Week 33. BW , Hela, Knull, Heimdall

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  • entrailbucket
    entrailbucket Posts: 7,016 Chairperson of the Boards
    ThaRoadWarrior said:
    Why would good, uniformly applied customer service cause other players to never start spending?
    Because the high-level f2p players teach new players how to dominate without spending anything, and actively discourage them from spending.
  • entrailbucket
    entrailbucket Posts: 7,016 Chairperson of the Boards
    Sekilicious said:
    entrailbucket said:
    No one is spending thousands of dollars in a sitting anymore, because they figured out that they don't have to.  Getting cover swaps is a huge part of that.


    But when players who spend a few bucks here and there, or nothing at all, become dominant, that's a problem.  F2p players love to talk about the community and the health of the game, and those things do have some value.  But in games like this, revenue is the single most important metric.  When f2p players drive spenders out, revenues take a hit, and revenues are the only reason this game still exists.
    To these two points.

    If no one spends thousands of dollars who are your best customers? Please pick among the options that you think are in the game, not some pie-in-the-sky ideal that you think will miraculously appear if the developers become more stingy with the people that are here, now, playing their game.

    You have moved the goalposts on the second point. $600 is more than most have ever spent on any game that isn't World of Warcraft. It isn't 'a few bucks here and there'. 
    If you ran a store, who's your best customer?  Someone who buys something every few weeks or someone who comes in every day to use your bathroom without buying anything?
  • Bad
    Bad Posts: 3,146 Chairperson of the Boards
    entrailbucket said:Because the high-level f2p players teach new players how to dominate without spending anything, and actively discourage them from spending.

    But how many years need f2p new players to get a maxed 5* without spending nothing? 
    I don't believe that a player owning a maxed 5* hasn't spent anything, and if he actually believes that is just fooling himself. 
    Once you give your credit card for anything, be it a vip or a bundle, one cannot remember the amount of money wasted over the years, and being just a ocasional buyer.
  • entrailbucket
    entrailbucket Posts: 7,016 Chairperson of the Boards
    ThaRoadWarrior said:
    I would say that the use case we are discussing, F2P players who can immediately 550 multiple 5*s, is pretty close to one of those steak restaurant "if you can eat this 5lb steak in one sitting, it's free! deals." The amount of times they have to pay out on it pale in comparison to the people who attempt it I'm sure.
    This.  You've absolutely nailed it.

    Here's the problem: they used to *sell* a bunch of those 5lb steaks.  Now, someone on the internet has discovered that the restaurant offers this challenge, and has worked out a way to beat the challenge every time. 

    People from all over the world discovered that the restaurant's challenge is beatable, and they're travelling from all over the place to take advantage of it.  They're telling all their friends how to do it.  The restaurant used to be full of paying customers and now it's full of steak-challenge eaters.
  • ThaRoadWarrior
    ThaRoadWarrior Posts: 9,566 Chairperson of the Boards
    I mean, if the solution is "sit at the table and take one bite a day for 6 years," I don't know how many of us are really, truly doing that.
  • entrailbucket
    entrailbucket Posts: 7,016 Chairperson of the Boards
    ThaRoadWarrior said:
    I mean, if the solution is "sit at the table and take one bite a day for 6 years," I don't know how many of us are really, truly doing that.
    It's a low number of players, and a low percentage of the total number of MPQ players. 

    If you look at the top placement tiers in the game, though, it's basically 100%.
  • HoundofShadow
    HoundofShadow Posts: 8,004 Chairperson of the Boards
    Hoarding for 550 is a miserable experience. It's about 1.5 years of hoarding for top players and more than that for other players. It will take me about 2 years 4 months to hoard from scratch. With 5* boost, you have 569 5* every day. I believe not a lot of players will do that. 

    I heard that roster slotsused to cost 3000 past a certain number of slot, and thanks to whale, they managed to convince the dev to cap it at 2000. So, whales does have some power. However, I can't verify the truth of this hearsay.

    Anyway, in any F2P games, both non-whales and whales co-exist together. It's like they complete each other. 
  • Jimsta_rooney
    Jimsta_rooney Posts: 167 Tile Toppler
    ThaRoadWarrior said:
    How playable is a champed Ultron? Mine isn’t there, but I kind of want to run Knulltron because I like the name…
    Ultron is brittys best third,one of the most common and popular pairings in mpq.
    Can wreck any team
  • Sekilicious
    Sekilicious Posts: 1,766 Chairperson of the Boards
    entrailbucket said:
    Sekilicious said:
    entrailbucket said:
    No one is spending thousands of dollars in a sitting anymore, because they figured out that they don't have to.  Getting cover swaps is a huge part of that.


