Pop-up Pay to Win

Marvel Puzzle Quest MPQ General Discussion
1

I understand there are going to be offers… The company needs to make money to support the game, pay employees, etc…

That said, over the past year the number of offers has greatly increased… To the point where the game seems to qualify as “pay to win” more and more. (This is likely true for most things/games, I’m just pointing out the increase in offers compared to the past)

That doesn’t truly effect me, if I’m being honest. I’ve been playing from the beginning and I’m competing against 550 players anyway. The whales having a few more things to spend money on won’t hurt me.

What does affect me are the pop-up notifications of those offers.

Maybe it’s just me, and maybe I’ve become overly sensitive to them, but I just don’t like the pop ups.

Want me to vote for something? Ok.
Want my opinion on something? Ok.
Want me to spend money? …I know where the offers page is. It’s very easy to find.

The lack of ads is a huge plus for me… I’ve tried many other games, enjoyed them, and deleted them because of ads.

I spend much less time than I used to per day on this game… Primarily due to lackluster characters that don’t excite me (my opinion) and just being burnt out (ascension seems like it could have some great aspects but it also came at a time where I thought I could finally save some resources and bam… Now I need so much more just to keep up… Being thrown way behind because I didn’t have 4* farms was demoralizing for me… Not to mention the latest fun team combination discussion, once my favorite thread to read as it was a source of shared positively, is now full of Ascended teams I won’t have for years… Unless I spend, spend, spend)

I’ve spent money here and there when I chose to, but I’m nowhere near being a whale.. and never will be. But it seems like now Everytime I open the game, and sometimes between pages in game, there’s a popup…I literally came here to write this rambling monologue directly after shutting down the game because an offer popped up asking for money.

You clarify: I opened the game intent on playing, got a popup, closed the game, and came here to vent about it because typing out an overly long rant was preferable to me over playing MPQ.

That makes me sad.

Can I just turn off the popups? Is that an option? Is this just the offer time of year and it’ll stop soon?

Anyway… Bored now and going to bed early.

Goodnight.

Edit: I realized this morning that posting this rant was an overreaction to an in the moment feeling.

The ads aren’t that bad, I’m just burnt out.
I appreciate they haven’t flooded the game with actual ads, and closing a popup occasionally is too easy. Nothing to complain about.

Leaving it up because I feel like saying I made a mistake I’m the moment is more honest than deleting it and pretending I never felt that way.

Anyway… Good morning all.

2

Were you playing back when the game would optionally give you a small freebie in exchange for you (optionally) watching a 30 second video ad?

I enjoy this game most days, other days I just feed my addiction, some days I don’t open the game at all. But if the price of a free game I enjoy is dismissing a few pop-ups every 24 hours, that seems like a reasonable price to pay. And yes, once in a while I do buy them, like the one-time sale on HP during the December Deals Vault.

All that said, if a game has good match-making then “pay to win” shouldn’t really be an issue, right? You shouldn’t be in unfair fights, but you might be placed in fair fights against people who have spent more money and less time than you have?

3

There are definitely many more sales, offers etc. But the pop ups have not increased proportionately. There are more, yes, but not loads more.

We’re also seeing different types of offers - more HP buys for 4* covers etc. This should also be a good thing, because whilst you can buy HP, you can earn it in game by playing.

I also remember that I’ve been playing the game for 10 years and have been lucky enough to collect pretty much every character as they’ve been released. Catching up takes luck, effort, knowledge, skill and money. They need to cater for different levels of players and the longer the game goes on, the more different levels there are.

These offers are a bit of an equalizer, so whilst some might feel the need to spend to keep up, others are trying to catch you - for games like this, I need to feel progress and a sense of achievement or I’d stop playing. That does come in waves.

Ascension came at a perfect time for me as I’d just started building small dupe baby champ 4*s. Ascending them all now becomes the new “Champ all 5s” on my target list so I have something to aim for, measure progress against and look forward to. It’s one of the reasons I won’t buy a 1ascended5 character - yes, rewards are better but I won’t see the point after 400 covers of getting a dupe and building it up.

