Retirement?

Phaserhawk

I think the biggest issue of the burnout began with tying covers to alliances. When alliances first started it just earned you bonus ISO and HP. If I wanted said cover it was up to me to get it. If we decided we wanted that 500 HP prize we went for it, but the constant get the cover top 100 or bust sucks. Alliances should be meant to enhance your play not be required to move forward. I think there needs to be a shift back to the individual player and less on the alliance. I truly think that will help immensely with burnout.

Bowgentle

Phaserhawk wrote:

I think the biggest issue of the burnout began with tying covers to alliances. When alliances first started it just earned you bonus ISO and HP. If I wanted said cover it was up to me to get it. If we decided we wanted that 500 HP prize we went for it, but the constant get the cover top 100 or bust sucks. Alliances should be meant to enhance your play not be required to move forward. I think there needs to be a shift back to the individual player and less on the alliance. I truly think that will help immensely with burnout.

Well, individual top 5 gets you all 3 colours again now.

The problem is that Fury cover.
Without that, we all could go back to skipping tourneys we don't care about (so half of the season).
With the one decent 4* being available to top 100 alliances only, there's no slowing down if you want to make sure you get that cover.

Remove that exclusive cover from alliances and we can get all back to playing for fun.

Unknown

The season aspect is clearly the worst addition to the game in the last 6 months, followed closely buy alliance rewards. It burns people out who choose to go all out for these meaningless numbers. And it screws the new players out of alot because people who don't need those covers (like myself) end up taking them from people who do.

But the 'season's is what will kill this game in a rapidly faster pace than it would have died otherwise. I've seen just about every big alliance turn to 'I could care less about it' and then to 'I'll keep in touch with you guys but this game is stale and losing whatever fumes it was running on for the last few months'

The reason changes are geared towards new players is that the money comes from new players. Older players don't spend money anymore because there's no longer a need to. Or you get the credit card crew who just buy everything including the extra ending after the final credits.

After S3 ends I know of a ton of people who are mostly bored, and forgot why they bother with this game, many who haven't spent money in 4 or 5 months, and many more who are looking for something else. The grind is what moves them away. These people are also out of goals worth their time. They have just about every cover, so rankings and cover packs are worthless. The fury yellow is the only thing left worth a minute of their attention. People buying first place are living in their own little bubble or their own cash sandbox if you will so more power to them. The other 99.9% who have played the actual game and earned everything are getting bored doing the same old tournaments over and over for the same covers we don't need.

Can we get some innovation before the game completely collapses? Otherwise there are a TON of games worth more time than doing the same thing for the 100th time? There are lots of donkeys who throw money at any carrot in front of them but really we need something interesting.

Unknown

LoreNYC wrote:

These people are also out of goals worth their time. They have just about every cover, so rankings and cover packs are worthless. The fury yellow is the only thing left worth a minute of their attention. People buying first place are living in their own little bubble or their own cash sandbox if you will so more power to them. The other 99.9% who have played the actual game and earned everything are getting bored doing the same old tournaments over and over for the same covers we don't need.

This is what's getting to me lately. I need a total of 6 individual 3* covers. That means, with the rare exception, all PvP gives me is some iso. That's fine, but not enough to keep me motivated to place top 5 anymore. It also means the difference between a season 5, 10 or 20 pack is negligible since most likely it just amounts to a covers to iso conversion.

LoreNYC wrote:

Can we get some innovation before the game completely collapses? Otherwise there are a TON of games worth more time than doing the same thing for the 100th time? There are lots of donkeys who throw money at any carrot in front of them but really we need something interesting.

This would make such a tremendous difference. It's just simply time for this. I wish they'd see that.

Phaserhawk

This reminds me of something IceIX said about when they gutted LR's that people actually prefered the random token packs vs. the cover. Well when you are a beginner and have no covers, absolutely the guarenteed 3* random pack was worth it, but oh how they gutted even that. PvE needs more progression awards (acievehable) progression awards and less grind, grind, grind. We are 3 days from when P2W completely take over with Fury destroying everyone.

My biggest improvement, suggestion is to actually create a visible MMR that one can see, and then have tiers. When you crack into a new tier, you get more ISO for wins, or more HP for placements, thus encouraging you to stay in your tier, sort of how Call of Duty muli player works. You win more, gives you more points to upgrade, helping you do better, until you get so good you move up a tier and start over again.

Unknown

I'm retiring after season 3, though we may create a DjangoUnbuffed old-timers alliance just for giggles. It won't be earning any alliance covers, I can tell you that.

