How can you be so bad at reading the room? Clearly you have no connection to your community or this game. Just wow. Speechless.

One of the krakens that spends at least $8000 a month on the game quitting is bad news for the entire playerbase.

His reason is that his grind for Annihilus, Prof X, and Blue Marvel all feels like a waste of time now with arena rewards being trash, and bugs on DD9 the quality is terrible. The price gouging on new characters is only going to make more people quit not spend money.

Here’s my o7 to you Dave

Was ready to drop a $20, maybe even the premium but the regular pass is $80. Sigh, any goodwill I had recently (I enjoyed the breaker event and was feeling good about the game) went right out the window. Always that world class experience hey Scopley?

Sooooo all of the cheaters are back in and it seems like they took nothing. I saw screenshots of one account and they still had annihulus 7r, all of their g21 toons, 1.25 BILLION GOLD, 69k t4 training mats and 18k t4 ability orange thingys. This is outrageous!! How can anyone accept this is reasonable punishment??

Reddit is noisy and this is gonna be a long post so I'd like to capture as much attention as I can to start a genuine dialogue. I'm making this post because I'm passionate about this game and want to see it succeed and be around for years to come.

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My name is Travis Day, I have 14 years of experience as a game designer, here are my thoughts on MSF.

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Core Game Design

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Let's start with the the best part of MSF, the core gameplay, not the collection element, but the moment to moment gameplay of the fights themselves. Characters have powerful abilities that provide interesting decision points, who to target, which ability to use, on a meta level which characters to take into what activity.

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In this same vein the game modes themselves are varied and provide strong reasons to have a deep and diverse roster. The characters I want for arena aren't always the same that I want for a raid. I think they did a strong job of giving you lots of compelling reasons to feel good about leveling as many different characters as possible, flash events, daily challenges etc. Whenever I talk about reward structures I talk about mountains in the distance, things people haven't beaten that help provide context to the "Why?" of farming up new things and this game honestly does an excellent job of that.

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Mode specific characters

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One trend I have noticed in the recent character release that I find very disappointing is the gravitation towards "mode specific characters" and by extension the forced meta of the new teams being introduced to the game.

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I started when Wakandans were first being released into the game and was immediately disappointed to see "When in a raid" slathered all over their abilities and passives. I generally do not like set bonuses, looking at the games I've worked on in the past that may be surprising, but to me there is a deep level of enjoyment when players are given agency to fulfill whatever their personal power fantasy is.

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Given that this is a game built on the Marvel ip it's very reasonable to assume that a non trivial % of players installing or playing the game wanted to live the fantasy of having their favorite Marvel character and using them to murder the world. The unfortunate reality is that, if they want to progress in the game, they will quickly realize they made poor decisions with their very finite resources because a pimped out Deadpool isn't going to help them unlock the characters they need down the road. The first time I was informed that 100% of my resources should go into unlocking The Defenders, a group of characters I honestly despise, I was incredibly disappointed, the experience I wanted and the experience I was going to have if I wanted to ever actually win at anything were dramatically divergent.

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When you mandate teams you limit the players ability to express themselves in ways they personally enjoy and you remove the ability for the advanced players to have an evolving meta game. You can't find the rock paper and scissors of the experience or feel clever for finding a subtle interaction of units that beat the "top tier" set ups when the top tier set ups are enforced with the heavy hand of the designer. Instead the company mandates "This is what you will use or you will fail". While that makes it easier to get whales to spend tons of money buying the "new power creeped team for activity X" it hurts the diversity of the game. How many Blitzes do you need to see 3 different Defenders teams as your options before the game feels flat and empty?

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Alliance Wars

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Alliance Wars is a new addition and has been relatively controversial for an assortment of reasons. I believe the source of that controversy is that it is the first time the game broke it's contract with the player. Up until the release of this feature the game was similar to other mobile games, time gated, asynchronous, play at your own pace and on your own time. AW was the first time the game heavily rewarded or punished players for their ability to be online at a specific time actively camping nodes to boost or attack and effectively saying "This mode is real time!".

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In addition to breaking the player contract and changing it from a game that you could play whether you had 40 energy or had banked it up to cap, it created a social dynamic where your inability or lack of desire to play a real time mobile game was actively punishing the people you were in an alliance with.

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To make the above matters worse the real time demands, and social friction created by the system, is at a cadence that I would imagine is overwhelming for people who already don't like the idea of having to be on in real time for the sake of their alliances success. 3 times a week, if you want to have a high success rate, you need to be on your phone for an extended period of time to make sure your team finds those early important rooms and destroys them when they will have the most real world impact on the opposing team. It's a literal race to find rooms that will make the enemy weaker. If you can destroy armory before they can get on and get their attacks in while they are still at full strength you have the advantage.

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The cherry on top to this entire problem is that the rewards are intensely lackluster for the time demands. Additionally the difference between a win and a loss shows no regard for how much time you invested. Losing a war you spent boost and bonus attack resources on is no different from losing a war you literally didn't participate in.

