2 options to make MPQ more profitable & make players HAPPY

HailMary

From the article

There’s nothing wrong with microtransactions intrinsically, but the temptation to deliberately build not-fun gameplay that’s then alleviated by purchasing widgets is overwhelming. There’s no need to make the level grind balanced — not when players can buy 50% Bonus XP for $4.99. Are current weapons underpowered? Sell HyperPower Ammunition, or screen-clearing bombs for just 10 cents a shot.

Doesn't that criticize precisely what you suggested earlier?

arktos1971 wrote:

Besides, there could be "skins" (or whatever you want to name it), so as to bring new abilities to the characters. Investing in a game and innovating in a game that is so open is limitless.

You could buy "Equipments" to have better protection or additional weapons to make even more damages.

They would sell a lot of these, making the game very fun and diverse.

The article argues against a type of game that MPQ clearly isn't:

If you’ve already extracted 75% of the estimated value of your playerbase within three days, then you’ve got little incentive to work towards creating a better, more-balanced title.

That may be part of why the vast majority of mobile games offer forgettable, simple experiences. It’s hard to convince someone they’re an epic hero, evil villain, or world-conquering strategic mastermind if they have to buy power-ups every six hours for just $2.99.

arktos1971 wrote:

What I see in MPQ is a "F2P" game with a very strong potential. But, it lacks innovation. Have you read what they are saying about innovation on this article ?

When you just stick to figures, small-term profits and do not trust how innovative you can be (or are just not innovative) YOU FAIL.

Ice has hinted that there are at least two Big Things coming down the MPQ pipeline that should be quite cool.

Making HP cheaper is not innovative. Neither is making Iso cheaper. Letting a player max out his entire roster for a smaller amount of money is not innovative, either.

arktos1971 wrote:

MPQ's game structure is now a 25 days loop for PvPs, and 15 days for PvEs. That is most certainly based on the current business model.

I don't understand. Can you elaborate?

arktos1971 wrote:

They don't even use the business model of Candy Crush anyway. They milk the cow outrageously till it dies. And expect new players to replace the veterans who left. That's not good at all.

And this is why I bring up my F2P status: if they were going to simply milk the cow outrageously, I don't see why their rules would still let players like me even exist. If they were simply going for quick, early money, they'd let you buy every cover you want without winning the first one first: let the big collectors simply drop $5K on a full cover collection whenever they're addicted enough to want to, without any further in-game effort. They'd have PVPs with 500-HP entry fees that are easier and provide better rewards than the "free" PVPs -- I think the low-value reward structure in the new NHB tourneys disqualifies them as such, but I'm not sure. To my entirely untrained eye, there are a large number of ways in which they could simply milk players for short-term spending, but they've chosen not to implement them.

Unknown

You don't get my point (your answers to my previous posts indicate so). Not a problem.

Unknown

arktos1971 wrote:

You don't get my point (your answers to my previous posts indicate so). Not a problem.

Since you've said your point isn't that d3p needs to sell thing cheaper, is your point that "some" ::waves hands vaguely:: aspects of the game are frustrating to players and d3p should "somehow" ::waves hands vaguely:: do something to fix those? Because, oh look, absolutely everybody, even the "naive veteran F2P who doesn't even have a job in customer focused marketing" already agrees with that.

Unknown

HM : innovation is not sales. That's not what I implied. Innovation is in the contents, in the product structures.

Yes, the article exactly says the opposite to what I was suggesting. Yet, very few games are profitable. Very few have the potential to be profitable. MPQ has it.

Let's see what the cool stuff Ice was telling us about will bring. I'm curious. So far, Season 2 is just a copy of Season 1, and it is just boring. No one cares about rankings, everyone just wants Nick Fury. 25 days of "work for one 4* cover that practically no one will be ever to max ?

For the moment, they are building the strategy on fast cash and noobs (Heroic Packs is an example). They make everything possible so that we have to pay constantly for playing. Latest decision : Prologue Healing (which I rarely used, Prologue is boring to death).

