2 options to make MPQ more profitable & make players HAPPY

Marvel Puzzle Quest MPQ General Discussion
1

TL:DR version (for those who hate long posts)… Lower prices = happier consumers/players which leads to a lot more purchases = more revenue/profit for MPQ. “The happy goose lays the golden eggs”

The pricing system in this game is over the top. If they really want to hit that $1 DAU (or whatever it is), they need a major structural overhaul in pricing to encourage more spending. The last 7 years of my life, until I started having medical issues and needed a break to heal up, I managed a small 2 person loan office that generated $500-600k annual revenue stream. Granted, being in Illinois, and Chicago, the taxes, fees, rent, etc ate into a lot of our revenue. But revenue is revenue. So if there is one thing I know how to do, it is how to make money.

Currently, most players would not be happy with spending money in MPQ for a multitude of reasons that I’m not going to go into because that is not what this post is about. And many that do make purchases, have buyers regret afterwards. If you want this to change, you (D3/Demuirge) HAVE TO CHANGE.

I will admit that after the changes to the last PVE (which sadly didn’t carry over to the Simulator. I’m hoping it was a beta test and you are working it into the next PVE with some tweaks), and the day that IceIX spent COMMUNICATING with us, and the good will gesture of giving the player base compensation for the server issues (which are still happening. I thought you fixed that?) that I have broken my boycott, and on 2 separate occasions in the last few days have purchased 2 of the 4.99 packs. That hardly puts me into the whale category. But instead of focusing on a small percentage of whales, if you were to focus on the larger percentage of your user base, your earning capabilities would be endless and your playerbase would be much happier overall. (I know what some skeptics are going to say, some people will ALWAYS find a reason to complain. I say let them.) So here is my suggestion to help you make more money by making it not only more accessible to customers who have limited means, but also making it worth more to the players to purchase your product.

OPTION 1
Change the in game HP pricing system to something like this. If in game HP prices didn’t seem so gougy, more people would purchase HP to spend in the game.

Healthpacks
Single - 25 HP or 1000 ISO
5 pack - 100 HP or 4000 ISO

Shields
30 min - 15 HP
1 hr - 25 HP
3 hr - 50 HP
8 hr - 100 HP
12 hr - 150 HP (Edited in for TheUnwiseOne)
24 hr - 200 HP
EVENT- 400 HP (for those who on opening day push to high numbers 1000-1300, it shields them until the event ends or until they break)

Character Covers (Edited… Original prices I posted appeared to be too low…)
1* = 125 HP (stays the same)
2* = 300 HP
3* = 900 HP
4* = 1500 HP

Don’t like Option 1, how about…

OPTION 2
Change the pricing schedule for HP itself to get more “bang for your buck”. Then there is no need for “Sales”. And I don’t know why you skipped over the $10 option to begin with, but it needs to be there. Trust me, IT DOES NEED TO BE THERE. And as stated, you don’t want people relying on ISO purchases, so either do away with them, or limit the choices to smaller amounts.

HP Purchases
$1.99 = 400
$4.99 = 1000
$9.99 = 2200 (bonus of 2500 ISO)
$19.99 = 4600 (bonus of 5000 ISO)
$39.99 = 10,000 (bonus of 10,000 ISO)
$79.99 = 25,000 (bonus of 20,000 ISO)

ISO Purchases
$1.99 = 1000 ISO
$4.99 = 3000 ISO
$9.99 = 6500 ISO

And finally, one off the wall idea that came to me while I was writing this. A monthly subscription pass. You could have different levels with different benefits. I am completely talking out of my arse at this point. Feel free not to even read beyond this point. This will (1) never happen and (2) would be RAGED/FLAMED against as P2W mechanisms.

Silver Package $4.99/month
Silver members receive each month:

  • 500 HP
    1500 ISO
    1 free 3 hour shield

Gold Package $9.99/month
Gold members receive each month:

  • 1000 HP
    3000 ISO
    1 free 3 hour shield
    1 free 8 hour shield

Platinum Package $19.99/month
Platinum members receive each month:

  • 2000 HP
    10,000 ISO
    2 free 3 hour shields
    2 free 8 hour shields
    1 free 24 hour shield
2

Hey, good post. Every ounce of me wants IAP’s to be cheaper in MPQ, but I tried to put myself in D3’s shoes for arguments sake. I think they’ve mentioned a few times that player progression should be a marathon, not a sprint. This time frame seems to match with the rate of new content and fixes they are able to pump out. I’m thinking lower prices would mean faster progression for more users, and more of them saying, “Well, what else is left? I have everything, now I’m bored.” The prices might be just right, as crazy as they are to normal folk. Whales get to feel awesome kicking butt and everyone else can justify a purchase once in a while. Would whales keep spending if their ranks were numerous enough to not look special anymore? I dunno. Subscriptions are pretty interesting though!

3

I remember Ice talking about their fear of making the game too much P2W, but with the current system, the game really is Pay A Lot 2 Win icon_e_biggrin.gif

This suggestion is nice, it goes without saying that those who pay should get advantages, after all we are supporting the freeloaders too..

