A retirement party! (Complete with gifts!)

Stony

Very few "I'm quitting" posts are necessary. This one is. Thank you for everything you've done for this game. Salute!

mjh

If this isn't a wake up call to the devs, I don't know what is

PuceMoose

Your character rankings are one of the best things on the forum. Best wishes to a true class act, and I hope you have the time/inclination to do one more before you go for good!

Unknown

So we'll definitely miss you, MM. We wish you godspeed, and thank you!

Unknown

Demiurge_Will wrote:

I and everybody here at Demiurge really appreciate all the amazing things you've done for this community. Thank you. It's been a pleasure entertaining you, and you'll be missed.

I hope you might check back in with us at some point in the future and see if there's anything to rekindle your interest after you've had a well-earned rest from the game.

So sad it's your strategy that made him quit...

Pylgrim

So long and thanks for all the fish.

RWTDBurn

There are very few people that truly affect a gaming community when they leave it. You sir, are one of those few. Sad to see you go.

Unknown

I 2nd and 3rd and 4th everyone here that along with myself used your character rankings to figure out who in the world was worth investing in. You will be sorely missed Michief. Thank you for being such a valuable contributor for all this time!!

Unknown

No need to elaborate on who Mischievemaker is or how his crew operates. 5* cover for him if he was ever a mpq character. Pleasure knowing you for my short stay with Chaos League and wishing nothing but the best. Deuces.

jimstarooney

The reason i came to d3p in the 1st place,L.E.G.E.N
D.

Unknown

MM probably is one of the oldest and most dedicated vets this game had (as I understand it, he started playing when the game launched), and one of the cornerstones that helped build the positive side of the mpq community and prevent it from turning into a total cesspool. He evolved and adapted to every seemingly insane change made by the devs (just one example, death brackets and alliances - instead of itching about it, he organized alliance reorganization to make it more manageable and stem the hemorrhaging player base), and this reflects on just about all his interactions with the community. Character rankings, many of the first and later community tracking spreadsheets so people could make better sense of the game and enjoy it more, others I'm probably missing. His contributions always made the game much more manageable and digestible, even when devs seemed hell-bent on turning the game into a scam to trick people into spending increasing amounts of time and money, and he did it for free.

I had the pleasure of playing with him the first two alliance seasons in Chaos League, and although the pace of the game got to be more intense than I was willing to commit to, the roster gains I made during that time (granted I also did put some money into the game), made it possible for me to play the game more casually when I did come back for the Taco Daily's. It's always difficult to manage the expectations of multiple player bases, but it's disappointing that the game didn't continue to evolve in a direction that allowed MM to continue enjoying it. When the only thing a game has going for it is collecting new characters on the promise they'll have some fun/in-game value, and you've somehow managed to stay ahead of the curve through consistent play, what else is left for you when they start nerfing 4-stars, especially when you need to manage a guild and put in increasing amounts of time in order to get them, and the devs decide it's a good idea to increase the character release schedule on top of that (which cost significant time and HP to keep buying roster slots for)? Not to mention his de-facto unpaid role as a community builder (a full-time position at most companies).

I quit this game last summer for similar reasons (the same thing was happening back then for transitioning 2->3* players), and more recently came back for the Tacos. I'd always hoped that he at least would be able to keep playing as he'd been playing (i.e. enjoying the game without dedicating his entire life to it), so it's disappointing that the devs never really fixed the core problems this game was facing a year ago when I left.

I started playing several months after MM, so I had a much bigger uphill battle to earn covers (since required characters were needed for essential nodes and boosted PvP in order to keep progressing). Back then, there were only 2 4-stars that basically weren't very useful (Fury had only just been released and only a couple covers were available). I'd put a considerable amount of time, and some money into building up my 3-star roster, so I could get to that same point and play the game somewhat more casually... and then they added death brackets, which made the game completely impossible for me to keep playing in any capacity less than a full-time job (MM largely managed to avoid that, as he'd been playing since the start, played well, spent his HP smart, etc..) Being in a top guild helped a lot, as it was impossible to progress at all back then without being in one (they were required in order to get all 3 covers in most events).

