Update to Heroes for Hire (6/23/17) *Updated (6/26/17)

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Comments

  • broll
    broll Posts: 4,732 Chairperson of the Boards
    I wonder if they decided to make this change because they vaulting debate was heating up again and they wanted to redirect everyone's rage. 
  • veny
    veny Posts: 834 Critical Contributor
    Frustrated1 said:
    @Brigby When are they shutting down the forums? Nothing we say really matters, so why have them?
    So they can say "We listen" (tho they dont react adequately, but it doesnt fit into "listen/read" part)
  • Starfury
    Starfury Posts: 719 Critical Contributor
    The only explanation my cynical self can come up with is that they noticed that by linking HfH to the Burrito targetted primarily new players. And that's a demographic that is notoriously short on HP anyway and won't waste 3.6 roster slots on a single 4* cover that they couldn't roster anyway.

    But I can't see how slowing the rotation isn't going to massively reduce sales so I'm still stuck at: WHAT WERE THEY THINKING?
  • MissChinch
    MissChinch Posts: 509 Critical Contributor
    IlDuderino said:
    I can't remember the last time one of these announcements didn't make the game worse. Please listen to us and spend your valuable time making changes that people want and make the game better
    No, until this Dev team changes composition they need to not touch anything.  

    Don't try making it better, certainly don't try pushing some change (the reality is they don't know what to do from a design perspective and they would probably hose the implementation side pretty badly anyhow, just look at what they do on a regular basis)

    I was pretty jazzed about the scaling changes... For the love of all that's good and pure in this world, this Dev team needs to shelve that immediately and dust it off once they've cleaned house...  Some manager needs to take all merge privs away and burn their Dev environment, changes only go in one direction...   I'd say bug fixes would be ok, but I don't think this team really does that, they post that they do but....   

    Seriously NO changes please, some things are pretty bad but there's always some way to make it worse...
  • MissChinch
    MissChinch Posts: 509 Critical Contributor
    This announcement is actually pretty humorous if you step back and think about it though...

    It's like you've been at a lunch meeting and everytime this guy at the end of the table talks you get this passive aggressiveness vibe, always some negative aspect hurled your way...  You just chalk it up to social incopentence and move on...  

    This announcement is when that guy waits till everyone's looking at the presentation, turns around, locks eyes with you and shoots you the bird.
  • animaniactoo
    animaniactoo Posts: 486 Mover and Shaker
    fwiw, I already thought the HFH store was overpriced - I had 9k in HP and still couldn't bring myself to buy 4* deadpool and luke cage covers just to finish the characters and be able to champ them before an extra cover expired. Why? Well because they were both vaulted or about to be. So champing them wasn't really going to increase their usability to me that much nor was it going to get me access to their championship rewards and avoiding wasting future extra covers for them in anything like a time scale that made sense to spend that kind of HP for it.

    I'm a VIP player, but no money beyond that, because I simply can't afford it. I will never be a whale.

    I admit I was sorely tempted by those two. Mostly because they would have been the first 4*s I COULD champ. But I didn't. Just couldn't bring myself to do it. Likewise on spending the CP there... why when I could go spend that in the classic legends store for the opportunity to build characters to more useable levels? 10-12 covers is pretty useable for a 4* depending on what you get. It was a better place to direct my "spending".

    I did think that in time, I might build up enough HP that the HFH store seemed like a negligible buy, but I figured that was a ways out... and in the meantime I started a 2* farm. Which I won't really get around to champing most of them until I get past some 4* iso needs, but that'll come sooner than a stockpile of HP big enough to make the HFH store a negligible buy.

    I don't know what the devs are planning and how this will work out. But many people seem to think that this is a money grab and it's targeted specifically at whales and the game being changed to monetize it as much as possible. If that is what's going on - I'll say one thing in response to that. I've been through several games. Yes, devs needs to make money. But at the end of the day, a freemium game relies on f2p users just as much as minimal/moderate spenders and the whales for the lifeblood of the game. Because you need a big enough community to keep it going, you need people for the whales to play with/against. And if you have enough whales that you don't need that anymore, then stop offering the game for free because it's soul-crushing to be edged out of a "free" game that you really enjoy because you can't dedicate your life (hours and hours a day to compete for the drippings of placing well, etc.) or your money to it which are the only 2 choices a f2p user ends up with when devs are focused on monetizing the game.

