Changing the D3 paradigm - Bigger and Better

Marvel Puzzle Quest MPQ General Discussion
1

‘The 7 most expensive words in business are: “We have always done it that way!”’

Kaizen (改善?), Japanese for “good change” is typically applied to measures for implementing continuous improvement

OK I may not know game design, but I do know business. D3, you need to sit up and say ‘we really cracked a good one here’, we can either make this game amazing and springboard our whole company or we can dwindle. I have outlined the below as a new business model because I, like everyone else moaning on this forum actually love your game and think it has amazing potential. And if you don’t want to listen, any other game designer out there that wants to make this game, please go ahead and use this. I don’t know if you have read your steam reviews but they are nearly all negative, many of them from peeps that have played over 1,000 hours of your game, because of changes you made that the community hated. Guys alarm bells should be ringing over there. What I am trying to do here is show you what your game could be. Every day your valued customers post farewell notes in this forum, do something about it, your business model is absolutely crap and needs to be chucked out and replaced. Period. Expand the steam version and move into Xbox and Playstation territory. Then have a lite version for mobiles. 20 years after it came out my mates and I can sit down on playstation 1 and rock Puzzle Fighter 2 all night.

Before anything else you need to balance your game. You need a curve scale with AP cost versus damage, for all the three character types; damage, support & Tank that is converse to health. Then with hybrid characters like tanky support BP you need to be in between somewhere. Then you need a fixed scale for all the tile types, like strike, defense countdown etc, and work off that, then any future imbalances you just tweek the numbers a bit. All numbers should be arbitrary and the only difference is the character, colors and flavor of each character. An open beta server and your community will play test stuff for you FREE! Imagine free market research! Free game balance, free staff! Tanky Thor should do less damage than DPS GSBW.

You need to hire more artists that do the character art. Currently it is amazing art and all in the same style for game design but that means you can only release content as fast as one artist can put together the 4-5 pictures per character. Everyone wants skins; I would pay 10 bucks for Mr Fixit hulk skin, or girl Thor. Don’t get over complicated if someone wants to buy something then sell it to them. You should have a stretch goal of like 200 characters by the end of next year.

I think you should look closely at Magic the gathering. It is a similar business model in that you can theoretically play free, but anyone that thinks they can win a game of Magic the Gathering with a standard pack is probably delusional. You may look at the below and say well that is impossible, but I am trying to define the ultimate your game could be and create some goal line. They do say without goal lines there are no touchdowns. I think you should get rid of most of the way you make money and focus on HP, charge entry to special events and offer HP as a reward, you have too many whacky currencies atm. You pay to enter a special event then if you are a good enough player to keep rolling your wins, you keep rolling, if you have a run of bad luck you need to buy a little more HP. Don’t make every event pay to enter, you need a healthy balance of free to play too. All together remove covers as a reward and run everything through HP. Blizzard Entertainments business model is Make a better product and people will be happy to buy it.

I would have a landing pad when you open the game with these options (make it like there is lots to do and explore options on how to play):

• Buy covers/ shop
• Social
• Tutorial mode
• Trial mode
• Play

If you click on each one a brief description:

Buy: Kill the whole 10 pack 42 pack. Just kill it with fire. It feels like a rip off and it is a rip off, you are basically running a lottery scam, everyone knows it, it pisses everyone off, it is unfair and a price gouge. Kill it with fire. Harvard Business Scool teaches that companies that perform ethically ALWAYS outperform in the long term. Have a page with every cover that is available. Boosts, health packs and special team ups, skins etc basically anything that costs HP. Get rid of the whole mess that is currently in place, there are people that want to play characters but have never got the cover that want to spend money on your game but you don’t let them, my best friend would instantly buy 4 covers for Ldakens Black but can’t because he never got the first cover. Remember if someone wants to buy something then sell it to them. Maybe something like special team ups like Devil dinosaur that aren’t available in game. You can’t keep gouging your customers; you need to make people feel like they are getting value for money. Let’s say at the end of next year there were 200 characters available with 100 covers per character colour and it was a buck or 100 HP to buy a cover, we have (200 characters X 3 colours X 100 covers X a buck = $60,000) obviously no one (I hope) is going to buy that and you would have many ways to constantly be winning HP or covers but it creates a longer game and should promote character diversity, you may have a favourite character and get to 80 covers and splash out on the last 20. I think ultimately it would make people more involved, have more to play for and you win by massively increasing the accessibility of the game (think those massive Asian markets, where they are happy to spend small incremental amounts as part of their social experience, they largely play in Internet cafe’s with their friends and will regularly pay 5- 10 bucks for stuff in game, I don’t work in game design and even I know that.) and the players get a better product. Maybe have an Auction house where you charge an HP fee to sell a character cover, so if I have a cover I don’t need at least I am half way to a cover I do want. Have a free weekly featured character that is slightly cheaper. Everyone wants to try before they buy, if you have good balance and peeps get a chance to try a fully working character people will buy in, this would also massively help the 2 -3 star transition. Every week have free characters to play, how are people going to know if they want to buy a character if they never tried it?