For me, there is just no reason to play. There is nothing to advance toward after you have a couple of three stars, no achievements to earn to show off, nothing. Complain all you want about changes that have been made, but ultimately the game is really devoid of any high level content. It baffles me that D3 spend all their time fixing up very minor issues, but don't make anything substantial for me to do in the game.

Unknown

dlaw008 wrote:

I'm retiring after season 3, though we may create a DjangoUnbuffed old-timers alliance just for giggles. It won't be earning any alliance covers, I can tell you that.

For me, there is just no reason to play. There is nothing to advance toward after you have a couple of three stars, no achievements to earn to show off, nothing. Complain all you want about changes that have been made, but ultimately the game is really devoid of any high level content. It baffles me that D3 spend all their time fixing up very minor issues, but don't make anything substantial for me to do in the game.

Instead of making new high level content or any new innovations they decided it was easier to put a meta score on everything and let those totals add up to give you another carrot. All purchasable so you don't have to actually play. This game needs new modes. It needs an offline mode. It needs a ton of new things to keep players interested or intrigued. Think outside the box D3. Look at old puzzle quest game. Marvel games. Other genres. But just give us something new and unique. No one cares about "rankings and numbers" give us something tangible and fun please.

Unknown

Playing devils advocate for a few moments here:

I've never come across a game where content creation has outpaced the ability of the elite to 'complete' that content. The pay-to-win aspect of this game makes that even worse because people can buy completion either through prior stocks of rewards or cash- see the number of 0/5/5 Nick Fury.

Sure some new game modes would be nice, but given the size of their development team I'm not surprised that it's taking this long. There's enough work that goes into the new characters every couple of weeks and the recycled tournaments and general bug fixes and improvements to the client (probably mostly unseen) it stands to reason that not a huge amount gets done on genuinely new content each week. The man-hours that go into well balanced, well tested, well thought out and interesting content is probably much higher than any of us think.

Content patches even on a 6 monthly cycle in any game are rare, especially ones where it's expected that there would be something genuinely new rather than just a rehash of the same mechanics in a new setting. These guys are not a massive gaming behemoth with thousands of people working on the game. High expectations are misplaced- I don't think we've ever been led to have such expectations; it's just what us forum goers, the hardcore players, want.


Which brings me to my next point: the hardcore don't really matter. Sure there are a few people that spend a considerable amount every PVP on shield hops and boosts. I'd guess that these players make up a very small percentage of the income derived from this game. The vast majority of it will come from players who are nowhere near burning out or getting bored with the game. There will be a constant stream of these players for a very long time.

The people for whom genuinely new content would keep them in the game are probably the same people who don't spend money and just stockpile HP/ISO from tournament rewards that they're obliged to participate in due to season score. From a cynical perspective if I were the developer I'd want these people to quit: I get nothing from them, they're vocal and often negative due to having higher than reasonable expectations, and they deny rewards from other people which discourages new players. Endgame players also require more fixes and balance changes because they're constantly finding new ways to get ahead either through exploits, techniques or character combinations.


I agree that some stuff being switched up and some genuinely new content would be great. I just think the time-scale which we expect it on is probably a bit optimistic, and we don't give the developers enough credit for putting up with us (those hardcore enough to actually be on a forum about a game) when it's probably not really worth it for them.

It's likely that there is a bunch of content just around the corner, but we'll probably complete it and get bored and burnt out on it in about half the time it takes to create. This is typical of any game that requires devs to create the content.

Unknown

I think that a critical point is coming up post-Season 3 when we see what they do with Fury covers.

If Fury covers become part of the regular #1 placement reward rotation, then it means that all this angst over pushing for top-100 in the Seasons was for naught. Excepting the few whales that will cover Fury immediately with HP, the majority of us will be getting our covers from placement rewards, and so +/- 1 cover isn't going to matter a ton in the long run; certainly not enough to justify all the headache of constantly driving for alliance season scores.

If, on the other hand, Fury covers either stay as part of the Season alliance rewards, then, as the saying goes, the beatings will continue until morale improves.

Heaka75

ZenBrillig wrote:

If, on the other hand, Fury covers either stay as part of the Season alliance rewards, then, as the saying goes, the beatings will continue until morale improves.

Unknown

Phaserhawk wrote:

We are 3 days from when P2W completely take over with Fury destroying everyone.

Seriously?

