Why you should not spend money on this game.

Unknown · June 2014

TL;DR - Do not spend money on this game under any circumstances.

I have played this game for a period of 7 months. Everything that I say here is purely my own opinion, based on my experiences as well as what I had interpreted from the experiences of others. MPQ was indeed a great game. But I truly believe that it has been overly monetized, and competitive to the point of being stressful. Feel free to disagree with me.

I am here to offer my reasons why I believe that we all should not spend any money on Marvel Puzzle Quest.

You are not getting value for money.
With the exception of Roster Slots and Shields (to some extent), nothing in the game is worth spending money on. The Heroic packs which cost 150 HP at the very least, have a very low drop rate for 3-stars, and even then it may not be what you need. I have heard cases where people bought the 42-pack, which may cost up to $160 USD, have gotten as little as 4 3-star covers. One can do a lot of things with 160 bucks, without gambling it away on packs that contain nothing but 2-stars.

Prices are exhorbitant.
A single 3-star cover costs 1250 HP to raise, which may cost up to $12.50 USD. And that's just one out of 13 covers for a single character. It also costs around 170k ISOs to up a character to Lv 141, leaving the costs somewhere around $300 USD just for the ISOs alone. For a single 3-star character, out of the 20 available. In my honest opinion, no single cover is worth 12 bucks. That is not a price I am willing to pay.

What you pay for is not what you are getting.
When you buy something, you expect it to be in a condition that was shown to you. I have heard multiple cases of people who paid to level their Ragnarok and Spider-man having buyers regret. Maybe they should have seen it coming, but not all of us are prophets. Nerfs are supposed to balance out these characters, but in some cases, they completely wrecked them. 5 Blue AP for a 1 turn stun..... Is this what you paid for?

"Funbalance" is the synonym for "tinykitty up".

Overly competitive gaming environment creates stress.
Despite what some people believe, this is not exactly a game that is considered casual. Everything in the game is a competition. EVERYTHING. You are literally forced into a situation where you have to compete with thousands of other players to get prizes that you require in order to progress into the game. Of all the games I've played, none of them are this competitive. This game has concurrent tournaments running, with cycles mostly around 60 hours. With such heavy competition going on all the time, it's hard not to imagine the stress and tension going on.

Instead of players paying money to improve their gaming experience, we may have a situation where players are actually paying money to relieve some of that stress piled up on them from the game instead.

Devote your life to win.
Some games are Pay-to-win. MPQ is a game that I consider under the category of Devote-your-life-to-win. As mentioned, there are many of these competitions running concurrently. It also doesn't help that you may have to disrupt your sleep cycles, take leave, or even play at work, in order to get good results at these tournaments. You make compromises, you make adjustments to your life, in order to be good at the game.

Your life now revolves around this game.

Removing 3-star cover rewards from Lightning Rounds is a jerk move.
I come from a time of the old Lightning Rounds. Transitioning from 2-stars to 3-stars was not easy in the least, but it is most certainly possible with time and patience. With the Lightning Round rewards now nerfed, trying to rise into 3-stars is now living hell. You are not likely to have enough slots for the random 3-stars you are getting, and it is very difficult to get into the top 10 of a regular tournament if you don't already have a good 3-star team.

Apparently, handing you out 3* covers so easily is just so sinful, the developers just had to take it out.

To make matters worse, the Lightning Rounds are actually now even more highly competitive, despite the rewards being nerfed, miraculously. I see people with godly 141 rosters fighting for the top place for some tokens. I just cannot explain why.

Regulars and top players are leaving the game.
Many of the top players, including Eddiemon and Theladder, just to name are few, are quitting this game. Many of them have invested quite a substantial amount. If these guys have spent so much time and money, but are now leaving, what message does it tell you about this game? I'm making my own plans for leaving by the way. Alas, the sunk cost fallacy....

I will not recommend this game to my friends.
At one time, I might have. But now, I know that if I recommend this to my friend, he will be stuck with the stress of constant tournaments, running out of roster slots, extreme difficulty trying to get 3-stars. I cannot imagine how hard it is to get 3-star rosters with the Lightning Round rewards now nerfed. Unless I want him to suffer from stress and insomnia, I'm not going to recommend this to him.

New characters are being added at an insanely fast rate. Not necessarily a good thing.
You got a new shiny 3-star character! Congrats! He is featured in tournaments and given out as rewards, and you try to slowly build him. Then, before you get the chance to fully train him, another new character is rolled out. And this process keeps repeating itself. You are stuck in the perpetual state where new characters are rolled out faster than you can train the old ones. We now have 20 different 3-star characters, with one more Storm on the way. Exactly when will it be enough? It doesn't help that drop rate from tokens haven't increased, making it even more unlikely to get the exact cover you need.

If feels like I'm trapped chasing after the illusion of having a full and complete 3-star team, that will never actually happen. It is true, new content is required, helps to keep the game fresh, helps to retain more people. But two weeks for a new character, in my opinion, is way too fast. Characters being tweaked immediately after they are sent out is a clear indication of insufficient planning to me.

Somehow it feels like these new characters are added to trap players in an eternal rat race, as opposed to introducing new elements to keep the game fresh.

The developers are not listening.
The objective of the developers is clear. Money. And they don't have to listen to your feedback to get it. They keep implementing changes like nerfing Lightning Round rewards, removing 25 Hero Points from Standard Recruit packs, so that they can exhaust your methods for obtaining covers and free Hero Points.

No one ever got rich in business by playing nice. And it is exactly what D3P is doing. Whatever tactics they are using to squeeze more cash out of you people, it is working, and they will continue to do it, even more aggressively. What you want in your game is inconsequential compared to what can make you spend.

If you find yourself not liking the way this game is heading, then you need to stop spending, for your own sake, as well as the others. The best way for you to speak, is to use your wallet. And the moment people stop spending, is the moment they start listening. Hopefully.

Ultimately, games are about fun.
Are you still playing this game because it is fun? Or is it because of peer pressure from your alliance, the need to get that shiny new reward, or that fear from getting kicked out from your alliance and losing everything that you have worked hard to get all these months?

If you're still having fun, by all means, go ahead and spend money to enhance your experience. But if you're not, now would be a good time to think twice before clicking on that Purchase button.

Sunken cost fallacy.
The reason that prevents me from quitting this game immediately, is the effort that I have given in the span of 7 months. To quit now would be to give up all the hard work that I had put in to get to where I am right now.

If I started this game the way it is right now, I think I would quit on day two. I don't know how many of you feel the same way.

Conclusion:
With the way the game is right now, I honestly feel that spending money would be a bad idea. But ultimately, it is your money, it is your decision. My recommendation is this. Do not spend any money on this game.

Feel free to disagree. Arguments are welcomed. No flaming please.

Kiamodo · June 2014

These are all things that are true. Many people may be stuck in a sunk cost situation. They spent so much time and money being number one why quit now. I believe you can have fun and not spend money on this game. At the same time if no one spent money then the developers would stop working on it. It comes down to what do you want out of this experience.

Why you should not spend money on this game.

Comments

Categories