I like the concept and the game plays great, but it has all the problems that caused me to stop playing Marvel Puzzle Quest. In short, too difficult to do basic levelling of characters, a convoluted scheme to get someone fully powered up, grinding for miniscule rewards, and a multiplayer mode that is punishing to those that can't dedicate a 24 hour cycle to it. I understand this as a monetization scheme, but I don't think it has legs. Right now it's new and shiny. However, I've already given up on PvP because it is boring and extremely repetitive. At least the 3v3 battles of Injustice mixes things up a little bit even if those are fairly predictable. The fighters all play very similar to each other in this game with only minor variations, so doing a 1 on 1 battle feels very similar and not at all dynamic. I'm perfectly willing to spend money on the game, but the lottery system is a huge turn off. For $10 you are guaranteed a Gold character in Injustice. For $5 you get a shot at a Gold, and will likely end up with COC's equivalent of a Bronze (2 star). Not to mention the roster selection is pretty terrible. It's made up of a lot of C-list players and while I am a big fan of Colossus (My best 3 star right now) to most people he's either a "Who's that" or a "Meh" at best. Most of the roster is the same way. Injustice has had legs because it is player friendly, is a grind with decent rewards (You can easily grind out the daily Gold pack without spending any real money), and it's an enjoyable game even if the actual fighting is inferior to COC. I want to like this game, but they need to do more. Give better access to characters, make PvP more accessible, expand the roster without so much exclusivity (Because no way in hell do I have the time to fight for a 3 or 4 star character of the week).
Keep in mind that is not really the developers fault. Rather, it's the consequence of the power of ePeen envy. They just put the system out there, that there are enough people crazy enough to set alarms, team up with friends to share an account, buy energy to grind out 10X as many matches as anybody playing 24 hours a day can, etc. is a phenomenon there is little they can do to prevent. Even if they took the fiscally damaging option of removing the option to buy energy, however big they made the top prize tier, it would just be filled with people with perfect earnings for a 24 hour period because that's what people will do. I can't claim to understand the true crazies in this bunch, but other than them expanding the prize tiers much more than they are, there isn't anything they can do to stop how far so many people are willing to go to show off.
C.Hannum I understand, I'm just saying a lot of people is complaining about the game being unfair and whatnot. I've seen the post when the developer said if there's a lot of suggestions or complains, it's possible to adjust the mechanics so the majority is happy. So I guess that's it. I mean, I'm pretty new to this game so there's a lot of hype and I'm not denying that. It's possible I'll be bored very soon with repetitive fights or slow leveling system, who knows. The fact is, in comparison with Injustice or Immortals it might feel unfair. But if the developer is making enough money from the IAP, there's no reason to change the thing, unless it's more about the players than a business which I actually doubt because imho all freemium games are just about making a profit, nothing else. Well, I might be wrong, but it doesn't matter unless there's an update with significant changes to the game mechanics and purchase model.
That's not entirely true. The prizes are too limited and encourage the behavior you describe. There is no easy fix for it in the PvP world, what would be better if there was a way to simply access those characters outright. They almost...almost...had something when they offered a special Storm contest that you could enter for 400 units (roughly $15) that would net a 3 star Storm for only 1000 points, which is essentially nothing. Hell, that's a little high but maybe worth it. I'd be willing, for the right character, to maybe do that. Not for Storm though. The latest challenge? No dice. No 2 star version (unlike Storm) but no option to practically buy the new character either. Just frustrating. So the only way is to dedicate waaaay too much time to the game. No way to achieve the same thing in single-player mode either. So, have extra time, no money, but can't play 24 hours a day? Too bad. We've seen that there are F2P models that don't punish players. Not sure why the Marvel licenses are all tied to what is essentially gambling and guaranteeing player frustration. Again, I want to like this game, willing to sink both time and money into it. Give me a reason. Right now I just play it casual. Sunk some money into it, like I do most games, but not seeing the point of it right now.
100% right! That's how I've been playing - short sessions each day, gradually levelling up my characters and developing a few solid teams - and it's been pleasant enough (kicking ass with Winter Soldier never gets old, and I can't wait for Daredevil and Moon Knight to roll on ). However, this latest Magik arena was proof enough that I'm unable to put in the time to actually earn anything worthwhile (I actually ended up surprising myself and ended the 2* arena with around 455k points, a record-high for me, and while I knew it probably wouldn't be enough to win Magik, I thought it'd likely be enough for 2 premium crystals, right? Nope, one single premium crystal...). Unless Kabam change the way their rewards are given out (maybe percentile rankings would be a fairer way?), I don't see myself going back. Yeah, I was on that same boat too. That particular event sounded promising: maybe Kabam was aware of the dissatisfaction and was tinkering with different ways of hosting their live events. Maybe these particular kinks will be ironed out as time progresses.
