Vintage Heroic Packs (3/30/17)

Options
13468911

Comments

  • Ayasugi-san
    Ayasugi-san Posts: 116 Tile Toppler
    Options
    You correctly state that the devs are trying to balance what the forum wants (a metric that they know) with what the rest of the playerbase wants (which at best is an educated guess). Given those two sets of information I would be far more inclined to go with the metric that we know for sure (what the forum suggests) as you can reliably predict the outcome of that change as you are starting with definite information.

    You're forgetting a group: the megawhales that have a direct line to the devs. They know that one for sure, and it's probably far less diverse and debated than the myriad suggestions the forums come up with. And the megawhales probably didn't see anything wrong with the store, because how they play is very different from how everyone else plays. So the devs come up with a solution that they think will placate the masses while generating max profits, the megawhales take a look and nod and say they'd use it, and the devs think that means the problem is solved.

    Of course, they do give lip service to taking our opinions into account. They give the forum liaison a little information about what they're planning, and because we're desperate for any sign that they're listening, we respond with mostly approval. But either by oversight or intention, they don't tell Brigby key pieces of information (that the new store is only once a month with very limited chances to earn tokens, and that it also contains more 2 star.png s than vaulted characters), so we don't know what we're implicitly approving of.
  • Mr_Aziz
    Mr_Aziz Posts: 39 Just Dropped In
    Options
    hahahahhahhhahahah
    you people really **** up your business model. no no no this isn't how you do it, what genius thought up THIS ****? y'all need to fire that person
  • Magic
    Magic Posts: 1,199 Chairperson of the Boards
    Options
    Dear Developers,

    Occam's razor (or Ockham's razor): suppose there exist two explanations for an occurrence. In this case, the simpler one is usually better.

    Read this carefully and please apply this principle.


    You want to hide the vaulted heroes behind the RNG (and in your case pay wall as well). Fine. Out of two existing solutions which one is simpler?
    1. Your option - new heroic token with 7% odds of pulling a 4*, and only obtainable during two events once a month while replacing another heroic token with 7% odds on the latest 4*.
    2. Token with all (and only) 3 and 4* in the game. Only available through game play (but not at 1200 in PvP - available is the key word).


    Again. Which one is simpler? Simpler to track, simpler to code, simpler to digest? God forbid which was is being asked for by the player base? You choose. Use the ockham's razor and choose. If you honestly believe that option 1 is simpler (thus better) - stick to it. And the players will make their choice. So far I have made mine - I will not waste my HP on this new store (as I don't waste it on regular heroic store, even the daily deal).
  • Knaaks
    Knaaks Posts: 40 Just Dropped In
    Options
    I do not understand this at all. So, their solution is, once a month, you have chance to earn a few tokens that will almost always give you a 2 star hero? Like, really? Am I missing something here? I feel like I have to be missing something because this solution just seems too stupid to have even been considered, let alone implemented.

    What drives me insane is this is the easiest thing in the world to fix, just put the old heroes in the classic legendary tokens, and give players a choice. New players could choose if they want to focus on a select few heroes (Latest legendary) and cover them quickly, or a bigger variety, but know it will take longer to get a hero max covered (Classic legendary). When I started playing almost 3 years ago, we didn't even have that choice, and I would have loved it if I did. Choice is good. It gives the illusion that the devs care about you. If I was new, I would personally stick to latest legends, in order to get 4's up to a usable level, then once I did and was able to place high in PVE and PVP switch over to classics to round out the ol' roster.

    I assume most people where I am at (Comfortably in the 4 star transition) would swap back and forth between classics and latest. Right now, with Riri, Gwenpool, Agent Venom, and Dr. Mordo in the pool who I have no interest in, I would focus on classic legends. Once they get swapped out and hopefully replaced with more appealing covers, I would swap over and start spending my tokens on latest instead of classic. Instead, right now, I am just not opening tokens or spending CP. Sucks a lot of the fun out of the game for me, it is much more satisfying and motivating knowing I am going to get enough CP for a pull and know I am actually going to USE it, instead of sit on it for another couple months.

    What makes no sense to me is the devs seem to really want you to have all the characters (Behemoth Burrito, Crash of the Titans, required characters for PVE) but they don't want you to get them.
  • j0nats
    j0nats Posts: 149 Tile Toppler
    Options
    I dont think this change affects whales/frequent spenders at all... because at this point they are most probably at the 5* star realm already.. or have champed the top tier 4*classics.

    This is a targeted campaign to get the 3* transitioners (who need strong 4*s classics to compete) to pay, and slow 4* transitioners (who need the classics to keep the cp , lt and iso flow to keep coming in order to make the necessary pulls to get the 5* covers they need).

    Right now i think we(im stuck in 4*land myself) just gotta bite the bullet and proceed champ the vaulted 12, and take the classic 4* covers from the 900 prog (or shield hop to top 5 pvp somehow), or pve prog which is almost a gimme given how easy to hit the 4*prog is.
  • Polares
    Polares Posts: 2,643 Chairperson of the Boards
    Options
    Brigby wrote:
    Hi Everyone. I want to inform you all that this is not necessarily the final iteration nor is it necessarily the only solution that will be presented.

