Infinity War Support Monetization

Marvel Puzzle Quest MPQ General Discussion
1

@jamesh Sorry to copy and paste much of what you’d written. I appreciate your input and, while the numbers of the 40’s seem to be off a tidge, it is still significant.

You’d need to pull 150 items from the vault to have a 50% chance of getting the master token. Each token has a 10% chance of a rank 5 support, so you’d expect to get one if you open 10 master tokens.

So that’s an average of 1500 pulls and 10 vault resets. Using 40 packs, this comes out to a massive amount of HP for something that is your #1 tie-in to the biggest Marvel movie since the last biggest Marvel movie. No one is going to spend money on it, I’ve asked. It’s a wasted opportunity.

the probability of opening 24 master support tokens without getting a rank 5 is about 0.8% (0.9 ^ 24 * 0.1)

Give me a thumbs up if you have personally had this happen to you with LT’s that post higher odds.

2

I still remember the Purple Reign vault. That one almost made me quit this game. 2 for 58 for Thanos and CS told me too bad so sad in your “luck”. Had an ally mate with a 0 for 70 pull streak before. It happens.

3

I’m not sure how quickly people expect to get a level 250 rank 5 support, but the expectation of the forumites and developers are definitely different, and I think that’s the source of all the angst.

My guess is they want this to be a months/years type of objective, and that players shouldn’t be running around with several maxed supports within the first year or so.

4

That’s fine, but then don’t make that your big toe-in for IW.

Unless the expectation is on is the support you get now will be useable by the 2nd movie.

5

Yeah, I definitely think they haven’t communicated well on whatever their vision is. At least with the forums.

There is speculation that the upcoming PVP season will be a big push and tie-in. I could see that with the release of an infinity stone support as the prize for it. Alliance reward? Individual placement? Maybe they release more tokens for the vault that way as well.

The movie release was pushed up a week. I wonder if they had the PVP season schedule set to align with the original date (next week), but then didn’t adjust it for the change of date.

6

Is the focus on :

  1. Master Token, and not on Beginner or Advanced Token?

  2. Support being monetized?

  3. Probability of getting Rank 5 support from a Master Token?

  4. Master Token should have a higher probability of getting pulled because of Infinity War?

  5. Master Token should be given to all players due to Infinity War

  6. combination of 1, 2, 3, 4 or 5?

Master Token, being the best token, naturally will have a lower probability of getting pulled. It isn’t any different from pulling an LT from Taco Vaults, except that we can’t stockpile Balancing the Universe tokens.

Should the focus be on how difficult it is to get Master Token/Rank 5 Support or should it be how useful a particular Support is to character X?

Timeline of what happened since Support was out:

Note: only resources related to Support will be mentioned.

12/04/18:

  • all players receive 6 supports and some Riso.
  • Beginner Token made available in all Events Vault (1/80), beginning from Fight for Wakanda.
  • Free token to “Welcome to Support” Vault.
  • Special stores/H4H:
  1. 3* Dr Strange: 4500 Riso, 9 Beginner Support Tokens and 1 Advanced Support token for 4600(?) HP.
  2. 4* R&G: 1 Master Token and 12,000 Riso for 7600(?) HP

23/04/18
SCL 8 bundle (Rank 47 and above): 1 Advanced Support Token and 500 red iso for 34.99USD.

26/04/18:

  • 10 new supports added.
  • Balancing the Universe Vault: 1x Black Order: Master token, 4x Black Order: Advanced Support token and 6x Black Order: Beginner Support tokens and 39 Riso slot(25-300 Riso). 1/300.
  • 5* Thanos special store: 1 x Black Order: Master Support token, 3x Black Order: Beginner Support tokens and 12,000 Riso for 450 CP.
  • 3* Thanos special store: 2x Black Order: Advanced Support token, 4x Black Order: Beginner Support tokens and 4000 Riso for 4200 HP.

