Marvel Strike Force

The following is a letter authored by Fates Fury the leader of Legion of Cabal and the entire legion cluster. As the letter States while he is the author this was worked on by both Legion and Pants of Hulk alike.

Quick note Wolverthor has come up with the tag "FixMSF" if you would like to show support in game you can add it to the end of your alliance name.

Linking the action plan posted by dismalcontent for the spending strike

Edit 1: if you wish to add your alliance to the list please fill out the following form it will make it easier to keep track of support

Official discord server for the boycott

Edit 2: text version of letter

Hello all, I want to start with a thank you for taking your time to read through this in it's entirety.

Introduction for the community: I am FatesFury and the leader of Legion_of_Cabal and the Legion family of alliances. While I might be the primary author of this Public Bulletin and message to FoxNext this was a community collaboration for the development of this. Dismalcontent Leader of Pants of Hulk and several other of the Top Alliance's were intrical in putting this together. We set our rivalries aside for we believe this is more important. We are putting this out because the need for change is at an all time high and there is little to no progress in that direction for months upon months. We feel, indeed many in the community feel that we are on the verge of collapse. For those of you alliance leaders out there and even members when is the last time season end rewards was what it should be, a day of rewards, excitement and happy teammates? Instead it's devolved into who's leaving today, are my friends checking out, will my alliance survive? Whoa... That is pretty bleak and that is sad. That is where we are FoxNext! You did this.

Attrition and Throttling: Orange gear economy and RS is completely broken. Players need a means of progress. Right now for many vets and MSF's supporting player base it's down to a lottery system where it's thousands upon thousands of dollars for a mere chance to progress. RNG is not a sustainable method for progress. The single most important resource in the game (RS) is a lottery system and the biggest contributor to attrition. Orange gear as well has no means to obtain in the quantities needed randomly or targeted. Furthermore that gear has a huge paywall on it. It's more than double the cost of Purple gear tier. The throttling and lack of progress is staggering. These two things alone are responsible for a huge amount of players quitting the game.

New Content: It is understandable that new game modes take time. However the pace at which anything beyond new characters (corresponding event campaigns are acknowledged) are released makes it appear as though it is neglected. Surely not everything is as time consuming as ISO8. Raids and Challenge Tiers were released at a much faster pace in the first year of release. What Happened? The lack of new content is having a negative impact on both progression and interest in the game.

New Characters: They are great for the excitement and possibilities of what might be achieved by them. There is not enough gold, ability mats, gear, and Red Stars being distributed that it sucks the good out of the little bit of NEW content we do get and is looked upon negatively. On top of this it's compounded with a lack of shards available to get them to a useful level of play. People would love new character releases if they have resources in which to do something meaningful with them. Unfortunately they are released at such a fast pace and the means to farm them so slow it is near to impossible for the majority of the player based to be thrilled for actual NEW content we do receive regularly.

Negative Progress: Stealth buffing raids. Leads to severe frustrations. The little progress being made is stifled. This needs to stop. Not looking for admission or comment. Just stop.

ISO8. Mixed Bag. This has great potential. However given history it is thought that this will be a form of reset like red stars were. As well as another strangulation mechanic and pay wall like all the others that exist. Which is pretty much every resource in game. We don't need more strangulation, we need oxygen. This idea of new content likely leads to further attrition and throttling. Many are ready to quit the day of its inception. The other side of that is, I cannot think of one instance a player has quit for lack of ISO8. Play testing is prudent.

Half Baked Solutions: Revamp rewards structure feeding more RS orb fragments (dupes basically), more orange gear fragments (RNG Progress). Rewards structure in all modes need a hard look. Milestones, Raids, Raid season rewards etc. Too many are dated. Do something about RS dupes. It is insanity.

Real Solutions: Reward promotion credits, release nexus campaigns, and reward more gold. Add characters to stores and/or campaigns at the same pace as new characters are released. These are what's needed. In actual means to targeted progress where people can actually feel good about the effort they put in.

