MPQ Manifesto

Argon Flame

Dear Devs

Have you ever considered writing a Manifesto that details what and how you intend for MPQ to evolve? Your Q&A and Monthly updates area step in the right direction but there are still a lot of questions out there that we, your users, keep asking and never hearing an answer to.

For example, a few months ago I asked a question about slice end times. I got a mixed response from the forum community, but then I got also had a reply from Kabir asking my location. I thought that this was great - the developers are listening to us - and replied. Now, months on nothing has changed. If you had a manifesto you could explain that you try to offer the widest range of slice choices, for your biggest client bases only. Or alternatively you could say that you're trying to offer the fairest most even split of time zones around the world.

Taking that forwards you could move onto discussing how in your Story (PvE) mode you want to reduce the 'grind' and importance of the end time slices and you are going to look at ways to allow people to play when they want to. Not when they need to to make sure they can hit top50/100 to receive a cover.

You could then go on to discuss how you want the Versus (PvP) arena to look. Whether you want to reward people for joining events early and playing out the event and discourage those who join late hoping to find a 'fresh' slice with few people that you can gain enough points to receive covers. You could talk about how Shielding is important, or how you intend to improve the environment.

You could talk about how you intend to keep the game fresh for players once their graduate through the different tiers of play. What is your end-game game play going to look like?

Those are just a few ideas and here is a link to the manifesto from another F2P game I play as an example. http://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-forum/dev-manifesto

Thanks for reading,
Argon

Unknown

If they wanted fairer slice end times they would have split them apart through the day. 24h divided by 5 (current number of slices) would be like 1am-6am-11am-4pm-9pm. Or change the number of slices, make 4 slices 6h apart of each other or 6 slices 4h apart (the former is better to not spread too much the players), then rotate between two different end times each event, like 12pm, 6am, 12am, 6pm then 3am, 9am, 3pm, 9pm or something like that.

Argon Flame

ShionSinX wrote:

If they wanted fairer slice end times they would have split them apart through the day. 24h divided by 5 (current number of slices) would be like 1am-6am-11am-4pm-9pm. Or change the number of slices, make 4 slices 6h apart of each other or 6 slices 4h apart (the former is better to not spread too much the players), then rotate between two different end times each event, like 12pm, 6am, 12am, 6pm then 3am, 9am, 3pm, 9pm or something like that.

This is exactly my point . If we knew the rationale behind their decisions then we, as their customers, would understand what we're in for before we spend time and/or money. Currently none of the time slices for PvE work for me but I don't know why they are not evenly spaced out to provide me with more options.

What effect would there be if there were more time slices?
Would more people be coordinating into the same slice or would there be a greater spread across the different time slices?

What data on this do the Developers collect? Would they ever consider releasing it (or some if it) to us to look at? - a meta-game of some sorts. If not, why not? I've seen posts on these forums so I know I wouldn't be the only one curious.

Vhailorx

They have done something like this in the past, and we players kinda burned them.

A little over a year ago the devs published a list of characters that were on their radar for a rebalance (either too strong or too weak).

Problem was the devs didn't get around to implementing every single item on the list for months, and the player base kinda flipped out about it.

Ever since then, the devs seem to have been very cautious about setting expectations. They mostly release hard details on any upcoming changes immediately before they go live. Longer term stuff is only discussed in a very high level way, as the community videos or broad release notes bullet points.

So at least sometimes, we are the reason we can't have nice things. . .

MarcusGraves

Vhailorx wrote:

They have done something like this in the past, and we players kinda burned them.

A little over a year ago the devs published a list of characters that were on their radar for a rebalance (either too strong or too weak).

Problem was the devs didn't get around to implementing every single item on the list for months, and the player base kinda flipped out about it.

Ever since then, the devs seem to have been very cautious about setting expectations. They mostly release hard details on any upcoming changes immediately before they go live. Longer term stuff is only discussed in a very high level way, as the community videos or broad release notes bullet points.

