What's Wrong With MPQ (And It's Community)...

Malcrof

Problems or not, MPQ is the first mobile game i have ever gotten my wife to play with me, and then to have her come home with some google play cards as a surprise during the Ultron event, was a bigger thing. She gets miffed if i spend money on a mobile game (and i hate her millions of shoes, so we are even).

This single fact, all by itself, means something huge to me.

We can sit on the couch with something on the tv in the background and play, gave us something new to talk and/or complain about, and it has gotten her interested in not only comics themselves, but in seeing the movies in the theaters with me.

I can handle anything D3 wants to throw at us, as long as it keeps her playing.. odd how a little game can actually make RL better in simple small ways.

TLCstormz

As a MODERATOR, shouldn't you be not commenting on stuff in this fashion? Yes, you are "just another user on here," but isn't that like....a conflict of interest, or something?

It is on most other boards. Be careful.

:+/

Stax the Foyer

GothicKratos wrote:

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.

I agree with a lot of what you've said there, but I think they should be generous with character rebalancing even if a character has been out for a while. Six months sounds like a lot of time, but it can often take a player six months or more to fully cover and level a 4* character, and that time frame is only going to go up with additional 4* releases. I'd say that there should be no time-based distinction in terms of available remedies, especially since someone could easily have started playing just before a nerf, no matter how long a character has been out for.

I've been harping on this quite a bit lately, but it's because I think character rebalancing and the aftermath is the irritant that causes a lot of the negative attitude on the forums. Rebalancing doesn't have to be a bad thing, but their policies have made it a disheartening experience for the players. We see it as a bad thing because of the stingy approach to buyback and the lack of respeccing available to players after a nerf. I've also been harping on it because it's something that it seems like they can change. A buyback cost change would be trivial, and while other changes might be more difficult to implement, I think there's a big upside to doing them.

Remember, if they've done a good job with the rebalance, the buyback costs are irrelevant, because most people will still want to keep that character. Let people get out what they put in, especially in terms of ISO. If they're worried about HP arbitrage by players selling unneeded covers, they could give you one generous buyback and then the rest at a reduced cost.

Scoregasms

I think most folks agree with your sentiment Gothic and the overall message. But as others have said, there are plenty of really good constructive, well thought out feedback on the forums, it's just lost in the noise. This is a public internet forum after all, whether the onus is on the Moderators or the Developers to read and respond to such feedback is unknown as it does seem they pick and choose where they want to respond which is perfectly fine of course. There's always going to be those crazy posters out there that make us all look bad, but there's still a nugget of truth even in that muck.

Personally, my uneasiness comes from a lack of confidence I have in the developers design goals along with the reactive nature of their responses to problems. You touched on it slightly with having more proactive guidelines to handling event problems, which most folks would agree is a better way to deal with issues. But seeing certain characters released just for the sake of it (versus actually adding value to the gameplay), significant character changes and general errors that seem to be avoidable with a little thought/testing is a concern of mine.

This game is really meant just be fun after all, but it is a business. I think at some point, the whole topic of Roster Slots costing "too darn much" just needs to be accepted. I'm currently seeing my next slot at 1000HP and will probably be slowing back my new character acquisitions. While I agree the costs are a bit insane (especially after 100, THAT def needs to be addressed), I personally think it's unreasonable for folks to truly expect to be able to earn enough in-game HP for every new character.

But, the way they made the game mechanics work, it almost forces a player to try and roster every single character available or face a disadvantage in PVE/PVP. Whether good or not, the weekly buff characters is a step towards it, but IMO, they should just get rid of singular essential characters and let us select from that weekly buff list for those essential nodes. Also get rid of community scaling and you have a lot of the frustrations folks have immediately addressed. This means even if I missed a PVE new release, I still have a good chance of playing through the PVE. Maybe give the old essential the +90 boost and the rest +30, that'd be fine provided I can just pick from a list of required characters for an essential node.

babinro

Drummerboycroy wrote:

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.

I would have thought the answer to this question was self-evident. If you choose to play the game ultra hardcore and be able to top 10 or higher in ALL PvE and PvP events then the answer is a resounding yes.

If you aren't a part of the top 2% of the player base then the answer is no. You can easily top 50-150 PvE without having the featured character for each node. The expectations are therefore self enforced based on what you want out of the game and how fast you want to achieve it.

I seriously doubt that D3 EXPECTS everyone to run 70 character rosters. I'd imagine their views are far more basic. They want to promote roster diversity because it extends replay value and encourages roster purchases which in turn generates revenue.

Making certain characters in tiers either required or temporarily buffed all works towards incentivizing people to expand their roster all while rewarding those who have already done so by giving their lesser used characters some action.

