's why I spend money on it. I'm not so sure I would be as interested in a game where I only played an hour a day.

I think it would be a great idea for Demiurge Will to do a state of the union each month that addresses the most popular issues and talks about changes, the intent behind the changes and wether the past changes are seen as successful. We actually had a little more of this kind of insight around the time that the skip tax was first implemented but things have gotten a lot less transparent since.

We need to trust that we will be taken care of in the future and that we won't be viewed as the small minority that is effected by things like scaling.

Unknown

Wanted to say one thing about metrics vs anecdotal feedback. I totally agree they both have a place but metrics will not tell you if people like the experience necessarily, or like the changes. There may be all kinds of influences for why people spend more time or money on something (including wether or not a new 3* cover is being offered).

Focus groups, surveys, and playing the game all have an important part in deciding the right direction to move a game like this.

I would like to see more designers play the game at a high level and see what the experience is like. try to get 1st in a PvE or a PvP. Spend some time with a high level player. or players of all skill levels. See how they play, what is useful and what is annoying.

One thing that has lost it's effectiveness is skip tax. for play above 1000 the skip tax is totally ignored by most players.

Puritas

davecazz wrote:

I would like to see more designers play the game at a high level and see what the experience is like. try to get 1st in a PvE or a PvP. Spend some time with a high level player. or players of all skill levels. See how they play, what is useful and what is annoying.

or any level

Unknown

Puritas wrote:

davecazz wrote:

I would like to see more designers play the game at a high level and see what the experience is like. try to get 1st in a PvE or a PvP. Spend some time with a high level player. or players of all skill levels. See how they play, what is useful and what is annoying.

or any level

This is a pretty common complaint on gaming forums and I think it's universally silly. Why do you imagine that the devs don't play their own game?

Unknown

If you don't come out of a fight damaged significantly then what determines who is best at the game? Whoever has more endurance to keep on playing forever?

Winning without taking significant damage does not work out financially (won't need to level up more characters for depth or more health packs for heals), and it doesn't make sense competitively. It's like measuring your Starcraft ability on winning % when 7on1 comp stomp counts. For there to be any ordering of player ability, it has to be the case that most people loses, relatively speaking, compared to the winner. Even if the winner never needs to heal, then at least all the losers definitely do need to heal or you can't even figure out who is the winner.

Puritas

ZenBrillig wrote:

Puritas wrote:

davecazz wrote:

I would like to see more designers play the game at a high level and see what the experience is like. try to get 1st in a PvE or a PvP. Spend some time with a high level player. or players of all skill levels. See how they play, what is useful and what is annoying.

or any level

This is a pretty common complaint on gaming forums and I think it's universally silly. Why do you imagine that the devs don't play their own game?

maybe you missed the discussion in the first two pages of this thread lol

Unknown

ZenBrillig wrote:

Puritas wrote:

davecazz wrote:

I would like to see more designers play the game at a high level and see what the experience is like. try to get 1st in a PvE or a PvP. Spend some time with a high level player. or players of all skill levels. See how they play, what is useful and what is annoying.

or any level

This is a pretty common complaint on gaming forums and I think it's universally silly. Why do you imagine that the devs don't play their own game?

I'm sure they play the game. but I dont think they play it like a lot of the players on the forum play it. I think there is something valuable to be gained from trying to get 1st place in an event. you can hear us talk about the various strategies but I think it's valuable to actually try them out. also you don't really feel the pain of something like scaling unless you try to actually grind out a couple subs in order to get top ranking.

I'm tying to find a way for them to actually feel the reason why people are making these complaints instead of taking our word for it.

Spoit

Seriously guys, how many months has it been? you're not going to get certain people to budge from their whole 'the game is trivial so lrn2play and stop whining' stances

Unknown

It's literally impossible for a dev to play the game like some of us. If they did that, those guys would never get any work done and the game will still totally suck.

On one hand you can't just expect a dev to play the game like crazy to see what's wrong and at some level you'd hope the guys design the game have enough faith in what they're doing, but on the other hand they also need to be able to tell the difference between general whining and a legitmate problem.

I think the problem here is that conceptually I think scaling is quite needed, but the way it's implemented leaves a lot to be desired. Without even arguing about design philsophy, you can't have a system where two guys with similar roster/playstyle have grossly different level enemies. You can't have a system where two guys with the same scaling in the previous event have starting enemies differ by 200 levels in the next event. You can't have a system that's fundamentally important to your success in PvE work like some kind of black box. People have to know what goes into the scaling before we can decide if it even works or not. You can't expect people to just accept on blind faith that the scaling is working when you indeed see a lot of crazy things going on with scaling.

Unknown

Phantron wrote:

you can't have a system where two guys with similar roster/playstyle have grossly different level enemies.

I don't think that's ever been demonstrated. Rosters sure, but playstyle? Unless the same person is playing both accounts, I doubt you can make that claim.

Clintman

Many of us have MMO roots that play this as addictively as we do.

It is important to have the high end superstars for new players to aspire to be like, there needs to be meaningful endgame.

I can't even count the number of MMOs that died because the endgame wasn't robust. New players come into the game, but they leave if they do not see an active veteran population. It only makes sense, why invest in a game if the people at the highest levels aren't vested any longer.

Not listening to the experienced base of players who are telling the devs what they find fun is a recipe for disaster. If they are not heeded then there will be an aftermath where you are sitting surrounded by metrics that indicate that things should have gone differently.

Puritas

davecazz wrote:

I'm sure they play the game. but I dont think they play it like a lot of the players on the forum play it. I think there is something valuable to be gained from trying to get 1st place in an event.

Well to be fair, when I worked in game dev I quickly stopped playing at anything more than a very casual level the games I was working on, despite how much I enjoyed their mechanics
But then again, that's the kind of feedback beta and QA teams are supposed to be for