On Generosity (Devs feel vs players)

TheWerebison

Omega Red wrote:

Maybe I'm weird but when I go dinner to a fancy restaurant that is celebrating its anniversary I don't expect to get a free bottle of wine or anything else of substantial value.

Probably right. It is tough to picture.

If, however, we were to compare it to something a bit more realistic, such as other online video games, you will find that a good many of them are more than happy to throw a few gifts your way just for taking part in whatever they happen to be celebrating at the time, be it a holiday or an anniversary.

When you go to a fancy restaurant, well, it's unlikely you go there every day. But with a game such as this, in which they deliberately try to tempt you into logging on at least once per day (a la the daily reward), they know that you keep showing your support for their product.

firethorne

Rob13 wrote:

Looks like every alliance got at least one Cyclops

Where the hell did you get that idea? Every alliance is not a top 100 alliance!. There are tons of players who came nowhere close. I wish you and the developers realized that. There are some of of us left farther and farther behind as the game caters more and more to the top 1% of players.

My alliance is still on round 5! We may pass it in these last 2 hours, but anything aside from a bull **** token is completely out of reach. We exist, and there are a hell of a lot more of us than you think there are.

Omega Red

Vhailorx wrote:

It's not 100 per PVE release, it's 100/1000 per PVE release. so 10% of players (roughly) get 1 cover for each 4* release. Did 10% of players finish round 6 in this even? I have no idea. . . Clearly more top tier alliances made it through round 8 in this event than in Ultron 2, but does that also mean more teams made it through round 6? I dont' know. . .

Well, when I said "100 players that got the Cyclops starter pack" I was speaking only of those that win the first three covers, not those who win at least one. Hard to know how many made it through round six as many alliances might have dropped the towel prematurely. Let's assume that ten brackets reward covers per standard PVE. That's 1,000 players who get at least one cover. So in Galactus you would need at least 50 alliances to complete at least the sixth round to equate PVE numbers. Given that 30 completed round 8 alone I think it's safe to say that this event ended up giving more covers to more people than the standard PVE release

Vhailorx wrote:

as for the sale and the cyclops release, they are both fine for what they are, but they aren't generous. The game is designed to make money. Generating HP to give to players basically has a marginal cost of $0 for demiurge. So dropping the (arbitrary) price 30% still leaves them with a nice 70% profit on a $0 dollar cost (yes I know that the game infrastructure costs money, muddying this point a bit).

This is a common fallacy, arguing that since it's game currency then it has no actual value. Since the game currency can be bought with real money and is used to purchase digital goods that have an actual cost to produce (you know, that beloved Iceman artwork had to be made by an actual paid professional artist) then said game currency has a real value. In true economic terms, what really happens during every sale is that the game currency is devalued for a short period of time so you can buy more with real money.

Vhailorx wrote:

And releasing new 4*s is their main business model. it generates need for people to buy roster slots (and for some to buy packs/covers to max their new shinies).

Is it generous when MacDonald's sells you a hamburger/fries/drink combo meal? It just seems like a business doing business to me. . .

It's generous when they sell it to me with a discount just because it's their anniversary or whatever.

Vhailorx wrote:

IMO this debate isn't about the generosity of the event, it's about the inadequate pre-event communication, the less-than-fun (arguably broken) design of galactus, the weaker rewards for this anniversary compared to Year 1, and mostly unsatisfactory post-release communications from demiurge.

I agree.

Omega Red wrote:

The fact that the boss node is so poorly designed that force quit becomes a part of strategy does not change the fact that the bar was set lower in comparison to Ultron, as it's evident by the number of alliances that have cleared it so far. Even if force quit is no longer possible for the next run I guarantee you will see it completed by more than two alliances, given that nothing else is changed of course.

Vhailorx wrote:

Your last sentence is speculation. We don't know what the event would have been like without force-quitting, nor do we know what the next event will be. We can only comment on the facts we have (which suggest that many more teams did beat this event than Ultron 2, but that many of them used a borderline exploit for at least part of their run to do so).