So at least sometimes, we are the reason we can't have nice things. . .

yeah people were sweating bullets for months about magneto after what the spider-man nerfs were like and were told mag was next

Mawtful

The main point of Demiurge's manifesto has always been "keep chasing that $1 ARPDAU". There's a great series of "blog articles" by Albert Reed, the CEO of Demiurge, here: http://venturebeat.com/2014/04/08/marve ... au-part-1/
There are 8 parts in total, and it's well worth the read, but if you just want to skip to the good bits check out part 8, where the legendary quote about removing the guaranteed cover from card packs comes from, "We’re not sure why players preferred this system, but we suspect the answer is a simple one: the uncertainty of opening packs is part of what makes them fun!"

There's a secondary point to the manifesto, and it's "this too shall pass". This is another one of Al's little nuggets of wisdom, and it goes a little something like this:

This too shall pass – While you need to expect and accept that there will be a backlash and the first couple of days will be painful, give it a few days before you judge the results. In the early days of MPQ, Ragnarok was massively overpowered and the day we changed it players were furious. A week later, it was no longer a topic of widespread conversation.

It was originally posted to his tumblr blog, which he gave up at some stage and now the account has a new owner.

Anyway, that's the driving force behind MPQ: maximize income, ignore complaints. What did you expect though? They're a business and they're here to make money, not friends.

GuntherBlobel

They won't publish a manifesto because they want to be agile and change the game as needed any time the need to. As Mawtful said, they're going to do whatever they need to in order to retain players and bring in revenue. That could mean more character changes, more 1* characters... who knows? Whatever sells.

I remember early on they announced that they planned 40 or so "episodes" of Dark Reign PvE. That hasn't happened and the reason is obvious. New PvE content doesn't bring in money. So, what's the point of a manifesto if sticking to it shuts down the game?

Heartburn

I kinda lost interest I this game because of the fact I don't know where this game is headed. They are too busy putting out fires then keeping people interested. They should have a 4 star DDQ at the end of each week so that it could break up the regular Ddq and we can finally pool taco tokens correctly. Or update the ui so we can finally see the AP totals without scrolling, not have a warehouse sized vault. Update lackluster/outdated heroes or even add a weekly one map adventure where you win one of each cover for selected 3 and get a background/adventure story about them. Treading water with 4stars releases is longer enough. May check back for anniversary.

GurlBYE

While opening the discussion makes sense from our point of view it doesn't benefit them much.

I think they'd be closer to more regularly hitting the $1 ARPDAU with some serious reconsideration of pricing all around, beginning with some sort of products thats actually a dollar.

Also if they think they are liberal with their hard currency they immediately need to play marvel future fight for a day/week.

Unknown

Could be the game is on auto pilot while they get money with little work out if it. The only time spent is on new 4*s to collect whale money and down the line shield money from players trying to get 1300...

yogi_

GuntherBlobel wrote:

They won't publish a manifesto because they want to be agile and change the game as needed any time the need to.

These two things have nothing to do with each other.

"A manifesto is a published verbal declaration of the intentions, motives, or views of the issuer, be it an individual, group, political party or government" (thanks Wikipedia).

It's a philsophical piece of writing that talks about why someone/s does what they do and having x pieces of Dark Reign PvE has nothing to do with it (but may be one of the ways they enact their manifesto). Nor does it have anything to do with ending times or character balance lists.

Also, I would hardly call much about this game or its' development agile in any manner, nor has anything really fundamentally changed about the way the game operates (more than tinkering at the edges).

I wrote a post broadly similar to this some months ago. Basically that there is nothing underpinning it - no story, no direction, no reasoning, nothing outside the narrow box. Another new character or new PvE is a nice sugar fix and I know people work hard on this stuff but the game doesn't make a person feel anything about it or connect to it.

This might be a good game or even a very good game but it's missing what it takes to be a great game.

Dayv

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