What they are doing is what I've seen many a good freemium do and it's not making me feel warm and fuzzy. Devs lose the beat. They start tuning the game for the 0.01% of players spending $100+ weekly, trying to turn the game into a concierge service for their whales. What they forget is that the whales were spending that money on the player friendly version of the game and that, although every noose tightening may temporarily increase spending short term, it also drives off players and discourages the light and moderate spenders from tossing the devs their $10-$20/month. Over time, the game becomes less and less fun for early non-whale adopters, the competitive non-to-moderate spenders move on, and the whales also start to get bored since there are fewer challengers and admirers. Once the balance is off far enough, game goes into a decay spiral where no amount of shenanigans from the devs restore revenue to earlier levels and the player base slowly degrades until it's a relatively small cadre of non-to-moderate spender die-hards who are playing the game long term since they've been with it for so long, a steadily shrinking pool of whales, and the clueless noobs who wander in, play for a few weeks and move on. If they keep altering the game in this direction, that's what they're going to do to this golden goose.
I don't spend $100 a week but I did just start playing a little over a month ago and I've dropped somewhere south of $200 on the game. Happy to do it. I loved what I saw and I wanted to get heavily involved right away. Dropped some serious cash and then some more here and there. I loved all the little extras and how much there was to do. I loved how it was a marathon and not a sprint (and mostly still is). I like how you didn't HAVE to spend money to progress in any mode of the game though spending money did give you an advantage, especially in PvP where you could essentially reset your fights. Not that it mattered because the real reward, to me, in PvP were the honor tokens and you could easily get 3 bios a day from it. The previous update hit just when I was thinking of dropping another $30 or $50 into the game but I held off because of some changes they made. I bought the initial VIP package for $25 and it was the first time I felt ripped off. I held off spending any more money. Now this last update? It's just a punch in the gut and even with the change they just made to Battleworld I am not impressed. I think I'm done with it. It was fun, I don't regret the money, but it went from a fun little ARPG romp with some very familiar characters and I can see it starting to turn towards more aggravation, blind grinding, and a constant query for how much money I have in my wallet. They are doing the same thing I've seen with every Marvel game now. Start out nice, give the players lots of free stuff, actually have a fun game (shock!) and then slowly replace everything enjoyable with cynical IAP practices. I'm out. I couldn't spend all my energy yesterday, even with autoplay or clear tickets, I was just so disappointed. I don't want to participate in this nonsense. I think I need to quit while I was still having fun before this game becomes what Marvel Puzzle Quest became for me. They are following the exact same path. PQ was an awesome game that went downhill fast and largely followed the same pattern FF is now. I don't see this ending well.
Thank you for the very insightful post! Though I don't have any prior experience or data to point to, everything about the process that you described seems to ring true: it's not a stretch to imagine that the changes in the F2P model might be glaring and off-putting enough to drive off some of the existing players, which could get worse if they don't "course-correct" soon. Above everything else, I fear for the future of this game, because I believe it has the potential for a longer lifespan than most freemium games. It's unfortunate that this had to happen, since MFF has been one of the brightest examples of "F2P done right" that I could point to: it is generous enough with its currencies, to the point where it's hard to feel like it's pushing you towards buying IAPs, but it has so many content that it wouldn't feel like wasted money if one actually went ahead and did it. Someone in the Mobirum forums put it perfectly: "I WANT to buy more crystals, not feel FORCED into buying them." (Here's a link to that person's excellent post, if anyone's interested: http://www.mobirum.com/article/detail?cafeId=futurefight_en&bbsId=84&id=35746#) Speaking for no one but myself, I had absolutely no regrets about buying Tony Stark's Stash every month since the global release. Not only does it offer significant in-game value for the money that's being spent, but above all it feels like a good option to keep supporting the devs. However, I'm having serious doubts whether to keep doing it if they keep up with this new direction.
Actually this game was performing extremely poorly, outside of top 100 grossing ios charts in the US with a Marvel license is just unacceptable to the investors. Developer's biggest mistake is they have no idea how to control the contents. I bought two stashes since release, had two six stars characters and six five star characters and got bored and quit. I came back, played battle world and got to top 100 in 30 matches and lost twice along the way. Imagine whales with a dozen six stars. This is a great example of how difficult it is to stay at top of grossing charts, even when you have a great game the balancing is very intricate. Unlimited special stage farming with overpowered characters ruined the game in all honesty. Now they are trying to up the difficulty and it is upsetting older players. Makes you appreciate Marvel Contest of Champions a lot more from developer stand point. Truly marvelous to stay at top. In any case I think they missed the boat already. Game is up 100 spots on top grossing chart to 50 since update but won't be able to sustain it in my opinion. Korean games are just too grindy.