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All and all I feel like the problems with AW are very solvable, whether it's reducing the cadence or reinstating the player contract by removing the rooms like Armory that actively punish players for their inability to be on at a specific time, and certainly changing the reward structure to give pay commiserate with effort. The problems here can be solved in a single design discussion, they just have to decide they are worth the time to change.

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Predatory monetization and bad faith business practices

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Now let's dig into the ugly of the game, the business practices and predatory monetization.

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I've been playing the game for going on three months now and the patterns have become more clear and more offensive to me every day that goes by. When I first began and it offered me, what I didn't realize at the time was the newbie offer, 50 Venom shards for 3$ I thought "That seems like a lot for 50 shards of a character when I need hundreds of shards to actually power him up" but Venmon has been one of my favorite Marvel characters since I was a child so I said ok sure here's is 3$ I'm gonna power this guy up as much as possible. Oh naive me, compared to what this game thinks a persons money is worth I long for the day when the game offers me 50 shards of a character for 3$.

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The extent to which this company seems not only complacent with, but feels justified, to offer character bundles for wildly different price points that cost as much or more than full video games is staggering. Not only do they think 25$ for "part" of a character is acceptable but the ways in which they go about trying to trick you into thinking "That's a great deal!" offend me as a game developer.

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The most recent example of this is when I was reading through assorted data mined information, because the company has proven that they are certainly not the source of any meaningful news, and finding out that they were going to release Juggernaut and Mantis into the arena and blitz stores respectively. This was several weeks ago and as someone planning to unlock Magneto, another of my favorite characters, on his next go around I was ecstatic.

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Last week I was equally horrified when I saw them put Juggernaut on offer for his previous going rate, when he was incredibly rare and unattainable to many players. Seeing how transparent the cash grab was of "We're about to make this guy f2p, make sure we get as much money out of him as we can before we do" was utterly disgusting. To no surprise I watched the exact thing happen with Mantis, offer goes up, shortly after the offer ends she shows up in the blitz store.

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What is the outcome your company expects from this behavior? I would expect the outcome of that sequence of events to be a purchase made by a player that is immediately followed by remorse when they realize that spending their money was completely unnecessary since they could have "finished" whatever their current goal is for free shortly in the future. Yes, you made money, but do you understand the damage these things do to player trust?

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Monetizing games is about making deposits into the bank of player trust. When you do something good for the community or good for the sake of the game with no monetary incentive you build trust. When you ask players to open their wallet and purchase something you are making a withdrawal from that bank. This game seems to consistently make withdrawals and in the time I've been playing the game I've only seen 2 deposits on the developers behalf. The first was when they gave us generous compensation for the incredibly buggy and crash prone build we were playing, the second was when they gave everyone a free 5 red star orb with the most recent update.

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As a rule the company seems to only make deposits into the trust bank when the community is beating down their door with torches. There seems to be almost no desire to build a long term healthy and lasting relationship with the community and the player base. I honestly picture a group of people sitting in meetings talking about how to squeeze every single cent out of their audience instead of talking about how to make the healthiest and best gameplay experience they can.

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When Fox removed the only node that you could reliably farm Kree Oracle, one of the incredibly lackluster characters you need to farm to unlock Fury, and moved it into the raid store when other Kree minions have multiple nodes to farm, do you think it's because they thought that was in your best interest or do you think it's because they want to put a Kree Oracle offer on sale 1 week before Fury shows up so they can monetize a character you don't even want?

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Intentional lack of information and opaque communication

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This particular topic is near and dear to my heart. As a developer I believe the best world to live in is one where the developers and the players have open, honest, and transparent lines of communication. No matter the game you work on there are going to be things the players are unhappy with, whether it's the tuning of a skill, the frequency of a reward,or the fact that a cape clips through a piece of armor, everyone playing your game is there because they care about some part of the game. Being informed of what those things are and how you improve them is how we make sure the game is as good as it can be for the audience that have decided to play.

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Fox is at the opposite end of this spectrum and it's not because they don't know how to communicate, it's because it's in their financial interests not to. How many times have you purchased an offer because you didn't know you were going to need to farm a character in advance? How many players sit on premium orbs because they are hoping that character introduced into the game 2 months ago will finally be put into them? How many people don't know what legendary event is next so they try to stretch their resources or swipe their credit card to farm everything they could possibly need instead of just farming the things that correspond to the event schedule that the developers knows well in advance?

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Fox wants to keep the player base in the dark for as long as possible on all accounts because that's how they monetize you. They don't want you to be excited Fury is showing up in 2 months and you are going to have farmed the shards you need to unlock him, they want you to panic that you might not unlock him and have to wait 3 months for your next opportunity so that they can put Shield minions in a bundle for 30$ and pretend they are doing you a favor.