Social: A better chat system, alliance controls, all the social things, Network marketing is essential these days, somewhere to beat the drum, tell others that you came first, virtual communities build games over the long term. What about overarching corporations with many alliances. Hello! access the forums in game! Paying $200 for a 20 person alliance that you have to be part of to compete in is more price gouging. I agree with the cap of 20 players, or you create 2-3 unbeatable teams, but the cost to the commander is ridiculous.

Tutorial: Either dramatically expand the story mode and have it somewhere separate or get rid of it. For tutorial you should have 2 games with every character, one playing with that character one playing against. So that people know what they are getting in to. Lets say there are 50 characters then the tutorial is 100 games, every time a new character comes out 2 games are added to this. Lets say I am at Loki, I can play one game with the best scenario for this character say 166 Patch/ Loki/ Lcap and see how good the green/ black combo is in reality. Then I have a chance to play against that team and see how it is on defense.

Play: This opens up into many ways to play the game. As a business person it baffles me that you have a system in place where you dictate the way in which people play. For example the current system is designed to be played for 1 hour, then don’t play for 3 hours while a node cools down, then play for an hour. A system where you encourage people to not play your game is rubbish. If I had a factory I would want it churning out product 24/7 or your profit will suffer. People hate being told what to do, open it up and offer as many flavors of the rainbow as you can come up with. Everyone thinks that you force them to play too much or not enough, let people play in the manner of their choosing.

Game modes

Sealed Play- Buy a 10 pack of covers and make a team out of those covers with 7 other players, play 3 rounds have rewards based on 3/0 wins 2 / 1 wins, 1 / 2 wins and 0 /3 wins. You can either do this with buy a ten pack keep the covers or some other monetary mechanism like 200 HP entry.
Trial mode - where you can try a team out, or try a new character in your favourite team.
Casual Play- pop in for 1 match
Fun Play – where whacky stuff happens, like fusing a 2 X 2 or 3 X 3 group of tiles into a big hummer of a gem if they all match like Puzzle Fighter 2 (Still the best game ever, period) or like the board turns 90 degrees to the right every three turns, or your roster keeps changing, or a three way game or 4 way game like two headed giant, or 2 versus 2 play, or just fun weird stuff.
Arena mode- wait for 32 players to join, this lasts 3-4 hours, if you score well you get a big HP reward if you don’t you lose your HP, set game times and maximum game length times. No Health packs, true healing applies. People will pay 2 bucks for a nights entertainment,
Challenge or Puzzle play – create complex puzzles like Lazy Thor has 7 green, you have to win before he gets off call the storm with these three characters, or here’s a level 400 hulk, enjoy! Or what about a maze, or an infinite mode where if you clear a page it resets to a new team and a new page of tiles.
1 star events – only 1 star characters allowed.
2 star events – as above
3 star (open events) – anything goes
Regular rotating PVE or Story modes – super casual, clear as you want in a 4 day period, with different start and finish times
Live tournaments – with highest ranked players fighting live and streamed to Youtube.
A gamble mode – Like I bet my BP black cover versus your LThor Green cover. Or each put in 200 HP and the winner gets 300 (see a trend here, loads of incremental charges)
Roster Run- like an arena with 32 players, but every time you use a character they disappear out of your roster for the preceding games. – Massively encourages large roster slots and diverse max covers.

