The odd priorities of d3

OneLastGambit

I'd geneuinely be very interested to see how the dev team determine priorities for the game.

Here's as couple of examples of why their changes are a tad confusing....

The change to many characters regarding team up tiles (in not arguing their merits here there's a thread for that) which I have never seen or heard anyone complain about ever (this forum sure would have complained if it was an issue) has been prioritised above....

The shield delay issue - been complained about by many many people ever since I started playing well over a year ago.

The game crashing issue - which for me is intermittent but for many is a regular occurance.

The crippling way that having 1 champed 5* renders your entire 4* and below roster unusable and your scaling becomes something nightmarish.

The RNG nature of 5* cover aquisition which makes the 5* transition wholly unenjoyable and very very slow.

The very long delay for releasing cl9 and 10.

*****

Now I will say that I do think the dev team do a reasonably good job on many things and more importantly for the past 6 months have been getting better.

But I think you should stop making minor changes to things that nobody is complaining about and start looking at some of these issues which either are a problem for everyone right now or will be when they reach the requisite level of play.

DFiPL

OneLastGambit wrote:

The change to many characters regarding team up tiles (in not arguing their merits here there's a thread for that) which I have never seen or heard anyone complain about ever (this forum sure would have complained if it was an issue) has been prioritised above....

Only thing I can think here is perhaps it was an attempt to address the complaints about why SW's passive is so much more effective for the AI than for the human. Otherwise? I got nothin'.

The game crashing issue - which for me is intermittent but for many is a regular occurance.

I seem to recall in more than one patch notes reference to this being addressed, so it seems like they're at least trying to squash it, but it's proving stubbornly persistent. They've already reduced the health penalty in a nod to that (and I don't recall that having been subsequently increased).

The crippling way that having 1 champed 5* renders your entire 4* and below roster unusable and your scaling becomes something nightmarish.

I mean, I think that one falls under "foreseeable yet unforeseen consequences of the tier in the first place." When you build a tier with an eye towards "even having one cover should be a Big Deal," you break the synergy between that tier and everything else if the player puts any ISO at all into it. Especially given what was previously understood about scaling (based on average level of top few characters on the roster). Seems to have blindsided them even though it shouldn't have and I'm just not sure how you fix that, long-term, short of the 'allow us to 'bench' characters' plea some have issued.

The RNG nature of 5* cover aquisition which makes the 5* transition wholly unenjoyable and very very slow.

This doesn't actually bother me, for a couple of reasons. The way they revealed the tier, that's exactly how the 5* transition was described in the first place. Now, yes, they kind of biffed that when they went from 'you won't be able to spend money to whale these guys' to 'oh hey buy clubs never mind go nuts,' but that's another issue. Other reason is, if the 5* game breaks the synergy with the lower tiers, the transition to 5* play being slow seems like it'd be a reason to keep dudes unleveled and enjoy 4* play until the 5* tier is more expansive. But that's another can of worms because of odds dilution and all of that, I know.

TL;DR: the vision behind the 5* transition was always proffered with "slow" as the default setting. That those with more money than God have been able to subvert that is no doubt of concern to the folks who DON'T have more money than God, but I think this one is bound up in the "I don't know how you fix that" Gordian knot. Which is to say, given the other issues involved with the 5* tier, reducing reliance on RNGesus' fickle nature seems like it would exacerbate all of those OTHER issues. If 5* characters render everybody else useless, accelerating the acquisition rate of 5* covers gets you to that state of irrelevance faster. If leveling 5* characters wrecks your scaling and MMR, accelerating cover acquisition rate gets you to that (un)happy state of affairs that much faster.

And so on.

Seems like addressing the RNG issues belongs at the *bottom* of the "list of 5* stuff to fix," because if you fix that before you fix the other underlying issues, the other underlying issues become that much more painful.

The very long delay for releasing cl9 and 10.