This still is FAAAAAAAAR more fair than CoC due to the fact you've been able to pick your path and grind your way to heroes you'd like. In CoC you need to dump money and simply wish for the best getting anywhere from a 2-4 star based on luck. Only thing that bugs me about this is I loved supporting them, and still would if it was pay to advance quicker as it sorta was. And unlike CoC you absolutely know what your money/crystals are going for when purchasing biometrics and not some gacha system. (Don't think anyone buys boxes) It just seems they're locking more things behind paying, and trying to squeeze money out of people that were happily paying before from time to time since they enjoyed the game and wanted cool characters/costumes/and had specific goals and modes they wanted to build for.
I'm in that boat. When I first started, dropped about $40 for various 2 for 1 crystal packages over the first couple of weeks out of impatience. Since then, other than the $10 75 biometric selector they offered with the last update, I've only purchased the stash option (up to my 4th and it expires in less than a week). The stash has been perfect. Between it and the daily quests, you get a fixed 100 crystals a day, plus probably another 15 crystals average from GM gifts, about 200 a week from the Arena and, ta-da, you can buy a couple of nice things every month by being patient. I'll probably pick up the 5th Stark's Stash when this one expires, but it's being done so under duress and I won't be picking up a 6th if this "ALL RNG ALL THE TIME" trend for non-whales keeps going. I do not regret what I've spent at all so far, but I'm done rewarding coercive monetization, and this update tips the scales toward that direction. Yes, haven't tipped yet, but this last update is depressingly on target for taking us there. Can you imagine trying to level any of the non-farmable token only characters if you just started? Just with the characters available now, statistically it will take clearing all 9 VS levels daily for more than a year to 6 star one of the token exclusives. It will take upward of 2 years of Arena playing to 6 star, say, Gamora from scratch, ugh!
The problems with terms like "gross" and "revenue" is that it is not PROFIT. The mobile market is sick right now. The metrics used for measurement are poor and the market is so crowded that unless you are one of those top 100 you have almost no visibility. Now, for all we know depending on their cost, Future Fight might be profitable. Maybe not insanely profitable but it could be making money. Unfortunately, because it does seem like the industry is obsessed with their position on the top grossing charts it doesn't matter. A lot of this is reminiscent of the early dot com advertising days when companies were obsessed with click throughs even though it wasn't a real indication of effectiveness and they were trying to hold internet ads to a higher standard than other advertising simply because it was easier to measure superficial metrics like clicks and views without additional data to measure true effectiveness. (Believe me, current Internet Marketing is MUCH MUCH more data driven compared to the silliness of the early days) In addition, I think the churn is about to hit critical mass. Companies depend on new players to replace old players who get burned out. Problem is, who hasn't played a F2P game by now? I'm not going to jump from Future Fight to something else. I have one F2P game I still play and I was burned early by IAP practices when I first got into mobile gaming. These companies are training their consumers not to trust them. That is not a trend that is going to profit them in the future. At some point this WILL hit critical mass unless the industry adopts a less cynical standard. My hope was that FF would resist, stay player friendly, and ride out the inevitable bubble burst that is coming by having a loyal playerbase. I suspect the Marvel Mothership is not going to allow that and instead wants to focus on short term profits at the risk of a flameout. I refuse to fault a company for making money but I am disappointed that they'll do the stereotypical and often disastrous short-term quarter-to-quarter focus at the cost of long term sustainability.
So true about what seems to be a majority of corporate AND political entities nowadays. Instead of realizing that if you are profitable, shazam, you're profitable, everyone has to keep tinkering and exploiting so they can keep becoming *more* profitable. It doesn't matter if you tank in the long term so long as you hit the metrics the shareholders want in the short term. Now, if FF has been losing money, fine, I'll take some bitter medicine with this update assuming it will help, but if they're already profitable and merely trying maximize profits, then I just have to once again yell, "WTF?"
Investors, no matter how tenured, will always....ALWAYS fail to realize that you can only gain so much market share. In a saturated market, making a profit margin should be considered a win, not the match that will catch fire. This is why I don't invest in Wall Street, and this is why I'm no longer in a sales role. Greediness is the corruption that feeds the idea that power is attainable and must be protected at all costs. F*** investors. When the player invests money and time, it's the player's f***ing money, not theirs.
I came to this game from Gameloft's Dungeon Hunter V (talk about money grabbing games, Gameloft has the formula down pat) and the first thing that really grabbed me with MFF was that you didn't have to manually grind missions that you've already cleared, which was a definite step forward. The second thing that grabbed me was the developer's generosity with crystals, free energy, etc. I remember when I started, back in the beta phase of the game, there were a few heroes that were only available to paying players, i.e. only available with luck and loads of crystals spent on chests: Angela Black Cat The Hulk If you didn't want to buy silly amount of boxes you were consigned to praying to Lady Luck that you will get biometrics for them through sheer luck. I remember Villain Siege was a big challenge. The challenge of completing it was significant, and it felt daunting. Then GotG update came and Special Missions made 6* strong characters easily attainable. And then Ant-Man update came out and suddenly the challenge of VS wasn't there anymore. Challenge of completing the game at Elite level became something people did with their eyes closed because the new Special Missions made the story progress feel insignificant. If anything I feel that NetMarble made a mistake by making GotG and Ant-Man special missions so easily mineable for biometrics. Getting 20-30 biometrics of very strong characters (Ronan, Yellow Jacket, Giant-Man) per day broke the natural progression of the game for everyone that started during that period. If there's no challenge in the game story, if all you do is power through Special Missions to get a character up to 5* or 6* so you can use them to power through the rest of the game, then what real fun remains? Fun in games is overcoming obstacles one at a time, not grinding. The game is easy and people complain. With 1.4.1 NetMarble decides to adjust the course and steer the good ship MFF from too easy and very, very free-to-play friendly towards monetary waters. Unfortunately they adjusted the course too much and instead of finding the path through the rock (not enough profits) and a hard place (dwindling player base due to blatant money grab) NetMarble takes the pinball route and hits both. Hopefully the game designers will find the right balance between the extremes soon enough, because any adjustment that is deemed too extreme will erode the trust of both the players as well as the financial backers.
