Customer = Always Right

Unknown

Dev Team,

I have a few suggestions that would bring this game back to the status of fun. (And the answer is yes if your asking yourself if it stopped being fun.) The following suggestions not only meet the requirements to appease your customer base, but they are also extremely easy from a development standpoint:

Back out all of your character Nerfs: Nerfs should not exist in a game about super heroes. When was the last time marvel comics said hey, we should take away superpowers and make our characters weaker? If people have complaints about characters being overpowered the answer is you make the other characters BETTER. The overpowered players are the ones that everyone wants to play. I work in IT and I know after a change is made it is relatively easy to undo as long as the change has not been in affect for too long. This is a golden chance to redeem yourself and go back to the basics when this game was fun.

Immediately focus on making characters better using the old stats for THOR as your base. If what his powers and strength were equivalent to were 2 star use that to improve all the 3 start and 4 star characters. They should be able to beat the old 2 star Thor. Again throw the word Nerf out of your vocabulary.

Boosts: Boosts should be a luxury or mandatory part of the game. First decide which one and then proceed with the following: If mandatory make them cost ISOs based on how good the boost is, if they are a luxury (meaning they ARE NOT NEEDED TO WIN) then make them cost HP. I am all for you making money, but you have to balance out people who want to play and those who want to be the best in the game. I think we can agree you should be able to play the bare minimum of the game without having to pay money.

Gameplay vs New Characters: You have a solid gameplay strategy going, stage based adventures and pvp tournaments. STOP TINKERING WITH IT! (watch the league to get the reference.) Work on more characters. This should be the majority of your development time mixed with Customer bugs. The game play is doing great, keep the rotations coming with an occasional special event, but give the people more superheroes. Again take a lesson from other games and comics... there is not multicharacter game but this one where they say "Hey we have to many characters for users to play with, lets have less."

Please give your customers' what they are looking for,
Another voice in the crowd

Unknown

Ah, you couldn't be more right. IceIX, where you at? You need to hire this man!

Dayv

Hal Jordan 8 wrote:

Back out all of your character Nerfs: Nerfs should not exist in a game about super heroes. When was the last time marvel comics said hey, we should take away superpowers and make our characters weaker?

Me. Marvel lost her powers to Rogue for years. Rogue eventually lost those stolen powers. Oh, and Rogue's dead now.

Magneto stripped the adamantium from Wolverine's bones and claws.

Thousands of mutants we're depowered by the Scarlet Witch. Oh, and she's dead now.

Iron Man has lost everything and had to start over more than once.

Just sayin'.

Unknown

DayvBang wrote:

Hal Jordan 8 wrote:

Back out all of your character Nerfs: Nerfs should not exist in a game about super heroes. When was the last time marvel comics said hey, we should take away superpowers and make our characters weaker?

Me. Marvel lost her powers to Rogue for years. Rogue eventually lost those stolen powers. Oh, and Rogue's dead now.

Magneto stripped the adamantium from Wolverine's bones and claws.

Thousands of mutants we're depowered by the Scarlet Witch. Oh, and she's dead now.

Iron Man has lost everything and had to start over more than once.

Just sayin'.

And then they reinvented MS marvel more powerful than ever,

and then they gave wolverine his metal back and put him in more teams better than ever,

And then they made one more mutant more powerful than all, and then undid what scarlet witch did because they realized it was a terrible idea,

and then iron man came back stronger than ever with new gear...

So you successfully proved that marvel had the same bad idea 4 times and then reversed them all. In your own roundabout way you made my point stronger. Thank you.

MPQ dev team, follow the long history of MARVEL and make things more power than before.

Unknown

"With great power, comes great FUN" Uncle Ben...

doc8998

Hal Jordan 8 wrote:

Dev Team,

I have a few suggestions that would bring this game back to the status of fun. (And the answer is yes if your asking yourself if it stopped being fun.) The following suggestions not only meet the requirements to appease your customer base, but they are also extremely easy from a development standpoint:

Back out all of your character Nerfs: Nerfs should not exist in a game about super heroes. When was the last time marvel comics said hey, we should take away superpowers and make our characters weaker? If people have complaints about characters being overpowered the answer is you make the other characters BETTER. The overpowered players are the ones that everyone wants to play. I work in IT and I know after a change is made it is relatively easy to undo as long as the change has not been in affect for too long. This is a golden chance to redeem yourself and go back to the basics when this game was fun.

