Season 2, Part 1: D3/Demiurge Meeting – Support the Supports

ammenell

wait, this is fictional? 

Punisher5784

ammenell said:

wait, this is fictional? 

It's supposed to be but I think the devs truly believe I am secretly tapping into their meetings lol

Shintok17

Punisher5784 I believe the Devs got mad at your fictional and entertaining story, because they spent so much time creating supports and they have been received poorly by everyone due to their pay wall conditions to receive higher ranks, limited amount of Red Iso available, and the sheer underwhelming nature of their low level perks. The Devs found out the hard way that they could not trick long and short time veterans of the game into spending a lot of money on Supports, so they are banking on new players (potential suckers) spending a lot of money on supports due to their inexperience.

With your fun entertaining story the Devs got sensitive and tried to make sure the new players don't get swayed by this and not spend on supports. They didn't care about the other stories, because they were making enough money on Gambit in the Latest store anyway and most new players wont have much access or need for a 5* like Gambit, but the high spenders and 5* top players would. It's all about when Money is not there they lay down the hammer. Isn't every decision in the game about Money anyway as of late.

Crnch73

In all honesty, they just don’t like being called out. It appears that the only thing they listen to is mockery, so they can halt it. Honest complaints and suggestions are not heard though... so I say we all make our future comments in the form of mocking satire. 

Daredevil217

Crnch73 said:

In all honesty, they just don’t like being called out. It appears that the only thing they listen to is mockery, so they can halt it. Honest complaints and suggestions are not heard though... so I say we all make our future comments in the form of mocking satire. 

So not true.  They adjusted vaulting, SCL, tapping, animations, wins-based, and probably a bunch of other stuff I'm forgetting due to constructive criticism.  I guarantee Gambit will get nerfed soon as well for the same reason. Willing to bet money on it if there are any takers.  I get the forum is a big cesspool of "what have you done for me lately", but to act like they never listen to player feedback is disingenuous at best.

11121

I look forward to the meeting where they discuss how much red iso to give as rewards..

Deciding on 3 red isos - now THAT should have a disclaimer of satire.

HoundofShadow

I joined this forum for less than a year but I was able to see that the developers do make changes based on feedbacks in the forum. However, if you are blinded by your high-expectations or demands, it's not a surprise that you continue to believe that the developers don't listen to feedbacks and complains. I can easily point out a few changes made:

1) Players complained about animation taking time, especially with two Dakens' abilities going off, so they allowed players to turn off animation.

2) Complaints about AP bar shifting between players' and enemies', so they gave the option to turn it off.

3) Tapping. Trial solution to reduce tapping and then implemented it for the long term.

4) 12 Days of Christmas Event. Free covers and isos.

5) Snowball PvP. Interesting concept but some negative feedbacks.

6) new PvE: Fight for Wakanda with introduction of new hazard tiles. Lots of complains as usual. 

7) more regular boss/alliance events. Complains as usual because they get lesser iso compared to 3 or 4 days event. I mean, you are getting full progression, depending on your alliance, at 1/3 or 1/2 of the number of nodes needed to clear a normal PvE and you expect to get the same amount of iso-8?

8) difficulty of getting 5* in Classic tokens, so they  introduced champed 4* giving 6 covers of 5*, with more coming. Unfortunately, there are complains about developers using old 4* as feeders, using new 4* as feeders, using perceived "illogical" 4* as feeders , using "logical" 4* as feeders. When you see this particular scenario,  it's obvious that there will be complains regardless of which 4* becomes a feeder. 

The problem with some players is they behave as if they are the managers of the developers. They expect the developers to give them full details and schedules of what's going to happen weeks in advance. When the developers didn't do so, they come up with conspiracies to create more negativities. Is this necessary? 

Anyway, I enjoy the satirical posts. As for this "meeting", Brigby has already clearly explained why he decided to step in this time. It's not difficult to understand. 

Punisher5784

HoundofShadow said:

I joined this forum for less than a year but I was able to see that the developers do make changes based on feedbacks in the forum. However, if you are blinded by your high-expectations or demands, it's not a surprise that you continue to believe that the developers don't listen to feedbacks and complains. I can easily point out a few changes made:

1) Players complained about animation taking time, especially with two Dakens' abilities going off, so they allowed players to turn off animation.

