[POLL] How do you react on latest alliance changes?

Unknown

What's with all these 'you only spent HP you didn't spend money' argument? Maybe D3 should erase all your characters for saying that because it's just 1s and 0s on their server that's also equally worthless. Of course alliance slots is worth money because people don't just find several thousand HP needed to expand their alliance under their couch and even if they do, that's still a lot of HP wasted on something that no longer has value that could've been used for something else. It's a tough problem to tackle for D3 because I'm sure people will start lying about how they spent HP for alliance when they did not, or people will want whatever HP they spent 6 months ago and so on, but that's the consequences for a bad decision. No D3 doesn't have to deal with the consequences but people will remember that kind of stuff too so they really should try their best to offer refunds whenever reasonable.

Nellyson

For the most part, D3 is right that those who spent money on alliance spots in the beginning have earned back their investment. I'd like to believe I have. Although it's pretty upsetting that I did spend money on only alliance spots, I feel like I could use a small gratitude gift. Maybe have them send out an email and be like, "We understand how those who bought alliance spots are upset at the entire alliance being open now. We would like to give you one cover of your choice as a Thank You for supporting us and your support for the future of our game." Cause seriously, one cover is nothing! You could even limit it to just a 3 or even a group of 3 , like the recent ones. That won't happen, but hey, it would be nice as one cover barely equals an alliance spot.

HailMary

Phantron wrote:

What's with all these 'you only spent HP you didn't spend money' argument?

Ummm... where?

I see one comment here countering the use of HP and money as completely interchangeable, which is actually a valid criticism. Many people used HP won in-game to buy alliance slots. That one comment might, if you really squint, meet your claim halfway. That's it.

Phantron wrote:

Maybe D3 should erase all your characters for saying that because it's just 1s and 0s on their server that's also equally worthless.

Right, Phantron, the free-alliance-slot change is just like D3 specifically targeting people who "say that" and erasing their rosters. That makes perfect sense.

Unknown

Nellyson wrote:

For the most part, D3 is right that those who spent money on alliance spots in the beginning have earned back their investment. I'd like to believe I have. Although it's pretty upsetting that I did spend money on only alliance spots, I feel like I could use a small gratitude gift. Maybe have them send out an email and be like, "We understand how those who bought alliance spots are upset at the entire alliance being open now. We would like to give you one cover of your choice as a Thank You for supporting us and your support for the future of our game." Cause seriously, one cover is nothing! You could even limit it to just a 3 or even a group of 3 , like the recent ones. That won't happen, but hey, it would be nice as one cover barely equals an alliance spot.

People who have a max size alliance more than got their money back but that's a completely different issue from issuing refunds. If someone who spent $100 on alliance slots yesterday is entitled to a refund why not the guy who spent $100 a week ago? A month ago? Six months ago? Unlike say releasing a powerful character and then eventually nerfing, this is much harder to argue incompetence/lack of foresight because you can say the guy who designed 2AP Thunderclap Ragnarok was on crack so it never occurred to anyone else that ending the game on turn 2 was kind of overpowered because it's only limited to some top % of players. But it's awfully hard to miss how all the 20 man alliances popped up overnight once it became obvious that having that size gave you a huge advantage. It's kind of like how in one of the Star Wars an imperial scientist was trying to explain how there are non military uses for the Death Star (destroy planets) but can't come up with one for the Sun Crusher (destroys solar systems).

Unknown

Phantron wrote:

What's with all these 'you only spent HP you didn't spend money' argument?

Because HP != real world money.

I'm not trying to be condescending with that answer. It just really, REALLY bears repeating. D3 creates an artificial currency that you buy with REAL currency, but as it's their property, they can do whatever they want with it.

Look at some of the facetious examples in the stickied thread - this could happen to roster slots, character levels, cover maximums, ANYTHING. Have I spent a lot of HP on roster slots? Yes. Would I be pissed? Yes. Do I have a reasonable expectation that I should be compensated for actions using an online currency I have absolutely no control over? Of course not.

The only way this decision wouldn't piss off everyone involved is if they gave it a TON of lead time. They should have, but they didn't. This ****-up happened because they didn't do the requisite amount of schmoozing with us forum-ites about what was going on. And we're a minority and are hardly ever happy anyway, so why not just pull the band-aid off?