    I dunno if the devs are trying to squeak more money out - maybe there's a longer range plan that they're not doing a very good job of communicating/strategically introducing. But if monetizing is the primary concern... I'm just saying... it is possible to break a game by focusing on whales over minimal and moderate spenders.
  • MissChinch
    MissChinch Posts: 509 Critical Contributor
    animaniactoo said:

    I don't know what the devs are planning and how this will work out. But many people seem to think that this is a money grab and it's targeted specifically at whales and the game being changed to monetize it as much as possible. If that is what's going on - I'll say one thing in response to that. I've been through several games. Yes, devs needs to make money. But at the end of the day, a freemium game relies on f2p users just as much as minimal/moderate spenders and the whales for the lifeblood of the game.
    I don't think it's a money grab, it's more a move to preserve an exploitable scarcity of retired 4* covers.  Covering them with 3600HP is somewhere between $25-$50.   Covering them with CP is $100 with optimal buy clubs, around $1800 without buy clubs.  Seems like someone didn't want to sell that scarcity away at ~$30 a pop as quickly as they were.

    Regarding a need for f2p players...  They don't need it in games like this, players never play against each other.  Plenty of other games simulate users...   They could take averages over the last 6 months and throw us all in PvE and PvP brackets by ourselves with 999 or 499 simulated players and it wouldn't impact our gameplay in any meaningful way.  There would be less participation in Line and forums, but those tools only draw more serious users anyhow.
  • animaniactoo
    animaniactoo Posts: 486 Mover and Shaker
    MissChinch said:
    animaniactoo said:

    I don't know what the devs are planning and how this will work out. But many people seem to think that this is a money grab and it's targeted specifically at whales and the game being changed to monetize it as much as possible. If that is what's going on - I'll say one thing in response to that. I've been through several games. Yes, devs needs to make money. But at the end of the day, a freemium game relies on f2p users just as much as minimal/moderate spenders and the whales for the lifeblood of the game.
    I don't think it's a money grab, it's more a move to preserve an exploitable scarcity of retired 4* covers.  Covering them with 3600HP is somewhere between $25-$50.   Covering them with CP is $100 with optimal buy clubs, around $1800 without buy clubs.  Seems like someone didn't want to sell that scarcity away at ~$30 a pop as quickly as they were.

    Regarding a need for f2p players...  They don't need it in games like this, players never play against each other.  Plenty of other games simulate users...   They could take averages over the last 6 months and throw us all in PvE and PvP brackets by ourselves with 999 or 499 simulated players and it wouldn't impact our gameplay in any meaningful way.  There would be less participation in Line and forums, but those tools only draw more serious users anyhow.
    Good points... I suspect it feels more like a money grab for f2p or newer players who are going to be pinched by the essential characters they need being vaulted and harder to acquire and build to reasonably playable levels.

    Which if anything would make me suspect that they're trying to slow down that end of the game, but are then exacerbating the problem by releasing new characters too quickly on the other end of it.

    I would be curious to know how many players have the majority of the 3 and 4 star roster maxed champion levels or close to it.
  • Königsmacher
    Königsmacher Posts: 61 Match Maker
    edited June 2017
    I just don't know what to say about this change.

    It was already pointed out that the rotation of a specific color would now increase to two years(!) until that color comes around again. But then I think back to the anouncement of the h4h store and how it would finally help people to get specific covers. It's like a cruel joke now.

    If it's meant as a way to make me spent more, it fails miserably. All it does is giving me more time to save hp needed to buy the covers I need (when they finally come around). I just can't wrap my head around this.

    Changing the COTT into a daily thing with the store changing daily as well would help, but this will never happen. They'll never give out a daily LT. So if this is gonna happen, the Crash reward would be toned down to something like 5 cp.

    I hope they've got something genuinly good coming around soon, or this game won't last long enough to complete the new h4h cycle.


