On Generosity (Devs feel vs players)

Pylgrim

Yes, we are all outraged about Galactus, but I want to shine the spotlight on an underlying philosophy on the developer side that is the cause of this and other debacles: stinginess. Nowhere has this been more evident, if not offensively blatant than in this Anniversary event. 2 years of maintaining an active database is a huge milestone for a mobile AP. The market is absolutely saturated with apps of varying quality and both becoming noticeable and not being easily replaced by the newest thing is an incredible achievement. What I'm trying to say is that a second anniversary is a cause of celebration much bigger than simply twice the accolade of a first anniversary. A rare chance of giving back to the community that has stuck with you through the thick and thin and supported your product and your livelihood. There is NO reason to hold back. Whatever generosity you display, is a once-in-a-year occurrence that will not badly skew your bottom line, but will generate lots of good will and loyalty.

And yet, what we got is not only not superior to what we got in the first anniversary, but arguably worse. And the worst thing is that going by a few select words by IceIX here and Kabir in Reddit, we can conclude that the developers believe otherwise! They actually think they are being very generous without noticing that every single act of "generosity" is being gated, limited or "compensated" in ways that end not being generous at all.

Let's see some cases in point:

-After lots of players complained about the badly decreased rates of drawing good stuff (and bafflingly, increased rates of drawing chaff) we were told that it's ok because they are giving away many more tokens... which sounds ok until you realise a couple things: First, they are not giving that many more tokens than the ones that were given in Anniversary 1 since we had the 20-man Lightning Rounds back then, which were a token (and ISO!) galore. Without an explanation that was not included in this second Anniversary even though it was one of the most beloved features. Second, and this is the actual infuriating part because it sounds as though our intelligence is being doubted, we all know (mostly because D3 is quick to remind us whenever someone complains about not opening anything in a 42-pack) that ODDS ARE "PER-DRAW". Meaning that higher odds are much more reliable than increased draws! The only people who don't understand this are the gambling addicts who'd happily exchange one draw with 100% certainty for two 50% draws in the hopes of scoring twice even if that means a good chance of getting nothing at all.

-It seems that after players generated a reliable strategy to beat Galactus, based on pre-release information, the event was tweaked to overcome those strategies, resulting in the ridiculous abomination that we all got to experience now. And I have to ask: why? What's the matter if some enfranchised players found a good strategy (something that as a "puzzle" game you literally encourage)? What's wrong if the relatively small slice of the userbase that frequents the forums caught wind of that? Hell, what would be the problem if most of the playerbase learned of it and used profitably in this anniversary event? LET THEM. Again: It's a once-in-a-year occurrence. Whatever is the issue in having a relatively easy event (if you care enough for the game to be an active participant in the forums and learned it) allowing people to get Cyclops reliably. They will still need 10+ covers (and a crapload of ISO) to get good use out of him, which translates in players engaged to play the game even longer. Why do you feel the need to wrap this alleged anniversary "present" on spiked wire and spite? Because "it's Galactus and he's supposed to be difficult?" Tell that to Squirrel Girl in one of her latest comics! Whatever flavour spin you want to put to explain the obscene, frustrating and un-fun difficulty of the even can also be spun with similar accurate flavour and make it fun and relatively easy for everybody as an anniversary gesture.

-Lack of 20-man LRs. It just bears to be mentioned again. It's basically like celebrating Christmas without a tree. I'm pretty sure you had your reasons, whatever they are, but again, they are likely not grave enough that couldn't be waved away with a good-natured "ah what the heck, it's our second anniversary, let's make people happy!"

The system is already fine tuned year-long to exploit the gambling tendencies of a few or the willingness to grind of the majority and there have been, you have to admit, several low points in the history of the game. And yet, here we are. The people that believe in you, that love your product and jumps though the hoops you ask of them. Is it really to much to ask than in rare, special occasions you show a bit more largesse, when it costs you nothing?

wymtime

I hate saying this about the LR because I desperately want them back, but the reason we had so many LR last anniversary was because on one of the PVP events they had event token instead of Anniversary tokens. Last min they decided to run the smaller LR with big rewards as compensation. They were a huge hit and should bring them back.

