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This game is a cash grab. Thank god.
DNA3000
Member, Guardian Guardian › Posts: 21,042 Guardian
Whenever this game introduces anything new, the same complaints are lodged against it. It is unnecessary, it is dated, it is a slap in the face. And of course, it is a cash grab. Of all of these, calling everything a cash grab is the most nonsensical to me. For one thing, in the sense that we used to use that term, almost nothing in this game is. But in the sense that people seem to use the term nowadays, then yes, everything is a cash grab. But that's not a bad thing. In fact, that's a good thing. It is a very, very good thing.
To see why, let's ask this question: how many people play MCOC, and how much money would it take to support a player population of about that size? From this, we can then ask the question: does MCOC ask too much from its players, and what do the players get in return.
So first, how many people play MCOC? This is actually a complex question, and one that has confounded game operators themselves for decades. Consider this hypothetical. Imagine a game in which one player signs up, plays for one day, then quits, never to return. Every day, a new player signs up, plays for a day, and then quits. Over an entire year, 365 people sign up, play for a day, and then quit. How many players does this game have? It seems absurd to say 365 players, because at any one time there's only one person playing. If we look at unique players per month that number averages 30. But if we look at unique players per day, that number averages just one. But now imagine a game in which thirty people sign up to play, and every single one of them never quits once they sign up. However, they all play on different days. In every month, every single one of them signs in at least once. If we look at average players per month, that number is thirty. And obviously, in such a situation there really are thirty players of the game. But the average player count per day is just one.
I mention this just to highlight that "how many players play the game" is a complex situation, and one beyond the scope of this post. We always have to make simplifying assumptions whenever we talk about how many players play a game. We get into how you define concurrent players, we get into the discussion of the difference between a "player" and an "account" and so on. We're not going to settle that here. But with that out of the way, let's try to estimate the playerbase for MCOC anyway, assuming number of accounts is a reasonable proxy for the estimate for number of players. First of all, I can say with 100% certainty it is more than 214,776 players. I know this because I know more than that many players participated in the last Battlegrounds season. I took a UC alt of mine, played exactly one match, scored 375 solo points, and then waited for placement rank at the end of the season. That's where I placed. When you consider that you must be UC or higher to participate, and BG cannot possibly have 100% participation, that number alone points to the game having on the order of at least 500k active player accounts.
We can try to cross reference that with another data point: the total number of participants in Alliance War. We can't measure this directly, but we can estimate it from the number of alliances that earn any season rewards. That number hovers between 25,000 and 30,000 alliances, more or less. They are not all full, but if we assume an average of 15 members per alliance (which seems conservative) that implies between 375k and 450k players participate in war. Again, it seems unlikely that Alliance war has full participation, which means if anything the alliance war data implies an even larger playerbase.
The last data point we have is that back when the Rocket button was a thing in the game, Kabam released the total number of accounts that chose to push the button: it was 1.3 million. It is possible that the current playerbase is smaller now than it was then, but this gives a ballpark estimate for the order of magnitude of the number of active player accounts the game has had in the past. Between the lower bound of about 500k and the upper bound of about 1.3 million, it would be a safe assumption that the current number of active player accounts in the game is between 500k and 1M.
How much revenue does a game of that size need to be sustainable? Well, we can guestimate that as well. Once upon a time, most online games of comparable complexity (i.e. MMOs) were supported by subscription revenue, in the days before microtransactions and the F2P model. Subscriptions for online games typically ranged from about $12 USD to $20 USD a month. Let's assume those numbers worked out to the reasonable scalable revenue for a large online game. The fact that the range was relatively consistent regardless of the genre or complexity of the game suggests that this revenue number is more strongly correlated with supporting the large player base than the type of game being managed.
So we'd guess that a game like MCOC, if it existed in the days of subscription revenue, would be generating between $72M USD and $240M USD. In the subscription days that revenue would be going directly to the game operator.
