What's Wrong With MPQ (And It's Community)...
GothicKratos
Posts: 1,821 Chairperson of the Boards
This is going to be one of those "the good, the bad, and the ugly" things. I want to address three things; the community, the developers, and what we both need to do to improve our relationship.
I'm going to start with us, as a community, because this is going to be a long post and this is what we can directly impact.
The Community (aka the ugly)
First and foremost, when something happens we don't like, we need to be more constructive. There's a lot of players here that are extremely smart and regularly put together very thought out, insightful pieces on these forums. We need to get back to that. Think of it in real world terms; when you're at work and you have some snot nosed brat in your face with a complaint, you're less likely to really give that guy the benefit of the doubt, right? But when the person is sincere and at least level-headed about it, you're more likely to go above and beyond for that person, right? There's plenty of things I think need to be examined in MPQ right now, as a game, but I just don't see the need to be aggressive about it.
Secondly, we need to stop biting the have that feeds us. If you want someone to hand you something, they should not have to worry about retribution for doing so. Here's a few examples;
*Forums ask to have insight on characters before they are released so that they can analyze them in hopes that they get fixed pre-release and not post-release. IceIX starts posting spoiler-free versions of upcoming characters for the community to both theorycraft whom it is and theorycraft good pairing. Win-Win, right? Until the first time someone was adjusted pre-release - Professor X comes around and there's a mini-apocalypse because he was "nerfed before he even got released!!129171!". Same thing happened to another character (can't think of who it was off-hand tbh). Do you see the ridiculous amount of irony here?
*Forums complain about the incredible amount of ISO-8 required to make a character playable. Developers chop off quite a large bit of that amount (50k was it?) at the top-end and reduce the curve at the bottom end so it's easier to reach the middle of the curve but harder to get to the top of the curve, so characters are useable earlier in your investment. Forums throw this back in the developer's faces by implying that it's a "cash grab" and an attempt to indirectly increase our node scaling. Maybe that's a little bit of a stretch, maybe? Since no matter what they did here, it would have that same indirect effect - the other option would have been to tell us to shove off and keep it as is. Can we admit this was probably overzealous?
*Forums complains that it's always the same old content released time in and time out. DQvMPQ comes out. Huge influx of players. Servers go down. Acceptable out rage, followed by acceptable compensation. Enemy of the State comes out, there's an issue with one event, that gets fixed within a day (maybe two? pretty sure it was one though). Outrage! Do I know how that particular stage made it past QT? No idea, but I'd be willing to be they tested the node type obsessively and not individual nodes - I have no idea what broke exactly - but it's clear the node type works and it was just a single clerical error. Compensation was given, people didn't partially like it from what I remember, but that did indeed pass pretty quietly. Next up was Ultron. I'll be the first to admit it was a catastrophe. The first run of that event was catastrophic. I was all but locked out entirely until the last day. On top of that, anyone in my boat was also locked out of every other event going on at the time. This is a disasterpiece if I ever saw one. I was frustrated because I came out of my hiatus to hopefully be interested in MPQ again...to this. Man was I aggravated. I piss and moaned on Line. I pissed and moaned to my girlfriend (whom used to play too). I pissed and moaned to myself. I didn't piss and moan to the developers. I'm not going to piss and moan right out of the gate, because they deserve a chance to fix it before I complain - it's completely new tech for them - so it's only fair, in my opinion. It came back up for a little bit, but it went back down again. I was still annoyed, but I still wasn't going to complain because clearly they were working on it. It took them a long while to actually get it under ropes, but they did. And you know what? That event was a TON of fun while I could play it. I look forward to it running again. I would play it again right now, honestly. I also look forward to the next piece of new content, even if it's in six months, because DPvMPQ was fun, EotS was fun (and by extension Survival Nodes), and Ultron was a blast (especially the unique-to-MPQ style meta it created). [**If you stick with me, I'll talk about compensation a little bit later, when I talk about the developer's end of the deal. Spoiler: I don't think it was handled right.**]
My point here is this; they're listening and they're trying to do the things we want them to, but we're sending some seriously mixed signals when we yell at them about one thing and then when they do the other thing we still yell at them. We're basically an abusive partner, honestly.