The PVP will be fine, Galactus is an epic fail to this point with players dying after 3 turns. The other issue, while nice that they are running progression Anniversary rewards are weak. For someone who scores 750 points on average over 4 PVP gets a shinny 2* Wolverine. Anyone who can hit 750 regularly does not need any 2*. Also what is up with the 40 ISO for actually beating Galactus? Seriously we are suppose to celebrate with 40 ISO?
Overall Galactus needs to be scaled back a little for rounds 5-7. Round 8 I fine potentially dying after 3 turns. Round 8 should be hard. Bring out LR to make everyone happy, and throw everyone some 3 Devil Dino covers. If I am not able to get some green Dino covers this year I will probably sell him for the roster slot, and he is my daughters favorite character to play when she plays seed team in LR for me.

Unknown

Nice post, Pylgrim. Suffice it to say I agree with you, and have felt the sentiment for a long time now.

I've been saying it for as long as I've been on this forum, but I honestly don't know how people can continue to cut D3 so much slack with regard to how miserly they tend to be, how little actual game exists in their game, how heavy-handed they are with regard to IAPs vs. actually winning anything of value within the game…

Perhaps this experience is finally bad enough to break the few remaining die-hard apologists of their bizarre Stockholm Syndrome-esque protection of a system designed to punish them at every turn?

On a side note, I've introduced a few MPQ players to Marvel Future Fight, and it's quite amusing to hear from them about what it feels like to play a FTP game that encourages purchases, as opposed to DEMANDING them…

tl;dr: It doesn't have to be like this, but if anything is ever going to change, the players need to realize that they're all on the same side and stop taking shots at each for constructively criticizing the game.

DBC

Ludaa

Thanks for reminding me about less stingy games like Future Fight! I just downloaded it and played for about 10 minutes, and was given a plethora of items during the tutorial. One such item lets you pick a hero for free. Guess who I picked after playing for 10 whole minutes? RED HULK, and I can actually use him right away.

Edit: LMAO, I'm still tooling around in the game, but It has menu accessible LINE buttons and other other social platforms.

stowaway

Good write up, Pylgrim. I said in another thread that all I wanted from the anniversary was 20-person lightning rounds and a reason to spend my stockpiled HP. Literally, that was all I wanted. Instead I got an event I'm not enjoying, and a PvP I might like slightly more than most, but don't really know because I don't have enough health packs to play it.

I feel like I mention this in every third post I make, but I started playing almost two years ago, but have taken enough breaks that I'm only today, in about five minutes, getting my day 365 resupply Dino. When I came back to playing, people talked about how fun the anniversary event was. I felt like I'd missed something. For the last three months (half of which I was down to only playing DDQ and lightning rounds), I've been saying to myself, "I should at least stick it out until the anniversary." And this is what I was waiting for?

LegendReborn

Another thing which is often overlooked, last year's anniversary was great for all roster levels. The 20 man Lightning Rounds were great for people who were rocking out top tier rosters or just two stars.

Here, what does a two star player really get? A handful of anniversary tokens over the course of an entire week that give worse odds than regular heroic tokens. They aren't going to be scoring high in the anniversary PVPs and they surely aren't going to be earning the 4 stars in the galactus event. Have the developers forgotten that those players are still here?

Unknown

At least come next anniversary, if we are still playing that is,

there wont be as high an expectation anymore.

This event simply divides the solid rosters from those that need work.

Xenoberyll

It's in every detail. I'm close to get my 900k points progressions reward for example and I can't describe how giddy i am to get a Human Torch cover for this...not

OneLastGambit

The rewards are woefully inadequate for the effort you have to put in. Why D3 thought that designing and event that you were supposed to lose would then reward you with nothing if you actually do as intended (and lose) or with a token no more valuable than a standard token if you win is very very silly.

Clearly they have sandboxed accounts for their play testing because if they actually had to earn the rewards from this event they would have complained and changed it.

PuceMoose

20 player-bracket Lightning Rounds...
awesome tokens... (nearly 40% for or higher per draw!)
delighted (for the most part) playerbase...
a general sense of optimism and feeling rewarded for sticking with the game...

Let's have a moment of silence to respect the first Anniversary and hammer home the things we'd hoped this anniversary could (and maybe still can? )be.