As I said, I'd always hoped that he'd be able to keep playing as he'd been playing since the start of the game, and that the things that caused me to quit would never apply to him since he'd been playing long enough that he was always ahead of the curve, but now the problems transitioning 3-star players were facing a year ago have never been fixed and have caught up with 4-star folks (their oldest vets are now in the same boat I and many others who left with the death brackets were in- ~1k+ to place, equivalent commitment to it being a second job): Increasing amounts of time and guild coordination in order to get into a place where you can play the game with any semblance of sanity, for fun, while still progressing and not getting your but constantly handed to you, and then being shown by the actions of the devs that what you worked for doesn't really hold value.

For me personally, the Tacos and the occasional PvP or PvE are enough to keep me playing casually for now at least, but that's because I still have a number of 3*s I need covers for, and need to level. But MM had all the characters. Nerfing 4*'s in favor of 3*'s is good for 3* players, but is a step back for vets (saying this as someone who still is squarely in 3* land). The way to address this is not to keep changing the system to favor one player base over the others (be it 2*, 3*, or 4*), but to legitimately address the problems with the reward structure, and ease off the over-dependence on alliances for progression (they really ought to be more social than essential). In order for a game to continue being fun, rewards need to be commensurate with the amount of effort that goes into getting them, and not be too stingy. This means making it easier to get both 4*'s and 3*'s, but also ISO and HP. As a player, buffing underpowered characters is always preferable to nerfing OP ones, as it just creates one more wasted character slot with a useless character in it. In the context of 3/4* this shows itself in the unnecessary 4* nerfs implemented in lieu of balancing progression rewards better.

The difficulty is that Demiurge is in the business of maximizing profit, which is in constant conflict with making a game enjoyable for most players. Most players want to be able to keep progressing without spending a fortune (or the equivalent amount of time) on a game. In MPQ, players have always been expected to be the ones to make sacrifices, but at a certain point there's an unavoidable fact that if you want your game to be fun you need to make it reasonably easy to keep progressing in the game while still playing it as a hobby (which sometimes means a hit to your profit margin). In that regard, the runaway cost of roster slots is also a significant problem.

Beyond that, you also need to keep innovating. When I returned to this game a couple months ago, the only thing differences I saw were: more 3*s and 3rd abilities (Doom, Rags, Loki), a number of 4*'s that appeared to actually be useful for people willing to put in the work to get them (now nerfed), ability to get all 3 covers from events without being in alliances again (not an improvement per-se, more than a return to the status quo of what sort of worked previously before alliances were implemented), and Taco Daily's.

I liked the Gauntlet. If they made all PvE's more like that/ an extended version of the Daily Taco's (more 3* covers from completing nodes in medium and harder segments, possibly even a 4* or two), got rid of the runaway scaling so it was playable by most characters, gave ample time to play it at your own pace, as was the case for gauntlet, that would be a positive improvement.

In terms of PvP, a double-tiered PvP reward structure seems more appropriate than the current (i.e. get rid of all the MMR sharding in favor of even distribution of different player levels and do something like):
[TOTAL 500 player brackets]

---

001-005: 3x 4*'s, 250 HP, 12500 ISO
006-010: 2x 4*'s, 250 HP, 6250 ISO
011-025: 1x 4*s, 125 HP, 6250 ISO
4* tiers also include 3* tier covers

---

026-050: 3x 3*'s, 125 HP, 5000 ISO
051-100: 2x 3*'s, 75 HP, 3000 ISO
100-150: 1x 3*, 75 HP, 2000 ISO

---

151-225: 1x 2*, 500 ISO
225-300: 1x 2*, 250 ISO
301-400: 2x Tokens, 140 ISO
401-500: 1x Token, 70 ISO