That's a player base issue more than anything else. If you don't have the depth at the top, unlocking higher Clearance Ranks just further splinters the pool up there. I mean, it seems like it's been an eternity, and I don't think the reward structure at SCL8 helped with that. The similarity just made people focus all that much harder on "what comes next?" If SCL8's rewards had been a decent boost from SCL7, maybe there wouldn't be quite the same clamor.

OneLastGambit

Interesting points there. I can agree with some.

I think the issue regarding 5* is that we are encouraged to go bananas trying to acquire all the cp to get those characters and then...ah actually. You're playing for nothing really. You're playing for hope. Hope that luck might smile upon you and Grant you the exact 13 covers you need. Should that transition be slow ? That's debatable. As a 4* player with little to no interest in jumping to 5 yet I'm happy with it being slow but I'm (hopefully) speaking for those who covered Oml and Phoenix back when they were the only two and are now stuck using them in every fight in every game mode because they're unable to cover anyone else.

The game will get stale for them...fast. I don't think having one 5* cover up for grabs per week is gonna break the game in anyway. What makes it worse for them is knowing that your skill level does not determine your progress it's all down to luck.

As for 5* making 4* irrelevant there is a way to fix that which is the way they should have been designed in the first place...

Keep 5* power levels as they are (inc match damage) but give them health like riri and xfw. Then they are still holy tinykitty powerful but they are not unbeatable to a 4* and thus both tiers are relevant and concurrently useful.

The scaling issue is a much bigger one and I feel the only way to resolve this would be to completely scrap the scaling equation and create a new one considering new factors. Some have suggested tying scaling to cl level but that will just end up with players gaming the cl system....

Hmmm actually....2 birds one stone here. Make a 5* cover the prog prize for cl10 and placement for cl9 and those high end players will not WANT to game the cl system and will also have targeted and somewhat player controlled progress.

Pope Belligerent

I think it comes down to this: the team-up tile change was likely a fairly simple bit of code, easy to develop and implement. All of the changes you list, while generally longed-for and promising a great leap forward in QOL, are large-scale changes that affect the entire game and would require significant recoding and QA testing. I honestly think it's as simple as that.

Crnch73

Pope Belligerent wrote:

I think it comes down to this: the team-up tile change was likely a fairly simple bit of code, easy to develop and implement. All of the changes you list, while generally longed-for and promising a great leap forward in QOL, are large-scale changes that affect the entire game and would require significant recoding and QA testing. I honestly think it's as simple as that.

I agree with this idea. But that is a shame. Take the easy way out that offers no positive change (or maybe even a negative change), rather than try to work harder and get bigger results... 'Murica

grunth13

OneLastGambit wrote:

Hmmm actually....2 birds one stone here. Make a 5* cover the prog prize for cl10 and placement for cl9 and those high end players will not WANT to game the cl system and will also have targeted and somewhat player controlled progress.

I thought about this for a bit and I think that is the wrong way to do it. The reason for this is, if you make it placement based, you will splinter alliances fighting for the placement. As of now, there are many top level alliances that are working together and trying to branch out over many slices and many brackets to maximize placement, but if you don't get the 4 star cover, its not the end of the world. Now if you put a 5star cover in its place, people will be fighting tooth and nail for that cover and they won't care about if their alliance mate needs it more than them. Just my 2 cents.

Pope Belligerent

Crnch73 wrote:

Pope Belligerent wrote:

I think it comes down to this: the team-up tile change was likely a fairly simple bit of code, easy to develop and implement. All of the changes you list, while generally longed-for and promising a great leap forward in QOL, are large-scale changes that affect the entire game and would require significant recoding and QA testing. I honestly think it's as simple as that.

I agree with this idea. But that is a shame. Take the easy way out that offers no positive change (or maybe even a negative change), rather than try to work harder and get bigger results... 'Murica

Oh, absolutely. I didn't mean my post as an excuse, just an explanation of what is most likely going on.

Punisher5784

OneLastGambit wrote:

But I think you should stop making minor changes to things that nobody is complaining.

