Gauntlet, Are you kidding me?

Unknown

DAggg,
Am I also correct in the assessment that you find your food in restaurant dumpsters and get free clothing from various charities? You seem to be very opposed to the idea of spending money when you can get by without. I'd like to visit your hut in the woods sometimes. I'll even bring a squirrel we can strip for meat.

Also can people please stop with the "please spread out the prizes more". If they spread it out it becomes the same as all the other PvEs. This is just a treat for the first 10 people, a free token and 100 iso for everyone else is completely fine. Those are not real prizes, they just put them in there so people would get something. Alternatively they could have not given out anything to places 11-10000.

Unknown

GothicKratos wrote:

I feel like this is a nice ideal on how to keep The Gauntlet from being a competitive grindfest, but also giving the folks that still want to have some kind of placing.

* More unique prize tiers. I feel like the ten-pack is a great top prize, but giving it only to the top ten and then giving the other 9,990 players a Standard Token? I understand the ten-pack is supposed to be a fancy carrot, but this is why people feel like it's "too competitive" (even though The Gauntlet is still giving away great Progression Awards, so I feel like they're over-reacting). They're giving away a prize to the 0.01% and nobody else gets anything. Give away some Heroics, give away some Gauntlet Tokens, give away some clumps of ISO-8.

* Smaller prizes. Honestly, a ten-pack isn't a big deal, but it sounds shiny, so everyone gets up in arms about it. Additionally, it is very much so in a different league of prize than just a single Standard Token. There's a big discrepancy here. If you would having been giving away a block of HP and ISO, or single Gauntlet Tokens, or Heroic Tokens - those things would have felt like icing on the cake.

Well-said. These points are key.

More instances of 3-pack, 5-pack, etc rewards would be reasonable.

NorthernPolarity

[quote="GothicKratos"
* More unique prize tiers. I feel like the ten-pack is a great top prize, but giving it only to the top ten and then giving the other 9,990 players a Standard Token? I understand the ten-pack is supposed to be a fancy carrot, but this is why people feel like it's "too competitive" (even though The Gauntlet is still giving away great Progression Awards, so I feel like they're over-reacting). They're giving away a prize to the 0.01% and nobody else gets anything. Give away some Heroics, give away some Gauntlet Tokens, give away some clumps of ISO-8.
[/quote]

That would do the opposite of solving the problem. If you introduce more reward tiers, then people would be EVEN MORE up in arms about this. Part of the reason why this isn't a big deal is because .1% of players will get the top 10 pack, which means that to the other 99.9% of players, this is just a free standard token and iso, and feels exactly the same as normal gauntlet. If you made larger award tiers, then the gauntlet really DOES become competitive just like any other PvE, which given the uproar for even this implementation, would cause even more of an uproar.

GuntherBlobel

Daggg wrote:

The_Valeyard wrote:

I'm getting tired of the "cash grab" reactions to everything.

It's not a big deal at all, but it is what it is: a cash-grab. I would probably be doing the same if I ran things over there. Gotta make money somehow, no need to white-knight for them. Conversely, people do have the right to complain when certain rewards blatantly appeal to that 1% of players who don't mind dropping $50 on this game on any given day. That is a valid complaint for people who invest a lot of time in the game with little reward.

Then Daggg, you should be applauding this instead instead of mocking it. If anyone dropped $50 to be in the T10, then that person just subsidized the game for you AND without getting "ahead" of you in the game. All they got was their name on the leaderboard and a bunch of 2* tokens. Go ahead and think you are clever for playing a "free to play" game without spending money, but your spending behavior is part of the business model too, you know.

Unknown

PPPlaya wrote:

DAggg,
Am I also correct in the assessment that you find your food in restaurant dumpsters and get free clothing from various charities? You seem to be very opposed to the idea of spending money when you can get by without. I'd like to visit your hut in the woods sometimes. I'll even bring a squirrel we can strip for meat.

Ha, honestly that is my ideal endgame, living off the grid. No dumpster-diving though.

