How does Marvel Strike Force monetise?

and welcome to Pocket Gamer top is my name is John Jordan and today we're looking at a marvel strike force so looking at this as part of our enough inspector a series nap inspector is looking at how in game economies work and looking at how developers are structuring them looking at the kind of different resources different coins currencies have generous they are giving them away and what that means for gameplay so this is the basic screen for Marvel's strike force you can see it's different kind of modes and missions here just start it off so there's a few things highlighted let's go could go and have a look so it's telling me go in and play this mode here I'll get some rewards I've been playing in the arena so it sees two different different currencies here already says an arena credit currency there's a power core so is a kind of key element here power

calls to purchase orbs energy refills health pack supplies etc so little bit of that they've got anything else some more similar rewards there we go so in box dumb what we've got here so this is the orbs so orbs that kind of the effectively the loot boxes so I've got two free ones here so we're gonna just open those up what do we get so we've got some some shards for this character here the hand sentry not very useful character so we can see here this improved close combat tactics and is actually something needed by I've got more off the character there so it looks like a gear sister gear system and this one here so BA again the gear kind of gear levelling system required by Hulk so we're getting an idea about how this works I have another one so similar no

current character I have in my roster requires to the vial and beat a cloth so quite a whole bunch of different characters might use that one and a shard for mercenary right guard again not particularly so as a character okay so there are three ones we've got obviously for the free things not necessarily very high-powered which is why they're free so supply supply shows you the it's the kind of marketplace the store so there's orbs here which you've seen actually I've got a few more so this one here is a premium orb I'm gonna guarantee guarantees at least 15 character shards so its might be a bit more useful if it's a character that I'm using so it's open this see what we get so again I've got these items that might be used for certain characters and then I got 15 shards of the a monstrosity not a character I've actually unlocked at the moment settings here need another 28 shards to recruit him or her for it so I suppose probably not the character I'm gonna use

at any point but that's the way of these squad based RPGs you end up with a lot of characters and part of the fun here's them choosing which ones you want to be part of your squad so can we can see here at this point I can use my currency to open another one you might do that moment another all pair so this is that was a premium or varying sees that's why it's going to cost a lot there's a Centurion hunter up here so this is gonna get me looks like a specific kind of character so yeah this one's gonna guarantee me at least two yo do shards he's getting on character amusing so I'm not bothered but basic oh this is the free one we got before so they've got five shots to the hands phosphorus again the character have use but not particularly useful okay so what else we got supplies so as typically

with these games we have them a soft currency this is just this gold so I'm I'm just buying this stuff because it's part of the daily activity you need to do so I'm just buying these because they were useful to me at the moment now this is a bit more interesting so Jessica Jones and black widow both characters I'm using sewing see I can spend 450 of these cores to get and we're gonna get five is that worth it probably not so the black we don't I only need seven more shot so five is not probably not bad bad thing to do so I spend that currency hope to get those shots no animation that being see now you need to mortar the rancor up some other things here what got here no characters need those these any use so you can see with the gold it doesn't really make a lot of odds I've got loads of it so the game is actually pretty

generous with these so even this one like forty thousand I've got two hundred fifty thousand I mean so can spend a bit of money there anything else okay she's one of my characters are used more and there's more so you know typical kind of store based currencies and obviously as we'd expect power cause although I have a lot of them have to say I've been played this game absence it was a soft launch so I've been playing it for three months even if just any been out for a few weeks I've got quite a lot of currency the game is I think fairly generous in terms of the currency it gives and the pacing you go through stuff quite quickly but obviously so I've got 3,500 so that's 20 as forty pounds worth maybe that's $60 not quite sixty fifty dollars worth of

power cause I just don't buy playing the game every day okay so mentioned daily objectives or some a quick look through here so we can see up done some stuff so I made three supply purchases what happens I get rewarded so these rewards as I say pretty generous I think I'm getting XP I'm getting energy so there's an energy system there's some other things I can do so training Duke gear let's go in and have quick look at the roster so this is my roster so I'm not some obviously plenty more to go I say obviously the more powerful characters as Ironman there I need 310 shots not got any obviously that's the way these games are structured they're literally kind of cool things people like Loxley Black Panther pretty popular character at the moment and so if I wanted to go in on what Kim I can't just buy him have to go in and contest you can't even do

that so there's no I haven't even got the stages game you get game yet or I can kind of grind out the missions I would need to unlock him so what does looking the roster sorry um so a few things I can see here so that the I've been buying a lot of those resources as um so we can see here Kimora I can craft these elements together than equip that's what that green arrows telling me so that's a useful thing and that's why was buying those currencies it's different levelling up so at certain points when she gets level carrot level 55 she's currently level 50 I can increase her assassin strike these at her moves in the game typical shard on a system here this is um well go and do that in another way actually there's lots of ways in in this game of kind of getting to different the gate to the same areas it's a bit more kind of if I would've done if I wanted to specifically level her up I could go in and find more shards and go in and

find the missions that I've completed then now I can auto win so different ways of doing the same thing the other thing to do so we can see here and nothing else there's these lower level characters I'm not really playing as at the moment I could do some gearing on them but doesn't really matter I can do some I need to level up a character so let's choose one who is in level 50 this choose bullseye this training mechanic so this is using again another resource these are kind of training modules I suppose I'm just living up as I try and do that he wants to sell me some more training modules not bother the moment I only care about bullseye I'm only doing this to complete the daily missions because that gives me more resources so spending some currency to do that and happy levels we see if I wanted to I could kroff these ones that I'm not gonna bother because the point of this kind of game is to focus your resources on the characters you really care about