Honestly playing the game now is like seeing someone using a winning lottery ticket as a drinks coaster. You want to yell at them get the damn thing cashed in because they could be doing so much more than they are with what they have.
If you are going to change the model then you also need to give back to the community to placate your existing customers don’t just make it a more sickening price grab, be fair and equitable, talk to us about what we want, we are here offering our help and support, in your community you will probably find any conceivable type of professional that is willing to help. Anyway some quick things I would suggest to give up on to change over:
• True Healing in PVP only, it makes sense
• Get rid of 1 and 2 stars make new players feel like they are competing in the big leagues rather than some 2 star purgatory for 2 years and make everyone 3 star, 3 powers, 15 covers all together or dramatically increase the numbers of each. Or just dramatically reduce the cost and make like 300 covers for each character. If you are going to kill off the 1 and 2 stars then consider having Player level or some other mechanism to match people up with equal power players. No one likes losing, especially if it is because they are new or perceive they haven’t spent enough money.
• Seriously consider Live PVP. 30 seconds to take a turn, done. Please it is 2014. An AI will always have idiosyncrasies that humans do not, like the AI will always do a match 4 over a colour it needs. People always figure this stuff out and exploit it.
• Give people more starting slots or completely remove the cost of slots, or just dramatically reduce it.

For the third time: if someone wants to buy something then sell it to them.

2

Great post. Lots of good insight and good ideas. I pulled this particular quote because it is precisely why they haven’t seen any of my money in quite some time: they haven’t offered me anything of value that I want to buy. I spend plenty of money on other games and I would spend some here, but there’s nothing they’re selling that I want to buy. I doubt I’m alone in that. They’ve obviously done okay for themselves thus far, but it’s hard to believe a business model so reliant on ignorance and desperation that burns through customers and leaves them with a bad taste in their mouths can be sustainable for much longer. Eventually they’re going to succeed in alienating the rest of their core fans and run out of new suckers who don’t know any better.

Also very much in agreement that this game badly needs more game modes, and meaningful modification to the modes that currently exist. There are a couple of posts bouncing around about which is better/worse between PvP and PvE, and there are pretty compelling arguments on both sides why each one is badly flawed. To borrow a line from my good friend Walter, “Nothing is tinykittied here, dude,” but this game needs to evolve. Everything has gotten very stale, and just rolling out a new character every couple of weeks while everything else stays the same isn’t cutting it. It needs a real infusion of new blood, and new game modes would do wonders to that end.

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Oh I had another idea, what about a loaner character? I can pay 100 HP for a max 166 character for 1 game. If I want to try out a character before a massive time investment a few dollars for a few games is great value.

Also if you win events they should be skeleton covers, or I can put the level onto whatever cover I damn want.

Or featured artists, like a Jim Lee Gambit, or a Mike Mignola Wolverine or a Rob Leifield.. no actually tinykitty Rob Leifield, no one wants that LOL

4

They already do this on PvE event where there’s a repeatable node worth 0 points and you’re loaned 3 guys that are pretty much maxed out.

5

I never knew you could replay those

6

200 characters by end of next year would certainly ruin the game more than build it up and would definitely be a turn-off for new players. It’s basically asking for a new character to be introduced on a weekly basis. Or is it even more than that since there are only 52 weeks per year. When new characters come out on a fortnightly basis, people on the forums already say it is too fast with the newer players saying that it dilutes the pool of characters making it very difficult to have any 3* fully covered. And, it would take over a year before you see the next tournament of the same featured character.

I understand you’re asking for new game modes as are other people and if D3 does that, it’d be great. However, I see many of your suggestions geared towards making people pay to play the game and are very F2P unfriendly. Yes, there should be ways to encourage people to pay more money. However, it shouldn’t be done at the expense of allowing a reasonable level of F2P.

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You have a point, I guess I didn’t express this well enough, think of every time you win then sell a 2 star crappy cover and in turn it was a 3 star cover every win because all characters were equal, you would make the game infinitely more accessible because you would constantly be building your empire. If you could unlock any cover you wanted every time you won a match then 200 characters would get filled up pretty quickly. I would much rather play a game where everyone was terminal rank. I am trying to express everything this game could be. I would love to find myself in a game with Whirlwind/ Colossus/ proffessor X versus an equal team of Barracuda/ Archangel/ Shadowcat.

