How to make money from your player base.

Marvel Puzzle Quest MPQ General Discussion
1

I think the best thing you could do, if you want to make money and not alienate the entire community is allow people to purchase enough ISO to level a character to level 141 for about $10.

This would empower you in ways which I do not think you have properly considered.

I do not want to pay to win, I want to pay to save my precious time. Once you have a full team of 141 characters you are pretty much set, having a few more does not make you considerably more powerful, it just makes you more diverse.

I have a roster now of 141 Spiderman, 141 Hulk, 141 IM40, 115 Rags, 106 Magneto, 96 Punisher, 93 GSBW etc. I finished 4th on the Avengers Elite Tournament and have spent money buying covers at the beginning and I would love to spend more money on the game, but the cost of leveling up a character using ISO is insulting. I have never bought ISO as the exchange rate makes no sense unless you are using a stolen credit card to buy it.

Think about this, I already have a full roster, every cover is maxed out with the exception of the 4*s. I would be HAPPY to pay to max out a cover to play around with it and probably shelf it in favor of whomever my favorites are. I have money, what I do not have in great abundance is time.

These upcoming nerfs to Spiderman and Magneto are really bothering me as I have invested so much of my precious commodity (time) grinding ISO that it makes me a bit sick to think about them being made irrelevant. If you made the leveling less expensive many people would pony up some cash at a reasonable rate and max out toons left and right. This would also lessen the sting of balancing as alternatives could be quickly brought into play, but as it stands now, when you guys screw up my level 141 characters it represents a HUGE investment on my part, it is not trivial.

Here is the thing, you release a new character on a monthly basis or better, I would be happy to play the hell out of the tournaments to get the covers, then I would be just a glad to pay to max out the character rather than grind for weeks on tournaments that I do not need or care about. If you charged a reasonable fee to max out a character ($10) you would be making some serious cash from the Whales who have already invested in the game, its a great way to keep them paying.

The reality of this from my perspective is that the demographics of people playing games is very diverse, the ones you want money from are willing to pay for one thing more than any and that is time. If I could pay to insta win the game it would not be fun, but if I could pay to save grind time I would do it gladly as I have other things in life to do, like make money.

2

Well the big issue with that is there would be a large spending wave and then every match would be against lvl 141 3*'s because everyone would have lvl 141 3*'s. The current ISO is way way overpriced but that’s is way way underpriced. Has to be some balance to it.

3

My suggestion for this problem is that they should offer ISO boosters. Say for $10 you can receive a 50% boost to ISO earned as mission/tournament rewards for a month (boost % and time can vary with cost, etc). I would never pay for ISO at their current rate but would gladly shell out for boosters.

4

If $10 to fully level 3* isn’t pay to win, I dont know what else is.

5

That’s a good way to increase the percentage of the player base that spends money, probably to around 100%.

6

I’d venture a guess and say that they don’t want many people to be running around with lvl141 characters. You probably know as well as anybody that the end-game is fairly non-existent at the moment (which was the reason the Elite tournament was introduced.)

And I don’t think we’d see the community taking it nicely. We’ve already seen tons of threads about how people say they are in ‘MMR Hell’ when they start seeing lvl 85 Thor/Wolvie (which…isn’t the definition, but whatever), even though when you or I see such teams, we consider them to be pushovers. But now there would be hundreds (thousands?) of maxed out 3* characters. There would be more complaints about P2W than there are now, because the uphill battle for F2P would be absolutely massive.

Having said that, I do agree with you that I can’t think of anything that is currently worth buying for me right now…ISO is too pricy for me to buy any. I know I haven’t spent money since around October.

7

You’re just saying they need to sell Iso 8 for cheaper because it’s easy to figure out what is likely to be earned in a month at 50% increase and realize that it’s more than what you get for buying Iso 8s directly.

The reason why Iso 8 don’t get cheaper is because they know people want them but are too cheap to buy it and there’s no reason for them to blink first.

