VIP is now Level 1

ammenell

why finish a low tier 4*?
209 is enough. 
i have 2.5m iso and about 15 4*s fully covered at 209 or lower because i never play them and/or they were never required for shield training

jp1

Champ rewards.

Phumade

ammenell said:

why finish a low tier 4*?
209 is enough. 
i have 2.5m iso and about 15 4*s fully covered at 209 or lower because i never play them and/or they were never required for shield training

The only way to safely break into the 5* tier is have a well developed 4* farm.  The resource momentum is generally what ensure you’ll consistently cover new5* as they get release.  I don’t go for 5* tier until I knew my 4* farms incomes could reliably generate 50cp daily average

Kojubat

Something to consider in a value assessment:

SHIELD Intercepts are not technically exclusive to VIP membership, though it is related. You can get the intercepts by spending on anything, even normal purchases in the resource store.

So unless the requirements change, that's more of a tag-a-long and not explicitly a "Level 1 Benefit".

MPQMastery

I'm down for a VIP Level 2. Can't wait!

DeNappa

KGB said:

A ) Time savers - More ways to sort/view your roster. 5 favorite teams you can fast select at the battle select screen. Battle select screen shows which character tanks which color with an added checkmark beside each to indicate active power in that color (you can see rainbow teams). One click/touch to fast repeat battles in PvE (vs the endless menu clicking. This includes no more dialog).

Yeah, no. That should be basic functionality, not premium. Keep in mind, the interface was designed at a time when there were only like 30 or 40 characters? (I'm just guessing that number there, so fact check me if I'm wrong). It's not really viable any more with nearly 200 characters, especially if you consider many people have rosters bigger than that to account for farms, team up sending, and duplicates.

Phumade

DeNappa said:

KGB said:

A ) Time savers - More ways to sort/view your roster. 5 favorite teams you can fast select at the battle select screen. Battle select screen shows which character tanks which color with an added checkmark beside each to indicate active power in that color (you can see rainbow teams). One click/touch to fast repeat battles in PvE (vs the endless menu clicking. This includes no more dialog).

Yeah, no. That should be basic functionality, not premium. Keep in mind, the interface was designed at a time when there were only like 30 or 40 characters? (I'm just guessing that number there, so fact check me if I'm wrong). It's not really viable any more with nearly 200 characters, especially if you consider many people have rosters bigger than that to account for farms, team up sending, and duplicates.

Thats why I'll pay $5 right now to improve my play experience.  It doesn't matter what should or should not have been in this game.  I'll leave it to the forum people to discuss that.  The game has already been part of my daily routine for 5 years.  Kool-aid got drank years ago.

but as a practical matter nothing will return more time to my day, ease more frustration with the game, improve my ability to understanding the timing issues, than saved loadouts, and faster access to dupes.

Provide a pro version of the interface, and I'll drop the shareware **** version immediately and without a second thought and seriously play the game again

bluewolf

With 187 characters in the game, that's 23 pages of characters (8 per page).  Obviously this situation is getting a bit crazy.  (That's discounting dupes etc).

It's a fair point that people would definitely be willing to spend some money on faster ways to select your teams, TUs, etc.

But I firmly believe that if the developers created this situation through their actions (adding a character every 2 weeks for over 5 1/2 years), and they also expect/hope that you roster every single one, then the solution/easing of that pain should not be tied to you spending more money.

The purchase of roster slots has been said to be the primary driver of revenue for the game.  If team selection is getting hard enough that rostering more characters starts to feel like something that will cause you headaches, then it is incumbent on the developers to address that situation for all players.

We know that the character release schedule will never stop; it may pause temporarily, but if the game is running a year from now, you'll have 26 more characters in the game, making this problem worse all the time.

JSP869

Dragon_Nexus said:

jp1 said:

I’d jump to a higher VIP tier for double or triple ISO alone, the rest of the rewards could remain the same.

$5 right now? I’d definitely pay that for saved cover display and custom roster sorting.

 A year ago I'd have agreed with you on the ISO.