Monetized Solutions: Promotion credits. They should be more available to purchase. To date the max earned and purchased since it's inception has been one 5RS promotion. That is pathetic. You are responsible for the killing off of your financial supporters.

Targeted progress in purchasing what is wanted or needed. Negative return rate is at an all time high. Most offers contain items that are not needed or wanted. Some bundles make sense, but most are giving a this and a that. If you are offering premium orbs just offer premium orbs.

End Game: FoxNext your frustration game design philosophy has evolved into a predatory, abusive, and repulsive dynamic that has sucked all the oxygen from the room. We can no longer breathe in this environment. What we are prepared to do and have already started. Community support for boycott. Enlist the aid of Content Creators and any other press coverage we can. We will spread this as far and wide as possible. We will boycott for an undetermined amount of time. I hope you understand what this means. It's not when we cave. IT's when you do. It is understood that some of what is mentioned takes time. Some of it does not take much as well. You can easily update rewards structure as a show of good faith effort that you are no longer just sitting idle and that you are actively engaged to create an environment people have more joy then discontent. A boycott is easily avoidable. Will you? Before you answer that I would like to encourage you to stop and ask yourselves is it really so bad to make people happy via the means they all benefit from. Progress. The juice needs to be worth the squeeze whether it's time or money. As to the proposed solutions above, they are just that. You can do better. You should do better.

Hello everyone, this is Archangel and I'm super excited to be here as a Scopley Community Manager in the Boundless Entertainment studio!!! I have played Marvel Strike Force for over 2 years now. I started when the game launched but took a break after a couple of months because I was playing two other games at the time (SWGOH and IDLE heroes). A couple of years later, during the early Black Order meta, I redownloaded the game and saw an offer for the X-Men team and I was like . . .I'm in! I called a friend who led an alliance and asked if I could join his alliance, as they were running Ultimus 7.0 at the time (I was under 200,000 TCP, so green). Within 6 months I was soloing a lane in Ultimus, became a captain and helped run the alliance, focusing on designing raid maps and launching the raids everyday and on time.

I eventually migrated to a higher-powered Alliance that was doing Doom 2 - I was just over 10 million TCP at the time. We unlocked Doom 2.3 not long after and I ended up going back to my old alliance to be with my friends, as they were stuck on Doom 2.0 and needed a boost in leadership. I became the Leader, organized a merger, made raid teams and maps, made training videos for the raid and two months later we are now doing Doom 2.2.

I have over 15 million TCP now, I play hard core and love the game. I will strive to communicate quickly and efficiently on timely issues and ensure detailed and accurate weekly developer blogs. As an alliance leader, I am looking forward to representing the interests of alliance leaders in the regular feedback sessions with the dev team.

Aside from MSF, I love sports with Pro Football, College basketball, and Tennis as my personal favorites. The Carolina Panthers are my favorite pro team and Duke is my favorite College team. I grew up watching Andre Aggasi play tennis but I would say that Rapha Nadal is my favorite tennis player today.

I have a strong passion for video games, especially RPG’s, as I love the stories and the extraordinary worlds we can experience in them. I was born on the NES - I love Castlevania, Dragon Quest, Elder Scrolls, Mass Effect, and Dragon Age, just to name a few.

I also love technology, whether it’s PC’s, phones, or gadgets. If you meet me, ask me about my Redmagic Gaming phone . . .you’ll regret it, LOL!

I am looking forward to getting to know everyone and making a great game even better.

Players leaving the game or something? I don’t play it but it’s coming up on other game forums.

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.

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

Core Game Design

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.

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.

Mode specific characters

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.

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.

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.

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?

Alliance Wars

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!".

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.

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.

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.

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.

Predatory monetization and bad faith business practices

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

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$.

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.

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.

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.

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?

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.

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.

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?

Intentional lack of information and opaque communication

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.

