Proof that the devs are not listening to the players.

babar3355

Ohboy said:

babar3355 said:

I am going to just chime in to say that it is OK for a game to have some content geared towards the late game players.  ToZ is clearly in this vein as the bosses are exteremly strong and require good strategy and some strong cards (or just endless cycling).  Newer players can attempt RAtC and other mid week PvE events as often as they would like.

It seems silly to alienate and annoy coalition focused players who do have the capacity to beat these encounters just to make it easier for newer players to hit progression.  Especially since as soon as the newer playeres figure out how to beat the bosses they will be with everyone else who hates the time commitment this event takes 3 out of every 4 weekends.

The only people concerned about playing every charge are top coalition players who voluntarily put themselves there to earn rewards not available to the rest of the population. 

Everyone else stops whenever they like. More attempts is better because not everyone will play every charge. Some get wasted by casuals who for example maybe don't log in on Saturdays perhaps due to hangovers, and others are used up for attempts on the bigger bosses. 

If what separates top coalition players from the rest is commitment and effort, then to insist everyone gets less chances so that they don't have to spend that much time on the game is... I'm not even sure how to describe it. 

The top players do it to themselves in return for rewards. If they don't like it, they can sit it out. They just want to do less and still get rewarded. 

Which is why I said it seems silly to alienate and annoy coalition focused players.  Not sure how this is a disagreement.  

We used to play around 9 games a day now we play 18 games per day to compete for coalition rewards.  Should we increase the recharge rate to 2 hours or 1?  It will give newer players more attempts and since we don't care about experienced players in coalitions, then why not?

The status quo since the KLD block has been 8 hour recharges.  The only evidence of community preference we have is based on a poll, which is far stronger than the total lack of evidence that most players prefer 4 hour recharges. (Pointing out flaws in polls does not prove the other side of the argument).

I just don't understand the war against top players. Nerf our individual prizes, nerf our coalition prizes, nerf the number of events that have coalition prizes,  increase the demands in order to compete for nerfed prizes.   D3 intentionally has rewards for coalitions who do the best in the game... why is it so crazy to attest that the demands of recent changes have made ToZ the most hated event in the game?  It is not just top teams who are complaining about this... its any coalition who is looking to compete.

ZW2007-

octal9 summed it up quite nicely. If it's geared towards casual players and new players and non-competitive players, why is it a coalition only event? Why have a competitive coalition aspect tied to it? If it's geared towards competitive players, why bend the structure to favor the casual players? Perhaps they should bend Trials of the Planes to make progression easier for casual players to achieve as well. Maybe they can give the player enraged, supercharged, and legendary and take those away from the AI. Surely this would be a good thing right? Coalitions were added to the game to make it more competitive and coalition events were the purpose of this competition. Arguing for or against 4 hr recharges is irrelevant when the events no longer achieve their original intended purpose.

naphomci

Ohboy said:

naphomci said:

Ohboy said:

You're polling and talking to people who by definition aren't the new/casual players. This pool of players don't often find themselves here to take your self serving polls, or to the private chat groups to give an opinion. Everytime someone talks about a poll or private conversations as if it's a good cross section of the population, I'm forced to wonder if they're dishonest or clueless. 

This is a terrible non-argument. You are suggesting that somehow, new players don't come here, but the new players posting in this thread prove the contrary.

As for relying on polls or discussion from here, where else should they rely? Your comment insinuates that there is no information that can be honestly used. So, basically any discussion is invalid under your approach.

Presence of new players here does not mean the demographic isn't lopsided. There are African americans who appear at trump rallies too, but his demographic is noticeably weak in African Americans. 

They can rely on stats taken from the games instead of user polls in forums that are lopsided. And while we don't know if they use them properly,  we know they do track certain stats from previous posts. What we do know is that forum opinion polls aren't the best tool for any decision making, ever. 

Your assumption then is that the devs have data showing that more players like the 4 hour recharge. You are making that assumption up on the basis of your opinion. While the forum poll may be imperfect, it is better than a hunch.

Ohboy

naphomci said:

Ohboy said:

naphomci said:

Ohboy said:

You're polling and talking to people who by definition aren't the new/casual players. This pool of players don't often find themselves here to take your self serving polls, or to the private chat groups to give an opinion. Everytime someone talks about a poll or private conversations as if it's a good cross section of the population, I'm forced to wonder if they're dishonest or clueless. 

This is a terrible non-argument. You are suggesting that somehow, new players don't come here, but the new players posting in this thread prove the contrary.

As for relying on polls or discussion from here, where else should they rely? Your comment insinuates that there is no information that can be honestly used. So, basically any discussion is invalid under your approach.

