jtwood said: The puzzle: How to win in a game with ever-changing bugs
FindingHeart8 said: The release of Manastrike and surge of players playing that makes me wonder if it'll take a good portion of the mtgpq players, as mtgpq was initially the only mtg game available for android-phones.Helpful Notes for developers (I sampled the game to get an idea):Manastrike has more graphicsquicker loading timemore rewards that are easy to obtainIt's built off the same platform as Clash Royale, an insanely addictive mobile game (one of the top games played on mobile phones for years).Hopefully the two games can exist separately, but since both require a significant amount of time commitment to be competitive, the possibility of product cannibalization does exist, and in this current state mtgpq is at a significant disadvantage.Hopefully these are things to consider @Oktagon_Support just trying to help mtgpq prosper and have a happy community!
bken1234 said: My coalition hasn’t added a new player since October. We have 2-3 on loan, so technically tinykitty’s roster is at 22-3 I attribute our retention to putting fun before everything. We are a close-knit coalition with excellent communication. Most of my players build fresh for each event. I will quickly change participation requirements for unpopular events or for events where bugs are greatly affecting scores. Our players individually approach the game more simply for the game and not the rewards, so the things that generally upset other players don’t affect the tone of my coalition as much. I didn’t build tinykitty, I inherited it when I moved down to top 25 after leading top 10 for 3 years, but culturally I couldn’t have asked for a more friendly, chill, fun place to relax, play MtGPQ and do well. They made the game fun for me again when it really wasn’t.
FindingHeart8 said: How easy is it for you to keep players in your coalition? What is your player turnover rate like? Made me really wonder what other players experiences has been in their coalition, and what they've done to keep players engaged. What has your experience been like?
madwren said: Mburn7 said: Nobody wants to spend any amount of time on this game anymore. We lost a lot of people with the coalition event reward nerf. Who wants to spend literally hours finishing all of their nodes over the course of a weekend for a first place reward of 5 jewels? It makes it very hard to care. The dearth of functional, rewarding, and fresh content has been the issue with this game for years. I don't play a lot of non-coalition events because I'm tired of playing the same iteration of the same event from two years prior, and coalition events are frustrating because the payout isn't commensurate with the effort required.Honestly, aside from friendships, the main reason I'm still around are because I love Magic THAT MUCH. If it wasn't my favorite IP I probably would have quit long ago.
Mburn7 said: Nobody wants to spend any amount of time on this game anymore.
Today a player from one of the larger alliances ("7 top 100 teams including the world number two") jumped into my coalition, left an advert for his own coalitions, and jumped out.
I suppose coalitions do what they must to survive the player churn caused by burnout but that's somewhat unethical.
This is not something that our alliance does. We absolutely do not jump into active coalitions. I'm sorry that happened to you. I hope you told em to go fly a kite. It's hard enough to maintain players without people trying to poach. Shame on them.
Hi guys, long-time lurker and player but new to speaking my voice here...
I lead a top-500 coalition that slowly progresses up the ranks on the backs of a small handful of active players. We were bloated with players who went inactive indefinitely after a dozen or even ten thousand coalition points, which I assume means they left the game - they didn’t share a reason. I’d kick one at a time just to have a slot for the next guy. Only a few have left voluntarily, seeking more activity.
We are trying to improve our experience through recruiting so I booted all the inactive players but there is no way to raise our hands in-game to recruit nor is there a way for players to find active coalitions in-game. We aren’t top-10 or have any other great stats to attract players but we want to have fun and thrive just like anyone else, so filling slots means effort, not just activating the advertising department. It seems that finding a coalition means joining a random one for a week to see if they fit.
I think that new players join coalitions because there are events they can’t participate in otherwise, but there is little in-game sense of community. The chat function is a minimum feature to connect players but there is little else. I read that many coalitions take their experience out-of-game, which is something I have done for other games but can’t do today due to time constraints.
I posted an ad for our coalition in the appropriate forum but I have my doubts that we will find any new players that way. I am not sure how else I can support my coalition with the time I have.
This isn’t a new issue - my coalition is born of the ashes of another coalition whose leader and most players went inactive so the core of us moved on. That was over two years ago...
Thanks for reading,
Bubbles
Hey, thanks for sharing! Always nice to have a new voice out here.
Unfortunately you are correct, recruiting in-game is basically impossible outside of the top 10 coalitions. There is the coalition forum here, and I believe some ways to recruit on Reddit and Facebook, and that's pretty much it.
Your are also correct that most coalitions move their chat to another app (usually Discord or Slack), since the in-game chat is pretty terrible. I do know some coalitions that do use it and thrive, though, so it is possible (if difficult)
This was from us. To explain a bit better: we aim for coalitions that seem to have only one or two players active with a lot of inactive players still there. We've found players this way that are very happy that we found them. More than a couple told me they would have quit if they didn't get our invite. I want to make clear we're not doing this to spread negativity or hurt other active teams.
@Pantagruel I'm sorry we got in yours, and if you explain you're active we will definitely not "poach" from active teams.