Thirdly, and lastly, we need to be more civil to each other (myself included). I know, personally, it's easy to get annoyed or frustrated, and it's even enough to type up some snarky response to someone and 'put them in their place', but this has got to stop. We need to start doing more things to harvest a community and unity. Demuirge is providing us with a game. We're the community, so we need to step up and be the community. I've brainstormed a few ways to bring some fun and some events to the community, that if things work out how I want to, I can hopefully bring to the community soon. As well, I think we need to give more nods to the developer team from taking time out do to some of these things for us, even if they're aren't anything hugely "special" - like that meme thread they did, or the Hero Point contests, or attending cons - because that's honestly special in itself. Yeah, maybe they aren't "as good as Marvel Heroes", but I'll be damned if I can't say they're better than the 80%. Give them credit where credit is due. It's fine to say 'hey, look at what these guys are doing, it might make things better here too', but saying 'you guys drool, these guys rule' is a pretty piss poor way to go about things.
The Developers (aka the bad)
Here it is folks. The sequel of the "MPQ White Knight Tells MPQ You're Doing It Wrong" - "MPQ White Knight Tells MPQ You're Close, But No Cigar". This is the part all you hyena are going to enjoy.
First and foremost, is the compensation thing. I've been keeping pretty close tabs on this since my last post about this. You guys have been doing pretty great. I only heard about a handful of token comps and they felt okay to me. Fast forward to Ultron Event. I'm not going to sit here and say those Token 10-packs were bad compensation, specifically related to the server outages, but overall, I feel like you gave a genuine effort, but you missed the mark. Here's why;
*The 10-pack was a good starter. I feel like that addresses the literal issue of the extended outages, however it was a lot more complicated issue than that. There should have been tiers to the compensation.
a.) Compensation for server outage. Ultron 10-Pack. (Which they did.)
b.) Compensation for first PVP event (assuming they had started the event). Top Prog Cover.
c.) Compensation for the first PvE event (assuming they started it). Top Prog Cover.
d.) Compensation for the Ultron Event. Scarlett Witch Cover. (Which they did.)
e.) Compensation for second PvP event. Bottom 3* Placement Cover.
f.) Compensation for second PvE event. Bottom 3* Placement Cover.
g.) Compensation for Shield Simulator (assuming they had started it). Heroic 10-Pack. Alternatively, they could wait until the end of the season to comp for this and bump your reward tier to the next tier.
I think that covers everything. I'll say, yes, some of these items are "steep" (like the 2nd PvP/PvE rewards or Shield Sim), but it comes with the territory. There's a pretty small scope of times that tokens are an okay compensation, and never when it's on a global scale - why? Because it's not fair. One guy gets an awesome Hulkbuster cover, but another guy gets a freakin' Bagman! That's no good. It's also not so great for specific occurrences because it's hard to say your sorry about missing that Hulkbuster with a Yelena cover. That just stinks. I think it's okay in this case, because it's kind of a 'step one' kind of thing - basically an icing on the cake. I think it's okay for Shield Sim, mostly because what else do you give? Like, really, giving the next award up right now is butt, because you're probably just going to get it anyways and a dupe of something might not be great, unless you're already at the top of Shield Sim.
Secondly, you guys need to be more transparent. I know we're rough to communicate with sometimes, but really, it's a key to releasing some of the stress around here. I'm not just talking about business stuff, but like, real things. Talk about the games you're playing (like, I know IceIX is playing FFRK right now in his spare time), vent with us about stupid things that crop up in MPQ (like bad pulls or downtime or a bad clear), talk to us about stuff that's in the gates, or things that you wanted to do and couldn't (like you did with Deadpool's event), and probably most importantly; get back to doing QnA videos and do some Reddit-style AMAs. Humanize yourselves.
Lastly, you need a new policy and process for handling character balancing refunds. The stuff we got going on is not working out. We already have to work with Customer Service to get these things rolling, so doing something different where CS is involved shouldn't be an issue because of that. Here's what I would suggest;
*For New Characters (characters that have not been out for longer than three months): We should, without a doubt, be able to contact Customer Service and have covers swapped equivalently across colors, however we would like. I understand that right now, that does require someone to sell the entire character, and have Customer Service send them those covers, and that's not optimal, but that is fine, as long as ISO-8 is refunded as well, and it should be handled within the hour. If a player does not wish to have their covers reorganized, they should be given a full refund of any Hero Points put into the character, as well as a reduced refund (not necessarily Hero Points - perhaps equivalent covers in another character) for any non-purchased covers as compensation.
*For old characters (characters that have been out for longer than six months): I feel like the current model is relatively fair. I think that the amount of ISO/HP refunded could due to be increased about 10%, maybe more, maybe less.
*For everything in between: Case by case basis. Poll the community. Talk to the mods, we have a hidden sub-forum for a reason. Whatever you have to do to get a feel for what we feel is fair.
Coming Together (aka the good)
The good. The good thing is both parties has been in a prime much better than what it is, so I feel like we can work together to achieve a much better community as a whole than what we have, or what we have had.
