The problem is as others wrote, that this monthly package is not worth it. I´ve read an opinion its a good offer compared to the other offers, but a bad offer is not a good offer only because the other offers are really bad.
The problem of this game, it depends economically as other freemium games on whales. So give us a monthly package it has to get a worth compared to whales. but then the whales will not be whales if a monthly package gives comparable advantages to whaling. So in fact we discuss a change of the economic base of this game. broaderbase of payers means they pay less than whales. I had payed for this game, i regret it because for what i´ve spend i could buy two fullprice-console/pc-games and it feels like nothing (in the 3* meta it was something, but i joined this game nearly before the meta goes to 4land, and now i see, i had to spend another amount like this to get there, but with this iso-“offers” i will never get them leveled before the meta goes to 6). If they want me back as a payer, they have to give me a REAL good offer. This package isnt this offer.
P.S.: I think the revenuess are enough from this game for a solid development. So i doubt this monthly package will lead to a sort of development we players earn.
I hope that this is just a package you can choose to buy once a month, if they are thinking of making it a requirement to play I think they will lose a lot of players, also I know I never would have started playing this game if I saw you had to pay any amount in order to play.
Personally I think this system would be very popular with one addition. When a new character is introduced you get 1 Free card.
If you think about it, it isn’t a bad deal for anyone. Everyone with a subscription has to buy a character slot on the first day the character is released and is that much more incentivized to start collecting the new character. Plus it would mean pretty much every regular player would HAVE to sign up since $14.95 is probably less than they would pay to get 1 card for a new character anyway.
But then I miss the old days when you paid $30 a month for a game and got everything and people stopped putting their dang hands out every 5 minutes.
Also the problem with supporting Veteran players is many of them appear to be actively hostile to beginners and the game won’t survive without new blood, so the Devs do have to make some hard choices. How to make a game which is all head-to-head support both isn’t simple.
They are probably right if that is their reasoning, getting a steady stream of new players who find the game fun for a while, chuck in a bit of money for roster slots and then eventually leave when they hit one or more of the progression walls in this game is probably far more financially lucrative than catering to the non-whales who have been around a long time and probably do not need to spend to stay where they are and have no intention of spending to try and catch the whales since they realise that won’t work.
When you start looking at what’s coming out now you’re seeing this resurgence of buy-to-play games. I think in the competitive space, in particular, there’s just a certain amount of fatigue around the idea [of free-to-play].
It’s been well received, and mostly because we didn’t go free-to-play. You could still play the game right out of the the box and not have to spend any extra money.
There may be a shift coming from the gaming industry back to a pay model: but not pay each month or pay for freemium, but pay for the game and have all of the content.
Perhaps if they did get more money, there would be more content added. Chicken and egg problem. What if the subscription also unlocked a special CotT like node or gave you access to character introduction boards like Antman a month before the F2P players?
Then I still wouldn’t be paying a monthly fee for a match-3 game. Especially not one that seems to lack a clear vision of how to keep the game from going stale for long-time players.
Well the one big advantage to eliminating Free-to-play is that you eliminate all the time spent trying to figure out how to trick people out of their money and instead focus all of that effort on how to make the actual game better.
No, the one big advantage to eliminating Free-to-play is that you eliminate the tedious mechanics that trick people out of their money, which are directly at odds with making the game better.
If the game really transitions into a subscription model, I can imagine the casuals leaving and the more hardcore ones continuing. i.e your pvp and pve brackets are gonna be saturated with hardcore vets. As if competition isn’t hard enough for some transitioners. I’m sure people would play harder if they have a tangible monetary commitment to the game. Hope the game can still be called fun after that.
Everything depends on what the subscription model is/gives. Ideally it should enhance your game experience but at the same time it shouldn’t change the game to a ‘pay-2-win’ so that F2P players leave in droves.
Here’s a list of things I’ve mentioned in a couple of threads that they could offer in a subscription package for say $10 a month.
ISO Bonus based on resupply date: Day 1-365 is normal ISO. Day 366-720 is double ISO. Day 721-1095 is triple ISO
Resupply Tokens are upgraded based on resupply date: Day 1-365 is normal. Day 366+ all standard tokens become Heroic, all Heroic become Legendary.
Covers never expire. If you end your subscription they all start on a 14 day timer.
Free skips (or at least reduced to 5 ISO)
A +1 level button on the level up screen so you don’t have to hold down the button
A game option to turn off the animations to speed up the game (very useful in PVP).
2 tier health pack system. The 10 that regenerate go into 1 tier. The ones you find go into a separate tier. You then pick which tier to use the health pack from when healing.
There may be other things they can offer. All these enhance the game experience without breaking anything for F2P players. Some of them (free skips, ISO bonus) can save several hours a month spent grinding for ISO which makes the $10 worth it right there if you are a regular player (anyone who spends more than an hour a day playing).
I would be willing to pay a small amount per month if what they were giving me was worth the money. They seem to think their entire playerbase is a bunch of kajillionaires. What I don’t understand is why they don’t realize that way more people would spend if they actually made what they wanted us to buy cost a reasonable amount of money.
So I’ve dropped money on Hearthstone and Solforge and League of Legends and Puzzle and Dragons and it’s honestly just I enjoy the games, I enjoy the fact that I’m not compelled to pay for anything, and I want to reward the devs for that.
Without starting a kittystorm re: quality of MPQ, as a 2-star player I honestly have no idea what I would even want to spend money on. Playing the lottery for 1/13 of a character? Not even taking the cover cap into consideration? That’s something for a whale. Not a casual who’s willing to drop a few bucks now and then.
Ultimately, if payment became required for MPQ, I’d move on. I have too many unplayed games from Steam sales and other mobile games available.
This game has always had a ludicrously over-inflated view of its own value.
Someday the FTP model will be recognized as the exploitative, life-damaging scam that it is, and it’ll be made illegal. When that happens, MPQ will be cited as one of the worst offenders.
These first two ideas are terrible ones to be included as part of a subscription model, if people are paying a monthly fee then they should get the same value from that fee and not be arbitrarily penalised for having played the game for a shorter period of time.
