Anniversary Updates

SunCrusher

wymtime wrote:

IceIX wrote:

Wanted to update you all on some changes we’re making to the Anniversary in response to your feedback.

Galactus
Slightly more alliances than we expected (111) made it to round 7 of Galactus, and 49 alliances met the final score target in round 8. But we got lots of feedback about the experience of getting there that we want to act on, so we’ll be significantly re-tuning the event for its second run this weekend.

In particular:
We’ll be working to make sure that even in later rounds, there are multiple interesting strategies to tackle Galactus.
We’ll be aiming to make each individual fight against Galactus feel meatier and more satisfying, lasting longer than a short, predictable number of rounds for more players.

We’ve got fixes for some bugs and miscellaneous balance issues as well.

Introducing new and different gameplay always involves balance risks, so your feedback is especially valuable when we introduce something like Galactus, and we’re looking forward to hearing what you think of the changes.

As a more (kinda) off topic thing, sorry about the relative radio silence from me for the past couple days. NYCC was pretty crazy this year, really cut down on my ability to pop on here. I'll be back to relative posting normalcy tomorrow. Pardon the grammar mistakes in this post, trying to get it up using a chiclet with in-flight wi-fi. Yay for that!

As you are looking at Galactus can you take a look at the last 2 rounds of essentials. The difficulty of the survival nodes in particular were just as brutal if not worse. I get that th essentials should get harder as the event goes on but level 300+ survival node is a little crazy. Level 395 gorgon that just pops up in survival mode killed so many in my alliance.

Galactus was broken in round 6 and beyond and the essentials were getting broken in the last 3-4 clears. In your post you said these "minions" should be trivial compared to Galactus. The reason more players were not complaint about these essentials on the last day was because players stopped playing. Please look at the essentials as well especially towards the end of the event. I got the legendary token so I had to beat these Gauntlet style essential nodes to fight a 2 turn kill Galactus.

I got Trivial minions/nodes ONCE. After that refresh ended, ALL of my nodes went to Normal and became totally and wholly and completely utterly UNPLAYABLE... while Galactus himself remained Trivial.

The fun part was, this was on Round One.

I'm a 2-3* transitional player very strongly in transition land with a lot of 3* characters who are only partially built out and no character who has been fully maxed out because it would cause severe level imbalance in my team-building when I have to mix and match 2 and 3* characters.

GurlBYE

Ctenko wrote:

killerkoala wrote:

Omega Red wrote:

killerkoala wrote:

For Galactus 2:

1) either unlimited health packs and boosts or no health lost when Galactus teleports you off his big head ship.
2) scale down the minion fight, some of them felt like gauntlet punishment nodes.


But changes they should make to for the betterment of the game permanently:

1) remove 2* covers from heroic and event tokens (we already get enough 2* from standards and matches to last us a lifetime), either convert them to 250iso or health packs.
2) scrollable leaderboards
3) remove "true healing", viva la "prologue healing"
4) remove 2* covers from season, shield simulator, and pvp progression; just make them heroic tokens or event tokens.
5) pvp nodes either give the amount listed or more if they moved in points, never less.
6) make the game fun again, play test in mind for someone who barely started the game and you as a dev want them to have fun and want to stay and pay you guys for the great job you do.

Someone who barely started the game needs all those 2* covers that you want removed. Also, what if I'm a veteran and suddenly I feel like I want to build a 2*? What if the 2* is an essential and you don't have it? How do you get it?

standards will have plenty of 2* and also playing match gives covers.

Standards have a much lower rate for them, and without getting them (In abundance) how do people make the jump from One star to three star? How do they do the two DDP's that require two stars? I'm just as annoyed as you every time I see a Moonstone instead of a Jean Grey. (Redheads forever!) But we have to remember that lower level and just starting people need these things too. Just like the game should not be all about the whales it should be all about where you are stuck.

Though I'd appreciate some lower odds of getting Two stars and some raised odds of getting better covers. Or the ability to trade covers or something. Considering how worthless the power creep is making many Three stars, I would like to see at least a better chance at covers we all eventually need.

your argument ignores that 3 stars do exactly what you think the game would lack if 2 stars were out of heroics/ events.

Theres no way to 3 star at the moment beside joing pves late. Legendary tokens sealed the deal on a 2 star without the 3 or 4 essential getting top 100 without a grind.