Forumites: When the developers do something for us, say thank you in some shape or form - even if you don't agree, say thank you for their time and effort. Try and keep your tinfoil hats to a minimum. D3Publisher's CEO might be a money grubbing POS and Marvel/Disney might be power hungry leeches, but that doesn't mean our developers are. When you disagree with something, feel free to express yourself, but please try and be constructive with your statements, and when you make said statements, do try your best to place it into an existing topic, if one exists - it's very disheartening to vertran and newbie alike to log into a forum and see five negative threads on the front page. We want to garner a positive, welcoming environment.
Developers: Work with us. Give us some time to work out of our bad habits. Keep up the good work - if you guys weren't doing something right there wouldn't be so many of us sticking around! Most importantly is just interact with us. We don't want robots or business stiffs. We want to see some human beings. Convince the tinfoilist that you're just some average Joes making an awesome game.
I'm going to start with us, as a community, because this is going to be a long post and this is what we can directly impact.
The Community (aka the ugly)
First and foremost, when something happens we don't like, we need to be more constructive. There's a lot of players here that are extremely smart and regularly put together very thought out, insightful pieces on these forums. We need to get back to that. Think of it in real world terms; when you're at work and you have some snot nosed brat in your face with a complaint, you're less likely to really give that guy the benefit of the doubt, right? But when the person is sincere and at least level-headed about it, you're more likely to go above and beyond for that person, right? There's plenty of things I think need to be examined in MPQ right now, as a game, but I just don't see the need to be aggressive about it.
Secondly, we need to stop biting the have that feeds us. If you want someone to hand you something, they should not have to worry about retribution for doing so. Here's a few examples;
*Forums ask to have insight on characters before they are released so that they can analyze them in hopes that they get fixed pre-release and not post-release. IceIX starts posting spoiler-free versions of upcoming characters for the community to both theorycraft whom it is and theorycraft good pairing. Win-Win, right? Until the first time someone was adjusted pre-release - Professor X comes around and there's a mini-apocalypse because he was "nerfed before he even got released!!129171!". Same thing happened to another character (can't think of who it was off-hand tbh). Do you see the ridiculous amount of irony here?
*Forums complain about the incredible amount of ISO-8 required to make a character playable. Developers chop off quite a large bit of that amount (50k was it?) at the top-end and reduce the curve at the bottom end so it's easier to reach the middle of the curve but harder to get to the top of the curve, so characters are useable earlier in your investment. Forums throw this back in the developer's faces by implying that it's a "cash grab" and an attempt to indirectly increase our node scaling. Maybe that's a little bit of a stretch, maybe? Since no matter what they did here, it would have that same indirect effect - the other option would have been to tell us to shove off and keep it as is. Can we admit this was probably overzealous?
*Forums complains that it's always the same old content released time in and time out. DQvMPQ comes out. Huge influx of players. Servers go down. Acceptable out rage, followed by acceptable compensation. Enemy of the State comes out, there's an issue with one event, that gets fixed within a day (maybe two? pretty sure it was one though). Outrage! Do I know how that particular stage made it past QT? No idea, but I'd be willing to be they tested the node type obsessively and not individual nodes - I have no idea what broke exactly - but it's clear the node type works and it was just a single clerical error. Compensation was given, people didn't partially like it from what I remember, but that did indeed pass pretty quietly. Next up was Ultron. I'll be the first to admit it was a catastrophe. The first run of that event was catastrophic. I was all but locked out entirely until the last day. On top of that, anyone in my boat was also locked out of every other event going on at the time. This is a disasterpiece if I ever saw one. I was frustrated because I came out of my hiatus to hopefully be interested in MPQ again...to this. Man was I aggravated. I piss and moaned on Line. I pissed and moaned to my girlfriend (whom used to play too). I pissed and moaned to myself. I didn't piss and moan to the developers. I'm not going to piss and moan right out of the gate, because they deserve a chance to fix it before I complain - it's completely new tech for them - so it's only fair, in my opinion. It came back up for a little bit, but it went back down again. I was still annoyed, but I still wasn't going to complain because clearly they were working on it. It took them a long while to actually get it under ropes, but they did. And you know what? That event was a TON of fun while I could play it. I look forward to it running again. I would play it again right now, honestly. I also look forward to the next piece of new content, even if it's in six months, because DPvMPQ was fun, EotS was fun (and by extension Survival Nodes), and Ultron was a blast (especially the unique-to-MPQ style meta it created). [**If you stick with me, I'll talk about compensation a little bit later, when I talk about the developer's end of the deal. Spoiler: I don't think it was handled right.**]
My point here is this; they're listening and they're trying to do the things we want them to, but we're sending some seriously mixed signals when we yell at them about one thing and then when they do the other thing we still yell at them. We're basically an abusive partner, honestly.
