Iron Fist Buyback - Policy Update For New Characters

Unknown

It's reassuring to see a firm policy being put in place on this. I for one welcome it, though the timing of it - in light of the recent "character updates" thread and lack of dev response there - is generating a lot of the saltiness in this thread. I'm not going to tell anyone their opinions are 'wrong' per se, but I do want to explain why I personally feel the way I do:

Lets say they release Gambit tomorrow and nerf him in 20 days. I've farmed out 7 covers and bought 3.

If Gambit is way OP and gets nerfed to the point of being useless, I'm entitled to a refund for the covers/HP I bought for it, and the enhanced sale value of the farmed covers. What do I lose here? Well, I've wasted a bunch of time playing during the farming I suppose, but I at least get SOME of that back, and I wouldnt play the game if I didn't enjoy it anyway, so all in all I'm reasonably OK with this being the situation.

However, if Gambit is way OP and gets nerfed to the point of being roughly the same level as similar-tier characters, things get a lot dicier. I'm still entitled to a refund of the covers/HP I bought for it, but only if I'm prepared to "swallow" the enhanced sale value and write off all my time, potentially having to repeat all that farming or (worse) buying up covers again from scratch. This is the nightmare scenario - I'm caught between not wanting to push the reset button on the character, and wanting my money and time back. Understandably in this case I'd probably be quite annoyed with D3.

So why do I feel this policy is a good thing to see? One very simple reason. If the exact scenario above played out a month ago with, say, SL on his release - I had no choice or options whatsoever. A nerf is a nerf, my HP/investment was simply gone. So, basically:

Is this the perfect solution to keep everyone happy? No.
Is that solution even possible, considering D3P have to keep making money with limited resources? Perhaps.
Are people right to be annoyed? Sure, customers are always entitled to have their opinions and it's important that D3 listen to it and take it on board.

But bottom line for me?
Are we better off with this policy than we were without it? YES. If nothing else, this is a good start and a good first pass at an equitable solution to a pain-point for the community as a whole.

Unknown

My translation.

"We know sometimes we release characters that need tweaking after they go live, we are not always fast about getting said tweaks implemented. We are giving ourselves a 30 day window to make changes where players can still get refunds if they are unhappy with the final version. "

The unsaid hope is that they might also use their 30 day window to tweak underrated characters before people give up on them entirely.

ZeiramMR

IMPORTANT NOTE!

Iron Fist was technically released on Feb. 24 (since he could be won from event tokens and not at the end of the introductory event). If the changes are going live on Mar. 23, you only have until Mar. 26 to make use of this offer.

Unknown

SteveMcM wrote:

But bottom line for me?
Are we better off with this policy than we were without it? YES. If nothing else, this is a good start and a good first pass at an equitable solution to a pain-point for the community as a whole.

Nope we are not.

At the same time, they did not say : if a character has to be nerfed, we commit ourselves to nerf it within 30 days of release, so that customers can claim for a refund...

So, from now on, they will nerf characters after day 31, and thanks to this new policy, everyone can be screwed completely...

In a contract, each part must have obligations. In that particular case, they did not mention they would nerf within a 30 days timeframe.

Unknown

I certainly don't believe that they will intentionally set out to delay nerfs beyond 30 days as a cash grab. Businesses just don't work that way in the 21st century, it would be incredibly short-sighted.

The way I see it is that there is an implication in the policy that their intent is to process any required/major nerfs in that period. And while I agree they don't commit to that, I do acknowledge they don't explicitly commit to the 30 days either.

So I guess what I'm saying is that I don't think it's fair to assume one way or the other until we've seen real cases of it in the coming months, and I'm prepared to give them the benefit of the doubt until such time as they prove otherwise through their actions.

ShanePHallam

arktos1971 wrote:

SteveMcM wrote:

But bottom line for me?
Are we better off with this policy than we were without it? YES. If nothing else, this is a good start and a good first pass at an equitable solution to a pain-point for the community as a whole.

