They do listen

wymtime

OneLastGambit wrote:

Ok so I just read the flame wars thread and thought to myself "do they have a point?"

Is it really 2 steps forward 1 back?

So let's see what complaints we've had since I started playing a year ago...

Not enough iso - addressed and fixing
Crit boosts - addressed and fixed
Appropriate rewards - addressed and fixing
Certain characters are poor - addressed and fixing
Progress is too much rng - addressed and fixing
Lack of new content - kind of addressed and fixed
Lack of communication - addressed and fixing
Too much of a time sink - addressed and fixed
Too much scheduled play - addressed and fixed
.

So from this list I would say D3 does listen to its players. 2 has been fixed and 1,4 feel like they are in the right direction. I would also say scheduled play time is a lot better. In any game where you have placement rewards there is going to be ideal play time. It is still there in PVE and PVP but it is much better.
The one I would strongly disagree with is D3's communication specifically on the forum. With clearence levels, new characters, changes to cupcakes there have been announcements but very little communication. The monthly video is gone, and Hi-fi is left deals by with all of our questions and issues and he is not part of the development team. I have enjoyed the interviews on puzzle warriors but as a forum there is very little dev player interaction. With these changes having time to talk with the players about what is going on and why is communication.
Here is the thing if they want to do it on Reddit, or Facebook, or Line instead just set up a link in the forum so players can take part. The devs have said they have been nervous and scared about rage on the forum, but the reality is when a red has shown up and stayed to talk the majority of the forum composes itself and can ask some thoughtful questions.

I feel the devs do listen, it just takes them a long time to implement the changes we want. Clearence levels have taken them over 6M to figure out and a good portion of the forum could be in clearence level 9-10 but because there are not enough players at that level yet we lack the progression we want.

Fightmastermpq

Calnexin wrote:

Polares wrote:

I agree too. PvE is clearly harder for 5 rosters.

Shouldn't it be, though?

A 5* roster implies you've practically won the game. Whether through grinding or spending, your roster is the best of the best.

PvE scaling is there to encourage progression of immature rosters. People without access to max-champ 5* can compete against reasonable difficulty, with grinding and the occasional expense. PvP is practically pointless for them. They can climb to a certain point, and then hit those 5* and get stomped with no chance at progression unless they spend thousands of Iso to skip.

That's the order of things in nature, but a game that wants to retain uses needs to use a little socialism. You can't let the top tier dominate new players in all aspects. That's not fun. So the little guys get a shot in PvE due to scaling. It's their chance to get their first 4* cover, vs a veteran who's looking for Hulkbuster lv 324 and doesn't even intend to use him after that.

I cry - no foul.

I'm not calling foul, just pointing out my observations. I kind of agree with you, but what incentive is there for a PvE player to progress through the game if doing so only makes it harder to compete?

IMO PvE has always been more about time spent playing than roster strength - a game mode that rewards people for how hard they play, regardless of what stage of the game they are in. But I still think the difficulty should be as close to even across all tiers as possible. Right now it appears to be skewed slightly against 5* players, and IMO the scaling should be adjusted slightly to compensate.

Phumade

Calnexin wrote:

Polares wrote:

I agree too. PvE is clearly harder for 5 rosters.

Shouldn't it be, though?

A 5* roster implies you've practically won the game. Whether through grinding or spending, your roster is the best of the best.

PvE scaling is there to encourage progression of immature rosters. People without access to max-champ 5* can compete against reasonable difficulty, with grinding and the occasional expense. PvP is practically pointless for them. They can climb to a certain point, and then hit those 5* and get stomped with no chance at progression unless they spend thousands of Iso to skip.

That's the order of things in nature, but a game that wants to retain uses needs to use a little socialism. You can't let the top tier dominate new players in all aspects. That's not fun. So the little guys get a shot in PvE due to scaling. It's their chance to get their first 4* cover, vs a veteran who's looking for Hulkbuster lv 324 and doesn't even intend to use him after that.

I cry - no foul.