Thirdly, and lastly, we need to be more civil to each other (myself included). I know, personally, it's easy to get annoyed or frustrated, and it's even enough to type up some snarky response to someone and 'put them in their place', but this has got to stop. We need to start doing more things to harvest a community and unity. Demuirge is providing us with a game. We're the community, so we need to step up and be the community. I've brainstormed a few ways to bring some fun and some events to the community, that if things work out how I want to, I can hopefully bring to the community soon. As well, I think we need to give more nods to the developer team from taking time out do to some of these things for us, even if they're aren't anything hugely "special" - like that meme thread they did, or the Hero Point contests, or attending cons - because that's honestly special in itself. Yeah, maybe they aren't "as good as Marvel Heroes", but I'll be damned if I can't say they're better than the 80%. Give them credit where credit is due. It's fine to say 'hey, look at what these guys are doing, it might make things better here too', but saying 'you guys drool, these guys rule' is a pretty piss poor way to go about things.
The Developers (aka the bad)
Here it is folks. The sequel of the "MPQ White Knight Tells MPQ You're Doing It Wrong" - "MPQ White Knight Tells MPQ You're Close, But No Cigar". This is the part all you hyena are going to enjoy.
First and foremost, is the compensation thing. I've been keeping pretty close tabs on this since my last post about this. You guys have been doing pretty great. I only heard about a handful of token comps and they felt okay to me. Fast forward to Ultron Event. I'm not going to sit here and say those Token 10-packs were bad compensation, specifically related to the server outages, but overall, I feel like you gave a genuine effort, but you missed the mark. Here's why;
*The 10-pack was a good starter. I feel like that addresses the literal issue of the extended outages, however it was a lot more complicated issue than that. There should have been tiers to the compensation.
a.) Compensation for server outage. Ultron 10-Pack. (Which they did.)
b.) Compensation for first PVP event (assuming they had started the event). Top Prog Cover.
c.) Compensation for the first PvE event (assuming they started it). Top Prog Cover.
d.) Compensation for the Ultron Event. Scarlett Witch Cover. (Which they did.)
e.) Compensation for second PvP event. Bottom 3* Placement Cover.
f.) Compensation for second PvE event. Bottom 3* Placement Cover.
g.) Compensation for Shield Simulator (assuming they had started it). Heroic 10-Pack. Alternatively, they could wait until the end of the season to comp for this and bump your reward tier to the next tier.
I think that covers everything. I'll say, yes, some of these items are "steep" (like the 2nd PvP/PvE rewards or Shield Sim), but it comes with the territory. There's a pretty small scope of times that tokens are an okay compensation, and never when it's on a global scale - why? Because it's not fair. One guy gets an awesome Hulkbuster cover, but another guy gets a freakin' Bagman! That's no good. It's also not so great for specific occurrences because it's hard to say your sorry about missing that Hulkbuster with a Yelena cover. That just stinks. I think it's okay in this case, because it's kind of a 'step one' kind of thing - basically an icing on the cake. I think it's okay for Shield Sim, mostly because what else do you give?
Like, really, giving the next award up right now is butt, because you're probably just going to get it anyways and a dupe of something might not be great, unless you're already at the top of Shield Sim.Secondly, you guys need to be more transparent. I know we're rough to communicate with sometimes, but really, it's a key to releasing some of the stress around here. I'm not just talking about business stuff, but like, real things. Talk about the games you're playing (like, I know IceIX is playing FFRK right now in his spare time), vent with us about stupid things that crop up in MPQ (like bad pulls or downtime or a bad clear), talk to us about stuff that's in the gates, or things that you wanted to do and couldn't (like you did with Deadpool's event), and probably most importantly; get back to doing QnA videos and do some Reddit-style AMAs. Humanize yourselves.
Lastly, you need a new policy and process for handling character balancing refunds. The stuff we got going on is not working out. We already have to work with Customer Service to get these things rolling, so doing something different where CS is involved shouldn't be an issue because of that. Here's what I would suggest;
*For New Characters (characters that have not been out for longer than three months): We should, without a doubt, be able to contact Customer Service and have covers swapped equivalently across colors, however we would like. I understand that right now, that does require someone to sell the entire character, and have Customer Service send them those covers, and that's not optimal, but that is fine, as long as ISO-8 is refunded as well, and it should be handled within the hour. If a player does not wish to have their covers reorganized, they should be given a full refund of any Hero Points put into the character, as well as a reduced refund (not necessarily Hero Points - perhaps equivalent covers in another character) for any non-purchased covers as compensation.