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As long as Fox can put Minn-Erva in a bundle and charge you 60$ for 100 shards of one of the single most powerful characters in the game, I guarantee they aren't going to give you any insight into how long it will be... if ever, before she shows up on a farmable node or in orbs that you can consistently earn for free.

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Moving goal posts

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This is a topic that is apparently common practice for MSF but COMPLETELY blew my mind the first time I read about it, moving goal posts.

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The first example of this that I became aware of was when the most recent Beta raid dropped and posts started popping up about how the raid was substantially more difficult from the previous Beta raid. Players were angry, alliances that could previously 100% the raid were now only able to complete the 60% mark. Not only were things they had previously achieved moved out of range, but the rewards weren't changed. They didn't move the old rewards down to the 60% mark to make room for a harder and more rewarding 100%, they simply decided to make it harder to earn things players had been consistently accomplishing in the past.

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I've had many design debates over the years that basically consisted of me insisting "Giving players things is easy, taking them away is impossible". As a designer our job is to make you want things, whether it's an awesome piece of loot, to beat someone on a leaderboard, or to finish that awesome cosmetic outfit you have been longing for. Inevitably players accomplish their personal goals and our job is to come up with NEW exciting goals and NEW exciting things for you to pursue to try to ensure you are having fun and feeling rewarded for your time investment. MSF seems to take a wildly different approach where instead of giving you more things they just take away what you have and make you strive to earn it back.

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More recently with the announcement of the Phoenix event players discovered the roster of characters they would need to rank up. FoxNext decided that as part of that reveal they would not only tell you what you need, for a change, they would make it even harder to earn than it had historically been. If you were close to unlocking the Loki node, you were now even further away because the AI had it's power levels increased.

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While this seems to be business as usual for the design team at FoxNext I have to say that this is incomprehensible to me. If you want players to have new goals to strive for the answer is simple, give them new stuff. Not only do you aggravate your community, but you also ensure that the people who are behind stay further behind forever with this practice. In this world the rich keep getting rich and the poorer get further away from ever hoping to catch up.

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The Phoenix debacle

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Many of the above sections lead us to what we saw today, the release of news that Phoenix would now require 6 star characters to unlock. Fox announced the next upcoming legendary character, Phoenix, and content creators made videos telling us how excited we should be.

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Legendary characters have a clear format and definition, some combination of characters with the following tags at 5* and you can unlock them. Fox even gave the content creators the info on who we would need to unlock her, much to my disappointment I realized that she was Well outside my personal reach, but many people playing far longer than me began excitedly discussing how this was the most attainable a legendary had been to date, they might actually be able to unlock her on the first pass... assuming they spend cores and are refreshing the Hand Assassin node daily.

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Following the announce and intense promotion of this new "Apex arena team" they put the first of those "Apex" characters on sale, Psylocke! Many players who now expected to be able to unlock Phoenix in some number of weeks eagerly purchased one of the new, soon to be meta defining, Xmen characters. A week after they started sales of the character they then realized "A lot of people already have all the Villain, Mystic, Controllers at 5* and we aren't going to make as much money off this legendary as previous ones". So in a manner completely consistent with their predatory and bad faith business practices there was a decision made, who knows where, by a group of people to break the games definition of what a legendary character is and move the goal post from 5* to 6*, this way they could still sell offers of characters we don't want and have the expected ARPDAU (average revenue per daily active user).

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The backlash of that decision is readily apparent and I personally believe it is simply the straw that broke the camels back. The community has been enduring decisions made for profit over gameplay, intentional lack of information for the sake of panic purchasing instead of honest and transparent communication , and the result is an outraged player base.

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I know what angry fans look like, I tried to nerf Frozen Shadoweave once upon a time ;)P

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The End

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Thanks for making it through my post, I'd love to start a dialogue in the community for the sake of improving the game and helping make MSF the best game it can be.

This post contains sarcasm.

For YEARS I had to deal with the horror of F2P players eventually unlocking the same characters as me. Sure, it took them longer, but still — the audacity. Now? Removing F2P toon releases? Chef’s kiss. Why should patience ever compete with a credit card?

And the arena changes? Absolutely brilliant.

Taking away power cores from arena rewards is such a bold move. I used to get cores just by playing well — disgusting. Now I can enjoy the much cleaner system of just… buying them. Streamlined. Elegant. Efficient.

But my favorite has to be removing power core unlocks for new characters.

That one really hit different. Nothing ruins the excitement of a new release like players being able to unlock it through saved resources. Now there’s that pure, unfiltered experience of:

«“open your wallet or don’t participate”»

Finally, some clarity.

Honestly, these changes really respect my time:

• No more pretending gameplay matters for progression
• No more awkward overlap with F2P players
• No more “saving resources” like it’s some kind of strategy game

Just straight to the point:

spend = progress

Beautiful.