Its a reasonable point. But the consequences should have been better explained/roadmapped. 4months ago, I made the decision to compete at the 5* tier based on the fact that the 5* rosters were clearly dominating pve leaderboards because of speed of clearing. At the time, I had a top tier 4* roster that was very competitive in vet PVP and avg in LRs.

I think many high level "enfranchised players" look at the game as 3 different modes that reward different types of roster.

1. PVP -- dominated by 5* and the prevailing meta (whether that means IM40, peggy blah blah)
2. PVE -- 4 months ago you would have said 5* rosters were ideally suited for this mode. Not necessarily true
3. LRs -- dominated by true healers and 5*.

I had know this roadmap 6 months ago, I would have focused my iso on champing my 4* and softcapping my 5* to 350 based on these reasons.

1. PVP -- An elite 4* roster can still easily make 1300 and T10. Your still vulnerable to the 5* rushing and you realistically give up T5 on 3 shields or less.
2. PVE -- As a competitive player, Grunth is right, the Sweet spot is elite 4* and softcapped 5*. The recent pve changes has minimized the need for champed 5* to be competitive in this mode.
3. LRs -- An elite 4* roster still competes very favorably in the T25 of each LR and with good timing and strategy can definitely make top 8.

Overall, I don't regret moving to 5* mmr (the release schedule pretty much guarantees we are going to a 5* world), but I wish it would have be easier to make long term roster decisions.

GrumpySmurf1002

Calnexin wrote:

That's the order of things in nature, but a game that wants to retain uses needs to use a little socialism. You can't let the top tier dominate new players in all aspects. That's not fun. So the little guys get a shot in PvE due to scaling.

I could somewhat buy this argument, however with the introduction of clearance levels, I think it should be dialed back. It no longer makes sense to scale such that little guys can compete with big guys, because they're no longer bracketed together.

There has to be some incentive to leveling your roster, especially in spending to do so. Making the top tier players experience painful and limiting their rosters to a couple usable characters discourages those players from playing, and as we've seen plenty, often into quitting.

grunth13

Also, a 5 star roster can not stomp a 4 or 3 star roster in PVP, because we never see them. The only time I see anything but maxed 5's is when everyone else is shielded or way below me (which won't happen now because of no cc) and they are only worth 1 point. I don't think any of those rosters are scared of my hitting their teams because I can take 1 point away and they can take 75 from me if they decide to use a whale.

MPQ_Daywalker

Ah, the Internet. Where the majority assume the worst of everyone else, and attack those who dare suggest otherwise.

FWIW, I agree with the the majority of the OP, but I think what OneLastGambit pointed out has to be put in context. If you go back and read his post from the perspective of either a 2* to 3* or 3* to 4* transitioner, I think it's accurate. Even more accurate if you say it's a casual player than a hardcore competitive (e.g., must get top 5 at all costs) player.

The vast number of changes we have seen this year (ever since championing in January) have benefited approximately 99% of the player base. Championing and Shield Clearance Levels give you a way to earn specific character covers now that we did not have before -- that takes RNG out of some of the tier progression, at least on the 2* to 3* and 3* to 4* levels. Giving fixed rewards per node (and no guaranteed critical boosts), scaled ISO rewards (in Rank and SCL), set targets to hit for progression rewards (2 clears for 3*, 4 clears for CP) -- these are all awesome changes for everyone.

Yes, RNG progression is a problem for the 5* tier and has been ever since Silver Silver came into the game about a year ago. Yes, the move to 24 hour timers in PVE is harder for competitive players, but now that more rewards have been moved to progression we're really just talking about those vying for Top 10, and only 1% of the players in every veteran bracket are able to do that. Moving more rewards to progression and out of placement is a good thing for MPQ players as a whole, and casual players (who just want to hit progression) especially.

I see a lot of calls for "more communication" from the devs but it sounds like what people really want are acknowledgements that problems exist and/or are being worked on. We report issues but don't necessarily hear back in what the forum considers to be a reasonable manner.

