Different types of players and why you should love them all.

Clintman

I see players as falling into 3 categories; Veterans/hardcore, Intermediate and Newbie. Mixed in there I talk about F2P since they populate all 3 categories.

First I will share my observations on each. Bear in mind I do not claim to speak definitively, only from my own perspective. Second I will explain the vital role each plays in the success of the game. Finally I will share my opinion on what needs to change and why.

Veterans/Hardcore: These are the people like myself, admittedly not representative of the population of the game, we represent the top 1-5% by my own estimate of the player base, but we are the ones that are watched more than the rest of the 95%. We are the ones who dominate the leader boards, whose alliances show up at the top. We are the people who have 10-11 Maxed out 141 toons and are not heartbroken over the nerf to Spiderman because we can take it. We spend money, and lots of it. Take a look at how many Dakens have almost all their covers and are in the 100's.

F2P: The F2P ones who have 5+ 141s that they earned through blood sweat and tears are the one that demonstrate that you can win at this game without refinancing your home to do it, they are the truly hardcore. These are the ones who do a lot of research on their characters and make sure they spend their ISO effectively. F2P are hybrids of the four groups I identified, they are Veterans/Hardcore, intermediates and newbies alike. The F2P eventually transition to paying, or hold onto their F2Pness like a badge of honor.
On a lighter note, some of our self identified F2P are like Celibacy club members who hook on the weekends, not everyone is honest about their spending habits, and really it doesn't matter.

Intermediates: are the working class of MPQ, these are the ones that are working toward their transitions, they have the full range of rosters, 1* Storm maxed out, 2* Thor/OBW/Wolverine working on Ares. You name it they got it. These are the ones that are the most likely in my opinion to make the tip and start spending money on something other than Roster Slots... Just hopefully they did not use their first IAP to buy Spiderman's last blue, or C Mag's Red.

Newbies: These are the guys that just came out of Prologue and want to see what the fuss is about, they are in no way vested in the game and want to see if it is fun enough to keep playing, they have not made up their minds about IAP, but they are curious to see how stupid the exchange rates are for currency. They want to try PVP and see what their 17+ 1* roster can do.
Who is most important of these groups? The unsurprising answer is all of them are important. Veterans/Hardcore are the people that the Intermediates and F2P look at and want to join the ranks of. Without the Veteran/Hardcore population being strong and vibrant the Intermediate and Newbie population get wary of the future and decide to keep their money in their pockets. Veterans/Hardcore burn out and fade away all the time, but what is important is why they fade away. If they leave because they are bored, found something else to do, wife left them etc. Then no harm no foul, new intermediates graduate into the hardcore and the cycle continues. If the Veteran/Hardcore population starts leaving because they become disillusioned then things get bad. The Veteran/Hardcore population is small, but it is vocal and it is influential. (I know, what a bunch of Divas right?)

Intermediates are the lifeblood of the game, these are the ones the Devs need to convince to start spending money. The Hardcore/Veterans already do, they are deeply involved in the meta-endgame where they spend 3-4X as much ISO in shields and boosts every PVP just to take first place. Those guys are already spending money, hell I have my Daken ready for the 1100 point reward and 3x covers from the next PVP featuring him and he will be maxed out.

But the intermediates are still on the fence, they have fun with the game, but they are not sure it's worth the cash. Is the game going to be fun enough in the future to warrant the investment? The answer to that question lies in the vibrancy of the Veteran/Hardcore population, and it also lies in the accessibility of events for them. Moreso the events than the Veteran/Hardcores of course.
Next we talk about the Newbies. These are the most temperamental of all of them, they might have downloaded it just because someone recommended it and have no idea if they want to even play more than a couple of matches before they go back to Clash of Clans. These are the ones that will be the future of the game if they get hooked.

Finally a note about F2P: Everyone starts out F2P, even if they never spend a dime they keep the population up and give targets for PVP, their contribution matters even if it is not a direct monetary gain.

Challenges: The challenges I see facing the game now are the aging population, the Veteran/Hardcore group is growing and getting deeper, this is good, but they are demanding as hell and vocal. They are also determined to find ways around controls set in place to limit the things they do not like.

This growing population however feeds brutally on the intermediate and newbie player base. It is common knowledge how to tank your MMR down to the level 6 1* MMR range and beat on people who just started the game because it is the fastest way to gain ISO.
The devs have figured out ways to protect the newbie's by sharding the brackets and putting all of the intermediate and Veteran/hardcore players together and leaving the newbies in relatively protected brackets. Sure they still get preyed on by the higher levels because of MMR but they have the ability to take first with a low level roster because of bracketing. I think this is a good thing. The new players need to be protected, but then again so do the intermediates.