How much money does MCOC actually generate? Well, we can estimate that from Netmarble financial disclosures. In the calendar year 2022, MCOC generated approximately $223M USD, based on the total revenue of Netmarble and the reported percentage of that revenue accounted for by MCOC, plus a guestimate for foreign exchange. This is within the estimate range for what MCOC would be collecting in revenue if they were charging everyone a sustainable subscription price. Per user, MCOC is not actually making a lot more than they would be making if they simply charged everyone a subscription comparable to the standard for the days when subscription MMOs were the primary game in town. And this is before factoring in the fact that developing and operating games is, in many ways, more expensive now than back then.
What is different is where that money comes from. Once upon a time, that money came from everyone. Every single player was paying between about $150 USD and $250 USD per year, every year. Now, only a fraction of players pay anything. How many players actually spend in MCOC? The industry average for mobile games is on the other of three percent. Just three out of every hundred players. I've never been told what MCOC's IAP conversion rate is, but I have been told by people who know that MCOC is not atypical for the mobile game industry. So let's be generous and assume MCOC's IAP conversion rate is between 3% and 5%. So between one in 20 and one in 30 players spend. If the average player would have been spending between $150 USD and $250 USD if everyone was spending exactly the same amount on subscriptions, actual MCOC spenders must be averaging between $3000 USD and $7500 USD per year.
$3000 USD to $7500 USD per year.
Now of course, not all spenders are spending that kind of money. Many spenders spend less. But there are other spenders who spend more: lots and lots more. It is the average that matters here. The average spender is spending thousands of dollars a year. And why? Because they have to make up for the twenty or thirty other players who are spending zero. If you're a spender and you're buying two or three Odins a year, you are actually just breaking even. You're paying for what your own account needs to generate and that's it. Anyone spending less is, in effect, still playing somewhat for free: they are paying less than what their account would need to generate in revenue for the game to be sustainable.
This game grabs a lot of cash. And for the most part, it grabs it from the players most willing and able to pay. Thousands and thousands of dollars. The big spenders are each paying for potentially hundreds of players, the whales are paying for thousands of players each. And for this game to survive, and for those hundreds of thousands of players to continue to play this game completely for free, the game must convince a few thousand players to part with millions of dollars of cash. It must convince them that even though they are surrounded by players who spend nothing and still get to play the exact same game as them, and will even get everything they have eventually, it is still worth spending all that money.
Champion crystals are a cash grab. Rank up materials are a cash grab. All the hard content is a cash grab. And yet, pretty much all of it is also completely free. Everyone eventually gets tons of champions. Everyone eventually gets tons of rank up materials. Eventually, the rewards in Everest content show up in the login calendar. This game is a give away to the free to play players and it is a cash grab to the spenders. The game makes it worth it to the spenders to spend, and it makes it worth it to the free to play players to not spend.
But yeah, the game is a cash grab. It is a very successful cash grab so far. It has to be, to support so many free to play players. And the primary benefactors of that cash grab are the non-spenders. The spenders get a ton of in-game stuff that will eventually become free, just earlier. The non-spenders get a game experience that would have cost hundreds to thousands of dollars before the F2P model was invented.
Who do you think is getting the better deal here?
There is such a thing as being a cash grab in the derogatory sense, in the sense of sacrificing good game design for quick profits. But to really judge that, you have to be good at judging game design, and good at judging the economy of the game, unless the game steers itself into obviously absurd directions. So far, the game has never done that. It does tend to offer the most valuable stuff for extremely high prices to convince the highest spenders to spend a lot. This is often portrayed as a bad thing, because the rest of us "can't afford it." But by convincing the highest spenders to spend a lot, everyone else has to spend less. Spending is directed upward, towards the highest spenders. This is deliberate, and a continuous part of the overall design of the monetization of the game to allow as many players to play for free as possible, and as many small spenders to play the game as possible, and as many moderate spenders to play the game as possible. Most of the spending is concentrated at the top, which is another way of saying everyone spends less than they would otherwise need to, in order to support the game. Except for the whales.
Next time someone accuses the game of being a "cash grab" be thankful that it is. If you're a free to play player, that's why you get to play the game. The game grabs cash from the whales, so it doesn't have to grab any cash from you. If you are a moderate spender, be thankful you are getting more for your money than you would be getting if this was a subscription game and everyone was spending what you are spending.