Upcoming:
Support tokens can be earned in Season rewards (starting with the upcoming Reality Season? on 3rd May)

4/27 - 3 Balancing the Universe tokens
4/28 - 3 Balancing the Universe tokens
4/29 - 3 Balancing the Universe tokens
4/30 - 3 Balancing the Universe tokens
5/1 - 2 Beginner Black Order store tokens
5/2 - 2 Beginner Black Order store tokens
5/3 - 1 Advanced Black Order store token
5/4 - 1 Advanced Black Order store token
** Log in required for above **

Infinity Stone Versus seasons:

  1. Placement rewards of up to 230 Riso and an Advanced Support token for individual
  2. Progression rewards added at the 4th, 11th, and 16th reward slot.
  3. Progression rewards added to Versus Simulator events at 5th, 17th, and 24th reward slot. Currently, there are only 23 progression rewards.
  4. Infinity Stones will be available as Infinity Stone Versus Season rewards (full detail unknown as of now).

07/05/18
Peggy Carter Deal: 3 covers + 1 Master support Token + 1,500 Riso. ~$20.

Looking at the different token types and what they give:

Beginner Token (Rank 1 to 3)
Rank 1: ~1:1
Rank 2: ~1:3
Rank 3: 1:20

Advanced Token (Rank 2 to 4)
Rank 2: ~1:1
Rank 3: ~1:3
Rank 4: ~1:12

Master Token (Rank 4 to Rank 5)
Rank 4: ~1:1
Rank 5: 1:10

As of now, there has been at least 3 ways to get Master Token: Guaranteed in R4G HfH for 7600(?) HP, guaranteed in 5* Thanos HfH for 450 CP and Balance the Universe Vault for 1/300 chance with 12 free tokens given out. The rest would be using HP.

There is no issue like wasted covers for Support because it is automatically converted to Riso. So far, Beginner Token is made available easily. For H4H special stores, they are pretty generous with the number of Beginner Support tokens. As for Advanced and Master, they are still making it pretty rare.

The developers have already stated what they plan to do. For example, experimenting with different ways of making Support Tokens available, which can be verified by all the players as of now, if they are not blinded by their impatience.

Experimenting is not testing out all possibilities in one sitting. It’s done step by step. If experimenting to you means making Support Tokens available using all possible methods immediately, that is to say, make it available as champed rewards, DDQ, placement, progression, SHIELD Resupply, CP Purchaseable, backlogging Support Tokens and Riso based on Shield Rank etc, I think you are pretty much out of touch with reality.

We are a few days away from the next season, and some plan has already been laid out for Support token(s) as far as next season is concerned. It is a fact that Infinity War was moved up one week in advance. The next season begins 3rd May. I think they meant to make everything coincide with Infinity War.

Today is the 16th day since Support was made available. It feels like a long time but it’s too early to blast the developers. Some of the posters can continue creating negative feelings about Support or we can wait till 3rd of May to see what surprises are being rolled out.

7

I wrote a computer simulation that pulled the token out of the vault, opened it, reset the vault and did this till it got the 5*.
I then did this 10million times and got the average cost and spread of buying a 5* from this vault.

Average 594461 hp or 2972.3 USD
Std Dev 572823 hp or 2864.12 USD

I used the higher price, not the daily deal price cause obvious reasons

8

How do you get the 120? It seems pretty obvious that you’d need to pull half the items to have a 50% chance of winning one particular item.

We can also calculate it by looking at the probability of not getting your item after a certain number of pulls, which shows we can cancel out most of the numerators/denominators to a simple fraction:

1 pull: 299/300
2 pulls: (299/300) * (298/299) == 298/300
3 pulls: (299/300) * (298/299) * (297/298) == 297/300
4 pulls: (299/300) * (298/299) * (297/298) * (296/297) == 296/300
…
N pulls: (300 - N)/300

From this sequence we can take the complement to find the probability of getting our one desired item: N/300. So the 50% mark is clearly 150/300.

9

jamesh beat me to the canceling fractions math.

