Q&A with Demiurge_Will Answers from Demiurge_Will begin on p.2

adamdivine

I'll echo everyone else's comments and say thank you for taking the time to answer some questions! It's much appreciated.
My question... I have become very disengaged from pvp as of late mostly due to the lack of variety of opponents in 5* land. Are there any plans to update mmr in a way that would allow some of us with more advanced rosters to use more than a handful of characters?

shartattack

adamdivine said:

I'll echo everyone else's comments and say thank you for taking the time to answer some questions! It's much appreciated.
My question... I have become very disengaged from pvp as of late mostly due to the lack of variety of opponents in 5* land. Are there any plans to update mmr in a way that would allow some of us with more advanced rosters to use more than a handful of characters?

seems like a balancing (nerf gambit) issue more than an MMR issue.  widening MMR would open up 4* rosters to club, allowing you to use your peter parkers and your black widows that never get used.  It would also open you up to getting slammed by 500s god mode rosters too.

tbighead21

Can we please get an update to The Prologue section? Why is it still there? Maybe unlock it each season?

animaniactoo

Demiurge_Will said:

The rockett said:

With some the cheats that have been used in the past and current, (I will not name them due to forum rules but would love to list them all) what is being done to make sure the game is secure?  With a lot of players investing money into this game/company, how quickly can these cheats be uncovered and dealt with in a swift manner? 

I'll send you a PM in a moment so I can make sure I know about everything on your list.

It's hard to be super specific about cheats and exploits without saying something that makes it easier for cheaters to cheat, but:

- We've closed a couple of significant exploits over the last six months.

- In the past year, we've banned 13,671 accounts for cheating.

- Most games have some delay between when they detect a cheater and when they're removed from the game, in order to make it more difficult for cheaters to reverse engineer the cheat detection systems and work around them.

- We investigate every report that comes into CS about cheating. We appreciate the reports and they've directly helped us shut down several exploits over the years. A large proportion of reports are mistaken (two common causes of this: 1) some players think they know about all the buy clubs and don't recognize players who use a different set of them; 2) sometimes players bank a whole bunch of currency or tokens over the course of many many months (sometimes years) and spend them all at once). We don't typically respond to the individual reports with specifics, because that could reveal information about how cheat detection works. Put that together and that allows the perception of cheating and its impact to be larger than the reality. I'm not sure how to fix this, and not 100% sure we should - any amount of cheating is a big deal and we're working to get it to zero and keep it there, so I'd rather deal with mistaken cheat reports than not hear about an issue.

I think one of the most consistent things I see (in terms of complaints of nothing being done) is a lack of communication or other significant observable evidence that action has been taken. So in general, players are left with a feeling that they're filing reports into a void.

Just knowing how many accounts have been banned for cheating is more info than I think I've seen over the past year.

I would like to suggest changing the standard reply from ending at "your report will be reviewed" to continuing on to 

"Your report has been reviewed. Thank you for contacting us and we will take whatever action is appropriate from here. Please note that you may not see an immediate result for a variety of reasons including but not limited to: Delayed action for a group response. Time needed to fix the exploit involved before taking individual action. We determined this was unusual but normal gameplay possible without any cheats or exploits necessary. 

Please update us if you have any new or additional information about this matter."

It's a small thing, but knowing that your report has moved from *will be reviewed* (and therefore could still be outstanding) to *has been reviewed* can be a key factor in players feeling that their reports are being taken seriously - because they know that it's gotten beyond the form letter "yeah yeah, we got it" stage. I suggest including the rest of the info because a lot of people don't read the forums...

ETA: And thank you for stopping in to answer the questions you can!

ejmus

Much appreciation for jumping in and giving us real responses, Will. Could you possibly give us an idea of the areas of the game that you are targeting in the near future, or something similar? We all have a number of concerns, for me personally it's mostly the lack of variety in the events (BP event helped a little), and character balance/usage concerns in PVP.
Thanks!

The rockett

@Demiurge_Will
Will, Thank You for coming here and giving us some details.  This has been some of the best communication that we have had in a long time. It is very nice to see some of these answers to questions that we have.  I really hope this does continue into the future as well.  

broll

Demiurge_Will said:

ZeroKarma said:

Aaaaaaaand the big question. There are a lot of rumors that go around on the interwebs. One of them is that we are nearing 6* characters in some shape or form.

Are they coming? Should we start hoarding? Will they be as big of a leap over 5* as 5* was over 4*? Will 5* covers start to flow more quickly once the 6* characters start coming out?

Will we have to sell any essential organs to acquire these characters?

There are no plans currently in the works for 6* characters, and we've heard a clear consensus among our players that they don't want them.

First off: Boo!

Second off:  Without creating a new tier how to expect to address the growing issues of character dilution in tokens?  4* has been bandaided, but getting vintage characters will continue to be a growing problem.  Classic 5*s are a mess.  The ability to get up to 6 covers for some from 4* champ rewards is helpful, but that's still not even quite half way.

GritsNGravy

Thanks for your time answering this.  I really hope the game continues to grow and evolve, I think you guys are top of the class with that.  The way the game has changed over the 4 years I've played is pretty amazing in retrospect.  Also, I remember at least 3-4 times where I was falling off of the game and you introduced a really cool new feature that pulled me back in.