And if you're a whale, tell them yes it is, and it is your cash the game is grabbing, and you're welcome.
To see why, let's ask this question: how many people play MCOC, and how much money would it take to support a player population of about that size? From this, we can then ask the question: does MCOC ask too much from its players, and what do the players get in return.
So first, how many people play MCOC? This is actually a complex question, and one that has confounded game operators themselves for decades. Consider this hypothetical. Imagine a game in which one player signs up, plays for one day, then quits, never to return. Every day, a new player signs up, plays for a day, and then quits. Over an entire year, 365 people sign up, play for a day, and then quit. How many players does this game have? It seems absurd to say 365 players, because at any one time there's only one person playing. If we look at unique players per month that number averages 30. But if we look at unique players per day, that number averages just one. But now imagine a game in which thirty people sign up to play, and every single one of them never quits once they sign up. However, they all play on different days. In every month, every single one of them signs in at least once. If we look at average players per month, that number is thirty. And obviously, in such a situation there really are thirty players of the game. But the average player count per day is just one.
I mention this just to highlight that "how many players play the game" is a complex situation, and one beyond the scope of this post. We always have to make simplifying assumptions whenever we talk about how many players play a game. We get into how you define concurrent players, we get into the discussion of the difference between a "player" and an "account" and so on. We're not going to settle that here. But with that out of the way, let's try to estimate the playerbase for MCOC anyway, assuming number of accounts is a reasonable proxy for the estimate for number of players. First of all, I can say with 100% certainty it is more than 214,776 players. I know this because I know more than that many players participated in the last Battlegrounds season. I took a UC alt of mine, played exactly one match, scored 375 solo points, and then waited for placement rank at the end of the season. That's where I placed. When you consider that you must be UC or higher to participate, and BG cannot possibly have 100% participation, that number alone points to the game having on the order of at least 500k active player accounts.
We can try to cross reference that with another data point: the total number of participants in Alliance War. We can't measure this directly, but we can estimate it from the number of alliances that earn any season rewards. That number hovers between 25,000 and 30,000 alliances, more or less. They are not all full, but if we assume an average of 15 members per alliance (which seems conservative) that implies between 375k and 450k players participate in war. Again, it seems unlikely that Alliance war has full participation, which means if anything the alliance war data implies an even larger playerbase.
The last data point we have is that back when the Rocket button was a thing in the game, Kabam released the total number of accounts that chose to push the button: it was 1.3 million. It is possible that the current playerbase is smaller now than it was then, but this gives a ballpark estimate for the order of magnitude of the number of active player accounts the game has had in the past. Between the lower bound of about 500k and the upper bound of about 1.3 million, it would be a safe assumption that the current number of active player accounts in the game is between 500k and 1M.
How much revenue does a game of that size need to be sustainable? Well, we can guestimate that as well. Once upon a time, most online games of comparable complexity (i.e. MMOs) were supported by subscription revenue, in the days before microtransactions and the F2P model. Subscriptions for online games typically ranged from about $12 USD to $20 USD a month. Let's assume those numbers worked out to the reasonable scalable revenue for a large online game. The fact that the range was relatively consistent regardless of the genre or complexity of the game suggests that this revenue number is more strongly correlated with supporting the large player base than the type of game being managed.
So we'd guess that a game like MCOC, if it existed in the days of subscription revenue, would be generating between $72M USD and $240M USD. In the subscription days that revenue would be going directly to the game operator.
How much money does MCOC actually generate? Well, we can estimate that from Netmarble financial disclosures. In the calendar year 2022, MCOC generated approximately $223M USD, based on the total revenue of Netmarble and the reported percentage of that revenue accounted for by MCOC, plus a guestimate for foreign exchange. This is within the estimate range for what MCOC would be collecting in revenue if they were charging everyone a sustainable subscription price. Per user, MCOC is not actually making a lot more than they would be making if they simply charged everyone a subscription comparable to the standard for the days when subscription MMOs were the primary game in town. And this is before factoring in the fact that developing and operating games is, in many ways, more expensive now than back then.
