state of the union - can we get one...?

jredd

i've enjoyed this game for around 4 years now. but like many others, am starting to find it a little stagnant and uninspiring. and the worst part is, there really isn't any communication from the powers that be as to what direction the game is heading in, or what plans are in place to fix some qol issues that seem to have been lingering forever.

so, this is my thread, speaking straight to the devs, in hopes of getting some kind of a response on the issues of the day. (and of past days that still haven't been resolved).

1. the quality of the last x number of characters has been appallingly poor. this has probably become the biggest issue in the game thanks in no small part to the release of 5* cap marvel. like many people i have been hoarding cp and lt's waiting for her to drop and what? now we have 3 sub par 5* in latests. for a game that's built around character acquisition, how am i supposed to get excited about using hard earned resources to get hard to obtain characters that suck? there hasn't been a decent 4* released lately either. whomever is in charge at creating new characters needs to figure this out asap or a lot more vets will probably be jumping ship.

2. fixing sub par characters. with the release of the latest grip of characters their job just got a lot bigger. but where have the character improvements gone? there are several (well known at that) mediocre characters that could use a buff. we should be getting a buff for an older character for every 2 new ones.

3. dilution. as the train keeps moving and more and characters are introduced and older characters fall by the wayside. feeders seem to have been put on hold. obtaining covers for classic 5* characters boils down to champ level rewards from 4* or from the odd special 5* store. people that don't pull classics tokens are not seeing a lot of older 5* covers, at least i'm not. a classics token sprinkled into rewards would help some. finishing the feeders would be a good idea too.

4. different game modes! a practice barracks, revamped gauntlet, alliance gauntlet, high score challenge, more 'combined arms' style events where you need to use more of the roster, non placement based events, casual or long term events, 4* and 5* covers added to dpd, more prologue missions/stories... the only things we have gotten, aside from a couple new alliance events, have been the cap marvel event and supports circuit. more of the same grind. something fresh, and different would inject some excitement back into the game. all they need to do is come into the forum for ideas and then run with the responses.

5. pace of play issues. being a grind-fest means any ways to cut down on play time would be nice. putting a 'replay node' option on the victory screen would save a decent chunk of scrolling through screens to get back to playing. being able to wave the nodes would be another option. putting a number on each node so we could easily see how many clears have been done would help. an 'open all' option on cover stores would also help. pre-set teams or favourites would save the scrolling and finding issue. there's probably several more small, easily implemented ideas that we could come up with. again, all they need to do is come here for ideas. 

6. supports. good idea, terrible implementation. 

7. costumes. good idea, terrible implementation.

there's probably a few more, but i feel these are probably the biggest issues. so please, devs, i'm sure you're already aware of all of these, but if you could maybe put your heads together, come up with some thoughts/solutions and then get back to us that would definitely be appreciated. as the game trends in a bad direction the radio silence doesn't give us any faith in your ability to steer the ship.

The rockett

These are great points.  One thing that is eye opening to me, and a bit concerning, is the amount buys and special deals they have going on.  We already have had a ton of bundle deals, HP sales and now something that we never had before is Bonus CPs.  

The reason why this is a bit concerning to me is that MPQ was not involved in Amazon’s Digital day,  whether this was Amazons decision or not, the revenue increase they saw from that day in 2017 had to be  astronomical.  Now add in the miss that they had from this years sale and there is a big gap for sure.  I believe, and others as well, that all the deals that they are doing to to generate revenue for the game since they are down due to the Amazon miss.  This almost seems like a panic move.  Not saying the game is dying or will shut, all I am saying is that a lot of vets are leaving due to the issues brought above.  Some of these really need to be addressed and hopefully soon.  

FraggleinPA

These are all excellent points.

What I would like to know, ultimately, is:  what steps (or functionality) are the devs going to take to inject some life into an addictive game that is becoming more predictable, grinding, and stagnant - to convince players (especially those who are veterans and have spent a lot of time and money on MPQ) to stick around instead of jumping ship?  Even ONE step such as the ones posted by the OP would be encouraging.

bluewolf

Dilution is a huge problem and a demoralizing one.  (not to mention roster slot costs, I estimate it would cost $500 or 100,000 HP to roster everyone currently in game for a new person once they hit the 1k per slot cost.  I know, pace it out etc, but this would be someone making very little from champ rewards.)