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In regards to the 200 characters - Given the current model of the game and how its’ currency works, in the long term of the game, I see a lot of difficulty for most people apart from the top players keeping up with a continued, very regular introduction of regular 3*s characters. I mean, HP slots alone… and then the ISO needed…

My belief is that eventually the game has to move to a system whereby you have the characters “open but greyed out” in a central roster / training system and then you then assign points / game currency, as you see fit.

Foundational single characters (perhaps pre-powered or their alias), with some sort of skill tree system (can be as simple as the current AP abilities initially) that can all be raised to the same level (eg. 100), which you then add costumes or whatever else. For example, you have “James Howlett” and adding ISO activates the basic hack / slash abilities and you can then have his Patch, Astonishing, X-Force variants (as costumes). Perhaps the covers can be reutilised some sort of currency model, so EVERY time you got a cover, it actually means something.

Once you have the base characters, whole sets of variants can easily be introduced. If people want to pay to get anything, great for the devs, otherwise people just earn stuff like they do now.

Within the confines of the current game model, my classification has a whole concept about how to move characters to a single model, which I strongly think would benefit the game hugely in the medium - longer term.

9

I like the business approach presented in this thread. Good work on the business case, there’s just one element missing and that are the cost requirements in order to calculate the potential ROI of those changes - but for that we would need transparency from D3.

I believe that covers are interesting thing, but I would welcome some experience based leveling of characters. You can see that many players do not even put the chars in their play until they have decent amount of covers and levels. And until they have it, they use in PvP those characters with highest level they have - which results in the stereotype of encountering still the same combos. In example: I haven’t seen much 2* human torch yet in PvP and if I saw one it was already maxed out.

If the character leveling was not only passive investment, but also an active investment (like participation in PvP or PVE) I believe the game would again become more diverse and fun. Of course only in case the leveling up would not be ridiculous like you would have to win 1000 fights with the character on roster for enabling him to level up to max level.

Given an example to fully level up 2* character, you would need to win at least 80 games with him on roster - 10 levels per 10 games with a milestone based approach:

level|wins needed
15 | 0
25 | 10
35 | 20
45 | 30
55 | 40
65 | 50
75 | 60
85 | 70
94 | 80

This by default would require reducing the ISO costs for leveling up of course at least by 20%-40% to remain motivating

10

exactly right, you can either invest time or money. More people playing investing time have their own long term pay offs for the company, bigger community, more activity more incremental payments.

11

Some PVE modes I’d considered:

Something like a ‘damage’ mode where you have 3 minutes to do a certain amount of damage to a ‘boss’ opponent based on the level of the characters you take into the fight. That might also help D3 sell boosts I’d imagine. Obviously that would favour certain characters but that’s why you’d also have a…

Defence mode. Your team don’t take damage, but there is a ‘4th’ healthbar (e.g. Avengers HQ) which the opponent team would constantly damage for a duration of say 30 turns and it’s up to you to reduce that damage either by taking down the key opponent damage-dealers or using defensive characters (LCap, Falcon, Spidey) to reduce damage done.

You could also use ‘damage mode’ as an alliance vs alliance PvP mode where you have to out-damage another alliance over 12 hours, in a kind of a ‘raid’ scenario. The alliance that does most damage to the boss (you’d probably need a Galactus or other ‘big bad’) wins and takes a big ISO prize, with top damagers in your alliance getting tokens.

12

While I like the Tutorial idea (MPQ needs in-game explanations badly), the skins concept, and the idea of an always-on rotating-end-time casual PVE series, many of the ideas laid out here are frankly horrifying.

You’re saying the current game is insufficiently P2W, and that making it completely P2W is the “ethical” path. Interesting.

No longer should players be encouraged to even earn the very first cover of a color: they should have the ability to simply buy entire characters with no gameplay effort. Why stop there, though? Some people would like to buy first place in events (as evidenced by sky-high scores in recent PVPs). Should there be a direct real-money auction for event placement? After all, if someone wants to buy something, the devs should make it as easy as possible for them to buy it, right? Why not cut out the middleman of actually having to fight other people then, and simply directly sell event placement? Auction it off, perhaps, instead of making people spend HP AND spend time actually playing the game – the second is a real hassle, while the first is bling-blang.

I see. You wish to unleash the horror of full-on farming upon MPQ. This perhaps, in some way, makes sense from a “business” point of view in the short term, but it would essentially lock out any players actually playing the game for fun from actual competition, which, I believe, would be bad for business. That is, if you’re not already directly auctioning off event placement.