What is different is where that money comes from. Once upon a time, that money came from everyone. Every single player was paying between about $150 USD and $250 USD per year, every year. Now, only a fraction of players pay anything. How many players actually spend in MCOC? The industry average for mobile games is on the other of three percent. Just three out of every hundred players. I've never been told what MCOC's IAP conversion rate is, but I have been told by people who know that MCOC is not atypical for the mobile game industry. So let's be generous and assume MCOC's IAP conversion rate is between 3% and 5%. So between one in 20 and one in 30 players spend. If the average player would have been spending between $150 USD and $250 USD if everyone was spending exactly the same amount on subscriptions, actual MCOC spenders must be averaging between $3000 USD and $7500 USD per year.
$3000 USD to $7500 USD per year.
Now of course, not all spenders are spending that kind of money. Many spenders spend less. But there are other spenders who spend more: lots and lots more. It is the average that matters here. The average spender is spending thousands of dollars a year. And why? Because they have to make up for the twenty or thirty other players who are spending zero. If you're a spender and you're buying two or three Odins a year, you are actually just breaking even. You're paying for what your own account needs to generate and that's it. Anyone spending less is, in effect, still playing somewhat for free: they are paying less than what their account would need to generate in revenue for the game to be sustainable.
This game grabs a lot of cash. And for the most part, it grabs it from the players most willing and able to pay. Thousands and thousands of dollars. The big spenders are each paying for potentially hundreds of players, the whales are paying for thousands of players each. And for this game to survive, and for those hundreds of thousands of players to continue to play this game completely for free, the game must convince a few thousand players to part with millions of dollars of cash. It must convince them that even though they are surrounded by players who spend nothing and still get to play the exact same game as them, and will even get everything they have eventually, it is still worth spending all that money.
Champion crystals are a cash grab. Rank up materials are a cash grab. All the hard content is a cash grab. And yet, pretty much all of it is also completely free. Everyone eventually gets tons of champions. Everyone eventually gets tons of rank up materials. Eventually, the rewards in Everest content show up in the login calendar. This game is a give away to the free to play players and it is a cash grab to the spenders. The game makes it worth it to the spenders to spend, and it makes it worth it to the free to play players to not spend.
But yeah, the game is a cash grab. It is a very successful cash grab so far. It has to be, to support so many free to play players. And the primary benefactors of that cash grab are the non-spenders. The spenders get a ton of in-game stuff that will eventually become free, just earlier. The non-spenders get a game experience that would have cost hundreds to thousands of dollars before the F2P model was invented.
Who do you think is getting the better deal here?
There is such a thing as being a cash grab in the derogatory sense, in the sense of sacrificing good game design for quick profits. But to really judge that, you have to be good at judging game design, and good at judging the economy of the game, unless the game steers itself into obviously absurd directions. So far, the game has never done that. It does tend to offer the most valuable stuff for extremely high prices to convince the highest spenders to spend a lot. This is often portrayed as a bad thing, because the rest of us "can't afford it." But by convincing the highest spenders to spend a lot, everyone else has to spend less. Spending is directed upward, towards the highest spenders. This is deliberate, and a continuous part of the overall design of the monetization of the game to allow as many players to play for free as possible, and as many small spenders to play the game as possible, and as many moderate spenders to play the game as possible. Most of the spending is concentrated at the top, which is another way of saying everyone spends less than they would otherwise need to, in order to support the game. Except for the whales.
Next time someone accuses the game of being a "cash grab" be thankful that it is. If you're a free to play player, that's why you get to play the game. The game grabs cash from the whales, so it doesn't have to grab any cash from you. If you are a moderate spender, be thankful you are getting more for your money than you would be getting if this was a subscription game and everyone was spending what you are spending.
And if you're a whale, tell them yes it is, and it is your cash the game is grabbing, and you're welcome.
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Comments
This game is at it's best right now, irrespective of the issues. I just reinstall the game when I get input issues but that is mostly due to android cache problems.
As I say always, play at long as you enjoy and play as much as you want, that's the key to not stress in this game.