Nope we are not.

At the same time, they did not say : if a character has to be nerfed, we commit ourselves to nerf it within 30 days of release, so that customers can claim for a refund...

So, from now on, they will nerf characters after day 31, and thanks to this new policy, everyone can be screwed completely...

In a contract, each part must have obligations. In that particular case, they did not mention they would nerf within a 30 days timeframe.

That's just thinking the worst of them. I think D3 has at least shown itself to try and listen to everyone and do what is best for them/the game when they can.

To me, the policy essentially says if they release an overpowered character (like IF was,) that they will be nerved near immediately and the full refund will be available.

Unknown

Arktos is 100% correct IMO, although I like that they release something like a policy, it's only meaningful if you assume D3 is acting in the customer's best interest. That means during this 30 day window after release they are analyzing the data or seeing it in use or continuing testing to see if it unbalanced the gameplay and then notifying everyone a nerf is pending. This gives the customer an ability to react and take advantage of the pending changes by exercising their right under this policy. It doesn't do the customer any good if they see the character flaw but wait until day 31 to nerf it. So yes, a bit of faith and confidence is required on both ends, which may be lacking on both ends of the spectrum as of late.

Unknown

EpicBeastmode wrote:

Arktos is 100% correct IMO, although I like that they release something like a policy, it's only meaningful if you assume D3 is acting in the customer's best interest. That means during this 30 day window after release they are analyzing the data or seeing it in use or continuing testing to see if it unbalanced the gameplay and then notifying everyone a nerf is pending. This gives the customer an ability to react and take advantage of the pending changes by exercising their right under this policy. It doesn't do the customer any good if they see the character flaw but wait until day 31 to nerf it. So yes, a bit of faith and confidence is required on both ends, which may be lacking on both ends of the spectrum as of late.

Thank you.

We all understand they want some kind of protection to avoid a frozen game because they couldn't nerf characters.

We all understand they need money to sustain the development of the game. Maybe it would be cool if it was not always the so-called whales who had to sustain the whole thing and they were not led to spend more all the time (example : scaling in PvE leads to HP expenditures to place high). And not lead the whales to burnout, because hey, we got enough money from them, let's move on to the noobs.

All we asked in the last months is that they do something so that we can rebuild trust. We got a lot of excellent moves, but also some "weird" ones (8hr coooldown on a 3hr shield to give just an example).

Some other examples where they "nerf" something (i.e. price), but never consider a compensation.

Roster slots :
Something is quite misty about the roster slots prices. DDQ was definitely not the answer to roster slots prices, nor was the increase of daily rewards. We never got a refund on the 25 first we spent money on. Yet they refunded the alliance slots. What's the logics in the whole system ?

Iso :
No compensation either for those who bought tons of them (and I'm not the only one)

Unknown

EpicBeastmode wrote:

Arktos is 100% correct IMO, although I like that they release something like a policy, it's only meaningful if you assume D3 is acting in the customer's best interest. That means during this 30 day window after release they are analyzing the data or seeing it in use or continuing testing to see if it unbalanced the gameplay and then notifying everyone a nerf is pending. This gives the customer an ability to react and take advantage of the pending changes by exercising their right under this policy. It doesn't do the customer any good if they see the character flaw but wait until day 31 to nerf it. So yes, a bit of faith and confidence is required on both ends, which may be lacking on both ends of the spectrum as of late.

I guess this is what it comes down to - the question of whether or not you have faith in them.
I do and I'm prepared to give them the benefit of the doubt until proven otherwise.
You guys don't, perhaps rightly so, perhaps I'd have the same opinion if I'd been burned as badly as you guys have.

Fair enough

polecat

While I think that their approach is a bit heavy handed, I do appreciate that there is at least an avenue for those that want to take advantage of it. Even though I won't be one of those for IF (I still really like him), I am glad it's there.

Thank you D3.