    But when players who spend a few bucks here and there, or nothing at all, become dominant, that's a problem.  F2p players love to talk about the community and the health of the game, and those things do have some value.  But in games like this, revenue is the single most important metric.  When f2p players drive spenders out, revenues take a hit, and revenues are the only reason this game still exists.
    To these two points.

    If no one spends thousands of dollars who are your best customers? Please pick among the options that you think are in the game, not some pie-in-the-sky ideal that you think will miraculously appear if the developers become more stingy with the people that are here, now, playing their game.

    You have moved the goalposts on the second point. $600 is more than most have ever spent on any game that isn't World of Warcraft. It isn't 'a few bucks here and there'. 
    If you ran a store, who's your best customer?  Someone who buys something every few weeks or someone who comes in every day to use your bathroom without buying anything?
    Since I have already stated what I think and you obviously ignored it my involvement in this discussion is finished. 
  • entrailbucket
    entrailbucket Posts: 7,016 Chairperson of the Boards
    dianetics said:
    I would say a "whale" would be someone who spends more than $300 per year.
    That would be a VIP who also buys into monthly promos every other month.

    It is double a WoW sub, but you, presumably, also have people who go way beyond that.

    How many people realistically spend more than VIP per month on the game? Anybody who is over double the sub should be the entry to whale territory.
    $300 a year is an objectively insane amount of money to spend on a mobile game.

    You have to understand what the top levels of the game used to look like, though.  Before 5*, the biggest whales had spent a few hundred dollars in total.  The community marvelled at their spending.  We thought they were crazy!

    After 5* everything changed, and it changed very quickly.  Suddenly the biggest whales were spending massive amounts of money on the game.  There were buyclubs running 24/7 where players lined up to drop $100 (or $200, or $500) at a time.  If you wanted to win, you had to spend to keep up.  These players dominated the game -- if you weren't spending at their level you couldn't achieve the highest placements. 

    This is when they adapted their customer service to cater to those folks.  The biggest whales had a direct line to call the developers whenever they felt like it.  High spenders got cover swaps and other benefits.  When I say "high spenders," I'm talking about tens of thousands in lifetime spend.  This sounds crazy to you, but there were a lot of them and they were 100% of top placers.

    Now these players are gone -- retired, or they've quit spending.  Why?  Because there's no reason to!  They can win without spending, and spending is no longer required to win.

    I don't know if that's good or bad for the game, because I don't have access to their financials and I'd have no idea what to do with them if I did. 

    My question was why they're continuing to provide whale-tier customer service to players who aren't whales.
  • entrailbucket
    entrailbucket Posts: 7,016 Chairperson of the Boards
    dianetics said:
    Are they providing whale tier customer service? I would say they really aren't.
    Tens of thousands in a lifetime doesn't sound crazy to me really knowing other games life Fifa or NBA 2k. It is not out of my price range if I perceive the value.

    As to your point there is no real benefit to buy hand over fist with no sure jump in power level.
    Even if you buy into the special deals you might get 1 5* cover per month for 30-40 bucks, and you can only buy in once.
    This is beneficial for the community at whole though, so I accept and appreciate it.
    I'm not a games economist but I imagine getting a wide net of low to mid tier players paying lower amounts consistently may be more profitable, and should be more steady and easier for the devs to manage monthly income than hanging on to a few big spenders who may leave at the tip of a hat.
    The "whale tier" customer service we were talking about is a special, unadvertised service that they provide if you have the 3 latest 5* at 550.  When you have that you can trade their covers in for any other 5* cover of your choice.

    Initially, they offered these swaps to players who had any character at 550.  Eventually they discovered that players would spend big once to get a 550, then exchange covers forever without spending any additional cash.

    The policy was changed so that cover swapping was only available if you had the current 5* maxed out.  This was done to encourage continuous spending.
  • DAZ0273
    DAZ0273 Posts: 11,509 Chairperson of the Boards
    entrailbucket said:
    dianetics said:
    Are they providing whale tier customer service? I would say they really aren't.
    Tens of thousands in a lifetime doesn't sound crazy to me really knowing other games life Fifa or NBA 2k. It is not out of my price range if I perceive the value.

    As to your point there is no real benefit to buy hand over fist with no sure jump in power level.
    Even if you buy into the special deals you might get 1 5* cover per month for 30-40 bucks, and you can only buy in once.
    This is beneficial for the community at whole though, so I accept and appreciate it.
    I'm not a games economist but I imagine getting a wide net of low to mid tier players paying lower amounts consistently may be more profitable, and should be more steady and easier for the devs to manage monthly income than hanging on to a few big spenders who may leave at the tip of a hat.
    The "whale tier" customer service we were talking about is a special, unadvertised service that they provide if you have the 3 latest 5* at 550.  When you have that you can trade their covers in for any other 5* cover of your choice.