3's are luck based, then DDQ helps you take it out of luck and into 1 of each color every 120 days.

Ctenko

GurlBYE wrote:

Don't bother, he's lost it in some round of galactus

Where do you get 2 stars?
In this game? True
That has a vault with over 120 of them? The one that requires an essential three star and a team to beat level sixties to earn a taco for that chance... and also requires Two stars to win the other Taco? Pretty hard if there are no two stars coming from your second most likely source.
The ones that have a chance of popping up for 500 iso? (Still more likely to get a One star, same way as you're more likely to get a two in heroics.)
The ones that are in progression in each pve that needs them? (The PVE you won't score well in because your roster is One stars, and under leveled Threes? because there was a mostly removed transition phase for you?)
The ones you win in pvp matches? Without a two star Transition how do they get to PVP? Direct from the Prologue? I sure couldn't.
The ones you get from prologue's last chapters?Cause 1/1/1 On Storm Wolverine and Thor is all you need right?

Again not saying he's not being a little dickish sometimes, but we can't just take those things off every token not a standard.

LHammer

Just going to point something out then move along again.

It doesn't matter how much you deserve it. It doesn't matter how carefully thought out your wording is. It doesn't matter matter how politely you try to make your appeal. At some point, the responses to this thread will be summarized for the higher-ups at D3. Every post that says anything even remotely resembling "you should give us..." will be lumped into a single category. The final brief will describe it as: XX% of the responses to our post about fixing the event and giving compensation were "waaaahhh... gimme more". The executive takeaway will be: don't worry about the forum trolls, all they want is free stuff.

GurlBYE

I'll just put it this way, most of my 2 stars that I use came from places besides heroics, because a 1 star player isn't facing receiving a shower of those either.

GurlBYE

LHammer wrote:

Just going to point something out then move along again.

It doesn't matter how much you deserve it. It doesn't matter how carefully thought out your wording is. It doesn't matter matter how politely you try to make your appeal. At some point, the responses to this thread will be summarized for the higher-ups at D3. Every post that says anything even remotely resembling "you should give us..." will be lumped into a single category. The final brief will describe it as: XX% of the responses to our post about fixing the event and giving compensation were "waaaahhh... gimme more". The executive takeaway will be: don't worry about the forum trolls, all they want is free stuff.

Something better to point out, no one has posted since second page. so it's all dust anyhow.

Only way to speak is by not playing and not spending.

Calling it whining is basically the entire forums if you want to get technical. But that'd make even your post whining, which it isn't it's commentary, discussion.

Figure15

Complaint letter to Marvel/ Disney? Of course on the off chance that it actually does anything it might nuke the game entirely.

GodsRightArm

IceIX! Were you the guy behind the computer at NYCC giving me my raffle winnings everyday?!

NighteyesGrisu

killerkoala wrote:

For Galactus 2:

1) either unlimited health packs and boosts or no health lost when Galactus teleports you off his big head ship.
2) scale down the minion fight, some of them felt like gauntlet punishment nodes.


But changes they should make to for the betterment of the game permanently:

1) remove 2* covers from heroic and event tokens (we already get enough 2* from standards and matches to last us a lifetime), either convert them to 250iso or health packs.
2) scrollable leaderboards
3) remove "true healing", viva la "prologue healing"
4) remove 2* covers from season, shield simulator, and pvp progression; just make them heroic tokens or event tokens.
5) pvp nodes either give the amount listed or more if they moved in points, never less.
6) make the game fun again, play test in mind for someone who barely started the game and you as a dev want them to have fun and want to stay and pay you guys for the great job you do.

while some points have some merit (espeacially 2....both of them), I'm a bit amazed why you think prologue healing would be a good thing to bring back. The way I remember it prologue healing and tanking were probably the 2 most annoying meta-game-mechanics that ever existed in this game. I certainly have no desire to go back to that.

As for the announced changes: that just serves me right for always opening my tokens right away.

oh, and I hope that re-tuning galactus isn't just making boss fights easier and in exchange massively increase his max health.....anybody remember ultron round 2?

Linkster79

Wait a minute. 111 alliances is more than what you expected to beat Galactus? Let's just think about that for a bit. At a time for celebration the games designers went with a system that was meant to completely stump the majority of the player base? Personally I would have thought that an event would have been designed to reward the very people who helped keep the game going, weather it be financially, telling others about it or just by continually playing it.

