Dear Demiurge, please show your players some respect.

IlyaF

Dear Demiurge,

I have some feedback, and I will try to keep it as constructive and respectful as possible. But I would like you to understand that I do feel very much disrespected by you.

A little about me. I am a long time player. I am on day 1042. I have 2 championed 5*s, 29 championed 4*s, all 3*s championed as well. I have spent tons of time on this game over the last 3 years, and hundreds of dollars as well. I have been paying for VIP since it came out. I am not a whale, but this is the most time and money I've spent on any game in my life, and I've been gaming for decades.

You would think that I am the kind of customer your company would like to keep. Yet you continuously act as if you could care less. Why? Is this really the impression you want to make?

Why do I say that you show me and my fellow players disrespect? Several reasons:

1) Poor QA. I am sorry, but it's been obvious for years that your QA is extremely sub-par. Every release of a major feature comes out with horrible bugs or extremely annoying limitations. I can give you many examples, going back to the launch of team-ups when you couldn't even delete the team-ups you don't want. Or the launch of championing which came with nerfed 3*s bug (some of it was intended but not all ). Or the launch of Shield levels which came with "some people get ISO motherload twice" bug. I could mention the time I couldn't play for many days because my phone was upgraded to Lollipop. I could go on and on, really.

Sometimes the bugs are not so big, but they are so OBVIOUS that it's impossible to understand how any reasonable QA could have missed them. For example, the bug with Attack tile animation coming in too late. How was this missed?

And sometimes it's not exactly bugs, but it's completely broken new events or new characters that were clearly not play-tested properly. As an example of broken events, we have Galactus launch on Anniversary 2 and Boss Rush on anniversary 3. As an example of broken characters, there are so many examples - Beast, Chulk, She-Hulk and others that were terribly balanced at launch, the players told you this immediately, and you still waited for many months to fix them. How long was Chulk broken for before you finally fixed him? Almost a year? Come on.

What this tells me is that you don't respect your players enough to give them a properly QA'ed product. It seems like your QA is done by some remote team, maybe in India or Eastern Europe, that doesn't really understand the game, or doesn't give a %$*. Seriously, whoever is doing your QA is ripping you off. Please fire them and get a real QA team.

2) Poor customer support. On top of having poor QA, you also have abysmal customer support. I have contacted it several times, and every time it has been an exercise in frustration. The responses are slow and unhelplful, they ask a ton of questions irrelevant to the problem, they clearly don't even read the message, and they almost never provide a satisfactory conclusion. I am still waiting for almost a week now to get the two Gwenpool covers I won in BFF PVP, and, inexplicably, didn't get. Even when they do provide a reasonable conclusion, they manage to mess it up. Let me give you an example:

A couple months ago, I tried to buy VIP. Instead of charging me once, you charged me three times. I filed a ticket, which I thought would have gotten resolved in a day. It was super straightforward - I got charged 3 times for the same VIP. It's not like I bought Hero points 3 times and then changed my mind - it's obvious that I would have no intention to pay 3 times for the same VIP. I asked for 2 of the payments to be refunded. Yet this took a week(!), and when I complained, they gave me a token for free VIP. "But I already have VIP", I said. Can you give me something else? No, they said, buzz off (not in those words of course).

A month later, when my VIP expired, I saw that my next VIP was free. So the token they gave me is actually good for free VIP in the future. If they actually TOLD ME this, I would have been reasonably happy. They couldn't even explain properly what it is they gave me.

Do you train your support? Do you communicate with them about new features as they come out? Do you pay them a living wage? Why is it that every time I deal with your support, I feel disrespected and unwelcome? I did not have a single interaction with your CS that I was satisfied with.

3) Poor communication. This has been a long standing problem and has actually gone up and down over the years. Sometimes, communication is good, and sometimes it inexplicably drops off. The months after IceX left were probably the worst. Lately, it has gotten better, until you suddenly completely dropped the ball on Boss Rush, posting insufficient announcement with a lot of missing details way too late. The "we are trying new things" response to the complaints of your users is tone-deaf beyond belief, even worse than "you are supposed to lose" response of last year. You do not respect me enough to communicate about your events, or to answer the numerous questions posted by your players about the event. Or to playtest the event you supposedly spent months preparing.

We are your customers. Treat us nicely, show us respect. We pay your salaries. Don't tick us off for no reason. It's just good business, for godsake.

wanghiking

As an 800 day player, I can't agree with you more.

The quality assurance of the game is abysmal...yet we continue paying and playing.

Maybe that's why they don't care that much, and continue insulting their customers, again and again.

I will not spend any cents on this game any more until the devs show enough respect for us.

Figure15

Remember when the worst thing to happen was server connectivity? I miss those days.

digimon1208

being a 900+ days player here, I can concluded that D3 CS totally has no respect to whatever or whoever.
let me give details about one of the recent concluded incident (note this is the not the 1st incident i had missing player/alliance rewards which has happened before) :-

On the completion of the recent SIMULATOR event, my rewards which was the Gwenpool covers along with ISO/HP was not received as intended. All I get to see on screen was *rewards pending* and after close/restart device/app does not help at all. The fact that Gwenpool cover was an essential in the next Venom Bomb event and further to that with the rest I was locked out for Sub 1 for 30 mins.