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?

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.

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.

Moving goal posts

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

The Phoenix debacle

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.

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.

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).

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.

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

The End

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.

Hello Reddit!

I wanted to introduce myself on behalf of the Marvel Strike Force team. This is our first official post here but not our first visit. While we've been reading and listening to your feedback on this subreddit, we have not done a great job of communicating back to you. That's going to change. Along with interacting and answering questions here on Reddit, we will also start to release new blog updates on our website that will go in-depth on new character reveals, content updates, as well as begin to take a deeper dive into our patch notes. We want to make sure we are communicating the changes we make, as well as taking the extra step to explain why we're making those changes. These blog posts will also make it over to our social pages as well so you will be able to stay up to date on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.

This community is an amazing collection of players who provide valuable information, guides, videos and feedback that we don't take for granted. We look forward to growing with you in the coming year.

I don't know if this will gain any traction but I will try to make this as clear as possible for non-players.

Marvel Strike Force is a mobile RPG game based on Marvel superheroes from FoxNext. Recently the level cap was raised from 60 to 65. The only way to earn XP is to play missions using energy, and so most people haven't even hit level 61 yet. But a YouTuber by the name of KnightlyGaming somehow hit 65 and was at the top of the leaderboard before even the most prolific whales. Many were raising questions about how this was possible and he responded with this video:

(Video deleted, mirror: )

In this video, he shows that he has 257,000 energy stored, a number well beyond normal amounts given that paying premium currency for energy only gives you 120 energy. He discloses that this is a result of him actually being an employee of the developer FoxNext, and they gave him a big chunk of resources so that he could better advertise the game. The problem is, he has never disclosed that he was an employee creating paid promotions for the last sixth months until now. (Which I believe is against Google's YouTube policy, please inform me) The playerbase over at is currently livid about this, because this YouTuber's account is on the live server and outcompeting other paying players. The YouTuber also says "In hindsight, I should have curbed that usage a little bit, so as to not raise eyebrows" expressing that he is really only sorry about being caught.

Essentially, FoxNext is boosting a YouTuber in exchange for advertising, without any disclosure from the YouTuber and he is competing against other paying customers.

I hope I was able to provide a decent explanation that will make sense to non-players.

UPDATE:

The original video was deleted. This is the original video:

He has uploaded a new video () in which he corrects himself as not being an employee but a paid influencer. He is also going to be hidden from the leaderboard. This is my opinion here - this doesn't address the issue. He is still taking a spot in the "blitz" mode where you compete with the rest of the playerbase for rewards, and competing with players in his arena pool.

This is also the top comment on the new video: "KnightlyGaming is a strictly positive community and personal attacks and accusations in the comments will be deleted and the account banned. Thank you."

I know card games are not for everyone, but I find it interesting how two different Marvel games are approaching the month of July.

On one hand, MSF is busy upsetting their playerbase with an event unrelated to Deadpool 3. An event with so much fomo, MSF couldn’t be bothered to even share with their top spenders that a Captain Britain awakened ability offer would pop up after buying a BP Shuri offer.

On the other hand, Snap has a month of Deadpool 3 themed events and characters to both build up excitement in their playerbase and capitalize on the hype of the movie. All of which will be revealed up front to their players, so they can make actual informed decisions this month.

You would think a game which had one of its top number of downloads around Avengers Endgame would understand the value of taking advantage of the most hyped mcu movie in years. Especially, since many of us play MSF because we are passionate about Marvel. I’m glad I will be able to enjoy the hype in at least one of the Marvel games I play.

As we work to continually expand and improve Marvel Strike Force, the team at FoxNext is constantly evaluating input from you, our amazing community of players. Recently, we’ve received strong feedback regarding adjustments to event rewards (such as the Deadpool Raids) and the value of in-game purchases and we want to let you know that we’re listening. We’ve analyzed the issues raised from a game balance and fairness perspective and we agree with the feedback and are moving quickly to make changes in the game.

