This Forum Isn't Fun Anymore

Unknown

pasa_ wrote:

One reason for that is that devs play the evil card -- read the advice given to people here and fix^Wbreak the workarounds at first opportunity (while leaving all the reported problems unaddressed).

Prologue healing? Killed. PVE scaling antidote? Killed. Self-service fixing MMR hell? Killed, you shall not have escape from the punishments.... just the few from top of my head.

Guess people learned to use other channels to talk how to keep the game somewhat afloat. "Good" job, worth keeping up.

You are right. I had forgotten about that.

Unknown

Did I miss out something? I though you can still prologue heal?

Unknown

laoahpeh wrote:

Did I miss out something? I though you can still prologue heal?

The loaner Spidey in Prologue no longer has a yellow cover. You can heal with your own Spidey or OBW, but not with the loaner heroes.

This is not so bad now that new players can randomly win OBW at any time, but it is still a kick in the butt.

If the game looked like this when I first started playing, I would not be on day 200.

HailMary

pasa_ wrote:

Guess people learned to use other channels to talk how to keep the game somewhat afloat. "Good" job, worth keeping up.

The alliance system is the direct cause of this.

The forum essentially used to operate as an informal mega-alliance. However, with the advent of actual in-game alliances, it was no longer merely "the forum vs. the faceless masses"; a huge "Forum Alliance A vs. Forum Alliance Q" layer was added, which was progressively compounded by the increasing in-game importance of alliances. While a lot of forumite banter and cooperative strategizing still goes on in the forum, the alliance system redirected a lot of pragmatic communication to private alliance chats, because while knowledge sharing still thrives, there's now a very real incentive to very selectively share knowledge outside of your alliance. Social communication naturally followed. This was compounded by the fact that many alliances had active recruitment drives and membership policies, which encouraged clique behavior due to the very real energy/financial costs of successfully building an alliance.

Et voila, for better or for worse, cliques (and mercenary squads) are now built into the game's basic framework.

Unknown

radiopy wrote:

Not sure if this is a joke thread or not (mirrors "This Game Isn't Fun Anymore") quite a bit. As a sometimes-poster, I thought I would weigh in.

If it wasn't for the forums, I probably would have dropped this game long ago. But this has got to be one of the best communities and best group of people I've met online (or maybe I'm just naive). The people in my alliance? All great people. The people in (most) other alliances? Also great people. How often does someone even CARE enough about someone else in a MATCH 3 GAME to post that, hey, we want to wish them well? Can't tell if walkyourpath was being serious, but that thread has more replies and more views than this thread. This isn't just a game; it's a community.

With all of the bickering about certain alliances recently, it's worth mentioning that this is a very small percentage of not just the player base but the forum group as well. I remember in the early days where a forum member was struggling to get their first Magneto cover and played a lightning round and forum-people would attack-retreat this person to catapult them into first place. These players got NOTHING out of it (except maybe a bit of tanking).

Candy Crush doesn't have that. Farmville doesn't have that. World of Warcraft may have that, but it's not a casual match-3 game.

This is the best casual gaming community out there and I am proud to post and be involved in the forum.

Just a quick FYI. That other thread was totally dead for a while. It didn't start getting posts until AFTER this thread was posted and started getting views. Pretty sure people read this then wanted to go relieve some guilt.

Unknown

I blame alliances and the upvote system for the degradation of the forum that you speak of. Alliances brings more players to the forums. These players generally wouldn't be the ones willing to be helpful, as they are the type to usually join a forum to either 1: ask for something or 2: complain. On top of that, alliances create nationalism which usually leads to fights because groups of stupid leads to empowered stupid. As for the upvotes, its obvious why they lead to fights, stupid comments, and bump n grump.

As for less info being posted...that's what happens with any game. When its first out ppl are learning and testing and blah blah blah. I used to be very into fighters in college. I won some locals and won money and so forth (never did EVO or anything cuz..time/life). First forum I ever joined was for fighters. I would give lots of info and combos and others did too. At some point, the new combinations and strats dry up and everyone becomes a cookie-cutter of eachother's playstyle. I remember being humored by watching, months later, ppl playing like a slower reaction version of me online and thinking how weird is was to see ppl using my strats and combos and things (even though I posted them so I knew ppl would see). Well, its the same thing here. The "New info" ppl.can give has dried up and now its go point of ppl rehashing the SAME info again and again...its tiring to tell ppl how to run a PvP every few days, it really is.

Most.of.the forumits that posts I would still say r generally well mannered and what not, its just...there isn't much to post about. A new character drops every once and a while, but other than that nothing new....EXCEPT...for wierd changes by the devs done stealthily. Which is what pissed ppl off. I mean, in life I tend to play devil's advocate all the time, because its the easiest way to get others to try and walk in somebody else's shoes, and I am constantly doing so in my alliance chat. A lot of ppl are stressed from the changes....PvP, pve, etc. The game has about a 1 good significant update to 3 bad updates ratio of recent...so its a surprise there is fatigue.