*For old characters (characters that have been out for longer than six months): I feel like the current model is relatively fair. I think that the amount of ISO/HP refunded could due to be increased about 10%, maybe more, maybe less.
*For everything in between: Case by case basis. Poll the community. Talk to the mods, we have a hidden sub-forum for a reason. Whatever you have to do to get a feel for what we feel is fair.
Coming Together (aka the good)
The good. The good thing is both parties has been in a prime much better than what it is, so I feel like we can work together to achieve a much better community as a whole than what we have, or what we have had.
Forumites: When the developers do something for us, say thank you in some shape or form - even if you don't agree, say thank you for their time and effort. Try and keep your tinfoil hats to a minimum. D3Publisher's CEO might be a money grubbing POS and Marvel/Disney might be power hungry leeches, but that doesn't mean our developers are. When you disagree with something, feel free to express yourself, but please try and be constructive with your statements, and when you make said statements, do try your best to place it into an existing topic, if one exists - it's very disheartening to vertran and newbie alike to log into a forum and see five negative threads on the front page. We want to garner a positive, welcoming environment.
Developers: Work with us. Give us some time to work out of our bad habits. Keep up the good work - if you guys weren't doing something right there wouldn't be so many of us sticking around! Most importantly is just interact with us. We don't want robots or business stiffs. We want to see some human beings. Convince the tinfoilist that you're just some average Joes making an awesome game.
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on developer communication, how about informing the players about sudden, unannounced changes, like 2/3/4* essentials. There were no less than 4 threads on the subject, yet not a single reply from a developer, would it have been so hard to confirm/deny this was a mistake? nope they just ignore it0
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Well said all around Gothic. I always try to be as constructive and helpful as possible, but there's been some definite snark that's slipped out from my keyboard. It's just so easy to hide behind the anonymity of the interwebz...when I noticed I was getting sucked into all the negativity floating around, I just stopped posting for awhile, which is a shame because I'm one of those smart, insightful people you mentioned. Damn modest too!
In the spirit of constructive ideas, I just had one concerning ridiculously scaled PvE matches. I really don't mind clearing them. Once. Lvl 300+ juggernaut/daken/venom? Sure, bring it on, I like a challenge. What's that you say? I have to clear it every 8 hours, then again 6 more times at the end of the sub, then start a new sub immediately after with lvl 395 ares being fed yellow and green ap by goons? Yea, no.
What if we keep these crazy nodes as part of PvE, but make them a one-and-done type of affair? Fight a lvl 395 Moonstone/Bullseye/Ares node and win, and you get a nice chunk of event points and maybe 25 HP or an event token, then the node is locked. It will feel more like an accomplishment, rather than something you dread when you start your clears. Seriously dev's, have you ever tried to play against a Lvl 300+ Ares, Venom, Daken, Moonstone, or *shudder* Juggernaut? It's not fun at all, it's hugely frustrating, and feels very cheap, especially when they're fed free mana by goons. Make these battles rewarding, and don't make our overall placement depend on being able to clear them 5-10 times. Leave that up to the essentials and our willingness to grind battles that we don't start out on a losing foot decide that and I think everyone will be a bit happier with PvE as a whole.0 -
...did this happen? Far as I know people just started poking around the code and finding stuff that was going to be released next, and posting it. Some forumites got excited about it do IceIX started posting "releasing next" characters.GothicKratos wrote:*Forums ask to have insight on characters before they are released so that they can analyze them in hopes that they get fixed pre-release and not post-release.
The problem with doing something like that you take responsibility for it. If you're going to show your cards before the characters are released, then obviously you should be careful that you're showing the final version. If you wait until there are a bunch of pages of comments then change the character, it looks a lot like you read the comments and said "Oh that's right, let me squash that interaction", even if nothing of the sort is going on (which in turn smacks of amateurism and lack of testing)
In my mind the smarter way to do it is to continue to let people poke around in the code, and when they post the characters before they're finished, you get to go "oh we didn't post anything, some dude did. How can you be disappointed at us when you're the ones doing it to yourselves?"