Or make minor changes that players will complain about

smkspy

We are quickly reaching a point where the number of 5 stars doesnt vibe with their rarity. What happens when we reach 20 5 stars and the only way to get them is still through rng? Some method of aquiring needs to set up that allows a reasonable method of building these characters yet also doesn't break gameplay when it comes to other tiers. Offering one 5 star month through gameplay would not break the system imo.

revskip

Punisher5784 wrote:

OneLastGambit wrote:

But I think you should stop making minor changes to things that nobody is complaining.

Or make minor changes that players will complain about

Honestly people will complain no matter what. Take the free stuff they gave on for Valentine's Day for the twitter promo. Saw plenty of complaints that the top rewards were unrealistically tiered so no one could hit them. People literally complained about getting free stuff but not enough of it.

Then they gave out an extra cover in that promo and I saw a smattering of complaints that it was the wrong color 4Cyke for their individual roster. Again, complaining about a completely free thing.

There are definitely some valid criticisms about the game, but when the user base complains about everything it makes it much harder to figure out which complaints are valid and which are just the usual grumbling of the forever unpleased.

Omega Red

Here's the thing, we all have different agendas and thus different priorities. The guys who want to get rid of the randomness in acquiring five star characters have an obvious interest in pushing that agenda because they're in that stage of the game where such a change would benefit them the most.

Me on the other hand, I see I'm being benefited by the RNG in five stars. Since it slows down the progression of the top players, it allows me to catch up with them a little faster. Thus, changing the RNG nature of five stars is at the very bottom of my list. Changing the artwork of Invisible woman or four star Cage is actually higher in my list, they just look terrible.

The devs have their own agenda, and most of the times it's not the same as the players'.

ZootSax

I gave up trying to understand their priorities when they pulled Yelena from standard tokens. While I didn't particularly care that they removed her from tokens, it was a really odd change which didn't seem to have any meaningful purpose, even to 1* & 2* players.

smkspy

Omega Red wrote:

Here's the thing, we all have different agendas and thus different priorities. The guys who want to get rid of the randomness in acquiring five star characters have an obvious interest in pushing that agenda because they're in that stage of the game where such a change would benefit them the most.

Me on the other hand, I see I'm being benefited by the RNG in five stars. Since it slows down the progression of the top players, it allows me to catch up with them a little faster. Thus, changing the RNG nature of five stars is at the very bottom of my list. Changing the artwork of Invisible woman or four star Cage is actually higher in my list, they just look terrible.

The devs have their own agenda, and most of the times it's not the same as the players'.

Not 100% true,

I have zero desire to move up into 5 star territory, yet cannot deny that my progression into it is entirely blocked by artificial checks. I look to bssm as an example, as it was nearly a year between him being added to classics and me receiving my first cover for him. Nearly a year of pulling countless classics and actually pulling a cover for him is ridiculous.

pheregas

ZootSax wrote:

I gave up trying to understand their priorities when they pulled Yelena from standard tokens. While I didn't particularly care that they removed her from tokens, it was a really odd change which didn't seem to have any meaningful purpose, even to 1* & 2* players.

I wonder if it was something as mundane as having too many characters in the standard token. You have X percent of getting a 1*, but when you hit that percentage, in game, there's some internal rounding and the presence of Yelena causes the number to round down instead of up, which then brings the percentage of pulling a specific 1* down to zero percent, which would probably make everyone grumpy when they, more often than not, pulled nothing from a token at all because of it.

Just a theory. Would be great if a dev commented on it... But... Not holding my breath on that...

OneLastGambit

grunth13 wrote:

OneLastGambit wrote:

Hmmm actually....2 birds one stone here. Make a 5* cover the prog prize for cl10 and placement for cl9 and those high end players will not WANT to game the cl system and will also have targeted and somewhat player controlled progress.