This forum shows they are wrong (very few games get so much organisation. MPQ has a wiki for instance).

Never did I see so much suggestion for improvement, so much criticism, anger, despair, disapointment for a game... This is abnormal. It shows one thing though : the game is loved, but the dev and cs teams do not cope with the whole situation and are helpless in customers' strategy and communication.

If you (as a company, not you as HM) are deaf to what your customers continuously tell you, and diminishes the impact of anger because you think your product is so great it will survive anything, YOU'RE WRONG.

The dev team has investors. If the investors are dissatisfied with the game's financial figures, they will call it quit. And I'd be sad (not only me) that happened.

Unknown

gamar wrote:

arktos1971 wrote:

You don't get my point (your answers to my previous posts indicate so). Not a problem.

Since you've said your point isn't that d3p needs to sell thing cheaper, is your point that "some" ::waves hands vaguely:: aspects of the game are frustrating to players and d3p should "somehow" ::waves hands vaguely:: do something to fix those? Because, oh look, absolutely everybody, even the "naive veteran F2P who doesn't even have a job in customer focused marketing" already agrees with that.

So what's your point ? Explaining to me what I'm saying is **** ?

Cool. You're perfectly right.

Happy ? You've just earned 20 ISO.

Unknown

arktos1971 wrote:

Absolutely. But lowering the price of the game (in a F2P business model) would help people improve their roster (since at the moment, this is the only cool thing to improve in the game, right ?)

This post wasn't about helping people improve their rosters. Sure, that is a side effect of what I am proposing, but not the intent.

The intent was simply to adjust the pricing of IAP to a level where more things are available on a more regular basis to people who would not generally spend money on a F2P game. Therefore opening the market to a higher percentage of purchases, making D3/Demuirge more money [rant] so that maybe they can BUY NEW SERVERS!!! [/rant] And I forgot the rest of what I was going to say because my tinykitty phone rang. If I remember, I'll edit it in later...

(((Space holder for edit because I have the memory of a gold fish sometimes)))

Unknown

arktos1971 wrote:

gamar wrote:

arktos1971 wrote:

You don't get my point (your answers to my previous posts indicate so). Not a problem.

Since you've said your point isn't that d3p needs to sell thing cheaper, is your point that "some" ::waves hands vaguely:: aspects of the game are frustrating to players and d3p should "somehow" ::waves hands vaguely:: do something to fix those? Because, oh look, absolutely everybody, even the "naive veteran F2P who doesn't even have a job in customer focused marketing" already agrees with that.

So what's your point ? Explaining to me what I'm saying is tinykitty ?

Cool. You're perfectly right.

Happy ? You've just earned 20 ISO.

I'm saying that we had a thread debating whether MPQ's IAP are at the right value proposition for players, and you came in and spent the last 3 pages insulting people and as far as I can tell your entire contribution to the conversation is "my experience in marketing has taught me that d3p should try to make their game better, because good games are better than bad games"

Unknown

Apparently 20 ISO were not enough.

You've earned 2000 ISO. Is that better ?

Your way of summarizing things does not require a reply, sorry for that.

Unknown

arktos1971 wrote:

Your way of summarizing things does not require a reply, sorry for that.

But..........you just replied

This thread is highly amusing. More please.

Unknown

I should have added "a reply to your argument".

Sorry for that

Unknown

arktos1971 wrote:

They make everything possible so that we have to pay constantly for playing. Latest decision : Prologue Healing.

You don't HAVE to pay constantly for playing, unless you choose to for fast tracking reasons. I don't buy covers and my LDaken is 4/2/2 at Level 69 already. And they just released him. I will show my support of the game by buying HP when I feel I am getting satisfaction for my money. I have only spent a total of approx $40 on the game so far. I do it to show my support when I am happy with decisions that they have made. And if they make bad choices, I do not spend again until I feel like they made good choices again.

And as far as prologue (story) healing, that has not been officially stated. Only hinted at. So let's not start that riot just yet.

arktos1971 wrote:

If you (as a company, not you as HM) are deaf to what your customers continuously tell you, and diminishes the impact of anger because you think your product is so great it will survive anything, YOU'RE WRONG.