I can comment on my personal experience given that I am one of the players whose alliane completed the event. I also earned the legendary token. I can assure you that force quit was not that big of a factor as some might think. Progress would have been slower but given how quickly this was completed by the first bunch of alliances I think it's pretty safe to say that at least five would have done it even without force quit.

Omega Red

Vhailorx wrote:

Omega Red wrote:

Maybe I'm weird but when I go dinner to a fancy restaurant that is celebrating its anniversary I don't expect to get a free bottle of wine or anything else of substantial value.

Perhaps not, but when the restaurant invites you to celebrate its anniversary one year, gives out complementary wine, then invites you back the next year saying "we know you had a great time last year, and we really think this year is going to be even better!" is it fair to expect something complementary, wine or otherwise?

So, if you don't get your bottle of wine how much of a fuss do you make over it? Do you start yelling at the clientele inviting them to leave because last year was better? Do you demand to talk to the manager because you think you are owed a bottle? Do you write an angry review over the internet? I don't know. To sum it up, is that such a big deal?

It sucks that this anniversary so far has been rather **** compared to last year's but is that reason enough to start demanding for all sorts of free or cheaper stuff? Are we really owed the things that we wanted/expected? Can we not concede that a sale and devil dino were two of the things we wanted and we actually got them?

firethorne

Omega Red wrote:

Progress would have been slower but given how quickly this was completed by the first bunch of alliances I think it's pretty safe to say that at least five would have done it even without force quit.

At least 5 alliances? Sure. 5 out of what, roughly 20,000 or so? That is my main problem with the state of the game right now. They are making content that caters to an increasingly smaller and smaller audience, while advertising to more and more. Yeah, I have no doubt 0.025% of the alliances out there can skate by. I'm just not saying designing events that are a disappointment to 99.975% of your customers is a good road to go down.

Omega Red

firethorne wrote:

Omega Red wrote:

Progress would have been slower but given how quickly this was completed by the first bunch of alliances I think it's pretty safe to say that at least five would have done it even without force quit.

At least 5 alliances? Sure. 5 out of what, roughly 20,000 or so? That is my main problem with the state of the game right now. They are making content that caters to an increasingly smaller and smaller audience, while advertising to more and more. Yeah, I have no doubt 0.025% of the alliances out there can skate by. I'm just not saying designing events that are a disappointment to 99.975% of your customers is a good road to go down.

Five is still 150% more than the two that completed Ultron for Hulkbuster.

Problem is, the reward is a four star character. They are supposed to be rare and hard to obtain. And the way this event is presented and promoted probably gives the average player the wrong idea that they have a shot, or they should have a shot.

Now, I don't know what should be a fair number of alliances completing the event for a four star character, but I know that the way the rest of the game is designed it can never be more than a small elite group that has progressed all the way to that stage where they actually can win more four star covers regularly, level them up and use.

SunCrusher

From the point of view of someone who:

1) has always been more of a soloist starting back when Alliances never existed (which is sort of why I played this game in the first place I will mention)

2) until now, bought some HP to expand my roster size because I like collecting

3) participated in events that I considered overall to be fairly 'fun' (previous year's Anniversary, Gauntlet, to name two off the top of my head)

4) was willing to stay in Transition Land for longer than most people would be content to do so because of the advent of Alliances

5) played through multiple nerfings of various characters including the infamous 'true healing'

I appreciate:

1) the fact that we now have multiple time zone slots to choose from

We asked for that for some time/offered feedback on this and the devs gave it to us - THANK YOU!

2) the fact that in spite of what 'news' may come, we DO get communication from the dev team

I know way too many other places where this doesn't even remotely happen on this level, so even though I don't always agree or appreciate the sentiments being expressed, I THANK YOU for the communication all the same.

3) that even though there have been some bumps in the road, that we did get new events, etc

The Galactus event LOOKS and SEEMS interesting and HAS an interesting concept like Ultron did (which I missed)... and as a returning player, Deadpool's Daily Quest is a new thing for me, too.