So, a ticket was raised but as usual reply was tons of unrelated questions but after answering there was no further update over the next 4 days? I wrote to David Moore on the 5th day which credit to David he gave me his words despite that I am writing to him the very first time that he would assist me to look at my ticket but citing the D3 CS is very busy with 100+ of emails everyday, okay fair enough I shall wait?

Over the next 1 day, viola DS CS replied that they have already send me the missing player/alliance rewards. I was pleased reading that email but instead of returning the complete missing rewards still 1 cover was missing. And, along with no explanation on what was happened nor apologies, instead a special *statement* which was included in that email that really capped my frustration to this incident :-

quote
Hey Digimon1208,

Thank you for waiting on D3 Go! Customer Support.

Always be sure to force close the application before switching devices. Not doing so will almost always lead to data loss of any recent progress. The following helpshift link helps explain on how to properly switch between devices: https://d3publisher.helpshift.com/a/mar ... -save-data

Please note that it is the players responsibility to practice safe device switching habits.

Unquote

I immediately wrote an reply demanding for an explanation to explain how can a player be responsible when I did not did any device switching at all times and the missing rewards has nothing to do with me an player as what display on screen was *rewards pending* after an event end?

well, 2 days has gone by and I did not hear from D3 CS further, so judge yourself, do you think D3 CS respect any player nor have the least decency to care?

oh yes, the did send the last missing cover the next day here with this short msg in my mailbox and I assume that how they file and close the case

Quote
Greetings!

I've gone ahead and Sent over the missing Gwenpool cover, its exclusion from the previous sending was by no means intentional.

Thanks for Playing Marvel Puzzle Quest!
Demiurge Studios's Main Tank

Unquote

Hendross

Thank you for writing this up, the most I can do is upvote, but I fear this (among others); articulate, constructive, and honest feedback will not be addressed.

As a side note; I work in software development, with a customer facing business. I feel that D3, including but not limited to their support and community staff, uses internet anonymity to neglect, ignore, and fail to address and/or report the feedback of the players. When in actually the players are all they have. No other type of business would survive shipping or providing new, untested, bugged, or just plain broken services.

I still enjoy the game and holding onto hope we reach a more stable, well rounded, and fair experience for all.

Crowl

Poor QA gets mentioned in threads like this and it is probably being quite unfair on that department, for this to keep happening so often it seems far more likely to be the case that the whole release scheduling process is where the issue lies, they have strict and short release schedules so any overruns on the dev side result in insufficient time for the qa dept to do their job since they are right at the end of the process while t the same time would have little scope to stop a release for anything that don't deem a showstopper.

Nightglider1

Something else they've done to disrespect players:

The "Boss Rush" event isn't over, yet the 30+ page thread on issues related to the event has been unstickied. Are they hoping it falls off the first page so that it becomes "out of sight, out of mind?"

viewtopic.php?f=7&t=53171

fmftint

Crowl wrote:

Poor QA gets mentioned in threads like this and it is probably being quite unfair on that department, for this to keep happening so often it seems far more likely to be the case that the whole release scheduling process is where the issue lies, they have strict and short release schedules so any overruns on the dev side result in insufficient time for the qa dept to do their job since they are right at the end of the process while t the same time would have little scope to stop a release for anything that don't deem a showstopper.

Players saw the flaws in Boss Rush within 30 minutes of the event launching, are you implying Demiurge's QA team had LESS time to test?

Nightglider1 wrote:

Something else they've done to disrespect players:

The "Boss Rush" event isn't over, yet the 30+ page thread on issues related to the event has been unstickied. Are they hoping it falls off the first page so that it becomes "out of sight, out of mind?"

viewtopic.php?f=7&t=53171

Pinned topics are on a timer. Once it expires it auto unpins. A mod or admin has to re pin

Crowl

fmftint wrote:

Crowl wrote:

Poor QA gets mentioned in threads like this and it is probably being quite unfair on that department, for this to keep happening so often it seems far more likely to be the case that the whole release scheduling process is where the issue lies, they have strict and short release schedules so any overruns on the dev side result in insufficient time for the qa dept to do their job since they are right at the end of the process while t the same time would have little scope to stop a release for anything that don't deem a showstopper.

Players saw the flaws in Boss Rush within 30 minutes of the event launching, are you implying Demiurge's QA team had LESS time to test?

I'm not implying anything of the sort, a fair more likely situation would be they saw them, reported them and they were not deemed to be a showstopper by those dictating the release schedule rather than the qa team and the release went ahead anyway despite their findings.