    Initially, they offered these swaps to players who had any character at 550.  Eventually they discovered that players would spend big once to get a 550, then exchange covers forever without spending any additional cash.

    The policy was changed so that cover swapping was only available if you had the current 5* maxed out.  This was done to encourage continuous spending.
    Is this still the case though? A lot (a lot!) Of your posts are in "the past" and you clearly have "issues" with certain players presumably through Alliance nonsense. What was the case in 2017 is not necessarily the case now! I don't know but then I don't claim to know - you do so - evidence?
  • DAZ0273
    DAZ0273 Posts: 11,509 Chairperson of the Boards
    dianetics said:
    Is the 550 swap still a thing? If that is, then it should be evidence enough right?
    Exactly but how many 550 rosters do we have here? Would be good to hear from them
  • entrailbucket
    entrailbucket Posts: 7,016 Chairperson of the Boards
    edited January 2022
    DAZ0273 said:
    entrailbucket said:
    dianetics said:
    Are they providing whale tier customer service? I would say they really aren't.
    Tens of thousands in a lifetime doesn't sound crazy to me really knowing other games life Fifa or NBA 2k. It is not out of my price range if I perceive the value.

    As to your point there is no real benefit to buy hand over fist with no sure jump in power level.
    Even if you buy into the special deals you might get 1 5* cover per month for 30-40 bucks, and you can only buy in once.
    This is beneficial for the community at whole though, so I accept and appreciate it.
    I'm not a games economist but I imagine getting a wide net of low to mid tier players paying lower amounts consistently may be more profitable, and should be more steady and easier for the devs to manage monthly income than hanging on to a few big spenders who may leave at the tip of a hat.
    The "whale tier" customer service we were talking about is a special, unadvertised service that they provide if you have the 3 latest 5* at 550.  When you have that you can trade their covers in for any other 5* cover of your choice.

    Initially, they offered these swaps to players who had any character at 550.  Eventually they discovered that players would spend big once to get a 550, then exchange covers forever without spending any additional cash.

    The policy was changed so that cover swapping was only available if you had the current 5* maxed out.  This was done to encourage continuous spending.
    Is this still the case though? A lot (a lot!) Of your posts are in "the past" and you clearly have "issues" with certain players presumably through Alliance nonsense. What was the case in 2017 is not necessarily the case now! I don't know but then I don't claim to know - you do so - evidence?
    Yeah, it's still the policy.   (And: you're correct!  But old issues with old players aren't related to this topic -- if they were I'd be dead-set against those players getting any customer service.)

    I'm curious about why it's still the policy!  I'm really not trying to put anyone down here, but when they put this in place it was exclusively used by crazy people who were spending the equivalent of a decent used car or so every month.  

    Now that it's mainly used by people who've spent relatively little but hoarded for a really long time, I don't get why they'd keep doing it.
  • DAZ0273
    DAZ0273 Posts: 11,509 Chairperson of the Boards
    entrailbucket said:
    DAZ0273 said:
    entrailbucket said:
    dianetics said:
    Are they providing whale tier customer service? I would say they really aren't.
    Tens of thousands in a lifetime doesn't sound crazy to me really knowing other games life Fifa or NBA 2k. It is not out of my price range if I perceive the value.

    As to your point there is no real benefit to buy hand over fist with no sure jump in power level.
    Even if you buy into the special deals you might get 1 5* cover per month for 30-40 bucks, and you can only buy in once.
    This is beneficial for the community at whole though, so I accept and appreciate it.
    I'm not a games economist but I imagine getting a wide net of low to mid tier players paying lower amounts consistently may be more profitable, and should be more steady and easier for the devs to manage monthly income than hanging on to a few big spenders who may leave at the tip of a hat.
    The "whale tier" customer service we were talking about is a special, unadvertised service that they provide if you have the 3 latest 5* at 550.  When you have that you can trade their covers in for any other 5* cover of your choice.

    Initially, they offered these swaps to players who had any character at 550.  Eventually they discovered that players would spend big once to get a 550, then exchange covers forever without spending any additional cash.

    The policy was changed so that cover swapping was only available if you had the current 5* maxed out.  This was done to encourage continuous spending.
    Is this still the case though? A lot (a lot!) Of your posts are in "the past" and you clearly have "issues" with certain players presumably through Alliance nonsense. What was the case in 2017 is not necessarily the case now! I don't know but then I don't claim to know - you do so - evidence?
    Yeah, it's still the policy.   (And: you're correct!  But old issues with old players aren't related to this topic -- if they were I'd be dead-set against those players getting any customer service.)

    I'm curious about why it's still the policy!  I'm really not trying to put anyone down here, but when they put this in place it was exclusively used by insane people who were spending the equivalent of a decent used car or so every month.  

