Progression Rewards for the Human Torch Event are Broken

Unknown

I'll add my voice to say I thought this tourney reward system was badly broken, and hope to see some compensation from devs.

Given that those of us who played right through capped out at 55k, well short of any of the major rewards, I think something is owed the community, given this is an abhorrent lack of balancing compared to systems like the PvP, which appear to be fairly well balanced at this point (not delighted about the removal of the mid-range HP reward in PvP, but I can understand the rationale there at least).

Offering unobtainable rewards is a poor gesture to the community.

Pwuz_

This issue has existed throughout most of the game really.

Who can really reach the past *Hawkeye in the progression rewards on S.H.E.I.L.D. Training? Any PvP event, who really gets those Bag Lady covers as progression rewards either?

I agree they are a tease, but don't act like this is new. If anything it's simply making the PvE more inline with the norm across the rest of the game.

Unknown

Pwuz_ wrote:

This issue has existed throughout most of the game really.

Who can really reach the past *Hawkeye in the progression rewards on S.H.E.I.L.D. Training? Any PvP event, who really gets those Bag Lady covers as progression rewards either?

I agree they are a tease, but don't act like this is new. If anything it's simply making the PvE more inline with the norm across the rest of the game.

Although Red ISO was an extreme case because NONE of the worthwhile rewards were reachable, it's really only the past few events - Hulk round 3, Heroic Juggs, and Simulator round 2 - where a huge amount of people left nothing on the table. Before that, PvEs always had at least two or three rewards out of reach for nearly everybody, including almost all of the 1st place winners, too (at least if I recall correctly).

Spoit

gamar wrote:

Pwuz_ wrote:

This issue has existed throughout most of the game really.

Who can really reach the past *Hawkeye in the progression rewards on S.H.E.I.L.D. Training? Any PvP event, who really gets those Bag Lady covers as progression rewards either?

I agree they are a tease, but don't act like this is new. If anything it's simply making the PvE more inline with the norm across the rest of the game.

Although Red ISO was an extreme case because NONE of the worthwhile rewards were reachable, it's really only the past few events - Hulk round 3, Heroic Juggs, and Simulator round 2 - where a huge amount of people left nothing on the table. Before that, PvEs always had at least two or three rewards out of reach for nearly everybody, including almost all of the 1st place winners, too (at least if I recall correctly).

Not really? Other than these last 2 events, the only times I remember people really whining about the last progression reward(s) being unobtainable was the first run of the hulk, which was fixed for the 2nd.

Unknown

Yeah, in the early days the grinders would get all of the progression rewards and then decide how high they needed to go based on their overall performance. The trend toward putting the last progression reward (or, in this case, the last half of them) out of reach of the top scorers is new.

New and lame.

kalex716

Just like the big plushy un-obtainable stuffed animals hanging right, center, middle at the county fair.

Pwuz_

kalex716 wrote:

Just like the big plushy un-obtainable stuffed animals hanging right, center, middle at the county fair.

I obtained more than a few of those big plushy stuffed pokemon about a decade ago. They take more than one game, but are certainly obtainable.

Unknown

Spoit wrote:

Not really? Other than these last 2 events, the only times I remember people really whining about the last progression reward(s) being unobtainable was the first run of the hulk, which was fixed for the 2nd.

The first Hulk had a lot of compliants because people have no idea that there was no last sub bracket left and were about 100-300 points short of the reward. Yes the second time around they also increased the points by a lot too, but even without it, had everyone knew when the last sub bracket ended, it'd be pretty easy for people to grind out an extra 100-300 points to hit the reward.

Unknown

I sent them a ticket and got a copy and pasted reply, I wrote back saying:

"I'm not sure if you missed the point of my complaint, so I will try to make it again, I don't mind mistakes and miscalculations in events, these things happen, I am, however, frustrated by your reluctance to compensate players, who have put in time into these events, other F2P games offer premium currency and/or other compensation rewards to the players who were affected by their screw ups, even minor ones. I find your stance on the issue baffling, you seem to have no interest in creating goodwill with the player base."

