Nerfs, diversions, and you.

wirius

This is in regards to the people out there who are saying you should go contact google and others for a refund over, of ALL things, nerfs in a video game.

Most of us know that D3 did nothing wrong. Legally, they are fine, and going and hurting google or apple and even D3 over the issue of a nerf is wrong. So why are perfectly rational people arguing this? I'm going to argue its not about D3, its about them.

You see, because people spent so much money or time on these champs, they've become incredibly emotionally invested. How healthy that is is not being debated. So when the nerf happens, some people have a few negative emotions flood them. Anger at having power taken away. Feeling foolish because they spent money or time on a good that is so easily changed. A feeling that they themselves made a mistake.

Now mature people who feel these emotions can look at this and say, "O.k., maybe I was foolish to expect this would never change." "Maybe I shouldn't have spent that much money, etc." Immature people think, "I have these horrible emotions, and the cause must be something else. They caused this!" Instead of saying, "Maybe I shouldn't have expected this to remain forever they say," "I got duped!" Instead of saying, "I made a mistake," its, "They should have play tested the champion better!" Instead of saying, "I had the best in the game but now its more balanced for everyone involved," they say, "It was fine, they scammed me of my money/time!"

TLDR: The point is, its time to stop blaming other people for your emotions over nerfs and turning game companies who balance the game into bad guys. They're a company that is trying to make the game more fun and accessible with anyone. Voice your opinion, but don't argue to hurt legit companies and make honest workers have to handle your farce of a business fraud claim because you can't handle your own shame, loss, or regret.

Unknown

Way back upon release, as this game's (and this forum's) community crawled out of the primordial ooze, its barely formed communal mouth creaked open and uttered its first words... "nerf... storm... and ragnarok...."

Not only are players of any kind of persistent game (MMO, MOBA, F2P, whatever) not oblivious of the possibility of balance changes and nerfs, they expect and demand them. As wirius says, pretending otherwise is disingenuous

Geauxbotz

Then quit selling covers. Problem solved.

Unknown

While nerfs are necessary for the game I do think if the nerf is on an egregiously overpowered character it might help to smooth the transition. In a competitive game, not investing in someone who is broken just because he might be nerfed later never works because you'd be putting yourself way behind in the competitive environment. For example, you can argue Sentry took some time before people figured out he was overpowered (even though it wasn't complicated), but it's hard to see the same argument for pre nerf Ragnarok "I often infinite combo with one move". It may be inevitable to screw up but there are degrees of screwing up too.

_RiO_

Nobody is contesting the fact that a nerf was in order on some characters and particular broken combinations.

People are in uproar over the fact that, as is usual with this developer: the resulting nerf is overreaching and is going to essentially shift the entire meta to the point where characters will fall completely out of use, making them and any investment made in them, worthless overnight. The developer is probably going to have their little buffed sale prices for the nerfed heroes for a while, but what you get back out of it hardly compares to the invested HP if you had spent actual hard HP on leveling skills. So people feel cheated.

The fact that "legally, they are fine", says nothing about whether or not they are morally fine.

wirius

Phantron wrote:

While nerfs are necessary for the game I do think if the nerf is on an egregiously overpowered character it might help to smooth the transition. In a competitive game, not investing in someone who is broken just because he might be nerfed later never works because you'd be putting yourself way behind in the competitive environment. For example, you can argue Sentry took some time before people figured out he was overpowered (even though it wasn't complicated), but it's hard to see the same argument for pre nerf Ragnarok "I often infinite combo with one move". It may be inevitable to screw up but there are degrees of screwing up too.

That isn't D3's fault that you decided you needed to have that cover to stay competitive. You could have decided, "That's too much to ask for to stay competitive," and not bought the cover. But to buy the covers, have a nerf, then say, "D3, you theives!" is about you not dealing with your emotions about the actions you decided to do, and not about D3 scamming anyone.

wirius

_RiO_ wrote:

Nobody is contesting the fact that a nerf was in order on some characters and particular broken combinations.

People are in uproar over the fact that, as is usual with this developer: the resulting nerf is overreaching and is going to essentially shift the entire meta to the point where characters will fall completely out of use, making them and any investment made in them, worthless overnight. The developer is probably going to have their little buffed sale prices for the nerfed heroes for a while, but what you get back out of it hardly compares to the invested HP if you had spent actual hard HP on leveling skills. So people feel cheated.

The fact that "legally, they are fine", says nothing about whether or not they are morally fine.

Again, this isn't about D3. We all know good game development means a fun game that maximizes available utility by ensuring a wide vareity of moves and options are available. If one or two characters are crowding out the rest, it is good design to tweak and balance. This is not an issue of morality. They are not attacking you specifically. There are free to play games that balanced all the time. League of legends balanced their champs all the time. Its not fraud or immoral; anyone who thinks it is isn't thinking straight.

Raffoon

OK, as per the OP, I'll put the focus on myself, rather than putting blame outwards:

-I- supported a mobile game by spending over 100 dollars on it.
-I- got screwed when changes were made that broke convention and had an unexpected magnitude to them
-I- will not be spending money on this game ever again

Unfortunately, by the fact that I already spent that money, D3P is walking away the winner here, even if I do never spend a dime on the game again.