The other smart thing would be to explain the genius strategy behind releasing highly experimental features Friday afternoon right before everyone in the company goes home for the weekend/holidays. I'm sure that has some kind of explanation behind it, I'd just like to know what it is.0 -
One thing that was said was that we received an Ultron 10 pack for server issues...we did not. We got 4 tokens. The 10 pack was given to the people who finished Ultron 2 or the people that were on level 8...can't remember which and to lazy to look it up.0
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Amen to "humanize yourselves", I was so surprised by the first video q&a and couldn't wait to see who you guys were and what you had to say. Now we get announcements and occasional replies to tech issues and that's it.
I know you don't have time to spend all day hanging out on the forum, but it feels like someone made the decision that no unnecessary communication should be made, feels passive aggressive tbh.
I couldn't believe it when the best sources for ultron event info in the last days before the event were other random websites. I think there was a Hollywood reporter article or something.
Anyway, thanks for what you have done here, you gave me something I feel is worth obsessing over and that's pretty cool.0 -
I'm not going to directly respond to anyone right this second (it's late), but I do want to encourage people to dissect and discuss anything I posted, as long as you're civil about it. I would like some input on things like the character refund balance policy or things of that nature.
Additionally, someone mentioned scaling, and I'm not going to get into it right this second (again it's late!) but that was something I thought very hard about talking about, because this is another thing I think they're right on the nose of getting right, but it's just quite not there, but I felt like that was a subject the deserved it's own topic (and I will create one later! 
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I've spent a lot less time on the forums, and a lot more time on LINE. Can't say I've really missed anything. Able to contribute to MPQ players I talk to and handle alliance business a lot easier, helping my alliances and other alliances a lot more efficiently.
I think there's a lot of people that have done the same, which is why the state of the forums is like how it is. Those that haven't done the same, have probably left the game completely.
When I had a thread a while back, about the poor quality of communication we got from the devs, the OP was one of the people derailing the thread and the message of the thread, so it's nice to see he's come around to see that the communication needs to be improved. The thread was about the Gauntlet 10 pk error.
The new layout makes me want to visit the forums even less. I guess I should try the old layout link, or maybe it'll grow on me. I think the forums still serve a purpose, but I do browse the forums a lot less now, and I don't really regret it.0 -
Good piece Kratos, I'll especially vote up the compensation and communication. It's nice that D3 tried to compensate players for the whole Ultron fiasco, but unfortunately they fell short of the mark on this, and they never even addressed the MMR changes of last season and how it affected many players negatively. But possibly more importantly, D3 needs to communicate more, yes they'll have to weather through the anger, but constant and consistent outreach is what will work. Making a post once and then going quiet will do nothing to help. Let the community take their anger out on D3, but given time D3 should build enough trust that the community will become a whole lot betters.
Marvel Heroes I think does this pretty well, and Piranha Games learned this the hard way with MechWarrior Online.0 -
GothicKratos wrote:Additionally, someone mentioned scaling, and I'm not going to get into it right this second (again it's late!) but that was something I thought very hard about talking about, because this is another thing I think they're right on the nose of getting right, but it's just quite not there, but I felt like that was a subject the deserved it's own topic (and I will create one later! ).
Gods yes to this, scaling really should be the next thing that D3 addresses next.0 -
Yeah, this is true, we can get catty. Keep in mind it though, takes two to tango, and communication is key in any relationship -- personal, professional, business, etc. The devs have done a better job communicating on the forums recently but it can and needs to get better. The level of communication that should be baseline and is probably around 98% deficient is informing the entire playerbase of changes through in-game announcements. Regardless, we should all take a moment and thank them for taking the time out of their schedules to post when they can.GothicKratos wrote:We're basically an abusive partner.
I have to agree with grunth13. I had difficulties throughout both Ultron events to the point of practical unplayablity throughout 85-90% of both events. I received 4 Ultron tokens and a SW cover despite my placement in every simultaneous event and the season itself being compromised. To top it off, I lost my Alliance because of this -- that's something D3 can't fix. (And before someone asks, I put in two tickets with CS.)GothicKratos wrote:a.) Compensation for server outage. Ultron 10-Pack. (Which they did.)
I'm glad there were some in the community that saw better compensation but some of us fell through the cracks.
This. GK hit it dead-on. We are all better than what we have been recently. I'm not saying we all need to hold hands and sing kumbaya, but forumite and dev both need to realize the place we have brought the forums and work to make it a place for constructive discussion.GothicKratos wrote:The good. The good thing is both parties has been in a prime much better than what it is, so I feel like we can work together to achieve a much better community as a whole than what we have, or what we have had.
Bill & Ted said it best, "Be excellent to each other! And...Party on dudes!"
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Are we, really?MarvelDestiny wrote:We are all better than what we have been recently.
Scaling has not been adressed.
MMR that apparently leaves pretty much everyone worse off than before has not been adressed.