While we will continue to update events whenever we feel game balance requires it, we intend to be much more deliberate going forward when considering adjustments to the rewards or difficulty of existing events. New characters may have special events with one-time reward structures (such as Deadpool’s initial Blitz requirement and limitation to weekends only), but for subsequent versions of that event, our goal will be to keep our reward structure consistent wherever possible.

As we commit to an ongoing focus to address this, the first step we’ve taken is to revert the Deadpool Fragment rewards for the Deadpool Raids to their most recent levels, while maintaining Deadpool Fragment Payouts at all completion tiers at each difficulty level.

Following that, our focus shifts to bringing lasting change to the quality of Marvel Strike Force, delivering a better gameplay experience, and greater fulfillment from your investment of time and/or money. To start, that means committing to keeping the quality of rewards consistent for existing in-game Events, like Raids, Events, and Blitzes. Additionally, it means delivering better value on Offers across the board. Balancing the value of offers with the value of time spent playing while keeping the game challenging and fun for everyone is tricky. We want to be clear: that balance will always be a top priority.

We know many of you are working hard to unlock Nick Fury in the “Chasing Fury” Event. To those who unlock him over the next week, congratulations! However, for those who fall short, we want to let you know the Chasing Fury Event will return in October, so keep up The Chase! We’ll also be bringing back the Iron Man and Star Lord Events in September, so players can continue to unlock and collect those Legendary Heroes if they missed them when they were initially offered.

To all our players, thank you for all you’ve contributed to Marvel Strike Force. We’re listening to you and we will follow up here by next Friday, 8/31 with an update on additional improvement plans for to the game.

Thanks again.

There was recently a thread posted on the subreddit that contained a drafted letter from a group of alliances declaring the State of Marvel Strike Force. One of the more prominent articles in this letter was mention of a boycott of in game spending. These topics have generated alot of conversation so the moderation team has decided to pin a megathread about it to the subreddit.

EDIT: The Leadership of the boycott will be allowed to occasionally make new threads provided they contain new information about the progress of the boycott. Individual player responses to this new information should be commented in those threads.

Please contain conversation on these topics to this megathread or the linked threads below:

Outside Coverage of Strike:

• - PocketGamer article about the boycott

• - Second PocketGamer article about the boycott

• -Khasino makes a post on the Boycott

EDIT: A lot of people seem to have an issue with the title, and I agree that retiring could possibly imply I'm completely leaving. The intention was more like "I'm old and tired of life and will be going to live in a seaside village" (Basically what I'm doing in-game and going super casual). I will be around, but mostly just in spirit. I'm stepping back from 99% of the game, and definitely spending.

Hey all, new video but cos I don't expect you to watch it here is the script below as well.

Hello all, this is Tauna and I’m here to announce a couple things and for once, I have a script so hopefully I won’t get too off-topic or trail off.

So, as many of you know I made a video a month or two ago about how I was unhappy with the game and the direction the game was taking. Now, I tried to be constructive and went through a number of different improvements that I believe needed to be made. I actually ranted a fair bit in that video, and got a little emotional too. I’ve been one of the biggest supporters of the game since global launch, but it’s come to the stage where this game is just too big of a squeeze to try and get much enjoyment out of on a daily basis.

Don’t get me wrong, there are parts of the game that I enjoy. I’ve been working hard on Sinister Six who are my favourite team even though they aren’t meta-breaking, and I really enjoy the friends that I’ve met in the official discord, Khasino’s discord, my own discord and more.

Looking back at my top ten improvements, I’m not expecting any of them to get changed or addressed anytime soon. Narrow synergy teams seem to be FoxNext’s go-to, Orange Uniques are still super rare and the weekly blogs are still just “this is what is happening this week”.