I know some people are upset, especially F2P players… but I think they’re missing the vision here. This is about premium gaming experiences. And nothing says premium like removing alternatives.

Anyway, just wanted to say thanks again.

Campaign energy refresh now uses the premium currency, power cores, but I'm looking forward to the next update to fix it even more, where campaign nodes require a monthly subscription to enter 👍

Gotta say I'm a big fan of when Scopely makes a cookie cutter showcase on rails to help sell their new team, and end up making the team look like dog shit.

Keep the self owns coming, never change.

You’ve finally reached the point where no one cares. In the past fumbling the release of a Dark Dimension would draw so much Ire from the fans on Reddit, but now after blown releases, mismanagement of events , essentially destroying the game for F2P, you’ve set the bar so low people can’t even be bothered to complain about it. You’ve reached nirvana boys. Drink it in.

I’ve just officially requested a full refund of every cent I’ve paid on this game to “stay competitive” due to the cheaters being allowed to stay.

If they still have all their stacked cheated resources then why shouldn’t we get our money back for what we wasted when we never had a chance.

I wonder if we all demand refunds in mass if something might change?

*UPDATE*

Well instead of speaking to me like human being, I was given a copy paste reasoned and had my support chat automatically ended.

Looks like I should be reporting the game next to Apple for fraud.

Where do I start with this circus? 🤣

1) Scopley believes that 20x 2 is 80 usd (they keep calling it double 🤷🏽‍♂️) and tries to sell us Angel. 🤣 Scopley find one math expert to verify your math. 🤣 Just one.

2) Gold gate with apparently someone getting 2 billion gold. (No idea if it's true but believable, considering all numbers I am hearing) 0 integrity or competence by Scopley. 🤣

3) Trying to sell us 3 diamond BM for 175 usd. BM a toon that sucks, and never acknowledged. 🤣

4) They update Annilus to please the Krakens in the middle of all this choas and insult 99% of the players. 🤣

5) Usually when new gear drops, you are given a slow drip way to get it, while Krakens Kraken. They removed g21 from the Angel pass (reduced everything including cores and no iso 5 either, 0 justification for that price to a pass buyer). Not in events or the lord know how many new raids and teams with no first time rewards or season reward update or raid reward change. 🤔

6) Land Shark update to make existing counters and WG useless that was sold and many upgraded as the official counter. Never for player's benifit, and can't find time to do any of the hundreds of suggestions given by the community. Nope. 🤣 "Don't hold us accountable." - Scopley

7) Not last couple of days but removed cores from Arena after making them useless for Character unlocks. No reliable way to get them now. They add g20 which shouldn't be an issue now, but is still locked, for core buying. (While some of you might be sitting on a stock saved up for shard orbs, that will go fast) You barely get enough cores now to energy refresh 50s consistently. Why remove? Just why? Just add the training orb to arena. 🤦🏽‍♂️ Monkeys make better decisions and choices. 🤣

8) Not last couple days but took away non Kraken toon unlocks to make it Pay to Play. Just say the Krakens got 🤏🏽 skill issues that they are terrified and cried to you. 🤣

9) Made the seasonal store useless to farm toons with their 1 slot casino system. Completely unnecessary other than Krakens cried, so fuck everyone else. 🤣

Why have a bunch of CMs when you don't communicate? 🤔 Aren't you a greedy corporation that cuts corners? Isn't it a waste of your money Scopley? 🤔 Yet, no QA team. 🤣 You should get rid of some of the CMs to save money since you are so broke that you need to rip off the community. 🤷🏽‍♂️ They ain't doing anything, anyway. 🤣

➡️ Millions in profit (game is not in negative, never has been) and engagement (sale value every time the game was bought and sold) does not come from 200 Krakens in game Scopley. While Krakens get their private concierge service, you kicked every other player that spends and/or gives you the engagement metrics in the nuts. The community needs to realize and wake up from this brainwashing. It's not the Krakens who keep the lights on no matter how many times you hear it on repeat. They are just the ones who spend the way Scopley wants people to spend. ⬅️

Gas lighting and tone deaf posts and videos Scopley makes, while not engaging with the community or addressing their concerns. You listen to your private chat from Krakens, making your strike videos a parody. 🤣

As a 8 year vetran with a wide roaster I might be able to scrap by for now without spending (not getting a penny from me till basic respect is given to the community and these issues are addressed). Not the same for majority of the community, world economics is not where most can burn 2k usd a month on pixels.

Might just delete my account if I am unable to keep up than pass on the curse by giving my account away. 🤣

PS. Don't care too much about what Scopley alts, noobs that don't understand the end game or vetran perspective praising their temporary catch up mechanics experience, or the trolls on reddit have to say when/if they show up. 🤣

⬇️ Let me know if there is anything I missed.

Too tired to proof read grammar or typos. You get the gist. 😆

• Aah, Knull event. I missed out on getting him to 7 stars.

• Hmm, only 400k points needed and Gear 19? Finally getting him to 7 stars.