Dungeon Hunter 5 was a huge failure, fell out of top 100 grossing two weeks in. You can not make a mistake as big as the special mission characters, you just don't recover from that because it completely destroys the progression balance. The unlimited runs is a terrible terrible idea, burns out players and creates six star characters in weeks for both free and paid players. Should have been a high vip privilege to get 10 more attempts and that is it. It forced the developer to do a hard rebalance toward the whales and they jumped up 100 spots in the US grossing chart to 50, 16 spots in South Korea to 8 since then. They have one global server and should be able to make enough money off whales. Life of a mobile game is very short for all but a few select franchises, gotta maximize the time.
Sorry the current mobile gaming industry is nothing like the dotcom bubbles which I was a part of. Investors are all about revenue while the dotcom era was about companies with astronomical pe's. The life cycle for most mobile games are very short and a lot closer to movie releases. Most games peak on top grossing charts first 3 months into its release, very few games can hold their standing after 2 years. Once you fall out of top 100 grossing for a while, you just don't come back from that. Investors are in "get as much money out of whales as you can for a few months and move on mode".
The focus from investors might be different but the pattern is the same. Some big new trend pops up. Mega overnight success. Everyone notices. People jump on the bandwagon. Investors start throwing money at everyone involved left and right. No one bothers to come up with a sustainable business model. Most of these ventures fail, a few that actually had a plan and a product survive, big corporations buy up anyone viable but not able to stand on their own. Somewhere as most ventures fail the bubble bursts and a lot of money is lost, careers ruined, etc. This cycle has repeated itself so many times it ought to be some kind of trope taught in business school. Also, let's keep repeating this. Revenue is not Profit. This focus on revenue is dangerous and the market is not going to be sustainable having this many players with only a handful being able to make any real money. This constant cycle of flameout, especially for F2P on-line only games that go away without anything for player's to show for it, is going to chase investors and consumers away.
You are arguing from a literally elite position: played since soft launch AND clearly play a lot more than the vast majority of players on top of that. You aren't wrong from a certain POV, but you are most certainly wrong when put in context. I have been playing since first official week, played almost every single day since then. Maxed out my SHIELD level ages ago. Have all pre 1.4 characters unlocked, all are at least 3 stars, all at least level 38, almost all have at least level 9 gear (remainder are level 8), have several 5-star characters. I do not have, nor am close to having, a single 6-star character. I was only able to finish story mode in normal a couple of weeks ago, and still working on finishing it in elite mode (3 more to go). I just got to where I could routinely clear VS mode in the past few weeks. Based on the Arena stats, I am ahead of more than 96% of players development wise. So, who is this course correction for? It sure as hell is not for the vast majority of players, many still working on just unlocking those "too easy to get" special characters. You don't try to balance a mass market game around what the top1%-2% of the players are doing because you just screw it up for everyone as a result. No closing the barn door after the horse got out is going to "fix" any alleged problem of the special characters with those top players, so the only practical outcome of such manipulation is you protect the positions of the asshats who sat there grinding out 6-star Giant Man & Yellow Jacket. And, while an n of 1 does not establish a pattern, my gut is that you have it backward. They didn't make a mistake with the earlier special content. Everything worked as it was supposed to. Power munchkins bought stacks of crystals, bios, and related packages, but with it being so long since they came out, the upper mid tier players like myself were catching up to the whales, and you can't have that, so they moved the goalpost in Villain Siege, they nerfed shifter drops in the Ant Man specials, and they gutted the ability to efficiently develop any token character but Captain Marvel and Hulk, both of which just aren't that impressive (although solid). They aren't fixing a mistake, they are just pulling the ladder up behind the whales as they go.
Strange thing just happened, the game offered me a 3 star hero because I failed a level. Usually they give you an option to continue, instead it offered me a choice of Hawkeye, Electra, or Kingpin, all 3 starred. I chose Kingpin thinking he was going to help me finish the stage but instead it just gave him to me. If I had known I was being given the hero I may have chosen Electra but still cool to be offered a 3 star.