Here's what they wrote back:

"Thank you for your understanding in this matter! I will forward your suggestions about a better compensation system to the appropriate department. You are not the first (and probably won't be the last) player to comment on how frustrating it can be at times.

Feedback from our customers helps us improve and we appreciate you taking the time to contact us!"

Maybe I'm missing something, but my complaint was dismissed completely, I guess they missed the point of my complaint yet again.

Nemek

illmatic wrote:

I sent them a ticket and got a copy and pasted reply, I wrote back saying:

"I'm not sure if you missed the point of my complaint, so I will try to make it again, I don't mind mistakes and miscalculations in events, these things happen, I am, however, frustrated by your reluctance to compensate players, who have put in time into these events, other F2P games offer premium currency and/or other compensation rewards to the players who were affected by their screw ups, even minor ones. I find your stance on the issue baffling, you seem to have no interest in creating goodwill with the player base."

Here's what they wrote back:

"Thank you for your understanding in this matter! I will forward your suggestions about a better compensation system to the appropriate department. You are not the first (and probably won't be the last) player to comment on how frustrating it can be at times.

Feedback from our customers helps us improve and we appreciate you taking the time to contact us!"

Maybe I'm missing something, but my complaint was dismissed completely, I guess they missed the point of my complaint yet again.

I guess I don't understand your point either. They heard your feedback, acknowledged that it can be frustrating, and thanked you for your comment. I guess it's hard to tell without your original complaint.

Unknown

illmatic wrote:

I am, however, frustrated by your reluctance to compensate players, who have put in time into these events, other F2P games offer premium currency and/or other compensation rewards to the players who were affected by their screw ups, even minor ones. I find your stance on the issue baffling, you seem to have no interest in creating goodwill with the player base."

Personally, I find your stance untenable. You were compensated for your efforts with node and placement awards. The other games have to compensate players b/c they have a much more fragile player base. So those companies have to **** themselves out to the player base to keep people around.

MPQ is put out by a much more established company and is building on 2 established franchises, Puzzle Quest and Marvel. While they do have to make sure they put out a fun game (which they are), they don't have to engender the same level of entitlement that other F2P games do. They build good will with the player base by keeping the game fun and competitive.

For me, I think I build up more negativity from the forums than from the game itself. With that in mind, I'm off to go pound some goon nodes in heroic deadly.

Unknown

Riggy wrote:

illmatic wrote:

I am, however, frustrated by your reluctance to compensate players, who have put in time into these events, other F2P games offer premium currency and/or other compensation rewards to the players who were affected by their screw ups, even minor ones. I find your stance on the issue baffling, you seem to have no interest in creating goodwill with the player base."

Personally, I find your stance untenable. You were compensated for your efforts with node and placement awards. The other games have to compensate players b/c they have a much more fragile player base. So those companies have to **** themselves out to the player base to keep people around.

MPQ is put out by a much more established company and is building on 2 established franchises, Puzzle Quest and Marvel. While they do have to make sure they put out a fun game (which they are), they don't have to engender the same level of entitlement that other F2P games do. They build good will with the player base by keeping the game fun and competitive.

For me, I think I build up more negativity from the forums than from the game itself. With that in mind, I'm off to go pound some goon nodes in heroic deadly.

The game is put out by a company with 0 experience in mobile gaming. Failed point
Sounds like you are crudely saying they get to be the stuck up rich kids cuz they got a marvel license. Failed point.

Putting perfume on **** doesn't make it anything else all u have there is a pile of ****.

Unknown

Riggy wrote:

For me, I think I build up more negativity from the forums than from the game itself. With that in mind, I'm off to go pound some goon nodes in heroic deadly.

Luckily you don't have to read the forums... ohhh nevermind.

Unknown

Psykopathic wrote:

The game is put out by a company with 0 experience in mobile gaming. Failed point

0 mobile experience, yet isn't there another thread about their road to the fabled $1 ARPDAU? The facts support my position more than yours.

Psykopathic wrote:

Sounds like you are crudely saying they get to be the stuck up rich kids cuz they got a marvel license. Failed point.

