Roster Slot Prices........a major problem for new rosters

HoundofShadow

Interestingly, a few months after mpq was available(somewhere in 2014), ~60% of HP was used for cover packs, ~30% was for Roster Slots, the rest 10%. Today, roster slots and cover packs switched position but the % remains similar.

veny

The amount of HPs you can get (even as a newbie) for free is insane compared to the amount i could get when i started playing this game... and daamn, we could have even sell 3* covers for HP.
Do you know how to avoid wasting? Do not open tokens if you know you cant affort a new slot in next 14 days.

bbigler

OJSP said:

HoundofShadow said:

Interestingly, a few months after mpq was available(somewhere in 2014), ~60% of HP was used for cover packs, ~30% was for Roster Slots, the rest 10%. Today, roster slots and cover packs switched position but the % remains similar.

In 2014, I think we had less than 1/4 of the number of characters we do now. In addition, the way to level a character was to get more of their covers.So, we didn’t need to have many roster slots and people who wanted to level up their characters quicker would buy cover packs.

In the beginning of 2014, the number of 3*s was about equal to the number of 2*s!  For me, the "old" characters are the ones that already existed when I joined the game in Nov 2013, which consisted of (if my memory is correct)
7 x 1*s
9 x 2*s
7 x 3*s
2 x 4*s

I believe IM40 was the first new character I saw introduced into the game.  Back then, getting ISO was difficult and getting 3* covers was even more difficult.  This turned into extremely slow progression.  You had to get top 10 PVE or PVP placement in order to get a 3* cover.  The only other source of 3*s was the random token draw. 

bbigler

I found a temporary solution to my roster slot problem: for the past 3 weeks I've been farming 1*s for XP, so I bought 8 extra slots to make that process easier.  So, now I'm starting to eat those slots for 4*s.  I'm also going to throttle my Heroic Token opening by waiting until I have 1000 HP and then buy a slot and take a slot from a 1*.  Theoretically, the more characters I roster, the less frequent I'll need to roster new characters. 

IceIX

MarkersMake said:

Thanks for the overview, @IceIX.

Do you have a breakdown on early stage (ie. before they reach 1000HP cost @ slot 77) vs later stage roster slot spending? My tally is 36,675 HP for the first 76 slots (~480ish per slot on avg). I'm betting on most HP being spent by players past this point of the game. 

From a revenue perspective, if most of the players who actually purchase HP have >76 roster slots (or have acquired a total earned HP > 37k), then adjusting early  roster slot costs shouldn't have too much effect on overall revenues, while potentially increasing retention. 

I don't have any of the numbers to make a solid case for you (since they're all obviously internal) - but it's not unreasonable to look into why new players leave the game and whether dilution/roster slots is an issue that could be addressed without cutting into existing revenues too significantly. 

It's actually the opposite on about a 40/60 split with the 60 being the players that have hit the 1K per slot. You have to remember too though that a lot of new players have no idea how the Hero Point economy actually breaks down, so their spending by and large is affected by that. 100 HP for a Comic Slot early on is a steal, but players don't really know that until they see how much everything else costs in general. And being relatively new, they simply don't have the experience to know that. So players that should probably be dropping those Points on the slot are waiting to see how things shake out first. And then the inevitable grindstone of the Churn Machine comes for a certain percentage of them before they decide to jump in for longer play.

Looking at the overall chart of roster slot spending, the curves are actually extremely close to one another across the board, meaning that the proportional number of players that buy, say slot 40, is about equal proportionally to those buying 120 or 240. So from a pure numbers perspective, people are happy to buy the slot at whatever cost their particular playtime has brought them to. With few exceptions (statistics being what they are), the charts of slot purchases just looks like a line for Slot 5 with all other slots past that just being neatly stacked underneath with the same line shape but lesser numbers in almost perfectly proportional numerical amounts. Reading it in ranked numeric form, it reads nearly perfectly in number order from 5-300+.