4) that bugs and glitches ARE being patched/addressed

In my likely unpopular opinion (sorry to Pylgrim and whoever else's toes I'm going to step on), leaving bugs and glitches around isn't healthy because eventually, it all boils down to and promotes a contest between those who can and will exploit to gain something which pushes statistics into territory that isn't actually representative of the community as a whole.

It creates unnecessary friction (weren't we all in a ruckus about the cheaters who needed to be sandboxed not so long ago), it promotes unhealthy gameplay mentality (to do well you NEED to exploit XYZ and if you don't, it's your own damned fault or you're stupid), and though I have my own gripes about this game (don't we all?) I DON'T want to be around to see it descend into the corrupted mess that I've seen so many other card-based and collecting-based build-a-team games fall into.

A game I will not mention eventually descended into the 'those who exploit and win and are smart VS those who do not and lose and are stupid' chaos which eventually led to widespread exploiting to the point that the game got shut down. The company lost too much money from the cheating, its actual 'bread and butter' playerbase AND the 'whales' who were NOT cheating departed (BEFORE the game shut down), and the people who kept insisting that exploiting was okay simply moved to another game with a shrug and a 'what I did didn't affect anything' mentality despite their role in the corruption.

I can see the rationale behind exploits; but for the sake of the overall and longitudinal health of the community, I really don't think it's a good thing and I want to encourage and challenge us as a community to collectively voice this concern - that there is such pressure to exploit because of unrealistic expectations given current non-exploit game mechanics - and have the devs address it rather than try to address it ourselves through exploits.

I play games to get AWAY from Real Life **** which includes dishonesty and to-your-face lying on a daily basis; it really disheartens me to see the same sort of behavior in my games, too.

5) for the people who DO like to spend a bit on the game, the sales are much appreciated

I don't know about anyone else, but as someone who likes to collect things and wanted the opportunity to build characters as they came along, I made a conscious decision to open my roster slots so I could collect more characters. The HP sales come in handy for this reason and helps to take the sting away from the otherwise cost-prohibitive per-slot HP cost.

6) DEVIL DINO CAME BACK!

Except the draw rate is kind of compared to last year's.

And have less than positive feelings about:

1) the fact that this Galactus PvE (and I'm guessing so was the Ultron event) is really and truly about Alliances

As someone who is more or less a soloist, I've now officially been shut-out from participating and doing even remotely well and I don't think that was a very generous thing to do.

I've vocalized this concern about the game turning more and more and more Alliances-only-driven and it looks like that that is exactly what is happening.

Why bother even playing?

Irritatingly, it's this giant block of real estate on my PvE/Story screen and it looks so interesting... until I remind myself that as a soloist, it just isn't worth my time or effort because all I will ever gain from it are truly paltry rewards EVEN for a transitioning player for an immense amount of effort and frustration because the game mechanics on its own EXPECTS a player who is entering the game to be in a strong Alliance.

People are complaining about Round 6-8. I still haven't passed Round 1. Not fun being slaughtered by not only Galactus, but also by every single node that's available because their scaling went crazy for me for some reason I can't even comprehend and in my tiny Alliance, I AM the strongest player.

Looks like it's the Simulator for me which is FINE... but it's a shame that participation in the Galactus event is more or less impossible/stupid to do -AT ALL- when a person is in my shoes.

In my opinion, that really is no way to encourage people to play.

If this Galactus event was supposed to cater to the big boys and girls and everyone else need not apply, then maybe it should have been made clear before I even jumped into it.

Look, I'm NOT wanting, looking for, much less DEMANDING a 4* character.

But when you can't even participate AT ALL besides getting slaughtered by Galactus and being unable to progress AT ALL on ANY of the nodes? And, to top it off, when someone so 'puny' as me actually manages to down Galactus... only to get some random Boost that I could have bought using my surplus of ISO?

