Poll: Regarding feature annoncements.

Dragon_Nexus

I'm in two minds.
On the one hand I'd like to know what they're working on. We often hear of "New features we can't talk about yet" and we never know what they are until maybe a week before they launch. I'd like to know what's coming up so I can get hyped.

On the other hand I totally understand why they don't. Nothing worse than facing the backlash of customers who felt they were lied to because "You promised a month ago you'd release a crafting system. WHERE IS IT!?" and the Dev's answer is "It's coming, just give us another month. Maybe two."

So I wanna know about stuff in advance, but I also would like them to only confirm what's actually complete and ready to roll out. Since I'm conflicted, I'm curious as to which option you guys prefer.

Dragon_Nexus

Bumping because...well, no comments yet. I'm curious about more than just the results, I'd like to hear what people think, too

Unknown

tbh i usually dont read the announcements. I just log in the game and when there is something new, i will see it then for myself.
So i did not vote in the poll since it doesnt matter for me. Its usually about some new character which doesnt impact my gameplay at all.

Dragon_Nexus

Frasaria wrote:

tbh i usually dont read the announcements. I just log in the game and when there is something new, i will see it then for myself.
So i did not vote in the poll since it doesnt matter for me. Its usually about some new character which doesnt impact my gameplay at all.

Usually their announcements are a new character, sure. But when the monthly news video comes out they tend to have something specific to talk about, and usually it's a new feature, or at least something that's out after more testing.

General news on the forum is usually minimalistic, but the news videos are worth paying attention to, I find.

Mawtful

Dragon_Nexus wrote:

General news on the forum is usually minimalistic, but the news videos are worth paying attention to, I find.

Announcement Posts, Sneak Peek Posts, Monthly Videos... they're all the same to me. They've got just enough information so that people won't say that they're lacking in information, but IMO they're basically sales-pitch drivel.

I play a bunch of other freemium games that all give regular updates about balance changes and upcoming features - in this case, regular ranges between weekly and monthly. One game in particular, has devs communicating directly with players through their forums and recently launched an "in-game currency for bugs" initiative, where players who reported bugs are reward with a small donation of the premium in-game currency. This same game just recently released a large balance update for ~25 cards/heroes/whatevers at the same time. These changes includes nerfs & buffs and were communicated about 6-8 weeks in advance. In that time, feedback from players resulted in changes to some of those nerfs before the update landed (planned nerfs were too severe, and they were reduced). What's more, the game offers a 100% "sell" rate for the next 2 weeks following this change AND offered players the ability to "buy back" any cards they had ~ever~ sold which were on the buff list - all they had to do was raise a support ticket and CS was able to run a search to see which cards you had sold and how many and players bought back for 100% of what they had originally sold those cards for. They advised that tickets would be resolved slowly due to an increased demand for CS due to this buy back offer. I raised a ticket over the weekend which was still resolved in less than 48 hours.

The comparison to MPQ is just worlds apart., but I'll let you guess which of the two games I spent money on last month.

Demiurge and D3 specifically obscure information from players as much as possible. It's a technique designed to keep the player's environment "unstable" - which is used to encourage spending. That's not speculation, that's something discussed in Al's famous venturebeat articles.

I'd love "long-range" feature announcements. Perhaps not specifically "we're definitely going to do ~thing~ in the next 6 months" type of forecasting, but a monthly "State of the Puzzle Quest" type discussion which covered dev feedback & thoughts on current meta and some small-scale forecasting would be good. Something like:

AP acceleration is still a really hot meta for the 3*-4* transition tier, particularly with Iron Fist able to quickly accelerate Black for characters like XF Wolverine and HB Iron Man. Iron Fist's fragility definitely helps restrict this team into the full 4* tier, so it's not too much of a concern, however it is restricting team composition. We're currently tossing around two different reductions to Iron Fist's power - one is to reduce the damage from his Passive attack tile, and the other is to increase the cost of his Purple from 5 to 6. As a third option, we're also considering a buff to AP steal in the 3* tier. Tell us what you think?

This shows an awareness of the game that's being played, and an understanding that even small changes can effect the meta significantly. In any case, this sort of regular discussion is worthless if they're not also providing frequent and small balance tweaks along with them. It's been, what, 6-8 months since the last mega balance changes? How much has changed since then? And worse, what was expected to change as a result, but didn't?

El Satanno

I don't really care which, so long as we can actually get complete information. Not teasers, hints, and/or guesses from both sides of the fence. I would like to know what the mechanic in question is and how it is intended to work.