See I am no business or marketing person but I would have thought that by being generous with in game rewards and making an event that say even 50% of all alliances may be able to beat it would have been win win. Us as players get a cornucopia of riches showered upon us, new players see how cool and easy the game may be so decide to stick around or even shock horror splash some cash for a little leg up to another playing tier, those who want to throw money at the game can do for awesome token packs and the rest of us sit in happy contentment with warm fuzzy feelings.

There is a time and place for heavy monetisation, there is also a time and a place for ultra hard grinds that only those who have the deepest roster and are willing to spend a lot of time have a shot at completing. During a celebration of a rather significant milestone is not that time or place.

In all honesty would it have been a massive game breaker if at least 50% of all alliances were able to get max progression? That would give them a 3 covered 4* character, almost as much use as a chocolate teapot. Are profit margins really that tight that for a few days you can let loose the purse strings?

Would it have been a massive disappointment for the top alliances to complete the event with a few days left whilst us casual plebs soldier on as best we can when we can, but fairly confident we can do it and not just give up as soon as we realise there is a snowballs chance in hell of getting any of the really cool rewards?

I will go out on a limb and applaud you for trying something different. Yes you failed miserably at pretty much every aspect but you tried, that is more than a lot of us casual players did once we knew we had no chance.

Sometimes a challenge is fun, but other times it is just as much fun to go full tilt and just steam roll a game without even having to strain a brain cell. Just blind pure unadulterated visceral fun.

I will ask just one last question, what assurances can you give us that we will not be seeing "Please check your connection" when everybody tries to connect to see what fantastic changes have been made?

Linkster79

NighteyesGrisu wrote:

The way I remember it prologue healing and tanking were probably the 2 most annoying meta-game-mechanics that ever existed in this game. I certainly have no desire to go back to that.
?

I remember it as pure joy. I could play for as long as I wanted when I wanted. Scaling and MMR getting a bit out of hand then just go get my **** whipped a few times and I could be back on track.

Oh the halcyon days before alliances and season scores were the be all and end all, it really was a more civilised time.

yogi_

Now super annoyed I didn't play for the first two days (to try and avoid some of this mess), as I could use the HP.

Ah well.

***

I've only had a few tokens so far. None of use. Happy anniversary, hey.

By the way, I know you are into your psychology this and % chance that but the use of randomised tokens for the better anniversary items both this year and last is an appalling design decision.

AsgardPrime

IceIX,

For the last couple of days, I have struggled with the need to post about the anniversary event. To start off, I looked forward to an epic battle with Galactus and was "all in" to battle. I know the team worked hard to make the event worthy of a milestone event. I acknowledge the design intent with the whole encounter and boss mechanics. I appreciate the response to many of the complaints that have flooded the forums and frustrated many players. Thank you to you and the team for all the hard work to put this together, on top of NYCC as well. My expression below is not meant to take away from that, just the scope of the target customer.

I became compelled to post on a few things that still very much bother me specifically, that left me as frustrated with this game as it never had before. First, only the top alliances had any chance of getting any Cyclops covers. I realized Friday night that we would never make it to get just one cover. We finally got bogged down in the middle of round 5 and stayed there for the last 36 hours - i think many in my alliance realized the same and gave up. Personally, I won a single match out of the last 27 boss encounters, only getting boards that extended beyond 4 rounds just a handful of times. Second, I wanted to at least hit that legendary token and but ended up with only 450k out of the 1.2m points needed. For someone who plays hard, usually a top 20 event placer, it was very hard to accept that no matter what I did personally, no matter how much I played, I would not get any of the ultimate prizes that I would have with most other events.

The crux of all this? That an anniversary event, which initially sounded great and expected to be a celebration and fun for all players - was really an exclusive event where only the top alliances got rewarded and everyone else got constantly smashed. As a player who plays this game a ton and has financially supported way more than probably any other game ever, it left a terrible taste in my mouth. I did not feel that the anniversary was meant for players like me - in fact, it left me feeling very taken for granted.