But I'm sat on 1.5 million with literally nothing to spend it on.

I had 1.5 million Iso yesterday, but I recently calculated it would cost me over 7-million to just level up, not Champion, just level up all of my non-Champion 5*s. "Had" because I did level up a couple of them, and this morning I also finished and Championed 4* Thanos. Now I have a shade under than 1-million Iso, but it would cost me 350,000 of that to make Old Man Logan Champion #7. I currently have him at 350, but with no Saved covers on him, I'm reluctant to Champion him just yet.

I loved the double-Iso week and if VIP came with double-Iso, I'd probably buy it a few times, at least until I got up to 10-million Iso. Then I'd go back to buying $2 HP once a month. Damn Skinner box.

DAZ0273

If we were paying for that sort of thing I would want it to go beyond just team selection upgrades, I would want it so they fixed it so they didn't auto-select 2* Wolverine for you whilst also insisting you take a Dr. Strange purple team-up.

Theghouse

VIP purchase is for the "perk package", costumes, tokens, healing times boost, etc...

Improving areas of the game is called proper game development.

Let's not confuse what belongs in each category.

If they put access to much requested and needed major game improvements like roster presets or roster sorting, new event types, etc behind a pay wall and call it new VIP levels, I can guarantee you I will never purchase anything again and will probably quit the game altogether.

DAZ0273

Theghouse said:

VIP purchase is for the "perk package", costumes, tokens, healing times boost, etc...

Improving areas of the game is called proper game development.

Let's not confuse what belongs in each category.

If they put access to much requested and needed major game improvements like roster presets or roster sorting, new event types, etc behind a pay wall and call it new VIP levels, I can guarantee you I will never purchase anything again and will probably quit the game altogether.

Gating new content completely would be a high risk strategy. However, allowing early access to VIP members with a second run of the event open to all isn't very different to what some console games do (Black Ops 4 as an example from last year where you paid a deposit to get a Beta code) - it would be a win/win situation in many ways for the Devs because not only would it drive interest but also effectively give them the chance to beta test an event.

KGB

Phumade said:

DeNappa said:

KGB said:

A ) Time savers - More ways to sort/view your roster. 5 favorite teams you can fast select at the battle select screen. Battle select screen shows which character tanks which color with an added checkmark beside each to indicate active power in that color (you can see rainbow teams). One click/touch to fast repeat battles in PvE (vs the endless menu clicking. This includes no more dialog).

Yeah, no. That should be basic functionality, not premium. Keep in mind, the interface was designed at a time when there were only like 30 or 40 characters? (I'm just guessing that number there, so fact check me if I'm wrong). It's not really viable any more with nearly 200 characters, especially if you consider many people have rosters bigger than that to account for farms, team up sending, and duplicates.

Thats why I'll pay $5 right now to improve my play experience.  It doesn't matter what should or should not have been in this game.  I'll leave it to the forum people to discuss that.  The game has already been part of my daily routine for 5 years.  Kool-aid got drank years ago.

but as a practical matter nothing will return more time to my day, ease more frustration with the game, improve my ability to understanding the timing issues, than saved loadouts, and faster access to dupes.

Provide a pro version of the interface, and I'll drop the shareware tinykitty version immediately and without a second thought and seriously play the game again

Me too. That's why I suggested L2 provide those features for serious/hardcore players. If that describes you, then you should be buying that level of VIP because you are spending multiple hours a day playing the game.

I live in Florida, and when I go to Universal Studios I *always* buy the VIP pass for an extra $100 a day that gets me front of the line access so that I don't wait more than 5-10 minutes for a ride/experience (vs typical 1-2 hr waits for non-VIP) . I do that because when I go, I am serious about wanting to do as many rides/experiences as possible in the time I am there.

KGB

bluewolf

The VIP at amusement parks is not a bad comparison, but in that situation the ultimate goal is to ride as many rides as possible, at least for 90% of the attendees.  So in MPQ, say, somehow tying a higher bonus rate on LTs or giving out more tokens for higher VIP status makes sense in the same regard, since your ultimate goal is getting the top end characters to play with.