Even then, there have been more complaints that I have had since that video. The Blitz Store crunch and demands, the gating of most new characters behind Blitz, Ultimus 6 still being the main raid after months and Ultimus 7 still not on the horizon, Black Panther still being the reward from Alpha Raids and the constant demands of Alliance War. The fact that we are getting 5 more saved slots, but only 5 and that doesn’t even cover every character in the game. Rescue being made farmable through the Blitz Orbs is another, and just another player unfriendly decision that has been made recently. Now, while Blitz currency comes easy here is some math;

While I agree that the currency comes easily, you also need to take into account:

• Every store refresh, you need to spend 575 on War Resources. That's 1,725 per day.

• If you are then farming for a character for an upcoming Legendary Event (Rhino, Mantis, SM Miles, SM, Gamora, KRG, Ravager Boomer) or for a Flash Event (MRG, LC), you then require an additional 500/400 per reset, so 1500 or 1200 per day.

That's 2925 or 3225 per day, and that's only farming one character. potentially 22,575 per week.

Every Blitz, from the Milestones you will get 2,750 Blitz Credits from the Milestones. So around 8,250 from the 3 blitzes per week.

You then get 250 per day from completing the Daily Mission, so 1750 per week.

So:

• Income: 10,000 per week

• Outgoing (if farming one character): 22,575 per week.

So, if I want to keep up with my outgoing and with the current of 10 credits per win, I need to make up 12,575 credits via wins. Or win 1,257.5 Blitzes every week.

And we don’t really have a choice on the war stuff. It’s required by alliances that want to be competitive. People talk about resource management and such, and I agree, but if you want to go well in War you need these. And the top alliances are likely using cores to fill up what they don’t get from Blitz. And Blitz is the biggest drain of time in this game, especially if you want top 1500 to get a character to useable.

But my biggest complaint, and the reason I have made the decision I am making, is the frequent bugs and errors that plague the game. There is a reason that the subreddit now has a meme of “0 Days since the last error” and it’s sad that this is something that is still happening. Now, don’t get me wrong, FoxNext is good with compensating these issues, but I would much rather a stable game where I don’t see constant issues that arise. I’m not expecting a bug free game, no game is really bug free in my opinion, but there are so many issues within the last few months that it is kind of crazy. The recent Block Party issues, the super-cheap offers for Vulture and Thing orbs, the Snap that kicked 95% of my alliance, the terrible, terrible lag from patch 3.4… The list goes on. It’s at the point where I don’t know what is going on.

Stability has always been the major concern of mine, and it’s really not being addressed. We hear back that they are trying to do better and that things will improve, but I’m really failing to see how.

So, with all that in mind, I want to make an announcement. As of the end of this current Orange Material season I will be retiring from Marvel Strike Force down to a lower alliance, as casual as I can go. I’ll be dropping back my game time in Marvel Strike Force, and possibly my involvement in the community as well and likely do top 10% in Blitz if that. (unless of course it’s Gambit)

I’ll still be maintaining my channel and posting videos, still posting resources and still working with all my patreons to give them as much advice and love as they need. I’ll still reply to you if you message me if you aren’t a patreon, it just might take a bit longer. I’m hoping to remain in the Envoy Program, but would understand if they drop me from it.

But number one, I won’t be spending any more money on Marvel Strike Force. I don’t believe this is a game that I can support with my wallet in it’s current state. I love Marvel Strike Force and think it’s an amazing game that perfectly blends gameplay I enjoy and the characters that I love BUT FoxNext really needs to pick up their game when it comes to multiple different aspects of this game. I will still be playing the game and sticking around, but for now my wallet is seal noises sealed.

So, what else will Tauna be doing? Well, I’m hoping to start playing some Star Wars Galaxy of Heroes again with a new account if people are interested in hearing about that, I’ll be looking for other mobile games if people want to hit me up with suggestions or even suggestions of other PC games you want to see/hear about!