GothicKratos

NorthernPolarity wrote:

GothicKratos wrote:

* More unique prize tiers. I feel like the ten-pack is a great top prize, but giving it only to the top ten and then giving the other 9,990 players a Standard Token? I understand the ten-pack is supposed to be a fancy carrot, but this is why people feel like it's "too competitive" (even though The Gauntlet is still giving away great Progression Awards, so I feel like they're over-reacting). They're giving away a prize to the 0.01% and nobody else gets anything. Give away some Heroics, give away some Gauntlet Tokens, give away some clumps of ISO-8.

That would do the opposite of solving the problem. If you introduce more reward tiers, then people would be EVEN MORE up in arms about this. Part of the reason why this isn't a big deal is because .1% of players will get the top 10 pack, which means that to the other 99.9% of players, this is just a free standard token and iso, and feels exactly the same as normal gauntlet. If you made larger award tiers, then the gauntlet really DOES become competitive just like any other PvE, which given the uproar for even this implementation, would cause even more of an uproar.

If the reward tiers are menial, there's nothing to complain about. Normal PvE is competitive because everyone wants the covers. If the top prize was a ten-pack of Event Tokens, next tier down was a ten-pack of Heroics, the next tier down was five-pack of Even Tokens, next down was a five-pack of Heroics, next down would be a single Event, then a single Heroic, then a ten-pack of Standards, five pack of Standards, single Standard, then down to ISO-8 and Hero Point prizes.

Unknown

NorthernPolarity wrote:

Daggg wrote:

The_Valeyard wrote:

I'm getting tired of the "cash grab" reactions to EVERYTHING.

First, they're in the business to make money. It should not be difficult to understand, if they don't make money, there is no game. Again, if they don't get money from someone, there is no free game for those that don't want or cannot spend money.

Second, no one is making any one go for the 10 packs. The gauntlet still has the same rewards as before. You know the same rewards that we're good enough before. The only difference is they added a reward that equates to first place on 1000 person brackets. In other words, they are not cutting back on the regular reward tier; they were generous enough to try and do something different that does not affect anyone that liked the way the gauntlet has been in the past.

It's not a big deal at all, but it is what it is: a cash-grab. I would probably be doing the same if I ran things over there. Gotta make money somehow, no need to white-knight for them. Conversely, people do have the right to complain when certain rewards blatantly appeal to that 1% of players who don't mind dropping $50 on this game on any given day. That is a valid complaint for people who invest a lot of time in the game with little reward. But the fact of that matter is, that aforementioned 1% of players is probably the only reason this game still has a dev team actively working on it.

Calling this a cash grab is just straight up dumb. Even if there were say 100 people, each of which spent 1000 HP on boosts and health packs, that's an entire 500 dollars profit for Demiurge! Considering how they're earning what, 20-30k a day, they'd have to be idiots if they actually implemented this feature with the intention of making any meaningful amounts of money.

The developers added this as an alternative for the higher level people who wanted to try a speed-run through the Gauntlet, and nothing else.

Oh boy...

Again, by nature, everything in this game is a cash-grab, whether it's at a small or large scale. Cell phone games require user purchases to be successful, and that element is definitely not lost on the developers of MPQ.

atomzed

GothicKratos wrote:

* Smaller brackets. Not 100 man brackets, but the usual 10,000 player brackets make it to where practically only the first fifteen or so players to enter have a real chance. 1,000 player brackets maybe? 500? I don't know the right answer, but I know 10,000 is not the right answer either.

I was initially disappointed that only top 10 get the prize. I thought it's better than if they give top 100 the prize. But after some thought, I think that if they reward top 100, I will probably be more stressed since I have a fighting chance.

So in some sense, I think it's better that they keep it at top 0.1% so that gauntlet remains stress free.

GuntherBlobel

Another thing: people were racing to the top finish way before this reward change. I remember the Devs being impressed by the speed at which some people beat the original Gauntlet. Why did they do it? It wasn't for a silly 10-pack then, and it isn't now.