Add on top of all that the fact that good ppl leave all the time who are hard to replace and its nit surprising at all. Heck, I don't remember when shikao, for example, even left. He helped do some nice grunt work for things, hard go imagine someone doing what he did from scratch. Some ppl were just nice to banter with..but they leave..move on. It's always hard to replace a good person, be it at a job or a forum or in life or whatever.

Do I think the grumping is a little much? Yea, sure. You have to remember as well though, that this is thier official site. If ppl have a problem..this IS where they are suppose to go. We r the ppl that have holed up in what is suppose to be a help site.

Also, hailmary has a great point...this was kinda like a giant alliance chat in a way. How many tunes did u hear someone say "Iwont attack that guy from the forum" or " sorry I attacked, I didn't know you posted."

Unknown

I actually spend a lot more time in my alliance's various other communication channels than I do here. In-game chat, the Facebook group, etc. As a matter of fact, I often feel like I'm going out of my way to come here and read or post, since I've usually already communicated with my peeps via other means.

As a matter of fact, WYP, you and your Shield buddies are one of the few reasons I keep coming back. "I wonder if Beezer saw that message in our thread?" "I should let WYP know I wasn't being a jerk when I attacked him." "I have to whine at Jachdo that his Magneto totally killed me." And "I need commiseration about being bracketed with reckless. "

So please don't go! We need you WYP... I need you.

But not TU1 so you can feel free to mute him.

WilsonFisk

walkyourpath wrote:

The final straw?

A community member posts a call for others to support another player going into recovery. That thread? 5 responses.

I don't take this game seriously enough to argue about it, but do like to have a little fun with the ensuing drama, but point you have made is an excellent one.

Unknown

I post rarely anyway, and consider myself still a relative newbie to the game really. But I did post yesterday that I hadn't been here for the past three weeks and a whole lot seemed to have changed in that time.

Still find this place helpful, but yeah, different.

And whilst I do blame the introduction of Alliances, for a lot of things now, I wonder of the numerous changes to this game are just bringing in different people.

Unknown

radiopy wrote:

Not sure if this is a joke thread or not (mirrors "This Game Isn't Fun Anymore") quite a bit. As a sometimes-poster, I thought I would weigh in.

If it wasn't for the forums, I probably would have dropped this game long ago. But this has got to be one of the best communities and best group of people I've met online (or maybe I'm just naive). The people in my alliance? All great people. The people in (most) other alliances? Also great people. How often does someone even CARE enough about someone else in a MATCH 3 GAME to post that, hey, we want to wish them well? Can't tell if walkyourpath was being serious, but that thread has more replies and more views than this thread. This isn't just a game; it's a community.

With all of the bickering about certain alliances recently, it's worth mentioning that this is a very small percentage of not just the player base but the forum group as well. I remember in the early days where a forum member was struggling to get their first Magneto cover and played a lightning round and forum-people would attack-retreat this person to catapult them into first place. These players got NOTHING out of it (except maybe a bit of tanking).

Candy Crush doesn't have that. Farmville doesn't have that. World of Warcraft may have that, but it's not a casual match-3 game.

This is the best casual gaming community out there and I am proud to post and be involved in the forum.

I know- I have always felt that way since I first joined the forum, and I wouldn't have enjoyed MPQ as much(Although the game itself is really good too. you know what I mean)if it weren't for the friendly community and the people in my alliance.

Unknown

HailMary wrote:

The alliance system is the direct cause of this.

soenottelling wrote:

I blame alliances

I blame seasons more so than alliances. Even when alliances were competing for the third cover, there was still a sense of camaraderie and the debate focused on the design principles of shifting rewards from single players to alliances. I'm sure that alliances stepped up some competition and started the shift towards cliques/isolationism. However, it wasn't until the advent of season 1 with the first new 4* (with solid skills and a fan favorite) where the competition became protracted and unrelenting, and the cliques became entrenched. All my opinion, of course.

Entrenched does not mean intractable though. I think a few cooperative release events (a la Hulk style) and a short break before season 2 (perhaps with some revamps to the scoring systems) would go a long way to restoring community here on the forum.

As a mod, I do feel a bit like a "guardian" or "caretaker" of the forum (despite it being purely a voluntary position and that we were all plucked from the ranks of the masses). Perhaps it falls on the mods to be more active in consolidating "hate threads" so that we don't see 80 negative threads and only a handful of positive. As an aside, consolidating threads is about as far as I would say the mods could go - any further would be stomping on free speech and imposing our subjective will on the forumites (which I 100% do not support). So I guess maybe I'll think on this and start a poll later - can the mods do more to help "police"/"foster" the community?