But that’s it for today. I’m sorry this video was so glum, but hopefully I actually managed to stay on topic and tell you exactly why I’m retiring. I love you all. You are an amazing community and I really hope to hear from people down in the comments! Are you thinking of quitting Strike Force? Is your wallet locked away? What would you like to see me cover in the future?

Thank you all and have a great day!

The problem is not that this is happening to cosmic crucible. The problem is if we don't keep posting our opinion, making YouTube videos and rating the game then this will be the new normal. At least 3-6 times a year there will be a 6 man team released with a paywall character in different categories. They will say it's ok because you still have a full team while the meta character is paywalled. Then they release Battleworld... with a 9.99 weekly subscription. It doesn't bother me to not be on top because I only spend 80 dollars a month on a mobile game, but at least I could compete with skill. How insane does that sound. I only spend 80 dollars a month. That's the Elder ring expansion price. I don't know what's right but don't let them silence you with their weekend calendar of 2 mil+ gold(that only select people got). Fill this sub with complaint after complaint. If not player base dwindles, whales stop spending and game does. On a side note what happened to the matinence compensations?

Will there be a Day 1801?

I buy all the Passes. I bought Alpha Flight

I spend but it is just never enough for your hunger.

Illuminati and Cap Brit is just to much.

Scopley please reconsider this. I do not want to stop playing MSF but you are making the decision for me

Hey all,

Just wanted to give a heads-up over here for discussion purposes. I just did a

It looks like mods will possibly be coming to Marvel Strike Force sometime in the future, sooner rather than later.

In the latest patch, a new file was added into the same folder that is used for datamining the various events, upcoming inbox mails and such.

This file seemingly outlines a mod-like system, with crafting, stat boosts and set bonuses.

There's also the that has popped up a number of times as a bug for various people.

This information is all from various datamines.

I'd love to hear what people think of this.

As I say in my video, I'm not against the idea but it depends on implementation.

And 100% Speed should NOT be a stat that is added to ISO-8/Mods. Speed ruins these kinds of systems. Please, please don't add speed.

EDIT: As much as I agree with some of the comments, downvoting this post means less people see it and get to voice their opinions.

EDIT 2: A reminder that this is all early datamines, and we only have the above to go off. We don't know exactly how the system will work, how grindy or non-F2P Friendly it is

EDIT 3: A number of people asking what mods are. to get a guide on how it works in that game. Not saying it will be the same at all, as we don't know the exacts about the implementation but historically this is how it works.

Hey all, Tauna here.

Today, we look at the top 10 improvements that I think need to be made to Marvel Strike Force YESTERDAY. It's honestly at the point that I might be quitting soon and I'll explain why!

TL;DW

10) Rework Nexus Campaign (similar to the Cantina Campaign in SWGoH that is focused on Character farms and has a seperate energy)

9) Less “narrow synergy” teams (and no "RAID only" teams)

8) More Red Star Orbs (if they are happy with the rework as it is, give us more)

7) General UI improvements (equip all, separate buy and open orb, confirmation on purchases for cores)

6) Blitz reward rework (more milestones and change to % rewards)

5) Return of the Development Update and Mailbag QA Blogs, calendar for the coming month

4) Increased rewards for Greek raids to match difficulty increase

3) Increase Orange Unique Frequency

2) Rework Event Campaign Rewards

1. Reduce Alliance War time commitment (boosting and amount of wars) and time commitment overall

Only get points for campaign energy unless you buy Kraven and use him in crucible. Why not add in crucible clears like all other crucible events? Scared f2p players might participate?

Hello everyone!

As a follow-up from my post yesterday, and with the help of the community and some amazing people I have managed to complete the article on the history of FoxNext and Marvel Strike Force.

This covers the following:

• An introduction about myself and the aim of this

• A history of the more prominent bugs, changes, issues, controversies and communications

• Some bugs/changes that I couldn't find exact dates for

• Examples from when FoxNext have communicated well and gone above and beyond

• Some FoxNext quotes that are often used and people look back on

• A conclusion which includes the key things we would like to see improved.