So, the newbies are happy, the intermediates are pissed because 10th place requires over 1000 points to attain and those point spots are all filled with 141 rosters. The veteran/hardcores are pissed because all they really want is more ISO to level up their 40 slot rosters, and now there is much harder competition for that ISO reward in the tournaments.

Every one of these groups is very important and interdependent. Even the elite/veteran/hardcore/A-holes are necessary even though they do not spend as much as the rest of the 95%. Don't forget they were part of that 95% before they broke away from the pack.

If you have had the patience to read my other posts you already know my personal opinion of the direction the game should go. Change is needed because the player base is maturing, and it will be REALLY loyal if it is nurtured.

We need a risk vs. Reward structure. once you hit the top echelon of the game you should be making more ISO per fight than newbie and intermediate players. There needs to be an incentive not to hit the weaker rosters and more incentive to hit harder targets that take longer to kill.

2 tournaments with different reward structures where a player can pick only 1 but not both. One tournament with lower level rewards and lower ISO per fight, but with covers that help you transition to 3*. And one that has a higher ISO per fight with better covers and then only let the player choose one. Let players decide which brackets they enter. It will go a long way to stave off people feeling like they got screwed by the Hogwarts sorting hat.

I also think we need to have fewer tournaments count toward the Season goals, allow people to take breaks from their alliance obligations and reduce burnout.

daveomite

Excellent post and thoughts/points Clint. +1

Unknown

Confession: I'm a F2P player. Have not spent a single cent to date and frankly quite embarrassed by it. There was a time when I really wanted to drop a Stark Salary to support the devs because they WERE so awesome. Open and active communications (IceIX), active forum, new characters, etc.

Then I realized something, something I also read in this forum, there is no progression in this game, only the illusion of progression. There were other issues too, most of which have been repeated plenty of times so I won't repeat them.

Not that I'm complaining as a F2P player, but game strategy and timing brings you further than a huge HP cache. I can't compete at the top but I'm happy slowly building my rooster, using whatever is given.

I agree that some changes are needed to cater to the changing demographics, to keep them interested. Plenty of good proposals have been threw around in this forum. I like the idea of two concurrent events, I hope the devs are listening thou.

*easter egg somewhere

mohio

I really want to know which hero you lovingly refer to as your rooster. Is it Loki? He's most rooster-ish imo.

Unknown

laoahpeh wrote:

Confession: I'm a F2P player. Have not spent a single cent to date and frankly quite embarrassed by it. There was a time when I really wanted to drop a Stark Salary to support the devs because they WERE so awesome. Open and active communications (IceIX), active forum, new characters, etc.

Then I realized something, something I also read in this forum, there is no progression in this game, only the illusion of progression. There were other issues too, most of which have been repeated plenty of times so I won't repeat them.

Not that I'm complaining as a F2P player, but game strategy and timing brings you further than a huge HP cache. I can't compete at the top but I'm happy slowly building my rooster, using whatever is given.

I agree that some changes are needed to cater to the changing demographics, to keep them interested. Plenty of good proposals have been threw around in this forum. I like the idea of two concurrent events, I hope the devs are listening thou.

*easter egg somewhere

I wish you hadn't said that...now I feel like I have to duel you to the death in our bracket just to find who is the more addicted f2p player. .... Does that make me the villian? Can I be the hood? I kinda want his hoodie for morning jogs *lies* I just want it...lol

Also, my roster doesn't like your labels. Just because I stop lvling at 131 and save iso doesn't make them less of a man! Also, to f2p players it somewhat does matter because we clearly cannot compete with ppl.dropping money in this roster progression game. Do I care if someone is f2p with a better roster? No. But j would still like to know my real constituents (read: ppl to beat). That said, non-f2p don't anger me..that would be stupid. Someone "wasting" ("" to show my opinion) money on the game allows me go play it at all,... so... Cheers all you whales and dolphins out there.

Also, your suggestion only helps me most likely as my roster looks like a little below a 141 but I play it just like a 141. Lvls are overrated in this game. So ya know..sure lol

Unknown

You should be worried about Sauce. Not me.

Unknown

laoahpeh wrote:

You should be worried about Sauce. Not me.

I don't know how many points either of you have in the shield. I DO know that I was ahead of sauce but behind you at.the end of the event before heavy metal when I had *cough hack SNEEZE* points in the shield training. So, my assumption is that you are most likely ahead of both of us still, discounting the shield training. Especially because o had a mild flare up of dgaf the last 2 events and only placed above 1.1k instead of 1.3k.

