Token Updates?

Unknown

Ok, so I have seen this question asked many times, but no real answer.
When are new characters added into the token pool? Both Heroic and Standard?
It seems that just before the Deadpool event was the last time anyone was put into it.
When can we expect to see possible Deadpool, Beast, Captain Marvel, COLOSSUS? I see 2* Johnny Storm is in there...
What is the process, Time? your Choice?
Just curious, ICEX, can you enllighten me, or point me in the right direction of the answer? SMASH!

Unknown

People keep asking, and they keep not answering. There are now five 3* characters that aren't in tokens: She-Hulk, Captain Marvel, Deadpool, Beast, and Colossus, and this problem isn't going to get easier to solve as it gets bigger. The last time anyone responded mentioned dilution of the pool, but that was, I think, over a month ago at that point, with no progress, or hint of progress, while a lot of people's stockpiles continue to grow.

Unknown

Let's green this fothermucker up and see if someone finally takes notice.

Infrared

Loki, Ragnarok, and Doom have been deemed too low priority to be given 3rd powers.
We have at least three characters that are overdue to being added to the Heroic tokens.
The character pool is getting diluted due to having too many characters available.

One obvious short term solution is to remove those low priority characters to make room for the overdue ones.

Unknown

Infrared wrote:

Loki, Ragnarok, and Doom have been deemed too low priority to be given 3rd powers.
We have at least three characters that are overdue to being added to the Heroic tokens.
The character pool is getting diluted due to having too many characters available.

One obvious short term solution is to remove those low priority characters to make room for the overdue ones.

"Loki, Ragnarok, and Doom have been deemed too low priority to be given 3rd powers."

Can you post a link where D3 has said something of that nature?

orionpeace

MikeHock wrote:

Infrared wrote:

Loki, Ragnarok, and Doom have been deemed too low priority to be given 3rd powers.
We have at least three characters that are overdue to being added to the Heroic tokens.
The character pool is getting diluted due to having too many characters available.

One obvious short term solution is to remove those low priority characters to make room for the overdue ones.

"Loki, Ragnarok, and Doom have been deemed too low priority to be given 3rd powers."

Can you post a link where D3 has said something of that nature?

He is making an assumption based on facts in evidence.

1. They don't have a third power.
2. Other characters that launched with 2 powers have been given a third.
3. D3 has made no announcement regarding giving those characters a third power

Ergo: D3 has deemed them too low of a priority to be given 3rd powers

Unknown

Also, this post from IceIX:
viewtopic.php?f=7&t=14801&p=211276&hilit=+third#p211276

"Yes. More towards rebalancing, less towards third abilities. That doesn't mean we don't want thirds still, just that we're focused more on user experience right now as opposed to additional experiences."

scottee

They know this is an issue and are working on it. If they're already aware, screaming in green doesn't make it go any faster. It's like a child screaming at a parent for food in the midst of making dinner.

orionpeace

scottee wrote:

They know this is an issue and are working on it. If they're already aware, screaming in green doesn't make it go any faster. It's like a child screaming at a parent for food in the midst of making dinner.

First, I would argue they aren't screaming.

Second, the point isn't to make it go faster. It's to get, at least, some kind of answer on timing. Cause right now we have bumkus.

Third, we know they are thinking about it. They have mentioned that token dilution is a concern. But they haven't said if they are even close to a resolution.

Forth, there is no need to characterize a behavior or people you disagree with as children. Kind of undermines your point and position.

scottee

orionpeace wrote:

scottee wrote:

They know this is an issue and are working on it. If they're already aware, screaming in green doesn't make it go any faster. It's like a child screaming at a parent for food in the midst of making dinner.

First, I would argue they aren't screaming.

Second, the point isn't to make it go faster. It's to get, at least, some kind of answer on timing. Cause right now we have bumkus.

Third, we know they are thinking about it. They have mentioned that token dilution is a concern. But they haven't said if they are even close to a resolution.

Forth, there is no need to characterize a behavior or people you disagree with as children. Kind of undermines your point and position.

There was a comment to green this up to get them to notice.

What does getting an answer on timing help? They don't know, and if they give an answer when they don't know, then people just complain when it didn't go exactly as they hoped. People are going to save tokens and then open them when they the tokens get updated. That doesn't change depending on if you know the date or not.

People on the forums over and over have basically said, "We know you're working on it, but we need you to come to forums to let us know that you're working on it."