10

Corrected my simulation to account for the one time purchase of the daily deals, this dropped the average and Std deviation of the PDF marginally

Average 589928 hp or 2949.64 USD
Std Dev 572625 hp or 2863.13 USD

Since I have access to the PDF, I can ask the big question. Say I have X amount of money to blow on this vault, What is the probability I will get a 5* Support with that money?

# Stark Salaries Cost (USD) Probability of 5* Support
1 100 0.013306
2 200 0.0447709
3 300 0.0634998
4 400 0.0978823
5 500 0.137604
6 600 0.158696
7 700 0.195177
8 800 0.215571
9 900 0.251027
10 1000 0.273966
11 1100 0.291282
12 1200 0.323001
13 1300 0.341511
14 1400 0.370407
15 1500 0.388654
16 1600 0.411401
17 1700 0.430996
18 1800 0.446197
19 1900 0.470263
20 2000 0.485743
21 2100 0.506014
22 2200 0.522382
23 2300 0.53531
24 2400 0.554391
25 2500 0.567993
26 2600 0.585904
27 2700 0.598677
28 2800 0.613608
29 2900 0.626972
30 3000 0.637085
31 3100 0.65211
32 3200 0.6629
33 3300 0.675304
34 3400 0.686575
35 3500 0.696258
36 3600 0.707601
37 3700 0.716708
38 3800 0.727762
39 3900 0.736507
40 4000 0.74591
41 4100 0.755042
42 4200 0.762045
43 4300 0.771389
44 4400 0.778918
45 4500 0.78698
46 4600 0.794119
47 4700 0.800889
48 4800 0.807944
49 4900 0.813877
50 5000 0.821051
51 5100 0.826948
52 5200 0.832885
53 5300 0.838926
54 5400 0.843878
55 5500 0.849487
56 5600 0.854566
57 5700 0.859752
58 5800 0.864366
59 5900 0.868999
60 6000 0.873593
61 6100 0.877568
62 6200 0.882049
63 6300 0.88603
64 6400 0.889965
65 6500 0.893812
66 6600 0.897224
67 6700 0.900881
68 6800 0.904249
69 6900 0.907767
70 7000 0.910869
71 7100 0.913945
72 7200 0.91706
73 7300 0.919636
74 7400 0.92254
75 7500 0.925206
76 7600 0.927816
77 7700 0.93032
78 7800 0.932684
79 7900 0.935054
80 8000 0.937181
81 8100 0.939456
82 8200 0.941522
83 8300 0.943504
84 8400 0.945515
85 8500 0.947257
86 8600 0.949128
87 8700 0.950905
88 8800 0.952607
89 8900 0.95428
90 9000 0.955809
91 9100 0.957358
92 9200 0.958688
93 9300 0.960126
94 9400 0.9615
95 9500 0.9628
96 9600 0.964104
97 9700 0.965255
98 9800 0.966428
99 9900 0.967565
11

May be, the point is to not have all maxed supports within a week of their release. The devs maybe want players to have actually played a long while, rather making the system Pay2Win. The way I see it, the CP system was designed to be hard to be p2w, but instead it turned out to be “pay a lot to win”. So maybe the point is, to make the p2w aspect so ridiculous, that players would rather earn it than spend. Look at the ISO prixes in the store? Not many buy it. It also makes the HP deal look lucrative in comparison (it’s related to bargaining against yourself, where instead of arguing whether you should buy or not, you argue that the HP is a much better purchase than ISO, thus never thinking whether you needed to spend that money in the first place or not)

Maybe they want the players to “have a sense of pride and accomplishment”. That however comes with the territory of completionists and whales feeling alienated because of the inability to max stuff days after it’s release.

I do think there obviously need to be more avenues to earn red ISO and definitely more tokens available to be earned in events, but that’s a different point of discussion IMHO. The while support feature, as it stands, does seem a bit half baked, but I have no problems with the excessive monetisation aspect. It prevents new features from simply being P2W. The frustration of the community is largely stemming from the fact that an incomplete feature was released. But I would also prefer (and may be that’s the reason why supports were released in this state) to have at least some new feature released, rather than complain about no character rebalances, no new feature added, the whole nine yards in the past months

12

The reason people are frustrated is because we are in the middle of the largest Marvel event of the year, some might say decade. The event that everything in the MCU was leading up to. Marvel themed games are all coming out with huge promotions, releases, game modes, etc..