Personally, I've been close to falling off recently due to lack of play variety, having 5* Gambit, and 5* Thanos limit my huge roster significantly when it comes time to PVE or PVP.  I don't have a great suggestion, but I hope you guys continue to innovate and surprise. 

I *feel* like I want reasons to occasionally play with more of the characters I have.

animaniactoo

Wait, wait. Now that someone is answering questions, I figured out what I really really want to know!

What is up with the PVE bracket schedule of 5/5/6/3/5? What's the reasoning behind that spread?

Andre_Leca_89

A midnight time slice for people in the UK midday time slice can be removed 

animaniactoo

Andre MPQ said:

A midnight time slice for people in the UK midday time slice can be removed 

Not without removing the 7 AM time slice (since they're the same) that works for a lot of the US East Coast.

PenniesForEveryone

animaniactoo said:

Demiurge_Will said:

The rockett said:

With some the cheats that have been used in the past and current, (I will not name them due to forum rules but would love to list them all) what is being done to make sure the game is secure?  With a lot of players investing money into this game/company, how quickly can these cheats be uncovered and dealt with in a swift manner? 

I'll send you a PM in a moment so I can make sure I know about everything on your list.

It's hard to be super specific about cheats and exploits without saying something that makes it easier for cheaters to cheat, but:

- We've closed a couple of significant exploits over the last six months.

- In the past year, we've banned 13,671 accounts for cheating.

- Most games have some delay between when they detect a cheater and when they're removed from the game, in order to make it more difficult for cheaters to reverse engineer the cheat detection systems and work around them.

- We investigate every report that comes into CS about cheating. We appreciate the reports and they've directly helped us shut down several exploits over the years. A large proportion of reports are mistaken (two common causes of this: 1) some players think they know about all the buy clubs and don't recognize players who use a different set of them; 2) sometimes players bank a whole bunch of currency or tokens over the course of many many months (sometimes years) and spend them all at once). We don't typically respond to the individual reports with specifics, because that could reveal information about how cheat detection works. Put that together and that allows the perception of cheating and its impact to be larger than the reality. I'm not sure how to fix this, and not 100% sure we should - any amount of cheating is a big deal and we're working to get it to zero and keep it there, so I'd rather deal with mistaken cheat reports than not hear about an issue.

I think one of the most consistent things I see (in terms of complaints of nothing being done) is a lack of communication or other significant observable evidence that action has been taken. So in general, players are left with a feeling that they're filing reports into a void.

A sense of fairness is important as well.  I'm still waiting for my opportunity to purchase 7 CP for me and my alliance for $2 like so many other rosters I have to compete with were able to do......

Kid_Dash

Are there plans to make PVE easier on our schedules?  For example, timing each match individually and tallying totals at the end would make it possible (and awesome) to pick up the game, stop for a while,  and come back to it without risking losing placement, while also being able to enjoy the story. 

jffdougan

Eichen said:

Have you ever considered doing live Q&A chats?  There are some great Q&A service providers that let people send questions in live and you you decide which ones to show and what to answer.  (JotCast is one that I see used allot)

I've offered to do something like this moderating at the Discord server in the past. Mainly, it requires coordinating a time that I can afford to be at a computer for a couple hours in a row during normal demiurge business hours, which means summer since I'm a school teacher.

sirwookieechris

Kid_Dash said:

Are there plans to make PVE easier on our schedules?  For example, timing each match individually and tallying totals at the end would make it possible (and awesome) to pick up the game, stop for a while,  and come back to it without risking losing placement, while also being able to enjoy the story. 

In the power gem season discussion, brigby mentions an upcoming change to pve tha might help deter tapping. Maybe it might help with this as well?

aesthetocyst

Demiurge_Will said:

Colognoisseur said:

Is the current use of tapping to insure placing in top 10 of PvE limited to few enough players that you feel it does not need to be changed?

No, I think tapping is a flaw.

Obvious follow-up is to bounce the usual player-proposed fixes off Will and demand to know why they won't work or haven't been implemented yet, from the dev's perspective.

Now where did I put that list ... 

tiomono

@Demiurge_Will

How do the devs feel on 5* dillution in classic tokens? Are there any plans to help players out with the frustration of pulling a 6th or more cover for the same color on a 5* besides the "it may end anytime" swaps on latest legends?

Brigby

sirwookieechris said:

Kid_Dash said:

Are there plans to make PVE easier on our schedules?  For example, timing each match individually and tallying totals at the end would make it possible (and awesome) to pick up the game, stop for a while,  and come back to it without risking losing placement, while also being able to enjoy the story. 

In the power gem season discussion, brigby mentions an upcoming change to pve tha might help deter tapping. Maybe it might help with this as well?

That's correct. We'll be providing more details once it gets closer to the date, however the team is working on scheduling some trial runs for changes to Story Events that should help address the issue with "Tapping"

Jonny1Punch

@Demiurge_Will thank you SO much for the communication. As you can see here by Your overwhelmingly positive responses on the forum this communication and open Q&A has been much needed. We have been starving for some good, respectful banter and honest answers. Congrats on the new project btw sir!

Zappa

This is good work and should be stickied for a month. Frankly if they did this once/twice a month for an hour most of the community would likely be happy.