If the game is trusting in-app purchases without verifying them, then that’s a pretty big oversight on the game dev’s part.
Taking Android as an example (as it was mentioned in the original post), an in-app purchase is accompanied with a unique order ID and digital signature so the app developer can be sure the transaction actually happened and hasn’t been duplicated. The documentation even recommends performing the validation server side to avoid local attacks.
If they’re skipping the validation, then that is a pretty big hole. But it is also the bare minimum game devs should be doing to check transactions.
Some of my alliance mates, myself included, are in a similar boat. We are currently debating how much longer we will continue to play with the lack of significant changes to the current game format.
To keep it simple, we would just like something new implemented that refreshes the play experience and rewards us for using more of our roster. Things like a weekly achievements list, special conditions events, more variety in types of PvE events that are run (Boss, Standard, Heroics, Gauntlet) would go a long way to keeping us interested.
I will be honest, I was disappointed to find out that Support Circuit was basically a re-skin of the standard PvE format despite it having more variety in terms of NPC opponents. Hopefully, they can implement something that isn’t simply a matter of downing opponent characters as quickly as possible with point values tied to a timer.
While I understand something like the March + April Forum Contest! is not playable for younger rosters, it was a breath of fresh air for those with more developed rosters. The dev team may not see much value in creating events specifically geared toward higher end game players, but I think if implemented well it would do wonders for player retention. If the concern is that it may turn off younger rosters who find it too difficult, simply keep the event invisible until a player reaches a certain Shield rank level.
Even something like a new version of Deadpool’s Daily, maybe something like Gwenpool’s Weekly, that focused on meeting different conditions at different levels of play and had support related rewards would be cool:
- At the 1* tier, you have characters that stun, steal AP, set attack and protect tiles and make critical tiles. Make winning conditions based on those abilities.
- At the 2* tier, add in strike tiles, CD tiles, repeaters, tile transformation, swapping, special tile theft, self-healing, and CD delaying abilities to the conditions.
- At the 3* tier, add in tile removal abilities, burst healing, throwing allies airborne, AP generation, AP destruction, tile buffing.
- At the 4* tier, add in invisibility, friendly tile conversion into different special tiles, enemy special tile reduction, enemy AP cost increase, ally AP cost decrease, tile fortification, etc.
- At the 5* tier, add in self revival abilities, ally revival, ally power boost, airborne stun, stun counters, etc.
There is so much to work with. By making it a week long event, it allows players time to work through the challenges while also giving the devs time to work on the next challenge list. And it would increase the value of supports.
For the long term health of the game, I believe this is the direction the game should head in.
I dropped from a major alliance after five years of playing back in January due to all the same issues that are being mentioned. Went from a 1.5+ hrs a day to one or two nodes of Deadpool a day.
I still check the forums every day to see if something new will bring life to this game. There is so much potential, but it seems to be dying on the vine.
Something like MSF did with Alliance Wars could be interresting. Alliance vs. Alliance, set up defense teams you can’t use for attack and attack is possible with each character only once. For that matter dublicates should count as one character.
My thought on the the whole “they’re busy building a new game” thought. If so, given saved covers and feeders for fives, when should we pull the trigger on converting those covers.
I’ve got several that I can trade to Champ with a one or two covers for champ levels, but feeders keep us from doing that.
If they announce the game is ending in a month, not having champed them for so long and being able to appreciate those champed fives is like having a store credit that becomes worthless when they go out of business.
Not that it’ll really matter in the end, but sitting on covers while waiting for that is one of the aspect of feeders.
Moreover, the five star game in general. If it’s time to shut up shop, I’d like to have said I progressed thru all the tiers and made significant progress in them with the massive amount of time I’ve invested in the game.
A bolt of realisation came for me when I put a message up saying my alliance was looking for more members and instead of the usual handful of replies and PMs I got no reply at all.
My alliance is down to 16 members. Sometimes 14 when people don’t check in for a few days.
I’m finding it difficult to stay focussed on the game now, too. There’s no sense of progress for me any more outside of my 2* and 3* farms. I want to get somewhere with my 5s, but spending a ton of 20CPs on classics is a waste when I could be chasing the current ones. And right now I’m waiting for Doom to leave and Rescue to show up so I can start opening them again. And in the mean time, I sometimes play PvE and I do PvP out of a sense of obligation. But the rewards aren’t exciting. I have 1.6 million ISO in the bank and nothing to spend it on. Literally nothing. All of my characters, including my 5s, are as high a level as I can get them.
Been with this game since pretty much the first month or two of release and the last time I remember something coming along to really revitalise this game was champion levels.
At the very, very least I’d like to see Classic Legendary tokens becoming a thing. I want to be able to earn a few of those a week somehow instead of my only choice being to spend 20CP. I’d like some new ways to play and new things to do.
That third paragraph is powerful, devastating – especially the last four sentences. It and they lay bare structural failures in the game that should have been patched long, long ago.