You could choose to view all of this in an entirely negative perspective if you prefer. Rewarding roster diversity is the same as punishing everyone who enjoys a specific playstyle or simply has a 2 or 3 favorite characters. It's an equally valid way to view the situation.

Either way...this question seems to answer itself without the devs having to come out and talk about it.

Drummerboycroy wrote:

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.

I'd be curious to their answer on this one admittedly but all evidence points to the answer being 'yes'.

We've had scaling be part of PvE for a LONG time and while they might not be 100% happy with every aspect of the feature it's been a non-priority issue long enough to remain unchanged for the better part of a year.

If you look at the leaderboards of any given pve they are made typically made up but a mix of 4* rosters, 3* developing rosters and 2* transitioners. Considering scaling is all about given all tiers of play a 'fair' battlefield...I'd say the end results have been fairly successful.

So if you ask, 'do you think scaling is working properly' then I'd have to answer with 'yes'.

Perhaps the question you really want to ask is 'Why do you feel it's acceptable to give a moderately dedicated 2* roster player an equal shot at the same rewards available to a hardcore 4* veteran?"

Unknown

GothicKratos wrote:

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.
The Community (aka the ugly)

First and foremost, when something happens we don't like, we need to be more constructive.
Thirdly, and lastly, we need to be more civil to each other (myself included).

Hey look it's what I've been saying all along, it's a green post by a green so maybe they'll listen now

Unknown

ArkPrime wrote:

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.

Please refrain from making broad judgmental statements like this. Being a Developer is a 24/7 365 job. When there is a production issue. It doesn't matter what time it is you have to fix it. Nothing ever gets to "Wait until Monday" to be fixed. During Ultron they worked all weekend attempting fix the issues. At no point did they say "We will get to it on Monday". I know everyone thinks that we developers have an easy life, but our job is constant. There have been many times I was on a cruise ship, using really **** satellite internet trying to fix a production problem or in a bar in Mexico that has free Wifi, trying to solve a problem.

Unknown

I'll add to this that I liked the Ultron event a lot, and it seems like the devs are trying to be more reactive to suggestions from the community these days, but a lot of the negativity on the forums stems from outstanding issues with the game that have never been addressed.

The roster slot costs is a big one, that's been hanging around for a long time.

Scaling is also a problem.

MMR / punishing players for leveling up is also a problem.

The required grind to win covers (and even moreso 4*s) is also a problem.

Lack of appropriate compensation for events where the servers tank or are poorly designed so players can't receive rewards is also a problem (and to be clear I was lucky and pulled a HB from my 10-pack so I'm not complaining about the personal compensation I received). They've gotten somewhat better with this one, but it's still a choice - whether or not to just give players a bone in the form of the cover(s) they'd have earned, or whether to enforce artificial restrictions on rewards.

Generally poor customer support for any issues involving compensation, reward delivery, adjustment, refunds, etc.. (falls into the same category of focus on whether or not to throw customers a bone - the most successful ones like amazon, etc.. understand the importance of this in building customer satisfaction and loyalty).

Health Pack Tax is a problem (namely game literally cheating when you're doing too well to balance things out - e.x. 5 rounds of cascades in the enemy's strong color triggered by you not taking enough damage or firing off a bunch of protect tiles). Likewise, the game magically knowing where your special tiles are and cascading them away to wipe out your damage, ap, etc.. stored in them.

Changes that drag out length of matches for seemingly the sole purpose of increasing health pack sales. (i.e. increasing character health vs. improving weaker characters' powers - true healing etc..) On one hand, it MAY push out some of the hardcore grinders, on the other it conflicts with the ability to play the game casually.

The competitive PvE / PvP systems have always been broken and repetitive. Nerfs don't fix them. They came pretty close to doing it right with Ultron, having novel event-specific game mechanics, and giving out plenty of rewards during it (although the event itself was still pretty repetitive), and making it noncompetitive. Most playing simply want decent progression that's not too grindy, and is attainable with some plannable effort (which is where the competitive mechanisms interfere). The system of losing points for a defensive loss also has always restricted character diversity, as it means players who use anything other than their tried and true A / sometimes B teams will get pounded constantly on defense.

So a lot of the common forum complaints, even when vested with vitriol, snark, and nastiness, still have a grain of truth in them. Many of the problems the game faces stem from its monetization model, and in a single-player game would be nonexistent or designed in a way that they'd be a nonissue. This paired with the fact that many people come to MPQ from other match-3, casual style games, means the competitive / restrictive progression model doesn't sit well with what many, many of the players expect out of a casual match 3 game.