Exactly zero cents goes to Kabam. Kabam as a wholly owned subsidary of Netmarble does not get any of the game revenue. Netmarble decides what their operating budget will be, including capital costs for equipment and salary and contract budgets for employees and consultants. Kabam has no ability to make more money and spend it how they want, any more than someone at McDonalds can try to sell more french fries to buy a new car.
I know a lot of ppl use old devices and expect no issues, but I can tell you this game is as much demanding as any other on the store.
If you have a mid grade phone, expect to run into issues. That's my investment in playing this game.
It's very easy to blame the company and/or other players, but if you do take a look you might find that the issue lies much closer.
I am sure there other ideas besides skins but its the first one to pop up
Assassin’s Creed, Skyrim, and RuneScape.
I got an email the other day saying my oldest RuneScape account was now 17 years old. That’s a game that I paid membership for for something close to 10 years on more than one account at times to the tune of about £6/month. If you stayed F2P you had access to maybe 20% of the game, optimistically.
Console games cost £50-70 a pop these days and other than a few masterpieces, they have a shelf life of 1-2 years before they’re superseded. And with the rise of MTX in games they often cost double that to get everything out of a title you would have had included in years gone by.
Kabam have made some very questionable decisions, and I’ve been extremely vocal in a lot of these matters, so I’m certainly no shill, but you know what you can do every day, for hours a day on this game, totally free? Play it.
Sure the whales are going to get more than you are and faster, but they’re also funding your experience and while I certainly agree that their efforts could be directed more to fixing the input issues, or working through a plethora of QoL updates that have long been requested, ultimately the input issues aren’t a game breaker for the most part, they’re an annoyance.
As far as F2P games go, other than chess.com this is pretty comfortably in the top 0.01% on the App Store.
Second, the problem is not that we have money offers in the game, but the nature of them, the strategy. Since there s fewer spenders overall, we have to make the whales to spend more to make up for the loss. That leads to monetize even more aspects of the game, having ridiculous offers that, don't only make the gap between ftp players and spenders bigger than in the past years, but now there s also a gap between casual buyers and rich people. This new gap is growing by the month, and make even more casuals to stop buying things. At the end, the whales will also stop carrying, because they won't have and actual competition except among themselves, IF they haven't already quit of frustration because of the input issues.
The solution is, to fix the game, first of all, and second, to make casual spenders to actually want to continue giving their money to a game that's competitive for them.
Example: I was buying the daily monthly offer every time. I stopped, when I realized that I couldn't compete with people that have 40+ r4 6 stars in the first 3 months of paragon, when I was only getting one/month (special irregular content like EoP not included). I can't seriously compete in BGs, because I have high prestige but not every r4 possible, I can't move on to a big alliance that gets the "good stuff" because of the same reason, so it was pointless. The same will be happening with r5s, and 7 stars, and in a bigger scale, since Kabam decided to accelerate the offers, they now give 4 packs of them in big spending events, someone who may got the batches of 3, they won't necessarily get the 4, that s $200 more. That, is a cash grab.
Were you buying the daily offer because you thought it would help you catch up to the mega whales or you were buying it because of the value of the offer? If you weren't a mega whale to begin with, you're never going to catch up. You can't go back and buy all the past offers or participate more in past gifting events. The daily offers aren't something that'll get you there either. Now if you're not buying them because you can't be competitive, I'm not sure how that correlates. R3's and R4's aren't that big of a difference in this game. It's not that big of a gap and with BGs, you can only have a 30 player deck and you're only fighting 3 of those at most of it goes 3 rounds.
Also, do you think they aren't trying to fix the game what what you think is broken?
For me, the bigger issue isn't the fact that people are spending but it's the fact that people believe that it has to either be one or the other.
Those who promote non-spending or free to play lifestyles usually do it to such an extreme that even if the game was working at his optimal best and giving the most Pro Player deals out there, they still wouldn't spend because they don't believe they should pay to enjoy anything and the worst part is they try to impose that will on other people. It's like people who preach veganism, I get it you found something that works for you and I support it but at the same time, I'm not going to do that.
I know somebody mentioned the idea of only doing skins similar to what I've seen in Marvel Strike Force and it's become a topic that's come up on more than one occasion but the reality is is that if trying to implement a skin system, then you're going to have to completely change the entire concept of how the economy Works in mcoc and you can't go back after this many years and change something that would have been easier to put in on day one.