In short, you may well just be bored of the game. I hope something comes along that inspires you and you find a different way to enjoy it, and in the meantime, just skip the ads and enjoy the many other things in life. :slightly_smiling_face:

4

I don’t recall that type of ad in MPQ, but I’ve seen them in many other games…I likely just don’t remember.

I agree… Closing a small pop up occasionally is a very small price, especially compared to most other free games…

I think I was just feeling salty last night.
I’m not feeling excited about current additions to the game and I let that overrule my good sense.

Eventually that will change and I’ll be back to praising the game I’m sure. Just in a rut.

5

Yeah, just in a rut and waiting for something geared more to my tastes. This morning I feel like posting this was an overreaction to a momentary emotionally driven observation.

I’d delete it, but that feels dishonest. Saying I was overreacting and made a mistake feels more genuine.

I’m sure if I had a 4* farm with multiple champs of several characters I’d feel differently right now. I’m happy for those that were in a good position… Personally, I’d just flipped some 4’s and several 3’s leaving me with zero dupes and missing some champs.

At the time I thought “I’m not using them anyway, may as well start them over”.

Then the ascension news hit and I knew I messed up. I think that feeling lingered and hit me last night.

And I’m sure the recent character subs l additions have their fans… They’re just but directed towards me. In time that’ll change and ik forward to it.

Honestly, one great character that I really want to play will fix it for me.

Still waiting for Baron Zemo, Fantomex, Night Thrasher, and the GLA in one character by the way. Joke, of course… Mostly.

6

@Blackstone let’s get another forum contest going. Doing something silly/dumb that has no relation to winning or losing is a good way to get out of that rut!

7

I get it completely @Blackstone, and I’ve definitely felt the same way. I’ve never sold a 4* but if I had, I’d be a bit gutted, and there are examples of similar things - like selling a max champ and they become a feeder 2 days later for the new character - that have always been frustrating.

I’ll admit that I’ve not even looked at the new 4* yet due to a combination of real life and apathy (3* ascension is making the 4* tier even bigger but I know how to use those) but I’m sure I’ll enjoy it when she’s champed and essential. Waves and cycles.

8

I completely agree that the popups are annoying. If they all popped up one after the other when you open the game, fine, but instead they’re doled out slowly as you navigate screen by screen.

On the other hand, I think they SHOULD add in ads lol, optional ones though! Plenty of mobile games (full gachas) have something where you can watch 20-30 sec ads X times a day to get some small rewards. I could totally see doing that for some iso and a standard token at the end or something.

9

No, they should not add optional ads. How long would they remain optional?

10

@MoosePrime said:

@Seph1roth5 said:
I completely agree that the popups are annoying. If they all popped up one after the other when you open the game, fine, but instead they’re doled out slowly as you navigate screen by screen.

On the other hand, I think they SHOULD add in ads lol, optional ones though! Plenty of mobile games (full gachas) have something where you can watch 20-30 sec ads X times a day to get some small rewards. I could totally see doing that for some iso and a standard token at the end or something.

No, they should not add optional ads. How long would they remain optional?

I remember the brief time that they had optional videos. The rewards were instead built into the bonus rewards for paying something every month when the video option was binned. I prefer the current setup. Extra clicks to refuse to watch a video are far more intrusive on the game than current pop ups.

11

@MoosePrime said:

@Seph1roth5 said:
I completely agree that the popups are annoying. If they all popped up one after the other when you open the game, fine, but instead they’re doled out slowly as you navigate screen by screen.

On the other hand, I think they SHOULD add in ads lol, optional ones though! Plenty of mobile games (full gachas) have something where you can watch 20-30 sec ads X times a day to get some small rewards. I could totally see doing that for some iso and a standard token at the end or something.

No, they should not add optional ads. How long would they remain optional?

You two are both describing something they already tried, and ended up completely removing from the game. Presumably it was not generating enough revenue, or it was upsetting to the player base, or both?

S.H.I.E.L.D. Signal Intercepts Arriving

12

@meadowsweet said:

@MoosePrime said:

@Seph1roth5 said:
I completely agree that the popups are annoying. If they all popped up one after the other when you open the game, fine, but instead they’re doled out slowly as you navigate screen by screen.

