I am not a spender and I have been playing this game for 3 years. I really liked this game at the beginning and obviously there are so many good stuff that SP has done. Well, they used to. I don't wanna get started with all the bugs and events that are impossible to finish.. It will take me all day, maybe even more, to finish the list. I just wanna say, as someone who doesn't spend yet I am still playing this game, it is getting increasingly frustrated and hard for me to find the motivation to complete the event. The recent mazes for instance, there are pretty much impossible to get at least one of the legendaries unless you bought the coins. Breeding events too. I really understand that SP needs to pay their bills and it is not surprising that this game is becoming more of a "pay to win" game. I am not against VIP or neemesis monsters which you need to pay to get them. I am just kinda disappointed that all the events that are used to be do-able, now become impossible to finish. Progressive islands, 72 hr challenge, breeding events, maze, PVP... I saw one of the moderator's comment on one of the posts here about the list of event that he doesn't have to put in effort and I absolutely agree with him. At the end of the day, I wonder what else can I do? All these events are impossible to finish and I can't even get the legendaries. I really like the team war ideas, and I love my team members. Perhaps that was the reason that keep most of us still playing up until this point despite we have to deal with all these "balancing changes" being introduced to the event. Should there really be a balance to the "balancing changes"? I still like this game, and despite all the negative things around this game, I will still play it. But I really can't hide the frustration. I also understand that no game is perfect without bugs, and I understand SP does take time to solve them, like the one happened today. Kudos to them for the hard work but I still think the bugs can be a potential annoyance to some of the players if there are just way too many bugs. What do you guys think overall, especially those of you who have played the game for a long time?

I agree with you. I honestly don´t know what happened to SP, what made SP ruin the game... and even if we try to talk to them, it won´t work. Back in the old days where everyone could have the good, the great, the excellent, and the perfect things... It didn´t exist conflict, everyone was happy. Do you remember the first maze? We could get all monsters easily. The other mazes were great too, I usually could get 3 Legendary monsters!!! But these days of glory are now over... Now it is only about money, and since everyone doesn´t have money, they will give up, because they will never be able to beat the elite players. ML will die, it is only a matter of time.

@Max-Pinheiro Do you think that there is new management at SP. It would seem to me that there has been a definite shift in attitude at SP going back to a least the change in team shop prices.

@Kaiju I think so. It is a good reason why SP is doing all these things.

@Max-Pinheiro Duh, I completely forgot that Take-Two Interactive (Grand Theft Auto, Civilization and BioShock) bought Social Point back in February. Maybe this is how Take-Two recoups the $276 million they spent? If this is the case, then we should expect it to be the new normal.

@Kaiju I forgot too lol.

@TCML-Lead First......she, not he.

As someone who is in the pay to play boat, I kind of understand where you are coming from but honestly I do think you boat has a big, giant hole in it. Now let me explain why I think this.

While I am do not agree it has been said over and over and over that the main focus of the game is team wars. As such in order for you to remain competitive you have to have strong monsters and to get that and to keep the game challenging, there needs to be more monsters with different and stronger abilities, which means SP needs to develop them, which means someone has to pay for these developments....hence the money game. It is a business offering a product which needs to be paid for. Yes they want to reel you in with the "free" portion but honestly the f2p players are not their priority and I do not think they are going to change that any time soon. But with all that said, I still think you can do it and continue to go far, you will just have to change your strategies and it might take longer to accomplish what you want. But I think f2p players need to get two things out of their head if they want to stay with this game. 1. fairness - their is no such thing in life and there is even less in this game, no matter they do 2. There is no way to keep up with big spenders or even medium spenders without spending yourself. Obviously spending is not a requirement because there are some high level, competitive players who are f2p, but it all comes down to strategy.

Woo I say all that to say, it all comes down to weighing the pros with the cons. As long as your pros outweigh your cons, then continue on with the game but if you find your con list is much longer than your pro list, then perhaps it is time to move on and find something else. Now I am not saying that your should move on, I am just saying that is an option.

And yes I did have quite a few things on my list which I no longer play or aggressively play but as of today my pro list still outweighs my con list so I am going to continue to play and even worse (depending on your point of view) continue to pay for the features I do like...such as monster sales. I find it cheaper and with less anxiety to waste my gems to try to "complete" quests. I just do what i can for free and add the others to my list to get eventually. Surprisingly this works for me since I am only 7 monsters short on my "to buy" list. This does not include VIPs, Nemesis or the new ones from today.