Dragon_Nexus

I'd said something similar.
Basically if Galactus was really easy and hard working Alliances of varying strengths, not just the top 100, got three Cyclops covers...so what? It's not like that's going to break the economy of the game. It's not like suddenly PvP is lousy with Level 270 Cyclops 4*s within a week because everyone took those covers and went mental with buying ISO and HP to max him out (though that would benefit D3, certainly.)

So why make it so insanely difficult to get even one cover? My alliance has been going for it and we are just about to beat round 5. So it's not going to happen. Check out my roster, I'm struggling to beat Galactus in round 5, I doubt my chances for round 6 unless I get a board littered with 5 matches.

So really, if the event was fun and fairly easy and everyone ended up with at least one Cyclops cover at the end of it, is that really so harmful? Newer players get a shiny 4* and feel like they accomplished something. As it stands I'm about ready to tell my alliance not to bother with the Red Hulk version since we won't get it. Hell, I don't know if I even have to tell them that since they're pretty demoralised as it is from how stupidly difficult the fights are.

So many really easy fixes could have helped with this.
Anniversary tokens have sucky odds. Make it a vault so the abundance of tokens means something. We're whittling down the odds until all that's left is the good stuff. "Ugh, I got another Moonstone cover. But at least I won't get that again!". Hell, I bet that would even increase sales of multi packs since people would want to whittle their vult down faster, assuming money is the primary goal for this event.

Galactus isn't meant to be a fight you win 95% of the time, he's meant to be someone you chip away at and lose to because he's all mighty. Groovy, I can understand that. But why have my characters die at the end, forcing me to waste health packs on them? Just throw me out the fight with my HP in tact.

Lystrata

Lack of generosity does seem to be something of a failing. I can't work out why, one week per year, they lose the chance to garner a remarkable amount of goodwill from their customer base. I mean, I work in technology and online products, and everything points towards 'happy customers = long term customers more willing to part with money". For the sake of one week - hell, one event - they've lost a lot of that goodwill. Don't see them getting much of it back.

optimus2861

I'm convinced now that D3 has moved MPQ to the "whale or GTFO" phase of this game. It's when a FTP game cannibalizes the wallets of its whales to the maximum extent possible in the game's short remaining shelf life, simultaneously inflicting increasing pain/pressure points on the free/low-$ users to either make them become whales, or quit.

So the devs don't care to be generous to the lesser players any more. They likely know by now that the game won't make it another year, and their marching orders are "Monetize, monetize, monetize. If you have users who won't monetize, start forcing them out." Hence all the rush of 4* characters, and now 5* characters out of reach beyond anyone but mega-whales. Hence the stinginess of the Anniversary & Galactus tokens. Hence the ludicrous difficulty of the Galactus event.

The end of this phase is reached when new content stops being developed. Then the game coasts along on retread events & characters for a short while for the last wallet squeeze. Then the lights go out.

Well, it's been fun. I'll stick around a while yet, but my wallet's permanently closed.

GMadMan040

optimus2861 wrote:

I'm convinced now that D3 has moved MPQ to the "whale or GTFO" phase of this game. It's when a FTP game cannibalizes the wallets of its whales to the maximum extent possible in the game's short remaining shelf life, simultaneously inflicting increasing pain/pressure points on the free/low-$ users to either make them become whales, or quit.

So the devs don't care to be generous to the lesser players any more. They likely know by now that the game won't make it another year, and their marching orders are "Monetize, monetize, monetize. If you have users who won't monetize, start forcing them out." Hence all the rush of 4* characters, and now 5* characters out of reach beyond anyone but mega-whales. Hence the stinginess of the Anniversary & Galactus tokens. Hence the ludicrous difficulty of the Galactus event.

The end of this phase is reached when new content stops being developed. Then the game coasts along on retread events & characters for a short while for the last wallet squeeze. Then the lights go out.

Well, it's been fun. I'll stick around a while yet, but my wallet's permanently closed.

While I'm not so sure that MPQ has quite reached that stage, there can be no doubt that the mobile game world definitely works in this fashion AND MPQ will get there at some point.