But hey, if people need a forum post from the devs for peace of mind, I guess that's a good thing. Helps people out for those who grew up never having learned to do what psychologists call self-soothing.

Unknown

The trouble is, they're "working on" a lot of things and we don't have a clue where this is in the priority order. Are they "working on this" like the end time issue? I doubt that will be fixed in 2014. This is unlike some of the problems in that it becomes a much bigger problem the longer it goes on, and they've let it go so long that some of the easier fixes for it might be harder to implement. It's also a pretty major concern to some of us who have been waiting for it to get resolved before opening any tokens.

We may have a new character out by Monday, given the every-other-pve release schedule and the current short PVE. There could be a backlog of ten characters if this doesn't get resolved fairly soon.

Kikujiro

thaBURNIN8OR wrote:

It seems that just before the Deadpool event was the last time anyone was put into it.

If you exclude Fury and Torchlight, the last time 3 stars were added to tokens was on June 23 ... Daken, Sentry and Storm.

Yeah, JUNE 23, almost 3 months ago. Do you remember healing with OBW ? Then you remember the last time you opened an heroic expecting some usable cover.

There was a post in the Q&A thread about this issue back then.

IceIX wrote:

ZenBrillig wrote:

What's the long range plan for dealing with the increasing number of characters? Clearly you can't stop adding characters, because that's what keeps people stuck to the game, but at the same point, it becomes increasingly difficult for new players to win enough covers of a single character to make it viable.

We've got some nascent plans for that at the moment, but they're not nailed down quite yet. We've definitely envisioned the game to be more of a marathon than a sprint, so we're not worried so much about people being able to jump in and have a 40 character roster at day one. That being said, with current growth it's getting harder and harder to get any given 3* character any reasonable progress without being lucky enough to get them when they happen to pop up on the Versus Tournament reward roulette. It's definitely something we're looking at.

Come on !!! Tweak some numbers, drop the rates, give us a slight chance to get those characters before Christmas. Is Deadpool selling THAT much ?

M C K

scottee wrote:

People on the forums over and over have basically said, "We know you're working on it, but we need you to come to forums to let us know that you're working on it."

I understand your perspective, but I am actually not as much interested in dates of releases as I am the priority of their backlog. I'm much more concerned if the focus is on, for example, introducing another new character (or lazychar) instead of fixing the token issue.

Transparency to the user community gives rise to a real back-and-forth between D3 and users. That's what a forum is...an exchange of ideas. Ideally the developers use this line of communication to address the most important items to the users. Ultimately the users should define the priority of backlog items, because they are the consumers. In the case that the company prioritizes their own items in a vacuum, users become disillusioned and leave.

Unknown

There is nothing childlike in respectfully requesting clarification from the devs. Their recent inaction has created reasonable confusion regarding token updates. It would be fantastic to see an update on this situation.

scottee

M C K wrote:

scottee wrote:

People on the forums over and over have basically said, "We know you're working on it, but we need you to come to forums to let us know that you're working on it."

I understand your perspective, but I am actually not as much interested in dates of releases as I am the priority of their backlog. I'm much more concerned if the focus is on, for example, introducing another new character (or lazychar) instead of fixing the token issue.

Transparency to the user community gives rise to a real back-and-forth between D3 and users. That's what a forum is...an exchange of ideas. Ideally the developers use this line of communication to address the most important items to the users. Ultimately the users should define the priority of backlog items, because they are the consumers. In the case that the company prioritizes their own items in a vacuum, users become disillusioned and leave.

I disagree that consumers should set the priority of the backlog. First off, yes, companies should consider what consumers want, but if they let that dictate their direction, they really have no vision. Great leadership axiom: Don't let your critics be your coaches. Second, software companies don't work like a personal to-do list. Different people are assigned different jobs. I'd bet a medium sized amount of money that the person in charge of new character development is not the person in charge of working on bug fixes and backlog issues. Third, they are clearly at an impasse on how to proceed with the diluted character pool. They have ideas, and they're trying them out, but it's not the type of issue where putting in more time will lead to a solution quicker. Coming up with new solutions to tough problems takes a stroke of insight and creativity from the project manager or someone working in that team, and those things either come or they don't. Thinking harder usually doesn't work, and is actually often counterproductive.

