Looking at vaulting from a developers perspective

Marvel Puzzle Quest MPQ General Discussion
1

With the new vaulting mechanisms in place there has been immense backlash from players, but not a lot of noise from developers other than “we are discussing it”. I think the most desired change discussed on the forums was to add classic 4s to classic tokens (seems kind of like a no-brainer), but that solution did not pop up on the developers list of things they are even considering.

So that led me to believe that ultimately, if we want to propose solutions to developers we have to think like developers and recognize all the ways this system benefits them aggravating players.

Increased value of vaults
Stories have popped up of people spending huge amounts on vaults so they can cover or complete older 4s. Under the old system people thought, “I’ll eventually get them”, but now, vastly increased rarity has upped the “value” of older 4s which can result in increased HP spending.

More time grinding
New releases will always be a grind-fest. Being in an over-saturated pool for a year won’t matter. There are enough people with the “gotta have the new shiny now!” mentality that will make these events slug fests. Only now, older toon events will also be a slugfest due to increased rarity. Especially the top tier vaulted 4’s. More hours grinding = win for the developers.

The 120 CP debacle
A lot more people are just buying covers outright with CP. With this new economy there is a huge amount of waste pulled (more on that later). As such, people are opting to cut out the middle man and simply purchase the covers that they can’t seem to get outright so they can use the 7 covers dying on the vine before they expire. That’s potentially 6 covers you could use being traded in for 1. Seems steep but when you replace dilution with oversaturation it becomes the best option and the developers ultimately win when you spend more resources for less covers (thus, needing to buy more resources). Similarly buying covers for near-completed vaulted 4s is more appealing than ever with the increased rarity.

The race against time
With Peggy rotating out, many are spending like mad hoping to cover her before she moves into the retirement home. People spending money and popping tokens to beat the proverbial clock is a win for the developers and of course adds to the aforementioned waste. This will continue to happen with each toon that rotates out (especially top tier ones) due to the increased scarcity.

Race against time II: electric boogaloo.
The second race against time has to do with waste. Many many reports of several (sometimes double digit) dupes dying on the vine has people rushing to champ all these new characters before the 14 day expiration date. This can cause an increase in iso sales (not to mention HP to roster all these new characters). Under the old system, people had time to collect iso as covers trickled in. Now, people are buying covers outright for their 11/2/5 characters and spending iso to max them.

Whale chum
One of the proposed benefits of this new system is that transitioners and newbs “get to” progress faster. That is great! Only what happens is new players getting propelled into brackets they can’t truly be competitive in and are essentially fodder for whales. While under the old system, people with 3-4 covers on their 4s were matched up against other 3-4 covered 4s while they transitioned. Now, players with 3-4 shiny new champs are going up against whales with boosted champs (new and old) many of which they have no chance of getting. In this case the whales get more “competition” but less competition having already climbed over the wall. Being launched into 4* land without a solid diverse roster sucks, but a win for whales is a win for developers.

Health pack sales
The counter to my last point is always, “any team with 2-3 solid 4* can compete”. In order to do so they are going to have to spend quite a bit on healthpacks. The reality is, if I have a solid diverse roster of low-covered 4s going against similar competition (old system) I can use more of my roster and spend less on packs. If in order to compete, I’m locked into my two best characters (this is progression?) then, I’d better be ready to spend way more on packs.

Champ drought
Finally, one of the biggest drawbacks of this new system for vets is a lack of champion levels from vaulted 4s. Before, for many vets every other cover they pulled was a champ level for an older toon, which meant no resources outgoing and instead resources were incoming. Now there is more of a need for resources than ever to prevent waste, and a less of them coming in than before. Now, if we want those resources we used to get we need to spend more or play more.

Conclusion
If you want to propose solutions, you have to think like a developer. I am sure the developers had all of the above in mind when they thought about impacts on the player-base and saw this as a money grab. I think they assumed that any negative backlash they would receive would be absolved with “bonus heroes” – and in their defense, there are some more vocal posters on here who bought into it (“Why are you complaining? You can theoretically cover that one single 4* character faster than before??”). Luckily a large majority of the playerbase has been able to see the drawbacks and have voiced their displeasure. Looking at the response from Brigby (spoiler above), even their solutions involve more money grabs (new store, new vault), or continued increased scarcity (amended vaulting). Overall, I would not expect a solution that will appease those who see the drawbacks for players (which I sort of outlined in another thread) and the many gains for the developers (outlined here).

Congrats on 100 million, MPQ!

2

I hope there is enough people spending money to make up for those of us that are spending less and less on the game. I don’t see how these changes will encourage new players as it makes older covers become unattainable. So the developers are hoping to get more milk from the few cows they already have hooked up.

Personally, my play time is slowing down as the number of new 4s out paces my ability to earn iso-8 to level them before they get vaulted. Once I get behind it will kill any interest I have to play. Before this I was building my 4s and could see being able to compete, but that is fading with the new system.