I would draw a comparison re: Roster navigation between imagining that in an amusement park, VIP access got you to the front of the food line as well, while at the same time the park slowly reduced the number of food stands, and how that would feel to the other park attendees.  To me that is a closer analogy to tying easier roster navigation/team selection to paying more money as the game developers make the process worse by adding more characters.

Everyone needs to navigate the roster, just like everyone is forced to either buy food in the park or leave and come back (spending precious ride time to do so).  Making any gain in navigation entirely dependent on VIP status would not wash, but maybe there could be some benefit from VIP, like the number of saved teams could go up from 3 to 7 or something.

KGB

I would think giving out more 4* covers/LT tokens/ISO/Higher 5* draw rates for VIP would cause a lot more bad feelings than better/faster roster interaction since that's really a pure pay 2 win model. 

As you noted, the goal in amusement parks is to ride as many rides as possible in as little time as possible since your time in the park is limited (1 day or even a few hours if you have tired kids with you). In the same vein, the goal in MPQ is to play as many matches as possible in as little time as possible. Not just because of PvE placement, but also to save real life time (just saving me 15 minutes a day is 7.5 hours a month which is absolutely worth $15 dollars given the other VIP benefits) or to have more time for PvP (something I'd also like to have).

The other thing is, if we don't pay for user interface upgrades how can we expect them to ever happen on a 5 year old game where there is ZERO dollars in it for them to work on it (unless they run out of paying work to do). A paid VIP program tied to user interface upgrades (something I always ask for in every survey) can trickle down to the free players too (say every few months as new features get added to VIP user interface some will transition into the free version so in effect VIP just gets user interface changes earlier). Hiring just 1 full time junior (3-5 years experience) person to work on user interface changes in California is going to cost at least 75K salary which is going to be 150K by the time the company pays benefits/payroll taxes etc. 150K/12=12500 a month they need in increased revenue via VIP level 2 to pay for itself which is roughly 2500 VIP people now (10/month) upgrading to L2 at say a cost of 15/month.

KGB

bluewolf

Well, this brings up an interesting idea.  If the devs approached some of the QOL changes with kickstarter model, I could imagine there would be some success.  Ask people to contribute and give everyone roster sorting tools once a goal is met; maybe stretch goals would give early access.  Maybe that would be a good way to add some of the changes we have been asking for.

(Assuming the code is manipulable to reach these goals.)

I feel like them saying "buy Level 2 and get more of the good things" is what is kind of expected, since that's already how the game operates (see the Strange costume bundle, for example.)

I guess we'll see what kinds of things VIP Level 2 brings.

HoundofShadow

I highly doubt that the dev will want to tie major UI changes,  such as the filter systems in character selection screen, to VIP. It is simply, IMO,  that they are going to dig a big hole that they can never jump out of. To some of the players, creating filter system in character selection screen is something that can be coded in hours and delivered perfectly in the next update. However, this is something that is going to eat into a big chunk of the dev time.

Think about this: there are more than a hundred different types of mobile devices in the market that comes in different shapes, sizes, screen resolutions, OS versions, hardware features etc.

All these factors affect how the UI has to be design, which means that a lot of testing on emulators and mobile devices will be needed. For example, the filter system on device A might look great. However, it looks horrible on device B. So they have to go back to redesign and recode again. Repeat until they can design something that can be consistent across majority of the mobile devices used in MPQ.

What if those players who purchased the VIP to get a better character selection system learn that the UI is buggy and unusable due to the OS versions or mobile brands that they use? What do you think is going to happen next? Chances are those players are going to say that they paid XX dollar for a VIP package that gives a broken UI or they are getting VIP treatment via a broken and unusable UI. They are going to demand a working UI/refund next or they will (insert whatever threat).

Therefore, tying UI such as filter selection to VIP is asking for trouble. 

*The reason for using filter selection as an example is because it is one of the most requested UI changes.