I thought about this for a bit and I think that is the wrong way to do it. The reason for this is, if you make it placement based, you will splinter alliances fighting for the placement. As of now, there are many top level alliances that are working together and trying to branch out over many slices and many brackets to maximize placement, but if you don't get the 4 star cover, its not the end of the world. Now if you put a 5star cover in its place, people will be fighting tooth and nail for that cover and they won't care about if their alliance mate needs it more than them. Just my 2 cents.

Why would people actually competing against each other be a bad thing? There is a ranking board for a reason.

I see where you're coming from but I think the benefit would outweigh the cost. This is already what happens on new releases anyway (the silly competition I mean) and the rest of the player base copes just fine.

OneLastGambit

revskip wrote:

Punisher5784 wrote:

OneLastGambit wrote:

But I think you should stop making minor changes to things that nobody is complaining.

Or make minor changes that players will complain about

Honestly people will complain no matter what. Take the free stuff they gave on for Valentine's Day for the twitter promo. Saw plenty of complaints that the top rewards were unrealistically tiered so no one could hit them. People literally complained about getting free stuff but not enough of it.

Then they gave out an extra cover in that promo and I saw a smattering of complaints that it was the wrong color 4Cyke for their individual roster. Again, complaining about a completely free thing.

There are definitely some valid criticisms about the game, but when the user base complains about everything it makes it much harder to figure out which complaints are valid and which are just the usual grumbling of the forever unpleased.

Not entirely true as you have just demonstrated its actually very easy to determine which complaints are valid and which ones are unreasonable. I'm sure the devs can do the same. I bet even the people that complained about those things knew their complaints were unreasonable they just complained anyway because some people are perennial complainers

TimGunn

as some other people have posted, this topic ignores the cost/ability to fix some of the problems. Like i think the shield lag issue would require structural changes to the game, and is probably never going to be worth fixing. Got to look at things from the COST and the benefit analysis

veny

Strange, i mostly dont care about things you named but i miss one thing there:

Why are they adding more and more covers and completely ignore the fact that you can barely use all of them.
Sure, without new characters people will be pilling up ISO, HP, and covers they already have, but still...

Straycat

I don't think its fair to say they are picking random issues to address while ignoring the stuff people complain about. If I were to guess, I think this must have been an issue or something with the Mr F change and with the upcoming character, since they target basic tiles. I remember Starlord's change also had an issue when he no longer made purple countdown tiles and I made a team up countdown tile. Doesn't really affect the game, but I get if they want to be consistent. If we give them the benefit of the doubt, this change will improve the game somehow.

I also don't think its fair to tell them they can't make changes that nobody is asking for.

Crnch73

Straycat wrote:

I also don't think its fair to tell them they can't make changes that nobody is asking for.

I agree that, at the end of the day... it's their game, they can do whatever they want with it. We are merely users to them, not customers. But that is probably where the issue comes from.

It doesn't take an MBA to know that angering customers is not good for business. It is, indeed, a very delicate balancing act between making people happy and not giving away the farm. Obviously, they need to make money and keep us interested. But let's just imagine we have 10 good ideas that we want changed or implemented. Not ideas that may "break" the game, such as colorless covers. But genuinely good ideas that wouldn't hurt their bottom line... if none of them get implemented, but instead random changes that no one ever wanted... it has an air about it that says "we will tell you what you want, we will tell you what is best".

Again, this is their right. But as a customer, it does not feel good. Sometimes in video games, listening to the customers and users can be the biggest benefit to games, whether it be beta testing or new features. I am sure many people on this forum would be more than willing to help

firethorne

Straycat wrote:

If we give them the benefit of the doubt, this change will improve the game somehow.

Sorry, but I think the players deserve a better explanation than "somehow." If it isn't readily apparent what this is fixing, they need to really outline what it was they're trying to fix.

I also don't think its fair to tell them they can't make changes that nobody is asking for.

Changes that no one asked for is one thing, changes that have clear detrimental effects is another level. And it is absolutely fair for a customer to offer their opinion on a product to a company. In fact, most companies value the feedback of customers.