And we get

  • an incomplete feature with huge distribution issues and low impact on actual game.
  • a few reskins, with no special tie in events.
  • a rerun of an old Boss event
  • a lack of a rerun of Thanos DDQ (Mad Titan), because it was too high EV, I guess?

Frustration is still a better reaction than complete and utter defeatist feelings. People still show they care and want the game to succeed. Those that haven’t left for the new game in town at least.

**Removed editing of quote - Ducky

13

BTW there was no attack on spenders @Daiches , please do not try to misconstrue clearly lined out thoughts for a discussion. A simple [/snip] would suffice.

To add to it, my point was it might be intentional for the initial supports system/red ISO rollout to be slow, because the devs want it to be a long term goal for players to work on, rather than be something which we can complete in a week and then start waiting impatiently for the next new feature. Think about champing - yes people champed some characters when champing was released, a very few handful people managed max champs on day 1 of champing release, but the majority player base took about an year to 18 months to start max champing 4s (talking about players who were initially in 4* land when champing came). The duration was higher for people in the lower tiers. So maybe supports is intended to be like that. However I reiterate that there need to be more sources to earn red ISO and support tokens. 100% support that fact.

EDIT - also am on the bandwagon that the IW tie-in’s have been super lacklustre.

14

And here’s where your logic fails. You say that maybe the developers are making them so rare that they can’t be pay to win. But you yourself admit supports and the resources needed to level them aren’t really plentiful in game. So if you can’t win by earning, how else does one earn them? Paying! So the optics of this make it look like supports have been hidden behind a huge paywall. Just because that wall is out of my tax bracket doesn’t mean other whalier whales who are bad at maths aren’t climbing it in an attempt at those shinies!

15

I guess one question I have is, even if one had money, why would whales buy the supports now? Wouldn’t it be better to make sure they come to PVP before buying? Having a support now is a little bonus but if I am whale with already covered 5*s, aren’t I doing SCL 9 PVE nearly fast enough anyways? Would the supports help THAT much?

Now, open supports to PVP and it’s a whole new ballgame. And one in which, I imagine, many people will leave and find another game.

Supports are flawed at best and detrimental to the game at worst, IMHO.

16

None of the whales are. In fact some of the biggest ones have move to MSF.

17

I think that’s EXACTLY what they were going for. They do not want the feature to be buyable, but rather earnable. (My logic being that buying the support tokens from current wall is not the final form of supports. I mean come on, getting one token 40 pulls at a time is just unreasonable. I understand that) the feature was half baked. The intention must be for support tokens to be only “earnable” in the future via progression and placements. That is why there is no support store page available when you don’t have tokens.

I realize I might be able to get across what I am trying to say. I have trouble materialising my thoughts into explainable words

18

I would agree. As of right now, I do not believe the current form will be final form of how we will earn supports. This is just a way of devs testing the waters as to how they are affecting gameplay, see if they are balanced, what the earn rate should be etc (a beta testing if you will). They will be served well to be given feedback that there does need to be more sources of earnable red ISO and support tokens, and they should be actively looking for it on the forums. This is probably not the way we are supposed to get them. If it is, then it’s CRAZY

19

Which makes them feel like I deleted my account and started over again at 1* level.

Which was fun back when 4* Wolverine was the hardest character to obtain, but the way the game works now having a whole new system of stuff to level up and obtain that’s as hard as 3*s were when the game began feels really bad to play.

Hoo boy, can’t wait to spend another 4 years levelling everything up again!

20

That’s about the way that I feel. I’m not looking for instantly whaleable content, but I was hoping for something that would make some impact on my playing experience in pretty short order given the amount of time that went into this at the detriment of anything else.