    Data evaluation is needed in order to determine how the store affects the entirety of the game and its players before being able to make adjustments, or even presenting an entirely new idea. We know it's not something that can be immediately ascertained, and I apologize for the delay, but it really is something that the developers will monitor and factor into whatever the eventual permanent solution may be.

    The repercussions from Vaulting were crystal clear, any player in this game could tell you that this was a really BAD action for a lot of players. Adding just this store to fix this mess it is almost like not doing anything at all, no, it is worse, because it looks like a money grab AGAIN. And we don't need to wait to get any data to know that, it is quite obvious.

    This action just bring morale for a lot of players even further down. Instead of trying to fix the past mistake it just looks like another way of trying to get more money from us.
  • Noobulator
    Noobulator Posts: 176 Tile Toppler
    Options
    Devs are so out of touch.
  • NewMcG
    NewMcG Posts: 368 Mover and Shaker
    Options
    You correctly state that the devs are trying to balance what the forum wants (a metric that they know) with what the rest of the playerbase wants (which at best is an educated guess).
    That's only an educated guess for people on the outside. They have the same data regarding purchases, playtime, engagement, etc for the people who have no idea there's even a forum for the game, as they do for every person with 1,000 posts on here.
  • jordanix
    jordanix Posts: 138 Tile Toppler
    Options
    giphy.gif
  • broll
    broll Posts: 4,732 Chairperson of the Boards
    Options
    labeuf-slow-clap.gif
    Brigby wrote:
    Data evaluation is needed in order to determine how the store affects the entirety

    Pardon my French but bull ****. This is you guys trying to find out how you can best monetize something that you took away instead of just reversing your policy of taking it away.

    IF you really needed data evaluation you would have done that before you vaulted in the first place! I'm constantly impressed how you guys can continue to up the ante on your greed and/or stupidity. Fool me twice I guess...

    Looks like we're gonna have another 50 page thread...
  • Magic
    Magic Posts: 1,199 Chairperson of the Boards
    Options
    4 to 6 tokens in an offseason. On average 1 in 14 (according the the information in the app currently) will net you a 4* cover. That means that you need to play for only 3-4 months to get one 4* cover among the vaulted heros. It gets better - you are almost guaranteed a bonus hero of your choice (old or new) every 60 to 80 months (let that sink in - 5 to almost 7 YEARS).

    Well - you can always splash money and grab a 40 pack that will come with 2-3 of them (and only 8 40-packs to get the bonus here). For heroics one costs 11200 hero points on a daily deal - equivalent of about 55-60$.

    Yep. Sounds about right.
  • deadtaco
    deadtaco Posts: 409 Mover and Shaker
    Options
    Brigby wrote:
    Data evaluation is needed in order to determine how the store affects the entirety of the game and its players before being able to make adjustments, or even presenting an entirely new idea.

    Basic comprehension is needed. This is making a cash grab out of a poor decision. "Data evaluation" is just seeing how many people bought it.
    Brigby wrote:
    We know it's not something that can be immediately ascertained, and I apologize for the delay, but it really is something that the developers will monitor and factor into whatever the eventual permanent solution may be.

    Again, they will wait and see if players just buy into what they are throwing out and/or if the players will just shut up already.

    Mass Effect has eaten all my otherwise at home MPQ time lately, this behavior is not making me want to rush back.
  • GurlBYE
    GurlBYE Posts: 1,218 Chairperson of the Boards
    edited March 2017
    Options
    Don't forget to add an ingame survey once this is done.

    I don't just want the devs to look at spending but at what people have to say, since typing long posts here are useless, maybe those will be read.

    I dont care so much that it's a limited token that you can spend for, that was a no brainer, I'm more heavily bothered by the inclusion of 2 stars.
  • firethorne
    firethorne Posts: 1,505 Chairperson of the Boards
    Options
    The thing that really grinds my gears, Brigby, is that we told you this all before. The disregard for player satisfaction has become so predictable, we saw it a mile away. We knew you were going to try to gouge us. We asked for you to have a bit more respect for your players, and that if you didn't do something that was unequivocally better, it would elicit the exact response that you see here today. I know I said that, and I was far from the only one. You had fifty pages worth of people saying this on the original bonus hero thread and probably fifty more in various others that popped up.

    Now, I hate to sound like one of those boring corporate motivational slide shows saying "Do the right thing" and "Earn customer trust and the rest will follow." But, at most successful companies, these are boring because it is such common sense that it simply the assumed status quo. I don't assume this is the case with D3/Demi anymore. There seems to be something severely broken with your corporate culture. I question if you will do the right thing. I don't trust you anymore.
  • Arphaxad
    Arphaxad Posts: 278 Mover and Shaker
    Options
    I will not spend one hero point on buying these packs. The only thing D3 seems to listen to is sales. If we want a change we need to stop giving them our money. I encourage everyone to ignore the vintage heroic packs, open only the ones you earn through play, and do not buy any packs.
  • 8punch
    8punch Posts: 97 Match Maker
    Options
    someone should forward the last few months to some famous game bloggers like jim sterling and make a youtube video of it.

