What would it take..

Unknown

So the forums are a very angry place these days. Admittedly, I'm finding reading them more entertaining than playing the game. I've seen a few other positive posts so thought about maybe trying for some constructive criticism and less vitriol.

So what would it take to appease you as a loyal player and/or paying customer?

1) Accurate patch notes posted a few days before the patch hits. I don't want to read some patch notes that come out after the patch has gone live and get surprised in game when buff (or shield) prices have been increased.

2) A bi-weekly calendar of upcoming events w/posted rewards and buffed heroes. People sold off their thorverines and then there were tourneys and pve featuring both of those characters. If they had known about these upcoming events and seen the rewards offered, they may not have sold their characters. This also lets us prepare before hand. If we know in 5 days there will be a tourney with Cap buffed and if we see that there are rewards we like, we can dump some iso in him if needed.

3) Some insight into how your MMR/PvE scaling is supposed to work, or how you would like it to work. I realize these last two pve events are not how you envisioned them, but without sharing your vision, we're left grasping at straws.

4) Sticky known issues threads. I know there's a whole other thread about this one specifically but it's a great point. We see a lot of new threads popping up where answers are buried in 15+ long threads. Treat the known issues thread as a TLDR for the forums.

5) Since you've admitted Thick as Thieves was broken, and now it appears Oscorp is as well, throw us a bone? Maybe toss us a Daredevil or some HP/tokens?

Twysta

They really do need to throw out some free goodwill gestures there to stop the alienation of their player base that's for sure.
They do say that sometimes things need to get worse before they can get better... we'll see how that goes.

Unknown

Personally I feel that the devs are working pretty hard on the programming side of the game, but are failing horribly in communicating to the players. They really need to rethink their PR stance and your suggestions are a great starting point.

And since issues with the scaling system broke the last two PvE events, I feel it really needs a rethink. Since they said its not based on play time, roster size, character level, or MMR, and that it depends on the performance of others on top of yourself, it's probably very, very complicated and that just drastically increases the chance they won't be able to implement it as they envisioned.

Unknown

If we have to have shields, I'd like them to be a bonus, not a necessity. You won't win without them right now, and you have to pay for them, so shields turn PvP in to the definition of pay to win.

A repeat of fixed versions of Thick as Thieves and Heroic Oscorp.

Obtainable progression rewards in PvP. I haven't seen anyone get over 850 points since Ares, so why is there a reward at 2400? It's stupid. It took all of one tournament to realize rewards were too easy to get before, so it doesn't take 4 or 5 to realize they're too hard now.

I won't demand covers or HP or anything, but it does go a long way as an apology. Doubling ISO gains for a weekend once everything is fixed would be a smart way of convincing turned off players to give the game one more shot too.

I really like your idea of an events calendar. I'm sure that they don't want to set PvE start dates in stone when they're developing new content, but it would be great to know which PvP tournaments are upcoming.

Unknown

Numbers 1-5 would make me happy.

Unknown

What would it take to make me happy?

Weekend support to fix issues like the current one. If no weekend support then launch new events on a monday.

Spencer75

Twysta wrote:

They really do need to throw out some free goodwill gestures there to stop the alienation of their player base that's for sure.
They do say that sometimes things need to get worse before they can get better... we'll see how that goes.

If every single player gets the "free goodwill gestures" i don't really consider that free since we're all essentially competing against each other...

Unknown

Spencer75 wrote:

Twysta wrote:

They really do need to throw out some free goodwill gestures there to stop the alienation of their player base that's for sure.
They do say that sometimes things need to get worse before they can get better... we'll see how that goes.

If every single player gets the "free goodwill gestures" i don't really consider that free since we're all essentially competing against each other...

LoL. So what's the standard, if only some get it? Only players who finished out of the running in the last two events? Only players with no DD? Only you?

We're not just competing against each other, we're competing in order to build a good roster. You having Daredevil or more ISO or more HP wouldn't take away my enjoyment of those things, so why not? After the last couple of weeks they need to rebuild some goodwill with everybody.

Everybody except those OP level 30 1* players. Those guys have it real good right now.