---

Reworking reward structures would be a start, but in a way is still a band-aid. Like I said before, I returned to this game w/in past couple months and found very little had changed. It's nice to be able to pick up where you left off (for me, since I still have work to do on my 3* roster), but it's also important to keep innovating and adding new things to players to do, without making those things essential to keep progressing (alliances were a nice improvement, except for the fact of making them required for progress), or punishing to players for taking part in (longstanding MMR and PvE scaling/banding issues being good examples). This means new gameplay modes for vets (in particular, but not limited to) to enjoy, WITHOUT reducing rewards from existing modes and WITHOUT increasing the pace of cover releases to compensate, or any other shenanigans.

The Taco's do this pretty well in 3* land (actually maybe not, since they're also increasing the number of new heroes they're pumping out), but there needs to be more for vets and competitive players to sink their teeth into to keep the game fresh. And again, it should be alternative ways to enjoy the game and earn ISO HP and covers, not requirements just to say on the same page as they were on before. Like the Daily Taco's, it needs to be things that make the game fun and more enjoyable, rather than more grindy and tedious. And they need to start balancing better (i.e. boosting underwhelming heroes instead of nerfing the ones people like).

I've been largely absent from the forums, and probably will not get overly involved from here on out this time around, since I'm playing much more casually than I did when I played before, but I wanted to take a moment to note MM's passing from the game and give him a proper MPQulogy in recognition of how much he loved this game and put into making it what it is for the community.

(I say it's a Mischief icon, so it is )

Unknown

Mischiefmaker, your posts have always been well thought out, informative, and well written. You will most definitely be missed around here.

All the best to you!

Scoregasms

Wanted to also wish you the best MischiefMaker!

You are the only reason why I even started playing this game seriously after reading your Character Rankings thread, it gave me a clear direction on who I should prioritize and who I should ignore. I feel for all the potential newbies out there who have the same questions I did and are now not able to find their way to that wealth of knowledge.

cydude808

Good to you, MM, you'll be missed, the resources you created have been amazingly helpful.

DEWDuck

Thank you so much MM for everything you have contributed. I always looked to your posts for knowledge and you have helped me excel in this game.

And to D3, see what you have done to one of the people that help keep your game going for the rest of us.

TheViceroy

arktos1971 wrote:

Demiurge_Will wrote:

I and everybody here at Demiurge really appreciate all the amazing things you've done for this community. Thank you. It's been a pleasure entertaining you, and you'll be missed.

I hope you might check back in with us at some point in the future and see if there's anything to rekindle your interest after you've had a well-earned rest from the game.

So sad it's your strategy that made him quit...

You know that a forum poster had influence when a dev actually posts in their farewell thread.

Your google docs were great (I saved off a copy of the ISO?level tracking one and I still use it to this day), which shows amazing dedication. Things won't be the same without you.
Wish you well on your next gaming endevour!

Unknown

Sorry to see you go MM. Even though I semi-retired a number of months ago my time in Chaos League was the most fun that I had with MPQ. And even after I retired you were always willing to help me out with advice and assistance when I had any game related issues. It was always an honor to me that I had been a part of an alliance that was headed up by someone who had done so much for the game. Not only through your character rankings posts (which were and are essential reading for anyone playing MPQ) but through all of your interactions with the forums and in the alliance. So I hope that you quickly find another game that brings you happiness without quite so much of the grind that MPQ has turned into. And if you do return for one last character ranking I am sure I won't be the only one reading it with a bit of nostalgia for times gone bye.

Alaric

rkd80

MM's retirement is a nerf to the MPQ community more so than any other nerf that D3 ever unleashed upon us. Still, retiring with such grace and eloquence is precisely why MM will be missed so much.

Unknown

Everyone drop what you are doing, and let this man decide whichever the next character will be, on his lonesome.

That's the only fitting swan-song that can be offered.

Pentagoon

Godspeed man. A lot of us day 500+ players feel the same, and we're all better players because of your efforts and contributions. Thanks for everything along the way,