To add some merit to your perspective here is the out-of-nowhere appearance of 5* characters and how seemingly everything right now is skewed to favor top end players. The power creep is at real right now and is only gonna get worse, eventually rendering the game mostly unplayable to people below a certain threshold.

This is the downside of pumping money into mobile games. They can cut and run at any point and leave you with absolutely nothing. At least in the console world, you've always got that disk to pop back in whenever you want.

It will be interesting to see how it all shakes out. I'm with you though, my spending is on pause pending future developments.

Vhailorx

Demiurge, if you have lost Pylgrim on this topic, you are in real trouble. he is one of the whitest white knights on the forums.

I don't say that as an attack on or criticism of him, just an observation that things must be very player-unfriendly for him to make this post.

tanis3303

Vhailorx wrote:

Demiurge, if you have lost Pylgrim on this topic, you are in real trouble. he is one of the whitest white knights on the forums.

I don't say that as an attack on or criticism of him, just an observation that things must be very player-unfriendly for him to make this post.

LOL! I didn't want to say it because I didn't want to call anyone out, but I have been thinking exactly this. When one of your most adamant defenders tells you to suck it, you done screwed the pooch

Crowl

Unconcerned wrote:

At least come next anniversary, if we are still playing that is,

there wont be as high an expectation anymore.

This event simply divides the solid rosters from those that need work.

Other than the nodes scaling up, it is not about solid rosters so much as it being about having the right characters to fit one of the gimmicks, one of which needed only the right 1*, 2* and 3* characters rather than maxed 4* or 5* characters.

xdogg

Out of all the complaints they have had about this event, the only change they made was to make the side nodes in Galactus harder, let alone beating Galactus, now I'm having a hard time beating hordes of lvl 300 enemies. I was here for last years anniversary, it was great! This one is a total failure so far. The only thing I can do is speak with my wallet, I had planned to spend money before the sale ended, that's not happening now.

Ctenko

I've made a post before about why I am offended about the response we've gotten, but considering my exceptionally low standards for what would make this a happy thing, I had not considered this. I want to thank Pylgrim for pointing out to me and taking the time to politely, and calmly detail a very deep form of problem I did not notice. I was so angry at Galactus, and at IceIX's response. I missed that bit. Two years is a heck of a milestone here. I played a bunch of games, and some which are members of Million download clubs that I used to play. The servers are closed. They are gone. Getting to this level of time and support is an accomplishment, and while hey we should be good enough to say thanks for making this game free to play. This is the one time in the year they can say thanks back

I'm not a whale, but I've been here for 471 days. I only just got involved in the forum Thursday. But I have spent Money. Somewhere around $200 I think. Just as a way of saying thanks for making the game. That's basically Triple the price of a AAA game. So to me that's very generous on my end. And I was annoyed but understanding when they raised the prices on me by a pretty stiff chunk. And I was annoyed but understanding when the game began to shift into '3*'s don't cut it anymore son' mode.

But I guess I feel hurt at seeing the end coming, and knowing exactly how little my contributions means, and I'm not understanding anymore. They just signed with Sega, they just made a Deal with WotC to make a M:tG version of this. They started Advertising this game I hear... Why are you actively trying to force your players out?

El Satanno

Spot on, Pylgrim. Spot. On.

Unknown

tanis3303 wrote:

Vhailorx wrote:

Demiurge, if you have lost Pylgrim on this topic, you are in real trouble. he is one of the whitest white knights on the forums.

I don't say that as an attack on or criticism of him, just an observation that things must be very player-unfriendly for him to make this post.

LOL! I didn't want to say it because I didn't want to call anyone out, but I have been thinking exactly this. When one of your most adamant defenders tells you to suck it, you done screwed the pooch

I've written and almost posted the same about 5 times now, deleting each draft before hitting the "Submit" button (ironic name for a button considering the whole Galactus experience ), but I don't think it's calling someone out to say "welcome to the players' side."

Sure, there can be a bit of… (myopia? insularity?) in the forum, but as as in "real life," empathy is hard to build when you just haven't experienced things the way someone else has. I think it's safe to say that at this point, from those at the lowest levels to those at the very highest levels, all if not most of us are experiencing things the same way now…

DBC