Relearning old lessons

QuiksilverHg

Is anyone else having flashbacks to when we had to fight for... I’m thinking about a year... in order to get daily boosters changed back from 1 card every 2 hours to 3 cards every 8 hours?

It was obviously a severe hit to player enjoyment and the company didn’t really gain anything by it.

With RT and ZE doesn’t it feel like the company is doing the same thing with respect to increasing time necessary just to get lesser rewards.  Obviously by now the players hate it, there’s very little reason I can think of that this helps the company in any way... is it going to take us a year to get this moved back to the reasonable-type events like RT again just like with the daily free boosters?

TomB

It's called austerity, and last time it was this bad it spawned the "Not Another Dime" movement. I've already started doing MY part, by canceling my VIP subscription today, and fully intend to quit my coalition and semi-retire from this disaster in response. I'll still play from time to time, mostly Legacy events, but there's no way I can stay competitive in Standard the way things are now.

Oh well...It was fun while it lasted.

Smokincookz

Possible that more time spent in-app can be used to boost/inflate the app’s value and appeal to shareholders? Unless I’m mistaken, other than IAP’s, this is the only other main financial source for apps like MtGPQ, that do not rely on ads at all. The amount of features and objectives that purposefully slow matches down are some examples. Why else, other than to inflate the user data?

I’m not an expert in dark marketing, or marketing at all. My opinion is not a professional one, just some basic knowledge of the industry, and the proven effective methods apps use to increase revenue.

FindingHeart8

Smokincookz said:

Possible that more time spent in-app can be used to boost/inflate the app’s value and appeal to shareholders? Unless I’m mistaken, other than IAP’s, this is the only other main financial source for apps like MtGPQ, that do not rely on ads at all. The amount of features and objectives that purposefully slow matches down are some examples. Why else, other than to inflate the user data?

I’m not an expert in dark marketing, or marketing at all. My opinion is not a professional one, just some basic knowledge of the industry, and the proven effective methods apps use to increase revenue.

I have education and experience in marketing.  Your points could be valid if they're doing this with a defined strategy.

I'd suspect it's either as you suggested, or they are marketing to a new audience with little consideration about player loyalty. 

The more difficult and work it is for a player to acquire cards, the longer and more reliant players will be on VIP to acquire high tier cards.  Yes, the veteran player base gets screwed over in the process, but ultimately we aren't their target market anymore.  We aren't as valuable to them as a fresh batch of new players who don't know any better on how the game used to work.

Bil

critman said:

FindingHeart8 said:

The more difficult and work it is for a player to acquire cards, the longer and more reliant players will be on VIP to acquire high tier cards.  Yes, the veteran player base gets screwed over in the process, but ultimately we aren't their target market anymore.  We aren't as valuable to them as a fresh batch of new players who don't know any better on how the game used to work.

Interesting.. it's often said that it costs a business 5 times more (or more!) to gain new customers than it does to retain existing ones. Mobile gaming is a little different, of course, because of the huge difference in the spending power of different customers, but it would seem intuitive to me that it would be even harder to find a new whale than to keep an existing one. I've had a bit of a google but can't find anything about this, can anyone help?

Not to mention the fact that , when a new player will notice how hard it IS to gather resources and how low are the droprates on packs, he will probably pass his way instead of spending 40 bucks on a bundle ....
I really doubt the direction currently taken by the game is likely to retain New players... On the contrary.

Bil

Well ... I don't know for whales ... But i Know how it Worked for the Friends i invited to this game.

Most of them are likely to invest cash on f2p apps ... But their feedback has Always been the same on mtgpq ...

They have a very hard and frustrating Time starting the game because they struggle even to get their first boosters ... And feel frustrated when they get peanuts out of them. 

Then their consider spending Money but they feel like 40 bucks for a mythic IS too much for a first investment on a game ... Especially when their first contact was a lot of Time invested without a significant payout.

They generally prefer spending those 40 bucks on another game that they were already playing and put an end to their mtgpq experience even when they love Magic and confess the Real potential of mtgpq ... 

jtwood

Bil said:

Well ... I don't know for whales ... But if Know how it Worked for the Friends i invited to this game.

Most of them are likely to invest cash on f2p apps ... But their feedback has Always been the same on mtgpq ...

They have a very hard and frustrating Time starting the game because they struggle even to get their first boosters ... And feel frustrated when they get peanuts out of them. 

Then their consider spending Money but they feel like 40 bucks for a mythic IS too much for a first investment on a game ... Especially when their first contact was a lot of Time invested without a significant payout.

They generally prefer spending those 40 bucks on another game that they were already playing and put an end to their mtgpq experience even when they love Magic and confess the Real potential of mtgpq ...

I can only imagine how miserable it would be to join this game as a new player right now.

At bare minimum, this game needs to drastically cut prices of Legacy sets when they rotate. There is no, justifiable reason those cards should have a cost so close to a Standard pack.

ambrosio191

jtwood said:

I can only imagine how miserable it would be to join this game as a new player right now.

At bare minimum, this game needs to drastically cut prices of Legacy sets when they rotate. There is no, justifiable reason those cards should have a cost so close to a Standard pack.

You mean people dont want to pay essentially full price for 4 year old content? I'm shocked....

On the topic of spending money on current content, I cant justify spending money on VIP when a good portion of it will be useless due to the legacy content. Nothing is worth buying at the moment because none of the events are fun enough to justify spending money. I have the ~10 cards needed to be competitive in any standard event, and because I'm a hoarder and not a collector I have the resources to get the 1 must have card in any given set for the next year.  As they starve us of resources over the next year that might change, but it wont incentivize me to spend money.  The only thing that would get me to spend money is if they release something truly unique, like Karn or the the 3 colored PWs when they first came out.

FindingHeart8

critman said:

FindingHeart8 said:

The more difficult and work it is for a player to acquire cards, the longer and more reliant players will be on VIP to acquire high tier cards.  Yes, the veteran player base gets screwed over in the process, but ultimately we aren't their target market anymore.  We aren't as valuable to them as a fresh batch of new players who don't know any better on how the game used to work.

Interesting.. it's often said that it costs a business 5 times more (or more!) to gain new customers than it does to retain existing ones. Mobile gaming is a little different, of course, because of the huge difference in the spending power of different customers, but it would seem intuitive to me that it would be even harder to find a new whale than to keep an existing one. I've had a bit of a google but can't find anything about this, can anyone help?

I agree that, generally, it can be difficult for a business to gain new customers.  But MTGPQ isn't just any new startup business.  It's piggybacking off of the most popular collectible card game in the world, and it's a expensive card game to obtain a competitive advantage in.  They likely expect that to carry them most of the distance.  Their target audience is probably new players looking for a mobile Magic the Gathering game, who are used to spending lots of money on the MTG cards and MTG-related products, and are willing to bring more cash into MTGPQ to obtain a competitive advantage here as well.

I am making an educated speculation of the strategy that it appears the directors of Oktagon Games is implementing.  I am not claiming that strategy is the right path; and as you can see from my other posts I've been outspoken about my strong dislike for their recent changes.  As we all know from experience, Oktagon has a history of questionable decisions related to the direction of this game.