Honestly, this just seems like a way to say Kudos to those speed demons. Why reward only 10 people with 10-packs? Because those are the only 10 names everyone can see on the leaderboard, which was the reward those 10 players were really after.

This thread is a litmus test for players who would criticize anything the Devs do.

Unknown

GuntherBlobel wrote:

Daggg wrote:

The_Valeyard wrote:

I'm getting tired of the "cash grab" reactions to everything.

It's not a big deal at all, but it is what it is: a cash-grab. I would probably be doing the same if I ran things over there. Gotta make money somehow, no need to white-knight for them. Conversely, people do have the right to complain when certain rewards blatantly appeal to that 1% of players who don't mind dropping $50 on this game on any given day. That is a valid complaint for people who invest a lot of time in the game with little reward.

Then Daggg, you should be applauding this instead instead of mocking it. If anyone dropped $50 to be in the T10, then that person just subsidized the game for you AND without getting "ahead" of you in the game. All they got was their name on the leaderboard and a bunch of 2* tokens. Go ahead and think you are clever for playing a "free to play" game without spending money, but your spending behavior is part of the business model too, you know.

Oh no, don't get me wrong -- I applaud this game vehemently. I've gotten several friends to play (one who has admitted to spending over $100 on the game, it can be a like a crack binge if you've got the cash, lol), I always shoot out that five-star review upon every update, and although I haven't spent a ton of money on the game, I have spent a small amount of money myself(<$10? For roster slots), so I feel like I've helped promote their game a decent amount.

But in a forum full of other players who already play the game as well, it's ok to analyze the game a bit.

g0dai

Just to add to the conversation, I finished 8th in my bracket for the first gauntlet. I didn't spend HP on the run and I'm not a "rich player" dumping large amounts of money into the game. I used ISO to buy the three 5-pack 2-color AP boosts, which averages out to 120 ISO per match (which I do for most of my PVP matches). I only used one heal, and that was just to be safe at the end of the main matches.

I don't have 270 XF / 270 4hor as some suggested would have been required to make it into the Top 10; For the main matches, I used my 226 XF / 166 CMags / 94 Cage. Cage is at lvl 5 in , which saved me from using heals. Otherwise I didn't use him for anything. For the Daredevil matches, I stuck with XF and CMags, and my DD comes in at lvl 163 when buffed by the event. I don't remember using any of DD's powers during the gauntlet matches.

I started right when the event began and tried my best to play quickly, but about halfway through, my wife started getting on my case. I lost some time during that match, so I was surprised to find myself in 8th.

Hopefully this provides some evidence that it wasn't necessary to be a top-tier player, or a big money player, to place in this event. Now I'm wondering, do they really have this thing set to run for the next 4 days? I think that would be a little anticlimactic.

Unknown

GuntherBlobel wrote:

This thread is a litmus test for players who would criticize anything the Devs do.

I don't know if that statement is true in this case, but you can't be surrounded by yes-men or you will never improve.

Hulk11

Since this is about rewards. The base rewards suck bad. What did I get for finishing the first one, like 2k iso. Really? This mode gets dumbed down so bad, the non competition side doesn't get any praise at all if this is what we get. Going to start 2nd tomorrow, but the scaling blows, who knows if I'll get the only rewards that almost matter. Good mode but **** scaling mixed in with stupid low rewards.

NorthernPolarity

Daggg wrote:

NorthernPolarity wrote:

Daggg wrote:

The_Valeyard wrote:

I'm getting tired of the "cash grab" reactions to EVERYTHING.

First, they're in the business to make money. It should not be difficult to understand, if they don't make money, there is no game. Again, if they don't get money from someone, there is no free game for those that don't want or cannot spend money.

Second, no one is making any one go for the 10 packs. The gauntlet still has the same rewards as before. You know the same rewards that we're good enough before. The only difference is they added a reward that equates to first place on 1000 person brackets. In other words, they are not cutting back on the regular reward tier; they were generous enough to try and do something different that does not affect anyone that liked the way the gauntlet has been in the past.