Yeah, I think there's something wrong.

This is not only NOT fun; I can't even really participate AT ALL.

2) the fact that a lot of us were all hoping for the Big Ole Dino to make his Anniversary comeback... only to have him come back with almost abysmal draw rates

That's just REALLY disappointing because I know of people who never had the chance to draw a Dino even from last year's Anniversary and I know people who were hoping to build their Dino up a bit more from last year and I know people who missed last year and were looking forward to collecting a Dino from this year's.

The Dino was/is kind of the ultimate in PAAARTEEE! and like I mentioned last year, would it have been so bad to give people a single random Dino card sort of as a 'party favor' given his novelty value compared to his actual usefulness value?

3) the fact that the draw rates for anything useful is so far kind of abysmal (at least on MY end)

I'm a 2-3* transitioning player who's picking the game back up after a hiatus and realistically, MOST EVERYTHING in the token pulls that aren't the Normal Recruit tokens OUGHT to have something useful every now and again.

But - no. I'm getting repeats of the same exact characters and covers from 2* land and coming from an Anniversary token, this is particularly disappointing if only because I HAVE SO MANY OTHER CHARACTERS who aren't 'high end' who also need covers.

I KNOW how probability works so I'm probably just getting a bad pull streak (last year around this same time, my pull streak was fairly decent), but all the same, it kind of stings.

Unknown

Let's talk about the sale and tokens. The sale started before the event, and before token odds showed. People bought HP in anticipation of the extra rewarding anniversary packs. The pack reveal, then, showed worse odds than regular heroics. Some people will get Devil Dino or some HP, but the odds are HIGHER to get a 2* than they are in a regular pack, so these packs are objectively worse. On top of that, the 40 pack costs nearly twice that of a heroic 40.
Pair that with an event that the majority find unfun, and that the top people win via an exploit.
I can get to Legendary progression in regular PVE without too much trouble, and got excited for a progression-based anniversary event. There are many others like me, and we are mostly extremely disappointed in this event.
The worst part is not that they are not giving away a bunch of free stuff. It isn't even the Galactus event. It is the fact that they sell us the event as a fun celebration and give us a **** grind and terrible tokens.

Vhailorx

Omega red: rather than going through point by point, I will just give the highlight response:

1) we have no idea how many 4* covers went out the door in this event relative relative to normal pve events. And any guess we make are based on assumptions (10 brackets total for every pve? Who knows. . . )

2) did you read my parenthetical? I expressly admitted that the game costs money, which makes the digital goods price argument less clear. The fact remains that the marginal price of extra digital goods is basically zero (unlike tangible goods).

3) when businesses sell things on sale, they are trying to generate more business in the long run. It's not generosity, it's a calculated business choice made in the hope of long term benefit for the seller.

4) why are you equating expressing criticism with demanding free stuff? There is definitely some of the latter on this message board, but I really think everything I and pylgrim have said in this thread is the former and not the latter.

Dauthi

Omega Red wrote:

I can comment on my personal experience given that I am one of the players whose alliane completed the event. I also earned the legendary token. I can assure you that force quit was not that big of a factor as some might think. Progress would have been slower but given how quickly this was completed by the first bunch of alliances I think it's pretty safe to say that at least five would have done it even without force quit.

I will honestly comment as a leader of 2 alliances, one who completed round 8 and another who almost completed 7:

Before we knew about the force quit (exploit?) we were in no way going to finish round 8, we had settled on finishing 7, while the other was worried about getting a cyclops at all. We went from 50% clears to 100% clears. You think that is trivial? That is a huge bump to points across an entire alliance.

I don't know if this an attempt to stop the developers from patching it, but I don't feel like downplaying it's significance will help the game. I still believe without it most alliances wouldn't have beaten round 8.

Marvelfamily

Do you all recognize what's good with all that complaining?

We still have a meaning, and we're not bowing our heads in devotion.

As long as it's good critic, I like that (I don't like hater posts).

D3 should be proud to have such an active community!