    also how can marvel be okey with this, because their brand name is suffering on this part too. i understand they licence their game out, but the game is full of broken mechanics.

    i wonder if marvel actually knows or cares, how their brandname is going to dirt because of these practises.

    i would email or contact marvel itself but my english is to poor for it. but be smart, unite and start sending mails to marvel. once marvel finds out many people complaining, for sure something will change, or not. but then at least you know marvel cares about their fans....or not.

    it is already proven, that just feedback on this forum means nothing. so why wait again?
  • OneLastGambit
    OneLastGambit Posts: 1,963 Chairperson of the Boards
    Options
    New McG wrote:
    You correctly state that the devs are trying to balance what the forum wants (a metric that they know) with what the rest of the playerbase wants (which at best is an educated guess).
    That's only an educated guess for people on the outside. They have the same data regarding purchases, playtime, engagement, etc for the people who have no idea there's even a forum for the game, as they do for every person with 1,000 posts on here.


    They have data for how often people play and how much they spend and on what. The statement brigby gave was that they were implementing the store as a test to see how popular and used it would be. There is no way to find out what the players would like in future without asking them. Implementing a cash grab store under the somewhat misleading premise that it's a "test" to try and resolve the issue of vaulting is disingenuous to many people playing (especially on this forum). If they really wanted to know what their 'wider' player base wants if they would be amenable to this new store then surely the best way is to ask people in game?

    The fact the didn't do this (they poll us about new characters and whether or not we like the game so they do actually consider feedback) makes me think that perhaps they didn't care about what the players thought about this decision and implemented anyway because they know they will grab some quick cash by doing so and then retracting it later saying 'hey thanks for testing the new store, we'll try something else.'

    I'm actually not one of those people who is overly critical of the devs but I think this move doesn't answer the problem at hand and simply creates more problems.
  • Jarvind
    Jarvind Posts: 1,684 Chairperson of the Boards
    Options
    I mean, everything that can be said about this pretty much has been already but I'll chime in anyway:

    This is a monumentally stupid fix to a problem that didn't need to exist in the first place.
  • smkspy
    smkspy Posts: 2,024 Chairperson of the Boards
    edited March 2017
    Options
    You correctly state that the devs are trying to balance what the forum wants (a metric that they know) with what the rest of the playerbase wants (which at best is an educated guess). Given those two sets of information I would be far more inclined to go with the metric that we know for sure (what the forum suggests) as you can reliably predict the outcome of that change as you are starting with definite information.

    You're forgetting a group: the megawhales that have a direct line to the devs. They know that one for sure, and it's probably far less diverse and debated than the myriad suggestions the forums come up with. And the megawhales probably didn't see anything wrong with the store, because how they play is very different from how everyone else plays. So the devs come up with a solution that they think will placate the masses while generating max profits, the megawhales take a look and nod and say they'd use it, and the devs think that means the problem is solved.

    Of course, they do give lip service to taking our opinions into account. They give the forum liaison a little information about what they're planning, and because we're desperate for any sign that they're listening, we respond with mostly approval. But either by oversight or intention, they don't tell Brigby key pieces of information (that the new store is only once a month with very limited chances to earn tokens, and that it also contains more 2 star.png s than vaulted characters), so we don't know what we're implicitly approving of.

    You megawhale conspiracy guys have to make up your minds. Either they (the whales) are reason for vaulting because they no longer needed the vaulted characters or they are the cash cow behind trying to sell vaulted characters back in this new token.

    If this idea was targeted towards whales I would understand it more, but it's not. It's targeted entirely if the average customer that is desperate to make some progress on the vaulted 4s. It's the very definition of predatory microgaming.
  • Vhailorx
    Vhailorx Posts: 6,085 Chairperson of the Boards
    edited March 2017
    Options
    Brigby wrote:
    Hi Everyone,

    This off-season we will be running a new Cover store that will give players an opportunity to collect older 3-Stars and 4-Stars. Here is some information on this pack:

    Vintage Heroic Cover Store
      • Runs from Sunday, April 2, 8am EDT to Saturday, April 8, 3am EDT • Pulls cost the same as the Heroic Cover store • The 40x pack also gives a new Classic Legendary token, which you can use in the Classic Legends store. • Contains all 2-Stars, and all 3-Stars and 4-Stars that are not currently in packs
      o Does not contain Limited characters such as Spider-Man (Bag-Man), Howard the Duck (Howard, A Duck), etc
    • Bonus Heroes are enabled with this store.
    • Rewards in Off-Season Versus Tournaments
      o Heroic tokens in progression rewards (350, 650, and 850) are replaced with Vintage Heroic Tokens o Heroic tokens in placement rewards are replaced with Vintage Heroic tokens.

    Respectfully, brigby, this is not at all a solution to the problems created by vaulting. This is just a way for demi/d3 to turn those problems into a new revenue stream.

    Vaulting took something like 75% of current 4*s out of the most common path that players used to cover their 4* roster: legendary tokens. This new store just offers players a way to spend additional resources making up the difference. It's fairly insulting to my intelligence as a consumer and is pretty disappointing. Demi/d3 can do better.