Nightglider1

fmftint wrote:

Nightglider1 wrote:

Something else they've done to disrespect players:

The "Boss Rush" event isn't over, yet the 30+ page thread on issues related to the event has been unstickied. Are they hoping it falls off the first page so that it becomes "out of sight, out of mind?"

viewtopic.php?f=7&t=53171

Pinned topics are on a timer. Once it expires it auto unpins. A mod or admin has to re pin

Then I'm off to "report" it to request a re-pin.

Razamataz

fmftint wrote:

Players saw the flaws in Boss Rush within 30 minutes of the event launching, are you implying Demiurge's QA team had LESS time to test?

Pinned topics are on a timer. Once it expires it auto unpins. A mod or admin has to re pin

Tbf qa may have been given a short time to test(look how much notice devs give players about events etc we get told of new characters from loads more sources before devs decide to tell us who new toon is) this is devs fault they should play test themselves before even sending to qa,what theyve done is sent out broken product hoping it will slip past qa and the customers .

And topics can stayed pinned/stickied indefinitely unless they have been pinned with an expiry date of only stay pinned for 24hrs 72hrs etc

DrStrange-616

Well said, OP.

Regarding QA, it is clearly lacking; however, the problems with Boss Rush should have been clear during the design phase. QA shouldn't have been needed to show what was wrong with it.

The real problem, I fear, is that they don't see anything wrong with it or the way they've handled it.

slidecage

wanghiking wrote:

As an 800 day player, I can't agree with you more.

The quality assurance of the game is abysmal...yet we continue paying and playing.

Maybe that's why they don't care that much, and continue insulting their customers, again and again.

I will not spend any cents on this game any more until the devs show enough respect for us.

if your a day 800 player what are you spending cash on... im a day like 680 or so I spent 20 bucks when i started and another 50 last year or so and can see never having to put another penny in

i have 18 slots open now i have almost 22,000 Hp to buy another 24 slots almost

Sm0keyJ0e

Haha, well said Ilya! Free pass in s5 next season!

TLCstormz

I mean....does NO ONE realize that over the years, there have been MANY MANY MANY threads of this exact nature?

With HUNDREDS of upvotes, collectively. By forum LEGENDS, even. And from THE BIGGEST whales in history.

Yet, "NOTHING" has changed.

This game is and ALWAYS WILL BE a business to them. Why would they care what we think of them or of their game????? lmao. As long as we / you all CONTINUE to spend money on the game, WHY would they bother changing anything that would specifically help us WITHOUT first rewarding them? lol. Common sense says that'd be doing extra work for no "good" reason.

People may get replaced once a year or so ( Ice, Will, etc ), but we still have THE SAME people in charge, the same game makers, the same bean counters, the same PR people, the same programmers, the same owners, etc etc etc.

Being spat upon over and over and over again and then letting them know how we feel about it IS NOT going to change anything. lol.

Maybe there is a high turnover rate here at the forum, because we have all been saying the same things over and over and over again. FOR YEARS. And "nothing" has changed. And, for some reason, people STILL get shocked when this sort of thing happens.........even though it's happened multiple times before. Say whaaaaa?

Drop rates being abysmal, 3*s getting nerfed, 5* game ending scaling on weak rosters, 5* ripple effecting EVERYONE'S scaling, RNG this, RNG that, constant bugs and server crashes, many 3* characters that are basically unusable, customer service being horrendous, and everything else, ad nauseam.

There is no point, because they do not care. How and or why is this new information? For anyone?

emaker27

Crowl wrote:

fmftint wrote:

Crowl wrote:

Poor QA gets mentioned in threads like this and it is probably being quite unfair on that department, for this to keep happening so often it seems far more likely to be the case that the whole release scheduling process is where the issue lies, they have strict and short release schedules so any overruns on the dev side result in insufficient time for the qa dept to do their job since they are right at the end of the process while t the same time would have little scope to stop a release for anything that don't deem a showstopper.

Players saw the flaws in Boss Rush within 30 minutes of the event launching, are you implying Demiurge's QA team had LESS time to test?

I'm not implying anything of the sort, a fair more likely situation would be they saw them, reported them and they were not deemed to be a showstopper by those dictating the release schedule rather than the qa team and the release went ahead anyway despite their findings.

I've worked in QA for years and this situation happens repeatedly everywhere I work. Without having inside knowledge of how the company functions, it's impossible to pin it on QA. Yes, they could have the worst QA Dept ever, or just say the QA's reported issues aren't important enough to be fixed before release.

If QA was given a day or two to test Boss Rush, and reported that it was too difficult, the feature needs to be delayed to allow for a complete rebalance which takes more days to change and then test again. If the decision makers don't want to delay the release, it goes as-is and the internal feedback is ignored.

_RiO_

emaker27 wrote:

If QA was given a day or two to test Boss Rush, and reported that it was too difficult, the feature needs to be delayed to allow for a complete rebalance which takes more days to change and then test again. If the decision makers don't want to delay the release, it goes as-is and the internal feedback is ignored.

This is likely the crux of the problem. Short release cycles with mandatory feature deadlines do - not - work.