We should all get top 5 regardless. The #6 is too far back.

Unknown

Clintman wrote:

the intermediates are pissed because 10th place requires over 1000 points to attain and those point spots are all filled with 141 rosters.

This is the truest quote ever. I've got a roster where I have a team of 60's, but I can't do anything past that. Every tournament is just slowly getting ISO to eventually make them 85. That is, after I get their last covers. Too bad I can't get any covers because I have to spend a lot of time just to get into the top 200 in PvP. If I want to get top 100, I have to basically get lucky fighting the last hour and hoping I don't get hit too much. It's also not helpful that the 2* covers recently have all been useless characters. It's not really fun to spend 3 hours grinding only to barely get top 200, where I don't even get any HP to expand my roster to accommodate all these 1 cover 3* characters I have, that I can't even get more covers for outside of tokens since I can never win any 3* covers from anything. The bracketing is seriously ridiculous now. A few weeks ago, I could get 400-500 points and get top 100, sometimes 50 for the 3*. Now I have to get like 600 (which is impossible to hold with my roster) to get top 100, maybe.

Vohnkar

I agree with everything Clintman said.

I'm not a F2P player, I love F2P games because I can try them and play a lot without paying anything, but if the game is providing me lots of hours of fun I usually spent money on them (if I can afford it at the time). I started the game when they released on steam on December and after a couple of weeks of playing I already knew I would be playing a lot so I invested some money to expand my roster slots. I've spent a couple more times to create my 20 slots alliance and make all the slots free for the people who joins in (half of the alliance are friends from RL).

I was planning to keep investing now and then a few € to lvl faster or get the dificult covers, but for now I'm waiting and stick to F2P again. I think I contributed more than enough, a game not f2p is 50-60€ worth, I've already paid far more and I'm ok with that, the game has provided me more than 400+ hours of fun. If the game finally stops dropping the ball on the changes and take a new direction that makes it fair to all of us again I'll consider to support again in the future.

Unknown

dragonsroc wrote:

Clintman wrote:

the intermediates are pissed because 10th place requires over 1000 points to attain and those point spots are all filled with 141 rosters.

This is the truest quote ever. I've got a roster where I have a team of 60's, but I can't do anything past that. Every tournament is just slowly getting ISO to eventually make them 85. That is, after I get their last covers. Too bad I can't get any covers because I have to spend a lot of time just to get into the top 200 in PvP. If I want to get top 100, I have to basically get lucky fighting the last hour and hoping I don't get hit too much. It's also not helpful that the 2* covers recently have all been useless characters. It's not really fun to spend 3 hours grinding only to barely get top 200, where I don't even get any HP to expand my roster to accommodate all these 1 cover 3* characters I have, that I can't even get more covers for outside of tokens since I can never win any 3* covers from anything. The bracketing is seriously ridiculous now. A few weeks ago, I could get 400-500 points and get top 100, sometimes 50 for the 3*. Now I have to get like 600 (which is impossible to hold with my roster) to get top 100, maybe.

I feel like I'm kinda beating a dead horse here by moaning about the woes of being a transitioning player on the forums all the time but with the recent changes to brackets it won't get better once you have maxed 85 characters.

I currently have 5 2* characters at max level and I am nowhere near close to transitioning to 3*, my highest 3*s are Hulk and Patch at 77, Falcon at 64, still some good 3-4 covers away from being useful.

Clintman

sup123 wrote:

dragonsroc wrote:

Clintman wrote:

the intermediates are pissed because 10th place requires over 1000 points to attain and those point spots are all filled with 141 rosters.

This is the truest quote ever. I've got a roster where I have a team of 60's, but I can't do anything past that. Every tournament is just slowly getting ISO to eventually make them 85. That is, after I get their last covers. Too bad I can't get any covers because I have to spend a lot of time just to get into the top 200 in PvP. If I want to get top 100, I have to basically get lucky fighting the last hour and hoping I don't get hit too much. It's also not helpful that the 2* covers recently have all been useless characters. It's not really fun to spend 3 hours grinding only to barely get top 200, where I don't even get any HP to expand my roster to accommodate all these 1 cover 3* characters I have, that I can't even get more covers for outside of tokens since I can never win any 3* covers from anything. The bracketing is seriously ridiculous now. A few weeks ago, I could get 400-500 points and get top 100, sometimes 50 for the 3*. Now I have to get like 600 (which is impossible to hold with my roster) to get top 100, maybe.