Pray tell.... what exactly is P2W about Fury moreso than the ludicrously powerful LDaken and the outright broken Sentry? How is the game already not P2W at higher levels of play?

How is Fury going to be more broken (P2W) then Sentry? Is Fury going to allow teams to win on Turn 2 instead of Turn 4, as Sentry already does against any team when fed HP-fueled boosts?

Unknown

ZenBrillig wrote:

I think that a critical point is coming up post-Season 3 when we see what they do with Fury covers.

If Fury covers become part of the regular #1 placement reward rotation, then it means that all this angst over pushing for top-100 in the Seasons was for naught. Excepting the few whales that will cover Fury immediately with HP, the majority of us will be getting our covers from placement rewards, and so +/- 1 cover isn't going to matter a ton in the long run; certainly not enough to justify all the headache of constantly driving for alliance season scores.

If, on the other hand, Fury covers either stay as part of the Season alliance rewards, then, as the saying goes, the beatings will continue until morale improves.

IceIX has already gone on the record stating that Fury is planned to be in the standard placement rewards for events once he is released. Right how, the single Fury cover of each color is simply bragging rights and a head start on building him.

IceIX wrote:

He's being considered a teaser/trophy at the moment.

It is an inevitability that Fury will be part of the reward rotation, likely sometime not far after the end of Season 3. The only real question is if alliances are going to get an opportunity for a 2nd cover of each color for him, or if a new 4**** will be introduced in this manner for Seasons 4/5/6 (I'm assuming the latter will happen).

Unknown

Lyrian wrote:

IceIX wrote:

He's being considered a teaser/trophy at the moment.

It is an inevitability that Fury will be part of the reward rotation, likely sometime not far after the end of Season 3. The only real question is if alliances are going to get an opportunity for a 2nd cover of each color for him, or if a new 4**** will be introduced in this manner for Seasons 4/5/6 (I'm assuming the latter will happen).

Actually, it's far from inevitable. What IceIX has said is that Fury isn't considered released yet, and that he's a teaser/trophy. He has never outright said how Fury covers will be awarded post-Season 3.

Unknown

dongtackler wrote:

Playing devils advocate for a few moments here:
<snip>

Very well said and I agree. I would only add as a minor counterpoint, that there IS an opportunity there to extend the arc of a "career" and, hypothetically, the income received from that player. To your point again though, the resources required to do that at this stage may weigh out in comparison to the benefit.

Unknown

Me and another alliance mate got phone issues at the end of season 2. Neither of us have gotten it resolved. It's now supposedly near the end of season 3. Know what? It probably saved me lol. I have a hard time quitting games cold turkey without a replacement. Being literally not allowed to play has let me remove myself from playing and I have enjoyed the last few weeks. More free time, had time to go on jogs outside and shoot more hoops. I have had a few bbq with diff ppl and I've just overall enjoyed my time way more outside of the loop of the game.

So yea, I would recommend quitting whole heartedly. I mean, they have advanced nothing really in 8 months. It's the same game...no new modes, haven't positively updated how the game specifically runs, very few new characters mean there is little variety in active and passive abilities. One of the most interesting new characters the dropped was fury...and he "came out" 3 months ago and still can't be used. It's an interesting match 3, but it hasn't had the level of content update to warrant ppl playing it for 8 months imo.

@ the end of season 1 I dropped my play time to about 15-20% of what I did before. Even that 14-20% felt boring. I had been using a team of magneto punisher for MONTHS. that isn't because mag is op, that is because its how the game functions. You can only afford to use a few characters, and once you level a few you get thrown into an mmr that DISALLOWS you to fight using weaker characters. So you get stuck in a mundane "play as my best characters" situation. They have done nothing to change this. No new modes, no new mmr feature, no selectable lvl grouping..nothing. I guess they just did some change to the lvls...but I dont know how much, if anythay helps with thus issue.

It's funny, ppl are quitting due to a change, the true healing, when they should be quitting due to the overwhelming LACK of change. Can u imagine if an mmo only dropped 2 new weapons a month? No new levels? No new classes? Just new weapons? That's what is happening here...stagnation. the only real big changes they have had are a few generic pve stories, adding shields, and adding seasons/alliances. All of those imo were negative or neutral to the enjoyment of the game, as a game. Only the new stories are worth anything there...and they happen maybe every month or two...for maybe 40-80 lines of dialogue? That's not change enough...not even close. I could write them a story with mire thoughtful dialogue in under an hour easy....so an hour a month is what you are getting for truly new content besides characters (who have been pretty lackluster for quite some time...a lot of that being due to lazy characters...and I did kinda laugh when I heard they made a 2** torch).