@Julie71 I have seen recruiters from your alliance (or an alliance tied to yours) use the same strategy. That's been a while ago, maybe your alliance doesn't use it anymore, but "we absolutely don't do that" isn't exactly how it is (or was).
Edit: spelling.
We are right on the cusp of the top 100 teams and have had a lot of player turnover recently. A variety of reasons are given but often it is burnout due to bugs, lag, changes to the game (see VIP and standard non-dupe packs) etc. We have recently lost a few long time players and are bummed to see them go. I agree that recruitment is difficult but we have had decent luck through Reddit. Players are out there looking for active crews to play with, it would be great to see some type of change to the way we get players, new and old, into active coalitions.
not a fan of not being able to craft masterpeices unless you pony up for vip, oh sorry i can hope to eventually pull them all along with winning the lottery on my birthday while hearing my wife tell me i was right.
I mean, technically you can craft them for 400 jewels a pop once you have all (or most) of the mythics in any given set. But yeah, introducing crafting for only players with 6 months of VIP is such a blatant cash grab its sickening.
The topic of income/monetisation strategies goes hand in hand with player retention. A stingy monetisation strategy will be unpopular and undersubscribed, and fail to fund the game's costs; this forces game content cuts which reduce player engagement. On the other hand, an overly generous strategy both risks turning off non-paying players, and also risks becoming unsustainable for paying players; earning more value than they can absorb in-game over the same rate of time means they'll eventually stop paying for more. Reduced income again leads to forced cuts of game content.
So a good monetisation strategy is crucial. It's fair to say that D3 haven't hit a perfect balance yet because they are still tweaking things.
I'm curious why you think a powerful reward for long term paid loyalty is "sickening"? Should powerful rewards never be given for money, or should they be given more cheaply? Do you think the latter would actually sustain the game? Personally I think MP crafting, if we're to have it as a paid reward at all, is pitched about right. I also think there's a huge space D3 could explore further which is cosmetic rewards for payment. E.g. money-only "foil" planeswalkers which animate or are glammy in some way in-game (whether you play with that PW or against it).
(By the way, I think this is obvious, but all free to play games require as a matter of existence a monetisation strategy which covers their ongoing costs; whether you call it a "cash grab" or "ensuring the game's continued existence/survival", it's the same thing. We can all obviously choose what tone we are going for when deciding on the label we use!)
Not saying they shouldnt have a chance to get paid for their development at all, just that it should be obtainable is all, expensive as heck ehh beside the point. just a bit of a slap in the face is all to people that have gotten most all the cards just working to finish up their collections, been playing, supporting, and occasionally buying cards but dont want the continued draw of 15 a month every month just for the option to craft masterpieces is all. Dont have the required currency to craft them been working to hard keeping up with the sets and just getting up to all the gold cards on everything but i may get there eventually. Just a rant that has been building and it slipped free, on a side note surprised it took as long as it did to have them change it to no crafting untill the next set so they could sell the bundles they had for a set.
beside the point i think a decent non crippling reward for them would be changing philip( blue dude what i call him anyways) instead of a nondupe pack, one single nondupe card would be a way to reward consistent players yes it is cards they cant sell but at once a week if feels more like a reward than 5 cards and probably 50 runes. and yes i did milk philip mercilessly when he was giving nondupe legacy packs and it was a heck of a feeling knowing i would get a pack with 5 mythics/masterpieces in it, but i got those because i worked to get everything else below them.
Locking the privilege to craft MP’s behind a paywall was always bad value. It didn’t matter if you were a subscriber, or a free to play player.
In a vacuum, crafting MP’s would be great and monetizing them to some degree would be reasonable. But in the context of the current VIP system, it’s not attractive because 1) you’re being asked to spend $90-$180, wait 6 months and pay 1.5-2 mythics worth of orbs on top of that. And 2) By that time you would likely have a near complete collection, so you’d have little/no need for it.
Depending on where you stand on whether the subscription value was worth the price, you might believe that Oktagon/D3 is trying to backtrack to stay afloat, or just trying to maximize their profit margins . I’ll concede that new content may be a dev priority, but I’ve seen no evidence to suggest that VIP has benefited the game.
I agree that there are good options for monetization aside from purchasing currency for packs, but I think a subscription service was unhealthy and discouraging for players who wanted a free to play progression system in a free to play game. Compounded with locking much requested features behind VIP, little stability improvement, and the increasing anti-player sentimentality, I think it’s a contributing factor in the declining player base.
Do the monetary changes equal the product from Oktagon? Do they rely on the community to , basically, beta each set? Do they make changes without informing the community? (languages) and give a reason if necessary? I would be a little irate if I just put money into the game and they suddenly removed my language without notice or reason why? If they were professional they would have given at least 2 months notice of the changes to languages. They nerfed the VIP and booster crafting only to create more soft locks than ever before. They actually made the VIP no worthwhile with booster crafting delay.
It comes down to pay wall vs the quality of the product. Oktagon made some choices , so players made some choices. Myself, I just decided to play solo and not invest time and money until I see some positive results.