I agree with this sentiment. Better game changes (Server fixes, MMR fixes, Scaling fixes, etc) need to be implemented before they role out new material. They also need to continue to work on the overall communication, and from what I have read, they need to fire every Customer Support Agent they have and try again with a new staff. (Regarding countless number of "it's been 2-4 weeks since I sent my CS ticket in with no response" threads.)

Unknown

The current situation is not amusing unfortunately. For those who spent money on the game, they have every right to expect for better service and another option than : pay more to play more.

Those who did not spend anything on it, they don't care.

Unknown

TheUnwiseOne wrote:

arktos1971 wrote:

Your way of summarizing things does not require a reply, sorry for that.

But..........you just replied

This thread is highly amusing. More please.

You're also F2P Unwiseone ?

Spoit

To be honest, I'm not even sure what you're arguing about arkatos. It just seems like you're arguing for the sake of arguing

Unknown

arktos1971 wrote:

TheUnwiseOne wrote:

arktos1971 wrote:

Your way of summarizing things does not require a reply, sorry for that.

But..........you just replied

This thread is highly amusing. More please.

You're also F2P Unwiseone ?

No I spent a grand total of $2, so i'm pretty close

HailMary

arktos1971 wrote:

Let's see what the cool stuff Ice was telling us about will bring. I'm curious. So far, Season 2 is just a copy of Season 1, and it is just boring. No one cares about rankings, everyone just wants Nick Fury. 25 days of "work for one 4* cover that practically no one will be ever to max ?

I, too, very much look forward to those Big Things. Season 1 simply had some novelty. Some people pushed too hard and burned out. Others realigned their priorities in Season 2. Still others didn't care even in Season 1. Some alliances (The X-Men, 5DV, etc.) still care about specific rankings in Season 2.

Fury is supposed to be a trophy, and a teaser trophy, at that. If you're viewing Season 2 as "work 25 days just to get a measly Fury cover," then to put it bluntly, you're doing it wrong. The Fury cover is just a bit of added impetus to maybe push a bit harder or grind a bit more. It should not be your raison d'etre for consistent MPQ activity.

arktos1971 wrote:

For the moment, they are building the strategy on fast cash and noobs (Heroic Packs is an example).

And when it comes to Heroic packs, it's apparently working. They've apparently seen sales of said cover packs rise after the switch to non-guaranteed featured characters. I actively dislike the change, but hey, if you're talking about bottom line, that was apparently a good move.

arktos1971 wrote:

They make everything possible so that we have to pay constantly for playing. Latest decision : Prologue Healing (which I rarely used, Prologue is boring to death).

Broken record. Rewind discussion for riposte. See: F2P status.

arktos1971 wrote:

This forum shows they are wrong (very few games get so much organisation. MPQ has a wiki for instance).

Wrong about... what? They clearly do support long-time players, else Ice wouldn't bother engaging with us at all, and the Alliance system, with its logistical and organizational overhead, wouldn't exist.

arktos1971 wrote:

Never did I see so much suggestion for improvement, so much criticism, anger, despair, disapointment for a game... This is abnormal. It shows one thing though : the game is loved, but the dev and cs teams do not cope with the whole situation and are helpless in customers' strategy and communication.

If you (as a company, not you as HM) are deaf to what your customers continuously tell you, and diminishes the impact of anger because you think your product is so great it will survive anything, YOU'RE WRONG.

Or, ya know, they do fix things, though with varying degrees of success. Some recent examples: PVE scaling, rubberbanding, MMR changes, sharding, and the Spidey nerf. They could definitely use better communications, at least about basic things like server outages.

Moreover, the forum contains a tiny, tiny contingent of MPQ's playerbase. I have yet to see any evidence that those vocal, critical forumites realistically represent any significant group of paying players (or players in general).

arktos1971 wrote:

The dev team has investors. If the investors are dissatisfied with the game's financial figures, they will call it quit. And I'd be sad (not only me) that happened.