8

If Iso 8 is cheaper it’d indeed be P2W at the high end. At the high end you’re generally limited by Iso 8, not covers. I can have several heroes at level 141 if I was given an unlimited supply of Iso 8, but obviously I don’t have that. Heck I don’t have more than 100 on me right now after pumping whatever I had left into GWBS.

I think what they should try to do is encourage a wider variety of roster so that you don’t feel like you’ve to always take your highest level guy. My GWBS is relatively low level but she’s pretty much unstoppable when combined with Thor in Big Thunder since Thor’s green pretty much auto kills everything, so even though she’s doing negligible damage, her green pump helps to put away the game way faster than even another level 141 3* hero could. People need to break out of the mold of ‘must have 3 highest level character’ and look for synergies more, at least on tournaments where this is applicable (and Big Thunder most definitely is).

9

Actually the point of the game is make you feel like you’ve “earned” rewards and improved your characters. Think of it this way, if you’ve bought every char, every cover, and leveled them all to max, what motivation is there anymore in playing the game or participating in any tournaments?

And compared to covers, ISO is the “grind” of this game and my opinion is that I would pay to make the grind easier, but not to turn the game pointless.

10

Obviously the exact prices suggested by the OP are completely off, but ISO does need to be cheaper by at least half if they want to make any real money on it. Bringing a character from level 1 to level 75ish should be affordable enough to make it a viable alternative to a dedicated 2 week grind.

11

The more I think about it, the more I’d be willing to buy an in game Iso doubler.

12

So, I already have enough maxed out covers to make a full 141 team, having additional maxed characters does not make a huge difference, and playing against other 141 teams isnt such a big deal, its a level playing field.

Considering that a premium title like COD, or Gears of War retails at $60 a FTP model can actually come in an make far more from each player at a moderate rate by making a reasonable amount off of new characters as they are released, it makes the buyer very wary when they feel that the game is going for their jugular for everything they charge.

I think of my time playing WOW, I had 9 level 85s at the time when I played, I really only played 2 seriously and the rest were fun to explore, variety makes things more interesting.

I am interested in DD, but not enough to dedicate the ISO to level him up, I think Punisher is OK, but I don’t want to invest the ISO to level him up either.

At this point there is nothing for me to spend money on in the game anymore, I have the money and would love to spend it reduce my time grinding. I play each tournament but I do not play to place as I do not care about the rewards and do not really feel the need to take the top tier rewards from others who actually need covers, really I just want to play with different team combinations but its impractical to do it with under leveled characters.

I came up with the $10 as a reasonable cost because it is an amount that I could personally drop every month as a new character is released to level it up and try it out without blinking, anything past that and I start thinking that I am being taken advantage of.

There is still the challenge of getting the covers and choosing a build.

With the rate that they are releasing characters you could have a hell of a revenue stream coming in, with the current high end endgame being less the 3-4 maxed level characters that people painstakingly selected to level up. Instead you could have teams with hugely varied rosters with different team compositions, it would be a much more varied playing field of different characters with strategies that are new and interesting.

13

The game currently rewards those who started early - those who joined the events to get covers and ISOs etc. But for people like me who started about 1 month ago, I find that there aren’t enough ISOs to max out my characters while at the same time trying out the newer ones. Developers need to do proper fun balancing, or different difficulty modes.

14

This isnt’ like wow where you hit 85 and then start raiding.

:At this point there is nothing for me to spend money on in the game anymore, I have the money and would love to spend it reduce my time grinding.:

You can reduce the time to spend grinding buy BUYING ISO.

15

ke

What I learned from this post:

You have an unhealth addiction to replaying the same content over and over again in videogames lol.

