The Business of Video Games (an homage to Ragnarok)...

Unknown

Demiurge_Al wrote:

Okay - I'll take the bait. It's wonderful to see fellow game-industry folks on this forum, thanks for posting.

The design decisions are made at Demiurge by the front-line designers at Demiurge in the interest of making the game great. Our publishing partners at D3Publisher have always supported us, trusted us to make the right decisions and encouraged our team to take the long-view. Ultimately, we believe our success comes from engaged players and we think that the best way to create that engagement is by having a balanced game with no single dominant character. We know that it incurs pain for some of our players and we are genuinely feel bad about that.

We certainly could stand to improve our communication to everyone about upcoming balance changes. We're working on that and you'll see some improvements in the future.

<back to lurking>

Cheers,
Al

Al, I'd like to see some reasoning behind the severity of this nerf. There is almost ZERO reason to play Rag over Thor now. Thor's Red costs the same, generates colors for it's next skill (Yellow) , and does more damage. His Yellow then feeds into his Green and does about 130% more damage than Rag's red. He has I think 1000 fewer HP's than Rag, and let's face it, that's just not alot (2 turns of AP matching at high levels not counting any special skills). He's also only a 2 star.

The coommunication for the game is atrocious! The design consideratoins seem EXTREMELY poor. Yes Rag was the overwhelming number 1 choice for players to work towards due to his abillity. However, as a damage dealer at 3 stars, he seemed just slightly over powered (His red should have been 4 points not 2 from the beginning), and from Thor to Rag he was the perfect transition from 2 star to 3 star. The fact that all the 4-star characters are extremely under powered, and most of the other 3 stars are underwhelming as primary damage dealers, doesn't mean you nerf the best character in your game into oblivion, especially when your customers are spending real money to buy him and level him up. That is a cardinal sin of any type of pay to play game. Small nerfs and nice buffs to other characters is the way to go.

And COMMUNICATE for crying out loud!!! I blasted you guys back when you started the hulk event and changed how the rubber banding worked for your lack of communication. You need a community manager very badly!!!

GuntherBlobel

Great post. And I am glad to see a reply from the studio.

MPQ has been fun and well worth the money I've spent. But it is constantly changing and the buyer should beware. MPQ could disappear tomorrow.

I get nauseous whenever I look at the $25 upgrades for 4* covers (someone must be buying them). Demiurge, save yourself the headache and get rid of the expensive items that lead to buyer remorse. Have the profits from these items paid for the tech support time dealing with refund requests? I do wonder.

Unknown

dmendro wrote:

Al, I'd like to see some reasoning behind the severity of this nerf.

I don't understand why people are confused on this part as it seems pretty simple. D3 makes their money based on people buying ISO or HP with cash. The primary (but not only) place that these resources are used is in leveling characters. Each character is a potential resource for the company to make money. That potential is based on how much ISO or HP remains before you max it out. A completely unleveled character has huge potential profit because a user can spend money to level it up.

A maxed out character, on the other hand, now has zero potential profit. In an ideal world for the developers, they would like you to immediately stop playing with a maxed out character as soon as you max him out and instead try to make you really want to max out the next character. What better way than to over-nerf a character that is popular? Now everyone has to move on to the next character because no one will want to use this one anymore.

Eddiemon

ccseifert wrote:

dmendro wrote:

Al, I'd like to see some reasoning behind the severity of this nerf.

I don't understand why people are confused on this part as it seems pretty simple. D3 makes their money based on people buying ISO or HP with cash. The primary (but not only) place that these resources are used is in leveling characters. Each character is a potential resource for the company to make money. That potential is based on how much ISO or HP remains before you max it out. A completely unleveled character has huge potential profit because a user can spend money to level it up.

A maxed out character, on the other hand, now has zero potential profit. In an ideal world for the developers, they would like you to immediately stop playing with a maxed out character as soon as you max him out and instead try to make you really want to max out the next character. What better way than to over-nerf a character that is popular? Now everyone has to move on to the next character because no one will want to use this one anymore.

That rationale would only make sense if most people had a maxed Rag. This obviously was not the case.

A 1-2 turn guaranteed win with Rag and grey widow was a completely broken mechanic. This Nerf firstly fixed that and secondly removed the pressure on most players to buy Rag covers to be competitive to avoid the pay to win stigma.

Unknown

ccseifert wrote:

dmendro wrote:

Al, I'd like to see some reasoning behind the severity of this nerf.