Nellobee

RefinedBean wrote:

Phantron wrote:

What's with all these 'you only spent HP you didn't spend money' argument?

Because HP != real world money.

I'm not trying to be condescending with that answer. It just really, REALLY bears repeating. D3 creates an artificial currency that you buy with REAL currency, but as it's their property, they can do whatever they want with it.

Look at some of the facetious examples in the stickied thread - this could happen to roster slots, character levels, cover maximums, ANYTHING. Have I spent a lot of HP on roster slots? Yes. Would I be pissed? Yes. Do I have a reasonable expectation that I should be compensated for actions using an online currency I have absolutely no control over? Of course not.

The only way this decision wouldn't piss off everyone involved is if they gave it a TON of lead time. They should have, but they didn't. This tinykitty happened because they didn't do the requisite amount of schmoozing with us forum-ites about what was going on. And we're a minority and are hardly ever happy anyway, so why not just pull the band-aid off?

The difference is that I have benefitted from my roster spots in the form of non-discarded covers. I never got HP or covers back from my investment in alliance slots, just a small amount of ISO.

Unknown

Nellobee wrote:

The difference is that I have benefitted from my roster spots in the form of non-discarded covers. I never got HP or covers back from my investment in alliance slots, just a small amount of ISO.

Yes. And that sucks, right? That really sucks.

But I'm going to ask a question, and I don't want it to seem like an attack. Just respond as you would.

How is that D3's problem?

Nellobee

RefinedBean wrote:

Nellobee wrote:

The difference is that I have benefitted from my roster spots in the form of non-discarded covers. I never got HP or covers back from my investment in alliance slots, just a small amount of ISO.

Yes. And that sucks, right? That really sucks.

But I'm going to ask a question, and I don't want it to seem like an attack. Just respond as you would.

How is that D3's problem?

Well, it is a revenue problem for them long-term. I have spent several times the costs of a AAA title on this game. I will never give them another dime if they do not relent on this.

Unknown

Nellobee wrote:

Well, it is a revenue problem for them long-term. I have spent several times the costs of a AAA title on this game. I will never give them another dime if they do not relent on this.

Yeah, I can understand that - you're feeling angry based on the...let's say BLUNTNESS of their recent action. I'd be angry too - I'm coming at this from not having invested in alliance slots. I know the expense is enormous.

But this one change is going to net D3 way, WAYYYYY more money than what they'll lose from pissing people off. This is my conjecture, at least. I feel it's pretty reasonable.

Also, I don't feel you answered my question. My question for you, and everyone else talking about wanting compensation:

How is your alliance not earning enough HP/ISO to reclaim the amount spent on slots D3's problem? Serious question. Looking forward to answers.

I'd say it's NOT D3's problem. They don't publish guidelines on how much you should be making per slot. They DID announce that the people who spent since day 1 of the introduction of alliances but in NO WAY have they ever suggested that the total HP you spend on upgrading alliance spots will be, in any definitive time frame, be compensated by the increased production of the alliance.

Listen, this still sucks from the perspective of established players. D3 should've seen this coming. Maybe they did, and didn't care - which is ballsy, if a bit misguided.

Unknown

I spent 5000hp+ to expand alliances and never felt like i got back all of this investment yet.
They just replied to me and said they wont refund me anything and that they are excited by their new feature. I guess this is the end of the road for me. I went through the character nerfs but this one is too much for me to digest . This is right out theft pure and simple. They make you spend based on X condition and after a few months they remove the condition. What u paid for dont exist anymore... null void contract.
This game business model is theft.
Let them grow with their players who dont spend a dim now and try to get a new customer based who spends and arent aware how D3 rips off people by changing the contract rules further down the road.

Nellobee

RefinedBean wrote:

Nellobee wrote:

Well, it is a revenue problem for them long-term. I have spent several times the costs of a AAA title on this game. I will never give them another dime if they do not relent on this.

Yeah, I can understand that - you're feeling angry based on the...let's say BLUNTNESS of their recent action. I'd be angry too - I'm coming at this from not having invested in alliance slots. I know the expense is enormous.

But this one change is going to net D3 way, WAYYYYY more money than what they'll lose from pissing people off. This is my conjecture, at least. I feel it's pretty reasonable.