It's important to acknowledge that the devs are trying to improve the game, much moreso than in the past, but we should also remember there's a multitude of good reasons many players get frustrated. The game encourages players to grind and level up, but then traps them in a mode where if they do, they face much, much tougher brackets, opponents, etc.. and hit a point eventually where it's simply not possible to play casually / for fun anymore to keep progressing. It also encourages them to collect every character in order to have a reasonable chance at earning new ones, but then hits them with roster slot cost scaling in a bad way when they do.

So there's a lot of things like that - places where the devs seem to have a design philosophy that directly conflicts with how many players would like to play the game.

One thing is true, that most people (and I assume devs) respond better to constructive criticism than to straight itching and whining, but my honest impression is that the prevalent negativity often found on the forums is caused by grind-induced stress from a game that expects more out of players than players want to put in, and doesn't necessarily reward them for doing so. I think part of the frustration also stems from the fact that until recently (at least back when I played competitively) the devs were really, really bad at communication, and totally ignored what players were asking for (or else implemented changes in odd ways that made problems worse), and had nonexistent customer service for most issues that mattered.

I will say, and that many people have mentioned before, is that games should be fun. If you're no longer having fun in MPQ, you need to step away and find something else for a while that doesn't cause you as much stress, or just play it more casually, and worry less about getting every character. At the end of the day, MPQ is a fun game, a mixed bag in a lot of ways from a design perspective, but still fun as long as you're diligent about playing it on your terms, rather than however the game seems to be pushing you to play.

Unknown

babinro wrote:

...

So if you ask, 'do you think scaling is working properly' then I'd have to answer with 'yes'.

Perhaps the question you really want to ask is 'Why do you feel it's acceptable to give a moderately dedicated 2* roster player an equal shot at the same rewards available to a hardcore 4* veteran?"

Wasn't going to respond, but since the above is so dramatically different from my intent, figured I'd just quote myself from another thread: viewtopic.php?style=1&f=7&t=26077&start=140

Drummerboycroy wrote:

Bowgentle wrote:

...

Of course, it would be preferable to go back to the system before scaling - nodes with (fixed!) high levels that requires high leveled characters.
But since apparently it's unthinkable to lock people out from high level content (which is what 95% of other games out there are doing), this is never going to happen.

IAH, I, as a 2* level 94 player would have ZERO problem with that. Those nodes are for level 160+? Cool, I'll play these level 100 nodes and hope for T100 until my roster is developed enough to run 3*s.

It's the very definition of simple. If I can't hang with the big boys, I can't. No big deal. I'll get there eventually, and I'll have a reason to try harder. If this is supposed to handicap nodes for lower level players, it simply isn't working.

DBC

Just so my original statement is clear. Moderate or not (I'm a bit more than moderate. Just ask my wife. ), I simply would like more clarity on why things in PvE work the way they do. In other words, as I tried to say before, I'd like more communication from the developers themselves, rather than a bunch of us guessing back and forth about what they're doing.

DBC

Unknown

traedoril wrote:

ArkPrime wrote:

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.

Please refrain from making broad judgmental statements like this. Being a Developer is a 24/7 365 job. When there is a production issue. It doesn't matter what time it is you have to fix it. Nothing ever gets to "Wait until Monday" to be fixed. During Ultron they worked all weekend attempting fix the issues. At no point did they say "We will get to it on Monday". I know everyone thinks that we developers have an easy life, but our job is constant. There have been many times I was on a cruise ship, using really **** satellite internet trying to fix a production problem or in a bar in Mexico that has free Wifi, trying to solve a problem.

Take your own advice. You are not all game developers in existence. Your personal actions have nothing to do with theirs. If they were on it this time, great, but it would be far from the first time if they hadn't been. It's not just some random assumption, we've been told several times in the past, directly by the staff here, that the devs are gone for the weekends and won't be back to do anything about it until Monday.

GothicKratos

I was going to wait awhile before I responded to anything, to let the conversation settle a bit, but I want to respond to one specific thing real fast;

Ralstonator wrote:

Take your own advice. You are not all game developers in existence. Your personal actions have nothing to do with theirs. If they were on it this time, great, but it would be far from the first time if they hadn't been. It's not just some random assumption, we've been told several times in the past, directly by the staff here, that the devs are gone for the weekends and won't be back to do anything about it until Monday.

Being out of office so they're not corresponding on the forums is by no way a reflection of what they do when something is broken.

For example, if I am not mistaken, the original run of DPvMPQ was on a weekend, and that server downtime, that occurred somewhere in the twilight hours, was addressed in an extremely timely manner.

