The character matters! (the effects of imbalance on spending)

Daredevil217

I just wanted to discuss the developers’ awesome decision to put Carnage in a HP store and not have him required before he’s available by other means.  

When Professor dropped there was tons of outrage not because we were offered another avenue to chase a 5* (albeit one with awful odds), but because in order to be competitive, we had to play those odds. With alliance minimums being a thing, some saw this as predatory. 

I had predicted that they would do this (offer the HP store but not make the character required), in order to see how each effects spending patterns. This makes sense business-wise. Same with offering feeders upon character release versus not.

Obviously, you expect spending to drop a bit when you are giving free covers or not making characters required. I’m sure we all know that. But the amount of spending being decreased has as much to do with the actual character as it does the means of distribution. 

You can’t offer feeders upon release with Loki, Wasp, and Captain Repeater but not with Kitty, Doom, and Hela and say, “wow we gave them feeders and spending is WAY down”. The character matters; and every time you release a clunker, THAT will effect numbers. 

Professor is one of the best 5* that has been released in a long time. Carnage is one of the worst. So I really hope that when people save their HP because he sucks, the developers don’t say “wow we didn’t make him required and spending is WAY down”. 

The character matters! Required/not required; feeder/no feeder, we will chase if you make characters worth chasing! I just hope this is factored into whatever data you’re collecting. 

#BuffCarnage

ThaRoadWarrior

I'm curious how much action his CP store is going to get, with BSSM in there. If loads of people decide to chase covers for BSSM, will it look like people want to spend CP on Carnage but not HP? You really have to minimize the variables when you're trying to draw conclusions about things, it's very easy to get the wrong idea about what's happening.

Kolence

On the flip side, good thing it's all RNG. Some of the time, you're likely to still jump to the right conclusion for whatever weird reasons.

Oh yeah,
#BuffCarnage, #BuffWasp, #BuffCarol, #BuffKingpin
(don't really care about Kingpin) 

LLohm

bit of a tongue in cheek here but no 5* matters since 2 4* can shut down all but 2 of them and one of them requires a match 4 to be immune to stun.

You can use convoluted teams to best the 2 4* of course but from the grand scheme of things, this is exactly what happens when you match 3 in a match 3 game.

HoundofShadow

There are always players out there who will roster characters not because they are in the meta tier, but because they love or like  them a lot.

I have seen players who chose to target X characters and when other players ask them why,  they usually reply "I know that X character is not meta or or is trash, but I still roster him because I like that character a lot.

This is another behaviour that exists.

Super competitive players make decisions based on how fast new characters can help them finish a match. Average players are unlikely to do so.

Besides, I think the dev stated that they deliberately make characters that are not meta and meant to be "fun". However, "fun" is a subjective word. What's fun for someone might not be fun for you. 

ThaRoadWarrior

I can tell you what's not that fun: being stuck with 5* MMR and only having a dud 5* on roster. 

Carnage's health is mega-high. I'm imagining the Carnage v Carnage fights where you can do at best 10k? target damage every 6 red AP. It would take 6-7 firings of that red power, and surely we're looking at 8-12 turns to gather that much?

purplemur

This reminds me of that old book How to lie with Statistics. Also my main gripe with the show Mythbusters. Like if you design an "experiment" to fail, or to give the answer you want than you can rest comfortably with your preferred paradigm; however faulty and abstract those results may be. 

DAZ0273

HoundofShadow said:

Super competitive players make decisions based on how fast new characters can help them finish a match. Average players are unlikely to do so.

So those are the two definitive MPQ player types then? 

crackninja

DAZ0273 said:

HoundofShadow said:

Super competitive players make decisions based on how fast new characters can help them finish a match. Average players are unlikely to do so.

So those are the two definitive MPQ player types then? 

If you're not first you're last

Daredevil217

HoundofShadow said:

There are always players out there who will roster characters not because they are in the meta tier, but because they love or like  them a lot.

I have seen players who chose to target X characters and when other players ask them why,  they usually reply "I know that X character is not meta or or is trash, but I still roster him because I like that character a lot.

This is another behaviour that exists.

Super competitive players make decisions based on how fast new characters can help them finish a match. Average players are unlikely to do so.

Besides, I think the dev stated that they deliberately make characters that are not meta and meant to be "fun". However, "fun" is a subjective word. What's fun for someone might not be fun for you. 

This is absolutely true for all characters.  Some will be more or less popular based on their name alone, and everyone is someone's favorite.  So if all characters have those people who will chase them "because I like the character" then it's less likely to effect spending.  I doubt the people voting OML into the Fan Fav Legends tokens are doing so because he's meta.  So I agree mostly with what you're saying.

What I'm saying is not counter to what you're saying, but more "in addition to".  Assume what you are saying is true and set it aside.  Stronger characters will still be chased more on the whole, individual preferences aside.  And you don't have to be "super competitive" to want a character to be good.  Especially in our tier where it can take months to years (depending on play style) to get enough resources to complete one.  To use the vault example again, back in February we got a "favorite legends" store that contained Thorkoye and Kitty.  Obviously, people are wanting these characters and I doubt people are chasing Okoye because she's their favorite comic character (a few maybe).  Most do so because her mechanics are awesome.

When you release a 5* whose 4* version is better (Carbage, welcome to the Wasp/Carol clubhouse!) and then spending goes down, it's more likely because of the character being awful, then the fact that they were released with a feeder or not made essential right away.