Be Generous to Players, Extra Generous to Payers: Marvel Strike Force's Dark Dimension

Last week I took apart Path of Kings and promised a follow up on generosity. One system that made me go… wow, this is incredibly generous, and at the same time it's still a brilliant monetization feature.

I played Marvel Strike Force for nearly 4 years, spent way too much money on it chasing metas and genuinely having a lot of fun. I was part of France's #1 guild, New Age of Salvation (NaoS), and made good friends there. Amir Rahimi, former FoxNext GM and now president of games at Scopely, put it well back in 2021: "When someone engages in a game long enough to get into the great social loops that exist, they build relationships that tend to last a very, very long time."

For those that don't know the game, it's a gacha game, where you collect, upgrade and form teams of super heroes/villains. The game boasts great graphics and animation, which at the time when it launched in 2018 really set it apart from the competition. The studio behind it is FoxNext, it was acquired by Scopely in 2020 and renamed Boundless Entertainment.

The game has many game modes, and the one that is quite unique to this game is Dark Dimension, a solo game mode that gives away a 7 star meta character and piles of gear if you manage to complete it. For whales, it's a form of cashback, for free2play players it's a long term goal to play towards… and it costs Scopely almost nothing.

A game mode for people with a lot of metas

The Dark Dimension is a really hard game mode, and it requires you to use all your roster. For the latest one, Dark Dimension IX, you need 25 characters at Gear Tier 21 just to get in, every mission takes a team of 5. Its 16 missions are split by character type, City, Cosmic, Global, Legendary, Mythic… so you can't just throw your best team at it again and again.

And this is important: every Dark Dimension, when it releases, requires the max gear tier of the time. The first one, DD I in 2020, asked for Gear Tier 12. DD IX asks for Gear Tier 21. So at release only the top rosters can even get in, and for everyone else it becomes a long term goal.

So it's for people who have a lot of metas: the whales, or the long time players. The Dark Dimension has different levels and rewards, but let's be honest, it's nearly impossible for someone who isn't whaling to finish a new Dark Dimension when it comes out. Fan site Marvel Church estimates a free to play player would need roughly 9 to 12 months to complete DD IX.

How hard is it? The top players finished DD IX in 3 days, OGDiamondDave posted "I Finished #7 in the World" on 18 April. But the first complete guides from seasoned YouTubers only came 2 to 3 months later: Travel Z's DD9 complete guide on 19 June, Jro's final boss node on 12 July. Boilon, one of the most watched MSF creators, only started his own DD IX run on 10 September, five months after release. When veteran creators need three months to put a full guide together, you know the mode is extremely hard.

What is given away for free

But what is impressive is the amount of stuff given away for free. A 7 star character, Annihilus this time, who slots into a lot of different teams (yeah, smart right?). So many gear pieces, gold, training modules etc...

And he didn't come out of nowhere. Scopely spent a whole year teasing him: the Age of Annihilus, 4 chapters of 3 months, three Legendary characters to unlock along the way (Quasar, Blastaar and Thunderstrike), and Annihilus waiting at the end, through DD IX. This is different from previous Dark Dimensions: instead of one sub meta team, each of them plugs into several existing teams. So whatever your roster looks like, the reward is useful to you.

Reward	Total
Annihilus	7 Yellow Stars, 4 Red Stars
Gold	468 million
Crimson gear and catalyst pieces	12,440
L4 Training Modules	32,500
T4 Ability Material	5,290
T3 Iso-8 Ions	8.1 million
T3 Blaster Iso-8	81 of each of the 5 types

Source: Marvel Church. Node rewards are paid on both runs. Icons: Scopely / MARVEL Strike Force.

As a 4 year veteran (I finished every Dark Dimension up to DD IV… well, except DD IV's timed run, still in progress 4 years later ^^) I found this mode fascinating from a player perspective, but even more so when I put my monetization expert cap on.

The beauty of it

Apart from the new character, everything else is 0 cost. It's only gear, so once it's been implemented it's just something you push from your Excel file :D This is something that is specific to gacha games and 4X, games that run deep economies hold an extremely strong advantage whenever they want to give rewards. It's not about creating more, it's about balancing the progression economy with retention and monetization benefits.

The impact on whales is immense. Everyone wants to beat it fast to get the extra character, who is going to be relevant in a lot of teams and who will then bring an advantage in PvP (Arena, Alliance War, Cosmic Crucible), plus the ability to gear some of your characters at a higher gear power level.

That's a form of cashback

That's why this is a form of cashback. You need a really well developed roster to be able to achieve it, meaning you need to be very engaged AND if you want to complete it within a month or two of its release, you need to pay. And Scopely adds the pressure on top. The first run gets you the character at 5 stars, the timed run takes him to 7. And the best extras go to the ones who go fast: the Race to Annihilus gave Diamonds to the top 100 players of DD IX.

But super payers are already spending their money for the competitive side, clan vs clan (Alliance War) and all the other individual power fights. Here, it's like they are given a reward.

Scopely didn't have to implement this. But they did, and by doing so they embodied the most important philosophy that every professional in the field should follow when working out monetization.

Be generous to players, be extra generous to payers

Last week, Path of Kings showed what happens when you build a one way street: it backfires on you. The Dark Dimension is the other way around. The payers get something back, the engaged players get something to chase, and apart from the character, it costs almost nothing to produce.