And on a different note, communication does help build trust with consumers, but it also has negative side-effects. I was part of a game community where the devs tried to have the transparency that everyone here is asking for. They gave development updates at every stage and gave people estimates on when things would get out. But programming and game design often do not go off according to schedule, and that's just normal in the industry. In every programming industry. The unintended consequence was that it actually broke trust with the community instead of building it, because then people would say "you said it would be released this part of the month and it's been a week later!", and so forth. I know it today's social media world people think they should get every bit of information immediately, but I can easily see that being worse for the gaming community than they think it'd be.

Unknown

scottee wrote:

Third, they are clearly at an impasse on how to proceed with the diluted character pool. They have ideas, and they're trying them out, but it's not the type of issue where putting in more time will lead to a solution quicker. Coming up with new solutions to tough problems takes a stroke of insight and creativity from the project manager or someone working in that team, and those things either come or they don't. Thinking harder usually doesn't work, and is actually often counterproductive.

This is one of those areas where communication with the player base could be incredibly beneficial. There are trade-offs to every option. They should tap the vast reservoir of players here to try and weigh options if they're having difficulty making a decision.

But most importantly: this isn't a complex problem. Fixing the end-times problem would require major rewrites of the game's code, and possibly a lot of server work. Overhauling the MMR system would probably take months. This particular problem is literally something they could fix in an afternoon. They need to tweak some odds. The obvious solution - reduce 2* odds, increase 3* odds - would probably make literally everybody happy without giving out a ridiculous number of covers. There is no excuse for this taking this long without some sort of update.

If they're completely overhauling the token system, then a brief "We're totally overhauling the token system" message would smooth a lot of this out. But the problem, as far as we can tell, is simply that they're paralyzed by indecision, in which case drawing attention to the problem might help them make up their mind.

M C K

scottee wrote:

companies should consider what consumers want, but if they let that dictate their direction, they really have no vision. Great leadership axiom: Don't let your critics be your coaches.

Agreed on that point, for sure. I think it works a little differently when you rely on your critics to pay your salary, though...if those critics don't agree with your vision, their wallets won't either. That's my biggest fear; D3 will alienate a majority of players with priority decisions and those players will disappear. And if the gamers are gone, so too shall the game go. It's more about a balance for me than anything. There's a lot of idealism in play on both extremes, so finding the middle ground would be good enough for me.

All good points, and it's nice to have a rational discussion on the Internet for once (ducks).

FierceKiwi

Ben Grimm wrote:

But most importantly: this isn't a complex problem. Fixing the end-times problem would require major rewrites of the game's code, and possibly a lot of server work. Overhauling the MMR system would probably take months.

Really the only hard problem there is maybe fixing MMR. Everything else seems to be more an issue of they want the perfect solution to problems without one. So instead of picking the least bad option they just stick to the status quo.

Unknown

FierceKiwi wrote:

Ben Grimm wrote:

But most importantly: this isn't a complex problem. Fixing the end-times problem would require major rewrites of the game's code, and possibly a lot of server work. Overhauling the MMR system would probably take months.

Really the only hard problem there is maybe fixing MMR. Everything else seems to be more an issue of they want the perfect solution to problems without one. So instead of picking the least bad option they just stick to the status quo.

There are fairly perfect end-time solutions that would just be a bit complex - rolling brackets that end a set time after they're filled, implementing a "pick your end time" feature, etc., and they'd be a bit complex. There really isn't an easy fix to it that isn't just going to makes things difficult for someone else.

FierceKiwi

Ben Grimm wrote:

FierceKiwi wrote:

Ben Grimm wrote:

But most importantly: this isn't a complex problem. Fixing the end-times problem would require major rewrites of the game's code, and possibly a lot of server work. Overhauling the MMR system would probably take months.

Really the only hard problem there is maybe fixing MMR. Everything else seems to be more an issue of they want the perfect solution to problems without one. So instead of picking the least bad option they just stick to the status quo.

There are fairly perfect end-time solutions that would just be a bit complex - rolling brackets that end a set time after they're filled, implementing a "pick your end time" feature, etc., and they'd be a bit complex. There really isn't an easy fix to it that isn't just going to makes things difficult for someone else.

The easy fix is just not making every PvE end at Midnight EST. Similar to how PvPs 1/3 end at Noon EST (still not great for lots of people but at least slightly less American-centric). They should probably have some 6AM/PM end times thrown in there too but alas they want the perfect solution which this is not but it's easy and at least slightly better for the poor Europeans.

Unknown

Its things like this that make me no want to log in to this game as much lately.