Lee T

Marvelfamily wrote:

D3 should be proud to have such an active community!

Indeed, the worst thing that could happen to them is apathy. People are being vocal because they actually enjoy the game and want it to be the best it can be.

Hyposphere6234

I think the original post put the nail on the head.

As for the whole restaurant talk, this is a game and not a restaurant, they're two separate entities entirely. Besides, if you're invited to a party and then told you have to pay for each glass of punch and every snack you eat then it's a different matter.

I'm getting free tokens, thank you D3 for them. Out of around 30 anniversary and Galactus tokens that I've earned, all of them have been 2* covers. What I've seen is that they're free and I should be grateful that I'm getting them. Thanks D3 for giving me a load of 2* covers.

I appreciate the 30% extra on the sales, for the first time I thought I'd splash out with the top tier for the full benefits. This is an anniversary, let's splash out and go for a 40 pack so I can really pay my respects and join the party with a bang. Legendary tokens are always welcome, that was one freebie I was relishing. Out of those forty covers: 38 2* covers that I didn't need, plus a purple Daredevil that I didn't need plus 1 green Carnage that I did need. Thanks D3 for the sale and all of those 2* covers.

I also took advantage of the daily sale of anniversary tokens, every day I got a 2* cover out of them. Thank you D3 for them.

Thanks D3, you've been generous with all the 2* covers, a lot of them free.

Also thanks for the Galactus event and your generous rewards. I'm glad that the top tier teams had to work their way to get the rewards, I'm not being sarcastic here, from the sounds if it they really had to work for them. But for the casual alliances, which more than likely make up for most of the player base, we weren't even thrown a bone. The first three rounds were a novelty and fun, but having to lose half my roster just to get paltry scores on spammy over-powered PVE events wasn't fun. To fight a boss in which I'd skim minimal health on through every unlucky board that rolled around was ****, especially when I lost my team completely by the third turn. I seriously thought about deleting this game forever because of this event. Well done to the guys who have bragging rights and want to swing their mobile **** around. To me, this game started catering towards the elite with some of the changes over the last few months, this event pretty much re-enforces it.

Pylgrim

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

What you never understood is that I wasn't "white-knighting". I was trying to compensate and be a voice of reason when pure vitriol had flooded the forums. I was always able to see the flaws and the shortcomings and several times stated so, but I kept trying to bring up the positive to diminish the toxicity in the forums. I have to say that even with the current Anniversary debacle and the anger and disappointment it caused, the forums are nowadays much less vitriolic than they were. Even so, this thread tried to look deeper for the underlying causes of which the Anniversary shortcomings are merely a symptom.

Anyway, since we have some people sharing their anecdotal conclusions, let me share that this is the very first time ever that I have played through an event releasing a new character without earning a single cover.

Linkster79

Rob13 wrote:

I don't understand all the complaining about the anniversary events. They basically tossed us a 4* Cyclops, with a chance for more covers. I found the first 6 rounds relatively easy with 7/8 progressively harder. Looks like every alliance got at least one Cyclops, with many alliances getting 2/3 covers. Don't get me wrong 7/8th rounds were hard, but isn't that the purpose of a game. If it was easy I don't think anybody would play.

Many many semi casual alliances did not get a single Cyclops cover, I can you assure of that. Even a lot of alliances that are filled with more experienced players most likely didn't get a single Cyclops cover.

What I felt most let down about is that an anniversary event is supposed to be a celebration of a game reaching a milestone. A time for the game to give back to the players who have helped to support it for all this time. A time for the bean counters to say to hell with the numbers let's maximise the number of awards we can throw at the players that won't affect the bottom line too much. I am not on about just giving away legendary tokens or 4* covers but raising odds on event tokens to make them too attractive to pass up, making tokens packs so cheap you would be a fool not to buy them, making max progression almost so low any but the newest player can attain them and above all make it FUN! To be fair until the essential node levels went from easy/slightly challenging to suicidal it was fun, but that single change killed that off. Who cares if the top 10% of the player base would have breezed through it in a day or 2? Let all of the player base at least feel they are in with a shot at it!