Immediately focus on making characters better using the old stats for THOR as your base. If what his powers and strength were equivalent to were 2 star use that to improve all the 3 start and 4 star characters. They should be able to beat the old 2 star Thor. Again throw the word Nerf out of your vocabulary.

Boosts: Boosts should be a luxury or mandatory part of the game. First decide which one and then proceed with the following: If mandatory make them cost ISOs based on how good the boost is, if they are a luxury (meaning they ARE NOT NEEDED TO WIN) then make them cost HP. I am all for you making money, but you have to balance out people who want to play and those who want to be the best in the game. I think we can agree you should be able to play the bare minimum of the game without having to pay money.

Gameplay vs New Characters: You have a solid gameplay strategy going, stage based adventures and pvp tournaments. STOP TINKERING WITH IT! (watch the league to get the reference.) Work on more characters. This should be the majority of your development time mixed with Customer bugs. The game play is doing great, keep the rotations coming with an occasional special event, but give the people more superheroes. Again take a lesson from other games and comics... there is not multicharacter game but this one where they say "Hey we have to many characters for users to play with, lets have less."

Please give your customers' what they are looking for,
Another voice in the crowd

Great thoughts, Hal... You seemed to address more of the "damage done" over the past couple weeks than I did, whereas I focused mostly regarding the Thor and Wolverine nerfs and a way to try and make both sides happy, especially if D3 is hell-bent on keeping them nerfed... Excuse the length of the post, but in thinking about it, I realized several complications in resetting them back to their original state this far into the game and attempted to come up with a solution that could benefit all... My biggest complaint was that such a nerf on their 2 most popular and populous characters, (REGARDLESS of whether they were overpowered or not,) was instituted where something as basic and as common as a respect option wasn't a part of the game... This wasn't a small tick or two, especially on Thor, but completely changed the way he needed to be played after people had already pumped lots of time, and in some cases, real money towards powers they were now taking away without offering anything near as to what they're truly worth in order to make the player "whole" again... I'll paste here, and apologize profusely if this comes off as "bombing" your thread. It was wonderful to read a post that wasn't solely based on anger, but actual musings on how to make things BETTER!

---

"I've been playing MPQ for months now... I have loved this game, and it has helped keep me sane (and for that, I thank you,) after recovering from surgery over the past few months. My wife also has taken a real love to this game, and it's not uncommon for either of us to spend more time than we probably should on it on an almost daily basis.

That said, this most recent patch has caused quite the uproar on the boards, and I'm one of those that's in the group of feeling cheated with the Wolverine and Thor nerf. (Going to mention only one other thing besides the nerf in the recent patch at end of this.) Both my wife and I have spent much time and some money (things that most of your players hold precious,) into building what we wanted, and we were certain to continue spending more time and money into the game. We were advertised these 2 characters with a certain strength to their powers; to entice us into devoting said money and time into achieving those particular powers which the dev team later (much later) decided were too powerful... (Again, I personally disagree, considering who these characters are.) The nerfing has completely altered the experience... Negatively. While I agree that it seemed there was no variety going into PvP, this could be fixed simply by adding accessible, achievable cards that challenged people to reconsider their team, or even toughening up a few characters.

(I don't believe Thor and Wolverine were overpowered, personally, just overplayed. D3, you licensed the characters, these two happen to be two of the tougher characters in the Universe you wanted to build around... Wolverine's healing factor is a fluid thing, constantly at work. While it may have a hard time keeping up with mass damage, it doesn't lay dormant until he's half-dead... Perhaps the answer was lowering HOW MUCH it heals per turn...)

I get it, though, D3... It's your ball, your game, you can change the rules on the fly, or fix what you feel needs fixing. However, as a longtime gamer, when most games nerf a class or character, they do so with respect to their player base, and IMMEDIATELY reset the character or class' skills so the players can then find a way to better utilize this character or class within the new guidelines of the revised skillset. While many in the community want the nerf reversed, (again, myself included,) if the dev team feels these changes are an absolute for the sake of balancing, how about showing some GOOD WILL towards the many players who have devoted time, money, and word of mouth about your game?



In another thread, entitled "Respec option in the works? Dev please read," Demiurge_Will responded with the following.

"Hi, Liaomiao!

Thanks for the note. Re-spec is one of our most requested features (including internally to the team here), and we like making changes that everybody wants.