So really its one of 2 things. 1. They aren't telling us what they are working on...but they have something cool in the Mix and are keeping a secret. In which case this parallels one of those stories of the boy/girl dumping thier boyfriend/girlfriend because the other one has been sneaking around at night...when the other has really just been working on a great gift for thier anniversary. 2. They haven't spent thier time on new things. Maybe they are not putting in the hours, maybe they are bad at thier jobs, maybe inefficiency, or..whatever...but they aren't spending it on bringing new content. In which case, you probably shouldn't stick around unless you feel a match 3 taking 1-4 hrs of your dayevery day, is what you want to do with your life.

I have kinda lurked the last few weeks..and...well I have seen very little on the Dec front. Even less than normal besides the true heal change. Maybe they are in damage control...but it makes the form, which has been going down recently, even worse. This is my first post in like 10-11 days I think. That's because I've seen nothing worth commenting on. When nothing new comes to a game, not only is the game stalebut conversations about the game get stale...therefore the forum gets stale.

Anyway, getting cut off probably was the best thing that could have happened. I can always try to reconnect to the game if they bring in something worth playing again for...bit that WON'T just be a new deadpool cover or 5 new lazy characters. It will need to be significant, because its summer time and there is PLENTY for ppl to do instead.

So yea, enjoy your summers everyone! Don't let your intense dedication to a game control you.

Twysta

Here I made an image explaining their theory of how players should progress.



Or if you like, have the same state of progression as the top line.
But have the reward progression stay at a banana - because that banana is going to be so useful for your robot.

Unknown

Content patches even on a 6 monthly cycle in any game are rare, especially ones where it's expected that there would be something genuinely new rather than just a rehash of the same mechanics in a new setting. These guys are not a massive gaming behemoth with thousands of people working on the game. High expectations are misplaced- I don't think we've ever been led to have such expectations; it's just what us forum goers, the hardcore players, want.

Maybe I've just been spoiled by Minecraft.

And Path of Exile.

And Loadout.

Given that those and MPQ are the only games in a similar category (MMO, indie), that's 3/4 in my experience. And those weren't match-3 puzzle games, those were, respectively, a 3D adventure/survival game, a stunningly well-made Diablo clone, and a stylized, well-balanced third-person online shooter.

But really, a 6-month content cycle wouldn't be so bad if they didn't seem to have a 6-month patch cycle. You know, when a character is fundamentally broken or woefully underpowered, and they just do ****-all? I remember that I had just started playing when the Magneto/Spidey nerfs and X-Force buffs were announced. I don't mean to make the devs look bad here; I study games engineering, I know how hard it is to make a game. But MPQ is not the kind of game where making new content should be massively time-consuming! It's the kind of game where, for most of what you want to do, you could probably make a fairly simple devkit. I wasn't kidding when I thought that given an explanation of how the code worked, I could probably fix Moonstone and Captain America in 15 minutes. If Path of Exile can come out with a new unique item and new skill gems (almost all with new sprite and 3D assets, and occasionally with effects on how the AI works) every few weeks, then there is no reason why it should take 6 months to patch Magneto, and no reason why it should take 6 months to patch X-Force, and no reason why we should be recycling the ISO Brotherhood again.

Unknown

@Twysta: Could be even improved with these kind of monkeys:

Unknown

It wouldn't take massive new game modes or a million hours worth of content to make me play more.

Some sort of achievement system that people could see by my name would do it. When the zombies saw my name in the leaderboards with an icon next to it that says, "This dude is awesome - envy him" would be enough. That's why powerful armors in WoW look so cool. When that guy runs past you in town and you're like, "Wow, what did he have to do to get that?"

Why do the XMen score 10 bajillion points in a random PvP when they get nothing for it and it costs a lot in terms of time, coordination, money, etc.?

Recognition.

Unknown

dlaw008 wrote:

It wouldn't take massive new game modes or a million hours worth of content to make me play more.

Some sort of achievement system that people could see by my name would do it. When the zombies saw my name in the leaderboards with an icon next to it that says, "This dude is awesome - envy him" would be enough. That's why powerful armors in WoW look so cool. When that guy runs past you in town and you're like, "Wow, what did he have to do to get that?"

Why do the XMen score 10 bajillion points in a random PvP when they get nothing for it and it costs a lot in terms of time, coordination, money, etc.?

Recognition.

Recognition that they spend a ton of money for nothing.