Player Retention

FindingHeart8 said:

The release of Manastrike and surge of players playing that makes me wonder if it'll take a good portion of the mtgpq players, as mtgpq was initially the only mtg game available for android-phones.

Helpful Notes for developers (I sampled the game to get an idea):

1. Manastrike has more graphics
2. quicker loading time
3. more rewards that are easy to obtain
4. It's built off the same platform as Clash Royale, an insanely addictive mobile game (one of the top games played on mobile phones for years).

Hopefully the two games can exist separately, but since both require a significant amount of time commitment to be competitive, the possibility of product cannibalization does exist, and in this current state mtgpq is at a significant disadvantage.

Hopefully these are things to consider @Oktagon_Support  just trying to help mtgpq prosper and have a happy community!

bken1234 said:

My coalition hasn’t added a new player since October. We have 2-3 on loan, so technically tinykitty’s roster is at 22-3 

I attribute our retention to putting fun before everything. We are a close-knit coalition with excellent communication.  Most of my players build fresh for each event.  I will quickly change participation requirements for unpopular events or for events where bugs are greatly affecting scores. 

Our players individually approach the game more simply for the game and not the rewards, so the things that generally upset other players don’t affect the tone of my coalition as much. 

I didn’t build tinykitty, I inherited it when I moved down to top 25 after leading top 10 for 3 years, but culturally I couldn’t have asked for a more friendly, chill, fun place to relax, play MtGPQ and do well. They made the game fun for me again when it really wasn’t. 

Today a player from one of the larger alliances ("7 top 100 teams including the world number two") jumped into my coalition, left an advert for his own coalitions, and jumped out.

I suppose coalitions do what they must to survive the player churn caused by burnout but that's somewhat unethical.

Hi guys, long-time lurker and player but new to speaking my voice here...

I lead a top-500 coalition that slowly progresses up the ranks on the backs of a small handful of active players. We were bloated with players who went inactive indefinitely after a dozen or even ten thousand coalition points, which I assume means they left the game - they didn’t share a reason. I’d kick one at a time just to have a slot for the next guy. Only a few have left voluntarily, seeking more activity.

We are trying to improve our experience through recruiting so I booted all the inactive players but there is no way to raise our hands in-game to recruit nor is there a way for players to find active coalitions in-game. We aren’t top-10 or have any other great stats to attract players but we want to have fun and thrive just like anyone else, so filling slots means effort, not just activating the advertising department. It seems that finding a coalition means joining a random one for a week to see if they fit.

I think that new players join coalitions because there are events they can’t participate in otherwise, but there is little in-game sense of community. The chat function is a minimum feature to connect players but there is little else. I read that many coalitions take their experience out-of-game, which is something I have done for other games but can’t do today due to time constraints.

I posted an ad for our coalition in the appropriate forum but I have my doubts that we will find any new players that way. I am not sure how else I can support my coalition with the time I have.

This isn’t a new issue - my coalition is born of the ashes of another coalition whose leader and most players went inactive so the core of us moved on. That was over two years ago...

Thanks for reading,

Bubbles

This was from us. To explain a bit better: we aim for coalitions that seem to have only one or two players active with a lot of inactive players still there. We've found players this way that are very happy that we found them. More than a couple told me they would have quit if they didn't get our invite. I want to make clear we're not doing this to spread negativity or hurt other active teams.

@Pantagruel I'm sorry we got in yours, and if you explain you're active we will definitely not "poach" from active teams.

@Julie71 I have seen recruiters from your alliance (or an alliance tied to yours) use the same strategy. That's been a while ago, maybe your alliance doesn't use it anymore, but "we absolutely don't do that" isn't exactly how it is (or was).

Edit: spelling.

not a fan of not being able to craft masterpeices unless you pony up for vip, oh sorry i can hope to eventually pull them all along with winning the lottery on my birthday while hearing my wife tell me i was right.

The topic of income/monetisation strategies goes hand in hand with player retention. A stingy monetisation strategy will be unpopular and undersubscribed, and fail to fund the game's costs; this forces game content cuts which reduce player engagement. On the other hand, an overly generous strategy both risks turning off non-paying players, and also risks becoming unsustainable for paying players; earning more value than they can absorb in-game over the same rate of time means they'll eventually stop paying for more. Reduced income again leads to forced cuts of game content.

So a good monetisation strategy is crucial. It's fair to say that D3 haven't hit a perfect balance yet because they are still tweaking things.

I'm curious why you think a powerful reward for long term paid loyalty is "sickening"? Should powerful rewards never be given for money, or should they be given more cheaply? Do you think the latter would actually sustain the game? Personally I think MP crafting, if we're to have it as a paid reward at all, is pitched about right. I also think there's a huge space D3 could explore further which is cosmetic rewards for payment. E.g. money-only "foil" planeswalkers which animate or are glammy in some way in-game (whether you play with that PW or against it).

(By the way, I think this is obvious, but all free to play games require as a matter of existence a monetisation strategy which covers their ongoing costs; whether you call it a "cash grab" or "ensuring the game's continued existence/survival", it's the same thing. We can all obviously choose what tone we are going for when deciding on the label we use!)

Locking the privilege to craft MP’s behind a paywall was always bad value. It didn’t matter if you were a subscriber, or a free to play player.

In a vacuum, crafting MP’s would be great and monetizing them to some degree would be reasonable. But in the context of the current VIP system, it’s not attractive because 1) you’re being asked to spend $90-$180, wait 6 months and pay 1.5-2 mythics worth of orbs on top of that. And 2) By that time you would likely have a near complete collection, so you’d have little/no need for it.

Depending on where you stand on whether the subscription value was worth the price, you might believe that Oktagon/D3 is trying to backtrack to stay afloat, or just trying to maximize their profit margins . I’ll concede that new content may be a dev priority, but I’ve seen no evidence to suggest that VIP has benefited the game.

I agree that there are good options for monetization aside from purchasing currency for packs, but I think a subscription service was unhealthy and discouraging for players who wanted a free to play progression system in a free to play game. Compounded with locking much requested features behind VIP, little stability improvement, and the increasing anti-player sentimentality, I think it’s a contributing factor in the declining player base.