2) Complaints about AP bar shifting between players' and enemies', so they gave the option to turn it off.

3) Tapping. Trial solution to reduce tapping and then implemented it for the long term.

4) 12 Days of Christmas Event. Free covers and isos.

5) Snowball PvP. Interesting concept but some negative feedbacks.

6) new PvE: Fight for Wakanda with introduction of new hazard tiles. Lots of complains as usual. 

7) more regular boss/alliance events. Complains as usual because they get lesser iso compared to 3 or 4 days event. I mean, you are getting full progression, depending on your alliance, at 1/3 or 1/2 of the number of nodes needed to clear a normal PvE and you expect to get the same amount of iso-8?

8) difficulty of getting 5* in Classic tokens, so they  introduced champed 4* giving 6 covers of 5*, with more coming. Unfortunately, there are complains about developers using old 4* as feeders, using new 4* as feeders, using perceived "illogical" 4* as feeders , using "logical" 4* as feeders. When you see this particular scenario,  it's obvious that there will be complains regardless of which 4* becomes a feeder. 

The problem with some players is they behave as if they are the managers of the developers. They expect the developers to give them full details and schedules of what's going to happen weeks in advance. When the developers didn't do so, they come up with conspiracies to create more negativities. Is this necessary? 

Anyway, I enjoy the satirical posts. As for this "meeting", Brigby has already clearly explained why he decided to step in this time. It's not difficult to understand. 

Hi Hounds,

Thanks for your feedback. Not sure how long you have been playing but nonetheless welcome to the Forum. I understand how it may look like the players have high expectations based on the recent changes but they're actually not very good. I have been playing since 2014 and a frequent Forum poster since 2015, I can respond to each one:

1) Players have asked for the Animations to either be sped up or optional for over 3-years. It was always on our wishlist and although it may not have been a priority, it took a very long time to finally come.

2) This was also on our wishlist for over 3-years. The problem with this particular request is the devs actually tried several different versions that were not very good. Numerous players gave the developers many ideas and they finally utilized one from a player that provided a screen shot over 2-years. Again, it was a much longer wait than expected.

3) When they first changed how points generated, the players immediately stated this would be a problem. Tapping stated.. very unhealthy, frustrating tapping. Players complained all year about it until it was finally resolved but it should have been fixed a long time ago.

4) Sure this seems nice to newer players, but compared to last year, it was a very sad Holiday. People in general will always expect the same as before, if not more, but when it's drastically less it creates complaints. Each year we receive less and less 'free' things.

5) I did not play this event but I heard it was fun overall.

6) The Hazard tiles were supposed to be neutral but they favored the enemy more in the first version. The devs did listen to our responses and improved it but overall the hazard tiles make this event more timeconsuming and unnecessary difficulty. We like a challenge but in order to be competitive you need to repeatedly defeat a node 5+ times to get all the progression and decent placement rewards. The challenge of finding time already exists, so the hazard tiles is just make it worse.

7) I will not disagree here. I am OK with trading Iso for more 4* covers, plus Boss Events really help bring the alliance together because we work as a team to defeat the boss. I believe most of the complaints come from T10 players because they already receive the same amount of 4* covers but now they're getting less Iso. Overall, I am happy boss events are more frequent because they are less timeconsuming to complete.

8) The issue is not necessarily the chosen character, although I agree that players will complain no matter which character it is, the problem is the time it takes the developers to give the 5* a feeder. It's a snails pace. The Champ feeders has been an issue well before 5* feeders because the feeders are not updated with each new character. For instance, did you know that 3* Gamora does not feed 4* Gamora. Star-Lord has two feeders. At this point, no 4*s should have two feeders. This is another longstanding issue that got worse when 5* feeders were introduced. Personally, it does not bother me.