Below is the document. I have also forwarded this directly to FoxNext in hopes to try and open lines of communication about these issues.

Please leave any feedback below, any thoughts, prayers and criticism too.

If there are big things I missed, feel free to let me know as well.

Looking at the rating, and how's it's progressed in the last month since the patch, we've seen a drop of around 10%. This is crazy, especially given over the past 6 months it's been fairly steady around the 4.34 Stars area.

The question is, how much does it need to drop before there is a response?

Source video of mine below where I look at it, update about #SaveMSF

^{Rating is from Google Play Store, USA}

Not counting some game you play for like 10 minutes at a time, talking actual video games where you are investing days/weeks/months into playing them.

I've found that finding other games quickly subdues the MSF addiction, without which I personally believe a large swatch of the player base would have quit a long time ago. I dont think a single person would argue that this game wouldn't have been long dead if not for the Marvel IP

Screen time is one of the most important factors in gaming and many players are starting to feel the burn of the game due to increased screen time. Not only is this bad for current players, it is also a massive turn away for newer players coming to the game.

Cerebro (Community Manager Interview) "So, first of all, how much time do we think is too much time. If people are spending more than 2 hours in the game a day, that's probably too much. Thats above our intentions. There's obviously an intended limit, where we dont want to try and push players to play more than that. The second part to that is, there's time spent in the game, and time spent out of the game but still thinking about the game. Like looking up stats, spreadsheets, alliance leaders going through members rosters etc. That's something we dont count for enough in that equation. Its something we hear about a lot. Its something we need to get better at understanding but we do understand to a certain degree.

7 months ahead - Required screen time

• 8 Blitz rotations x 5-10mins each rotation = 40/50+mins

• 8-12 War attacks attacks (based on 5 min timeout) = 40/60+ mins

• 8-10+ Raid attacks (based on 5 min timeout) = 40/50+ mins

• 5 Arena battles (based on 5 min timeout) = 25+mins or more

• Dark Dimension (time varies based on # of attempts for good attacks)

• Daily objectives with RTA included = 10/15+ mins?

• Events tied to blitzing an unhealthy amount

• Additional screen time for claiming milestones, energy, opening 1 orb at a time.. +X minutes.

All of the required screen time for these objectives is well over 3 hours a day.Lets not forget what coming up

• Harder campaign events (adds more time to complete)

• Tower mode (Takes up an insane amount of time each day)

• Cosmic crucible (Screen time TBD, likely to be more than a few minutes)

• Dark Dimension replay-ability (Some point in the future)

• Scourge Events (Some point in the future)

• RTA Leagues (Lets be honest, are these ever going to make it into the game? Who likes RTA?)

The problem with screen time in MSF is that it requires you to login multiple times throughout an entire day. When the day is finally over it feels like you've spent all day playing, instead of an hour or two at your own given time. At the end of the day, this is a Mobile game.

SolutionsYou've given us sim blitz, which is great but still not ideal with the 2 hour timer attached to it. Why cant we be allowed to do all our blitz's for the day whenever we want. 8 rotations in the morning, or 8 rotations at night. LET US CHOOSE, time is valuable and precious.(As pointed out by others, 8 rotations suck. Lower amount of blitzing)

Let us sim raid battles (We know its already coded). Greek raids are easy and repetitive and are pretty much pointless, and it wont be long before Doom raids feel the same. Some already feel this way about the Doom raids.

Orb openings are a nightmare, some orbs only allow you to open 1 orb at a time. When you have hundreds and thousands of orbs are you really wanting us to sit there and open each orb 1 at a time? Make the default option to open x10 orbs at a time, or x100 if the orbs are available. Collecting milestone rewards or other rewards is also time consuming, please add a collect all rewards button or something similar.

There is probably a bunch more that I have missed out on accident, or didn't think about. But this post should indicate whats most important.