Unknown

We don't know it isn't working as intended. Maybe they want it to be terrible?

Not sure I need appeasing. I think they've screwed up atrociously and I won't stick around indefinitely watching the meltdown, but to be honest I'll just keep trundling along if they get it on track before I lose interest. Obviously I'm just waiting and watching for the time being, but that's because there's nothing in their game I can play, not because I wouldn't if I could. So any accessible content would be a start, I suppose. It'll be too late to salvage Oscorp by the time they're back at work, so sticking Lightning Rounds up early for an extra rotation or three wouldn't go amiss.

I agree a preview calendar would improve the game immensely. It's always felt a bit silly that you ideally need to sit on a 20k stockpile of a scarce resource or second guess who's getting buffed next to participate fully, even if you usually can guess fairly easily. Even without committing to dates, just "coming soon". They can't be tied down more than a week ahead: they're agile developers, a well-intentioned philosophy alarmingly prone to generating clusters of kitties like the one urinating into their revenue stream.

I'd also very much like them to post a brief statement on what level scaling is intended to achieve, how it's supposed to work (less than optimistic they'll answer that), and what their immediate plans for it are now. At the moment, a pretty widespread opinion of its effect seems to be that it's outright destroyed the game, so I don't see they have much to fear in transparency. They're not going to make forumgoers' opinion of it worse, unless the goal actually is to feed negative energy to some elder god they've been petitioning.

I don't really know what's up with Demiurge. They aren't some cowboy startup - I've been seeing their name around for a good while, and they've been involved in several very high-profile releases. They do seem mostly to have been a work-for-hire studio to date, though. I'm not sure anything but Shoot Many Robots before this was really theirs. I guess the demands of managing a frequently updating game have thrown up hurdles they didn't anticipate. Plus they look to be doing most or all of their own promotion and community management, seemingly without anyone employed explicitly for the purpose, which can hardly be easy - they have a publisher, but D3P's not bringing anything visible to me besides this forum and a faceless customer service account in the news section that could have a Demiurge employee posting through it, for all I know. They are probably doing promotion on various app channels and who knows what else, I just don't know about it.

RockMonster wrote:

LoL. So what's the standard, if only some get it? Only players who finished out of the running in the last two events? Only players with no DD? Only you?

If you're really competitive you should, for instance, try to win all the upcoming tournaments with Patch as the 3* placement award. It's not enough that you already have him twice over: others must be denied access for your advantage to be assured and your victory complete.

I doubt more than a handful go that far. With the need to blow 100-600 HP to secure a good placement, though, I think we might be seeing more people competing to snipe late high enough placements to treat 3*s purely as part of the HP award to fund them through other tournaments they do want the covers from.

Talking of awards, whatever happened to Hulk's black? Did I just miss all the tournaments bombarding us with him, or has there really been nothing since it was a progression award a couple of times?

Twysta

Shoot Many Robots was a good game... but they gave it like Zero support...
That said, it didn't really need patching, the netcode was a bit shoddy so a lot of the mp games were really laggy.
It's just a shame they never made more content for it. Oh well.

I heard that they might have been one of the small teams that Aliens: Colonial Marines got shipped out to...

What a joke that was

Unknown

Spencer75 wrote:

Twysta wrote:

They really do need to throw out some free goodwill gestures there to stop the alienation of their player base that's for sure.
They do say that sometimes things need to get worse before they can get better... we'll see how that goes.

If every single player gets the "free goodwill gestures" i don't really consider that free since we're all essentially competing against each other...

Suppose they posted a full set of DD covers to everyone. How is that not free? How it hurts anyone? Who would be unhappy?

Unknown

Veracity wrote:

I agree a preview calendar would improve the game immensely. It's always felt a bit silly that you ideally need to sit on a 20k stockpile of a scarce resource or second guess who's getting buffed next to participate fully, even if you usually can guess fairly easily. Even without committing to dates, just "coming soon". They can't be tied down more than a week ahead: they're agile developers, a well-intentioned philosophy alarmingly prone to generating clusters of kitties like the one urinating into their revenue stream.

