Legendary Limited Stores - An Ongoing Discussion

Vhailorx

This OML/Thanos/strange store makes three limited LT offers over and above the new character release stores since January.

Classic 5* dilution has been a big problem for a long time now.  Has Demi finally decided to start offering special LT stores more often as a means of countering?

If so, this is a great decision!  (Something I think the community has been suggesting for at least 2 years now)

Are there some drawbacks that I am overlooking? 

Mod Edit: Changed title as the thread has evolved. 

Steve111

Yes it’s good. I hope I am mistaken but it seems we are getting these stores rather than the feeders for 5*’s. 

bluewolf

You undercounted though...

12/13 Family Legends - Thor/OML/Bolt
1/21  Masked Vengeance - BSSM/GG/GRRR
2/19  Favorite Legends - Kitty/Thor/Okoye
3/11  Legendary Leaders - 5CM/Cap FA/IM
3/20 Storied Legends - OML/Thanos/Strange

I thought about the stores replacing feeders too, but as you can see, all of the stores contained fed 5's.  Some were all fed.

It's just the only way to address dilution within the game's economic model.

Vhailorx

Ooh, right. I forgot those two stores in December and January.

So the pattern is even stronger.  Good.

Phumade

Game is definitinely headed to end game monetization.  They are definitely trying to help speed players along to the 5* tier.

Vhailorx

Phumade said:

Game is definitinely headed to end game monetization.  They are definitely trying to help speed players along to the 5* tier.

This is a potential explanation. But it's not necessarily the only one.  I agree that Demi seems to be pushing to democratize the 5* tier.

But couldn't that be because they are prepping for 6* or whatever the successor endgame might be?   The original Ddq came out right when they were prepping to jump from 3*s to 4*s for endgame.

Phumade

Vhailorx said:

Phumade said:

Game is definitinely headed to end game monetization.  They are definitely trying to help speed players along to the 5* tier.

This is a potential explanation. But it's not necessarily the only one.  I agree that Demi seems to be pushing to democratize the 5* tier.

But couldn't that be because they are prepping for 6* or whatever the successor endgame might be?   The original Ddq came out right when they were prepping to jump from 3*s to 4*s for endgame.

With all hte knowledge, history and experience you have in this game.  ARe you excited to fund a 6* tier?  

Have to speed up the 5* population is esstentially saying that their orgignal budgeting scenario has failed. and they don't have to player populations in the appropriate tier to grown organically.

Purchase offers outside of traditional anniversary / Christmas generally means their business forecasting failed. and they need to make adjustments.  Call me a cynic because I have a financial background,  but these types of moves generally happen because  your carry excess  inventory, missing forecast.  I've seen this type offering in multiple industries and its one of the benchmarks to watch in business.

Vhailorx

Phumade said:

Vhailorx said:

Phumade said:

Game is definitinely headed to end game monetization.  They are definitely trying to help speed players along to the 5* tier.

This is a potential explanation. But it's not necessarily the only one.  I agree that Demi seems to be pushing to democratize the 5* tier.

But couldn't that be because they are prepping for 6* or whatever the successor endgame might be?   The original Ddq came out right when they were prepping to jump from 3*s to 4*s for endgame.

With all hte knowledge, history and experience you have in this game.  ARe you excited to fund a 6* tier?  

Have to speed up the 5* population is esstentially saying that their orgignal budgeting scenario has failed. and they don't have to player populations in the appropriate tier to grown organically.

Purchase offers outside of traditional anniversary / Christmas generally means their business forecasting failed. and they need to make adjustments.  Call me a cynic because I have a financial background,  but these types of moves generally happen because  your carry excess  inventory, missing forecast.  I've seen this type offering in multiple industries and its one of the benchmarks to watch in business.

I have been shouting about 4*s being too hard to acquire relative to their place in the endgame since 2015, let alone the almost rng-only 5* tier.  So I have no sympathy for demi/d3 on those design choices.

But that's a separate discussion from whatever is happening now.  Demi is making some atypical monetization choices.  The net result is actually not so much more 5* covers out the door as letting players spend their resources more efficiently.  Until the most recent buy club cp boost, they had not done much to make CP more available, it has mostly just been more specialty stores.

It does seem like they are experimenting with ways to get more spending.  That could be because they are failing to meet projected targets (maybe that's even the occam's razor conclusion). But it's not the only possiblity, and I don't think we have enough data yet to be as certain as you sound phumade.

jym010

Phumade said:

Game is definitinely headed to end game monetization.  They are definitely trying to help speed players along to the 5* tier.

I don't know if you are referring to the "end of the game" or "Avengers: End Game" .  Hopefully the later.

Malcrof

If they weren't successful, they wouldn't keep doing it. 

HoundofShadow

Coming up with special stores more frequently to minimize Classic 5* dilution = more conspiracy theories.

I think one of the devs said that majority of the players don't want 6* in a q&a last year.

As far as I know, these stores use CP and not HP, which is the major source of revenue. Most whales have probably champed all these three characters. 

The devs should probably stop coming up with all these special stores that are not part of new 5* releases. These special stores should pop-up along with only new 5* releases. 

Colognoisseur

I tend to think part of the explanation is the devs don’t think players sitting on giant hoards waiting for the next game breaker 5* is a good thing. By offering stores with the current meta characters in them it can offer a choice to those with hoards whether it is better to take a sure thing versus a new character.
i don’t dismiss there is a bottom line component. Compared to the revenue from a year ago they will be down because of not being involved in Digital Day this past December. 
Just like the board discussion they might also be trying to get a more consistent income stream instead of having huge peaks followed by nothing.
i don’t feel like this is a sign of the game coming to an end. It seems more like a course correction of whose success is yet to be determined.