MarvelMan

Im trying not to bash D3, but I just dont see it as really reasonable for them to give themselves a 30 day window. If they had play testing, which they obviously dont, it might work....but we would see a lot fewer broken things in the wild. If they dont, do we really think they can pull together the data, figure out the fix, get it ready for issuance and then get it live....all within 30 days?

This seems to only address the flea in your bed when there is an elephant on the pillow. What about chars tweaked after 31 days? What if you only bought two covers...and dont want to sell the char, just recoup that expense (and give up the covers and any iso spent)? What about on characters who (*cough*SheThor*cough*) that were out for quite a while....and are only now getting *updated*? I think they will offer something for those cases, but where is that policy? This just screams that its woefully inadequate incomplete, like a lot of their communication recently. It had gotten so much better around the time they brought in Hi-Fi. He and Miles were giving good explanations, posting fairly frequently....what happened? And can they turn it around......

Unknown

The fallacy of 'broken combos' or 'op' characters.

First of all, OP characters don't exist. Bad play-testers and laziness perhaps, but releasing characters intentionally strong because they're much more expensive to get and take longer to max is what's supposed to make 4* good. If you don't want stronger tiers of characters then throw the damn star ranking out the window already. There are many ways to win vs any character. Some combos are just better but nerfing is the wrong approach. Characters who suck should be buffed. I understand you can't sell more old character covers since people have them but that's the correct way to fix the lazy play testing and poor conceptual ideas that don't mesh across old and new characters.

I feel the nerfs don't hurt the vets because we already have everything maxed. It is annoying because we see this repeated time and time again - strong character released, D3 makes lots of money off characters - once sales cool down, nerf character.

The correct reward should be to give everyone partial hp and iso back without having to lose the character AND allow for a respec of max cover characters for free. Not having this in the game after almost 18 months is just ridiculous.


Secondly - broken combos

Infinite combos are not broken. If you can beat something difficult with a combo team but it takes twice as long - is that really broken? Its not even a guaranteed win with pre-boosts. Ok you don't die after 2 or 3 fights - so is the issue that you can play without having to regen frequently or buy health packs for a decent duration?
Combo characters are a fun and very different play style from the smash mouth style or the intentionally taking damage to do bigger damage style. It's fun and it's unfortunate that D3 (or whomever makes these decisions) think taking damage in this game is necessary to have fun. Complete opposite of fun. - Scaling too High, no more healing (granted this ended ages ago) Now lets remove all the fun combos that let you compete. The whole idea behind removing healing was to promote roster diversity. Well let me tell you, scaling to 395 completely destroys roster diversity. You have no shot at beating some of these nodes with more but a few select characters.

You want to win back all the brownie points you lost with your fan base? Fix some of these **** characters that were released with 0 play-testing. They're a joke, and you know who they are because your meta probably shows close to 0 usage of them.

Then spend more time on new events and limit character releases to maybe 1/month - that'll win back more fans than any other character you can think of.

Why is this buyback policy set up this way? Because A. They want to limit as much as possible the amount of customer service response necessary. And B. because they don't believe it's a bait and switch so even if you spent 100 hours trying to win 4 covers and bought 9 more for hp, all they will refund is the 9 you bought. (don't buy 9 covers - that's just stupid)

Hope they learn their lesson eventually because the Marvel brand is the only thing holding people to the game

Unknown

El Satanno wrote:

It seems to be the case that D3 could just as easily tell you to get bent and be done with it.

Because that will surely allow them to continue making a video game as a dayjob....

Hope they learn their lesson eventually because the Marvel brand is the only thing holding people to the game

This x100000000000

Philly79

Initially I liked the idea but after reading some of the posts, I am now leaning toward the reset option with a refund of points, take a 3/5/5 IF and drop him to 1/0/0 and just refund the hp/iso spent. I wish the devs would focus more on fixing the non-progression/ lost node point issue before worrying about "balancing" characters. Make in-game adjustments after you fix the things that are broken. I have submitted a few tickets to hopefully receive some sort of compensation for my wasted time, money, iso, hp, boosts, etc..still have not received a reply from two weeks ago and have had it happen numerous times during the current heroic event (as recent as 10 minutes ago for 300+ points). I did not realize this was an on-going issue until I saw how many others are getting the shaft, sadly the ones who report it are the ones who have actually caught it.

