Note to D3: It ain't about the costumes!

helix72
helix72 Posts: 996 Critical Contributor
in MPQ General Discussion
Dear d3,

I imagine somewhere come performance review time, someone is taking credit for costumes and the additional revenue they bring in. With my apologies to the artists and creators, I'd like you to know that the only reason I ever buy any of these offers has nothing to do with the costume, it has to do with the extra goodies packaged with them. In fact, if you would rededicate your internal staff who are working on costumes to other, more pressing in game items which are too numerous to list here, I'd much appreciate it. And feel free to keep offering "goodie bags", but without costumes, and I for one will continue to buy the good ones and never miss costumes at all.

Sorry to anyone who loves the costumes, but since they don't affect gameplay, I have no interest. And I'm one of the people who actually likes supports!

Comments

  • Therealsmkspy
    Therealsmkspy Posts: 254 Mover and Shaker
    edited June 2019
    Costume puzzle quest aside, supports themselves aren't hated. It's that they're treated worse than five stars when it comes to attaining them. 

    I've been "lucky" that I pull a lot of basic support tokens. In the last 30 pulls everyone has been a dupe. The one rare "elite" type token also produced the same. 

    Supports could be fun, but they're a broken system, peroid.

    That said, the emphasis on costumes worries me in the fact that this seems like the only thing devs can think to offer us. Sure, they're fun, but they offer absolutely nothing substantial with the game. Like feeders, they're just another band-aid to deflect from the over - laying issues that affect the game and continue to remain in unresolved.

    (pre-defense team posts, I'm not saying feeders aren't a good thing, but that they are, in implementation, a band-aid to the larger problems that this game has in regards to five stars and vet engagement. )
  • jp1
    jp1 Posts: 1,081 Chairperson of the Boards
    I buy the packs for everything but the costume as well. Sometimes the costume are a cool added bonus, sometimes I don’t love them. In any case, as already pointed out the resources that go into providing a costume are not even remotely attached to the many other wants you are referring to. 

    No harm in keeping them rolling out for a little variety. Especially if it gives an excuse for a bonus “deal” of some sort.
  • Vhailorx
    Vhailorx Posts: 6,085 Chairperson of the Boards
    TC,

    The fact that Demi keeps releasing costumes strongly suggests that people are buying them and they are a good source of revenue.  So it might actually be about the costumes.

    Also, I would like to see the support system expanded and improved too.  But I am not confident that it can be made relevant, rewarding, and balanced in a reasonable time frame.
  • helix72
    helix72 Posts: 996 Critical Contributor
    I beg to differ. They have a budget for payroll, they can spend it how they see fit--artists or programmers. To be fair, I did say "staff" and not more generically "resources". Point of clarification.
  • Dragon_Nexus
    Dragon_Nexus Posts: 3,701 Chairperson of the Boards
    I'd rather costumes were earned in more interesting ways than "PAY US" or gated off for the 1%, but overall I don't mind them.

    Some are pretty good or just fun. Superior Spider Man is a great costume. I like Kamala Khan's costume. I'm hoping Riri gets her new armour as a costume, too. And...not as something I need to pay for.

    Think of it this way, in the old days if they wanted to update the look of a character we got a 3* dupe where the stars glowed a bit to show they were special.
  • JHawkInc
    JHawkInc Posts: 2,605 Chairperson of the Boards
    helix72 said:
    I beg to differ. They have a budget for payroll, they can spend it how they see fit--artists or programmers. To be fair, I did say "staff" and not more generically "resources". Point of clarification.
    And if they have an artist on staff, and he spends all week working on new characters and events and every little thing the game needs (like new token pages, someone has to put Phoenix and Kitty next to Storm for her release store), maybe you figure out how to make all of that take 4.5 days during the week, so he can spend the leftover time on something like a new Support, or a Costume. You can find ways to improve his workflow, anything from him getting better at his job, to developing new internal practices that take up less time, to create that 1/2 day of free time for new projects.

    What you CAN'T do is take that to payroll, pay him for 4.5 days, and hire a programmer for the other .5 day each week. You can't allocate things piecemeal like that.