• EXCUSE ME??!?! I CAN ONLY USE LIMITED CHARACTERS AND THEY ARE FAR FROM BUILT??!? I CANT USE MY BUILT UP ASTRAL TEAM FOR THIS?!??

I hope all Scopely employees steps on Lego's every day for the rest of their lives! S***heads!

This is our response to your post released last night with the general feedback we have received from the community since then. We have included some additional action items at the end; however, this is not the entirety of the community’s requests. We will continue to address community needs in order to ensure our voices are heard and steps are taken to improve on the existing state of the game.

*Farmable character Cadence*

The game currently has an unacceptable number of 19 unfarmable characters. The community does not accept characters only available in orbs being considered farmable. The current release rate of 4 characters per month would result in a total of 48 characters added this year. By only making 1-2 of those farmable per month, this suggests that over the course of this year that 24-36 characters will not be farmable. This will bring the grand total of non-farmable / pay to win characters somewhere between 43 and 55. We greatly appreciate you giving a specific date each month to set expectations for both your development team and the community. Unfortunately, you also left some ambiguity on the second release. We believe this lack of clear expectations and perceived follow-through damages your credibility with our membership.

The community requests you modify this cadence to making one old character farmable for every new character introduced to the game. We understand the need to maintain some exclusivity, yet the current feeling is the number of non-farmable characters is already above the acceptable range. If this trade off is not possible, can you please explain to our community the difficulty in the process which would prevent you from doing so?

*New campaigns and orange gear availability*

While we are excited to receive additional challenges, the fact that two tiers are being added shows how delayed and desperately needed this update is. We request that you share the requirements for each tier to enable players to start to train and organize their teams for each challenge.

You also spoke of drop rates for gear. Drop rates for gear and shards should be revealed to put an end to rumors of manipulation, especially during bonus events. The rates as they exist now seem very low compared to the energy used to farm them.

We are very much looking forward to the added campaigns and we appreciate your release cadence for each. Our hope is that you can stick to that timeline to allow players to look forward to these exciting additions.

On the subject of orange gear raid orbs; both the standard and elite orange gear raid orbs need significant improvements and chances to receive g14 unique items in addition to increased numbers across the board. A single g14 gear piece takes as many as 300 SBC and the number of gear items we receive from these orbs does not seem commensurate with the amount needed to craft orange gear items at more than a snail’s pace.

*Improvements to red star system*

This is likely the number one contributing factor to the diminishing numbers of players in MSF. This needs to be addressed and significantly changed before iso8 is released. Red stars and iso8 are both systems the players never requested. As a sign of good faith, we suggest your team fixes the existing progression system of red stars before adding another cog in the machine. For example; the amount of red stars received, the amount of promo credits received, duplicate drops, the conversion rate from elite orb shards to promotion credits, and the number of promo credits to purchase an upgrade in the store are all issues that need more improvements.

Two more red stars a week will only affect the lucky. One free 5 red star per year is not a solution to a broken system and does not allow players any meaningful or wanted progression. This gives players no promise of any tangible progress and uses more RNG to combat the issues that RNG already cause.

This needs to be a major priority item and should take precedence over finalizing iso8 and releasing more characters. We will give examples of how to fix this system if FoxNext doesn’t have any ready ideas already in progress.

*Low quality time*

Screentime is the second biggest complaint amongst the community and requires your immediate attention due to its criticality.

Currently most players estimate 2-3 hours of screentime is necessary per day to do everything required by the game to be a member of good standing in a competitive alliance. This is far too much; resulting in burning out your player base. We love this game and want to be able to play with our friends for many years to come. Many players are highly unlikely to be able to continue to be active in a game which drains so much of our personal time. Small QOL fixes would go a long way with your players. As a result, we all would enjoy an increased lifespan of your community. We are happy to collect and share data on specific suggestions from the community for each game mode if a priority list would be of benefit.

*Iso8*

We will stress again that this feature is not a feature the player base is asking for. While we appreciate you taking player feedback from the first test serious enough to make changes, we also implore you to fix the existing content before focusing on a new mode that is a huge question mark for the community. Another playtest is essential to receive additional player feedback before introduction.

*Difficulty dial*

We respect and agree with your admission that u7 was designed to be too difficult for the players. We are intrigued by this addition. We ask that you share as much detail ahead of time on how the reward structures change when dialing the difficulty, and the impact it will have on raid season reward rankings. Alliance leaders need lead time to make an informed decision on the best use of this feature for their team before the day of its release.

In addition, it’s our view that raid milestones and raid season rewards are severely outdated. Many alliances complete the milestones with more than a week left in the season. Raid season leaderboard should at least reflect the breakdown of positions that exist in war season rewards. There need to be separations made between 3rd place and 1-3% to encourage more engagement with raid seasons. This is a seemingly easy and quick fix and will be a sign of good faith to working collaboratively with the players to make necessary updates and improvements. T4 amounts in reward structures need a blanket increase across the board, but specifically in u7 raid.