I am nowhere nearly as advanced as you and I, too, get the most consistent pleasure from the game in … FARMING. 
Pretty unfun, unsexy, for a Marvel superheroes game. Mystifying. Why? Because I know I don’t want to be in the 5* game (even from the outside, I can see that it’s broken), certainly not before I absolutely have to, and there’s no point in champing new 4*s until they’re necessary for some event; each new champ is pretty much just a tchochke on the shelf 99% of the time, gathering electronic dust. Why strive for that?
There is more I could say, but your comments speak so well for themselves… (EDITED to say the rest of the post is great, too, not just the one paragraph.)
I’m on my 2nd rotation with my 3* farm. There is literally nothing fun about it.
Meanwhile, as a five star player, the only goal is to champ fives. This is only champing. The few champ levels I may get are purely a bonus, but realistically, I don’t see any of my fives ever reaching 500.
When I made the jump to 5* land, you couldn’t save covers. The main reason I made the jump was I suddenly had a 14th Thanos cover and he seemed like a good place to start. Then I soon got a 14th Daredevil and it carried on from there.
These days, I don’t know if I’d recommend going to 5* land because of the save cover system. 5* covers are rare, but you can save them to a character forever now. So you can go into 5* land at your own pace, rather than like how a lot of us did and “Well it feels like a waste to sell it when I could champ them.”
I miss the feeling of getting my daily ISO from playing and deciding which character to spend it on. Or focussing a single character and watching their level grow until I reach that point where I need 10-20k ISO to champ them and start making them better with covers. Even my farm now when a character gets a cover, I instantly whack them up to their max level and wait it out until they get another cover. They get champed, I sell the original 2*, or duplicate 3*, and have a spare roster slot probably for the next 2* or 3* dupe.
4s for me…well that’s my one area of focus. I’m trying to get the last two America Chavez covers I need so I can finally champ Jessica Jones. After that Talos and Thanos are my bonus heroes and I work to champ them…which I could do easily with the ISO I’ve hoarded. And then until Ronin enters the tokens, I’m sat gathering covers for 4s hoping to get a useful 5* cover.
quote "
1- Bishop -(I won’t even bother with the details)
2- Kitty (or, gritty, grocket and kitty) -"
I just went to 2000 in Shield Sim. I literally passed 100 Bishop+4R&G+Kitty teams in a row around 1900pts, and then only got to 2000 by hitting back at people that hit me (i.e. for ~30pts or so). I don’t have BSSM to fight them, so I’m SOL.
Bishop needs a rework.
stay tuned…
I don’t know if you think you have some information about a Classic Token being a thing, but I really hope there isn’t some plan to replace a CP reward somewhere with a Classic Token. I like the flexibility of the CP; so unless there is some additional reward coming or the stores are being reworked, I have no interest in a Classic Token.
Honestly, the idea of a Classic Token has no appeal to me in general, especially since they are constantly opening short term Legendary stores that only use CP (in general). I much prefer the CP, personally.
that’s the rub, right. how rarely they give something without taking something back. if it does happen, hopefully it just slides into rewards here and there without removing or replacing something else.
I would honestly prefer anywhere I was awarded a latest token it would just give 25 cp instead. That gives you choices and choices are great.
For sure, but frankly that’s the difference between giving money and giving food stamps… Giving money to people who need it would afford them agency and our Overlords cannot possibly permit that.
I would assume that the freedom of choice is precisely the reason they don’t just give 25CP instead. And why Classic tokens (as a reward in champ rewards or vaults or whatever the way we receive LTs now) don’t exist in the first place. It’s a deliberate funneling method to keep the “Latest character release” treadmill running.
Based on past history, Latest token was given instead of CP. The players asked for CP to be given instead… And their wish was granted. As seen here:
https://forums.505go.com/discussion/39282/legendary-packs-rewards-change-to-offer-flexibility
Now if you want the devs to add in extra 20CP equivalent as rewards, or like many players in here said, 7 cp cost 99.USD and 20CP cost approximately 300USD. Sure, they might add them into progression, but the number of clears will probably increase to six or seven instead to make you earn that extra 300usd.
Nothing is always free in this world. :o
you don’t think getting the odd 5* cover for characters no longer in latests would help you much? hmmm…
we’ll just have wait and see i guess.
I think this suggests a lot more certainty about the business arrangements that we players actually have.
Marvel owns the IP. D3 is the licensee and publisher (they are owned by namco bandai now I think), and demiiurge studios actually make the game.
While it’s certain that everyone is getting their beaks wet on game profits and that d3 administers most of the game infrastructure, it’s not at all clear to me how the money flows.
Does d3 pay a flat fee to marvel for the license? Does marvel get a cut of ongoing revenue? I would assume the licensing agreement is more favorable to marvel that their deals from the 90s (i.e. why Sony will own Spiderman movies and games more or less forever)?
And when/how does Demi get money from the game?
Without knowing those details it’s a bit hard to guess at everyone’s incentives and predict who will leave based on what event.