End rant, but my point is that there are other issues that need to be addressed before creating "character balancing" policies.

Edit: Also agree with the quoted quotes above.

Unknown

This really is the start of a new relationship between the Devs and the wallet warriors. Wallet warriors are the real play testers, otherwise it would take us months if not years to find the real exploitable strengths / weaknesses.

Whether or not they fully play test the characters or play competitively themselves, fact of the matter is that the route they are going is reasonable.

I for one appreciate the step the devs have taken.

Unknown

arktos1971 wrote:

SteveMcM wrote:

But bottom line for me?
Are we better off with this policy than we were without it? YES. If nothing else, this is a good start and a good first pass at an equitable solution to a pain-point for the community as a whole.

Nope we are not.

At the same time, they did not say : if a character has to be nerfed, we commit ourselves to nerf it within 30 days of release, so that customers can claim for a refund...

So, from now on, they will nerf characters after day 31, and thanks to this new policy, everyone can be screwed completely...

In a contract, each part must have obligations. In that particular case, they did not mention they would nerf within a 30 days timeframe.

This is a very cynical outlook. The devs aren't out to screw us, that isn't their job.

Rather than focusing on the policy as a whole and weather or not changes within 30 days will continue to occour, I think we should address the issue of those who bought Thor covers within 30 days. It's great that the devs recognize that a change to a popular character should result in full refunds within a given time period, but why should those refunds be limited to only NEW characters? Is someone who bought a Thor cover in the last 30 days who is then unhappy with the changes less entitled to a full refund? The policy states you must sell the character to benefit from the refund, so why not just apply a 30 day window to all changed characters. If you bought a cover or spent iso to level a dude who is then changed within 30 days, contact CS for full refunds. Seems fair to me.

Unknown

The problem is that since they've to verify that you deleted the character it's likely a manual process and something they don't want to do very often because labor is very costly and is exactly proportional to the size of your market. Suppose currently 5 guys on customer support can handle all cases of this, and the game gets 10 times bigger. You'll now need 50 guys on staff just to handle this. For example, in WoW they used to verify that your account was really stolen and that you weren't trying to trick them when you report your account is stolen. Now, it's pretty much standard process to give you a standard kit and not even verify whether you lied or not, because it isn't worth the CS guy's time to verify whether you're really lying to try to get a few more gold.

This suggests that it might be possible to get a refund for any changes if there is an automatic system in place to handle it but I'm pretty sure one doesn't exist at this point.

_RiO_

Lerysh wrote:

Rather than focusing on the policy as a whole and weather or not changes within 30 days will continue to occour, I think we should address the issue of those who bought Thor covers within 30 days. It's great that the devs recognize that a change to a popular character should result in full refunds within a given time period, but why should those refunds be limited to only NEW characters? Is someone who bought a Thor cover in the last 30 days who is then unhappy with the changes less entitled to a full refund? The policy states you must sell the character to benefit from the refund, so why not just apply a 30 day window to all changed characters. If you bought a cover or spent iso to level a dude who is then changed within 30 days, contact CS for full refunds. Seems fair to me.

^^ THIS

The standard form of a money back guarantee or of a right of withdrawal always works off of the date on which an ordered product is received or on which an ordered service commences. It does not work off of the date on which a product or service is first featured.

slidecage

so iron fist is the only one they are buying back.

love to sell my mystic and magneto

wondering what i get out of a level 70 max mag. level 60 7 cover mystic and a 4 cover iron (all covers earned)

probally nothing

Unknown

You can still sell your Mystique and Marvel Now Magneto for the regular buyback price. And since I doubt very much you bought a cover for either of those in the last 30 days, this new policy would have no effect on either sale, even if it did cover characters other than IF.