Basically, from a purely statistical point of view, players don't appear to be finding Roster Slots hard to buy at the start, so they buy as many as they "need". Then, if they don't churn, they buy as many as their personal Hero Point economy can provide them without a real particular sticking point. The curve runs upward on cost, but as players continue to play, they get used to it and just keep going when it caps out at 1K.

sirwookieechris

I wonder if a “slot bundle” would sell well among new players. I know one of the reasons I didn’t burn out when I returned was that I used the HP from a buy club to heavily invest in slots because I hated lost inventory (ptsd from mmos).

Sell a bundle of 50 or so roster slots for X amount of money. Make it available to players who just hit 1k per roster slot. They know at this point how important roster slots are. Make it a good deal (let’s say 40% off). Would the loss in revenue balance out the fact many players would now be invested to staying in the game longer to fill in all those roster slots?

IceIX

I wouldn't say that 50 would be a good number in this cases purely due to the economics involved. That'd be ~250 USD in Stark Salaries for that many Hero Points, which, even at 50% off would still be sticker shock for most players. Maybe 20 slots with a steep discount, and aim it at 100+ slot players who are used to 1000 HP each. But it'd be hard to say whether that would make more money than the Logan's Loonies that people routinely buy to pad out roster slots when they don't have a stock of Hero Points and they don't want a character dying on the vine. We'd have to do a deep dive on the numbers to determine how common that action is compared to what it could be with a batch of slots purchased ablating that.

I point out making more money specifically because of how valuable roster slots would be for players, and thus how valuable they end up being for the bottom line. We don't always make decisions based off that, but something that would change the income values in a potentially large way would *have* to be thought of like that. It may be worthwhile to make less in aggregate if it raises player satisfaction, but I can't imagine we could make much less before it just becomes a non-starter.

sirwookieechris

IceIX said:

I wouldn't say that 50 would be a good number in this cases purely due to the economics involved. That'd be ~250 USD in Stark Salaries for that many Hero Points, which, even at 50% off would still be sticker shock for most players. Maybe 20 slots with a steep discount, and aim it at 100+ slot players who are used to 1000 HP each. But it'd be hard to say whether that would make more money than the Logan's Loonies that people routinely buy to pad out roster slots when they don't have a stock of Hero Points and they don't want a character dying on the vine. We'd have to do a deep dive on the numbers to determine how common that action is compared to what it could be with a batch of slots purchased ablating that.

I point out making more money specifically because of how valuable roster slots would be for players, and thus how valuable they end up being for the bottom line. We don't always make decisions based off that, but something that would change the income values in a potentially large way would *have* to be thought of like that. It may be worthwhile to make less in aggregate if it raises player satisfaction, but I can't imagine we could make much less before it just becomes a non-starter.

Yeah that is a lot of money. Anyone who bought that probably is loyal enough that they aren’t going anywhere anyways. Do you know how the sale that occurred around the new year went? I’m sure there was a huge influx of roster slots bought ( I myself bought quite a few). Was it successful enough that we might see one again “soon”?

justsing

sirwookieechris said:

IceIX said:

I wouldn't say that 50 would be a good number in this cases purely due to the economics involved. That'd be ~250 USD in Stark Salaries for that many Hero Points, which, even at 50% off would still be sticker shock for most players. Maybe 20 slots with a steep discount, and aim it at 100+ slot players who are used to 1000 HP each. But it'd be hard to say whether that would make more money than the Logan's Loonies that people routinely buy to pad out roster slots when they don't have a stock of Hero Points and they don't want a character dying on the vine. We'd have to do a deep dive on the numbers to determine how common that action is compared to what it could be with a batch of slots purchased ablating that.

I point out making more money specifically because of how valuable roster slots would be for players, and thus how valuable they end up being for the bottom line. We don't always make decisions based off that, but something that would change the income values in a potentially large way would *have* to be thought of like that. It may be worthwhile to make less in aggregate if it raises player satisfaction, but I can't imagine we could make much less before it just becomes a non-starter.

Yeah that is a lot of money. Anyone who bought that probably is loyal enough that they aren’t going anywhere anyways. Do you know how the sale that occurred around the new year went? I’m sure there was a huge influx of roster slots bought ( I myself bought quite a few). Was it successful enough that we might see one again “soon”?

If not soon, then it would be nice if it were a yearly thing to coincide with the other big sale that just so happens to occur at the end of the year