This has been the only game that's kept my attention over the last 8 years. Every other game that I've ever enjoyed either died a slow death or stop being worth my time until they've actually died an even slower death but mcoc has been different and it's still been the most fun I've had in a long time. PC and console games are amazing but they either require an extreme amount of investment (time or money) that I can't afford or have a window of relevance that slowly Fades Into a barely surviving channel on Twitch.
Through this game I've met a lot of amazing people from around the world who have become closer to me than family and even for all of its notable flaws and questionable decisions, it's still a game that I want to see continue and thrive for many more years to come, if possible, so even as someone who fits the demographic of a casual/ regular Spender, I'm not ready to give up and I'm not ready to let anyone else tell me how to enjoy my primary source of stress relief..
Maybe there was a dlc later that prices in at 40 to 60 bucks.
You have to have the top notch Hardware to enjoy those Games fully.
I dont have a gaming PC or console anymore.
But in my (outdated) understanding 60€ a year should be Something that helps the company, dont make me poor and gives me some Peace of mind.
Since i Like to get paid for my work, it seems fair to contribute some Money to kabam that they can get paid too.
Pros:-
1) Mcoc is essentially a free to play game.There is not a single content that is only accessible to paid players and above that,There is zero ads.. As a hardcore mobile gamer who play every sort of game,I know best how annoying it is to deal with ads lmao. Even mcoc don't have optional "ads for rewards" to let playerbase abuse it and destroy the gaming experience,we should really appreciate it.
2) The best part is,no matter how much you spend,whether you sell you car to spend bucks on game,you are never going to get a guaranteed powerful champ in a higher rarity. Example:- whales can spend a million units on a cavailer crystal which has "supposedly" high chance to give a 6* herc,but they are never guaranteed to get a herc for a million units. While the f2p can get a herc if they are lucky enough.
Cons:-
Recently the gap between paid players and free to play players are widening. The revive farming removal is a great proof for this. Even if you are the picaso of mcoc, you can't complete abyss or eop without a ton of revives, let alone v3 carina challenges with no freedom for champ to choose. How can they expect us to do it 25-30 revives?An average player needs 2500-3000 units per carina challenge. That requires 6-7 weeks of arena grinding for a average ftp player(they have a real life too lol). Basically it means you will take nearly 9-12 months as a ftp if you start it now and don't rush it.. Anyway 6* r5 is going to be very easy in a year, and all your hard work go into vain while the rich paid players can do it a week, spending their bucks on game.
LET ME BE CLEAR OF THIS:- I HAVE NO ISSUE RICH CLEARING CARINA V3 IN A WEEK. After all they have to get something for their money right?But look at the reason kabam stated, revive farming is killing skills. I mean what? Spending 5k units per run won't kill the skills?anyone reading my article,please answer this question. How spending 5k units per run(all bought with odin vault) don't kill the skills but revive grinding will?
The issue isn't the use of revives to beat content. Also a good player can do all the carina challenges in under 30 revives each if they have herc. The issue was how easily and quickly people could acquire revives for free. 2 weeks of efficient energy use and expiring energy refills in 3.2.6 yielded me over 120 level 1 revives which funded pretty much all my carina challenges. Due to this, I finished all the carina challenges within a week of their release. I know I'm far from the only one who completed this super hard challenge for free within a week. Due to how easy it was to farm revives, a lot more people got a r5 gem sooner than anticipated.
The purpose of the Apothecary and solo event buff is to still allow us to farm revives, just at a much slower pace. If you're impatient, then buying revives will be worthwhile to you, the typical carina challenge doesn't go over 50 revives unless you have really bad AI or just suck at facing thanos or are an average player. 50 revives x 40 units is only 2k units which hard-core arena grinders will tell you that is possible to achieve within a week. If you're an average player, then maybe you should expand your skills and roster, or beefing up your item stash first before taking on end-game content designed for end-game players.
If people dont pay for it, they dont care for it.
Free Revives get consumed easy
If u paid for it u might try Harder to Skill up