So, not only do you want fewer interesting gameplay mechanics – because anything that’s new or even a twist on existing concepts would require rejiggering this entire “fixed” balance web – but this balance scale should be “fixed,” even though “all numbers should be arbitrary”?

… What?

They already do this, though to your credit, they don’t only offer HP as a reward. Perhaps you’re saying that Elite tourneys should strip out all non-HP items from their placement rewards?

MPQ has 2 currencies. While I admit that 2 is indeed greater than 1, the use of 2 currencies is generally not a strong argument for “too many whacky currencies.” If you’d like to see an actual example of what could be “too many whacky currencies,” take a look at Brave Frontier.

First off, you’re actually talking only about PVE, and only if you’re playing optimally: PVP exists, and no one’s making anyone play PVE optimally. Second, your alternative to refreshing nodes is… what? Nodes that have zero refresh time? If that’s the case, then that nightmare scenario would make current complaints about end-of-event grinding and Euro-unfriendly end times seem like trivial bellyaching compared to the “whoever sleeps at all over the course of X days wins nothing” events that the complete elimination of refresh timers would create.

Ummm… what?

Many people are more than willing to pay current prices to open up 20-person alliances. If this is really a business proposal as opposed to a “here are some suggestions, but I’m gonna slide in some nice chunks of plain ol’ ranting cuz I feel like it, too” post, then you’d realize that price elasticity of demand is something that should be factored in, as opposed to simply declaring “it’s price gouging!” and patting yourself on the back. Also, you may be misunderstanding commandership here: a founding commander creates a new alliance using a little chunk of Iso. S/he then has the power to make anyone else in the alliance a commander, and anyone who’s a commander can chip in HP to expand the alliance and promote additional commanders.

There are a number of interesting suggestions on the mechanics/game-mode side of things, but the tl;dr version of the money side of your business proposal is nothing more than “make everything cheaper and make everything directly buyable (and sellable).” The first half of that? Sure, that might make sense, if you could actually provide any numbers to support your claim of benefiting the devs. The second half? Pretty darn horrible… for players, I mean. It might work pretty well for the bottom line.

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Firstly, how do you earn a cover? the 200 day crowd have all the end game tied up and it is actually impossible without buying in, atm. You start a new account and show me a max Sentry without buying and I will delete this post, straight up. The entire game structure is the rich get richer the poor get poorer, the older gamers win all the events and get all the cover rewards, which makes them stronger and more able to win, which makes the gap wider for new players and winning anything in 3 star land a dim dream. Secondly you missed the point, I am advocating the ability to buy in if wanted or to get that one cover that you always miss out on. Seen that other post with I’m on day… I dont have…

I think you are right, may I suggest HP reward for selling an unwanted cover as a simple alternative. I sell hundreds of covers I don’t need and never get ones I do. In hind site you are right here, an Auction House would be terribad. selling covers for HP is better.

what context is this? I am saying they can’t change anything in their business offering without bringing a simple balance to the game first, insert 5,000 Nerf this buff that forum posts. make a simple replicating model and stick to it. I love the diverse nature of the game and wouldn’t see it dumbed down for a max Nick Fury.

kind of yes, have one reward system that everything else works off, HP.

By currencies I included all the different unwanted crap you get for a win; Iso, boosts, team ups, HP, covers, have one clearly defined reward system. If I go into this game I will win 100 HP, not I win this Lightning round and got a token that turns into my 500th yelena.

Even playing normally you have to log off and on just to refresh health packs unless you want to buy a game extension 5 pack. I am trying to say that they should remove any barrier to entry for the game, anything that gets in the way of people playing should be removed.

Ok I am talking about a redesign. 300 covers to max a character (100 per color) and remove iso leveling. They would need to convert existing covers if they changed over so level 5 = a new level 100, 3 covers = 60 basically every cover you have now would become 20. Then sell the covers at 1 dollar each. you can then make HP purely by playing or spending money if you want, I envisage it as people will get to a level by osmosis playing then top up at the end for some of their characters. Honestly it is the best I could think of that balanced play/ Pay/ ease of entry/ top down simple design. I am way open for suggestions here, and think any healthy debate on the issue is good for the game that we both love.

price elasticity of demand is an excellent point in my argument, thanks for raising it. No demand and widening gaps between the day 200 crowd and new crowd means less new players that want to invest time or money which directly forces the developers to come up with more god awful True healing, sharding, shield hop mechanics to make money off their dwindling player base. Surely it is better to throw open the doors and welcome everyone in which increases financial flow through the gates of D3 and we all get a better, more enjoyable, perpetually expanding, thriving game.

