Pay to play - Are the rewards worth it?

Kishida

jp1 said:

First, I don’t believe anything in the game should only be available to paying customers. I like that if you choose to be free to play you can still enjoy the entire game. I don’t see how rewarding folks who spend money more generously would take away from their experience at all. If anything we would spend more and the F2P folks in our alliances would receive more CP.

Rewarding a paying customer with anything other than advertised merchandise unbalances the game's ecosystem. It effectively shouts out, "If you aren't paying, we don't care about you." This establishes an unspoken ante, and drives away anyone not willing to pony up that amount. Engagement is worth more to the long-term health and future revenue of MPQ than someone putting down a couple thousand dollars a year. Long ago, someone on this forum put forth the insightful point that ISO is crazy overpriced because they need to have far more people playing the game than simply buying their way through it. Conversely, if a player chooses to do that, they're going to punish them by overcharging them for the privilege.

What I’m really getting at with the money issue is this: 

If you sell me a steak, give me a steak. Don’t take my money for a steak and say “well we might give you a hamburger instead”. If you have premium pricing (which is in place to support all those f2p folks you mentioned by the way) you need to offer premium content. 

If if you want to give me mostly garbage, okay I’m fine with that too, lower the price. A 40 pack should not require the purchase of a stark salary if it will more often than not result in mostly 2* pulls. 

They're giving you what you pay for. If you buy a 10-pack or 40-pack, the stated odds are that you will receive almost entirely 2* covers. They're selling you a hamburger, telling you that you'll get a hamburger, and hinting that if they can scrounge it up, they might give you a bit of steak. If you take that to mean that you're definitely getting a steak, that's not their problem. The single guaranteed bonus for buying a 40-pack is the LT, which again promises a 4* with a small chance for a 5*.

MPQ is an enjoyable game for players of all stripes. Each player gets to choose how they approach it. As has been said dozens of times in this forum, it's a marathon, not a sprint. Undoubtedly the 3* and 4* tiers are a bit of a choke point, but they're also where the majority of the playerbase resides. While they may make changes to speed up 4* acquisition (unlikely, since that's what the latest 12 serve to do), there's a good chance that it will be locked behind difficulty and/or SCL, which can only be overcome by... playing the game. It may seem boring to roster and level characters that don't appeal, but champ rewards are key to progression, along with the aptly-named progression rewards. As frustrating as it may seem, the game most benefits well-rounded rosters with a strong foundation.

For players who put money into the game, every lowly 2* and 3* cover gives them rewards that advance their whole roster. That's the advantage: building from the ground up, one piece at a time. If you're not happy with what you're getting for your money, either spend more, spend more strategically (i.e. buy clubs/sales/digital day), or quit spending.

Ultimately, there are enough whales who understand what they're getting for their money, they allow the entire MPQ ecosystem to thrive, and it seems highly unlikely to change.

Phumade

Jrlrma said:

Bowgentle said:

Jrlrma said:

How in the hell can you earn 78k iso in one day?

By playing a lot for a long time or by spending a lot.

The dude said you can earn that much in a day by “playing optimally” im tryn to figure exactly what that means. 

78k is probably counting sub rewards, event rewards and maybe pvp rewards? In anycase 78k is definitely reachable on a LR day. But it might be high for a non LR, non event ending day. Realistically, you should be earning over 25k a day easily cosidering, sub, ddq, pve selling covers etc..

SymmeTrey

The game is a progression-based game, any time you "cheat" to the max level everything, it becomes super boring. Some occasional acceleration of progress is one thing, but, skipping straight to the end is always going to be unsatisfying. Try using a cheat code to get all the stuff in any game and it quickly loses all its meaning.

In games, as in life, the fun is in the journey, not the end result.

randomhero1090

Newer player.  Like day 160 or so.  Spent money on HPs and those SCL packs.

First, spend what you want.  I totally get the "feels silly" to spend money on a match game.  But hey, if you get hours and hours of entertainment out of it, who cares.  Think about what you spend at the bar.  Or on dinner.  Or to go to a movie.  A movie cost my wife and I, plus 2 kids, like $60 the other day.  Tickets, popcorn, etc.

As for paying...  I would only buy HP and packs with great HP deals and ONLY spend HP on slots.  The slots are king in this game.  Open them all up.  If you don't have covers to put in the slots, then put 1* cards in there.

KenshinUK

I've spent £12.67 getting the three steam bundles (e.g. fury doomsday etc).
Am currently on day 172, have 124 roster slots and champed 3/4 of the 3*s.

Quite happy with what i've spent as, without doing so, this game wouldn't have been as much fun continuously selling covers due to lack of space!