  • Felonius
    Felonius Posts: 289 Mover and Shaker
    I thought the HfH store was a poor value before, and as an unused screen I have to regularly flip through, it was nothing but a waste of my time.

    Now, I think the HfH store is a poor value, and as an unused screen I have to regularly flip through, it remains a waste of my time. 
  • Reecoh
    Reecoh Posts: 210 Tile Toppler
    Brigby said:
    @deadtaco
    The reason we wanted to provide this news on Friday was not to avoid backlash, but to give players a couple more days to decide if they'd like to take advantage of a current Heroes for Hire opportunity before the update is implemented on Tuesday. 
    If that's true why wasn't it announced in game? I imagine a large percentage of the player base won't see this on the forums, or any other related boards like Reddit.

    If it was, then I'll file a bug b/c it's not in my news in-game.
  • nycjonny
    nycjonny Posts: 59 Match Maker
    I used the H4H store more than I'd like to admit. It got me a fully covered Peggy and pretty close on Iceman. I'm not going to use this store for one cover for Crash. One cover isn't going to help me win a crash anyway. As an alternative to the vault situation, H4H was an expensive but useful choice for me. Now it's a hard pass. Don't they actually want our money?
  • deadtaco
    deadtaco Posts: 409 Mover and Shaker
    edited June 2017
    @Brigby 

    Compromise - Why not at least let the third color cycle finish before making this change?  Then it could have at least completed one full cycle before this ridiculous change goes through.  It would not add that much time to it.

    Edit - Reecoh brings up a good point - if you wanted players to have adv. notice - in game is the way to go.

    Stuff like this and claiming that users "preferred" the higher HfH price point make it hard to trust.
  • zodiac339
    zodiac339 Posts: 1,948 Chairperson of the Boards
    fmftint said:
    What do people who want/need a Big Enchilada character 4 star supposed to do now?
    More to the point, you can usually complete a Burrito with 1 cover on a Legendary, and let the other 2 do the work. Except for the rare invisible Crash (Duck, Prof, and Sue), you're going to waste a lot of time losing with a 1 cover Legendary and probably never win, unless you somehow just keep getting match 5 cascades in your favor. Maybe they... don't want our money? Because this seems like the least profitable change they could have made.
  • Warbringa
    Warbringa Posts: 1,301 Chairperson of the Boards
    edited June 2017
    This is extremely stupid of the devs and/or D3.  The store was already a rip off for what it offered, but at least it was a viable option that cycled through fairly quickly.  Now it will take forever to get to that one cover you needed.  Why not wait until the third and final rotation of covers was done as well.  For example I really needed an Iceman purple cover, which was coming up in the third rotation, and now I will have to wait for a long time to get it. I am sure many other people are in the same boat.  The issue to fix the Crash of the Titans to be more viable is to make 4* covers more available.  This doesn't do this at all, in fact it does the opposite by making 4* covers less available.  5 days per cover is way too long to cycle through all of the 4* covers. 

    I am very disappointed as I am seeing more and more poor decisions by the development team.  Vaulting was already a big issue and you are simply making it even bigger with this change. 

    What I really don't like is that this is going to negatively impact revenue, so that means they will try to make it up somewhere else.  Don't be surprised when it happens.
  • sinnerjfl
    sinnerjfl Posts: 1,276 Chairperson of the Boards
    MissChinch said:
    I don't think it's a money grab, it's more a move to preserve an exploitable scarcity of retired 4* covers.  Covering them with 3600HP is somewhere between $25-$50.   Covering them with CP is $100 with optimal buy clubs, around $1800 without buy clubs.  Seems like someone didn't want to sell that scarcity away at ~$30 a pop as quickly as they were.
    Ding ding ding! That's the only logical conclusion I can come up with as well.

    3600 HP is too cheap for a single 4* cover in the eyes of D3/DU, you're reading that right.

    Someone thought "omg were losing revenue with this incredible deal in the HfH store, we better slow down the flow of those insanely cheap covers so that people lose patience and spend even more to acquire CP instead!"

    And let's disguise this change by saying its to help people complete the Crash...  HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA.

    *SIGH*

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