Why there will NEVER be a Player's Advisory Group

Colognoisseur
Colognoisseur Posts: 806 Critical Contributor
in MPQ General Discussion
The suggestion has come up again within the saved covers thread about a player's advisory group. This is not a new idea. It was suggested within the first four months of MPQ's existence. Here are the many reasons why it will never happen:

1.) Demiurge doesn't want it.- I could just stop here. I've brought this up in face-to-face discussions at NYCC. I've spoken on discord, here, and Reddit over the years. if there is one consistent response is they believe it is easier said then done. As I said the list should stop here but I've come around to their way of thinking.

2.) Who sits on the panel? Well of course the most vocal players on the forum or discord or Reddit or PW3. As mentioned over and over we represent less than 5% of the player base. To really have a comprehensive and  responsive panel it would need to represent MPQ as a whole with the most representatives coming from the tier where most of the players are. If we use that as a yardstick that means maybe one or two players from the group who reads this. Think about that. Is there any one, or two, people here who 100% represents your opinion except yourself? Of course there isn't. Which then turns those players into just another convenient target for complaining.

3.) When would the panel be employed? For every change? So a player's advisory group would need to weigh in on every change to the game before it goes live? That should give you a reason why it isn't going to happen. A group of players holding the development timeline hostage to their review.

In the end we have seen Demiurge respond to many things that have been pointed out on the forum and change them. As far as it is ever going to exist the forum, discord, and reddit are as close as we will ever get to a player's advisory panel. If you think about it those outlets have produced change many times. I've come to believe it is as good as it is going to get.

Comments

  • broll
    broll Posts: 4,732 Chairperson of the Boards
    edited June 2018
    I personally think the bigger issue is the Marvel license.  They've stated in the past that the reason why datamines/spoilers are so bad is they could get in trouble if a character is known about earlier than the release date/news date.  This makes any type of alpha/beta much harder.  I suspect that's the reason they say "they believe it is easier said then done" not because they don't want it.  Doing this with characters you made up and own the IP (like Blizzard having a test realm in WoW for example) doesn't have this legal hurtle to figure out.
  • The rockett
    The rockett Posts: 2,016 Chairperson of the Boards
    I was just told that Marvel Strike Force has a player panel and they signed NDA.  So this is fully on Demi and D3.  
  • ZeiramMR
    ZeiramMR Posts: 1,357 Chairperson of the Boards
    I think #3 is a little disingenuous because there are two obvious answers: 1) Only for the big game features being added/updates (DDQ, Champions, Supports, Saved Covers) or 2) Character Additions/Rebalances. The latter is much more and frequent work to coordinate so I don't see anything coming like that... short of being more reactive to feedback in the forum threads when full stats are posted and a lot of people see a problem. (Which can still be wrong, like the balking at Agent Venom because of any self-damage)
  • Wumpushunter
    Wumpushunter Posts: 627 Critical Contributor
    I'm glad there is no player panel. You know that even if they did let ONE new player on it the whales would be over represented and would only benefit 5 star end game players. No way would any advisory group represent equally all sides.
  • broll
    broll Posts: 4,732 Chairperson of the Boards
    The rockett said:
    I was just told that Marvel Strike Force has a player panel and they signed NDA.  So this is fully on Demi and D3.  
    So someone blabbed?  Lol jk. Interesting that tinykittys my post. 
  • The rockett
    The rockett Posts: 2,016 Chairperson of the Boards
    IceIX said:
    Strike Force is also being done by FoxNext, whose parent company also owns at least some rights to parts of the Marvel universe. Which also means that their contracts with Marvel probably read quite a bit different than ours. Our contract, for example, basically means that if any piece of info of confidential projects leaks from us, we get Disney Ninja/Lawyers (ninja lawyers?) on us. So it's more trouble than it would probably be worth to either renegotiate that part of it or to make 100% sure that people invited over don't see something that they shouldn't, even accidentally.

    For example, for those "office shot" type video shoots? That takes hours to make double/triple sure that there isn't some piece of concept art or script or something somewhere. Bringing people physically in, or allowing them access to some kind of dev build would be orders of magnitude more difficult.
    That is very interesting and makes sense.  There have been things though, Win Based PVP 1st run, that player could have gave feed back as soon as it was shown like we did as soon as it was posted.  So some of this makes sense but some doesn’t.  Now how would you handle that?  Not 100% sure but there could be a way.  
  • Kevmcg
    Kevmcg Posts: 122 Tile Toppler
    Having a player advisory group does not have to be on all aspects of the game including new characters or rebalances if that would be legally risky.

    There are many that would provide opinions on items like game mechanics, quality of life, nuisance features that would not be as risky as they are contained within MPQ itself.

    Some items like the AP bar toggle, removal of tapping, win-based vs. point-based PVP, Boss Rush difficulty at high end all would have benefited and been quicker with an established group of players. And Yes, this group should not be all veterans/whales. Need to design for new, intermediate, and advanced players.  
  • CaptainFreaky
    CaptainFreaky Posts: 451 Mover and Shaker
    Yeah as someone who has to deal with NDA's and such all the time, certainly it's understandable to be risk averse when it comes to even inadvertently leaking or sharing content before it's public.  I think sharing thinking about potential changes on this forum or discord could help fix problems before they steam role out of control, but there are two problems with that:

    (1) Neither the forums nor discord have much representation from the casual/new playerbase

    (2) It might be difficult to get accurate feedback because we may only get partial information (for instance one change may seem bad but if you knew of the second change coming later might not be so bad)

    I think maybe it's best to think of changes in a couple of buckets:
    (1) Quality of life updates that benefit everyone (these could be UI updates etc)
    (2) Improvements to make new players less confused/frustrated (and more willing to buy roster slots or whatever metric Demi is using for player engagement/revenue)
    (3) Improvements to make middle/late game players not drift away and continue to spend (could be features tuned to late game players, new content, better MMR/PVP, etc).
    (4) Significant new features (eg Championing, Supports etc) that effect everyone differently
    (5) New Character specs or Character Rebalances and their effect on the early/middle/late meta

    I'm sure there are a couple other categories, but you get the idea - some are very relevant to early game players and some are really much more relevant to later game players (especially significant changes to the meta - Gambit I'm looking at you).

    If Demi wants to improve the game, they should look for public ways to engage the right audience for each of the 5 (or however many) broad topics that they look to improve.   Alternatively, they need to adopt a VERY nimble and flexible process where they release new game elements and are prepared to rapidly tweak/adjust them based on rational user sentiment that they couldn't foresee.

    What is NOT good for game health is to not look for ways to get player feedback ahead of time and also to not be prepared to quickly and adequately adjust things when rational user feedback is available (again, see Gambit).

    We all want a better game with more engaged users -> I'm sure Demi wants this too.  So if they want to improve, they really need to look for ways to incorporate feedback in ways that don't destroy the overall quality or revenue model they need to survive.  

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