Crnch73

I can honestly say that as a veteran player who tracked token pulls... it never evened out for me. I actually had to stop tracking them because they were getting depressing. I was at 1-2% routinely on pulls that rewarded higher than the minimum, and running about 3% on bonus heroes. 3% isn’t so bad, except I was so rarely getting tokens to reward 3-5 stars that I barely got any overall. Over an 8 month period, I got a total of 1 bonus 5 star, through MANY pulls. 

I can’t say I know the solution though. I would like something to help aid in the process. Both the fact that RNG handles the star tier that you receive AND then the character AND then the color... it’s a tough system.

Colorless covers are the ideal, but not a truly realistic option. I personally suggested a “bad streak breaker” option, where you would only have to sit through a certain number of “lowest tier possible” pulls in a row before getting a guaranteed better pull next time. I honestly can’t say that this doesn’t already exist behind the scenes, but I can attest the odds are pretty poor. I also suggested an “experience points” type system with covers. If you got a certain number of unusable covers, instead of selling them for iso you could just apply them as a “bullet point” to that character. 5 bullet points means you get to trade them in for any color of that character. Less waste in my opinion.

The worse the RNG odds are, the more we need to chase. As long as they scatter random, rare events where you get something nice-and-shiny... we then feel rewarded and keep chasing again. Typical gamblers mentality... just give us the minimum amount of shiny rewards to keep us coming back. No more, no less. Personally, even with a decently developed roster, it would still be nice to tweak this a little. 

jp1

Okay, the steak analogy was inaccurate I admit. What I meant was don’t sell me a hamburger for the price of a steak. 

Premium prices should net premium content. As someone who has worked extensively in sales, I find it hard to believe the business model of relying solely on whales and free to play folks for extended revenue is the most viable option. However, it is only my opinion..as I’ve stated. I’m not going to rage quit or anything. Just pointing out that there is potential income being overlooked because of exorbitant pricing. They can do whatever they wish with that. 

If you can acquire and keep many players who consistently spend $100 monthly, that is a much more stable base than the small fraction of society who will pay tens of thousands of dollars. Again, this is my opinion, I don’t know their business model or their numbers so this discussion is purely for the sake of offering some insight from different types of players perspective.

Phumade

jp1 said:

If you can acquire and keep many players who consistently spend $100 monthly, that is a much more stable base than the small fraction of society who will pay tens of thousands of dollars. Again, this is my opinion, I don’t know their business model or their numbers so this discussion is purely for the sake of offering some insight from different types of players perspective.

Honestly,  I think its your perspective that is a little off base.  This game has always valued new char releases at the $1000+ mark.  Thats been true ever since the 3* /4* days.

A buy club whale who's making steady roster progress into 4*/5* land is realistically spending $300+ a month.  Anything less than that isn't really enough sustained spending to make a meaningful difference unless your already well established.

Kishida

jp1 said:

If you can acquire and keep many players who consistently spend $100 monthly, that is a much more stable base than the small fraction of society who will pay tens of thousands of dollars. Again, this is my opinion, I don’t know their business model or their numbers so this discussion is purely for the sake of offering some insight from different types of players perspective.

I don't know the numbers, and my knowledge of whale spending habits is purely anecdotal, but I have the impression that there are a small core of players putting at least four figures into the game monthly. VIP and small monthly purchases to chase intercepts account for that spectrum of people who consistently spend on the lower end. If they can cover those two bases, they seem happy to offer enough chase items in the middle (Heroes for Hire store, SCL bundles, HP sales, etc) to pull in whatever else they need. 

You, yourself, are a great example of the importance of new players. You come in, spend a decent amount, and figure out that your purchases aren't worth it, whatever that means to you. Now, you've stated that you're not going to "rage quit," so they have your money and have kept you as a customer. You've already displayed that you have a willingness to spend and you're not going anywhere. To them, that's pure profit, and an indication that the status quo works. Why would they start devaluing resources for the merest chance that maybe more people will give them slightly more cash than they're already making?

While there are definitely unaddressed issues in terms of gameplay balance, it feels like D3/Demi have a strong idea of what they want the in-game economy to look like.

Scofie

I've not spent much on the game and I've always been of the mind that I'm enjoying it as F2P. I buy things occasionally to support the game but I'm on day 1615 and I've earned all the covers I have over the last 4 years.

If people want to buy up to my level then fair enough but I'd be pretty annoyed if my reward for playing hours a day for years on end was diluted odds at getting new covers. 

jp1

Lots of excellent points at hand. I would like to make it clear that I haven’t only purchased my way to where I am, I have played rather religiously for the short months I have been active. Also, I did mention rewarding longevity as well. I’ll address some more when I get more time.