So, let me ask this - are the tweeks to the event enough that alliances that made it to 5 should be able to complete 6 and get one cover? Will players still have long winless streaks at those rounds without decent boards or deep, unskewed lineups? Will we still need more health packs a round than regens? If I belong to a casual public alliance - one thats filled with very frustrated players which may not even participate in part 2 - should I even bother? If the casual player/alliances can only expect a handful of event tokens no matter what, than I think the only ones being celebrated are the top 2%.

lukewin

ZeiramMR wrote:

For what it's worth, our alliance came up a little short of completing Round 5 and I was 150K from the Legendary. I think the points were there if people could still beat the later Rounds or do reasonably damage before losing.

That does suck, that ultimately, it was your alliance's progression holding you back. That is a great score for only completing Round 4. If you were in a higher round, you would've faced increased difficulty, but more points were available for beating Galactus. You actually probably did more damage to Galactus / won more matches than other people that had a higher score, but b/c you were in a lower round, you were getting less points for the same amount of matches as someone in higher rounds.

Dracodad wrote:

DayvBang wrote:

I'm less interested in apologies and more interested in being told what they're doing to fix things, personally. This response (see OP) is far more of what I want to see.

>>a lot of snipping<<
I believe the way to improve the game is to offer solutions. Not, let's give everybody 100 tokens to apologize solutions, but reasonable, rational ideas on how to make the event better. Constructive criticism, as it were.

I am sure I will be flamed by those still feeling betrayed by the devs, but flaming them or fellow players doesn't make the game better. Tell them what would increase the fun (while understanding that they are balancing the game with profit. Don't hate them because they want to make money. Thats how Great games like this are made to start with. Instead, tell them "we want the game to be more FUN and here is how you could do it".

You remind me a lot of a myself and my attitude towards D3 Go! and Demiurge before this debacle. Copying / pasting from other thread.

lukewin wrote:

I tried for as long as I could, to try to correct mistakes that forum goers made, with quotes/posts from you guys, so that they weren't outraged due to their own misunderstanding. That's when I had faith in D3 and Demiurge. The anniversary / Galactus Hungers, their rollout, your lack of response (at first) and your response have devoured that faith.

For a small amount of time, I created the PVE event threads, that listed boosted characters, rewards, etc, that were used for the discussion of the PVE. In my sig, I have a list of links that I maintained as well, so people could check previous runs and find info that isn't readily available. The community is doing the job, but it would be nice if the game's publishers could provide this info. It's like having an instruction manual for a video game.

After this weekend's events, I am no longer doing that. I did it to support them and the community, since I am F2P, and figured this was one way that I could show support. I'm not trying to say it was a huge role or a big loss, but I'm choosing to withdraw my support of them by no longer creating those threads. It might hurt the community and not D3, but hopefully, someone else will come along and pick it up, like I picked it up from those that came before me.

Now my posts are more geared towards holding them accountable for mistakes they've made that hurt the game and community. I'm trying to do it in a constructive manner, so that the point isn't lost by the delivery of the point.

Dracodad wrote:

Who knows, someone from D3 might listen to those posts.

Take it from me, check my join date, previous posts before this weekend and feedback rating, when I tell you, I think I know. While they might listen to those posts, very rarely are any changes made that benefit the community.

killerkoala

NighteyesGrisu wrote:

killerkoala wrote:

For Galactus 2:

1) either unlimited health packs and boosts or no health lost when Galactus teleports you off his big head ship.
2) scale down the minion fight, some of them felt like gauntlet punishment nodes.


But changes they should make to for the betterment of the game permanently:

1) remove 2* covers from heroic and event tokens (we already get enough 2* from standards and matches to last us a lifetime), either convert them to 250iso or health packs.
2) scrollable leaderboards
3) remove "true healing", viva la "prologue healing"
4) remove 2* covers from season, shield simulator, and pvp progression; just make them heroic tokens or event tokens.
5) pvp nodes either give the amount listed or more if they moved in points, never less.
6) make the game fun again, play test in mind for someone who barely started the game and you as a dev want them to have fun and want to stay and pay you guys for the great job you do.

while some points have some merit (espeacially 2....both of them), I'm a bit amazed why you think prologue healing would be a good thing to bring back. The way I remember it prologue healing and tanking were probably the 2 most annoying meta-game-mechanics that ever existed in this game. I certainly have no desire to go back to that.