Now look at it from a a non-forum-reading, casual player perspective. They just see the in-game announcements and explanations. They're not playing PVE or PVP at a high level, so issues that negatively impact those don't affect them (and if there's a delay in hearing back on issues related to high level play, they don't notice). They're experiencing the lag, but have gotten a communication that it should be fixed in R110 and compensation will be coming. For the majority of the player base, I think D3/Demiurge are doing a good job at communication lately.

If you haven't listened to it already, I heartily recommend checking out the latest episode of the Puzzle Warriors 3 podcast, interviewing Demiurge's MPQ Lead Designer, Dave Guskin. There's a lot of interesting stuff in there, from how they pick who getting buffed (they mentioned the forum as playing a part), to the possibility that SCL may come into play in the future for PVE difficulty levels.

Fightmastermpq

_Daywalker_ wrote:

I see a lot of calls for "more communication" from the devs but it sounds like what people really want are acknowledgements that problems exist and/or are being worked on. We report issues but don't necessarily hear back in what the forum considers to be a reasonable manner.

I disagree with this. The bigger issue for me is major changes to game mechanics and structure. The 4* transition is really long, and the 5* one ridiculously longer - this requires a lot of planning for a long time. Those plans are dictated largely by game mechanics. People pick and choose which characters to spend resources on based on the mechanics. People save for incredibly long periods of time to give themselves as big of an advantage as the game allows them. When changes get made without being communicated it can disrupt long term plans before players have time to act on them. That creates a lot of unnecessary frustration.

We still haven't heard anything significant on how defensive teams are set, and the change is live right now. This is a big deal and affects how people play the game. A little communication would go a long way to helping people understand what will be required of them to hit the goals they have set out to accomplish.

MPQ_Daywalker

Fightmastermpq wrote:

I disagree with this. The bigger issue for me is major changes to game mechanics and structure.

You didn't quote or mention the rest of my argument which is that they are doing a good job of communicating on the issues that matter to the casual players who make up most of the MPQ player base. Everything you are talking about are topics for the top level, end game tier of player. (Yes, these players make up the majority of forumites, but not the majority of people playing the game.)

Fightmastermpq wrote:

The 4* transition is really long, and the 5* one ridiculously longer - this requires a lot of planning for a long time. Those plans are dictated largely by game mechanics. People pick and choose which characters to spend resources on based on the mechanics. People save for incredibly long periods of time to give themselves as big of an advantage as the game allows them.

I argue that when people are looking for as big of an advantage as the game allows them, they're concerned with competing as well as possible in PVP. It's the only game mode that genuinely benefits a player to have maxed the fastest, strongest characters above all others. While that may apply to the majority of forumites, I don't think it applies to the majority of MPQ players.

Fightmastermpq wrote:

When changes get made without being communicated it can disrupt long term plans before players have time to act on them. That creates a lot of unnecessary frustration.

I assume this is referring to changes that affect the percentages of 5* pulls in legendary tokens, or which character(s) are moving to classics. Again, this does not apply to casual players.

Fightmastermpq wrote:

We still haven't heard anything significant on how defensive teams are set, and the change is live right now. This is a big deal and affects how people play the game. A little communication would go a long way to helping people understand what will be required of them to hit the goals they have set out to accomplish.

It affects how a subset of people play the game. The unwashed masses will continue to play PVP as they always have.

My guess as to why they haven't revealed the exact workings of the new defensive team structure is to avoid people gaming this new system. If they give us the exact numbers (X number of levels between your last team and your new team means the old team is still on defense) it would just lead to people calculating the exact level of team they can still leave out for people to hit. Which probably will still happen, but if Demiurge is trying to stop people from doing that, why would they make it easy for them?

In the PW3 interview, Dave said (without getting "mathy," as he put it) that the defensive team will only change when the team you switch to is significantly weaker. He said a 5* player could use 4*s and it wouldn't affect it. He said you could even use boosted 3*s. But if you go down to 2* or 1* characters, it wouldn't show as your defensive team.