So:
In order to change the current incentives for the developers/D3P closer to a structure that makes large over-nerfs like this less of a good idea for them:
I will voice my displeasure about this and discourage others from spending money on the game, here on the forums and anywhere else I go.

Seems reasonable to me.

Geauxbotz

Wirius, not be nosey but how much do you spend on the game? You have a pretty smug attitude towards the people that support your favorite developer.

wirius

Raffoon wrote:

OK, as per the OP, I'll put the focus on myself, rather than putting blame outwards:

-I- supported a mobile game by spending over 100 dollars on it.
-I- got screwed when changes were made that broke convention and had an unexpected magnitude to them
-I- will not be spending money on this game ever again

Unfortunately, by the fact that I already spent that money, D3P is walking away the winner here, even if I do never spend a dime on the game again.

So:
In order to change the current incentives for the developers/D3P closer to a structure that makes large over-nerfs like this less of a good idea for them:
I will voice my displeasure about this and discourage others from spending money on the game, here on the forums and anywhere else I go.

Seems reasonable to me.

And thumbs up to you for that! Absolutely nothing wrong with voicing displeasure and making future transactions based on that displeasure. The only problem is when people go overboard and begin accusing the company of theft, fraud, and dishonest practices when none are there. At that point, that 's emotional issues a person needs to deal with.

Unknown

Since 'we were stupid when we designed this character' usually doesn't give much reassurance to the future of a game it'd be a good idea to have some kind of compensation to go with changes to egregiously broken characters in a game that obviously does try to make money by selling characters to you. If everyone decided to never spend money on the game due to potential nerfs then the game would go out of business and that'd suck too. The 50% sell back price is reasonable for anything that cannot be easily forseen, but I don't know how you can not forseen things like infinite combos isn't going to create a problem later.

Unknown

_RiO_ wrote:

Nobody is contesting the fact that a nerf was in order on some characters and particular broken combinations.

People are in uproar over the fact that, as is usual with this developer: the resulting nerf is overreaching and is going to essentially shift the entire meta to the point where characters will fall completely out of use, making them and any investment made in them, worthless overnight. The developer is probably going to have their little buffed sale prices for the nerfed heroes for a while, but what you get back out of it hardly compares to the invested HP if you had spent actual hard HP on leveling skills. So people feel cheated.

The fact that "legally, they are fine", says nothing about whether or not they are morally fine.

I don't get this either. I had a maxed Rags, maxed Spidey, maxed cMags... and I love those nerfs. Rags and Spidey are the poster children for "overreaching," their nerfs made it harder for me to "win," but made the game much, much, much less tedious and more fun. If you just want covers, why not get sandboxed or play cookie clicker with a post-it note of a marvel character stuck to your screen?

wirius

Geauxbotz wrote:

Wirius, not be nosey but how much do you spend on the game? You have a pretty smug attitude towards the people that support your favorite developer.

Very fair question, not offended at all. About 140 dollars I believe. I bought a few steam packs on sale to buy 2thor (lol, I was a noob). Later, I bought the big starks's salary when you got 20% extra HP and finished up my X-Force and a few other 3's like hood. If they nerf X-Force? I'm fine with that. I got my enjoyment out of it, and that's the way games go. I knew what I was buying, and I knew he could one day be nerfed. If its the responsible thing for the game for him to be nerfed, so be it.

Geauxbotz

They nerfed a character that was two weeks old. And they knew it was coming. But they kept selling those covers, didn't they? If you don't see that as a problem I don't know what to tell you. It's a poor business model and it also poor game design. When people get cheated, they get upset. I hope they do get their money back.

_RiO_

wirius wrote:

That isn't D3's fault that you decided you needed to have that cover to stay competitive. You could have decided, "That's too much to ask for to stay competitive," and not bought the cover. But to buy the covers, have a nerf, then say, "D3, you theives!" is about you not dealing with your emotions about the actions you decided to do, and not about D3 scamming anyone.

It is D3's fault for the initial design flaws in the game that essentially make it impossible to continue to compete at the top level of the game without conforming with the meta and deeply investing into whatever new characters define that meta. Invariably; you will not have been able to amass enough covers to build those characters to full completion by prizes alone by the time the meta has already shifted and there will have already been whales with pockets deep enough to have bought the character outright, so if you want to keep competing at that level (and really; once you've reached end-game and are competing for the 4* top-of-the-foodchain rewards, you have precious little choice other than stopping to play) you are opening your wallet.

(Ofcourse it's probably not an accidental design flaw either, but a conscious design choice. Those periodic bursts of cover sales when the meta is shifting are probably a big contributor, if not the biggest contributor, to 'keeping the lights on', so to say.)

wirius

_RiO_ wrote:

It is D3's fault for the initial design flaws in the game that essentially make it impossible to continue to compete at the top level of the game without conforming with the meta and deeply investing into whatever new characters define that meta. Invariably; you will not have been able to amass enough covers to build those characters to full completion by prizes alone by the time the meta has already shifted and there will have already been whales with pockets deep enough to have bought the character outright, so if you want to keep competing at that level (and really; once you've reached end-game and are competing for the 4* top-of-the-foodchain rewards, you have precious little choice other than stopping to play) you are opening your wallet.