I think dates aren't too much to ask for. Lately, PvE events start on Fridays and I know they have to have a production calendar somewhere. Its not like they wake up Friday morning and say, Ok guys, we have two hours to throw an event together...how about Ares? They have to know at least a week in advance what they're working on pushing out and the releases have been really regular.

Crazze47

Agree with pretty much everything in the OP, don't have much to add except to say I am glad to see posts offering solutions instead of just complaining. Not that I don't understand the complaining. I am not actually playing the game atm because of how messed up things are right now. Now I just hope when the Devs get back these topics will be at the top and the Dev's will actually pay attention to them.

Also I agree asking for info on events too far in advance might not be realistic due to the fact that they are still working on some events, but I would guess most stuff is fairly concrete a week in advance so a what's going to happen this week type thing should be doable.

Unknown

You're also competing against future players who won't get the goodwill bonus.

Unknown

pasa_ wrote:

Spencer75 wrote:

Twysta wrote:

They really do need to throw out some free goodwill gestures there to stop the alienation of their player base that's for sure.
They do say that sometimes things need to get worse before they can get better... we'll see how that goes.

If every single player gets the "free goodwill gestures" i don't really consider that free since we're all essentially competing against each other...

Suppose they posted a full set of DD covers to everyone. How is that not free? How it hurts anyone? Who would be unhappy?

I'm pretty sure I would be unhappy. As someone who has tried out the level 77 DD....it really sucks. Reactive covers that are easily countered are completely useless to me. For me it would really be giving away prizes that help me and everyone to win future events. A ton of gold coins for example.

Unknown

ApolloAndy wrote:

You're also competing against future players who won't get the goodwill bonus.

Future players have it easy because they're having an easy time getting first place in all current events because difficulty is skewed for us veterans. So, screw the future players.

Unknown

They need to first off address the issue that people are feeling cheated and offer some sort of olive branch to the folks they have alienated.

Secondly, they need backtrack on the ISO Tax

After that everything the OP said is a damn good start.

Crazze47

ApolloAndy wrote:

You're also competing against future players who won't get the goodwill bonus.

I don't want to bring too much negative into this but I do just want to say those future players aren't currently dealing with the **** events we are. Would I like a free DD? Yea but I don't need one. I just feel like future players aren't really relevant to the current situation. Really though I think fix the scaling in pve and as someone called it the 0-sum pvp (which is a near perfect description) that would be a good will gift good enough to keep me playing.

Unknown

Crazze47 wrote:

ApolloAndy wrote:

You're also competing against future players who won't get the goodwill bonus.

I don't want to bring too much negative into this but I do just want to say those future players aren't currently dealing with the **** events we are. Would I like a free DD? Yea but I don't need one. I just feel like future players aren't really relevant to the current situation. Really though I think fix the scaling in pve and as someone called it the 0-sum pvp (which is a near perfect description) that would be a good will gift good enough to keep me playing.

I should have added the PVP problems as well. Attacking one person for 30 and coming out to find you have been hit by eight people is ****.

Bacon Pants

I'd like to see an event where we get to play as the villains. Give me an event with some buffed bad guy and the Hammer or Maggia folk on my team. I want to one shot level 100 avengers with a rocket

Seriously though, I want a full bad guy event.

Unknown

justaplayer wrote:

Crazze47 wrote:

ApolloAndy wrote:

You're also competing against future players who won't get the goodwill bonus.

I don't want to bring too much negative into this but I do just want to say those future players aren't currently dealing with the **** events we are. Would I like a free DD? Yea but I don't need one. I just feel like future players aren't really relevant to the current situation. Really though I think fix the scaling in pve and as someone called it the 0-sum pvp (which is a near perfect description) that would be a good will gift good enough to keep me playing.

I should have added the PVP problems as well. Attacking one person for 30 and coming out to find you have been hit by eight people is ****.

That is 100% on purpose though. They want you to buy shields, attack once or twice, and buy shields again. I hope they revert back...either to 2 months ago or to right after shields came out and the high progress rewards were doable...either one works for me honestly.