Here is an Interesting idea, but what if they sold a boost for hp that would level up you character to max with a random color combination for just that match? Make it a progress reward in most pve, especially when new characters come out, and make it cost 300 hp to buy a +3 of it. That would let ppl try out the new character just by getting one cover. It also could be a means to make a little extra as, right now, nobody is going to buy a second build. What they MIGHT do is drop 600-900 hp to try out a few random builds of the character at max before making a decision. Not just ppl looking to buy bulk, but ppl maybe looking to buy that last cover for the heck of it and needing to feel it in action to know. Make most tournements have them disabled but have a tournement every week, shield rounds, and pve allow the use of the boost. If you use the boost for your def team it counts as a loss and thusly doesn’t change your defensive team though you still win or lose point wise as usual. ALSO it would allow ppl to have something to allow them to complete the harder missions (should only be one 230 mission per a map…EVER). At thr end of a tourney ppl might drop +600 hp to get +6 matches with a full level boosted character despite not having the ISO to level them up.

Basically think of it as a small cost (given for free sometimes) trial of the character. Enough to wet your whistle and make you want more (assuming good character design), let you have some more hard info on the character, and do so all at a PROFIT with no negetibe feedback for the devs. It doesn’t affect your def team so the boosts don’t harm others defensively. Nobody would know if u used it or not. It’s still too expensive to use Like a regular boost constantly. Everybody would love getting a trial run of a new character (its the reason they have the freebie characters throughout the pve events afterall). It’s disabled in most tournements (PvP) so as not to affect the outcomes even if ppl were willing to drop hp on it. Makes ppl more willing to diversify as they can test run the character at max first. Makes ppl realize how good non conventional builds can be. I don’t see a loser in it.

16

Right, at present I do not see a way out of this with the current model, a new player really cannot compete, it’s not pay to win, it’s no way to win if you are just starting.

This is the reason behind mudflation in MMOs, the only way to bring in fresh blood is to make it so new players can come in and compete. When I played MMOs, I did not play to be the casual raider, I played to be a the top of the raiding food chain, and if there was no fast way to get up and competitive then they would never have been able to keep my interest.

17

I like your points Nemek,

Right now I do not see how a new player can get in and compete at the high end of the game, and for many players like myself that is important. ( I was lucky enough to find this game early in it’s life). The gap is only going to grow now. As the game matures the elite competitions are all going to be 141 rosters at the top end, its the natural progression.

Lots of people are completionists and have money and would max out their 33 character and growing roster just to have them, from a business perspective I would want to tap into that.

The thing is, I am already at the top of the food chain, me paying to max out yet another cover faster than I already am is not going to upset the balance of anything. What you would see as you play matches is varied teams that you have not seen before because people would take risks on different characters.

If some new player that just got his 13th Patch cover wants to max it out in levels and compete in end game PVP, so be it, I say.

Wouldn’t it be neat to go in an figure out what to counter a fully leveled Patch/Loki/X team with? That would be some fun endgame PVP, instead of… Well I know they have a maxed Hulk because he is a PITA for defense plus Spider Man, and Magneto/GSBW or Punisher. People don’t take risks with other covers because they can’t afford to invest that much ISO into something they dont know will work well at the high end.

18

QFT, God I loved raiding, I wish I had time for that now. Started with Everquest in College and then played WOW from Launch to the start of Mists of Pandaria… Pandas’ really? Then had a family… so much for raiding icon_razz.gif

19

I don’t think they want to make real money on it.

If they get it right they make their money on slots and covers, either as packs or as specific colours on a character.

Shields are a grey area because if you are addicted to them you have to spend, but I’ll generally only use one every fourth or fifth tournament so I generally earn HP from tournaments. So they will be a money spinner from those out of control, but I don’t think most players will spend up big on shields.

But ISO. To make money off you they need you to keep playing. To keep you playing they need small and large rewards. If you were playing an entire week just for a shot at a daredevil cover, is that drive enough? But if every 15 matches or so you get to add a level to a character, the you constantly get the endorphin rush to keep playing.

20

Funny, to level a toon from 15 to 141 costs 172K ISO

52000 ISO sells for $99

Roughly $350 if you wanted to level a toon to max.