D3- Can you change Seasons to enable sustainable play?

Zifna

Hey D3! We've got about a week left until the end of Season 3 and the last Nick Fury cover is handed out. I think you've probably noticed the large number of posts from people saying they've left or are leaving, and a quick look through the Alliances forum will show you how many people are burning out and needing to be replaced... and how many alliances are imploding, unable to recruit enough to replace the burned-out players.

I used to lead a top 200 World of Warcraft guild, and that was pretty intense. It was very hard on players, but I tried to do my best to make it as easy as possible on them, to focus on recruitment and retention. However, that was a lot more possible in that game than in this one. The way this game is set up, it's kind of "DO EVERYTHING ALL THE TIME OR ELSE" if you want to compete at the highest levels. This isn't helping players or your game in the long-term. I just want to do a brief rundown on why your alliance/Season setup is hard on people:

• You can't play with some of your casual friends - Playing with friends increases retention. You want to help them out, joke with them, cheer their progress, show off your phatty loots to them. But many of my friends and family who play are casual. I can't chat with them. I can't easily view their rosters. I'm basically not playing the same game that they are.
• You're placed in a bad position with "kind of hardcore" friends. You know what I'm talking about. The people who can make good scores sometimes, but aren't reliable. Or the people who are reliable, but can't quite put up the points the rest of your alliance members can. If you don't let them in your alliance, it may cause bitterness and hurt feelings. If you do keep them in the alliance, you may miss rewards and cause bitterness among contributing members.
• You can never rest. In a top MMO raiding guild, you may need two tanks every time you raid... but you could keep three tanks on your roster, or even four. There's no such thing here. Going on vacation? Don't want to Puzzle Quest on your honeymoon? We'll have to kick you and try to find a spot for you when you get back?
• You are forced to earn rewards you can't use - effectively stealing them from players who need them. There's a Loki tourney right now. I have all the covers. I'll snag 800 points or so to help my alliance and season score, likely snagging 2 or more individual covers. That means those covers WON'T go to a Jane ** who only has 4 Loki covers and really wanted them. I will vendor them for ISO and feel bad about wasting my time. Each top ten will have multiple people like me.
• Communication with alliance members is difficult. If there's a player who hasn't been performing well, I have no in-game way to contact them one-on-one to ask questions or offer tips. I can either express concern publicly, in alliance chat, possibly humiliating that player, or not communicate at all.

Some possible solutions:

• Add "Friend slots" to alliances, purchasable with ISO. These slots don't earn points and receive reduced alliance rewards (perhaps HP/ISO only? Or even half HP/ISO only)
• Only count the top events/players Let an alliance have some breathing room - Only count the top 15 players scores' toward the season, or drop each player's lowest two or three scoring events from their season score.
• Only make a few events "Season Events". Instead of ten events in the Season, how about five?
• Make the alliance rewards drop-off less severe. Top 100 alliances get a completely unreleased **** cover! Alliance 101 gets 3 tokens which will probably be three bagmans. We know you can make custom tokens - why not at least give a *** token or two to the next set of alliances, maybe with a bonus chance at the top reward cover?
• Offer people the option of entering a "hard-mode PvP" if they have a max character - Oh, Loki tournament. Looks like you have max covers for Loki. You can compete in the lowbie tourney if you like... or you're offered the choice of competing with other people who have max lokis for a different (better) set of rewards. Both count towards the season.

There are lots of ways the problem could be addressed. I'd love to hear from D3 that they recognize this is a problem (and if they have plans to address it they're willing to share, those would be great to hear!). I'm also sure other forumites can brainstorm other ways to make the situation less bad, or to offer criticism or improvements to the suggestions I've made. Thanks for reading!

gambl0r312

Zifna wrote:

• Add "Friend slots" to alliances, purchasable with ISO. These slots don't earn points and receive reduced alliance rewards (perhaps HP/ISO only? Or even half HP/ISO only)
• Only count the top events/players Let an alliance have some breathing room - Only count the top 15 players scores' toward the season, or drop each player's lowest two or three scoring events from their season score.
• Only make a few events "Season Events". Instead of ten events in the Season, how about five?
• Make the alliance rewards drop-off less severe. Top 100 alliances get a completely unreleased **** cover! Alliance 101 gets 3 tokens which will probably be three bagmans. We know you can make custom tokens - why not at least give a *** token or two to the next set of alliances, maybe with a bonus chance at the top reward cover?
• Offer people the option of entering a "hard-mode PvP" if they have a max character - Oh, Loki tournament. Looks like you have max covers for Loki. You can compete in the lowbie tourney if you like... or you're offered the choice of competing with other people who have max lokis for a different (better) set of rewards. Both count towards the season.

These suggestions, especially that last one, are excellent. Did you post these into the Suggestions & Feedback forum as well?

Now it is up to D3 (to save us all)....hmmm

Unknown

I think these are all great suggestions. Really... It's one thing to spur competitiveness in your player base, but this is just going to cause burnout. A lot of burnout.

Zifna

gambl0r312 wrote:

These suggestions, especially that last one, are excellent. Did you post these into the Suggestions & Feedback forum as well?