    It's the same argument as having specific skillsets. You can't just see costumes, say you don't like them, and that they should be doing programming instead. It doesn't work that way. You can't trade an artist for a programmer like that, you can't magically teach an artist to program, nor can you dictate a small portion of the work he's paid for be shifted to a new programmer.
  • helix72
    helix72 Posts: 996 Critical Contributor
    @JHawkInc :

    You absolutely can. They're called consultants.
  • ThaRoadWarrior
    ThaRoadWarrior Posts: 9,456 Chairperson of the Boards
    It’s too bad Costumes and Supports aren’t the same feature - then you’d know at a glance what support a given character had AND there would be some mechanical incentive to chase them.
  • tiomono
    tiomono Posts: 1,654 Chairperson of the Boards
    helix72 said:
    @JHawkInc :

    You absolutely can. They're called consultants.
    So your suggesting they hire a consultant to evaluate which artists they can use to do other tasks instead of in game art? 
  • DAZ0273
    DAZ0273 Posts: 10,283 Chairperson of the Boards
    sambrookjm said:
    Vhailorx said:
    TC,

    The fact that Demi keeps releasing costumes strongly suggests that people are buying them and they are a good source of revenue.  So it might actually be about the costumes.

    Also, I would like to see the support system expanded and improved too.  But I am not confident that it can be made relevant, rewarding, and balanced in a reasonable time frame.
    I snapped up the Shuri "Coustume" bundle in a heartbeat.  Not because of her costume, which I think looks rather silly.  However, three covers for her for 2750 HP is a steal.  Especially since those three covers for me got her to LVL 281, so I got a champ level for my Okoye.


    It was like Father like son again...
  • jp1
    jp1 Posts: 1,081 Chairperson of the Boards
    I believe he is advocating for them to slash funding to the art department in order to fund additional staff in the programming department.

    The problem with that (aside from the fact you are advocating eradication of someone’s livelihood) is they are not equivalent resources, not to mention you know nothing about their team, business model, or focus at this point. It’s very easy to give nebulous advice when you don’t have to deal with the ramifications.
  • Malcrof
    Malcrof Posts: 5,971 Chairperson of the Boards
    I honestly think supports and costumes are the future of the game. We have too many characters as it is, now we need upgrades for them, not more characters.  Imagine 5* Carol, but with a chance to have supports that fortify her tiles, or cause repeaters to go off twice each time, things like that, you get a power creep, more stuff, maybe add new moves to supports or additional abilities... i would even go so far as to say instead of red iso, make it xp based, the more you use a support with a character, the more it levels on its own. 

    just morning thoughts. 
  • bluewolf
    bluewolf Posts: 5,822 Chairperson of the Boards
    I agree that it would be far better for the game at this point to begin to slow down on new characters and let costumes/Supports pick up the slack in terms of adding content and revenue.

    Also at this point, dilution is so bad that simply offering cover bundles should be more common; lately it seems like they are rare.  Leaning in to helping people get a few covers for the better characters would seem to be low-hanging fruit for the game to earn some more revenue.  (See the Shuri costume bundle.)

    Unfortunately that doesn't seem to be happening.  The pace of character releases continues at the same rate, and the only change lately has been an apparent shift to a higher % of 5*'s being released (about 40% instead of 33%).

    Also, Supports - the element that actually impacts gameplay - basically seems to be on pause while the devs try to figure out how to get past their hurdles (extremely hard to acquire/upgrade, confusing to use for many players, and often having minimal impact on your play).  So there's a major element that was added that has, for the moment at least, failed to get the response that I'm certain the developers hoped for/were depending on.

    I have no problem with costumes in general and making them reasonable to acquire makes them more interesting/likely to get my attention/dollars.  More fun ones also will get my interest.
  • jtsings
    jtsings Posts: 278 Mover and Shaker
    edited June 2019
    Malcrof said:
    Imagine 5* Carol, but with a chance to have supports that fortify her tiles
      Actually one, somewhat, already exists for her.  The Carol Corps, which honestly imo is the worst designed support for it's intended "host" 3* Carol, I currently have parked on 5* Carol because at level 200 every turn has a 20% chance to fortify a special tile; including repeater tiles.  It's not guaranteed but it's something at least.
  • jp1
    jp1 Posts: 1,081 Chairperson of the Boards
    jtsings said:
    Malcrof said:
    Imagine 5* Carol, but with a chance to have supports that fortify her tiles
      Actually one, somewhat, already exists for her.  The Carol Corps, which honestly imo is the worst designed support for it's intended "host" 3* Carol, I currently have parked on 5* Carol because at level 200 every turn has a 20% chance to fortify a special tile; including repeater tiles.  It's not guaranteed but it's something at least.
    Shuri’s Lab works pretty well on her. I have it at rank 4, working on leveling it up (currently 165 I think). Anyway it matches her colors for damage boost, has red AP gen, and fortified friendly tiles. At rank 5 it would have green AP gen too.
  • Vhailorx
    Vhailorx Posts: 6,085 Chairperson of the Boards
    edited June 2019
    For all of the griping about dilution, there has always been a simple solution that Demi simply refuses to adopt for 4*:

    Subdivide the LT pool.  They can calibrate to exactly the level of dilution they prefer by setting the number of 4*s in each LT.  12 would make it very easy to cover specific characters quickly, 80+ is far too many.

    There are so soany options (LTs and classics could remain diluted while special stores offered reduced pools of 4*s too, or LTs and classics could rotate every month.  Or they could create more permanent LT stores offering, for example, yearly vintages of 4* and 5*s).

    This is effectively the approach they have taken with 5*s, using periodic speciality stores to make classics more regularly available.  Why not do some version for 4*s now too?

    And back on topic, cosmetics (costumes) are reliable money-makers in gaming, so I expect them to stay in some form.  But supports are in a tough spot right now.  A few are VERY powerful in pve.  Too powerful to just push them over to PVP as is.  But most are junk.  And the older, 5-power supports are pretty clearly better than the newer "stronger" ones. And they are so hard to get for most players.  Personally, I would love to see more customization options (so maybe deaggregate the support perks and let players mix and match).  That would be a lot of fun, though it would likely lead to even more balance issues.
  • bluewolf
    bluewolf Posts: 5,822 Chairperson of the Boards
    1.  They have run a couple stores with weighted odds (50/50) of select groups of 4's.  But only a couple and they were overpriced for the HP one, if I recall.  Every "solution" to dilution will require tradeoffs.  More stores seems like an easy fix but the devs know that having too many open at once can feel overwhelming to players.  That said, some short term stores make sense, but if they start to run them semi-frequently, and they seem like a better deal than normal offerings then the devs are going to cannibalize their other store sales.

    2.  I prefer the 3 rank supports since the effects are more focused and each effect is more impactful.  The 5 effect supports often do stuff that either never triggers or triggers too much and slows down your game.  


  • ThaRoadWarrior
    ThaRoadWarrior Posts: 9,456 Chairperson of the Boards
    On the topic of grouped stores:

    Disney Emoji Blitz was recently taken over by Jam City, and they have exactly the same problem as MPQ when it comes to character dilution (in that game, you unlock emojis that are both in-game characters as well as available for use outside the game in texts etc). They have adopted the permanently subdivided store option for that. The economy in that game is based on Coins and Gems, roughly equivalent to Hp and CP in MPQ. Collecting emojis is more akin to collecting Supports in MPQ though - you get them permanently, and getting more of them levels them up. There is a Player Level gating system much like the Shield Rank - at Level 20 it says there is a Groups feature that unlocks which allows you to "collect duplicate emojis to win prizes, including exclusive emojis!", but since i'm not there yet (18) I don't know exactly what that entails. 

    They have:

    Diamond Box (200 gems, changes on a 24hr timer): only 3 emojis, equivalent to a 5* and 2x 4*, with a 15%, 40%, 45% chance at them

    Silver Box (15,000 coins, doesn't rotate):29 emojis with an equal chance of drawing them. Unclear how they are sorted, but it's mostly super basic classic characters like Mickey, Minnie, etc. This is comparable to a store that only gives 1 and 2* characters in MPQ, since they can only achieve Level 3 status (out of 5)

    Gold Box (30,000 coins, doesn't rotate): 67 Emojis with equal chance. Not mega sure how they decide who ended up in this one, but it's more like a heroic token with no chance of drawing below a 3*. 

    Then they have 3 different collections that seem permanent, labeled Series 1, 2, and 3, all costing 30,000 coins like the Gold Box. they don't have a standard number of emojis in each, they're 19, 18, and 21 respectively.

    You can pay real money for gems, which can be exchanged for coins in various increments. Prices on gem bundles seem pretty in line with MPQ prices, though the in-game value of the amounts you get may not align:
    80: $1.99
    200: $4.99
    500 (has a Popular! stamp next to it): $10.99
    1,000: $20.99
    2,500: $49.99
    5,000 (has a Best Value! stamp): $94.99

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