(Ofcourse it's probably not an accidental design flaw either, but a conscious design choice. Those periodic bursts of cover sales when the meta is shifting are probably a big contributor, if not the biggest contributor, to 'keeping the lights on', so to say.)

Again that is YOUR CHOICE. You could have recognized that and said, "I don't think that's worth my money." D3 designing the game that way isn't a scam, its pretty straight forward and obvious. Buying characters carries with it the risk they could be nerfed in the future. If you're willing to accept that, buy in. If you're not, don't buy in, the blame D3 for fraud because you can't handle what you knew could have happened.

And to guy above: I agree IF could have been handled better. I think that's motivation to not invest in new covers in the future, and D3 might ultimately see sales fall short. But this is again not a scam. We have no evidence they were going to intentionally nerf the character. I chalk that up to more likely being a lack of playtest time and deadlines being reached.

Unknown

I'm new to mobile app games and online gaming in general. I've never even heard of the term nerf until I came to this forum. Do you think that many other people downloading this game and playing and paying for that awesome thor and IF would be just as understanding of your "should have known better" argument?

Listen I agree with you in part, if your an adult, you made the decision to purchase the item. It's on them....however...it's never that simple is it? A quick google search on consumer protection laws helped me find this little nugget:

(24) failing to disclose information concerning goods or services which was known at the time of the transaction if such failure to disclose such information was intended to induce the consumer into a transaction into which the consumer would not have entered had the information been disclosed;

Now I don't know one way or another if d3 did or not...but the point is...you don't know either. So to sound all smug about how ridiculous everyone is just comes off...well...smug. You sound just as emotional as all these other people. Was I impacted by this? No. But even I had the same reaction...a lot of people just got "f'd over."

Software companies have lost in court over the whole kids running up the bill over in app purchases thing...the "should have known better" argument didn't work for them.

I can only imagine the reaction of all those 90% who are not on this forum buying thor covers with no notice of the coming change...oh yeah, I forgot, the notice was sent out as long as you know how to find it in game.

wirius

EpicBeastmode wrote:

I'm new to mobile app games and online gaming in general. I've never even heard of the term nerf until I came to this forum. Do you think that many other people downloading this game and playing and paying for that awesome thor and IF would be just as understanding of your "should have known better" argument?

Listen I agree with you in part, if your an adult, you made the decision to purchase the item. It's on them....however...it's never that simple is it? A quick google search on consumer protection laws helped me find this little nugget:

(24) failing to disclose information concerning goods or services which was known at the time of the transaction if such failure to disclose such information was intended to induce the consumer into a transaction into which the consumer would not have entered had the information been disclosed;

Now I don't know one way or another if d3 did or not...but the point is...you don't know either. So to sound all smug about how ridiculous everyone is just comes off...well...smug. You sound just as emotional as all these other people. Was I impacted by this? No. But even I had the same reaction...a lot of people just got "f'd over."

Software companies have lost in court over the whole kids running up the bill over in app purchases thing...the "should have known better" argument didn't work for them.

I can only imagine the reaction of all those 90% who are not on this forum buying thor covers with no notice of the coming change...oh yeah, I forgot, the notice was sent out as long as you know how to find it in game.

End user agreement: http://www.d3p.us/EULA/MarvelPuzzleQuest/

Also, kids don't have the same rules as adults.

Unknown

Eula doesn't trump federal/state statues...otherwise anyone can put in that they are not liable for killing anyone they want at anytime or stealing from you at anytime..or driving drunk or doing anything they decide to. Eula have their purpose in contract disputes, the consumer protection laws are a whole different animal. I guess you believe when parking lots put up a sign they are not liable for break ins or theft either? Guess what....they can be held liable...lol...you think the law is black and white...it is the biggest area of gray ever.

Blergh

What would be interesting is finding out where the posters disputing the ethics and even legality are living.

There is a huge difference in perspective, and even law over digital rights and ownership between US and Europe. Anyone see the trouble steam got into in Germany a few years over licences and them denying access to banned people or people who no longer had the ability to access the internet? I wonder how much of the divide, and difference in attitude can be attributed to cultural differences....

Yes. I am very sad individual.

Unknown

Blergh wrote:

What would be interesting is finding out where the posters disputing the ethics and even legality are living.

I think the greater difference is between those who remember complaining about all the nerfs to weapons and items WE SPENT OUR HARD EARNED DUCATS ON in Ultima Online and Everquest in Nineteen Ninety-Nine. You'd think if there was a legal issue (in the US OR Europe) we'd have a single example where a game company was successfully sued over it by now. Doubly so now that everyone has an in-game currency system so you never bought covers at all, you bought iso and HP, which "weren't nerfed."

Blergh wrote:

There is a huge difference in perspective, and even law over digital rights and ownership between US and Europe. Anyone see the trouble steam got into in Germany a few years over licences and them denying access to banned people or people who no longer had the ability to access the internet?

Valve won that lawsuit...