We have a design for it, and it's at the top of our backlog, but we can't give you an ETA. Bear in mind that, in addition to all the usual uncertainty of software development, for changes that require an app update, like this one, there's a long and unpredictable lead time between when we develop a feature and when it's in your hands.

We'll continue to make balance improvements in the meantime - both changes that make characters stronger and those that make them weaker - because balance issues are too important to the experience to leave them alone for that long. We'll try to keep you informed of our plans in that department, like we're doing here:"




Here's the issue. People are locked in with these two characters as they are post-update, and none too many are happy about it. Strategies they used have become barely passable, pve basic thugs are killing off these 85 characters far more frequently than what should be standard, people feel as if all that effort and cash they put into these characters has been wasted... Players have, with as long as Thor and Wolvie have been at this level of "overpowering," adapted to this, and have strategies for when they use them, or go against them; waiting to balance these 2 popular characters until a respec is available isn't going to ruin people's games as much as the nerf being instituted apparently has. You may believe that their balancing is more immediately necessary, but many of the players feel as if their effort (whether by time, money or a combination of both,) has gone to waste with NO WAY to possibly respec or feel as if they're getting enough in return for the loss of these characters if they opt to sell them off...

And the "buffed buyback" option is significantly under what it should be in order to make people feel whole. I can't find the thread, but someone pointed out that it's approx. HALF of the card's worth when you figure in what you'll need to put into the character to get him back to 85.

I believe a proposal that would make many a player mostly happy would be the following... "Un-Nerf" these two characters for the time being, with the understanding that they WILL go back to the nerfed versions when the respec ability is implemented... Again, this is pretty much a standard happening in most games that decide to nerf to balance competition. When respec becomes available, give each player the ability to respec each of these characters FREE of charge once.

Now, this idea isn't without one major pitfall... By already "funbalancing," and by offering the buffed buyback, many may have already sold off and spent their earnings elsewhere... In that case, a rollback could be an answer, although, probably not a very good one; This could cause even further uproar... (I don't envy the blowback that this nerfing has created by reading the boards here... Anger, (rightfully so,) refunds asked for thru whatever service, people quitting.) Deciding to nerf not one, but two of the most common 85s in the game isn't going to go without some sort of negativity.

The answer truly would have been forethought in what you were doing before you did it. Implemented mid-tournaments, after players have spent so much time in achieving these characters and building them up to what they saw as the best loadout based on your guidelines of their powers...and with no answer but to get hopping mad because something as COMMON as a respec option wasn't implemented BEFORE nerfing what may be the 2 characters most players build up first. (I'm actually jealous of my wife now... She wasn't sure how to deal with the card combinations initially and actually has a 5 in Thor's green, which was given a pretty solid upgrade.)


If, as Demiurge_Will states, that a respec option is one of their most requested features, move it to the front of the queue with high priority and reinstate Thor and Wolverine with the knowledge that they WILL be nerfed when the respec option is implemented AND in the same patch.

I'm not sure I have all the best thoughts on how to go about it, considering people have reacted over the past few days to the nerfing... If they've sold off, then there's an issue with them not having the card any longer to reinstate. If you were to rollback, people lose iso8, HP, card drops, victories in tournies, etc... However, perhaps with the database you do have, since its always online to play, a check of players' Thor and Wolverine cards on the day of the patch versus current date and roster could be used. Those that have sold off would get their card reinstated as it was, (whatever level that may be, as long as it is no longer part of their inventory,) with a respec option and get to keep whatever they had done with their "profit" when they sold off. Those that still have the cards, due to hesitation of having to rebuild 2 cards they had already spent time and money on, would get a "resupply compensatory package" along the lines of the free respec for the characters, 2 Heroic tokens (from current tournie, perhaps, or a combination of Heroic Tokens of some sort,), some decent amount of iso8 and HP. (not necessarily the same equivalent had they sold those two cards off completely, but enough that if they were to get some cards from the tokens they receive that they wanted to level, or help level other characters because of the Thor and Wolverine nerf, they could do so.)

(Unrelated, but I did want to mention that, unlike some posts I've read, I actually love the entry fee tournaments... Although I didn't have hero coins to join in this time around, I know I'll be stockpiling them as I earn them (if I can even earn any in tournaments any longer with 1/2 my 85s nerfed,) to join along... As long as this doesn't become a replacement for free tournies, and the rewards don't become so overbalanced it becomes crazy... But yes, the rewards should have some higher return.



Thanks for reading,
Regards