Unknown

"sorry we are closing this thread because it belongs on the complaints and bickering subforum"

Unknown

pandaberry6 wrote:

The Ladder wrote:

It's **** like this that leads us long time contributors to post what walk posted there.

I'm with walk on this one, the forum used to be fun. I strongly suspect that alliances played their part, not ground breaking analysis, but there isn't the inclination to want to share data or help the community any more. At least not at Ladder towers.

It was good whilst it lasted.

Yup. I noticed that too. Even during the elite tourneys - people were sharing info - even at the point in the competition that would make or break the top spot.

Sort of...?

During the avengers elite tournament there was a guy (thereck I think?) who everyone thought was cheating until after the tournament when he shared his strategy for hitting opponents twice, and even WYP didn't go into any detail on his strategy until it was over.

Unknown

I will say that I've felt that the tenor of my posting has become increasingly negative of late. I don't know if that's a reasonable thing for me to think--I'm probably always kind of negative--but that's the impression I've had. When a game you enjoy keeps doing inexplicably unpleasant things, the need to vent can become overwhelming. An alliance mate was commenting on how much fun he had during one of the recent events, and his description was telling: "It was like realizing that that guy you know who beats his wife is surprisingly fun to hang out with."

Anyway, I think a truly cooperative event would do a ton to boost community morale. Progress bars and global objectives are a good start, but it would be nice if they got us all something good instead of just another stage in which to compete. What if there were progressive bonuses available in a game mode that were undisclosed? Like, if 100 mission wins with teams featuring Bagman won everybody an ISO-8 bonus, and nobody would even know it was a possibility until someone won the first one...

Something to get the MPQ community working together for once. Would be a cool gimmick.

Kiamodo

As humans we crave novelty and new things to indulge and participate in. We are all community people who share a common intrest in marvel and this game. I think when alliances formed most people shifted from the forums to alliance chat or line. Maybe the competitive side of this game got the better of some of us. As a whole it's a very good community there just haven't been crazy developments that would encourage us to keep coming back to the forums. Some of the older players have seen and talked through all of this material before. I for one didn't see the post about the individual mostly because I spend time in chat more than scanning the forums. I wish everyone the best and I'm proud of the community, sometimes more than others. Good luck to everyone!!

KaioShinDE

The tone and athmosphere of a forum mirrors the playerbase's attitude towards the game. You call it "rehashing the same tired old complaints", but that is simply the reason the forum went sour. Don't blame the playerbase, blame D3.

Passion and hopefulness turned into frustration, disappointment and burnout.

I hope the devs are real proud that their numbers went up by 0.x percent in the last two weeks when they'll start to notice the steady decline that will soon follow.

Unknown

KaioShinDE wrote:

The tone and athmosphere of a forum mirrors the playerbase's attitude towards the game. You call it "rehashing the same tired old complaints", but that is simply the reason the forum went sour. Don't blame the playerbase, blame D3.

Passion and hopefulness turned into frustration, disappointment and burnout.

I hope the devs are real proud that their numbers went up by 0.x percent in the last two weeks when they'll start to notice the steady decline that will soon follow.

I think the post-Season 1 participation will be interesting, one way or the other. I suspect there's a fair number of players who are trudging along until then and then re-evaluating.

Bowgentle

Impulse wrote:

KaioShinDE wrote:

The tone and athmosphere of a forum mirrors the playerbase's attitude towards the game. You call it "rehashing the same tired old complaints", but that is simply the reason the forum went sour. Don't blame the playerbase, blame D3.

Passion and hopefulness turned into frustration, disappointment and burnout.

I hope the devs are real proud that their numbers went up by 0.x percent in the last two weeks when they'll start to notice the steady decline that will soon follow.

I think the post-Season 1 participation will be interesting, one way or the other. I suspect there's a fair number of players who are trudging along until then and then re-evaluating.

Which is exactly why I fully expect season 2 to launch without any break, to keep people invested.
I'd love to be proven wrong, but the last weeks haven't exactly been promising.

Although, to find something positive, to let the second sub of Oscorp run its course without tinkering with the goalposts even though that was on the cards was a good move. Now we need about 10 more of those and we might get some confidence in the devs judgement back.

Bainee

At this point Lurking is the best option.

Unknown

gamar wrote:

During the avengers elite tournament there was a guy (thereck I think?) who everyone thought was cheating until after the tournament when he shared his strategy for hitting opponents twice, and even WYP didn't go into any detail on his strategy until it was over.

IIRC the double-hitting bug was actually posted midway.

Wyp really made a good report after the tournament but it mostly explained the shieldapolaza tied down all the attention too.