It's not a big deal at all, but it is what it is: a cash-grab. I would probably be doing the same if I ran things over there. Gotta make money somehow, no need to white-knight for them. Conversely, people do have the right to complain when certain rewards blatantly appeal to that 1% of players who don't mind dropping $50 on this game on any given day. That is a valid complaint for people who invest a lot of time in the game with little reward. But the fact of that matter is, that aforementioned 1% of players is probably the only reason this game still has a dev team actively working on it.

Calling this a cash grab is just straight up dumb. Even if there were say 100 people, each of which spent 1000 HP on boosts and health packs, that's an entire 500 dollars profit for Demiurge! Considering how they're earning what, 20-30k a day, they'd have to be idiots if they actually implemented this feature with the intention of making any meaningful amounts of money.

The developers added this as an alternative for the higher level people who wanted to try a speed-run through the Gauntlet, and nothing else.

Oh boy...

Again, by nature, everything in this game is a cash-grab, whether it's at a small or large scale. Cell phone games require user purchases to be successful, and that element is definitely not lost on the developers of MPQ.

You have to understand that when you say "cash-grab", people interpret this as "a feature that exists for the sole purpose of screwing money out of the customers". Not a feature that is beneficial to the customers, but one that is ONLY trying to get money out of them. A cash-grab is something like "Regen outside of combat has now fully been removed! Now you can only use health packs to regenerate a character's health!".

By your logic, literally every single developer change to the game is a cash-grab. Give out a free heroic token to all players? Cash grab because it makes the players want to play more. Promote a balanced metagame by balancing characters? A cash grab because that means players actually have choice in what characters they choose. If everything is a cash grab, then whats the point of calling things a cash grab? You get to the point where you start calling things that Demiurge has added solely for the benefit of the players a cash grab, and that makes the term completely pointless and arbitrary.

Unknown

I'm not offended that it's a cash-grab because cash has to show up somewhere. I am offended that it is an ineffective cash grab that made me feel less good about this game while returning negligible revenue. If D3's metrics come in and say, "Hey guys we made $5000 attributed to this new change so joke's on you for saying this sucks!" I wouldn't mind that at all, because that $5000 can hopefully pay for someone to work on new content so having a a few angry forum guys is a great tradeoff for $5000. But for $100, the joke is indeed on D3. If a single whale says, "This is dumb, I'm going to stop buying this week's Stark's Salary to protest" then they have already lost the likely total value they made of this new structure (I think 20 guys spending 500 HP is unbelievably generous in favor of D3, as I'm sure most of the top 10 didn't need to spend any HP). Yes I get that people are usually just saying this stuff and not likely to actually do it, but $100 is such a low bar for damage done by angry forum users that it's hard to see this bar somehow not cleared.

Believe it or not, not every change to the game is positive. The AP banner, for example, is obviously a negative addition to the game, and had it not been removed relatively quickly I can certainly imagine that translate to a long term hit, because it is indeed quite aggrevating to get the pause every single turn. The change to Gauntlet did not improve the enjoyability of the event. It did not return any meaningful amount of money even using a very generous estimation of amount of HP people may have spent to get top 10, and it certainly made a lot of people angry. While player goodwill is worth very little, I think it's still worth more than $100.

Unknown

GuntherBlobel wrote:

Daggg wrote:

The_Valeyard wrote:

I'm getting tired of the "cash grab" reactions to everything.

It's not a big deal at all, but it is what it is: a cash-grab. I would probably be doing the same if I ran things over there. Gotta make money somehow, no need to white-knight for them. Conversely, people do have the right to complain when certain rewards blatantly appeal to that 1% of players who don't mind dropping $50 on this game on any given day. That is a valid complaint for people who invest a lot of time in the game with little reward.

Then Daggg, you should be applauding this instead instead of mocking it. If anyone dropped $50 to be in the T10, then that person just subsidized the game for you AND without getting "ahead" of you in the game. All they got was their name on the leaderboard and a bunch of 2* tokens. Go ahead and think you are clever for playing a "free to play" game without spending money, but your spending behavior is part of the business model too, you know.