I feel like I'm kinda beating a dead horse here by moaning about the woes of being a transitioning player on the forums all the time but with the recent changes to brackets it won't get better once you have maxed 85 characters.

I currently have 5 2* characters at max level and I am nowhere near close to transitioning to 3*, my highest 3*s are Hulk and Patch at 77, Falcon at 64, still some good 3-4 covers away from being useful.

I really hope they separate out the cover packs so that you can select from a grouped selection of heroes. Marvel Heroes recognized this and they created fortune cards that had a group of potential heroes you could win for each one allowing you to spend money for a chance of the one you want. I realize D3 came to the conclusion that random is more exciting and therefor has a wide open lottery on cover packs, I am proposing they create smaller groups to random sample from.

An alternate idea sugested by.... I can't remember that I liked similar to the above is to do the same thing, except you could only get heroes from a color, so you would create 6 packs that would have all of the heroes with blue, as the only rewards available, and you could only get a blue cover for any hero.

I base this idea off of the belief that people will spend money on card packs, but that the current system is way out of the players favor and ultimately will work against the devs if the players cannot reasonably get enough covers to transition to the 3*s.

P.S. 6% Drop rate of a featured character is garbage, I would have bought a 10 pack of the Daken event covers if I did not feel that the odds given were an idiot check to see if I was stupid enough to waste my money rather than just pay 1200HP per cover to upgrade him manually. I like random chances as much as the next guy, but I can see when the odds are clearly designed to screw you.

_RiO_

Clintman wrote:

I really hope they separate out the cover packs so that you can select from a grouped selection of heroes. Marvel Heroes recognized this and they created fortune cards that had a group of potential heroes you could win for each one allowing you to spend money for a chance of the one you want. I realize D3 came to the conclusion that random is more exciting and therefor has a wide open lottery on cover packs, I am proposing they create smaller groups to random sample from.

Actually; Marvel Heroes now has a premium currency called Eternity Splinters with which to purchase heroes. You can either purchase a random hero (normal distribution, same odds for all heroes) for 175ES or buy a specific one for 200, 400 or 600 ES. Cost does not represent power, but rather the amount of actual work that was involved with creating the hero; voice talent, graphics work, inventing new game systems. You'll be just as good with a 200 ES hero as you would be with a 600 ES one. Lastly, the ES currency drops at a fixed rate of about 1 ES per 10 minutes. However, special simultaneous drops of 2 ES or 10 ES exist and their occurence is affected by your special item find (SIF) rating, i.e. they can be boosted. Boosts and ES are handed out like candy in weekly special events and through codes redeemed through your game account.

The random stuff dropped from fortune cards are special costumes that only drop from those particular cards (or that can be bought by farming a set amount of special resources only dropped from those cards; a consolation prize, basically). Also, costumes are purely cosmetic. They're more of a prestige thing than anything that gives you functional power in the game.

D3P stands to learn a lot from Gazillion's modus operandi.

Clintman

You know I see a few of our frequent negative posters who seem to think that whenever someone complains about nerfing of tokens,roster slots and no guarantee of the featured hero which has all happened lately. That the players are acting like they are entitled.

It is funny, paying customers are entitled, and D3 looks at F2P as potential paying customers and should not treat their concerns as dismissively as a lot of our negative posters seem to think they should.

I can definitely agree that a lot of belly aching gets old fast, but the reality in my opinion is that the game is turning the corner and is becoming one of the F2P titles that I instinctively avoid because the blatant monetization is more important than the game. I don't want to see this happen because I love the game, but feeling like I am being taken advantage of will lead me away from it.

The fact that people are willing to try to craft meaningful alternatives and are wanting to be part of the solution tells me a lot. This is a great game and people do care about it, if they did not, this forum would be barren and we would all wander off to another title.

Bainee

_RiO_ wrote:

Clintman wrote:

I really hope they separate out the cover packs so that you can select from a grouped selection of heroes. Marvel Heroes recognized this and they created fortune cards that had a group of potential heroes you could win for each one allowing you to spend money for a chance of the one you want. I realize D3 came to the conclusion that random is more exciting and therefor has a wide open lottery on cover packs, I am proposing they create smaller groups to random sample from.