Presence of new players here does not mean the demographic isn't lopsided. There are African americans who appear at trump rallies too, but his demographic is noticeably weak in African Americans. 

They can rely on stats taken from the games instead of user polls in forums that are lopsided. And while we don't know if they use them properly,  we know they do track certain stats from previous posts. What we do know is that forum opinion polls aren't the best tool for any decision making, ever. 

Your assumption then is that the devs have data showing that more players like the 4 hour recharge. You are making that assumption up on the basis of your opinion. While the forum poll may be imperfect, it is better than a hunch.

Not assuming that at all. The question was asked if there were other ways, and we know they track stats... Which is a better way. 

Ohboy

ZW2007- said:

octal9 summed it up quite nicely. If it's geared towards casual players and new players and non-competitive players, why is it a coalition only event? Why have a competitive coalition aspect tied to it? If it's geared towards competitive players, why bend the structure to favor the casual players? Perhaps they should bend Trials of the Planes to make progression easier for casual players to achieve as well. Maybe they can give the player enraged, supercharged, and legendary and take those away from the AI. Surely this would be a good thing right? Coalitions were added to the game to make it more competitive and coalition events were the purpose of this competition. Arguing for or against 4 hr recharges is irrelevant when the events no longer achieve their original intended purpose.

Trial of the planes has been made much easier for the casual player with an increase in 33% of charges. You now need to hit only 66% win rate in totp to get max progression, compared to 90% before. 

And coalitions have been anti competition for a while. I'm not sure how people convinced the devs that less competitors will lead to more competition, but apparently they were swayed by that argument and officially encourage coalitions to swell to over 20 members. 

But like you said, this is about competition. And if toa is a sprint, toz is a marathon. If you're a sprinter, compete in sprinting. Don't join a marathon and request they cut the distance. That's not competition. 

babar3355

Ohboy said:

ZW2007- said:

octal9 summed it up quite nicely. If it's geared towards casual players and new players and non-competitive players, why is it a coalition only event? Why have a competitive coalition aspect tied to it? If it's geared towards competitive players, why bend the structure to favor the casual players? Perhaps they should bend Trials of the Planes to make progression easier for casual players to achieve as well. Maybe they can give the player enraged, supercharged, and legendary and take those away from the AI. Surely this would be a good thing right? Coalitions were added to the game to make it more competitive and coalition events were the purpose of this competition. Arguing for or against 4 hr recharges is irrelevant when the events no longer achieve their original intended purpose.

Trial of the planes has been made much easier for the casual player with an increase in 33% of charges. You now need to hit only 66% win rate in totp to get max progression, compared to 90% before. 

And coalitions have been anti competition for a while. I'm not sure how people convinced the devs that less competitors will lead to more competition, but apparently they were swayed by that argument and officially encourage coalitions to swell to over 20 members. 

But like you said, this is about competition. And if toa is a sprint, toz is a marathon. If you're a sprinter, compete in sprinting. Don't join a marathon and request they cut the distance. That's not competition. 

You do realize they changed the timer recently right?  You keep saying people "want to do less work" and "don't join a marathon".

I also don't like the fluid coalition structure, but we live with what we have.

I still don't see anyone explaining why the players that keep getting the most harmed by developers are the most dedicated and "zealous" of the player base.

Ohboy

babar3355 said:

Ohboy said:

ZW2007- said:

octal9 summed it up quite nicely. If it's geared towards casual players and new players and non-competitive players, why is it a coalition only event? Why have a competitive coalition aspect tied to it? If it's geared towards competitive players, why bend the structure to favor the casual players? Perhaps they should bend Trials of the Planes to make progression easier for casual players to achieve as well. Maybe they can give the player enraged, supercharged, and legendary and take those away from the AI. Surely this would be a good thing right? Coalitions were added to the game to make it more competitive and coalition events were the purpose of this competition. Arguing for or against 4 hr recharges is irrelevant when the events no longer achieve their original intended purpose.

Trial of the planes has been made much easier for the casual player with an increase in 33% of charges. You now need to hit only 66% win rate in totp to get max progression, compared to 90% before. 

And coalitions have been anti competition for a while. I'm not sure how people convinced the devs that less competitors will lead to more competition, but apparently they were swayed by that argument and officially encourage coalitions to swell to over 20 members. 

But like you said, this is about competition. And if toa is a sprint, toz is a marathon. If you're a sprinter, compete in sprinting. Don't join a marathon and request they cut the distance. That's not competition. 

You do realize they changed the timer recently right?  You keep saying people "want to do less work" and "don't join a marathon".

I also don't like the fluid coalition structure, but we live with what we have.