This I agree with - their prize tiers are far too small relative to the size of the player base. If you have a decent team, play well, and use up more than 12 hours worth of energy a day of the event, you ought to be able to count on at least a guaranteed 2 star of a limited edition character and a couple of "premium" crystals. Otherwise your energy would have been better spent grinding out story and single player event stuff for iso-8 and catalysts. Everything comes down to giving players a sense of ROI, and the size of their prize tiers leave me going, "huh?"
Overall, I think everyone agrees that the lottery system's odds are stacked way too far from being anywhere worthwhile for a majority of players. They should adopt a system ala Injustice that would guarantee hard earned currency (whether in-game or real life) be converted into something useful (instead of horrible 1* and duplicate cards). I gave up on the MP tournies. You really would have to play all day long, which is f'ing ridiculous. Do it like Avengers Alliance where passing certain milestones guarantees a reward payout of fixed "said item", and then special prizes for top players.....not the 5 dudes who skip out on school for a week so they can win a tourney....that's just stupid, and is obviously leading to some bad gaming habits.... As-is, right now I'm just playing for my daily crystals and an occasional daily event (we need crystal cornucopia again!!), or just questing to upgrade characters.
I'm really sorry to find myself on the complaint bandwagon, but it is what it is. I'm willing to put in a good deal for grinding if it's worth my while, but it just seems to not be the case here. First off, every time the game loses connection with the server, you automatically lose the fight. This seems to only happen to me when I am at the maximum multiplier. Maybe because I am there quite often. This has caused me to drop back to ×1 over and over again. Obviously this isn't helping me rank high in tournaments with players who obviously have way more time on their hands than I do. I'm not sure if these people are unemployed or never sleep, but they definitely are way beyond my ability to win anything in these tournaments. With all the time that you have to clock to even do decent in these tournaments, don't you think that you could give a little bit better awards? Like some ISO or something worthwhile? Screw the little bit of gold that we are being awarded with! It's not worth it for all the work that has to be put in. Otherwise, I'm going to need to just stick to the core campaign. Seems to be the only way to build up characters, but I don't have time to go hard-core into tournaments and also campaign. With all that said, I really do want to like this game. I enjoy the gameplay and fast-paced action. I even enjoy the story when I actually get to play, but I seem to be wasting way too much time trying to place in these tournaments. FAAAARRRRRRRR too Grindy!!! And I normally don't mind that. I've even dropped a few bucks here and there but enoughs a enough! Let this game have some natural reward that doesn't feel like winning the mega million just to land a 3 star character. Or even a decent slab of ISO. Really now! SUGGESTION... If connection is lost before the fight starts, don't make it an automatic loss! That is absolutely absurd! Fix this issue right away. Please...
I deleted the game a few days ago. Unlike Injustice you can't grind out any decent rewards and the lottery is just stacked against you. I STILL haven't got even one 3 star champion after months of play. Absurd and ridiculous beyond ridiculous. I got a lot of gold cards in Injustice for grinding. And for real money you can choose which hero you want instead of some lottery which is way fairer as you get to choose what you spend your money on. This is nothing but a poker machine where you endlessly hope that you'll win the jackpot. Grinding doesn't reward you with anything. Real money doesn't reward you with anything. I've spent $15 on the game and got about 15 2star champions but no 3 or 4. I'm sticking to Injustice. I even bought Injustice for PS4 the other day. No crystals, no lotto or spins just rewards from skill and effort which is how it should be.
Im not against them making big money but we who pay must KNOW what we are buying. It shouldn't be a lottery if you are paying. You don't go into a store, hand over $15 and then tell the store manager to give you what he wants to sell you. You pay so you have the right to CHOOSE. Here they give you no choice even if you spend $100. You could end up drawing all 2 star champions. Have a set price for 2,3 & 4 star. I know some will claim that is Pay to win but Injustice uses a few systems so that everyone can get top cards and it works very well and they make plenty of $$ so I don't see why they can't make it work with this game.
The more than 180 million dollars Americans walk into ordinary stores and willingly hand over for lottery tickets every day (that statistically, hence *knowingly*, just flat out take their money) wants to have a chat with your "knowledge" about consumer rights and practices LOL Remember, Injustice is the exception to prove the rule. The overwhelming majority of "fuse and fight" games use lottery systems. Worse for your argument is that a large percentage of top grossing games are just outright gambling games to begin with. When it comes to those who don't mind throwing money at games in their pocket, lottery systems are not only acceptable, they are *desirable*. Think about that, about 1 in 5 of the top grossing games in the top 100 are games that people are spending considerable amounts of real money on to outright gamble for fake money, and you want to pretend there is something about a lottery system for hero distribution in this game that is a violation of consumer rights or desires, hahahaha
The fact that gambling apps are huge sellers, has nothing to do with what most people are asking for here. Nobody is playing this game because they like gambling. If they wanted to gamble, they would download a gambling app. No one is asking for much more than to pay for what characters and items you want. Like a kid in a toy store. Or like MOST in game purchases. Not so difficult a request. I must say, you found pretty pompous for someone who fails to raise a relevant point.
