The Business Behind the Changes

Marvel Puzzle Quest MPQ General Discussion
1

So there has been a lot of wailing and gnashing of teeth regarding the multiple recent changes/nerfs, and from a veteran player’s standpoint, it is justified. Althlough I do not pretend to know the developers, from a business side, what they are doing makes a lot of sense. I do not believe they are evil, wicked trolls trying to ruin the game. Instead, i beleieve they are doing their best to make as much money as possible, and honestly do not really care what I think or say, or anyone else on the forums. I will list some points in illustration.

  1. 4* Thor: Everyone knew how powerful this character was as soon as she was announced. The developers knew. We knew. Heck, my dog probably knew. She was so powerful that if you wanted to compete and save health packs, you needed a she-thor, as really the only defense was another she-thor. Initially people threw money at her, as evidenced by unprecedented numbers of max and fully covered she thors that appeared in the weeks after her release. Business wise this was great. People were paying money to buy covers, paying money to buy the massive amounts of ISO needed to level her and paying money for hp in order to shield in any event that offered a shethor cover. So why the nerf? The number of people with high level she thors increased and spending decreased. In addition, she was so powerful that PVEs required almost no health packs and she allowed rapid wins in PVP as well with almost no health loss, especially with boosts (see below) which also allowed meteoric rises without shielding. The combination resulted in loss of income on many levels and new players could not make up the difference. Answer: Nerf.

  2. X-Force: while she Thor was around, XF was unbelievable as her partner, exacerbating the issues above. However, if she thor was Enemy #1 list to D3 making money, XForce was #1A. Why? First, almost all veteran players already had him fully covered and leveled, meaning they were no longer spending $$$ on him. He again allowed rapid destruction of opposing teams, especially with Hood and boosts, resulting in less need to shield multiple times. Everyone knew that if an opposing team had a hood, all you had to do was use your own hood, boost green/black +3 and X-Force would down the opponents hood after a single green match, leaving them at your mercy. While reducing boosts down to a max of +2 was an attempt to prolonging matches, his green and black were still too fast, and allowed too many easy wins in PVE. This, in turn, reduced health pack useage and consequently HP purchases. In addition, having characters as powerful as She Thor and XF meant that people did not have to maintain a large roster, which is one of the biggest uses for HP. Peopel could succeed with relatively small roster sizes, if they chose, and a large source of HP purchase was eliminated.

  3. Deadpool Daily Quest: what a nice gift from the developers you thought? More like an astute business move. Why not make a mini game that gives great rewards (just not ones easily useable by veterans who have covered most of these characters). However, the mini game allows rapid acquisitions of multiple under covered characters for transitioning players. How cool would it be as a CEO to watch the cash flow in as these players suddenly need new roster spots on a daily basis. And the slowness of the cover acquisitions virtually assures that a large number of these players will pony up to buy their last couple of covers in order to finally complete their black panther, for example. In addition, all those veteran players who deleted their 1* and 2* characters to make roster space for all the new releases? Hello! Welcome to Deadpool Daily Quest where you NEED to return those characters back on to your roster. Speaking of which…

  4. Rapid increase in new characters: I mean, this is so obvious, I don’t really need to go into the reasons. Just see above.

  5. Buffs: I’ve noticed that poor old Bagman isn’t getting a buff. Who is? Why, it’s characters that no one spends any ISO on., but are 3* (as they cost more ISO and HP to cover and level than poor old Bags) One certain way to increase player ISO spending is to make the characters many people have already maxed useless (as the income potential of those characters has been significantly reduced) while buffing those characters that are so useless that no one spends any money on (in order to make them more profitable). Continue adding powerful new characters for people to go crazy about (like Ultron will almost assuredly be), track their profitability, and then nerf them when too many people have them maxed, or they are allowing too many wins without using health packs. It is simple economics and marketing, but done in a way that would make any Fortune 500 company proud.

  6. OK. But shouldn’t the company care about keeping its customers? I mean, if these changes cause people to leave, such as Bonfire icon_e_sad.gif
    , why would they continue to make these “mistakes”? Trust me. None of these changes, nerfs, buffs etc are “mistakes”. Nor do they care about Bon leaving (sorry dude, but it’s true, although the rest of AOB miss you). Why not? Because while they lose veteran players, many of them had maxed their profit potential. They had the most important characters maxed, and even with buffs like xforce and shethor, they had large enough rosters that they could make do with the many other characters. D3 doesn’t really care about losing veteran players. Honestly they don’t care about losing new players, per se. The only decision tree is: " if we do this change/nerf, will it make us more money than if we don’t". If the answer is yes, then the change occurs, and trust me, the income potential of these changes has been analyzed and projected every which to Sunday before they actually occur. Losing X number of players who have Y income potential is easily offset if you can cause X number of other players to spend 2Y dollars (to put simplistically). With the new movies, TV series, Internet series etc, new players and transitioning players have way more potential income than long term veterans. It sounds harsh, but almost every company does similar calculations. I.e. Will we make more money by raising the price of our goods, driving away some customers but making more money off the ones we keep?