I don't understand why people are confused on this part as it seems pretty simple. D3 makes their money based on people buying ISO or HP with cash. The primary (but not only) place that these resources are used is in leveling characters. Each character is a potential resource for the company to make money. That potential is based on how much ISO or HP remains before you max it out. A completely unleveled character has huge potential profit because a user can spend money to level it up.

A maxed out character, on the other hand, now has zero potential profit. In an ideal world for the developers, they would like you to immediately stop playing with a maxed out character as soon as you max him out and instead try to make you really want to max out the next character. What better way than to over-nerf a character that is popular? Now everyone has to move on to the next character because no one will want to use this one anymore.

I dunno about you, but most people I know who play this game do not have maxed Rag's and I imagine this character is a huge source of income from ISO and HP.

Eddiemon

f3nfire wrote:

You are dead wrong. Been into worlds top 25 raids for a long time.we had a GM with us when we encountered the four horsemen. He knew his tinykitty and watched us try, had a look into the mechanics and two weeks later, tinykitty was balanced. With every desperate reach out to the casuals, Blizzard lost top players and theory crafters. Until the point where WOW became a paradise for 13 year olds and housewives. Game lost its appeal an the subscriptions dropped like crazy. This game mainly consists of PvP and people hate being crushed, but they all want to be part of the big guys party. So they grind their teeth and man up, get their stuff and lots of satisfaction along the way with every milestone. In the meantime thez discover new goals to reach out for. That's the nature of competition and it nets you a frenetic and sometimes fanatic player base.

Except you made my point. The GM went into a raid. He didn't post on the general forums and ask for everyone's buy in.

It was great for you that you got 1 on 1 time with a GM (or 40 on 1 given the raid). But for 99 point lots percent of the player base the reality was zero consultation and zero interaction. For all we know the devs here could be speaking to a select group of individuals on the side.

Unknown

Toxicadam wrote:

Elementalor wrote:

Pentagoon wrote:

I consider the guys at D3 brilliant - the business model is no doubt amazing, when coupled with the hook of randomized prizes and enough licensed content and storytelling to keep it interesting enough for us to lose sleep over.

It's a carbon copy of the Puzzle and Dragons model, they've won quite a few awards for it.

You couldn't be more wrong.

PAD is a non-competitive (actually cooperative game) that has 100's of more characters, more strategies and a TON more content. Sadly, much better art also.

Also, they are far more generous in giving away in-game currency and have much better communication with their fanbase. People spend money on PAD and don't feel like they got **** in the process.

None of those things you're talking about is the business model. You're talking about the game design. The fanbase communication is more directly related to marketing as well.

Unknown

Of course the nerf is related to $ because a bad game doesn't make good $, and at the high end MPQ is a bad game with Ragnarok being so dominant. You won't have very many of the so called 'whales' that will drop several hundred dollars just to get Ragnarok (getting that first Rag red can easily take that much money), and further, those guys who did this ALREADY paid and would have no reason to continue paying because they've a character who cannot be matched by anyone else.

There was another post comparing it to MTG before, and MTG is powerful because it has FOTM. This cycle it might be Voice of Resurgence that is the rage, and next cycle it might be Thassa. If Voice of Resurgence is always the strongest creature at any given time in MTG, all that does is people who have 4 copies of that will never need any more, and new guys will generally be discouraged by the price tag. Because the FOTM changes depending on which block is in there's a reason to continue to invest in the game. Even if you missed out this cycle's uber deck, you can always start buying packs for a new expansion and hope you're part of that crowd. By the way, an article for MTG says they'd very much like to nerf certain cards. The only problem is that MTG is a physical product so it's pretty hard for WotC to make a change like "Voice of Resurgence now costs GGWW instead of GW", which is why they can only ban cards (which they do when certain cards are deemed too powerful). The reason why you don't see too much bans on MTG is because WotC has been doing this for 20 years so they're pretty good at figuring out how to make something that's borderline broken but not completely broken. Even then, you still occasionally see cards show up on the banned list that people obviously paid big $ for.

Unknown

I like the MTG comparison. MTG does it with sets and cycles. A super powerful card like Skullclamps was only out in one set and then pops up now and then. You can still get the original card and play with it but it cycles in and out. Nothing about the actual card was changed.

Unknown

Eddiemon wrote:

ccseifert wrote:

dmendro wrote:

Al, I'd like to see some reasoning behind the severity of this nerf.

