So, no anniversary LRs or Double Iso? Dev Update

Stax the Foyer

I think I found the problem, you guys.

IceIX

Wanted to give an update on this:

So, it was an error on our part as to why the Lightning Rounds this week did not offer double Iso. It was intended to, but the switch simply didn't get flipped and the mistake wasn't caught ahead of time. We definitely apologize for that.

Unfortunately, rerunning the event with it turned on isn't as simple as taking it down, flipping the switch, and putting it back up again. So we can't just "enable it".

What we're going to do instead is provide a single lump sum to anyone who plays in this set of Lightning Rounds that works out to be about what the top 5% of LR players would normally gain from rewards. Basically, 95% of the user base will make out like bandits to varying degrees, 3-4% will possibly lose a couple hundred compared to a normal LR set, and a few players at the very top end of every LR will make a bit less than double what they'd get normally. This bonus works out to a nice square 5K Iso-8. We're planning on sending this bonus out once this set of Lightning Rounds is completed.

Mawtful

IceIX wrote:

Unfortunately, rerunning the event with it turned on isn't as simple as taking it down, flipping the switch, and putting it back up again. So we can't just "enable it".

We can land robots on Mars and you're telling me that your "match 3 tiles" game is too complicated to change the rewards?

mmrosek

That's great, but 5k is nothing to what we would have gained. Eff this. Too little, too late.

Dragon_Nexus

With all the anger and disappointment on the boards these days, a single thought keeps coming into my head.

It must really suck for the developers to put a lot of hard work into creating something, putting it out there and smiling thinking the world will enjoy their creation only for everyone to actually hate it. It makes me feel kinda sad to think of all the developers who are probably kinda hurt by the reception to their work. As disappointed as I was with this year's anniversary events that image does keep coming back to me because I genuinely hope this wasn't designed purely to make money but instead an attempt to make something fun and new that just went wrong without anyone realising.

And then this sort of thing happens and "Whoopsidoodle, we forgot to turn on double ISO! Herpaderp, we did a silly! Oh gosh let me help with that OH DEAR I just tripped and thrust this custard pie in my face HEHEHE!" Now it's starting to feel tragic for different reasons.

Orion

Ice, I think you dropped a zero somewhere. Better go look for it.

I can easily earn 1500 ISO in a single lightning round just from seed teams. Multiply that by 10 lightning rounds, which is generous considering I'll probably play closer to 15 of them at least over the next 2 days, comes out to 15000 ISO.

So does that make me part of the .5%? Because I'm being conservative and your bonus is way way too low.

puppychow

With D3 busy dealing w/ NYCC, and having server issues during GH1, I certainly wouldn't blame them for overlooking the double iso issue in LR. With that said, I'm waiting to see how D3 handles GH2.

scottee

Orion wrote:

Ice, I think you dropped a zero somewhere. Better go look for it.

I can easily earn 1500 ISO in a single lightning round just from seed teams. Multiply that by 10 lightning rounds, which is generous considering I'll probably play closer to 15 of them at least over the next 2 days, comes out to 15000 ISO.

So does that make me part of the .5%? Because I'm being conservative and your bonus is way way too low.

The bonus is like 5x what I would have played. Sorry, I'm dragging down the curve.

aesthetocyst

Orion wrote:

... I'll probably play closer to 15 of them at least over the next 2 days...

VERY few players play that many. I play way too much and I typically hit 2 of them.

Orion wrote:

So does that make me part of the .5%?

Yep, almost certainly.

This is flat compensation across the board. Individual mileage will vary. It's spot on for my usually involvement. It's WAY short for the hardcore LR guys, and way long for the casual player who might haphazardly do 1 or 2 LR matches a couple times a week.

You can't underestimate just how casual the average player is.

fmftint

also would've been nice LR to have anniversary tokens instead of standards
they were supposed to have them last year but that got omitted by mistake as well

LegendReborn

Oh boy. 5k iso. I can hardly contain myself.

I don't care if we are outliers, you are saying our experience doesn't matter. D3 best devs. Why run it next week when we can phone it it Ike the rest if the anniversary?

IceIX

Orion wrote:

So does that make me part of the .5%? Because I'm being conservative and your bonus is way way too low.

If those numbers are correct, that'd put you in the top .7% of all Lightning Round players. So close, yeah. Very very few players play 90 LR matches an LR set in the middle of PVE, Versus, DDQ, etc.

LegendReborn

You do realize our lightning round participation increases during double iso, right? Taking normal lightning rounds and assuming literally the same participation is lazy work. So keep at it!

IceIX

LegendReborn wrote:

You do realize our lightning round participation increases during double iso, right? Taking normal lightning rounds and assuming literally the same participation is lazy work. So keep at it!

Hence why we put it up to the top 5% of player rewards instead of something like taking the average of all players, which would be decidedly lower. So, yes. We do realize that, thanks for checking.

hex706f726368

Is there a reason why you couldn't have just said, whoops sorry, we'll run double ISO LR next week instead?

Orion

Wow, ok. So I vastly overestimated how people play the lightning rounds. So then what I have to say is this:

Are you guys crazy? Do you know how lucrative the lightning rounds are for farming ISO? If you can enter the event right when it starts, you can play 6-9 seed teams and rack up 1500 ISO easy like I said. If you just do that 3 times over 2 days, then you can get that 5k ISO. With the insane cost of leveling characters, this is easily the best way in the game to get tons of iso.

Even if you don't enter right from the beginning, you can still sometimes get 3 seed teams that will earn you almost 1k ISO. It's a no-brainer to at least try. Heck, even 1 fight and win gets you 140 ISO for progression, the amount for the win, and 70 for placing on the leaderboard at the end. So guaranteed 300 or more ISO for 1 fight every 2 hours.

DrStrange-616

I'm having a lot of trouble understanding how something like double ISO for LRs was just "oops" overlooked. It says an awful lot about how much thought and care went into this anniversary.

timbopp

IceIX wrote:

What we're going to do instead is provide a single lump sum to anyone who plays in this set of Lightning Rounds that works out to be about what the top 5% of LR players would normally gain from rewards.

The problem here is that double Iso Lightning Rounds are not normal and many players had intended to play them much more than they normally would play regular LRs.

I am severely Iso poor so I had intended to play double Iso LRs as much as I could, more than normal which is still a lot.
I was excited and eager for them but now I'm just disappointed and demoralised.
That there seems to be the theme of MPQ Anniversary 2015.

udonomefoo

I work and sleep, so 5k is generous for me, thank you. Though, I'd agree that the "sorry we screwed up, next weeks LR's will be double iso instead" route would have been better, even though it would have been worse for me personally.

Mawtful

fmftint wrote:

also would've been nice LR to have anniversary tokens instead of standards
they were supposed to have them last year but that got omitted by mistake as well

Obviously they were caught by surprise - I mean, it's not as though the anniversary happens at the same time ever year. There's no way they could have planned for it, we should be thankful that they had all these Anniversary branded art assets on hand.