Roster slot prices are spiralling out of control, and DDQ is _not_ the answer.
Those are the huge, gigantic elephants in the room, and until those are adressed I refuse to see the game improving for the vet population, which is what _I_ personally am interested in.
Yes, the ISO reduction for levelling is good, but while scaling, MMR and roster slots go unadressed, it's not going to make me have fun again in PVP and PVE.0 -
Bowgentle, I absolutely agree with everything you are saying. Scaling & MMR are killing the game. Coupling with the health increases has brought the issue to new order of magnitude.
But the heart of GK's post (as I see it) is primarily about our communication difficulties. Flaming, anger, resentment, attacking, retaliatory strikes, and pure silence are all problems prelavent throughout the board. I didn't address the coding problems because I wanted to keep on track with GK. Plus, I've posted till my batteries bled on scaling/mmr and other issues and so I jumped at the chance to shine a spotlight on HOW we are voicing our complaints and the response (or lack thereof) from d3.0 -
GothicKratos wrote:a.) Compensation for server outage. Ultron 10-Pack. (Which they did.)
Not quite. Everyone got 4 or 5 Ultron tokens (can't remember which). The only people who got a 10-Pack were the alliances that reached round 8 on the 2nd Ultron runGothicKratos wrote:d.) Compensation for the Ultron Event. Scarlett Witch Cover. (Which they did.)
Again, not quite. It was only intended for the "top 10K players" who were on round 6. This is the laziest, most vague wording I can imagine. There were players who didn't even make it to round 6 that got one. There were players who did *not* get one while players in the same alliance *did* get one and had a lower score than the player who did not. I was on round 6 and did not get one (I switched alliances between Ultrons, so I don't know if anyone else in my alliance got one).
They did give out the next progression cover from Ultron 1, provided you were reasonably close to obtaining it. Not sure that I would call it compensation because, you know, it's Quicksilver.0 -
On a side note, i know you mentioned it in the OP.. but did anyone ever find out if anyone won the HP sweepstakes? I saw multiple threads asking about it die and be forgotten...0
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Nerf GothicKratos!!!!!!0
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Malcrof wrote:On a side note, i know you mentioned it in the OP.. but did anyone ever find out if anyone won the HP sweepstakes? I saw multiple threads asking about it die and be forgotten...
They announced it on their Facebook Page:
Congratulations to Kacie, Derek, and Douglas on winning the recent Hero Points Sweepstakes. Stay tuned for the next sweepstakes coming soon!0 -
I agree with the OP and applaud him for taking the time to fashion that message to us. It's putting yourself out there for people to appreciate and troll alike. Good job.
I agree that we are mostly good people at heart, and its easy to fall into the angry, pessimistic mode when it seems to be the dominant vibe in the forums.
When I first came here in October 2014, it was a great, helpful feel, with a few heated posts sporadically about the forums, but not the extent it is today.
There is an expression I gathered from a workshop I attended that encourages us to be individual Change-Makers. Be proactive, "Don't wait for change, make your change".
If we wait for the forums to settle down before we settle down, it won't happen. If we each settle down our posts individually, it'll create a wave across the forums and we'll feel better. Heck, try and post a positive thing every day that you post... and make it your first post of the day. Start your forum time on a good note.0 -
There are GOBS of good, constructive posts on here....that go unnoticed. If they (and Im thinking Kalbir/David) dropped in to talk about some of them it would go a long way.
Plus, give us a high level view of what the goals for the game, and players, are. Are matches taking the desired amount of time? Is scaling doing its job? What IS that job? What is the goal with rubberbanding? Are roster spots where they want them for high end players? Are slices/brackets doing what they want? Have they looked at how these things impact the top 10% of players?
People who know they are being heard, even if the suggestions arent incorporated, are much happier than those ignored. Even if it was as simple as "That looks like a good idea" or "The math doesnt work quite like that, but I like the thought."
As for compensation....tokens are (almost) NEVER the right option. I pulled one 3* (useless to me: GSBW red) from my 14....whoo hoo. But there are people who I hear pulled 2 or 3 IMHB covers. Seems fair, right? The extra cover was the right vein. Bump people (all people) up a tier or a little HP/ISO. Something that is NOT odds dependent.