Thanks No, I haven't yet... Maybe I will!

FaerieMyst

Excellent suggestions.

Unknown

Like it all. Not sure how the Friend Slots would work but all the rest should be implemented pronto.

Twysta

I'm sure the devs will probably tell you they believe people will burn out anyway...
Probably according to their metrics?

yogi_

Lotta good things in this post.

I once suggested something like a two tiered PvP (hardcore and more general one similar to now), enter one only, running at the same time thing.

Hopefully will come to pass at some point, but sadly, not going to hold my breath.

Would also be nice to have access to Nick Fury without needing to be in top alliance.

Meanwhile, I'll just bask in receiving more useless 2* covers from yet more "high level" tokens that I spent a lot of hours of time to get.

Is there some way to "turn off" cover characters that we don't want or would that be too....... doesn't matter.

Unknown

Honestly, I think those changes are just too good to be used by D3, I have no idea what they are doing, but overall they are doing really bad for some reason and sometimes that make me wonder...

I find it amusing when cover prizes are in every tournaments for the very same players with already maxed out char, it is really that hard to change for something like: if x number of players from top 100 have maxed out char, then give prize cover to next top players (for 100 + x)?

ClydeFrog76

Meanwhile, at D3...

Unknown

Even if Demiurge took your advice on some of these changes it would take them 1-4 months before they would even institute them. Glacial pace of change.

Unknown

Demiurge wrote:

No, we can not. Everything is working as intended.

Unknown

Toxicadam wrote:

Even if Demiurge took your advice on some of these changes it would take them 1-4 months before they would even institute them. Glacial pace of change.

It seem they can't even figure battles worth for 6 sim subs and must recycle normal in the next hard.

Wolarsen

Lots of sense in the original post.

Unknown

You're not the only one who's thought that D3 managed to implement an even more burnout inducing spin on mmo raiding. I think these are all solid ideas, but I don't know if we'll see them I've seen some suggested before, and you'd think a no brainer like making only every other event a season one would be easy enough to change.

Tharos

"A lot of good stuff here, but we are still monitoring the recent changes made from season 1 to True Healing. If our metrics tells us that everything you say is true, we will make changes to keep our ARPDAU high. Expect changes very very soon, somewhere near Season 7, or Season 6 if you are lucky"

Zifna

Impulse wrote:

You're not the only one who's thought that D3 managed to implement an even more burnout inducing spin on mmo raiding. I think these are all solid ideas, but I don't know if we'll see them I've seen some suggested before, and you'd think a no brainer like making only every other event a season one would be easy enough to change.

Yeah... I've been impressed with D3's turnaround time on some issues, not so much on others. That's kind of why I suggested a range of solutions - some stuff, like just reducing the number of Season events, doesn't really address a lot of the underlying issues very well (even if it's only 5 events, you're still pretty screwed if one of those events can't be played by one or two people in your roster), but should hopefully be simpler to implement.

MojoWild

Awesome post. I also really like the best x out of y counting towards the Season total.

Also, the progression rewards could be better in the Shield simulator PVP. Most of these are 2* that get handed out willy nilly anyway. I only need the one or two 3* that are the highest levels, but at some point I hit a wall and can't progress further.

The first season I tried to maintain a score for the whole season and used a few more shields than necessary. Season 2 I entered with about a week left and got about the same performance/result. I haven't entered this season's PVP yet but probably will soon. It's basically a tiebreaker to tack on to all the other Season PVPs.

Thing is, my token draws have been very sparse for 3* lately. Like 5 in the last 400, approximately, including the Heroic and Event tokens. I had no 3* in the last two Season 10-pack progressions (Season 3 I got 3 Bagmen, no joke!). So I'm kind of wary about really pushing for more Heroic tokens when it seems like the odds are that I'm just going to get Bagmen...

So I think also a re-evaluation of the progression rewards and the prizes of the actual Season PVP is due as well.

Zifna

MojoWild wrote:

Also, the progression rewards could be better in the Shield simulator PVP. Most of these are 2* that get handed out willy nilly anyway. I only need the one or two 3* that are the highest levels, but at some point I hit a wall and can't progress further.

That's definitely a good point as well - right now Shield training is simply an additional burden on almost every player. Maxing two-stars has become comparatively trivial with the extra PvP rewards, but few players can climb high enough to snag the *** covers.

I suppose there are a few hero point scattered about to ease the sting, but not very many.

Unknown

This is a really good thread. I agree with all of these points. I was on vacation last week actually and it was hell to try and contribute in a ...cell phone puzzle game..... while trying to enjoy family I havent seen in a year...

Many changes are needed to refine this game. Look at WoW. They never rested on being number one. They kept making it better.

Its really shocking to me how slowly development moves in this game.

ThatOneGuyjp189512

the best one to me is the not making all events count towards the season, cause that's the reason sooooo many people are getting burned out on this game. With the season format we are literally robbing other players who actually need the covers the chance to get the covers cause we don't want to get left behind on the season. It would also help a lot cause it would definitely avoid burnout and allow the top people to relax and....this seems like hard concept for D3 to understand....HAVE FUN with a game they like!