As for the announced changes: that just serves me right for always opening my tokens right away.

oh, and I hope that re-tuning galactus isn't just making boss fights easier and in exchange massively increase his max health.....anybody remember ultron round 2?

i never could figure out how prologue healing was bad. it let people play as long as they wanted. say for example, if you retreated instead of getting defeated (definitely need 3 health pack); you didn't need to use health packs on any middle to low health characters, you just went and healed back up and continued playing. if you thought it was boring to do then use your health packs and go about your business and don't prologue heal.

CNash

Are the new Anniversary token odds live yet? Just want to be sure before I open any more.

SunCrusher

OJSP wrote:

SunCrusher wrote:

I got Trivial minions/nodes ONCE. After that refresh ended, ALL of my nodes went to Normal and became totally and wholly and completely utterly UNPLAYABLE... while Galactus himself remained Trivial.

The fun part was, this was on Round One.

Well, up to round 6, where my Galactus was level 300, he was still considered Trivial by the game..

That's another thing about the game that probably has changed since you left.. The difficulty description isn't always accurate, because it seems to decide that by comparing the average levels of our opponents to our roster; specifically the average of highest levels characters in our roster (a few, 3 or 4 or 6 highest characters, depending on the source of information)

How DOES scaling/difficulty level work now?

Unknown

Little underwhelmed by the response - just give out tons of freebies. Seriously, not to sound too entitled, but it's an anniversary, so should be a huge celebration - and I want gifts every day, I want that happy feeling every day! The anniversary tokens should have minimum 3 star rewards. Even with participating in Galactus battle as much as possible, I don't think I've played less MPQ! Absent lightning rounds are a big miss this 'season'. In a backwards way, I've enjoyed the break

Anyway, we should be grateful they upped the healthpacks from 5 to 10 not too long ago. Imagine if they hadn't!

Bottom line - we want gifts for an anniversary, not just a poor chance at a possible gift. And to repeat someone further up - regarding rewards etc - why can't we have more chances with higher odds. Doesn't have to be one or the other?
Massive congrats to those who smashed Galactus!

Polares

Polares wrote:

A couple of considerations

First Galaktus. What about the rewards from the first Galaktus event? My alliance could not do a scratch over Galaktus on round 6 so we could not get a Cyclops cover. Then I myself could just get to 950k because we as an alliance could not past round 6. So what about that? And of course Cyclops is mow essential.

And about the 10-pack, Icex I got 10 2s, so yeah for me before the tokens were completely pointless. Now, I will get 3 tokens as compensation, but the problem is that individual tokens doesnt have the same chances than a 10- pack, so now I am screwed two times (and yes, it is better getting 3 tokens than nothing but the ones that play the most are the ones screwed).

Basically this fix helps things for the future, but doesnt help with all that has happened before (cyclops covers, tokens already opened, etc.).

As I said, it is nice for the future of the anniversary but I want compensation for everything that has happened until now!

I run the numbers for the 1-pack diference:

Chance of NOT getting a devil dino with old 10-pack+3 new tokens - 44%
Chance of NOT getting a devil dino with new tokens - 34%

That is a 10% difference! And that is just the difference for getting DD, for the rest of the 4s the difference is even bigger!

So please remove from my pool 2500 iso (my reward for selling 10-2s) and give me another 10-pack!

And I dont have a cyclops so Simulator is being more difficult than it should be (to get to the legendary)


PS: I got NOTHING from all anniversarty tokens, just 2s and one 3, and the first token with the new chances I opened I got a Reed R! (The second token got me a 2 ). Is it just coincidence?

NighteyesGrisu

killerkoala wrote:

i never could figure out how prologue healing was bad. it let people play as long as they wanted. say for example, if you retreated instead of getting defeated (definitely need 3 health pack); you didn't need to use health packs on any middle to low health characters, you just went and healed back up and continued playing. if you thought it was boring to do then use your health packs and go about your business and don't prologue heal.

if you have limited time to play, having to spend some of that time doing unproductive stuff like healing or tanking really was annoying as hell. The thing is, prologue healing doesn't just affect yourself, so it's not really accurate to say that if you don't like it, just don't do it. During the time it was nearly impossible to compete with guys who do tank/prologue heal if you didn't do it yourself as well (unless you opened your wallet to buy more healthpacks). So really, if they really bring back prologue healing, I'm out.