jralbino wrote: I had a thought to create a checklist for the devs to think about when they decide to institute changes. This isn't meant to be snarky, condescending, or critical of change. It's really meant to be a roadmap that will help avoid some of the landmines they seem to keep stepping on, when they feel a significant change is necessary: 1. Communicate the change ahead of time, ideally in a pop up for people not on the forums. More importantly honestly communicate the intent of a change and the progress, negative or positive, towards that goal. The honesty part is key. The player base will quickly detect "spin", pick it apart and immediately assign the worst of intentions (e.g. "also...money") 2. Keep in mind how the specifics attributes of different event types will impact the change and vice versa. Call this the Nefarious Foes test. 3. Keep in mind the rewards, and how hotly contested (or low demand) rewards may impact the ability to properly evaluate the change. Also realize that a poorly received change will be made worse if high demand covers are at stake. 4. Understand your characters and the impact a change might have on each of them. For example, scaling 1*s and 2* to 395 is very different than scaling a 3* or 4* to that level. Is that considered? 5. Think about the winners and losers of changes made in the middle of an event and actively decide whether the winner/loser equation is acceptable. So many negative reactions are the result of divergence from expectations. Anticipate that. 6. When creating characters don't forget to consider user demand (not necessarily fan favorites but needs) and the needs of the metagame. Think about what is lacking out there rather than create characters, good or bad, and leaving the player base to figure out where they fit. The overpopulation of R/G/Y and the (relative) under-representation of B/B/P is a symptom of this. 7. Understand how a change will impact diverse, highly developed rosters, mid-tier transition rosters and limited, lower-level rosters. Actively decide whether the impact equation is acceptable. 8. Have someone play-test the changes, not for bugs, I assume that's done, but rather to ask one simple question: Does this make the game more fun or less fun? The answer may be no, and the change might be for business reasons, but get ahead of it and anticipate the impact of making the game less fun for players. 9. Use your forum resources. I can't believe some of the quality, prolific, free work some guys put in on this forum. Their work has helped hundreds of players while returning very little in the way of tangible benefits. I'm sure if you contacted 5 trusted people and asked them their general thoughts on a change that you're noodling around, they'd be thrilled to brainstorm potential issues you wouldn't have though of otherwise. 10. Put on the armor and stay in the arena. A forum is obviously an easy place for people to vent, be nasty, and contribute little to a good conversation. But, one look at this forum will show there are also a ton of reasonable people that really want to contribute in a positive way. You could follow every single one of the steps above and still get slammed. Unfair maybe, but there's little that will change that. The flip-side is that if you don't follow any of these steps, you'll lose the people that want to contribute, and that's good for no one. Edit: 11. In honor of 3* Daken and now Hood. Try to avoid changing character abilities or costs shortly after you've awarded covers. Obviously people commit to builds that might be rendered obsolete by changes. That's just some of one man's thoughts. I would think if these things were considered before making changes it would have a snowball effect of goodwill and a feedback loop that would create a better game, which I'd expect to translate into being a more profitable game. At very least, you'd have to apologize less.