One could also look at both running of the Ultron events, which were actively worked on throughout the weekend - as evidenced by it coming back up after going down. Servers don't prop themselves back up and start running again when they break.

Vankysher

GothicKratos wrote:

I was going to wait awhile before I responded to anything, to let the conversation settle a bit, but I want to respond to one specific thing real fast;

Ralstonator wrote:

Take your own advice. You are not all game developers in existence. Your personal actions have nothing to do with theirs. If they were on it this time, great, but it would be far from the first time if they hadn't been. It's not just some random assumption, we've been told several times in the past, directly by the staff here, that the devs are gone for the weekends and won't be back to do anything about it until Monday.

Being out of office so they're not corresponding on the forums is by no way a reflection of what they do when something is broken.

For example, if I am not mistaken, the original run of DPvMPQ was on a weekend, and that server downtime, that occurred somewhere in the twilight hours, was addressed in an extremely timely manner.

One could also look at both running of the Ultron events, which were actively worked on throughout the weekend - as evidenced by it coming back up after going down. Servers don't prop themselves back up and start running again when they break.

IRC Hi-Fi did communicate on the forums during the first Ultron run about the server issues - which was a pleasant surprise.
My memory fails regarding the second run as I didn't pay as close attention to the forums during that time frame though I believe Kabir did post something as well.
Overall if they consistently did this minimal thing, the perception of their poor and utter lack of communication would be improved.

Unknown

I think D3 has some really strange priorities. You don't just do a huge promotional event and then leave the server to blow up without anyone checking on it. It's one thing whether any of the problem could've been resolved in a timely manner but I just don't think they understand their priorities that well. I think they suffer from the problem in that while it is well known the forum guys are a small, whiny minority, sometimes doing exactly the opposite of what people are whining about doesn't mean the masses will support you. Sure, we're all complaining about how the server outage sucks, but just because we're whining doesn't mean the silent majority is saying, 'Server blow up on a crucial Ultron run wiping out several days of hard work? Who could possibly care about that?"

Unknown

GothicKratos wrote:

I was going to wait awhile before I responded to anything, to let the conversation settle a bit, but I want to respond to one specific thing real fast;

Ralstonator wrote:

Take your own advice. You are not all game developers in existence. Your personal actions have nothing to do with theirs. If they were on it this time, great, but it would be far from the first time if they hadn't been. It's not just some random assumption, we've been told several times in the past, directly by the staff here, that the devs are gone for the weekends and won't be back to do anything about it until Monday.

Being out of office so they're not corresponding on the forums is by no way a reflection of what they do when something is broken.

For example, if I am not mistaken, the original run of DPvMPQ was on a weekend, and that server downtime, that occurred somewhere in the twilight hours, was addressed in an extremely timely manner.

One could also look at both running of the Ultron events, which were actively worked on throughout the weekend - as evidenced by it coming back up after going down. Servers don't prop themselves back up and start running again when they break.

Ok...? I could reference some times when they did not do that too, particularly on holidays, but that's beside the point.

I did not say or even imply that they didn't do their jobs and I certainly wasn't suggesting that "servers magically came back up on their own". I absolutely did not say that their response to problems was to disappear for the weekend. I never demanded that they should be here on holidays or criticized them in any way for having lives of their own. I only said that they're not they're on call "24/7 365", and they're not.

Unknown

GothicKratos wrote:

I was going to wait awhile before I responded to anything, to let the conversation settle a bit, but I want to respond to one specific thing real fast;

Ralstonator wrote:

Take your own advice. You are not all game developers in existence. Your personal actions have nothing to do with theirs. If they were on it this time, great, but it would be far from the first time if they hadn't been. It's not just some random assumption, we've been told several times in the past, directly by the staff here, that the devs are gone for the weekends and won't be back to do anything about it until Monday.

Being out of office so they're not corresponding on the forums is by no way a reflection of what they do when something is broken.

For example, if I am not mistaken, the original run of DPvMPQ was on a weekend, and that server downtime, that occurred somewhere in the twilight hours, was addressed in an extremely timely manner.

One could also look at both running of the Ultron events, which were actively worked on throughout the weekend - as evidenced by it coming back up after going down. Servers don't prop themselves back up and start running again when they break.

I mean. The first event with the mmr was released on a Friday and we had a what, 30 page thread about how awful it was with zero official responses? Then later there was an entire pvp event with nothing but seed teams. I know what you're saying- if the game is starting to implode someone does go back to the office and solve it (specially if it's an ultron event released with the movie, because it would be downright stupid to not be there to fix an event that marvel and Disney were closely monitoring as part of their advertising), but you know and I know that lately there was been several times where the community gets ignored or told to chill out while they slowly come back from vacation and they'll see what they do about the ruined events later.