Dragon_Nexus

El Satanno wrote:

I don't really care which, so long as we can actually get complete information. Not teasers, hints, and/or guesses from both sides of the fence. I would like to know what the mechanic in question is and how it is intended to work.

Agreed. I'm okay with hearing "We're working on something that should be out soon" as a base announcement. This is so vague that speculation would be scattershot. If something was more substantial then speculation is more focussed leading to eventual disappointment when the really good idea the community comes up with ends up not being what the devs were actually working on (Case in point the recent announcement of command points when people were assuming a crafting system was being made).

In retrospect the vault announcements were weirdly handled, too. Even up to the moment of release I still wasn't entirely sure how it was meant to work, despite listening to both news videos explaining it.

STOPTHIS

I'd prefer to know in advance what they're looking at and working on. However, I understand why they don't. You can only take so many "Where's [feature] you talked about?" type of threads and posts before you snap, but I really hate the vagueness of "we're working on something to help with [common complaint]". With no specifics and rarely a time table given it feels like a brush off. I see the argument for waiting until the feature is fully set so they can fully announce how it works, but they've messed up/lied at that point before too (looking at you, Clash of the Titans).

I don't know. I just know I'm more likely to be forgiving of certain problems if I know they had a solid game plan to address those issues.

simonsez

If it's something that's going to affect decisions I make in the game, I'd want to know as soon as possible. If it's just random new features, then it doesn't really matter.

Hendross

simonsez wrote:

If it's something that's going to affect decisions I make in the game, I'd want to know as soon as possible. If it's just random new features, then it doesn't really matter.

e.g
If drop rates are changing, need to know ASAP to start hoarding/off loading.
If new character stun is 2 or 3, don' t really care.
Changes to existing character stun, need to plan on respeccing if applicable.

simonsez

Hendross wrote:

simonsez wrote:

If it's something that's going to affect decisions I make in the game, I'd want to know as soon as possible. If it's just random new features, then it doesn't really matter.

e.g
If drop rates are changing, need to know ASAP to start hoarding/off loading.
If new character stun is 2 or 3, don' t really care.
Changes to existing character stun, need to plan on respeccing if applicable.

Yep... or if they're going to implement a new feature that offers a potential use for dupe covers, stop opening all tokens immediately.

TxMoose

as always, more communication > less communication

cooperbigdaddy

I agree with most of the folks on this thread. I definitely want to know if I need to save all my tokens because a new selling mechanism is introduced (hopefully soon!) or if a character I'm about to sell is about to become the most powerful in the game, haha.

If it's a new character coming out, fun, but I don't need to know too far in advance.

But definitely keep the communication coming. I always like learning new things about the game about to come out.

Jarvind

I voted for right before release, because I'm impatient and I hate waiting months for a thing to be implemented.

On further consideration, though, I guess the heads-up is nice in the event that it's something that prompts token-hoarding.

Dragon_Nexus

TxMoose wrote:

as always, more communication > less communication

Well my question isn't about how much communication we get, more about when we get it.

Though I suppose...learning about a feature a month in advance would lead to more updates as time goes on...I suppose.

Jarvind wrote:

I voted for right before release, because I'm impatient and I hate waiting months for a thing to be implemented.

On further consideration, though, I guess the heads-up is nice in the event that it's something that prompts token-hoarding.

Yeah, that's kinda where I lie as well. I love the fact something new is announced and then a week later we get it. I don't have to fidget for a month thinking "Ugh, I'm playing the **** version of this game just WAITING for this new thing to happen"

I suppose overall it depends on what the announcement is. Something regarding changes to characters or what we want to spend money on should be plenty in advance, I guess.
But new beneficial features? I like being surprised. I mean, it's no fun having a present you really want at the beginning of the month but having to wait weeks for Christmas.

(Paws at my unopened and unplayed Xenoblade Chronicles X box. Why did I allow my mother to buy that for me for Christmas!?)

TxMoose

I have no problem waiting. I'd rather know plans in advance, even if those plans get tweaked. however, I completely understand them not putting things out too much in advance because once they set an expectation, their customers tend to rage over any reality that differs from their expectation.

BlackSheep101

Simon summed it up well. I'd just add that if no decisions would be changed by the new feature, I'd rather hear right when they're ready to roll out so I don't have to read here on the forum all the speculation, hand wringing and cries of how much it sucks before it's even released.