I still don't see anyone explaining why the players that keep getting the most harmed by developers are the most dedicated and "zealous" of the player base.

The timer was also on 4h longer than it was on 8h. AND you couldn't store as many charges so we pretty much had to play every 12 hours.  It's not like this is undoable.

The hardcore players aren't being harmed. They are harming themselves. There's no rule that says that top coalitions need to play x ribbons. They set it and do it to themselves. If everyone's only willing to play 20k ribbons, then the 20k ribbon coalition will come out on top, even if the theoretical max is 60k. That's competition. Don't be willing to play only 20k,and request the cap by dropped to 20k. That's not competition. And when the request actually hurts casuals, that's just wrong. 

Corn_Noodles

octal9 said:

Steeme said:

It's time to start segregating casual and competitive play. 

I haven't read the entire thread but segregating these two playstyles is the solution. 

My thought here is to run two events and the player opts into the version they want. Casual is progression only where competitive is progression + rank rewards. The casual bosses would need to have their health tweaked, of course. The problem this runs into is how to handle coalitions. My best idea would be to have a flag for coalitions to choose if they are casual or competitive. If a player is in a competitive coalition and tries to choose casual for a coalition, they would be denied and vice versa. This is starting to sound too complex for the implementation. I think it's best to "suck it up".

babar3355

Ohboy said:

The timer was also on 4h longer than it was on 8h. AND you couldn't store as many charges so we pretty much had to play every 12 hours.  It's not like this is undoable.

The hardcore players aren't being harmed. They are harming themselves. There's no rule that says that top coalitions need to play x ribbons. They set it and do it to themselves. If everyone's only willing to play 20k ribbons, then the 20k ribbon coalition will come out on top, even if the theoretical max is 60k. That's competition. Don't be willing to play only 20k,and request the cap by dropped to 20k. That's not competition. And when the request actually hurts casuals, that's just wrong. 

Ok, so it was a marathon, then a sprint, now a marathon again and we just are being lazy. 

Anyway, D3 introduced a competitive element to the game to give players reasons to play.  The argument that the players don't actually have to play the game and could just quit or have a gentleman's agreement to restrict the amount of effort they exert is a pretty awful argument.  The game should be fun and geared to be that way.

And BTW, when we had 4 hour recharges in Avacyn's Madness the life totals were much lower, the card pool wasn't restricted, and the prize top 10 coalitions received was good enough to cause teams to actually fight hard for top 10.  If you are going to make the game suck for players wanting to compete then shouldn't you at least offer a worthwhile prize?

But, you are correct.  The only reason I still play this game is because I have a lot of wonderful friends within my coalition and across many other coalitions.  Perhaps this was their plan all along.  Ruin the end game experience for players with too good of collections.

Ohboy

babar3355 said:

Ohboy said:

The timer was also on 4h longer than it was on 8h. AND you couldn't store as many charges so we pretty much had to play every 12 hours.  It's not like this is undoable.

The hardcore players aren't being harmed. They are harming themselves. There's no rule that says that top coalitions need to play x ribbons. They set it and do it to themselves. If everyone's only willing to play 20k ribbons, then the 20k ribbon coalition will come out on top, even if the theoretical max is 60k. That's competition. Don't be willing to play only 20k,and request the cap by dropped to 20k. That's not competition. And when the request actually hurts casuals, that's just wrong. 

Ok, so it was a marathon, then a sprint, now a marathon again and we just are being lazy. 

Anyway, D3 introduced a competitive element to the game to give players reasons to play.  The argument that the players don't actually have to play the game and could just quit or have a gentleman's agreement to restrict the amount of effort they exert is a pretty awful argument.  The game should be fun and geared to be that way.

And BTW, when we had 4 hour recharges in Avacyn's Madness the life totals were much lower, the card pool wasn't restricted, and the prize top 10 coalitions received was good enough to cause teams to actually fight hard for top 10.  If you are going to make the game suck for players wanting to compete then shouldn't you at least offer a worthwhile prize?

But, you are correct.  The only reason I still play this game is because I have a lot of wonderful friends within my coalition and across many other coalitions.  Perhaps this was their plan all along.  Ruin the end game experience for players with too good of collections.

Sometimes I'm not sure I'm really being that unclear. I didn't mean a gentlemen's agreement. I'm saying that the cap is what players make of it. Having an unlimited cap makes for good competition. Being restricted makes for a poor one. 

That's why tie breaker rounds would have been preferable for example, in pvp events instead of multi way ties. 

