Unfortunately, this is where you come to the Catch 22 of Marvel Puzzle Quest.
On the one hand – Roster slot costs and Iso shortages are intended barriers to advancement in the game – the former in the earlier stages and the latter in the 4* phase (with only really CP being a barrier to the 5*). On the other hand – the game, sometimes quite aggressively, wants you to roster all characters and level them as high as you can, all of which requires resources being spent as fast as they are obtained until you reach a certain level in the game.
Of course, as there is very limited advice to new players about managing their roster in game, we end up quite often with players with several 5* characters over levelled but with an under developed 2 & 3 star tier which hinders Pve and destroys PvP for those players. Those players have spent resources, possibly in-game and in real life but are now stagnated.
Cheaper roster slots might help with this also meaning you can make more mistakes with your roster and not suffer. However, for the Dev’s any early HP purchases are important for the game because it acclimatises players to the games economy and I can’t see the Dev’s changing that. Once you feel it is OK to spend $20 (or more) on a mobile game, there is a good chance you’ll do so more than once.
What’s with all the binary thinking in this thread? It’s not all or nothing.
Look, let’s say the “original” math on character acquisition rate vs hp accumulation meant that you couldn’t roster 15% of the characters you acquired in the “typical” case. That’s your incentive to buy HP.
If that rate is now 30% due to dilution, then you can adjust roster slot costs so that it’s back to 15% without reducing it to zero.
EDIT - if you want to put it in business terms, replace “original” with “optimal” (ie. the ratio at which the incentive to purchase HP is not so strong that it reduces overall profits by driving too many players to quit the game entirely).
They’re good at conditioning players to spend money. The SCL 3 Starter Pack costs $8 and you think, “wow that’s a great deal for all those covers and ISO” so you buy it. Then SCL 4 Starter Pack costs $15 and you think the same thing. Then SCL 5 Starter Pack costs $20 and you don’t think $20 is a big deal because last time you spent $15. SCL 6 costs $25 and SCL 7 costs $30. Because these 1 time deals are so much better than just buying HP outright, you do it, but if they presented a $30 deal in the beginning, I bet people wouldn’t bite.
I’m guessing the SCL 8 Starter Pack costs $35, but I’m not there yet.
While there is alot of truth in saying new rosters have to cover ALOT of charas, your ignoring the important fact of how much MORE ISO and HP flow in today’s economy.
I’m pretty sure a new day 300 roster is seeing 2x as much ISO/HP as I was at that stage of the game.
It should go without saying that Rosters slots costs have stayed fixed since the start of the game. Thus as avg daily ISO/HP/CP keeps RISING, Roster SLoT expense as % of daily income keeps going down.
Its still appropriate and accurate to say that slots are the lifeblood of new accounts. But I would also say slots are now cheaper than ever, and its as easy as its ever been to buy new slots as a % of income.
ISO income has drastically increased - I’ll agree with your 2x estimate. But where in the game has an increase of that magnitude occurred for HP?
I mean, sure, a mature roster (champed 2*/3*/4*) gets champ rewards that provide a ton of HP.
But new players by definition don’t have that source of HP. I suppose if you consider only day 300+ players to be “new”, they might have enough champs to be HP-positive, but that’s just defining your way around the question, isn’t it?
I mean, it’s a FTP game with an amazingly large pool of characters to potentially play. Something’s gotta give, and at the stage you’re at (again), it’s HP. It makes sense for them to want to “throttle” roster growth at that stage. If they didn’t, everyone would have dozens of 3* and 4* characters with 1-2 covers each instead of building up a few characters to truly usable levels.
Pick a few characters to build until you have a working 2* farm supplying you with steady HP. If you have someone rostered who isn’t that interesting to you, swap them the next time you get a cover you like. Don’t feel bad about selling covers for characters you’re not either actively using or just need to keep for personal reasons. You’ll get more.
