What will you do when Season 1 ends and…

Seasick Pirate

Nick Fury doesn't show within the first 24-hours?

Unknown

Wait until he does?

God these "where are my rewards?" threads are so annoying.

HairyDave

Wait it out.

It's not like one Fury cover is going to make much difference. Daken could at least be useful if you managed to get all three covers, and you've got the option if you're mental enough - or have enough disposable income - to pay for the rest of his covers

Fury is just a trophy.

Unknown

Seasick Pirate wrote:

Nick Fury doesn't show within the first 24-hours?

I am sure that D3 will learn their lesson from this and at the end of the next event the message will say...

"You will receive your rewards in the next 7 days"

Seasick Pirate

SirKopath wrote:

God these "where are my rewards?" threads are so annoying.

That's what I was getting at. If people are flipping out this badly over a a new Daken, how pissed would they be after not getting the reward they worked a month for?

Unknown

In fairness, people are used to a delay in getting their rewards after an event ends, but that delay is usually less than 2-3 hours, depending on whether you joined the event right at the beginning or somewhat later. (If you join the event later, you will see a longer delay.) Yes, the devs have a notice that says, "Delays may be up to 24 hours," but in general, it's much less than that.

In this case, we have an event that was marked by an early screwup that affected some players considerably more than others, producing an uneven playing field. That screwup was not remedied on an individual basis--very likely because it would have been prohibitively difficult to do so on a technical level. In addition, 3* Daken has been eagerly anticipated by many players for a while, and his released stats look like a powerful addition to any roster. The end of the event came and went, and after the usual wait of an hour or two, a few people got their individual rewards. After some more waiting, we realized that the rewards weren't being released on the usual schedule, and the server was going through an extended period of instability.

More than 24 hours has now passed since the end of the event, and I believe the vast majority of individual rewards and likely all of the alliance rewards have not been released. The card on the Events page recording the final leaderboards has disappeared. IceIX was on the boards briefly a few hours ago, but he was here to get feedback on an unrelated technical issue. After 26.5 hours, there has been ZERO official acknowledgement of this issue, not even a quick "hey, we know things are slower than usual; we're hard at work fixing the issue."

A reasonable player would say, "well, I guess I need to ticket the issue, to make sure the devs have a record of the rewards I'm owed." Unfortunately, from repeated reports over the past several months, the ticketing process is an abysmal failure at providing customer service. Delays may last weeks or MONTHS, and this particular issue is likely to be much worse than usual because of the high percentage of players affected, which will generate an unprecedented flood of tickets into a badly broken system. Also, unless you screenshot the leaderboards before they disappeared, you don't have that method of proof available to you anymore.

From all I've seen of IceIX, he sounds like a nice guy who is genuinely interested in providing feedback to and from the rest of the development staff. He's had a consistently reasonable attitude, and has been willing to explain the thinking behind various decisions, knowing that the decisions have been poorly received in some parts. The problem is that he does not provide ENOUGH feedback to the players on the forums. I'm not saying that he's slacking; I fully expect that he has many other responsibilities that take up most of his day. However, the scarcity of communications from the dev team is a very serious customer-service failing on d3's part.

TL;DR D3 needs to step up their game in communications and compensation for screwups that negatively impact the playerbase. Their reputation in both areas is terrible, and deservedly so, based on their track record.

Unknown

Vairelome wrote:

TL;DR D3 needs to step up their game in communications

I think this is hugely important in general, not just in terms of screw ups. I love playing MPQ and I love the Marvel theme, but I hate the fact that we all have to spend so much time trying to figure stuff out that could easily be explained to us in a few simple sentences. They make so many minor changes behind the scenes that have large ramifications for us as players (such as the bracketing changes recently), it's hugely disappointing that they don't communicate them better. You'd think they'd know better as well. F2P games depend on their community to survive, for those players to be happy with the game so they'll drop real money on it. The way things are going, D3 are just going to alienate the whole community and that spells trouble for the developers as the money will eventually dry up.

_RiO_

DaveyPitch wrote:

Vairelome wrote:

TL;DR D3 needs to step up their game in communications

I think this is hugely important in general, not just in terms of screw ups. I love playing MPQ and I love the Marvel theme, but I hate the fact that we all have to spend so much time trying to figure stuff out that could easily be explained to us in a few simple sentences. They make so many minor changes behind the scenes that have large ramifications for us as players (such as the bracketing changes recently), it's hugely disappointing that they don't communicate them better. You'd think they'd know better as well. F2P games depend on their community to survive, for those players to be happy with the game so they'll drop real money on it. The way things are going, D3 are just going to alienate the whole community and that spells trouble for the developers as the money will eventually dry up.

Not communicating changes breeds uncertainty with players. Uncertainty pushes players outside of their comfort-zones and causes them to make mistakes. Mistakes can be compensated for with shield, boost and health-pack purchases. Purchases that put a drain on ISO and HP reserves. Reserves that can be refilled in a pinch through micro-transactions.

The act of "keeping them guessing" is a viable (and despicable) tactic to drive sales.

Seasick Pirate

DaveyPitch wrote:

You'd think they'd know better as well. F2P games depend on their community to survive, for those players to be happy with the game so they'll drop real money on it.

With the only other Free-to-Play games I've played, I've only ever played for the first couple hours or so until I hit that "pay wall" where it's nearly impossible for a player to continue without pouring money into the game. I expected to do the same with this game. I had never played a Puzzle Quest game before but the Marvel theme is what hooked me.

I never got to the point were I felt the need to pay real money for anything in this game. A few times I came real close, to losing covers because I didn't have the roster space, but I was able to earn enough HP. About a month ago I started feeling like I wanted to put money into the game because I have been enjoying it for so long. But after some consideration I decided not to. Not because I don't want 3-star covers - I still do - it's because this game has been very inconsistent, and since finding these forums, I see it's way more than I would have ever guessed.

At this point, I don't think my money would be well-spent on this game. I don't mind character buffs and nerfs over time, I think it's healthy for balanced gameplay. But this game is hardly balanced. Not only am I sick of fighting OBW/Thor in 95% of my matches, but the outrageous scaling of PvE enemies has always been an issue with me. I remember with the Hulk and Ares Hunt events the enemies climbed to over level 200 when I was still building a 2-star roster. Not to mention how little information this game actually gives the player about basic gameplay. I have learned so much from this forum that I never would have from within the game. And I didn't even learn of this forum through the game but a Google search.

If this game ever gets to a point were it feels consistent and players know what to expect from the mechanics of it, then I will reconsider giving them my money. That is if I even still find this game fun at that point. Summer is coming and there are countless better ways for me to spend my time.