Unknown

You know what outrages me more than anything, the ones who seem to think anyone can get to the round 6's and 7's!! Guess what Einstein! Some of us have much more basic rosters and are sick to our back teeth of events clearly giving us newer folk the middle finger! What is further insulting is whiny whales moaning about us complaining. Go tinykitty yourselves you arrogant pompous kittynuggets!!!

The sooner people like that and the devs wake up about lower level teams the better!!!

firethorne

Omega Red wrote:

firethorne wrote:

Omega Red wrote:

Progress would have been slower but given how quickly this was completed by the first bunch of alliances I think it's pretty safe to say that at least five would have done it even without force quit.

At least 5 alliances? Sure. 5 out of what, roughly 20,000 or so? That is my main problem with the state of the game right now. They are making content that caters to an increasingly smaller and smaller audience, while advertising to more and more. Yeah, I have no doubt 0.025% of the alliances out there can skate by. I'm just not saying designing events that are a disappointment to 99.975% of your customers is a good road to go down.

Five is still 150% more than the two that completed Ultron for Hulkbuster.

Statistics that don't factor in the total numbers of the complete audience are meaningless spin. Saying it is a 150% increase is just a way to avoid saying you've gone for a solution that works for 0.01% of your audience to 0.025%. Ultimately, you've moved from being able to count your groups on one hand to... still being able to count your groups on one hand. Still a failure when considering the full 20,000.

optimus2861

Rob13 wrote:

I don't understand all the complaining about the anniversary events. They basically tossed us a 4* Cyclops, with a chance for more covers. I found the first 6 rounds relatively easy with 7/8 progressively harder. Looks like every alliance got at least one Cyclops,

"Every alliance"? "Tossed us a 4* Cyclops"?

I'm sorry, but what planet are you on?

My alliance stalled hard at round 5, and round 4 was an immense chore. Only 3 players (I think) even cleared 100,000 points personal progression; the only 3 with a large core of 166 heroes. A lot of us just threw in the towel at the insanity of it all.

And to top it all off, of the 6 Galactus tokens I earned, 5 of them spit out 2* junk. The last, a 3* Daken.

You do understand that there are lots of alliances below the T100 line, right? The ones that D3 took a massive dump on with this abomination of an event?

The only thing I was "tossed" was into the meat grinder.

Unknown

optimus2861 wrote:

Rob13 wrote:

I don't understand all the complaining about the anniversary events. They basically tossed us a 4* Cyclops, with a chance for more covers. I found the first 6 rounds relatively easy with 7/8 progressively harder. Looks like every alliance got at least one Cyclops,

"Every alliance"? "Tossed us a 4* Cyclops"?

I'm sorry, but what planet are you on?

My alliance stalled hard at round 5, and round 4 was an immense chore. Only 3 players (I think) even cleared 100,000 points personal progression; the only 3 with a large core of 166 heroes. A lot of us just threw in the towel at the insanity of it all.

And to top it all off, of the 6 Galactus tokens I earned, 5 of them spit out 2* junk. The last, a 3* Daken.

You do understand that there are lots of alliances below the T100 line, right? The ones that D3 took a massive dump on with this abomination of an event?

The only thing I was "tossed" was into the meat grinder.

I almost responded and then thought, there's trolling, and then there's TROLLING.

DBC

Pylgrim

Marvelfamily wrote:

Do you all recognize what's good with all that complaining?

We still have a meaning, and we're not bowing our heads in devotion.

As long as it's good critic, I like that (I don't like hater posts).

D3 should be proud to have such an active community!

Exactly. I've never been against being critical, just against the kind of tone employed when being so. I have to say the community has been generally very good in the coping with the flaws of this anniversary, clearly stating grievances without (much) name-calling, often proposing solutions and alternatives and being somewhat more patient and hopeful about resolution. Good job everybody!