Though this change would make the already established whales ragequit since their past purchases become less in value, so there is that..

4

I want a god damn 12 hour shield. That is all.

5

The first statement is irrelevant, since it’s inadvertently true of the entire F2P industry. I doubt, though, that the forum rage you’re most likely referring to truly, in any way whatsoever, reflects the sentiments of “most players” of MPQ. The second statement has zero support.

Shield prices seem fine, noting the fact that we already buy shields pretty frequently. An event-long shield is an interesting concept, though.

Health packs could, according to my completely baseless gut feeling, use a lower price (making them buyable using Iso would be a significant price discount,though people would almost certainly still complain about 1000-Iso health packs), but without knowing the existing numbers or attempting to address the issue of massive reporting/raging bias, there’s no solid support for the idea that health packs are actually overpriced for their intended purchase frequency.

I wonder if you’re simply anchoring to current prices, disliking them, and arbitrarily picking a moderately lower number that, for the moment, feels good. If you aren’t, I’d be very interested in your specific rationale for your proposed prices.

Sales work. In their VentureBeat article, Demiurge mentioned that daily-deal discounts worked very well, and there’ve been a number of forumites who openly stated that they’re waiting for the next sale to spend money on HP.

Interestingly, they gave precisely the same rationale (“we don’t want people relying on them, so we got rid of them”) for bundling roster slots, thus limiting people’s choices, specifically due to paying players’ complaints. In response, there was a great gnashing of teeth in that thread. How is your idea fundamentally different/better?

6

Edited in 12 hour shields for you. . . icon_e_biggrin.gif

7

aaronschmitz OP is right.

This game is too expensive. The goal for each player in MPQ is to have maxed characters. Because this is fun, because it is collectible.

This CAN NEVER HAPPEN if you are F2P. 5 million ISO is huge (that’s $9900 using the biggest pack, crazy). For newer players, they will NEVER be able to complete most of their characters.

I’ve been playing A LOT (using Health Packs, shields and whatever) and could earn 1,5M ISO in 120 days. The rest was paid for. I still need 1,2M ISO to complete the 4* characters.

It would take another 100 days to get this ISO, but meanwhile, 6 3* characters would be released, so that’s another 1,2 M ISO to gather. So even in my case, it is impossible to catch up.

The characters are really fun to play when they are maxed. Whoever tells us that having a maxed character is pointless is a liar.

The business model of MPQ is totally wrong now.

No other Match 3 can be compared to MPQ, so it must have its own business model to become a big thing (and it truly has a strong potential for that). Candy Crush is based on small investments and the daily turnover is huge.

I’m a strategy marketing manager, have succeeded with “customer oriented” business models so I know what I am talking about.

Subscriptions would be the best thing and better reward structure. (20 ISO for a match is ridiculous, 10 ISO per Alliance member each day is ridiculous).

Apparently the devs did not make the math of what it takes to max characters.

Too bad.

8

Yes. But MPQ is not a “standard” F2P. People may not realize it, but MPQ is in fact a premium F2P game. It is solely supported by the player base. It is a direct competition game and also a collector’s game. So the paying playerbase here is already higher than ad supported F2P games. But it could be much higher, unfortunately, the prices are much higher instead.

I may have undercut a bit on shield prices. I don’t play any other games that require such a mechanism, so I just went with what I believed would generate more use, therefore increasing purchases. But none the less, if they were more readily available price wise, more people would be inclined to use them other then just the top 10 in each bracket with a few stragglers here and there.

The ISO purchases are more for those desperate to get the health pack and don’t have the HP or money at the moment to purchase HP. Remember that Option 1 is if they leave the price of HP at it’s current rate. As far as the “intended purchase frequency”, that would be, from a business stand point, as often as possible. Hence scaling, MMR, multiple events going on and ending at the same time. (We currently have FOUR events running that all end at the same time) icon_lol.gif

A little bit of all of that, plus adding to the equation the other F2P game prices that I currently play, and talking to my friends (4 of them) who play the game, who haven’t yet spent any money on the game. I asked them what would make them consider paying for the HP needed to expand their rosters, shield, etc. It’s a very small sample size. But it worked for the moment. Maybe I should create a Poll Thread asking F2P players at what point they would consider spending money to get a larger sample size and adjust my numbers.

Agreed that sales work. But if the prices were reasonably priced all the time, I honestly believe that more people would spend, more frequently.

I don’t follow your statement. It was my understanding that they didn’t want people “relying” on the $1.99 package to purchase slots. But D3/Demuirge’s rationale is flawed. They can explain it any way they want, but it was just them trying to “nudge” players to the $4.99 package. A gougy cash grab, if you ask me. Which you didn’t. But anyway…

9

Nobody in their right mind would want to max all chars.
Yes, it takes more ISO than you get - that’s why you concentrate on a core group of chars, max those, and hoard ISO for when the next good char comes around.

