Ben Grimm wrote: I think it's about fifty/fifty dollar chasing and rank incompetence. The people in charge seem to fixate on metrics over gross revenue, even to their own financial detriment. So a directive probably goes out that they're not selling enough health packs, even if revenues are fine, and they'll screw up the game trying to increase one metric or another. The ARPDAU articles were eye-opening in that they gave us an idea of what they're trying to do, and it is, quite frankly, ridiculous. If they'd make the game more player-friendly, they'd increase total revenues, even if averages went down a bit. I happily put money into Simpsons: Tapped Out, the only other f2p game I really play, and it's because they give me a rewarding and fun user experience. MPQ feels like it's trying to make me either pony up a ton of money or grind myself down, and I haven't given them a dime in months. This game is run badly. It's managed badly. The people in charge do not seem to know what they're doing. If I could play when I wanted, how I'd like, and not have to bow to their schedules and their weird monetization ****, I'd put in some money - $5, $10, $20 per month. Happily. But I keep being on the cusp of thinking it's time to quit, and in any case, I'm simply not giving a game that's this frustrating any money. There's a very good game underneath all this that the developers keep trying to drown in monetization.
rixmith wrote: My reasons for being stuck in the Ares/OBW rut are simple. 1. If I used any other team I got attacked a lot more. Like 10x. 2. I could end maybe 2/3 or my matches at full health and keep playing With the proposed mechanic I won't be able to do #2 anymore. That would be okay if it weren't for #1. I expect this mechanic will just lead to much more skipping - why even consider attacking Thor/OBW when you can skip and probably find a cStorm/MNMags?
mcheath wrote: I apologize for being frank but your post is complete garbage. You cannot make the assumption that this game would make more money just because you SAY you'd spend more money if the developers gave you what you want. People SAY things all the time, it's what they DO that counts here. "Oh the devs made the game more player-friendly so I will reward them with 10bux." How many of the playerbase do think have this thought? 5%? Less? More than likely the thought would be: "wow this game is easier now I don't have to spend money on it to suceed, I'll save 10bux for the Steam sale!"
Teke184 wrote: It's probably a combination of a cash grab and most devs, outside of Ice, not actually *playing* the game competitively.
FoxyMulder wrote: Teke184 wrote: It's probably a combination of a cash grab and most devs, outside of Ice, not actually *playing* the game competitively. lol I wouldn't call Ice's 32 pts per every three tournaments "competitive" play.
MarvelMan wrote: Here is a chart, from Steam, that someone (I forget who) posted earlier showing that the playerbase is dwindling: http://steamcharts.com/app/234330 That tells me that they are either getting more money from each of those fewer players on average, or their profitability is tanking. Neither of those is a good thing.
Teke184 wrote: strip-mining of their player base
pasa_ wrote: The real sad thing is that it is (IMO) established industrial wisdom that 'customer satisfaction' works. That happy players pay more than unhappy ones. That monitoring customer feedback worth its wile in gold. Also that users of a system usually have the most information about it, so almost anyone with consistent play record could provide better models, estimates, explain things. And could tell money-wise impact more precisely. Seem they must actually crash into the iceberg before starting to think how good idea it is to speeding away in the night ignoring the warnings.
pasa_ wrote: The real sad thing is that it is (IMO) established industrial wisdom that 'customer satisfaction' works.