Irgy

I personally found it insulting to put us to the trouble of having the survey only to just ignore it. It's not like it's hard to fix either it should just be twiddling a few numbers somewhere.

shteev

I'm confused. I thought that the interests of whales were what drives a game forward, and most decisions are being made to try and keep them on board so they can pay for everything. But aren't whales 'late game players'? Anything digital objects that I've earned in the game through my grit and determination can be bought by whales, can't they? They're at the top of the game by way of having bought themselves a killer collection. Are any whales actually sitting around in Bronze Tier, still?

Whales, take, what, a couple of weeks to be converted into whales, so you only need that much low level content, and then you need to keep them happy with late game content, right?

What am I missing here?

babar3355

shteev said:

I'm confused. I thought that the interests of whales were what drives a game forward, and most decisions are being made to try and keep them on board so they can pay for everything. But aren't whales 'late game players'? Anything digital objects that I've earned in the game through my grit and determination can be bought by whales, can't they? They're at the top of the game by way of having bought themselves a killer collection. Are any whales actually sitting around in Bronze Tier, still?

Whales, take, what, a couple of weeks to be converted into whales, so you only need that much low level content, and then you need to keep them happy with late game content, right?

What am I missing here?

You are missing the complete misdiagnosis by D3 of what caused loads of players to quit the game.  They blamed giving too many cards to the toxic elite rather than the brain-dead design of having a collectible card game where it was impossible to collect the cards (or even get close without gobs of money and a massive time commitment every week).  Their solution was to make it even harder for everyone to collet cards and an even more elite set of cards that even less people would ever get.  Then they ruined the fun of the end game.

Phillmoore

Sorry.  But the only thing I lost players in my team from was converting to standard play without having the ability to have two free slots.  The frustration of having to change decks was too frustrating.  

No no one ever complained about playing the game as often as they would like too.  That seems to be an issue if the top coalitions.  

Corn_Noodles

babar3355 said:

You are missing the complete misdiagnosis by D3 of what caused loads of players to quit the game.  They blamed giving too many cards to the toxic elite rather than the brain-dead design of having a collectible card game where it was impossible to collect the cards (or even get close without gobs of money and a massive time commitment every week).  Their solution was to make it even harder for everyone to collet cards and an even more elite set of cards that even less people would ever get.  Then they ruined the fun of the end game.

TL;DR - Always evaluate changes to the game through D3's desire to make money based on data we do not have access to.

I don't agree that D3 misdiagnosed anything from their point of view. Don't forget that our priorities as players are not necessarily the same as D3's. What's D3's most likely priority? Making money. What are the player's priorities? A fun and fair game that rewards the player for the time and money they spend in the game. Making money does not always line up with those player priorities. We don't have access to the numbers D3 collects as most of our information is anecdotal from players that post here. The majority of players have never visited this forum and likely never will.

So, looking at the changes, what does it look like D3 was trying to accomplish? Well, I've got two theories. The first, is that they are valuing mana crystal sales as a high priority. Secondly, it appears they're trying to keep whales in the game spending money. So how do the changes accomplish these two things? Keep in mind that whales will whale and prize cards may not move the needle much for a whale since they may spend whatever they need to obtain those cards later. The only prize cards a whale might make an effort for is exclusive prizes. So by reducing the "free" mythics for non-whales and drop rates, D3 has accomplished two things: keeping whale collections valuable and likely increasing the odds that players will buy crystals to exchange for chances at mythics. Whale collections stay or become more valuable because it will be harder for free players (and especially new players) to keep up with the whales and the whales will have a better chance to be at the top of the leaderboards.

A popular cry is that if drop rates were increased, more people will buy crystals and D3 will make more money. I wish that was true, but D3's actions suggest they have evidence that this may be misguided.

babar3355

Your synopsis actually gives credence to the thought that they are trying to remove the free to play players from the end game.  It has worked quite well so far.  However, short term plans for profit rarely lead to optimal outcomes for businesses.  We shall see.

Corn_Noodles

babar3355 said:

Your synopsis actually gives credence to the thought that they are trying to remove the free to play players from the end game.  It has worked quite well so far.  However, short term plans for profit rarely lead to optimal outcomes for businesses.  We shall see.

I have no evidence of this, but perhaps D3's license expires in the short term so the long term does not matter.

shteev

Corn Noodles said:

Whale collections stay or become more valuable because it will be harder for free players (and especially new players) to keep up with the whales and the whales will have a better chance to be at the top of the leaderboards.

Not with cycling the way it is. Winning all of your games doesn't take much of a collection at all now.

losdamianos

shteev said:

I'm confused. ................

What am I missing here?

D3's definition of logic and sense

naphomci

@Brigby
Are we going to have to suffer through another 4 hour recharge this weekend, or will it be changed?