Ya know, you keep referring to supposedly dismal financial figures, but you've yet to even try to cite any numbers, let alone bother to source those numbers.

Unknown

Ok, let me try and synthetize things and try to enlighten what I have said previously :

My motivation (and I think the one of some if not many players) : trying to get new covers and levelling characters. Either from that, I don't see any other interest spending time and money on this game. That's what appealed to me immediately, and even though my roster is nearly maxed out, I still find interest to play. I need to use some strategy to rank better (in order to have the covers missing). So far, I don't see any other motivation in a Match 3 game to push me ranking better. Please tell me what yours are, I may have missed something and I am interested to know. It could bring a new light to my vision of the game.

Strategy/business/money/failure : in all businesses, the same causes lead to the same consequences, you do not need to follow the figures. It's my job to screen companies and give them strategic orientations. How does it work ? You gather all parameters and you draw conclusions. So far, I could predict the downfall of Apple in the post 1992 era, the one of Disney in the 2000's... When I predicted the downfall, the figures were just brilliant. If you do not listen to your customers or do not anticipate their needs and expectations, you always fail sooner or later. This is even truer in the world of phone apps and leisure industry where things go high or low lightning fast. The offer is overwhelming, and making one's place is hard enough. The article mentioned (but it's just common sense) that keeping players in the game app industry is truly hard.

Moreover, the MPQ players who paid once or several times will be more incline to stay (those are the ones to complain on this forum, because as they paid, they become customers, with a legal binding), whereas the ones who did not simply don't care and are not enclined to claim for a compensation, will erase the app and download another one. So, if MPQ has not succeeded in making you purchase anything from the game, and you represent 98 % of the population, what do you think about the other 97.99 % of your fellow players (99 % of which are not on this forum) ?

How can you ignore or simply go against the flow of what your customers (who paid) ask ? Many companies think that what they do is for the best of the company and for the best of their customers. They are wrong. Guys have repeatedly said : stop monetizing the game. They do the opposite. The more complaints, the worse monetization decisions...

MPQ has succeeded in many ways so far : 120 or more days playing is a lot. MPQ is a great game. It has all the ingredients to last, like LoL for instance (provided they bring innovation). BUT : they go too fast when it comes to drag incomes to the game and they do it awkwardly (when customers have the feeling you try to gouge them, you've failed). The product is not stable enough so that they add new "financial rules" to the game. Not to mention the CS... Why do you think many players currently say "I'll stop paying till all problems are fixed first" ?

For some time, I have been sick of reading complaints on this forum. Until I had the problem with Google. I called the D3P CS and will not go into details here, but their answer was not good (from a business point of view, not necessarily from a customer's one). If you are interested about my past interaction with the CS I will tell you about it privately. They've been good in the past and with Google, they've been bad. The guy even succeeded in making me feel a freak, spending so much in his game. (Seriously ) I may be a freak, but they made the rules, right ?

I have a friend who plays LoL. He told me that MPQ was great, but he stopped playing because he does not see the point in spending more money than he did (he bought slots for his roster in the beginning) and gave me numerous reasons why MPQ is weak from a player's perspective (he was playing Candy Crush before). He told me you do not have to pay to succeed in LoL, but the devs included a lot of fun stuff, and so far (in 2 years), he spent $80 in it. He spent $13 in MPQ and stopped...

I hope you see my point now, and since you are interested in more explanations, please ask if needed.

HailMary

arktos1971 wrote:

My motivation (and I think the one of some if not many players) : trying to get new covers and levelling characters. Either from that, I don't see any other interest spending time and money on this game. That's what appealed to me immediately, and even though my roster is nearly maxed out, I still find interest to play. I need to use some strategy to rank better (in order to have the covers missing). So far, I don't see any other motivation in a Match 3 game to push me ranking better. Please tell me what yours are, I may have missed something and I am interested to know. It could bring a new light to my vision of the game.