My point is that their user base is more dedicated than the typical mobile user base. People were compensated for their time in the most recent event. Sure, the progression rewards were unattainable due to other reasons, but that also means people didn't put as much effort in this time around. No effort = no progression rewards. System worked. A sense of entitlement doesn't mean you are entitled.

Psykopathic wrote:

Putting perfume on **** doesn't make it anything else all u have there is a pile of ****.

My point still stands. Mobile games target a very ephemeral demographic. There is zero long term commitment. Any screw up by most mobile companies will put them out of business very quickly. Hence, when they screw up, they bend over backwards to try and keep the users. By building on established IPs, D3 has more leeway. Look how much abuse we've put up with for some of their mistakes, and yet we're both still here, arguing about why we aren't being compensated for one bad set of progression rewards.

Free market economics at its best. You may hate it, you may not agree with it, but the fact remains that despite the issues, MPQ is very profitable and the trends are positive. D3 isn't handing out cake for free b/c they have a business model that works. Shelve your sense of entitlement and drive the market with your wallet.

Unknown

Riggy wrote:

illmatic wrote:

I am, however, frustrated by your reluctance to compensate players, who have put in time into these events, other F2P games offer premium currency and/or other compensation rewards to the players who were affected by their screw ups, even minor ones. I find your stance on the issue baffling, you seem to have no interest in creating goodwill with the player base."

Personally, I find your stance untenable. You were compensated for your efforts with node and placement awards. The other games have to compensate players b/c they have a much more fragile player base. So those companies have to **** themselves out to the player base to keep people around.

MPQ is put out by a much more established company and is building on 2 established franchises, Puzzle Quest and Marvel. While they do have to make sure they put out a fun game (which they are), they don't have to engender the same level of entitlement that other F2P games do. They build good will with the player base by keeping the game fun and competitive.

For me, I think I build up more negativity from the forums than from the game itself. With that in mind, I'm off to go pound some goon nodes in heroic deadly.

You also build good will by providing a real response to a customer instead of throwing back a cookie-cutter reply and not even apoligizing for something that was obviously screwed up.

I have found that contacting customer support via tickets is usually a pointless endeavor. It usually takes 3-4 weeks and several follow ups to get attention to whatever issue you are contacting them about.

Unknown

Spoit wrote:

gamar wrote:

Pwuz_ wrote:

This issue has existed throughout most of the game really.

Who can really reach the past *Hawkeye in the progression rewards on S.H.E.I.L.D. Training? Any PvP event, who really gets those Bag Lady covers as progression rewards either?

I agree they are a tease, but don't act like this is new. If anything it's simply making the PvE more inline with the norm across the rest of the game.

Although Red ISO was an extreme case because NONE of the worthwhile rewards were reachable, it's really only the past few events - Hulk round 3, Heroic Juggs, and Simulator round 2 - where a huge amount of people left nothing on the table. Before that, PvEs always had at least two or three rewards out of reach for nearly everybody, including almost all of the 1st place winners, too (at least if I recall correctly).

Not really? Other than these last 2 events, the only times I remember people really whining about the last progression reward(s) being unobtainable was the first run of the hulk, which was fixed for the 2nd.

Progression awards were absurdly unreachable before they introduced shields. Forgot people whining; for the 4-5 months I've played, it seemed like progression awards have been unreachable about 75% of the time.

Unknown

MikeHock wrote:

You also build good will by providing a real response to a customer instead of throwing back cookie-cutter reply and not even apoligizing for something that was obviously screwed up.

I have found that contacting customer support via tickets is usually a pointless endeavor. It usually takes 3-4 weeks and several follow ups to get attention to whatever issue you are contacting them about.

Their customer support does seem to be very hit and miss. Some people on the forums swear by it, some swear at it. My own experiences with them have been limited but handled well enough (certainly not cookie cutter or weeks of waiting for a response).

But, I also seem to be in the minority in saying that the progression rewards weren't the issue in this event, it was the rubberbanding. We the players realized that rubberbanding would prevent us from getting a good lead, so we didn't put in the effort. I placed around 13th with some reasonable fraction of my normal effort (arbitrarily, I'll say 62% of the effort). If enough people had been willing to put in their normal effort to leapfrog the leaders, we could have reached the high end progression rewards. So I still maintain that the error was in rubberbanding and not incentivizing the grinders enough to try and maintain their lead, and not the progression rewards.