    Now that it's mainly used by people who've spent relatively little but hoarded for a really long time, I don't get why they'd keep doing it.
    That is fair enough and I respect your honesty a lot here. I am not anybody who has ever had a 550 (I barely have 450s!) but I can understand how things go at a higher level. I don't know what the situation should be with regard to spending - I have spent on this game, way more than I would have figured for a  free to play game but not for a while now. Maybe the issue is a lot of these guys with the zero spend have benefitted from Alliance mate's who have spent? This game seems "broken" around Alliances sometimes. My best friend and I made an Alliance lots of years ago and will never split so maybe I don't understand the bigger picture.
  • Bad
    Bad Posts: 3,146 Chairperson of the Boards
    entrailbucket said:
    The "whale tier" customer service we were talking about is a special, unadvertised service that they provide if you have the 3 latest 5* at 550.  When you have that you can trade their covers in for any other 5* cover of your choice.

    I don't see nothing odd here, from a logical view.
    Players hoarding to max 3 latest 5*. All that time and commitment invested. If devs say this rule only applies to people whaling on the hp store, it's like you are killing the reason to play the game for a lot of players( and remember hp store is on hp and many players could been saving it. If they give that service to some players because "they spent money " and others not, there would be less transparency and a lot of complaints).
    And finally a lot of players could hoard that huge amount of cps and tokens, but following that rule they finally do spend some money extra to get some classic covers for sure. It's a win-win for them.


  • entrailbucket
    entrailbucket Posts: 7,016 Chairperson of the Boards
    Daredevil217 said:
    Players have been predicting the game shutting down for years because they think they know how to run the business better than the developers (heck, I’ve probably done it once or twice in my 7+ years in the game myself).  I assume the game is making money with their current practices, as I watch them outlast mobile game after mobile game.

    Bottom line is hugely important for a company but how you get there is also important. Spirit airlines is cheap as hell, but I’ll never fly with them again because their customer service is horrendous. I will give Costco more of my business even if I spend a bit more on their products because their policies and customer service is top notch.

    This is like saying, “I don’t understand why the developers gave out retroactive milestone rewards. They would have made a ton more money if they charged for them instead”. Really they could monetize anything they want, but that doesn’t mean they will make more money. They did something that was of a benefit to the players and the servers didn’t come crashing down. Good companies do this kind of stuff often.  I don’t even know if swaps are considered “whale tier service” or just good customer service. Back in the day, people used to pay for their 550s. Now people pay, hoard, or some combo of both to get there. The game has changed SO much (I mean look at all the al a carte pop up offers we get now, VIP, etc.), that it’s hard to base todays game and economics on one where the landscape was so drastically different.

    I say, let the developers decide if it’s good for their business. Why are we trying to armchair exec? Is it really because we care about the health of a game?

    I’ll say this. If I was a 550 player who didn’t hoard, opened classics as I went, and I had a bunch of maxed old school characters whom power creep had LONG passed by, I could see being a bit perturbed that people with discipline could hoard for years and essentially leapfrog me by also having 550s, but theirs are WAY better than mine. THAT would be an incentive to rally for the developers to shut down swaps for anyone who doesn’t spend exorbitant amounts of money (which basically means shutting down swaps altogether because you’ve stated that tier of whale no longer exists).  I’d probably couch it as caring about how much money the developers make, but really I’d just be mad that I have to face a sea of maxed Wanda, Colossus and Apoc. I imagine that must be brutal. 

    Who's rallying anyone to do anything?  Even if I was lobbying for them to make some kind of change, why on earth would they listen to me?  I (absolutely deservedly) have no influence whatsoever, and I don't pretend to.

    I'm not a competitive player these days, because I don't care to participate in the things one is forced to do to be a competitive player.  I assure you that I'm not secretly pining for those days and scheming out ways to get back to the top by taking other players down. 

    I asked a question, after someone else brought up the policy (a policy which many people here were unaware of).  I don't think this policy will cause the game to shut down, and I didn't say that.  I don't think they're losing money, and I didn't say that either.  I have no idea what's best for them financially.
  • DAZ0273
    DAZ0273 Posts: 11,509 Chairperson of the Boards
    So anyway, that Knull guy, he sure is a healthy fella.
  • ThaRoadWarrior
    ThaRoadWarrior Posts: 9,566 Chairperson of the Boards
    edited January 2022
    I’ve actually found Hela to be a lot of fun now that she has numbers that are material. I’ve been running Polaris/Knull/Hela in PVE, and targeting the enemy with lowest health while trying to match strikes as often as possible. In PVP I’ve been using Hela/Polaris with the same strategy. Actually Dock Ock has too low health to get strikes out before he goes down, so I kind of reserve him until I have at least a couple in play and then kill him to start pumping the specials.

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