Yes, getting new covers is a motivation to keep playing. New characters are part of that motivation. Also, it's fun, so there's that.

arktos1971 wrote:

Moreover, the MPQ players who paid once or several times will be more incline to stay (those are the ones to complain on this forum, because as they paid, they become customers, with a legal binding), whereas the ones who did not simply don't care and are not enclined to claim for a compensation, will erase the app and download another one. So, if MPQ has not succeeded in making you purchase anything from the game, and you represent 98 % of the population, what do you think about the other 97.99 % of your fellow players (99 % of which are not on this forum) ?

Unsupported assertion. Provide evidence that any player who doesn't loudly complain on the forums will simply delete the app.
Counterexamples: most of my alliance, Colognoisseur, Bugpop, etc.

arktos1971 wrote:

How can you ignore or simply go against the flow of what your customers (who paid) ask ? Many companies think that what they do is for the best of the company and for the best of their customers. They are wrong. Guys have repeatedly said : stop monetizing the game. They do the opposite. The more complaints, the worse monetization decisions...

I'm glad you have such a good, solid handle on what MPQ's general paying playerbase asks for. Approximately zero other complainers on this forum are similarly informed.

arktos1971 wrote:

Why do you think many players currently say "I'll stop paying till all problems are fixed first" ?

Attention-seeking behavior.

arktos1971 wrote:

For some time, I have been sick of reading complaints on this forum. Until I had the problem with Google. I called the D3P CS and will not go into details here, but their answer was not good (from a business point of view, not necessarily from a customer's one). If you are interested about my past interaction with the CS I will tell you about it privately. They've been good in the past and with Google, they've been bad. The guy even succeeded in making me feel a freak, spending so much in his game. (Seriously ) I may be a freak, but they made the rules, right ?

If that CS person made you feel like a freak, then s/he is a complete idiot. But, let me get this straight: you had many good experiences with D3P CS, but then had one bad experience, which clearly means that D3P is financially doomed? Really?

arktos1971 wrote:

He told me you do not have to pay to succeed in LoL, but the devs included a lot of fun stuff, and so far (in 2 years), he spent $80 in it. He spent $13 in MPQ and stopped...

So, D3P is doomed to financial failure because your friend spent less in MPQ than he did in LoL, arguably one of the most popular and successful F2P games on the planet? Interesting.

Edit: typo.

noobprime

arktos1971 wrote:

He told me you do not have to pay to succeed in LoL, but the devs included a lot of fun stuff, and so far (in 2 years), he spent $80 in it. He spent $13 in MPQ and stopped...

LOL doesn't help your argument really. The game is about >4 years old now and when it was introduced it was buggy as heck. It took them a long time to fix their server side problems (over 9000 login queues?) and to this day lag is still problematic. They gave out boosts as compensation quite freely in the early days something D3P really hasn't embraced.

As for introducing stuff, NOTHING happened for a long time aside new champions and rebalancing. There was simply NO innovation till they got their **** together, and it took time. Years even. Now they have smaller maps, dominion, 1 for all, etc. At this point the community expects about 1 new shiny 'game feature' from them every ~10 months.

BUT the most important part, LOL has absolutely pathetic monetization. Their playerbase does not spend money on the game. D3P mentioned the mythical $1 ARPDAU that they hit recently. LOL has ARPDAUs of 5 ... 5 CENTS and I think I am rounding up here. The sole reason why they are successful is that they have a good core product, and people *stayed* to play the game.

MPQ doesn't have that at the moment, changing the $$ structure only helps so much, but at the moment is akin to lipstick on a pig (sorry pig, I love you bacon).

Unknown

arktos1971 wrote:

Moreover, the MPQ players who paid once or several times will be more incline to stay (those are the ones to complain on this forum, because as they paid, they become customers, with a legal binding), whereas the ones who did not simply don't care and are not enclined to claim for a compensation, will erase the app and download another.

Can you provide literally any data or evidence to support any part of this assertion? Because it's contrary to everything the metrics for f2p games show and this forum itself is a prime example showing people who have invested time feel just as much of a need to complain as those who invested money