That may be splitting hairs, but it's important to at least understand what we are complaining about.

Edit so as not to doublepost:

MikeHock wrote:

Progression awards were absurdly unreachable before they introduced shields. Forgot people whining; for the 4-5 months I've played, it seemed like progression awards have been unreachable about 75% of the time.

The quoted list you're answering goes back and forth between PVP and PVE. For PVP, it certainly does take dedicated use of shields to get the high end, plus a little luck in retals. For PVE, I would put your number of unreachable progression rewards far lower. I can only think of a handful of events where the high end wasn't reachable. The DD covers and the X-Force covers (though others did get those, confirmed by IceIX), and obviously the Steves in the most recent event. Typically though, they are attainable.

Unknown

Two different issues, though. PvP progression rewards are basically jacked up. They've virtually never been attainable.

PvE progression rewards, however, have usually been within reach. You might not always make that last bonus (or any of them, if it's Heroic Oscorp), but you can usually get most of them. That's why this ISO-8 stung so much; we had a reasonable expectation of being able to get at least half of the rewards, but that didn't happen.

That doesn't mean the company owes us anything, though. We didn't pay to get into the event, and the playerbase missed out as a whole (it's not like a few people benefitted from some little-known exploit and reaped all the progression rewards). I'm confident that they're very aware of how frustrating this was, and I can't imagine that we'll see another event with progression rewards this bad.

Unknown

Riggy wrote:

MikeHock wrote:

You also build good will by providing a real response to a customer instead of throwing back cookie-cutter reply and not even apoligizing for something that was obviously screwed up.

I have found that contacting customer support via tickets is usually a pointless endeavor. It usually takes 3-4 weeks and several follow ups to get attention to whatever issue you are contacting them about.

Their customer support does seem to be very hit and miss. Some people on the forums swear by it, some swear at it. My own experiences with them have been limited but handled well enough (certainly not cookie cutter or weeks of waiting for a response).

But, I also seem to be in the minority in saying that the progression rewards weren't the issue in this event, it was the rubberbanding. We the players realized that rubberbanding would prevent us from getting a good lead, so we didn't put in the effort. I placed around 13th with some reasonable fraction of my normal effort (arbitrarily, I'll say 62% of the effort). If enough people had been willing to put in their normal effort to leapfrog the leaders, we could have reached the high end progression rewards. So I still maintain that the error was in rubberbanding and not incentivizing the grinders enough to try and maintain their lead, and not the progression rewards.

That may be splitting hairs, but it's important to at least understand what we are complaining about.

Edit so as not to doublepost:

MikeHock wrote:

Progression awards were absurdly unreachable before they introduced shields. Forgot people whining; for the 4-5 months I've played, it seemed like progression awards have been unreachable about 75% of the time.

The quoted list you're answering goes back and forth between PVP and PVE. For PVP, it certainly does take dedicated use of shields to get the high end, plus a little luck in retals. For PVE, I would put your number of unreachable progression rewards far lower. I can only think of a handful of events where the high end wasn't reachable. The DD covers and the X-Force covers (though others did get those, confirmed by IceIX), and obviously the Steves in the most recent event. Typically though, they are attainable.

However the problem occured... who cares; thats up to D3 to deal with, not us.

End result progression awards were not reachable.

Unknown

MikeHock wrote:

However the problem occured... who cares; thats up to D3 to deal with, not us.

End result progression awards were not reachable.

Which they're always working on. I don't believe anyone disagrees with that. I was simply putting your number in perspective.

The discussion in the most recent part of the thread is whether people should receive compensation for it, which I don't agree with. They put out progression rewards, there was a path to those progression rewards, and due to other reasons people chose not to pursue that path. After balancing reward vs. effort, the grinders prioritized placement rewards over progression rewards, which meant no one got them. Simple as that.

It might make more sense to complain that the minority (leading grinders) determining the majority's ability to obtain placement rewards.