Wow! 100 million! That is surprising, guess their model works just fine.

NeonBlue

My concern is that they will stop releasing SCL value packs, then the only thing worth buying is VIP. I'm surprised these packs weren't made available until very recently. Offering limited-time sales always gets people to buy where they otherwise wouldn't (because of the psychological effect this perceived value has) and its limited availability (ie. one-per-customer). In an economy where the supply is digital goods with little to no supply cost, the only mitigating factor is demand. However, given the longevity of this game's progression, as long as there is a consistent playerbase, there will always be demand

The only potential downside from a developer perspective is that frequent sales dissuade potential buyers from buying during non-sale periods. However, it seems likely that these sales converted more F2P players into paying customers than it turned frequent payers into sales-only payers. At most the average F2P player might drop $2 for a month of bonus rewards or $10 for VIP. Big spenders will buy anyway, because their approach to the game is different from others, often valuing time and progress far above money. 

Jabrony_Geoff

There's a post on here somewhere called

How I cured my MPQ addiction.

Read that please. That answers your question. 

cschwinge

DPD already gives a 4* cover every 5 days via the LL token. Should that be a bit more? Probably. But a daily 4* sounds like it would be a bit much. Crash could be done every day. First day gives you LL token, next 4 days give Heroics. 

For earning ISO, optimal play is probably counting Bonus (about 4k/day?), DPD (8k?), champ rewards (variable), 6/6 every node plus bonus 1/1 nodes (10k?), progression rewards for PvP and PvE (5-6k/day), alliance play every day (2k), and high level placement for personal and alliance in both PvP and PvE (8-10k/day)

There's also spamming PvP for the ~100-200 ISO per match. Take a break to get torn down, then building back up. Works great when there are lightning rounds, until you run out of health packs.

Warbringa

I have always thought that this game could, and should have long ago, tweaked its in-game and out-of-game economics.  The iso pricing is one of the biggest issues.  $100 of iso should level up at least 2 4* characters at a bare minimum which would be 600,000-700,000 iso for $100?  You would have far more people buying iso than the very, very few that probably buy it now.  Let us all be honest, 600-700k of iso isn't really that much when you look at total iso costs to champ 3* and 4* now is it?  If someone wants to spend a few thousand to speed up that process, if I were D3 and the devs, I would say yes please here is your iso.  

The biggest issue that I see with the game is that new players can't really buy that much advancement which is a problem due to the long nature of this game.  We all know how long it takes to build a diversified and useful roster in this game. This dissuades players from even getting to the mid level of the game, which is currently where spending money actually is of the most value.   Veterans are to the point where they can usually be F2P because they can earn enough good rewards through their roster and play,  or at least spend only $2/mo. for VIP lite.  That is a lot of lost $ opportunity from my business experience.  

I would like this game to continue to stay around for quite some time since I have invested a lot of time in it (and some $ but I am certainly not a whale). 

NeonBlue

Warbringa said:

I have always thought that this game could, and should have long ago, tweaked its in-game and out-of-game economics.  The iso pricing is one of the biggest issues.  $100 of iso should level up at least 2 4* characters at a bare minimum which would be 600,000-700,000 iso for $100?  You would have far more people buying iso than the very, very few that probably buy it now.  Let us all be honest, 600-700k of iso isn't really that much when you look at total iso costs to champ 3* and 4* now is it?  If someone wants to spend a few thousand to speed up that process, if I were D3 and the devs, I would say yes please here is your iso.  

I think ISO pricing is intentionally undesirable because its the devs making a statement that they encourage playing rather than paying for ISO. ISO is the big in-game currency, so buying it from the store is for the extremely rich or desperate. HP on the other hand is a better value because you get much less of it in game. It's the real-money currency, so they want people to buy it. I think its meant to illustrate the business philosophy/strategy of giving the average player (who buys based on perceived value) a reason to both spend money and play every day.

If they made ISO "worth it," there's the potential that you'll get a lot more short-term players who will buy their way to the top and feel less of a need to consistently play, which means less active users. The devs are betting that long-term active engagement will yield (1) more repeat customers over time and (2) a more active community to entice players to compete. A dead game discourages spending across all tiers of customers. There will be less incentive for whales to whale because they have less people to beat and thus less psychological reinforcement and validation of their purchases. There will be less spending among average users because of the perception that if no one is playing, then its not a game worth spending on, or a game that will not survive long enough to be able to get returns on any money they invest.