Yikes I can be really long winded sometimes..I'm gonna stop now. :D

@Kaiju said in Where to go from here for loyal players?:

@Max-Pinheiro Do you think that there is new management at SP. It would seem to me that there has been a definite shift in attitude at SP going back to a least the change in team shop prices.

Yeah I think there has been some mobility in the last few years just by the way things are changing. They are trying, I will give them that. Sometimes they make decisions for the players....or what they think is for the players, and sometimes they are wayyyyyyyyyy out in left field and doing things strictly for the bottom line. I think I have a different perspective than most of you, first because I am mostly a collector and fighting is secondary and 2. I have familiarity with them from DC so I tend to form opinions and make decisions when comparing the two.

@Nynaevelan But the problem is that a long time ago there were fairness. All players could obtain everything. And how F2p players are supposed to compete with much stronger teams? Most of the time we battle against much stronger teams, and it needs a lot of time to get stronger.

@Kaiju

This is what happened.

@Nynaevelan First of all, I apologize for my mistakes. I didn't pay attention as to which moderator wrote that comment. I saw the comment, thought I agree with everything said there and assumed it was said by a guy. And perhaps I misunderstood what you meant in the comment. My bad. Anyways, I still stick with my point though and it applies to collector as well. For instance, since they made the events so hard, it is literally impossible to get the last few legendary monsters. This wasn't the case. Like what Max said, the first maze was great and you had a great chance to get all the legendaries (Flirty, Caillech etc). But i guess it was the first maze and perhaps it was too easy and SP made some changes. So it became just 10% discount. I honestly think that was fair. It used to be like this for maze: if you are active and log in constantly, you can get all monsters but the last one, which I think is absolutely fair. The last monster is always the best and of course you can't make it easy to get. But things changed. Maze coins dropped, and the event became shorter yet you still need the same amount of time to get all the monsters. I don't see how this is gonna work for a collector though. Same thing goes to all other events. I used to get really excited when there is a breeding event but I don't even remember when was the last time I got excited when i see the recipes. And oh, I did try to breed them with the monsters that I have, but of course I am not gonna get the legendaries. Maybe this is a bit too harsh but I think there needs to be a balance with the balancing change. In other words, there needs to be a balance between trying to get players to spend and keep the loyal, passionate players content. After all, these loyal players were the ones who stick with this game when this game was first introduced. Look, I understand some complaints are kinda stupid, but if you see many people made the same complaints on ML Community Facebook page, forum and the tickets submitted everyday, you know there has to be something wrong. I understand the f2p players are not their priority but I am not really sure how long the spenders will keep spending. Some f2p players might end up spending once in a while if they think they want to as long as they are content. But if you keep pushing away the loyal, f2p players, SP is just losing a lot of customers and perhaps a good way to promote the game and new players to come play this game. Feel free to disagree with me everyone.

I can remember in the Seven Deadly Sins maze I got Pigredo for free, and in the Space Raiders maze I got Globrush for free. Since then, something has changed in the maze format and now no legends can be got for free - although to be fair to SP it seems the progressive island challenges have got easier with 1 or 2 legends being realistic targets whereas before they were not, so maybe SP just reversed the maze and island?

Social point was making a boatload of money back when you could 3 legends out of a maze and all the other events people say were easier back when. The Social Point cheerleaders need to stop with the line that Social Point was forced to make all these changes to get more money because they need to keep the lights on back at HQ. They made a ton of money, their success was why they were bought.
It's becoming pretty clear the business model is to run the game into the ground while getting as much money out of players as possible. Then they'll move on to some other game and do the same thing.

@testcyp said in Where to go from here for loyal players?:

Social point was making a boatload of money back when you could 3 legends out of a maze and all the other events people say were easier back when. The Social Point cheerleaders need to stop with the line that Social Point was forced to make all these changes to get more money because they need to keep the lights on back at HQ. They made a ton of money, their success was why they were bought.
It's becoming pretty clear the business model is to run the game into the ground while getting as much money out of players as possible. Then they'll move on to some other game and do the same thing.

Well this is going to come off as me cheering them but...... this is the second reference I've seen where you stated they were making a boatload off of events where we were getting more for free. Do you have access to their accounting books that we are not aware of? Personally I get the opposite impression, that they were not making enough off of the events hence the drastic changes to them. Now while I do agree that the events should NOT be where we get everything for free, I disagree with the "balancing" that they have done on them recently. Personally I think if users put in the usual 6 to 8 hour pool intervals that it should be possible to finish at least 65-75% of them for free and those that want to reach 100% can put in the extra effort and gems/cash.