Sell back....phew. Too bad they couldnt have put in a respec option. If they could do that I think that that would be fair for any buff/nerf. I had both SheThor (bought two blue 4 days before the nerf announcement, yes I knew it was coming) and XF (all covers earned). Ive barely touched them since their nerfs, but didnt feel I could sell them back because I had put so much time/effort into them. I scrimped and saved 1.5 seasons playing all the way to the end of PVPs to avoid shield use to get the HP for those two covers. And yet, they sit in my roster. Not doing nothing though....they ratchet up my scaling. So they do LESS than nothing. Im not really sure what to do with compensation for when selling chars though. I, badly, abused both the Daken and MNMags sellbacks so there are obviously scenarios that need to be addressed prior/during sell backs. Like shorten the window while posting here, and in game, what the window will be ahead of time....just not too far. Like it starts a week after the nerf/buff and runs two weeks. Every time. Id been putting off selling my second XF because I didnt want to figure out the HP break point and/or deal with CS....then it got posted as it went live that the sale was over. Nice advanced notice.
Anyway, there are my rambling thoughts on things. Feel free to ignore as you wish.0 -
This is frankly a bit hard to write. I upvoted the OP, mainly based on agreeing with the overall tone and feel of the post. That said, I can speak for myself and say that despite trying really hard to be positive, sometimes the (developer) silence in the forum is deafening, and oftentimes when something, ANYTHING from them would help.
The last thing I want is to sound negative or petulant, and I will continue to try to remain positive or at least neutral, but without meaningful interactions from the developers, the forum will likely continue to be a place where people can shout into the wind. A quick glance at the poll started by Colognoisseur paints a pretty clear picture of some questions that have been respectfully asked many times with either no response in most cases, or a vague-ish response in some.
To name only a few, roster slots, compensation, and scaling have been brought up, well, a few times. A quick glance through the forum is all you need to see a pattern emerging. In my experience, one of the reasons developers even have forums is to encourage honest, thoughtful, intelligent communication between themselves and players. I would really appreciate more of this from D3.
Do they expect me to carry 70 characters and pay HP for all the necessary slots (essentials)? If yes, fine, tell me that. I'm an adult, and I can handle the truth. If not, tell me that, and more importantly, do something about it. The handwringing and vague acknowledgements of the "problem" get old.
Do they think scaling is working properly? If yes, again, please just be open about it. If not, I would appreciate some communication about what they can and will do to fix it.
When we got our alliance outage/ISO compensation, I was the first to commend them, which I hope illustrates my interest in being fair. What ever happened to the PvE and PvP compensation (Ultron outages) they mentioned? I might have missed it, but I haven't seen anything, and that doesn't account for how many hundreds of posts I've seen repeatedly trying to engage the developers in a conversation about many posters' distaste for "token" compensation. Again, it would be great to have a development representative come out and say, "We like tokens as compensation, and that's what we're going to do." Awesome. I love information, and I'm mature enough to manage my personal feelings of disagreement.
I could go on, but I'll suffice it to say that the topics I've noticed people tend to get angry and sometimes downright rude about? They're pretty much all there in one poster's attempt to open dialogue (Colognoisseur's poll), again. Perhaps the developers will notice the poll and weigh in, because as it stands we've got a forum full of people without a bunch of answers to some relatively important questions. And not knowing is not quite as good as knowing.
That kind of unknowing makes people uncomfortable, and uncomfortable people often become agitated, and agitated people behind the supposed veil of online anonymity often get rude. I don't enjoy it, but I get it. I'm not one to resort to tantrums or namecalling, but I'd be lying if I didn't admit to sharing much of the frustration behind the words...
I post this with all due respect, and I'm hoping my desire to sound reasonable but empathetic comes through.
Edit: Just before I hit "post," I refreshed and noticed MarvelMan's post. Is it too late to just delete all of this and write, "What he said?"
DBC0 -
GothicKratos wrote:
*Forums complain about the incredible amount of ISO-8 required to make a character playable. Developers chop off quite a large bit of that amount (50k was it?) at the top-end and reduce the curve at the bottom end so it's easier to reach the middle of the curve but harder to get to the top of the curve, so characters are useable earlier in your investment. Forums throw this back in the developer's faces by implying that it's a "cash grab" and an attempt to indirectly increase our node scaling. Maybe that's a little bit of a stretch, maybe? Since no matter what they did here, it would have that same indirect effect - the other option would have been to tell us to shove off and keep it as is. Can we admit this was probably overzealous?
If you take this extract out of context from the rest of the game it sounds reasonable, but add some context and it loses some of that.
If this had of happened any time in the last year it would have been well received, but it didn't, it fell as a time when the direction of the game was changing to make matches longer and every change was made to ensure damage was taken during a hop (the nerfs, the health boosts and the mmr change). The iso changes just compound these issues.
Everyone was crying out for an easier path to a maxed levelled cover, but that just made another function to promote grind easier to sell.0
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