so I trained up a character and I gonna claim some XP sand gold some more training modules in seeds a kind of a looping system okay so quite a lot of things still to do here in the daily objectives but we can whizz through some of these quite quickly which is another way of kind of showing you how stuff works so campaigns this is a hero's assemble is just hero missions that villains United Isabela missions and then Nexus is doing your own you can just choose whatever squad members you want a few other different ones here but if go here and here is assemble - who've we got so you can see here I've done quite a few of these missions any one of these ones that I've three starred I can then go back and auto play to get the shards anyone I'm to keep odds about okay there's a character I use so I can go three starter I've got energy I can go in an auto inter says how many times will want to play use up 80 energy do that five times I mean see I want got some shards

for night nurse no actually I can never up buy lots of things yeah so I could again spend these calls to refresh and do it again don't do that now but I'm gonna go into villains because there's a few here that I want to access so there is Jessica Jones so I've got 109 energies so I can also that one I've got six shots of hers and who we are not against so should I do that I won't do that actually that's so let's go into the Nexus and see who there is here who shot I might want there we are so there's good more I don't have the energy to do that so I'm gonna have to purchase it with campaign energy there's another kind of currency being saved there I've got 35 of those so then I can go in and auto win those use up sixty

energy or 80 energy and who else is as Elektra again similar thing I'm use up 80 so we see here there's quite a lot of quite a lot of layers of different resources based around kind of golden and power causes the kind of soft hard currency then lots of other different kind of two different energies and all playing into this leveling up characters in terms of the shards and then training them as well and then also having this gear system so if we go back now to daily objectives we can see here I've needed to play three Villa missions which I did with that auto play similar with hero missions these do ten campaigns in total did I need to do three auto missions obviously some of these things kind of happened in at the same time what else we got set challenges this is just like another system I'm working at these different rewards so every kind of resource needs its own kind of mode so this is using an

auto coin again another specific currency for this specific mode may seem a bit confusing but basically when you're playing the game you just like I can just also this so it's less confusing than it would appear if you've not played the game for the first time so did those two challenges - what am I got to do now the other ones have to do is arenas and blitz so the arena missions are obviously PvP not showing you the gameplay yet so that's maybe to quickly do that so we can see here this is my rank and my power we can see here I'm mostly gonna be tacking so I can attack people yeah so yeah these are a higher rank than me I can kind of see their power obviously different characters interact differently with each other this guy here Michael seek rift has a Wolverine who's one of the characters just available at launch so have a look nice here we get on that's my team

I could swap someone out so my lowest level characters probably Widow so I could just walk Black Widow for Luke Cage let's see like after he's a tank kind of character so let's quickly rush through this since at least you season game play obviously this is something I'm gonna be doing quickly so I'm gonna put it on to three speed and do a multiply so quick : p what's going on here so I'm doing not too bad at the moment he's lost one of characters

everyone's got spider-man we slow it down a bit I think it's nice to see and what's going on to this healing going on there's nice really good animation say spider-man fudge that one he dodged that one so spider-man's off see you know that kind of dodgy type character but you can look at the dodge Jessica Jones crossbow bones just stunning on spider-man spider-man's done a bit of stuff on spider-man and we see off to the health bars at the top spot you know spider-man spider-man there mm-hmm good morris has taken spider-man out so we can see but probably in a win this one now yeah because crossbones is not looking too healthy then says he only got the healed character in there she's not very powerful and that's a pretty big attack good more up who's up next so she's just healing herself as always you can do oh what's your point Captain America I always say 200 remaining hmm okay they dodged the Jessica Jones is

taking them straight out and there we go so the moisture still so there we go so victory the gameplay is kind of effectively the same no matter what mode you're in just different kind of enemies or different squad setups so I ranked up there off T again more rewards from that and now it's on a time down so if I want to speed up again I use the power 25 power cores to speed it up otherwise I wait for 13 minutes so I'm kind of in conclusion I suppose in terms of marvel strike force we can see pretty much everything I do I get more rewards for doing so this one is just a gold orb so it gives me more soft current seeing see - a pretty generous sustenance died off with about thirty three hundred and fifty thousand dollar up to five hundred and over five hundred thousand then a milestone because I done stuff this game per se is very very generous

and it seems confusing I say it seems confusing but fundamentally it's like any other free-to-play mobile game it has a soft currency gold which you get more off using the hard currency which is orbs you want more option spend real money you have an energy system which has another kind of currency so this campaign energy which is actually I think a new thing they've they've brought in there wasn't the case during soft launch why are you spending this kind of currency what's the point of the game well it's unlocking new characters it's leveling up the characters you've got training them in terms of loot so there's a level there's a training there's a gear system so that's a few different kind of layers of doing that and has also not really gone into this is not part of the monetization particularly but there is an alliance system so that's obviously more a retention model so this is the alliances

you join otherwise you can do other kind of modes as a new mode coming Alliance Wars coming fairly soon that's quite a big deal but you can do these lights all coming soon but and maybe we can do alliance raids so fundamentally really strong IP a very strong kind of squad based meta game and a very generous in app purchase economy you know resource economy maybe not the simplest to understand but it already flows and I think one of the reasons it's not very complicated is you just get so much of this route so much of this resource that you never kind of stuck with what to do there's always just loads of it that may change offices get to the high level so I'm level 50 at the moment in the game the level cap at the moment there's just been increased to 60 that said up to that point I've not really had any not really felt I've been gated in any way

I've not really felt there's been any any resource bottleneck so that's why I've been enjoying it so there we go thanks watching the video that check out the article there are enough inspector series where we go through and we look at free-to-play mobile games and look at the kind of resource economy and try and do a bit of analysis on what developers from a bid I thank for watching this one and hope to see again soon