Actually; Marvel Heroes now has a premium currency called Eternity Splinters with which to purchase heroes. You can either purchase a random hero (normal distribution, same odds for all heroes) for 175ES or buy a specific one for 200, 400 or 600 ES. Cost does not represent power, but rather the amount of actual work that was involved with creating the hero; voice talent, graphics work, inventing new game systems. You'll be just as good with a 200 ES hero as you would be with a 600 ES one. Lastly, the ES currency drops at a fixed rate of about 1 ES per 10 minutes. However, special simultaneous drops of 2 ES or 10 ES exist and their occurence is affected by your special item find (SIF) rating, i.e. they can be boosted. Boosts and ES are handed out like candy in weekly special events and through codes redeemed through your game account.

The random stuff dropped from fortune cards are special costumes that only drop from those particular cards (or that can be bought by farming a set amount of special resources only dropped from those cards; a consolation prize, basically). Also, costumes are purely cosmetic. They're more of a prestige thing than anything that gives you functional power in the game.

D3P stands to learn a lot from Gazillion's modus operandi.

Also the communication they have with their community is excellent. I have never seen more communication on forums than that staff of Marvel Heroes does with their player base. Anyone who loves Marvel, ARPG's and hasn't tried Marvel Heroes yet, I recommend you do.

Spoit

_RiO_ wrote:

Clintman wrote:

I really hope they separate out the cover packs so that you can select from a grouped selection of heroes. Marvel Heroes recognized this and they created fortune cards that had a group of potential heroes you could win for each one allowing you to spend money for a chance of the one you want. I realize D3 came to the conclusion that random is more exciting and therefor has a wide open lottery on cover packs, I am proposing they create smaller groups to random sample from.

Actually; Marvel Heroes now has a premium currency called Eternity Splinters with which to purchase heroes. You can either purchase a random hero (normal distribution, same odds for all heroes) for 175ES or buy a specific one for 200, 400 or 600 ES. Cost does not represent power, but rather the amount of actual work that was involved with creating the hero; voice talent, graphics work, inventing new game systems. You'll be just as good with a 200 ES hero as you would be with a 600 ES one. Lastly, the ES currency drops at a fixed rate of about 1 ES per 10 minutes. However, special simultaneous drops of 2 ES or 10 ES exist and their occurence is affected by your special item find (SIF) rating, i.e. they can be boosted. Boosts and ES are handed out like candy in weekly special events and through codes redeemed through your game account.

The random stuff dropped from fortune cards are special costumes that only drop from those particular cards (or that can be bought by farming a set amount of special resources only dropped from those cards; a consolation prize, basically). Also, costumes are purely cosmetic. They're more of a prestige thing than anything that gives you functional power in the game.

D3P stands to learn a lot from Gazillion's modus operandi.

Like what, how the vast majority of the heroes in MH cost less than a single 3* cover upgrade?

_RiO_

Spoit wrote:

_RiO_ wrote:

Clintman wrote:

I really hope they separate out the cover packs so that you can select from a grouped selection of heroes. Marvel Heroes recognized this and they created fortune cards that had a group of potential heroes you could win for each one allowing you to spend money for a chance of the one you want. I realize D3 came to the conclusion that random is more exciting and therefor has a wide open lottery on cover packs, I am proposing they create smaller groups to random sample from.

Actually; Marvel Heroes now has a premium currency called Eternity Splinters with which to purchase heroes. You can either purchase a random hero (normal distribution, same odds for all heroes) for 175ES or buy a specific one for 200, 400 or 600 ES. Cost does not represent power, but rather the amount of actual work that was involved with creating the hero; voice talent, graphics work, inventing new game systems. You'll be just as good with a 200 ES hero as you would be with a 600 ES one. Lastly, the ES currency drops at a fixed rate of about 1 ES per 10 minutes. However, special simultaneous drops of 2 ES or 10 ES exist and their occurence is affected by your special item find (SIF) rating, i.e. they can be boosted. Boosts and ES are handed out like candy in weekly special events and through codes redeemed through your game account.

The random stuff dropped from fortune cards are special costumes that only drop from those particular cards (or that can be bought by farming a set amount of special resources only dropped from those cards; a consolation prize, basically). Also, costumes are purely cosmetic. They're more of a prestige thing than anything that gives you functional power in the game.

D3P stands to learn a lot from Gazillion's modus operandi.

Like what, how the vast majority of the heroes in MH cost less than a single 3* cover upgrade?

And then there's that, yes...
MPQs pricing is really stark raving mad, if you stop and think about it.

Unknown

You forgot one class my class I spent money early on then saw all nerfs and how badly it became p2p so I ran app to get unlimited Iso and hp thus sandboxed and dont care that I am granted I can't join an alliance but can still get any character and play around without interfering with anyone else