Vhailorx

HoundofShadow said:

Coming up with special stores more frequently to minimize Classic 5* dilution = more conspiracy theories.

I think one of the devs said that majority of the players don't want 6* in a q&a last year.

As far as I know, these stores use CP and not HP, which is the major source of revenue. Most whales have probably champed all these three characters. 

The devs should probably stop coming up with all these special stores that are not part of new 5* releases. These special stores should pop-up along with only new 5* releases. 

Are you joking? Why would we, as players, ever want fewer options for acquiring 5*s? 

Vhailorx

Malcrof said:

If they weren't successful, they wouldn't keep doing it. 

Sure, the stores seem to be successful, since Demi/d3 keep running them.  But what does "successful" mean in this context?  Without knowing the particular concerns that prompted Demi/d3 to run the stores in the first place, knowing that Demi/d3 achieved their goals doesn't tell us much.

Polares

We should be having one of these stores with old chars every week or so, as it is the only real way of getting the old 5s that are now in classic (classic store MUST be revamped as it is mostly useless to get any 5 champed).

It would be good though if they were a bit more predictable. Spending your stash on a char you want, and then having that same char appear in another sale with another char you also wanted would be really unfortunate. We need to know these stores in advance!!!

Now, said that, getting old good 5s is nice, but what about also having some good new 5s released Demi? Some new chars we actually want to get?

Edit: A 6th tier would make me abandon the game immediately, it would be nuts!

bluewolf

There are a lot of possibilities here.

Besides Kitty we've had months - almost a full year since Okoye now - of 5's people have skipped, barely covered, certainly not opened wallets for.  Hoards have been built up, spending has slowed.  Digital Day didn't happen.  So of course the devs are looking for ways to drain those hoards and possibly spur spending (or at least create the need to keep playing for CP).

The dilution just gets worse, and it's not a secret.  You could open just Classics for a year and get 3-4 covers per 5.  Your odds in these store are 10x better than Classics to get one of the 3 featured characters.  Well, not quite 10X, we need one more 5 for that.

The bundles of 4* covers are also a way to address dilution there via a spending option.

Essentially the pace of Popup Legendaries, assuming it continues, is an attempt to introduce a reason to always be pulling vs the "building the hoard for a good Latest store" strategy that many people have taken.  At least, that's my take.

The devs have an incentive to increase spending and revenue like any other company.  There's no way to know whether these offers are more "get more money" or "make up for less revenue" but the offer era has been going strong for a while now.

I do not believe at all that the game can support a 6* tier.  Top players/spenders are leaving or getting bored and there continues to be no design space where a 6* character would make much difference.  Your typical meta player is finished with a match in somewhere around 4-6 moves already.  (or maybe even 0 moves)

I think the game at some point reached the apex of growth and we are in the waning phases.  I can't predict how much longer but I don't think a massively diluted character pool is much fun to chase for beginner players.  And the cycles are so long now it seems pointless.  You're chasing Mordo in PVE now, and your next opportunity is about 2 year away.  In PVP you will see Mordo rewards about twice a year.

HoundofShadow

Or it could be possible that a lot of players (outside of this forum) feedbacked to the devs that they like these special stores because it helps them with covering older 5*. They hope the devs come up with these stores more frequently. The devs listened and that's why we are seeing these special stores more often.

On a side note, I'm sure there are someone out there tracking all these out-of-norm special stores, trying to analyse a pattern to this. Has any pattern been found yet?

ZootSax

bluewolf said:

I think the game at some point reached the apex of growth and we are in the waning phases.  I can't predict how much longer but I don't think a massively diluted character pool is much fun to chase for beginner players.  And the cycles are so long now it seems pointless.  You're chasing Mordo in PVE now, and your next opportunity is about 2 year away.  In PVP you will see Mordo rewards about twice a year.

I guess I assumed the timeline was something like that, but it's still depressing to see it spelled out like that.  I've all-but given up on a lot of the newer 4* releases unless I particularly like a character or mechanic and this kind of reinforces how little that decision will work against me once the character cycles out of the repetition of newer characters in PVE.  Yikes.

bbigler

There is a pattern now and when they first started doing this I hoped it would be a regular thing.  I believe it is their answer to 5* Classic dilution.  But it also seems to be more than that since these stores have had some top tier 5*s.  So, I would also guess that they want more players in 5* land so that they can roll out more content / events / nodes for 5* players.  I wouldn't be surprised if the next 5* store contained JJ, DD, PP.  They could call it the Alliteration Legends store. 

bluewolf

Here's another pattern for you to consider.

Kingpin release and Family Legends opened 12/13/18

Doom released 1/17, Masked Vengeance opened 1/21/19

2/19 Favorite Legends, 2/28 Galactic Heroes (CM releasse), 3/11 Legendary Leaders

Now 3/20 Storied Legends.

Make your own conclusion.

Richyyy

bluewolf said:

I think the game at some point reached the apex of growth and we are in the waning phases.  I can't predict how much longer but I don't think a massively diluted character pool is much fun to chase for beginner players.  And the cycles are so long now it seems pointless.  You're chasing Mordo in PVE now, and your next opportunity is about 2 year away.  In PVP you will see Mordo rewards about twice a year.

I'm amazed that anyone who decided to download the game and try it for the first time in the last couple of years has chosen to stick with it and play consistently. The basic Puzzle Quest gameplay might still be fun, but the character base is so vast and your chances of covering/champing individual meaningful ones are so long that I'd be put off immediately. And unless you're going to spend a fortune, the prospects of joining the 5* tier must seem a gazillion miles away.

But to get back on topic, yes, these special stores are a great idea and they should keep doing them (ideally week after week, not just occasionally). It's taken them far too long, but better late than never. And communication about what's coming would be lovely, but completely out of keeping with everything else they ever do.