Tic-toc-tic-toc D3, your time to fix your system is running out.

3

I’m with Arphaxad. The OP leaves out a group that shouldn’t be overlooked: the people alienated by the changes and have thus halted any purchases for the foreseeable future. If I’m thinking like a developer, that would scare the heck out of me. Getting new customers is a far riskier proposition than keeping an old one.

4

Oh absolutely. I for one am against the changes and hope more people speak with their wallets. I’m just highlighting some of the points that the developers may have failed to mention to us (that likely went into their decision-making) when packaging it as a quality of life improvement.

5

Why would you say that? I would think more grinding = more burnout = difficulty keeping players longterm.

6

I assume people want them playing their game as much as possible. Ad revenue (though I no longer get those shield intercepts at all and have no idea why), and time away from other games are just two reasons.

7

It is a mix.

https://www.appannie.com/insights/mobil … for-games/

“For a mobile game to thrive and earn revenue it needs to be played several times a week — and better yet, several times a day — until a habit of playing is formed and game sessions become an integral part of a user’s routine.”

Essentially, while there is certainly burnout for many people, there is also the fact that is becomes a regular part of the day or an addiction. A player can’t imagine stopping something they do everyday at the same time multiple times a day. Even more, people can’t imagine giving up on a game they spent hundreds of hours in. That is similar to the sunk cost fallacy that impacts gamblers especially. That means that if you already put so much into something, even if it doesn’t make financial (or emotional) sense to continue putting into it (money or time), you feel like you have to continue because of past contributions. It would feel like a waste to stop playing now after you built up such a strong roster over 2 years of daily play. Going back to the addiction side, you might have a need to play the game to release dopamine and feel good.

8

Maybe it was a simple as this:

The Developers thought that character dilution was making each new 4 character release less and less enticing.* Since the one and only business model for this game relies on new character releases, that is a big problem. Vaulting, like it or not, fixes that problem.

I doubt they spend a lot of time enumerating and rejoicing all the ways a new change like this will screw over their players. They only needed the one reason to implement vaulting. Everything else follows naturally (Iso sales, etc.), since this is the way the game has been structured for more than 3 years.

In the end, I don’t see the point in viewing the developers actions as malicious and devious. A cynical viewpoint isn’t going to make matching gems any more fun. At the end of the day, this game runs on new characters and all the spending that comes from it. If that seems wrong to you, then I think you are headed for even more disappointment down the road.

9

This would work if they stopped boosting the vaulted 4*'s. For new players they CANT get these vaulted 4*'s yet they are still expected to beat them. If they want to make the NR’s truly the meta they should relegate all of the vaulted 4*'s to “limited” status along with BagMan, Howard, Yelena and Dino.

Whats the incentive to champ Riri or Agent Venom when a magical ultra rare boosted Rulk dishes out 11k AOE…

10

I would be so disheartened if the future numbers show that this move increased ISO purchases. I imagine I’d have one of those “they can’t keep getting away with this!” moments.

11

Who was viewing them as malicious? There are two simple explanations, neither of which was that they are malicious. According to your explanation, they are incompetent and don’t understand basic and obvious consequences of vaulting. According to the OPs explanation, they were trying to make more money from the game and he elucidated many possible ways the new system leads to making more money that the devs likely considered. Your explanation of complete and total incompetence I find much harder to believe than the OPs, even though they screw up a lot with implementation of new features. No one is saying the devs are evil. Making money isn’t evil. But anyone with half a brain should know this game is a business, and every decision at the end of the day is how can they make more money. If making the game more fun will make more money, great. If making the game less fun will make more money, that is fine too.

12

Excellent post.

It’s kinda why I’m interested in bonus heroes becoming significantly better/more consistent than anything.

And the truth is unfortunate.

For every one of us not spending because of change, a whale going on a buying spree for a new 5 will usually spend more in that 5 day span than you/I probably have for all of the time the game will exist, combined.

13

Your arguments are not completely rational or logical, even though I still understand what you’re trying to say. You’re certainly speaking with your emotions and not your intellect. It’s easy to say that the devs are greedy, but that’s not true. If you want to call someone greedy, blame the executives, the devs are simply doing their job! Yes, it’s their job to do whatever management tells them to do. From the managers point of view, they are simply trying to appease the executives by meeting revenue goals given to them. The executives are trying to appear useful by increasing the company revenue and profit. If stock holders are involved, then the executives are trying to keep their stock holders happy by growing the company.