Also, I don't feel you answered my question. My question for you, and everyone else talking about wanting compensation:

How is your alliance not earning enough HP/ISO to reclaim the amount spent on slots D3's problem? Serious question. Looking forward to answers.

I'd say it's NOT D3's problem. They don't publish guidelines on how much you should be making per slot. They DID announce that the people who spent since day 1 of the introduction of alliances but in NO WAY have they ever suggested that the total HP you spend on upgrading alliance spots will be, in any definitive time frame, be compensated by the increased production of the alliance.

Listen, this still sucks from the perspective of established players. D3 should've seen this coming. Maybe they did, and didn't care - which is ballsy, if a bit misguided.

Oh, I am downright livid, and I do admit that this is a good change for the game moving forward. The lack of compensation for people in situations like mine is my only issue.

SunCrusher

Speaking from a purely 'Alliances in terms of monetary value' point of view:

To earn the extra HP and extra covers/Higher Tier Heroic or Event-Specific Tokens and not just ISO and Recruit Tokens, your Alliance needs to be able to place high enough consistently over the course of time.

Speaking from experience, the Alliance itself/Commander who paid for the slots doesn't bank Alliance-specific/Commander-specific HP which kind of complicates the issue; the individual players do when it comes to winning in events etc.

In most cases, I don't think individual players repay their Commanders the HP earned to pay back their slots after every event. In most cases, I am sure Commanders don't ask for it, either. In the cases of the Alliances where the players 'paid' for their roster slots and then were able to 'earn' the HP back in either forms of HP or super great covers that don't need tossing out, we can likely say that, "Okay, at least for these people, the HP spent has come back."

But a lot of people aren't in that boat where their 'earnings' have 'offset' the cost in a purely financial sense - especially if they footed the entire Alliance's bill themselves in expanding the slots.

There's always going to be argument that you can't look at Alliances in a purely financial sense, but IF we were looking at them in a purely financial sense, this is what we're kind of looking at.

People took a financial risk for something that had become - as Phantron put it - the 'status quo' and despite D3 saying they/D3 might re-evaluate it way back when Alliance rewards was announced, the re-evaluations that might have happened behind the scenes never happened where any of us could see it and so Alliances continued as they were and in my opinion, I think a lot of people looking at the situation re: Alliance Advantage saw that risk-taking in regards to Alliance-forming was more a necessity to do even remotely well as opposed to an optional 'fun' thing that didn't make much of a difference in terms of progress.

Don't we all remember when D3 said Alliances were supposed to be fun? With emphasis on the fun and community and social aspects?

That said, I recently had an application + game combo that - without word of warning whatsoever - suddenly removed itself from the App Store. This was on the heels of a major major in-game currency sale which I had dropped significant money for.

The fact that the App suddenly left the App Store didn't bother me so much so long as I could still keep going with my version on my device, but when an update for everyone else who wasn't in my region came on the heels of that removal (which I obviously couldn't get to!), I got really upset because that update not only provided app stability which was greatly needed but it also opened up all the new areas that I couldn't access but actually needed to complete Quests which cost in-game currency to embark on. Additionally, in pushing the update to some but not all players, they triggered a really bad bug where people on the old versions couldn't even reliably access their games.

So what did I spend money for? That?

The lack of communication was appalling and where yes, caveat emptor, I also as a customer purchased the virtual currency in Good Faith that I could still reliably get what I wanted. Suddenly upping and removing the App from the App Store and then updating and breaking all the old versions of the game without any kind of a warning whatsoever was NOT 'in Good Faith'.

The situation is a bit different here, but the concept is still the same. People bought something to get a certain advantage (form a Good Alliance and start earning better rewards) or bought into something thinking it was the only way to get it (big Alliances competitive or not ALL cost HP to expand so if you wanted to just 'have fun' with a bigger group of people, you STILL had to spend to form a group) and now, very suddenly, that's not how it works anymore.

I would say that it's that lack of being able to make an informed choice pre-update of the, "Okay, I know Alliances are going to change within XYZ time... Do I still want to spend on it?" variety that's triggering a good majority of the negative responses here (general here).