That rationale would only make sense if most people had a maxed Rag. This obviously was not the case.

A 1-2 turn guaranteed win with Rag and grey widow was a completely broken mechanic. This Nerf firstly fixed that and secondly removed the pressure on most players to buy Rag covers to be competitive to avoid the pay to win stigma.

That rationale would make sense if I were referring to Rag being nerfed (which I wasn't) as opposed to referring to the severity of the nerf (which I was). I have no problem with them tweaking characters to fine tune balance. I do have a problem with them slashing and burning characters so that they are significantly worse and you have no strategic reason to play them (see the oft-mentioned comparison between the new Rag and Thor), particularly if they were expensive for players to max out and especially if they give little to no reason as to why.

Unknown

Saint Matthew wrote:

I like the MTG comparison. MTG does it with sets and cycles. A super powerful card like Skullclamps was only out in one set and then pops up now and then. You can still get the original card and play with it but it cycles in and out. Nothing about the actual card was changed.

Pre nerf Ragnarok would clearly be considered an equivalent of a 'Vintage' level power in MTG, though, and there are far more non Vintage tournaments than Vintage tournaments. I'd imagine if you scale the frequency of playing in MPQ to MTG, it'd be like perhaps every month there's a tournament you can even use Ragnarok at all. In all the other touranaments, PvE events, and even SHIELD training he'd be completely banned, the same way you sure can't use an Ancestral Recall in the vast majority of MTG tournaments. Is that really better? You'd have your character but you'd be lucky to use him once a month?

Unknown

the mention of ancestral recall made my bits and bytes tingle with joy btw

Unknown

I can see that balancing is needed and Rags was too powerful. Disappointed that they felt the need to make him unusable but I suspect he will be in his proper place after the rest of the nerfs (would have preferred them to all happen at once). Wish I had not made Hulk skill decisions based on having strong red in Rags, Thor, and Wolvie since I am now expecting that to be gone. Along with the Spidey stun lock. At least I have had Spidey with 5 blue for a while.

Anyway, from a business perspective, it is bad business to have Rags own all as it means the other characters will not be upgraded and thus no income for them. I get it from a long term view but they should have done this a long time ago rather than waiting for so many to invest in him. I've asked for a refund on HP I used to level up Rags last week (yea I know - don't hold my breath). If they respond to that favorably it will make a big difference.

Pentagoon

Demiurge_Al wrote:

Okay - I'll take the bait. It's wonderful to see fellow game-industry folks on this forum, thanks for posting.

The design decisions are made at Demiurge by the front-line designers at Demiurge in the interest of making the game great. Our publishing partners at D3Publisher have always supported us, trusted us to make the right decisions and encouraged our team to take the long-view. Ultimately, we believe our success comes from engaged players and we think that the best way to create that engagement is by having a balanced game with no single dominant character. We know that it incurs pain for some of our players and we genuinely feel bad about that.

We certainly could stand to improve our communication to everyone about upcoming balance changes. We're working on that and you'll see some improvements in the future.

<back to lurking>

Cheers,
Al

I hope you found my bait tasty, and note that I used a barbless hook Thank you Al for your candid, direct response to me, but more-so for posting the upcoming balancing list for the community to digest. I'm glad to hear that your relationship with your publisher isn't as bad as in a few environments I worked in prior, but that makes me worry about the process of balancing decisions, and how anyone in their right mind would have nerfed a 3* character so recklessly. Maybe whoever play-tests those characters should be forced to earn the statistics behind them so they don't take the skills and powers for granted

I took a few days to really try to make Ragnarok work in my lineup, but for PvE and PvP both he's quite underpowered, even fully maxed which is very inappropriate for a 3*. There's simply no synergy to be had there, so I'm slugging away, spending my ISO bringing Thor up to 85 (10 to go). I am unable to complete the level 240x3 Hunt missions with my current lineup, thus am unable to compete at the upper echelon anymore. It's humbling and if it weren't for Thor and my maxed Storm Classic (both 2* of course) I'd have little chance of competing, even with a maxed 3* Rag - sitting on the bench now. Seeing Thor, Spidey, and Mags on the lineup for balancing makes me leery to invest in any direction at this point, but at least I have more information now to help.

Again, thanks for responding - I appreciate it.

--\(*_*)/

Unknown

I found my 115 Rags to be a bench warmer now too as well and found my 85 Thor to be a better fit in almost all circumstances. I'm also hesitant to increase covers beyond 3/3/3 because of potential future changes.