Sure, I’d like to have all chars maxed, but do I need all chars maxed to be competitive? Certainly not.

Do you really need a maxed Falcon? Daredevil? Spidey after the nerf?

A maxed LT, Hood, Punisher, CMags and Patch will get you just as far, and it’s perfectly feasible to max those without buying ISO (if you manage to get the covers).

If you really need to max every new shiny thing on day one, go ahead. It’s certainly not required.

10

People who playing for the competitive aspect, no. Not all characters need to be maxed.

People that are playing for the collection aspect, yes. They want ALL characters FULLY maxed at some point. It’s like building a ship in a bottle. It takes a lot of time and patience. Or a lot of money to pay for it to be done for you.

11

For many reasons, this is not correct.

A maxed Falcon was very useful in the last PvE (along with Daken). You can’t judge a character until you use it at his max.

If you’re happy to play with 5 characters over and over again, then good for you. I am not. You’re just saying that 85 % of the game chars are useless.

When I have the choice, I prefer diversity.

What’s the goal of this game really ? Being competitive against THE SAME enemy team ? OBW, PUN and LT ?

I could enjoy more diversity playing with many characters.

Giving one’s opinion when they could not experience the real situation is not very useful. Sorry to say.

12

I do not collect them. I just play them when I have the opportunity and to date, I’ve been enjoying playing with all of them, because PvPs enable to play with many chars.

Loki buffed for it’s own PvP is funny, same with Doom. That’s something D3P does pretty well. If you just look for competition, then you play Tier 1 characters, and you are just a robot playing against AI.

To each his own…

13

Yeah. I consider a char maxed once I got it fully covered the way I want it.
Putting ISO into it can wait, depending on the usefulness.
Guess that’s the difference.

14

I got 7 maxed 3*, 6 more around level 100.
My fully covered Loki was just as much fun to play at level 50.

15

How can you tell if a char is worth it maxing if you haven’t maxed it ?

I thought Falcon was useless until I played it in the last PvE (that’s an example)

There is a great synergy with the chars.

If your theory was right, the game would have no future. And this is not right.

16

You usually can tell if a char is worth using when you got him fully covered.
Falcon is good in PVE alright, but he’s not worth the extra 90K ISO to get him his final 40 levels for me - that ISO went into lazy Daken.

But we’re getting slightly off topic here.

17

We’re not.

This game is fun the way it is conceived. It is very addictive and can be either really cool or boring.

Honestly, I don’t play much PvP right now, because once I have finished struggling against let’s say : Hulk, Sentry and LThor (the cool Tier 1 for this PvP), I have ANOTHER same team to win against. And then, the same again. So as to go up in ranking, I need to shield, wait, play against the same enemies, shield again… Use some health packs and in the end, the PvP is worth $10 (at the very least).

Is it worth my money ? Certainly not.

There IS a reason why most of the Top 10 Alliances in Season 1 are not in Top 10 anymore in Season 2.

The Season system is simply NOT worth the efforts and money right now. They’ll have to innovate to make it fun and sexy again.

18

Not necessarily. If they wanted to simply maximize profit, one easy, huge step they could take would be to remove the “get the first cover” requirement for buying specific covers. As for having multiple simultaneous events (are you double-counting Simulator? or counting SHIELD Versus as a separate event?), there’s no reason you need to participate or do well in any of them. I, for one, don’t plan on entering any NHB tourneys, am just casually playing Simulator, and haven’t done anything in SHIELD Versus yet.

You said “as stated, you don’t want people relying on ISO purchases, so either do away with them, or limit the choices to smaller amounts.” That closely mirrors their stated rationale for bundling roster slots. Sure, you can dismiss that rationale as “flawed” (I frankly don’t understand their rationale, either), but yours isn’t better.

And yes, as a high-level F2P player, I tend not to give any credence at all to emotional condemnations of MPQ being cash-grabby or P2W, much less ask for said condemnations.

19

F2P is just a new marketing/business model. It is more Free to Try than Free to Play.

If no one invested in the game, it would stop immediately.

What we try to say is “find a better business model so that players are more happy than they are now that they are stuck in the game, because addict”.

20

He was talking about whether you “need” maxed Falcon. Sure, Falcon is useful, but I do just fine without leveling him. My go-to PVE guy is Mr. Rogers, and I haven’t needed to level him past L75 yet. Similarly, Loki, Rags, and IM40 can be useful, and many people use them, but I’m probably never going to level them.

So far, in the current PVP alone, I’ve seen AWolv, 2* Thor, CStorm, MStorm, Daken, OBW, Punisher, LT, CMags, Patch, UDaken, Hood, and Sentry. I want those Patch covers (I only have a half-covered Patch), which means I’m being fairly competitive in this PVP, and out of my seven L100+ characters, I’ve used LT, Hood, CMags, and UDaken so far.

You were saying something about diversity?

I agree with your assessment of F2P, which is why I’m still quite impressed with how far MPQ lets a F2P player go.