On the other hand, I think they SHOULD add in ads lol, optional ones though! Plenty of mobile games (full gachas) have something where you can watch 20-30 sec ads X times a day to get some small rewards. I could totally see doing that for some iso and a standard token at the end or something.

No, they should not add optional ads. How long would they remain optional?

You two are both describing something they already tried, and ended up completely removing from the game. Presumably it was not generating enough revenue, or it was upsetting to the player base, or both?

S.H.I.E.L.D. Signal Intercepts Arriving

I was around for this, and it’s one of the weirder things in the game’s history. I don’t remember any significant player backlash over it (and, as the game’s foremost rememberer of player backlash, I think I would).

My guess is that it just didn’t generate much revenue for them, or it caused problems with devices or the app stores at the time. I think it was only around for a short time, and kind of disappeared one day without much warning.

13

In general you shouldn’t feel bad about being annoyed by the game. It is what it is, and the offer popup could definitely be worse, but it’s also markedly higher than it used to be, so being put off by it is completely fair. Others have complained about it. There’s no way out of it, probably, because the game is at a point where there are a lot of vets who have no pressing need to spend, at all, and it seems to be that one main way to keep money flowing is offering lower cost offers that might be appealing to people who see splurging as $10-20 at a time vs a hundred, thousand, or more.

In the older days, I think there were more whales, and whales spent more, so the game depended on them for a lot of the money flowing in. But (I think) some of them left or just stopped feeling the need to spend as much (not to mention keeping up with 550ing a new 5 a month vs every 6-8 weeks is a significant bump in resources if you were just buying CP in increments of 140 CP/$99.99 in a buy club to overcome RNG). So more of the revenue had to start coming more from people who weren’t going to plunge thousands into the game on a monthly basis.

Anyway the game is probably still running because all those lower cost offers/higher rates of resources per dollar are being bought by more players that didn’t spend, or as much, or weren’t interested in buying HP for the standard old vaults and rare hits on the new 4 or 5 or whatever. But offering direct covers for cash makes sense and is something you might consider doing once a month or two for a character you really want.

So the same things that annoy you are probably very key to keeping the game running. Just something to consider.

14

On the question of ads if one pops up I immediately go to the offers page then the rest does not POP up and ;from the game perspective my two cents would be to enjoy where u are and not worry about the rest even in pvp .The idea of playing with all these characters takes away any negativity of having lost out in the race of top spot after ascension ,you are already at the top of the creamy layer so play happy

15

I’m down. The last one was more fun then I’ve had in a long time on a game.

16

There’s a very simple way to get around this whole problem @Blackstone. Which is to head to the offers store and look preemptively.
For me new things (offers, vaults etc) happen at 5pm I think, so anytime I log in afterward my first thing to do is to go to the offers page and scroll from top to bottom. I don’t buy anything… just scroll. Having seen all offers there’s no need to call my attention to them anymore and the game doesn’t. No pop-ups. It works. Try it.
The game only ever tries to ply you with the new stuff so if there’s 3 new offers, you get 3 new pop-ups etc. So if you forget to check the offers first thing then see a pop-up (and realise you forgot to check) then go to the offers page, you can still avoid the other 2. It works.
It’s just a matter of training yourself to look at the offers page first thing. (I’m still working on that bit myself :laughing:)
Anyway try it, nothing to loose…

17

The popup ads have highlighted a few offers that actually entice me. The lightning deal of 500 HP for $1.99 is 2.5x the HP at that price in the resources store. The big one for me is the lightning deal where I can get a roster slot (plus a few other resources) for 900 HP vs the regular roster slot price of 1200 HP… I’m saving 300 HP and getting freebies!

18

The problem I have with these is that they interfere with S2 PVE.
I wish they could be shifted back an hour.

19

I asked about that in last month’s Q&A and so now they’re aware of it. Who knows if they’ll make a change, though.

20

There are more sales/offers but its not really pay to win more like pay to enter “end tier status”. For alot of people that might seem to be the same thing, but here is the key difference. Once you enter the end tier, its relatively easy and certainly “low cost” to maintain that status.

As a long time player, I certainly don’t feel compelled to spend money to maintain my tier of play. In that sense, the devs both old and new have certainly fulfilled their original mission of making the game relatively “free-to-play”