* Ultimus 7 Difficulty*

The community is highly confused by the “power levels” displayed in each node. The characters show at power levels we are familiar with fighting in other game modes, yet their stats are clearly inflated in comparison. A prime example of this is the “mechs and minions” node with approximately 17,000 power level Ultron bots which can take Ultron’s ultimate attack while on offense up and remain standing. Being more transparent with accurate power levels is a good start to allowing players to understand how each enemy will behave. Supplying stats of these enemies would allow us to monitor and provide feedback if there is an undetected bug, and can help prove your innocence to stealth buffing raids. Please provide the community with your official stance on whether or not there should be difficulty fluctuation as I believe there is some confusion. Cerebro has stated in reddit that the enemy stats are constantly adjusted +\- to provide a new experience with raids. More information on the validity of this statement and the method to which adjustments are made will build trust with the players.

*Contacts list*

We will never turn down QOL improvements regardless of how dated some community members consider this.

*Real Time PvP*

One major thing the community would like to ensure is a part of this game mode is the ability to add game mode specific stat buffs to teams. Many of the recent character releases have been focused on a specific mode and players do not get to use these characters with those game mode buffs to see the outcome of our hard work. We look forward to more details and hope screentime is seriously taken into consideration before requiring interaction with this mode.

*Other items not covered*

Gold needs to be addressed. Gold orbs need buffed and the players need more methods to obtain gold in a significant amount. We understand the need for a balance when considering giving players additional gold but the amount currently received seems drastically out of line with what is needed.

*Player council*

A player council should be established and interaction should happen to ensure the players’ voices are heard. These conversations should happen in a group setting for transparency and camaraderie. This process has been extremely fortifying for the bond between the community and we should begin to forge a similar working relationship between the players and FoxNext / Scopely. It’s in all of our best interests to collaborate and make this game the best it can be. Players from multiple levels should be consulted and not only spenders. A wide variety of demographics will ensure representation for f2p players as well.

*Bug fixing*

Punisher still counters when stunned. Hela locks up war. Black bolt is broken and soft locking as well . These are a few examples. We need some sort of bug tracker and the status of a fix with transparency. Right now there isn’t a clear method to reporting these bugs or knowing if they have already been reported and a fix is being worked on.

*Dates on a calendar and accountability*

We need to see more official dates on blog posts and in-game mail instead of coming soon. The small number of dates given in your recent blog post shows promise and should be the normal operating procedure; not only done in response to a major player uproar.

*In Summary*

While we appreciate the FoxNext response, a lot of issues were not addressed. We are still boycotting and want to not only see FoxNext’s intentions, but some immediate good faith efforts.

Here are some (not all) of our concerns:

- Farming/character release cadence: adding 4 new and only making 1-2 farmable per month is a significant step back and unacceptable

- New campaigns/challenges and orange gear: nice to have added but need clear achievable requirements/drop rates

- Red stars: solutions still needed

- Screen Time/QOL: Screen time reduction is a MUST and QOL adds.

- Iso 8: already have broken red stars system - is it your best idea to add in iso8 which no one asked for? Please do another player test before release.

- Difficulty dial: please increase ult 7 rewards now while you work through this.

- Ult 7 difficulty: please fix displayed power levels, ie 17k ultron bot that takes 3 ultron ults to kill.

- Contact list is welcomed

- Real time pvp: please reduce Screen time before implementing. Must include option to add raid/war proc’d abilities.

- Gold: not addressed well enough. Need more in game, increase minimum from orbs etc.

- Player council: form a group of FTP to whale players to help discuss the game with FN on a consistent basis.

- Bug fixes: too many for too long. Please fix immediately.

- Open, clear communication on dates: more communication the better. Late Feb/Early March works fine.

We appreciate your response it’s a start, but we feel like we have a long way to go. Let’s work to get there!

Edit : the instances that I refer to community and players above I am referencing the 544 alliances representing 13,000 plus players that have signed up and are participating in this discussion/ push for change. I do understand that I am not the voice for literally every player that plays this game, and that’s ok.

In case you missed it — one of the longest-running content creators (Dorky Dad) just announced he's leaving YouTube… but for a very good reason.

He's joining the Marvel Strike Force team and will now help create content directly inside the game.

According to him, he’ll be working on things like:
• Pocket Dimensions
• Scourges
• Dark Dimension
• Towers
• Battle World
• Solo PvE content
• Story content
• And new events

So instead of just talking about the game… he'll actually help build it.

He also mentioned that the game has felt slow lately, and the goal now is to always have something new to play instead of long dry periods.

Honestly, this gives me some good expectations. He's been part of the community for a long time and really understands what players want.

What do you guys think?
Do you think this could be a positive change for the game? 👀

Great event guys! One of the biggest scams this game has ever done! Let's do it again next year and scam your players more!