@Nynaevelan said in Where to go from here for loyal players?:

Well this is going to come off as me cheering them but...... this is the second reference I've seen where you stated they were making a boatload off of events where we were getting more for free. Do you have access to their accounting books that we are not aware of? Personally I get the opposite impression, that they were not making enough off of the events hence the drastic changes to them.

If someone has a subscription to the ThinkGaming website, they can get revenue amounts and possibly number of players. A quick search shows an amount of $107,422 and 22,639 installs, but the page does not say if that is just today? This week? This month? Note that this amount is for All of SP, both ML and DC.

I should not comment on this kind of posts but...
@testcyp said in Where to go from here for loyal players?:

Social point was making a boatload of money back when you could 3 legends out of a maze and all the other events people say were easier back when. The Social Point cheerleaders need to stop with the line that Social Point was forced to make all these changes to get more money because they need to keep the lights on back at HQ. They made a ton of money, their success was why they were bought.

I'm afraid you don't have the info to do such statement

It's becoming pretty clear the business model is to run the game into the ground while getting as much money out of players as possible. Then they'll move on to some other game and do the same thing.

This affirmation is not correct.

@Carlos said in Where to go from here for loyal players?:

This affirmation is not correct.

The last couple of months seems to indicate that. Do you have information to the contrary?

We have had some controversial decissions in the past, but our business model is not to to "run the game into the ground while getting as much money out of players as possible. Then they'll move on to some other game and do the same thing."

@Nynaevelan the basic info and analysis of the deal are easily found with a google search here are some excerpts from the first article

seekingalphaDOTcom/ article/ 4043984-running-numbers-take-twos-250-million-social-point-acquisition
(sorry if links aren't allowed, i'm not clear on the rule. I just included it so people would know i'm not making anything up. Delete if I did something wrong)

Take-Two paid $175 million in cash and $75 million in shares (plus a potential earnout based on future performance of $25.9 million in additional cash and shares) to buy Social Point, a company which Take-Two said generated sales of $90.8 million and EBITDA of $19.9 million in 2016.

Doing the math, Take-Two valued Social Point at 2.8 times its 2016 sales (or 12.5 times profits).

So, while every deal has its own dynamics, in terms of the sale financials, it looks like a win-win acquisition for Take-Two and Social Point. Take-Two gains a profitable company that gives it access to a market it previously didn't, while Social Point gains scale plus the financial, IP and experiential resources to enable it to grow quicker.

By all accounts it sounds like Social Point was very successful with Dragon City and ML, a big company took notice who wanted to get into the mobile game market and bought them.

@Carlos yeah that comment is a bit hysterical i guess. But i do think there's some frustration in the feeling that there are so many changes it's hard to keep up with them or develop a strategy for playing the game. If you modestly level up your monsters it doesn't "feel" like your progressing at all and make you nervous for the future of the game after you have sunk a good amount of money in time in the game.
Sure I gotten enjoyment for the money I have spent so it's been worth it, but I'm apprehensive about the future course of the game.

Maybe you can livestream a Q&A with developers and talk about upcoming changes to the game and answer audience questions.

To answer the question. Where to go from here: away .. like I am doing.

@Sam said in Where to go from here for loyal players?:

To answer the question. Where to go from here: away .. like I am doing.

With each day passing, that is becoming the most plausible option.

@Sam Lol. Exactly. I do complain some but not a lot because ultimately it is a game. So I can uninstall or just play something else. I don't have to play or give my money to something that ultimately frustrates me.

Hello, everyone!

I think this topic derailed a bit from the original post. Comments like these shouldn't belong in the official forum, some of the posts would get deleted if it was a forum of any other game.

Again, I will repeat Carlos. You don't have enough information to assume what some of you wrote in your comments. You are just spreading your own opinion.

We always try to listen to players, our goal is to make you ALL happy even though it's clear that it will never happen as there will always be someone who doesn't like this or that. Nevertheless, even though we have some hiccups every now and then, we do our best, most of the team is breathing for the Monster Legends.

This topic ended up as a witch hunt. I am sorry, I am up for a discussion about gameplay but matters of business do not belong here. Therefore, I am closing this discussion.