See, if that actually happened I'd support this, except I doubt the game made more than $100 out of every person who placed top 10 in the first 2 brackets because it was clear all you had to do is iso 8 boost for the relatively low difficulty. If 20 people spent 500 HP each to try to get top 10, that's $100 at the worst money to HP ratio. Never mind why you'd need 50 AP+3 all boosts to beat the first two brackets in the first place (and clearly people who placed didn't need it), it's still a paltry amount of money for a considerable amount of ill will.

NorthernPolarity

Phantron wrote:

I'm not offended that it's a cash-grab because cash has to show up somewhere. I am offended that it is an ineffective cash grab that made me feel less good about this game while returning negligible revenue. If D3's metrics come in and say, "Hey guys we made $5000 attributed to this new change so joke's on you for saying this sucks!" I wouldn't mind that at all, because that $5000 can hopefully pay for someone to work on new content so having a a few angry forum guys is a great tradeoff for $5000. But for $100, the joke is indeed on D3. If a single whale says, "This is dumb, I'm going to stop buying this week's Stark's Salary to protest" then they have already lost the likely total value they made of this new structure (I think 20 guys spending 500 HP is unbelievably generous in favor of D3, as I'm sure most of the top 10 didn't need to spend any HP). Yes I get that people are usually just saying this stuff and not likely to actually do it, but $100 is such a low bar for damage done by angry forum users that it's hard to see this bar somehow not cleared.

Believe it or not, not every change to the game is positive. The AP banner, for example, is obviously a negative addition to the game, and had it not been removed relatively quickly I can certainly imagine that translate to a long term hit, because it is indeed quite aggrevating to get the pause every single turn. The change to Gauntlet did not improve the enjoyability of the event. It did not return any meaningful amount of money even using a very generous estimation of amount of HP people may have spent to get top 10, and it certainly made a lot of people angry. While player goodwill is worth very little, I think it's still worth more than $100.

Or you know, maybe the developers aren't a bunch of idiots, and they implemented this feature because they were thought it was fun and were trying to give the more hardcore players a new and interesting way to play the gauntlet? Just because you hate the feature and think it's pointless doesn't mean that everyone else has the exact feeling about it.

Hulk11

NorthernPolarity wrote:

Phantron wrote:

I'm not offended that it's a cash-grab because cash has to show up somewhere. I am offended that it is an ineffective cash grab that made me feel less good about this game while returning negligible revenue. If D3's metrics come in and say, "Hey guys we made $5000 attributed to this new change so joke's on you for saying this sucks!" I wouldn't mind that at all, because that $5000 can hopefully pay for someone to work on new content so having a a few angry forum guys is a great tradeoff for $5000. But for $100, the joke is indeed on D3. If a single whale says, "This is dumb, I'm going to stop buying this week's Stark's Salary to protest" then they have already lost the likely total value they made of this new structure (I think 20 guys spending 500 HP is unbelievably generous in favor of D3, as I'm sure most of the top 10 didn't need to spend any HP). Yes I get that people are usually just saying this stuff and not likely to actually do it, but $100 is such a low bar for damage done by angry forum users that it's hard to see this bar somehow not cleared.

Believe it or not, not every change to the game is positive. The AP banner, for example, is obviously a negative addition to the game, and had it not been removed relatively quickly I can certainly imagine that translate to a long term hit, because it is indeed quite aggrevating to get the pause every single turn. The change to Gauntlet did not improve the enjoyability of the event. It did not return any meaningful amount of money even using a very generous estimation of amount of HP people may have spent to get top 10, and it certainly made a lot of people angry. While player goodwill is worth very little, I think it's still worth more than $100.

Or you know, maybe the developers aren't a bunch of idiots, and they implemented this feature because they were thought it was fun and were trying to give the more hardcore players a new and interesting way to play the gauntlet? Just because you hate the feature and think it's pointless doesn't mean that everyone else has the exact feeling about it.