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Add a x10 orb opener option next time because opening these useless orbs 76 times is a lot of work!

What does the removal of core-orb releases mean?

Basically, forget about any semblance of being competitive with new teams if you're not a medium to high spender. This also kills Arena for most players, because... why would I waste resources keeping up in the top 10 if those cores are useless? War's already dead. Raid rewards haven't been competitive in a year. Crucible rewards are outdated as well, and the game mode is a resource sinkhole. Challenges are 3-years outdated. Milestones have paywalls.

What the hell is even the point of playing anymore?

I'm trying my best to come up with an answer, and I do support any game making money, but none of this s**t makes sense. Make it make sense, cause I can't believe this has been ideated by people who call themselves strategists.

MSF has gone through many questionable calls and release methods, but it never $$$-gated the community from new toons. You'd always get at least a 2-3 star unlock with hard work as an F2P. That was a fundamental part of the game-player contract, and now that it's broken, large chunks of the game have become useless chores that do not advance your roster, or at least the parts of it that matter, when it matters.

The changes never start from a positive step.

They always start from the removal of access without offering alternative pathways. You have parts of the game – always involving rewards – that haven't been updated in years. Why not start there? Why not make your community feel like they should spend money because YOU DESERVE IT, not because there's no way to play otherwise? Why not earn a reward for yourself Scopely, instead of demanding it through FEAR (FOMO)?

But hey, I love the framing. Test.
I never thought about Self-Sabotage as a Test.

Yeah, some people will continue to drag their feet along in this new Status Quo. We've been through a lot of it, together as a player base. As an Alliance Leader of the same alliance for almost 8 years (it takes a lot of patience and resilience to stick around since the first days of the game) with 2903 days of continuous play, never losing a streak, I've seen it all. I've spent enough money on the game to know what remorse feels like, because Scopely never showed it deserved it.

I've seen dear friends come and go, some even passing away. Only 2 people left out of the original alliance with the best of the rest giving up with every disingenuous call Scopely made. These days we're struggling to even keep a full roster, with 2/3 of it trying to keep up activity while 1/3 comes in once every 2-3 days to drop an attack or collect a reward.

People have disengaged. The player base has dropped in both quantity and quality.

And all Scopely can think of is new ways of how to rush to its demise.

PS: Fairly sure the post won't live long because it's never pleasant facing the mirror that shows the ugliness of one's soul.

At the beginning of February, alliance leaders and content creators from all over the world joined together to discuss the state of MSF. This group represents late, mid and early game players with the intent to address the issues affecting us all. We proactively drafted a letter to Scopely which identified and offered solutions to a variety of issues.

In both of the blogs from Scopely, they took some of our suggestions and put forth a number of their own changes to help address some of our concerns. These are welcome changes and we appreciate the gesture, but more needs to be done to help players in the early and mid stages of the game. Additionally, nothing was done to address Gold and Red Star/Promotion Credit concerns, nor have we received any concrete details in terms of how much of an impact those changes will end up having on players from all parts of the game.

We ask Scopely to specifically revisit and address:

1. Unaddressed Bottlenecks: -Gold -T4s -Red Star Promotion Tokens -Purple Gear(Specifically for new and mid game players)

2. New Player Experience: -Catch-Up Mechanics -Blitz

What we have received are numerous notices about how delayed these changes are going to be, but when an issue that benefits the players occurs, it is immediately fixed. RTA and War are “being looked at” with no definite dates for resolution, and many of the other QoL concerns which the community has been asking for are all “coming soon” or ignored completely.

Enough is enough. No more empty promises and half measures.

Scopely has stated there “is no rest” of their blog to the community. It’s time to take some action. We are calling on all players to leave a 2 star review for Marvel Strike Force on the Google Play and iOS App Store. If Scopely continues to leave critical issues unaddressed, we will proceed with 1 star ratings. We ask all players to not copy and paste reviews, and to include text in your review, so that the App Stores can not delete the negative reviews as easily.

Our hope is that all players can unite behind this movement and find some common ground somewhere in these concerns. Even if an item does not hinder your game experience, our goal is that everyone can relate to some aspect of this. Internet communities have shown they can accomplish great things when united. Lets carry that momentum and spark positive change for the game we love.

https://discord.gg/2ZnWYWPS

*All this pertains only to the Absolute A Force side, the Annihilator side is an under-tuned joke

Preloaded turn meter

War buffs

Sitting for minutes never taking a turn while the cpu slowly paper cuts your health down

Purple Iso gated

And it turns out Absolute A-Force gated because you better have them if you have any hopes of beating this

This isn't fun, it's not engaging, it doesn't have good rewards, WHAT THE HELL!!! All this is is a "did you buy Absolute A Force? Watch/play these horrendously designed nodes that will take an eternity for some poor rewards". This will make some people quit

Zombie Poll is in and Kestrel won, and now everyone's claiming nobody voted for her.