  7. Ultimately, rather than taking this as a personal attack, realize that this game is a business, and while businesses want to keep customers happy, almost any business will willing to lose a few customers if they end up becoming more profitable as a result. That, is the real game going on here.

2

Kudos, very astute analysis.

I’m going to argue with you on one point though: the longevity of the individual consumer. The changes d3 has implemented are short-sighted and are not designed to realize the maximum profit potential out of their consumers. Oh, I’m sure their analysts would disagree, but it’s doubtful they understand the experience they are creating for players.

Character explosion
Forumites have recently been complaining that the pace of character releases is too fast. I’m sure this confuses d3 since it was only a few months ago we were complaining about the lack of new releases. Really, this should just tell them they swung too far and haven’t found the sweet spot yet. But I digress, the real problem with too many characters under the current system is that it will overwhelm new players and drive them away. After they realize that the sheer volume of characters combined with the lottery style token system will make it nigh unlikely they will ever completely cover their characters, new players will lose faith in the game and their enjoyment will reduce drastically. This does not contribute to the dedication needed to succeed and grow in mpq.

Enter time constraints.

Prolonged Battles/Grinding
Some battles take a long time. Boosted tanks like Ares, Jugs, and Hulk or PVE scaling to the moon are some examples. Most new players will walk away after fighting a few of these. The amount of personal time this game demands is unlike any other app-type game I’ve seen; to rank well takes hours per day in a balanced environment. Most consumers want a quick fix or something to burn a few idle mins. I’m not saying mpq should be that type of game, I’m just pointing out the widening disconnect. The longer these battles take, the higher the number of dropouts.

Lack of New Content
Regurgitating the same gameplay over and over is dull, unexciting, and unimaginative. With the staggering amount of Marvel material available, failing to produce new material also conveys a sense that the producers of the game are lazy and don’t care about the experience of the end-user. (I’m not saying they actually are, just analyzing the perception.)

MMR/Scaling
This is a big problem that probably does not affect the ultra-newbie. However, without serious changes I guarantee this will affect every player eventually. Fact: Once they hit that wall most of the remaining holdouts will quit.

Culture of Nerfs
In terms of consumer retention and maximum profit, I am hard pressed to say whether this or the mmr/scaling problem is top dog. Of the remaining holdouts, probably more than 95% will have invested a few dollars into the game. However, NOWHERE else in the world is a consumer forced to replace a superior product with an inferior one. Yes, d3 has recently released a buyback policy, but it is for pennies on the dollar. This leaves players feeling robbed (literally, it’s stealing). Nerfing characters, even for the good of the game, is a strong statement to the player base. In effect, players are told that their investment of time and money is neither appreciated nor respected.

Where does this leave d3? It leaves them dependent on oblivious new players to repeat the cycle; whereas, building a balanced game that provides a better return on investment and fostering an environment of appreciation and respect would free them of that dependency. Further, as more dissatisfied players leave, downgrade their rating of mpq, and spread negative word-of-mouth, that pool of oblivious new players will evaporate.

I’ve tried to keep this post neutral but im going to get personal now: d3’s business model is retarded. The longevity and profitability of mpq could be limitless but the people in charge of these decisions seem perfectly happy to grab the fast nickel.

Whew! Done. Thanks for reading. icon_e_smile.gif

3

Also, they just sold the game/company so the original crew gets to cash out anytime soon now. The just need to finish the clauses and then its someone else’s problem. They all got their bonuses, shiny stars on resume, etc

4

So many good, reasonable and likely correct arguments being made in this post. Good work, fellas.

Sadly though, none of this is new. Another app company (where bases are made and fight each other with archers etc and who advertise on tv a lot) have done exactly the same thing. And they still make money by adding another game. They encourage players to get strong, fast. Then punish high end players. Why? They understand the joint process of business AND addiction. They, and D3, know what it takes for a paying player to leave a game. We invest in these games, emotionally and financially.

I left that other game when the ridiculous, punishing changes got me angry. I will never, ever play one if their games again, and I encourage my friends to avoid them like the plague. The game makers do not care. The game is owned by accountants who know that people being angry on forums are showing their emotional investment. Don’t get angry, life is too short. Just leave, and never come back.

I was told once, if you lend a friend £20 and you don’t see that friend again, that’s the best £20 you’ll ever see in your life.