14

Speaking from experience, having in-game trading of items (covers) usually leads to a black market outside of the game with people setting up trades for cash. It’s avoidable, sure, but most companies don’t get it right. Last year I made $800 selling items in Rage Of Bahamut, and I wasn’t even trying that hard.

15

You know how it’s been a month and we STILL have Team-Ups and everyone wants them undone? At launch, it used to take 20 covers to fully max out 1 skill, 50 for 1 character. Yeah, I can totally see the game backtracking 11 months.

Also, just imagine trying to max out a Rare character when you only get 4 covers per tourney.

16

but if the covers were more accessible and you could spend your game rewards on whatever cover you wanted wouldn’t make it easier to level a small team first. E.g. every game you win 100 HP, then it takes 300 covers which cost 100 ap to buy to max out a 3 star so 30,000 HP to max out a 3 star = 300 games. Far easier than now.

17

Two words: phone app.

18

one word: What?

19

The whole reason why they reduced the number of covers it took to max a character from like 30 to 13 was because they wanted it to feel like earning a new cover meant something: changing this to 300 covers would mean what, every cover gave +1 damage? Tournaments would award like 25-50 covers to first? People would probably be even less willing to spend because they dont get any sense of progression from the next cover. I have to agree with hailmary in that a lot of your ideas dont seem right. Furthermore: youre trying to change too much: d3 would never follow ideas as radical as this let alonr have the time to implement all of this. You should consolidate your ideas into ones that actually have a chance to be implemented if you want to see change. (Sealed for instance seems like it was copied off of mtg but it doesnt really apply to this game well at all, especially considering the development time involved)

20

There’s some good thoughts here as far as expanding game play, but there’s a lot of change for the sake of change here too.
Couple retorts

Firstly, how do you earn a cover? the 200 day crowd have all the end game tied up and it is actually impossible without buying in, atm. You start a new account and show me a max Sentry without buying and I will delete this post, straight up. The entire game structure is the rich get richer the poor get poorer, the older gamers win all the events and get all the cover rewards, which makes them stronger and more able to win, which makes the gap wider for new players and winning anything in 3 star land a dim dream. .

I’m on day 203. I’m still firmly in the 3* ‘transition.’ I’m close to breaking through, really just need ISO to mass level like 6-8 characters, but I have at least another month, maybe two to go before I can even begin to compete. (and if I don’t find/buy LDaken covers, probably longer).

As far as competititon: The scaling in PvE almost makes it easier to win for newer players. Look at the leaderboards in the PvE brackets. There’s a few old timers, but it’s a lot of 2* and even 1* players who happen to have a cover in the essential character. With PvP, no, a newcomer doesn’t compete for #1 in PvP, but there’s a strong argument that they shouldn’t either. There’s a lot of players who seem to think that the progression of the game should be 1* → 3*. It should not be. That’s why the rewards in the prologue are ultimately 2* characters. They don’t give out Sentry for beating 3 lvl 30 goons once.

The reward structure in PvP is such that you can compete for the cover you need. A 1* player competes for 2* characters, 2s compete for 3, and 3* competes for the top prize of a 4*. There is an obvious overlap where 2* are bumping into other 3* players for the covers they need (and 1s bumping into 2s) and that’s why it pays 20% for at least one 3* cover, and top 40% for at least a 2* cover. Too many react to this as “I only got one cover” instead of “hey, I earned another cover.”

Lastly, you’ve got two contradictory ideas at the end:

a) If you are going to change the model then you also need to give back to the community to placate your existing customers
b) Get rid of 1 and 2 stars make new players feel like they are competing in the big leagues

If you want to piss off your customer base, changing the system where people that have grinded the game since launch are on par with the guy who joins tomorrow is a good start.

a) Give people more starting slots or completely remove the cost of slots, or just dramatically reduce it.
b) For the third time: if someone wants to buy something then sell it to them.

Stop selling roster spots, which people are happily (ok, maybe unhappily) buying.