I understand you feel the players behave like they are the Managers of the Developers, but keep in mind that the player-base on this forum is the average age of 30+. A majority of the players here aren't working at McDonalds, they are Professionals of IT, Accounting, HR, Marketing/Sales, Mathematical/Analytical, etc. They understand how a business runs and when they ideas/suggestions/pleads are not heard, or it takes years, they get frustrated. Oftentimes it turns into a "Told you so" when things go wrong because the issues are pointed out immediately.

Regardless, I am glad you enjoy the posts. As for me not understanding, I am fine with Brigby stepping in, but I did not agree with receiving a Warning after I've made 10-posts in the same format. Nonetheless, this issue has been resolved.

HoundofShadow

Let's take a big picture view of what a typical business has to juggle with:

1) resources (time, money and manpower)
2) limitation/restriction/constraints
3) priorities
4) changes

In the case of MPQ, it's slightly more different than your typical SMBs. One, they are indirectly part of a listed company, and two, they have certain ways of measuring business performances. As such, listed companies or big companies usually have some kind of methodology and rules that have to be followed and these might be passed down to their subsidiaries and even to their clients or companies that they work with. 

1) Time: the developers have limited hours per day, probably 8 to 10 hours per day. I believe that they don't dedicate 8 to 10 hours solely on the game itself everyday. They probably have to attend events, meetings on some days etc. A year has 52 weeks, and assuming the developers work 5 days a week, they are actually working 260 days per year, instead of 365 days. MPQ is about 4 years old. While it looks like 1460 days have passed by, the developers actually worked on this game for 1040 days. I have not factored in holidays and the developers' annual leaves and vacations (about 10 days or so). Anytime a developer or a team member takes a vacation, progress will be slowed down slightly. You could argue that there would be someone taking over their duties, but it doesn't change the fact that some other tasks have to move down the priority list. The equation would look like: manpower decrease, number of tasks remain the same, but time taken to complete a certain task increased.

Using an assumption of 5 working days, I would say that the developers probably worked on this game for about 1000 days, instead of 1460 days. 460 days is equal to 1 year, 3 months and 5 days.  To put it another way, 1460 days might have passed by for the veteran players, but only about 1000 days have passed by for the developers. 

2) Limitation: what are the limitations placed on the developers? We won't know. What kind of limitations are there?
Manpower could be one of them because they mentioned before that they are a small team so they can't do as much or as fast as other developers company with team 10 times the size of theirs. Business goals/ ROI/business metrics could be another one. Who placed the limitation? Could it be Marvel? or the Project Manager? Finance? Business Development Manager? VP? We won't know but it's not unrealistic to think that Marvel might have placed certain limitations on what the developers could do and could not do.

3) priorities: How do they determine which task warrants a higher priority? Deadlines, Management's orders determine that. Maybe even players' feedbacks. Players' feedbacks are tricky to handle. Should they go with the majority or the minority? Or should they go with those that paid the most money? Either way, it's a fact that the other group of players have to wait or sacrifice.  Looking at the replies about 6* characters and why win-based PvP was "abruptly" switched back to point-based, it seems like they went with what the majority of the players wanted. Is it a "wrong" decision? It is a wrong decision in the eyes of players who did not benefit or "suffer" from the decisions. But it is a right decision to those who benefit from it. Now, can you see why sometimes, things are not as simple as it seems? More often than not, either majority rules or the one with the highest authority rules. 

4) I'm thinking of management change or change  of staffs. Probably new management took over and they have a different vision of what things should be? Maybe some programmers resigned and new programmers came in. Getting programmers to read other programmers' written code is not really straightforward, even if there are comments within the codes.  If you are a programmer, I think you might know what I'm referring to.

There are more factors. So, it's not unreasonable to think that a combination of these factors might led to why certain changes  took a long time to happen. 

Mustache1

Riveting episode Pun! Loved it. Spot on. Looking forward to the next segment. 

Punisher5784

Mustache1 said:

Riveting episode Pun! Loved it. Spot on. Looking forward to the next segment. 

Thank you! I actually released the next segment shortly after: https://forums.d3go.com/discussion/72415/punisher-s-warzone-chat-with-special-guests-from-d3-demiurge#latest

It's a different format but I am returning to the Meeting format next post. Enjoy