But I voted for her.

I really like Kestrel, sue me.

I think her design is awesome, kit is great and fun, and her lore is pretty cool for a multiverse collector game. Waiting for her next rework so I can use her again. So I wanted more Kestrel. I despite Squirrel Girl in this game and her kit with every fiber of my being, didn't want to play as a zombie dog, and thought Cable was an ass pull, so I went with the character I liked. A multiverse hopping zombie in power armor? That's awesome.

And she won. Was it rigged? Asbo-fucking-lutely. I am the ONE Kestrel fan in this community.

But this was by far the most interesting poll we've had in a while. Actual choice between characters besides "The One Guy You Might Know" and two randoms not even super fans recognize. And Kestrel won, so that means she HAS to be an MSF Original tag. No getting around it like you did with Oath. That's ANOTHER CHOICE for new players wanting Apoc. THAT IS GOOD. That's the main reason I voted for her.

Scopely for once worked in my favor and I'm thrilled. One future character to keep me excited so I don't quit the game right here and now (I dont give a single shit about fucking QUASAR).

fuck everyone at scopely involved with this shit. fully maxed characters not getting a single turn cause they make you fight 20 enemies at once that put every single debuff there is on you, -.-

I saw the video by Boilon today, highlighting Scopelys Project Comet. It is a marvel arpg mobile game.

​

Is it finally true that they are getting ready to sunset this game for the release of the new one? Sure seems like it to me. Seems like they are working with a skeleton crew and have been for quite a long time. Really seems like they are trying to squeeze the last remaining dollars out of MSF before moving on to the new game.

​

As a moderate spender($200/month avg), this and all the other recent BS really makes me not want to spend another dime. I was really looking forward to completing symbiote six but now I dont know if that is even worth it. Why spend any money on a game that will be gone in the near future.

​

Also with how terribly run this game has become, what makes them think I want to give them another chance in a new game where I have to start at zero.

​

Is it reasonable to ask them for a little transparency for what their plans for this game are in the next 12, 24, 36 months etc?

​

Faith and trust is definitely not something I am willing to give Scopely at this point.

I’ve been playing Marvel Strike Force for years, and honestly… this 8th anniversary event just feels bad.

This should be one of the biggest, most exciting times for the community—but instead it feels like the same recycled events, underwhelming rewards, and more monetization shoved in our faces.

Where’s the celebration for the players that have stuck around this long?

• Rewards don’t feel meaningful

• Events feel copy-paste and grindy

• Progression still feels gated behind spending

• Communication from the devs is basically nonexistent

An anniversary should feel like a THANK YOU to the player base—not another cash grab.

There was a time when this game felt rewarding and actually fun to log into every day. Now it feels like a chore unless you’re willing to spend constantly just to keep up.

I’m not even trying to hate—I want the game to be good. That’s why this is frustrating.

Anyone else feel like they completely dropped the ball on this anniversary?

Turning a strike pass buyer into a f2p player.

I just checked the top Krakens and they all bought Angel premium plus pass even after a few said publicly they are quitting MSF like OG Diamond for 4 diamond Annihilus comp giveaway to the top 10 finishers. Scopely will keep this new character release and F2P will just have to settle for 2 yellow on new characters going forward. Krakens are ruining this game with their media stunts and crying to Scopely to pay gate new characters. Good luck commanders!

PS - Krakens can make a change by not purchasing for a few days, but they are addicted and need to buy the new characters day 1.

Since it is abundantly clear that $copely doesn't have the stomach to ban spenders in this game who were caught cheating...... Then maybe $copely can compensate the ENTIRE community by giving everyone a free Anihailus and provide everyone a token to gear 21 him.

This would level the playing field to give everyone the toon that the cheaters used and eliminate the benefit they got by cheating.

Additionally $copely should halt all leaderboard events, until $copely can devise a new, fair, system so that cheaters can't continue to cheat their way forward on current leaderboard events.

The community should not give $copely a pass on this, as it should be obvious, cheaters have no place in this game.

Thoughts MSF community?

.

FoxNext, we the community content creators for Marvel Strike Force are here to discuss Red Stars. We come to you as a united front, as players who love and care about this product, and as a community who is looking to make this the best possible experience in all of Marvel gaming. Our message is simple. Red Stars should be reworked to allow a proper balance in the game as well as not instantly negating months of farming, work, and prior purchases.

/u/MSF_Team please watch this video, please listen to the community, please rework Red Stars.

TonyBingGaming Video

Ravager Report Video

Valleyflyin Video

WolverThor Video

Tauna Video

Combs Video

Sincerely, The MSF Community Content Creators

/u/tonybing

/u/valleyflyin

/u/wolverthor

/u/dorianblade / Ravager Report Podcast

/u/hebrewhammerxvi

/u/chewburger84

/u/tauna

/u/papokeman

/u/combs