What really makes this more enticing to a hardcore player? If the scaling and characters you have are in your favor it's really anyone's game, what's hardcore about that lol?

NorthernPolarity

GothicKratos wrote:

NorthernPolarity wrote:

GothicKratos wrote:

* More unique prize tiers. I feel like the ten-pack is a great top prize, but giving it only to the top ten and then giving the other 9,990 players a Standard Token? I understand the ten-pack is supposed to be a fancy carrot, but this is why people feel like it's "too competitive" (even though The Gauntlet is still giving away great Progression Awards, so I feel like they're over-reacting). They're giving away a prize to the 0.01% and nobody else gets anything. Give away some Heroics, give away some Gauntlet Tokens, give away some clumps of ISO-8.

That would do the opposite of solving the problem. If you introduce more reward tiers, then people would be EVEN MORE up in arms about this. Part of the reason why this isn't a big deal is because .1% of players will get the top 10 pack, which means that to the other 99.9% of players, this is just a free standard token and iso, and feels exactly the same as normal gauntlet. If you made larger award tiers, then the gauntlet really DOES become competitive just like any other PvE, which given the uproar for even this implementation, would cause even more of an uproar.

If the reward tiers are menial, there's nothing to complain about. Normal PvE is competitive because everyone wants the covers. If the top prize was a ten-pack of Event Tokens, next tier down was a ten-pack of Heroics, the next tier down was five-pack of Even Tokens, next down was a five-pack of Heroics, next down would be a single Event, then a single Heroic, then a ten-pack of Standards, five pack of Standards, single Standard, then down to ISO-8 and Hero Point prizes.

I mean, people are already struggling seeing the current rewards as something extra, and the current state of the event as is only affects 0.1% of the playerbase. If people can't handle a reward structure like this, and are already complaining that "the Gauntlet is ruined! Now it's competitive!", what do you think they'd say to a system like yours, even if it is completely free?

NorthernPolarity

Hulk11 wrote:

NorthernPolarity wrote:

Phantron wrote:

I'm not offended that it's a cash-grab because cash has to show up somewhere. I am offended that it is an ineffective cash grab that made me feel less good about this game while returning negligible revenue. If D3's metrics come in and say, "Hey guys we made $5000 attributed to this new change so joke's on you for saying this sucks!" I wouldn't mind that at all, because that $5000 can hopefully pay for someone to work on new content so having a a few angry forum guys is a great tradeoff for $5000. But for $100, the joke is indeed on D3. If a single whale says, "This is dumb, I'm going to stop buying this week's Stark's Salary to protest" then they have already lost the likely total value they made of this new structure (I think 20 guys spending 500 HP is unbelievably generous in favor of D3, as I'm sure most of the top 10 didn't need to spend any HP). Yes I get that people are usually just saying this stuff and not likely to actually do it, but $100 is such a low bar for damage done by angry forum users that it's hard to see this bar somehow not cleared.

Believe it or not, not every change to the game is positive. The AP banner, for example, is obviously a negative addition to the game, and had it not been removed relatively quickly I can certainly imagine that translate to a long term hit, because it is indeed quite aggrevating to get the pause every single turn. The change to Gauntlet did not improve the enjoyability of the event. It did not return any meaningful amount of money even using a very generous estimation of amount of HP people may have spent to get top 10, and it certainly made a lot of people angry. While player goodwill is worth very little, I think it's still worth more than $100.

Or you know, maybe the developers aren't a bunch of idiots, and they implemented this feature because they were thought it was fun and were trying to give the more hardcore players a new and interesting way to play the gauntlet? Just because you hate the feature and think it's pointless doesn't mean that everyone else has the exact feeling about it.

What really makes this more enticing to a hardcore player? If the scaling and characters you have are in your favor it's really anyone's game, what's hardcore about that lol?

Okay... replace the term "hardcore" with "players who think that speedrunning could be interesting, and have the necessary roster to do so?"