Which turned to be some tokens and a couple covers. Hurray.

Cymmina

Phantron wrote:

I think D3 has some really strange priorities. You don't just do a huge promotional event and then leave the server to blow up without anyone checking on it. It's one thing whether any of the problem could've been resolved in a timely manner but I just don't think they understand their priorities that well. I think they suffer from the problem in that while it is well known the forum guys are a small, whiny minority, sometimes doing exactly the opposite of what people are whining about doesn't mean the masses will support you. Sure, we're all complaining about how the server outage sucks, but just because we're whining doesn't mean the silent majority is saying, 'Server blow up on a crucial Ultron run wiping out several days of hard work? Who could possibly care about that?"

What priorities are you questioning here, exactly? Because it sounds like you're just assuming they sat around doing nothing whenever there was a problem. I know this might sound crazy, but maybe the people who were fixing the problem were too busy fixing the problem. Would you rather them delay fixing things so that they could tell us they were fixing things?

Normal, rational people would visit the forums looking for status information when they encounter a problem. If an official statement is missing, they start browsing to see if other people are having the same issue. When it becomes clear that there's nothing to do but wait, they do so patiently. Pointing the finger at the D3 staff, accusing them of doing nothing or not caring because "OMG I can't play for 2 hours" DOES NOT HELP.

Sometimes things can't be dealt with as fast as you or I would like them to. That doesn't mean nothing is being done.

JVReal

A train has already derailed and caused casualties:
http://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/amtrak ... ?ocid=iehp

Let's not derail this thread.

It's about improving the community by both the company and the players.

Unknown

Phantron wrote:

I think D3 has some really strange priorities. You don't just do a huge promotional event and then leave the server to blow up without anyone checking on it.

I thought that they dealt with the problem of a lot of people being locked out of the events at the start of Ultron in a very competent manner. Its not that they weren't in the office and someone walked in a few hours later, flicked a switch and everything was fixed. They would have had to spend that time looking for whatever was causing the slow down and they found it and fixed it in a matter of hours.
The outage did cause a problem because of the relatively short duration of the event. But to think that they weren't doing anything in the initial hours is a bit naive.

Unknown

Compensation for server outage. Ultron 10-Pack. (Which they did.)

They did? I think I got 4 tokens and a free Quicksilver. Must have been different awards for different people.

Buret0

It's funny, in my 34 years of life, I've only ever played two games that ever had developers actually interact with the community. Most of the time, I would just play the game, completely oblivious of what the developers were planning and the developers completely oblivious of what I thought about their game.

I don't know when this changed, but obviously it is a good thing with respect to developing a community and understanding what the community wants in order to keep people playing and happy.

On the other hand, it creates these expectations that the developers should serve the community, especially the forum active community. In both of the games that I played that had developer involvement in online forums, this eventually divided the community with respect to proposed and implemented changes. The developer tried to please too many different people and thus broke from their own vision for the game.

The changes drove away vets and made the game far too difficult for newcomers to get into. Many of the vets stopped playing the game but continued to login to the forums to spout their discontent for the way the game had changed and about why they had quit (or were going to quit, or would never spend another dollar on them).

In my day (being the days where games were developed in isolation), I wouldn't write letters to the developers when I grew tired of their game. I wouldn't go to the place where I bought the game to complain about how much money I spent on the game and to discourage other people from playing it.

I would just pick up a new game and forget about the old one. If one of my friends asked me about the game, I would tell them about it, but I certainly wouldn't offer my opinion about it, unsolicited to strangers.

Then again, in the past, when you were in the middle of your Super Mario 3 run, Nintendo wouldn't update the game and decide to nerf Tanooki Suits (which is really the 4* version of the Leaf power-up). Then again, I never called my friends to complain that I pulled a frog suit token from my mushroom hut reward either.

Community involvement is both empowering and potentially treacherous waters to tread. I was happy playing this game, completely oblivious to the other people playing it and what changes were coming down the pipe. I believe that the majority of the casual players will never find this website or even ever bother looking for it. They will play the game, or they won't. I'm guessing that many of them were far more frustrated by the Ultron event server errors than the hardcore players, because they had no idea what was going on or whether anything was ever going to be done about it.

However, once the developers let the genie out of the bottle, they created expectations with respect to community involvement, communication, and becoming part of the vision for the future of this game. Now the developers are stuck with these expectations and risk alienating the hardcore MPQ gamers if they fail to live up to them.

It is a tough boat to be in... but it is a mess that they made for themselves.

Good luck to the team. You will need it.