I wish businesses didn’t work this way, but they do and you shouldn’t blame the working ants for any changes related to increasing company profits. You’re also only looking at this from your point of view (despite your post title). If you got everything you wanted, the game would be unbalanced and fall apart over time. Their is a delicate balance between work and rewards in the game in order to keep it going for as long as possible. They don’t want players to progress too fast or too slow. They’re trying to balance ISO rewards with covers gained. They’re trying to balance competitiveness with in game purchases. They want players that spend money to have an advantage, otherwise, they wouldn’t spend that money.

Since they don’t know what the perfect balance is, they’re figuring it out as they go along. And since many players have been playing for years, changes made now to the “balance” of the game may not have their full impact for a long time, which is the vaulting change. I see it as a long term solution, with short term consequences (short being a year or two) but it allows the game to carry on indefinitely. The old system was not sustainable.

14

You’re probably right. Though, I’d still like to remind them, it is a dangerous game they’re playing by alienating larger and larger groups of lower paying players. It is sort of like the economy of McDonalds. It is a far better long game to have thousands and thousands of people that will give you a few dollars than a few people that will give you thousands and thousands.

I look at some of the rosters out there, the types that have 5* Panther maxchamped, and closing in fast on Hawkeye, and wonder, what the heck happens when a person like that quits playing. If that dude gets bored, do they have to lay someone off? I know that isn’t the way I’d try to position my company.

15

As a long time player of CCGs, vaulting and creating a new 4* metagame smells vaguely like the first step in a multi-step plan. Not speculating on what I think it enables, but it has upside and downside in my mental modeling. Player-side upside is VERY interesting, and it gives more levers for developers to tune to address a variety of player concerns and twiddle with the economy.

16

Sorry, but I have to agree with bbigler here. Though I share many of the concerns about the new changes (though certainly not to the extent that many do), I found this post to be very biased, with numerous loaded terms, as well as unsupported claims. I also don’t get the point of it, since you don’t seem to propose any solutions. Voicing complaints is fine, but I’m far more interested in seeing actual changes implemented and this post doesn’t seem to be remotely conducive to that (if you want to get the devs to do something, it probably isn’t a good idea to start off by insulting them - I see that you changed the part about how the system benefits them “screwing the players over” to “aggravating players” but you could have just ended with “benefits them.”)

17

Well, the OP didn’t outright call them evil, but “money grab” is not a charitable way to describe a business transaction. IMO, every point in the OP has a an “us vs. them” vibe to it. It’s not what I expected from a thread advertising the “developer’s perspective.”

Look, I’m not saying that the developers were completely naive when they made these changes. They understand their own business model, I’m sure. But when the OP says that we should assume that the developers are just thinking about the next money grab, I disagree. They don’t have to think about every possible revenue increase, because almost everything the OP mentions has been baked into MPQ since the beginning. All they need to think about is how to keep new characters enticing. Most of the time that means releasing a cool new character. Every once in a while, it means changing the way that people get access to new characters (in this case and once before, it meant vaulting).

From my reading of the OP, I doubt that author would agree with what I am going to say next (but I’d welcome the correction): I can only imagine that many of the developers see this game as more than a means to make money. I don’t believe that the developers who design the new characters are thinking about how each new character will increase health pack sales (although I’m sure they know that new characters sell health packs). Instead, I imagine that many of them just want to make new content that keeps people interested in the game.

18

They should make new content that isn’t just another character then.

19

First of all, this isn’t a “letter to the developers”. In fact, it’s it’s geared toward the player-base. I highly highly doubt D3 will respond to my post.

Secondly, I didn’t “insult” them.

Third, my goal was to point out to players all of the unstated ways the developers stand to benefit with this new system. Whether or not they are actually benefitting in said ways, I don’t really know (maybe they are turning off more players than they are benefitting?). It’s a discussion board some I’m bringing it up for discussion.

As for offering solutions, like I said, I think putting classic legends in classic packs would be perfect. But they aren’t even considering that. Like I said, all of their solutions seem to be more about money/scarcity then what the players want. I get that they’re a business and the bottom line is important, but I guess I’m hoping there’s some sort of compromise (not bonus heroes) but am not super hopeful. What that compromise could be I’m admittedly not sure. But we could discuss that (again, this being a discussion board and all).

20

Despite all the whining about vaulting going on in the forums, I strongly doubt that most people think it’s bad. The majority of players not on the forum are probably just as happy to get a Carol cover as a Hulkbuster, and maybe happier to get an Agent Venom than an Elektra (since he is easier to cover).

Long-term, this change has positive implications as long as new characters are competitive with old ones. Everyone who feels gypped at not being able to get Iceman might care a lot less if future releases make having an Iceman not that big of a deal. And I do think they plan to crank up the power a good bit on new releases, if only to make the barrier to entry less punishing.

Most of the complaining is coming from people being short-sighted, frankly. They see that they can’t develop older champs and think this will cost them champ rewards, which it does in the short-term, but won’t stay true once they hit an equilibrium point. And the trade-off is that the metagame will change over time, making the game less stale.