Whatever you have already spent will be worth it when you quit. Trust me.

5

I am in a tailspin… I’m not sure whether to be happy or sad, stay or leave. (The devil you know and all.)

6

How many up votes does a thread have to get, in order to have it viewed by a red name?

7

Yea, it just sucks because this game used to be so much fun.

8

You can’t win new characters in Deadpool’s Daily Quest, as the Survival node that rewards a 3* cover is gated by an Essential node requiring the character whose cover is on offer. So your idea of players needng “new roster slots every day” is incorrect.

9

You can still get a taco with a slightly better chance of pulling the character you don’t have, or, as some have posted, get an extra cover for that character sitting on your roster with only one or two covers that you were thinking of selling to make space for the new one waiting in your queue.

10

You’d have to be insanely lucky to pull a 3* every day from the Taco Tokens, though. I won’t even bother computing the odds; they’re not negligible but it’s still very improbable.

11

You individually won’t pull a 3* every day, or even once a week. How many people are there playing ddq, though? Do those odds look better now?

12

update:

  1. Increase in character health: This has two under the table consequences for players. While it is true that increasing chaarcter health will keep your characters alive somewhat longer, (so it sounds good), it will also keep your opponents alive longer as well, thereby prolonging matches in PVP. Thsi is good from D3s perspective, as longer matches means slower rises, reduced viability of shield hops (as you will likely get hit more often), meaning it will take more shield hops to get to the same level as before. More shield hops=more hp purchases.

In addition, as the increased health is affecting many characters that veterans never use, it does not benefit us, BUT it greatly benefits the AI in PVE events, as now those buffed characters will be even harder to put down, especially now that XFOrce and 4Thor are gone. Again, this will have the effect of increasing health pack spending and only those who purchase teh packs will be able to stay on top.

  1. Reduced ISO costs: many veterans have complained that this is a slap in the face for those who have used up so much ISO to get where they are, but the same thing happens when cool stuff goes on sale after a while. You paid when it first came out, and had the use of your new phone or shirt, etc but eventually teh cost goes down and other people buy the same thing as you have, but cheaper. I don’t buy that argument. But why would D3 lower the cost? Like I said earlier, the profit potential of new customers far exceed that for veterans, so it is good business to cater to that subset of your customers that are expected to give you the most money going forward. Easier increases in levels = more new players seeing quick results = positive reinforcement and they keep playing the game.

But wait, you might ask, doesn’t lowering ISO requirements go against the business model of making money? At first glance it would seem like it would. However,to D3, giving ISO is essentially free (it doesn’t cost them anything to produce it). I bet if you ran the numbers, the vast majority of ingame purchases are HP, especially now that ISO is readily avaiable. If they make everything too hard to get, people don’t get rewarded very quickly, and there is little positive reinforcement to continue. In addition, in teh course of the game, it is easy to spend HP (one button clicks to buy health packs, the allure of maybe getting that rare cover you need from the discounted 10-pack and 42-cover packs, etc. So if they choose to make ISO more available, while making changes designed to cause HP burn if you want the top rewards, you get the positive reinforcement of watching your characters level, but needing to use HP to get those additional covers you need. Also, for the beginning player, a rapid accumulation of character covers will result in some buying ISO anyway, as they will have so many characters to level up. All of these factors would have been considered and calculated before making the recent decisions.

13

Just going to make one quick observation and this thread seems a reasonable place for analysis.

Is the health changes and MMR changes an indirect nerf to ISO flow?

Harder matches all the time leads to longer matches
Higher health leads to longer matches
Longer matches should see a reduction in # of matches played and an increase in skipping.
Fewer matches played lowers overall scores so fewer progression rewards reached also.
All of this together will have a negative impact on the flow of iso.

I suppose iso is being addressed in R75 so will wait and see what plans they have for us on that front.

14

“Forumites have recently been complaining that the pace of character releases is too fast. I’m sure this confuses d3 since it was only a few months ago we were complaining about the lack of new releases.”

What!? When were people complaining that enough new characters weren’t being released? It’s been the opposite since, I dunno, I guess the 1 yr. anniversary, which was over 6 months ago.

15

Just to give the actual figures. Since October 10, 2014 when Devil Dinosaur was released for the Anniversary through today April 14, 2015 there have been 17 new characters, 6 of which were 4*'s, over the last 185 days. That averages to a new release every about every 11 days.

16

Not to split hairs, but ncreased chance of a 3* from Taco token, so techinically there is. I’ve heard of a few people getting featured charecter from taco token so they could go for the 2nd cover

17

The original post was correct, but he did word it in a way that allowed himself open to people misinterpreting his message…which at the core is 100% accurate.