I pretty much walked away from it this week even though they were running Crystal Cornacopia. I'm tired of being stuck with B and C-List nobodies for a majority of my roster, I'm sick of the paltry rewards. The minimal progress. Injustice and Immortals are both grinds as well, but the rewards are known and you can progress multiple characters easily everyday. You can easily get a new character everyday or at least a gold pack everyday. Even Ultimate Robot Fighting with its wonky control scheme and weird in-game currency scheme does better for rewarding players. With Kabam's profits I don't see any incentive for them to listen to player dissatisfaction, so instead of griping I'm just not going to play their game and take my money elsewhere. I generally stay away from F2P schemes like this but gave it a shot because I wanted a Marvel version of Injustice and they damn near delivered. Unfortunately, it misses in all the wrong ways. A shame, I think the fighting mechanics and graphics are better than any of its competition. Unfortunately, I am burned out on punishing IAP's and will be ecstatic when this particular bubble bursts. Don't think it will be anytime soon though.
Well, 5 times in a row 2-star Hawkeye and right after that 5 times in a row 2-star Iron Fist. On top of that, the same rewards during the whole Act 1, most of boxes contains the lowest ISO-8 with 75 value (which is pretty much a joke considering the amount of ISO-8 you need to upgrade each of your champions) and finally ridiculous difficulty in Act 2.. Slow progress, repetitive matches. The point is, I deleted the game, it's a waste of time. If there are significant changes on multiple troubled areas I might try again in the future. Until than, no, thank you.
Amusing how those who don't admit objective facts and data > feelings and beliefs quickly resort to name calling and outright falsehood. My general point, which you missed intentionally, is that if the overwhelming majority of games in this very vein use gambling distribution, and they do, you claiming they don't won't make you right, and if they perform better in the marketplace than your allegedly superior model, and they do, then the vocal complainers don't matter because consumers voting with their wallets have trumped those voting with their "principles". Games, like everything else, are a business. You don't like the business model they're using, don't play it, but stop trying to think you're doing more than making a kook's complaint by telling a successful business they are doing it wrong when they are doing better than your allegedly superior counterexample of a sales model. Maybe it's exploitative for so many games to use gambling mechanics to fuel progression, and that could be an interesting debate, but there is no question which model succeeds better in the marketplace.
I'm in no way anti-freemium but some of the arguments used to justify some freemium elements are stupid. All they're are asking for is a way to get certain characters or a guaranteed 3 star+ Crystal thingo. Of course the devs are going to make money off this gambling system BUT, for the consumers, the gambling system is a big ripp-off. You keep paying money to get a certain character at a certain star and it's unlikely that you'll get what you want so by the end of the day, the consumer is feeling ripped off. The devs can make ALOT of money while at the same time making the consumers feel rewarded and happy at the end of the day from their purchase. Saying that "This method makes them more money" is stupid because it encourages the devs to ripp-off their customers. Is it so much to ask for a some what user friendly freemium game system that can still make the devs loads and loads of money ?
These aren't arguments. They are simple facts. Whether I like them, whether you like them, whether *anyone* truly likes them does not matter one tiny bit. Any time you get involved with a large scale, well funded freemium fuse and fight you are truly at the mercy of the publishers because the power of whale spending trumps everything for most publishers. If the whales are feeding, they sure as hell are not going to stop feeding them because it makes *you* feel better. You don't matter to them, at all. Case in point: been playing BC competitively as a "non" spender for ~1.5 years. I've spent right about $200 on the game in that time. You would think that matters, it doesn't. It is *nothing* to the publishers. My $200 on the game might as well be $0 from their p.o.v. because there are people who think absolutely nothing of spending five times that amount for a weekend competition. They introduced a VIP feature this latest update that came out Thursday. There was a screenshot circulating yesterday from someone who had *already* put more than $7000 USD into the VIP program for bonuses over non VIP players. You simply cannot compete with that sort of money when you're talking about a strictly for profit business. Accept the reality, or get out.
It is the current reality, a reality where people get ripped off. And as long as people like you keep justifying it, it will stay a reality.
Reality needs no "justification", not even sure you know what the word means. There are grown adult people out there who for whatever reasons are willing to pay hundreds to thousands of dollars to feel empowered over their fellow gamers. Then there are people who say this is wrong and want to pay a "fair" price. In the marketplace, that second group of people will lose every single time. That is justifying NOTHING, just admitting that the sun comes up and the sky is blue. EDIT: Here's your problem.... That isn't true. If you, a hopeless idealog, were to spend the money, you would feel ripped off. These people spend the money and *don't* as a rule feel ripped off. You want very successful businesses to be less successful at giving people what they implicitly want because it isn't what *you* want. If it's not what *you* want, then make your own game, play another game, go outside, whatever. Not every single game follows this sort of profit maximization at any cost to the arguable quality of the game, but trying say M:CoC should be different, when it is exactly what it aimed to be, is like arguing with a giraffe it should really be a great white shark. The giraffe is going to stare at you not comprehending anything you said to it and then just keep on being a giraffe