Yes, of course change is inevitable and of course I think the responsibility is on all of us to remember this when we make decisions, but I also don't think it's wrong to ease people into major changes as opposed to just dumping ice water over everyone's head... regardless of how common the 'dumping ice water' practice is... but maybe that's just my opinion.

Lystrata

RefinedBean wrote:

The only way this decision wouldn't piss off everyone involved is if they gave it a TON of lead time. They should have, but they didn't. This tinykitty happened because they didn't do the requisite amount of schmoozing with us forum-ites about what was going on. And we're a minority and are hardly ever happy anyway, so why not just pull the band-aid off?

Heh, have you checked out the FB post page recently? Forum goers aren't the only ones whining about a change ... for once. A lot of people following the FB stuff are posting equally angry messages, and ascertaining they're not going to be fooled into spending anything on this game again.

... not trying to argue your post, btw. Agree with all points. Just adding that in this instance, there's not actually a 'minority' of annoyed customers... it's across the board. This was a really, really **** way to go about things.

atomzed

Going back to the poll... The "I won't spend hp anymore as I am not sure when I will be fooled" (29 votes)was kinda what I expected.

I just surprised that the other top vote was for "mpq players are just whiners" (32 votes). Going by the discussion in the other thread, you get a sensing that everyone are just unhappy. But this poll.shows that it's almost evenly split.

Nellyson

Phantron wrote:

Nellyson wrote:

For the most part, D3 is right that those who spent money on alliance spots in the beginning have earned back their investment. I'd like to believe I have. Although it's pretty upsetting that I did spend money on only alliance spots, I feel like I could use a small gratitude gift. Maybe have them send out an email and be like, "We understand how those who bought alliance spots are upset at the entire alliance being open now. We would like to give you one cover of your choice as a Thank You for supporting us and your support for the future of our game." Cause seriously, one cover is nothing! You could even limit it to just a 3 or even a group of 3 , like the recent ones. That won't happen, but hey, it would be nice as one cover barely equals an alliance spot.

People who have a max size alliance more than got their money back but that's a completely different issue from issuing refunds. If someone who spent $100 on alliance slots yesterday is entitled to a refund why not the guy who spent $100 a week ago? A month ago? Six months ago? Unlike say releasing a powerful character and then eventually nerfing, this is much harder to argue incompetence/lack of foresight because you can say the guy who designed 2AP Thunderclap Ragnarok was on crack so it never occurred to anyone else that ending the game on turn 2 was kind of overpowered because it's only limited to some top % of players. But it's awfully hard to miss how all the 20 man alliances popped up overnight once it became obvious that having that size gave you a huge advantage. It's kind of like how in one of the Star Wars an imperial scientist was trying to explain how there are non military uses for the Death Star (destroy planets) but can't come up with one for the Sun Crusher (destroys solar systems).

Those would not fall into "the most part." I don't think that was right. I think they should have announced that this change was coming. Issued refunds at that point instead of oh hey, it's changed....sorry if you just literally spent $200 5 min ago. But, something like this is just difficult to take. I don't like it at all. I just wish they would have done something to compensate everybody. It's just too limited right now.

Unknown

All MPQ players do is whine, including me. Everyone has something to whine about though they may be different.

Unknown

KevinMark wrote:

All MPQ players do is whine, including me. Everyone has something to whine about though they may be different.

Not all no i whined now i take actions. I wont let some game company steal my money like this and take me for a fool. Tonite i will dump that game with 66k iso and 5k hp instore.

I stayed silent when they nerfed spidey, oBW (i have two), magneto .... this time i am not taking it anymore.
.1☆ on play store and warning to newbies, dump the app and i will take my dollars elsewhere. No game company has ever treated me like **** as D3 with their lame excuse and templated emails they keep repeating when i ask for a refund.

homeinvasion

Kaigen wrote:

Where is the "All MPQ players do is whine" option?

Irony

Unknown

homeinvasion wrote:

Kaigen wrote:

Where is the "All MPQ players do is whine" option?

Irony

Only if you're Alanis Morissette.

Nellobee

Kaigen wrote:

homeinvasion wrote:

Kaigen wrote:

Where is the "All MPQ players do is whine" option?

Irony

Only if you're Alanis Morissette.

https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source= ... GkmjXPQZeA