Let's watch the numbers...

Unknown · June 2014

I love this forum. After I was turned on to this game by a coworker, I immediately sought a consolidated list of characters and there potential ranking. I found it on this forum.
Everything was copasetic... Well, not really my Hero 10 pack award was incredibly weak. I learn to lower my expectations and excitement of Recruit tokens and think of them as just 100 ISOs. But all in all, I was satisfied and not disturbed enough to complain publicly. I expected to grind.

But then they started that temporary healing and true healing garbage.

I instantly became a long time listener/reader, first time poster to the forum.
And the board has rewarded me ...

I was given a link to the CEO Al Reed's blog and read that they EXPECT a fallout, but only for about a week. He called it "This too shall pass" and it is totally insulting.

This too shall pass – While you need to expect and accept that there will be a backlash and the first couple of days will be painful, give it a few days before you judge the results... A week later, it was no longer a topic of widespread conversation.

http://almnop.tumblr.com/post/86306274206/handling-balance-changes

I will now watch the game numbers dissipate ...
http://steamcharts.com/app/234330

Compliments of a contributor to the board!

Unknown · June 2014

Hmm, I wonder if that "Ask" link works...

Thank you very much for the link.

Unknown · June 2014

The number of players decreases each month on Steam since December 2013. Maybe because you can't sync your account with your phone...

But if those figures are the same for other platforms, they can start having new ideas to seduce the players...

Unknown · June 2014

From that same blog:

We playtest the changes a ton and run them through some mathematical analysis that we’ve developed since launch. The end result is that if you’ve taken the time to max out your Spiderman ahead of your other rare cards, he’ll remain your best character.

Wow.

Wow.

Wow.

Lunch must really be good, as he's obviously still out having it.

rixmith · June 2014

One of the lessons they teach in business school is that customer retention is always much cheaper than customer acquisition. But I'm not getting the feeling that Demiurge thinks the same.

yogi_ · June 2014

"This too shall pass – While you need to expect and accept that there will be a backlash and the first couple of days will be painful, give it a few days before you judge the results. In the early days of MPQ, Ragnarok was massively overpowered and the day we changed it players were furious. A week later, it was no longer a topic of widespread conversation."

Do you genuinely have not a clue on how to treat customers? The arrogance of this sort of statement is astonishing and says a lot about you and indirectly your company. Pathetic.

Let's continue briefly.

"Telegraph the change – As soon as you know a character is overpowered, make sure you let your players know that you know. Months ago, we published a list of the top-5 incorrectly balanced characters. A week ago, we published the specific changes that were coming to Spiderman. This week we expect to roll out the change"

Gotta get that stuff right, hey... On a related note, how is the list of poorly / underbalanced characters going?

"Listen to Blizzard – “Make Everything Overpowered” is a design motto at Blizzard and we try to adhere to that here at Demiurge. At the end of the day, you need to think not just about the numbers but the emotional impact of a character. When you’re done, aim to have players think you didn’t go far enough!"

Name one thing that is overpowered in this game. Everything we've seen you do screams only numbers. I can't see anyone saying you didn't go far enough. I am not even sure what the point of your statement is.

"Give players an out – If players truly feel that your balance changes have made the durable no longer useful, then selling it for hard and soft currency should be a no-brainer. During the period after a balance change, we massively increase the sale price of characters."

Hard currency - You give that out? I only have a few Spider-Man covers, but from what I understand the character is now close to useless. I am pretty certain people put "hard" currency into him. Is it a no-brainer to return it?

Unknown · June 2014

"Spider-Man" Al, it's ****ing "Spider-Man." Not Spiderman. It's not a last name.

I mean, God Damnit, he's Marvel's most iconic character, and you make a Marvel game. Get your **** together!

gambl0r312 · June 2014

rixmith wrote:

One of the lessons they teach in business school is that customer retention is always much cheaper than customer acquisition. But I'm not getting the feeling that Demiurge thinks the same.

May not be applicable to a F2P situation where certain numbers of your client base (the established veterans) do not need to pay but are a drain on your resources, therefore it becomes worthwhile to draw in new customers in the hopes they will convert to paying ones before they become resource draining

I just wish it wasn't this way as I completely agree with you

Unknown · June 2014

Unknown · June 2014

dr34dz wrote:

I love this forum. After I was turned on to this game by a coworker, I immediately sought a consolidated list of characters and there potential ranking. I found it on this forum.
Everything was copasetic... Well, not really my Hero 10 pack award was incredibly weak. I learn to lower my expectations and excitement of Recruit tokens and think of them as just 100 ISOs. But all in all, I was satisfied and not disturbed enough to complain publicly. I expected to grind.

But then they started that temporary healing and true healing garbage.

I instantly became a long time listener/reader, first time poster to the forum.
And the board has rewarded me ...

I was given a link to the CEO Al Reed's blog and read that they EXPECT a fallout, but only for about a week. He called it "This too shall pass" and it is totally insulting.

This too shall pass – While you need to expect and accept that there will be a backlash and the first couple of days will be painful, give it a few days before you judge the results... A week later, it was no longer a topic of widespread conversation.

http://almnop.tumblr.com/post/86306274206/handling-balance-changes

I will now watch the game numbers dissipate ...
http://steamcharts.com/app/234330

Compliments of a contributor to the board!

Hey, 2* are 250 iso's

Tharos · June 2014

Even though I fully agree that all this true heal thing if garbage (made me stopped playing), all these links were quoted on the true heal post. Why re-post here?

I do not think the infomation it brings is more relevant to to the subject that many many of the True heal posts.

IceIX already stated (I do not remember where) that they are monitoring the changes, but from a longer that just a few days. It is easy to understand, because:
- the change was made during a pve without OBW
- heroic pve events never were that popular
- the change was made during GSBW pvp event, so it was hard to monitor OBW changes in it
- next pvp event was a Daredevil event, not the most popular character
- steam numbers are on the decline since a long time
- steam is far more affected by this change that the other platforms. What if it made people on mobile platform play more often? (I don't think so, but who knows?)
- maybe other reasons that do not came in mind now

And if you want more information from the dev side, you can grab some small pieces on twitter.

They believe that retention was more hurt by all the OBW teams than by being forced to stop playing after 30 minutes. Even if a lot of us think it is false, they think otherwise. Only time (and figure) might tell the truth.

_RiO_ · June 2014

Bugpop wrote:

Hey, 2* are 250 iso's

Which is ridiculous, if you think about it: I'd just as soon grind the first prologue scenario 14 times and avoid getting 50% of my health tossed out by a stray Onslaught or Sunder from a PvP Ares.

Let's watch the numbers...

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