A note on steam features (and intercepts)

Vhailorx

It definitely sucks that mobile players get access to intercepts while steam users don't. I am personally undecided on intercepts. I don't love interrupting the flow of the game with advertising, but I also appreciate that value of several k iso a day is too much to ignore in a resource starved game like MPQ. But in any event, mobile players have more options than steam players and that is unfair.

But before we continue posting wrath-filled posts about the dev's obvious vendetta against the PC community, I think we should probably consider the possibility that the problem has nothing to do with d3 or demi.

iOS and Android are built from the ground up to deliver targeted advertising. hell, this is the one trick that turned google into a corporate mega-whale. These platforms strongly encourage the sort of integrated advertisement promotion used in shield intercepts.

steam is an entirely different platform, built several years before iOS or the Google play store, to serve an entirely different marketplace. To be sure, steam is very different now from what it was at launch in 2004. But that doesn't mean that demi can just snap their fingers and implement targeted ads on steam.

I am not at all sure that demi/d3's implementation of intercepts is ideal. But we should at least acknowledge that they have to make some difficult choices. They obviously want to implement the ads everywhere possible to get the extra revenue. But that makes steam players happy. And if they give 3-5k iso a day to steam players without ads as compensation, then mobile players will get angry about the new unfairness.

TL; DR: before we flame the devs endlessly, let's consider that there may be some extrinsic factors that account for different treat of the mobile and steam platforms.

Dartmaster01

Mobile users with VIP don't have to watch the ads. It should simply be a feature of VIP on Steam and then there is no unfairness.

Vhailorx

Dartmaster01 wrote:

Mobile users with VIP don't have to watch the ads. It should simply be a feature of VIP on Steam and then there is no unfairness.

Well, there would still be all those non VIP players getting intercepts on mobile and NOT getting them on steam. I can't imagine that anyone would be upset about that, can you?

zulux21

Vhailorx wrote:

Dartmaster01 wrote:

Mobile users with VIP don't have to watch the ads. It should simply be a feature of VIP on Steam and then there is no unfairness.

Well, there would still be all those non VIP players getting intercepts on mobile and NOT getting them on steam. I can't imagine that anyone would be upset about that, can you?

pretty much all of us steam players complaining are former VIP members at this point and if someone who wasn't is complaining andthey really wanted the intercept rewards they would at least have the option to VIP subbing. (or they should at least drop the price of VIP on steam since mobile users get far more rewards per day than steam users for the same price)

beyond that I really don't think the mobile players would have much room to complain if they merely gave steam players half of what the average player gets for mobile ads.

it would still have the steam users falling behind resource wise each day to competitive mobile users and that still wouldn't cover the million plus iso that steam users are behind from no facebook connect.

they could also you know... figure out some way to let steam users migrate their account one time from steam to mobile. I mean they did in the past, and even if the saves were compatible it shouldn't be impossible for them to make a new save that has the same resources and playtime as the old save. it would just take some effort.

either way, the steam users complaining won't stop until they do something. it's really that simple. you can't build a game where players have to compete against each other, give one side a huge advantage, and expect the other side to merely get over it.

revskip

zulux21 wrote:

they could also you know... figure out some way to let steam users migrate their account one time from steam to mobile. I mean they did in the past, and even if the saves were compatible it shouldn't be impossible for them to make a new save that has the same resources and playtime as the old save. it would just take some effort.

That would be most likely the best thing that could be done. Steam will not allow Facebook integration because they don't want that and they won't allow ad pushes so that is out too. CS should just let any Steam user who wants the extra rewards migrate their account on a one time basis. If Steam users are that committed to getting the extra rewards they can go mobile, if not just continue on Steam with the understanding that since they are a minority of the app's users that they won't get all the bells and whistles that mobile users get (although they do get a much nicer UI).

Sure it would mean a bunch of tickets in the short term, but surely that is preferable to disenfranchising a portion of their users, many of whom have spent money on the game and want to continue to spend.

zulux21

revskip wrote:

zulux21 wrote:

they could also you know... figure out some way to let steam users migrate their account one time from steam to mobile. I mean they did in the past, and even if the saves were compatible it shouldn't be impossible for them to make a new save that has the same resources and playtime as the old save. it would just take some effort.

That would be most likely the best thing that could be done. Steam will not allow Facebook integration because they don't want that and they won't allow ad pushes so that is out too. CS should just let any Steam user who wants the extra rewards migrate their account on a one time basis. If Steam users are that committed to getting the extra rewards they can go mobile, if not just continue on Steam with the understanding that since they are a minority of the app's users that they won't get all the bells and whistles that mobile users get (although they do get a much nicer UI).

Sure it would mean a bunch of tickets in the short term, but surely that is preferable to disenfranchising a portion of their users, many of whom have spent money on the game and want to continue to spend.

speaking of the UI. I get that it would be extra work, but they really should bring the steam UI to a tablet only version of the game for android and ios.