Unknown

Wow. I start to thing nerfing had a ton of benefits if only from inducing lots of excellent posts here.

Unknown

pasa_ wrote:

Wow. I start to thing nerfing had a ton of benefits if only from inducing lots of excellent posts here.

that's the nature of the beast, massive change leads to massive disgruntled which leads to massive concessions

Unknown

Pentagoon wrote:

I hope you found my bait tasty, and note that I used a barbless hook

Pentagoon wrote:

and how anyone in their right mind would have nerfed a 3* character so recklessly.

Even with a barbless hook, you certainly gave the line a good yank once you had him on.

I would propose a counter-argument as to why Rags was nerfed so hard. If it was a balanced nerf, then it wouldn't turn people off of him and there would still be very little evolution within the meta. They needed people to bench Rags and go out and consistently try other heroes in the competitive high brackets (which are really the only places you'd see a 5/5 100+ Rags). Granted with a relatively small pool of heroes, there is still very little synergistic diversity to be had and remain competitive. By nerfing him so hard, they made sure no one will use him, encouraging people to try out more combos so that they as developers can get more feedback on player mentality, playstyle, and future balancing / design concerns and/or ideas. I suspect that in a month or 2, Rag will get balanced up a bit.

Also, I would question the wisdom of you putting ISO into 2* Thor given that he's on the "re-balancing" list. Most people in the middling tiers of competition see nothing but Wolvie/Thor and I suspect that they'll be breaking that combo up for the same reasons as above - more diversity and more data collection.

Personally, I agree with them that the game needs to be slowed down by a turn or 2. However, if Rags really is the new standard for speed, they can't expect us to grind out matches as we do now. I suspect they'll hear the player feedback and come to a happy medium.

Unknown

Phantron wrote:

Of course the nerf is related to $ because a bad game doesn't make good $, and at the high end MPQ is a bad game with Ragnarok being so dominant. You won't have very many of the so called 'whales' that will drop several hundred dollars just to get Ragnarok (getting that first Rag red can easily take that much money), and further, those guys who did this ALREADY paid and would have no reason to continue paying because they've a character who cannot be matched by anyone else.

Just as others pointed out, the best account state of users for the studio would be 31/31(*) having each character, maxed out. (*) replace with the current number of heroes.
On whatever path it gets there.

If the game is unbalanced, then it can never approach that state, instead accounts will have converge to 3-4 heroes maxed and that's it. And lesser amount of them too, as too many people will find it overly boring and never take root.

What means trimming the overpowered things, pushing up abandoned stuff and obviously keep adding new content to jump on.

Unknown

Phantron wrote:

There was another post comparing it to MTG before, and MTG is powerful because it has FOTM. This cycle it might be Voice of Resurgence that is the rage, and next cycle it might be Thassa. If Voice of Resurgence is always the strongest creature at any given time in MTG, all that does is people who have 4 copies of that will never need any more, and new guys will generally be discouraged by the price tag. Because the FOTM changes depending on which block is in there's a reason to continue to invest in the game. Even if you missed out this cycle's uber deck, you can always start buying packs for a new expansion and hope you're part of that crowd. By the way, an article for MTG says they'd very much like to nerf certain cards. The only problem is that MTG is a physical product so it's pretty hard for WotC to make a change like "Voice of Resurgence now costs GGWW instead of GW", which is why they can only ban cards (which they do when certain cards are deemed too powerful). The reason why you don't see too much bans on MTG is because WotC has been doing this for 20 years so they're pretty good at figuring out how to make something that's borderline broken but not completely broken. Even then, you still occasionally see cards show up on the banned list that people obviously paid big $ for.

This last part is somewhat odd -- over the history of MtG the rules changed several times in drastic ways, rendering old cards work differnetly. Many cards got different text and in tournaments always the most recent version of the Oracle, English is in effect whatever is actually written. And each half-year there is an update to the banned and restricted lists that influence the card pool.

MtG from almost the beginning put extreme amount of resources into R&D, testing and thinking interactions back and forth. Reaching the release the product is normally of good balance quality. Yet even there overlooks happen that results in eventual bannings. What is the way to go, all for the sake of the game. Those playing in the pre-ban formats can tell how un-fun it was, on either side.

I didn't play with Rag but descriptions here on the rag/gsbw team sounds exactly like playing with the Prosperity-Bloom deck at the time, usially just called the "solitaire'. It was a relief when Squandered Resources finally hit the ban list.