I have easily spent $20 at the very least for roster spots to accommodate the new star.png
star.png
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characters I have been getting from the tacos which to date is 10 and climbing. Why do I say it was easy to spend $20+ for roster spots just to have 1 cover even for people like She Hulk and Colossus? Because I know that if I play long enough I will get all the covers I need for those characters, albeit an incredibly slow grind. I have been playing diablo 3 since release so I’m clearly okay with slowwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww grinds. icon_redface.gif
But anyway, I recognize their business model for the DDQ and I’m okay with it cause they make a little money and I get something that feels as close to progress as I can get from this game compared to the other areas.

18

Points 1 and 2 in the original post, if they were the actual intent of D3 as opposed to realizing mistakes, as the kinds of bad business practices which bite you in the butt long term because of a lack of trust.

Thora getting nerfed was reasonable to a degree because it was a downgrade but not a disembowelment. XF is a disembowelment along the lines of Rags and Sentry, which pisses people off because they could have done a reasonable nerf and kept people happy instead of a total nuke that leaves lingering resentment.

There is a finite number of oblivious players out there to be recruited. Poisoning the well with the vets raises the chances that bad word of mouth steers players away rather than bringing them in.

The textbook case of a game alienating its own fan base to chase new players has to be the Star Wars MMORPG that Sony Entertainment majorly overhauled with no notice, not even to the developers, to bring it in line with what their focus groups said new players wanted.

It didn’t bring in new players and alienated enough old ones to put the game into a death spiral as many of those peoe moved over to other games like WOW instead.

19
  1. Ultimately, rather than taking this as a personal attack, realize that this game is a business, and while businesses want to keep customers happy, almost any business will willing to lose a few customers if they end up becoming more profitable as a result. That, is the real game going on here.
    This point holds true with all of gaming mind you.

Look back at the NES era of gaming or even before. Think of how much attention has historically been given to a games opening sequence compared to it’s ending and ESPECIALLY compared to it’s middle.

For decades we’ve seen games with story heavy buildup, long hours of treading water (repetitive tasks with minimal story/cinematics to cut expense) and then a lackluster ending sometimes as simple as a single screen of text.

It took several decades for this formula to be improved upon but the drastic drops in quality from the opening minutes/hour is still highly noticeable.

It also helps explain why expansion packs and later on sequels have been so highly favoured over new IP’s. Expansions allowed companies to charge 2/3rd the cost of a full game while only doing a small fraction of the work since all the foundation was already in place. Sequels offer similar benefits without the barrier to entry of owning the original game while still encouraging people to buy it by virtue of being a sequel.

You could certainly make the argument that a free to play game puts more thought towards the underlying profits to be made for their work…but if anyone reads this thread and feels shocked by the results just try and realize it’s always been part of gaming history.

20

As someone who was both a first-day adopter and a longer-term Test Center resident on SWG, I’d just like to note that this is an oversimplification of a more complex issue… (Also, Sony was the developer, and they did know about the things that they themselves were doing…)

As I’m sure nobody wants to read a detailed history of Galaxies and all the mistakes Sony made with it… i’ll tl;dr this in advance and say that there were multiple issues involved.

  1. Combat in the game as released was functional, but vast swaths of character combinations were effectively unplayable because the mechanics weren’t balanced properly.
    1a) And there weren’t spaceships. This is kind of a problem for a Star Wars game.
  2. SOE took a handful of experienced testers and workshopped solutions for combat with them, to make more classes (e.g. swordsmen) viable. This was the “Combat Upgrade”. It wound up being a near complete rework of combat, top to bottom. It wasn’t really an upgrade… it was a replacement. AND, worse of all for vet players, it introduced a level system, something that hadn’t been a part of SWG. It had been skills-based. [In the long run, it was a better system, as the previous system had basically forced you into certain slots with certain buffs, etc.]
    2a) But at least they added spaceships.
  3. Down the road, ANOTHER complete revamp of characters and combat (the “New Game Experience”) was released the day an expansion went on sale. An expansion that was sold to players within the context of the old system. It was playable in the new system, but different.

And a lot of people quit. But the main reason they quit was because the post-NGE game was very different than the original SWG had been, and had intended to be. It was more of a ‘traditional’ RPG like Warcraft. And Warcraft was better. But those changes didn’t really put SWG into a death spiral – it lasted 6 more years. It was already in that death spiral, because it was rapidly becoming a niche game (like, say, EVE) that wasn’t accessible to newcomers. If anything, NGE pulled it out of a death spiral.

But it’s really not similar to the MPQ situation, ultimately. The SWG experience would be as if the current match-three puzzle with pools of AP that trigger abilities had been changed to a Candy Crush-style move-timed match-3, then later changed to a brawler.