I currently have 12 x 2s champed, so that farm is up and running now. I have 45 x 3s rostered and 10 x 4s rostered, which means that I’ve wasted 0 covers since the restart, but it required buying HP. Here’s my problem: my current HP income is insufficient even though I have my 2 farm again. Plus…I’ve been hoarding HT & LT, so my roster needs could have been a lot greater. Back when I had 15 champed 4s along with all champed 3s and 2*s, my HP income was about 500 per day. Now, it’s more like 250.
I’m certainly taking the fast track to progression, but it looks like I will need to buy some HP in the future if I ever want to “catch up” with my roster slots given my hoarded tokens.
You are the exact reason why the system is the way it is. You can’t throw money at them and say “stop charging so much!”. You’re buying HP hand-over-fist because you want zero waste. To me it seemed like a waste to use my real life income just to roster my 42nd (or whatever) 3*. I sold TONS of covers back in the day. Honestly way more 4* covers than most people I’d imagine. But that was the cost to stay F2P. I knew those covers would eventually come back around again. Plus making those hard choices (reading character rankings, getting forum opinions on who to keep) was part of the fun of the game for me during that particular struggle. Now I have every character rostered, 212 slots, and 22k HP in the bank all while spending less than 20 dollars over 1300+ days (I very recently joined the $2 a month intercept club).
I think the infrastructure is there to be F2P but you really have to let go of the idea of wasting being horrible or be extremely patient (which is where I am.. you should see some of my hoards!).
I remember Shield Intercepts, which were “free” to VIP members. Has that changed in the last year? I’m VIP and get Bonus Rewards…am I missing something here?
They are no longer free but no longer tied to ads either. As long as you make a purchase (any purchase) you get them for a month. So with VIP you’re fine. I just buy the tiniest thing I can (pittance) once a month because to me it’s the best return on investment.
Roster cost today are infinitely better that they used to be, HP is more plentiful and slot prices are capped. Back when I stated roster slot prices had NO cap, every slot cost more than the previous one indefinitely and HP sources were more limited.
Not to give specific numbers, but as others have stated in the thread, Roster Slots are a majority of Hero Points spent on anything across the game on a regular basis. It would be a very difficult (but not impossible) sell to the bean counter types to modify that amount without pretty concrete evidence that it would help our revenue.
In brief numbers, just yesterday, Roster Slots were around 60% of HP spent, Comic Packs were around 30%, and every other source of HP spend like Heroes for Hire, Health Packs, Boosts, Shields, etc making up the rest. Roster Slots are kind of important.
Do you have a breakdown on early stage (ie. before they reach 1000HP cost @ slot 77) vs later stage roster slot spending? My tally is 36,675 HP for the first 76 slots (~480ish per slot on avg). I’m betting on most HP being spent by players past this point of the game.
From a revenue perspective, if most of the players who actually purchase HP have >76 roster slots (or have acquired a total earned HP > 37k), then adjusting early roster slot costs shouldn’t have too much effect on overall revenues, while potentially increasing retention.
I don’t have any of the numbers to make a solid case for you (since they’re all obviously internal) - but it’s not unreasonable to look into why new players leave the game and whether dilution/roster slots is an issue that could be addressed without cutting into existing revenues too significantly.
You also have to take in account of players that bought these slots and then dont play anymore. So they already got their money from that player and have turned them over. You have to also include a turnover factor as well.
Speaking from my own experience (what a worthless qualifier, who else’s experience can I talk from.. duh!) Ice’s explanation sounds about right. I spend HP on roster slots on a pretty regular basis. I’ve brought four or so new slots in the last week. Other spending, shields, packs, HfH, boosts… is much less frequent
Humm… I personally enjoyed managing hp when I had fewer roster slots. Back in the day I just kept collecting heroic packs. That was enough to manage slots. I think I got to 300 and after that I was able to have a big enough roster. Also, the saved covers feature also keeps you from having to dupe heroes