Options for dilution are the same as always;

1.  Retire characters.  The whole point of the game and token dilution is that you should roster everyone (and devs make more money from roster slots).

2.  Vault characters.  A soft retirement.  Not something the devs seem to favor as they went away from the Latest weighting almost a year ago once Saved Covers became a feature.

3.  Increase resources/CP/LT availability.  Making pulls more frequent (which hasn't happened in about 1 1/2 years other than Support Circuit being introduced with the extra CP) makes dilution a little less of an issue with volume. But it throws off the economy and is a very tough balance for newer people, where you don't want to give them too many high end pulls, which will just make them frustrated as they get overwhelmed with roster slot pressure.

4. The option the devs seem to have chosen for now:  Popup special stores.  We saw the 4* favorite store this year and a number of 5* stores have been popping up as well.  It seem reasonable within the constraints of the game economy and is probably the only one we can expect for a while.  But I don't believe it's nearly good enough.  Making a permanent rotating store with groups of 4's and 5's seems like a better option (like the Supports).

In terms of offers, we don't truly know how much money the devs are making with the current offer model vs what they missed out on from Digital Day.  However:  The devs, like anyone, want to make more money each year.  Going up is what we all want to do.  So making more offers is certainly going to capture more spenders.  The flip side of frequent offers for the devs is making the "normal" price less enticing so they will end up (probably) getting less buys from the normal store with more spikes around the offers.  The other point is that the special offer rampup really began last year just after Gambit Digital Day, so its not necessarily a reaction to what happened this year.

I'd say I hope the game is healthy for a long time, but the recent character releases make me wonder how much I really care about that at this point....

Daredevil217

To be honest; all of these points have been collected and presented several times for YEARS. Some examples are on the front page right now (Brolls retirement for example). I don’t know how much saying “I’m talking directly to the developers with this thread” means they are listening, anymore than they listen to all the other threads and surveys.  

I give you props because I agree with all of your points and am glad you didn’t shoehorn in permanent progression only PVE or time slice removal as game solutions. I had to play progression last PVE due to a work conflict and it was pretty awful. Felt like the Deadpool’s Daily Quest grind- only longer. Much happier now that I’m back to racing other players again.

HoundofShadow

TL;DR You want the devs to work on these issues faster? It's simple. Increase the dev team by five times to ten times the current size. 


The problems have always been this:

Limited resources, limited manpower, limited development time.

As such, they need to prioritise their tasks, based on whatever criteria they set, and based on whatever Marvel/Disney wants them to do. 
 
If the dev team is as big as Blizzard's, I doubt feedbacks or complaints about user interface, lack of game mode, character balances etc will still exist.

As far as new characters being a dud goes, imagine a 5-storey tower. Veterans like you are at the top, you are unlikely to care about what happen to the bottom. You might care about what happen to level 4. You are unlikely to think about the consequences of how churning out meta characters frequently affect those below you. You don't care. You only care how you are going to benefit from the latest characters. Can it help me the match just as fast my current team, or even faster? If it doesn't, it's useless.

However, the devs can't think like only those players at level 5, they have to move up and down the tower to see how it might affect the rest of the players in the long and short run. 

I'm sure the devs would like to fix some of the QoL changes mentioned in here, it's just that they are constrained by their team size.

Colognoisseur

If someone would copy and paste the OP in to Discord then you know the development team will see it.
They use Brigby to tell them what happens here. 

bluewolf

Trust me, these issues are brought up frequently on Discord as well.

The devs know our complaints and issues very well.  Nothing this thread brings up is a mystery to devs.  If they are halfway competent (I think they are) they have some kind of ongoing document/suggestion list that has all of the player complaints collected.

You decide whether their lack of movement is a result of lack of resources, willingness, etc.  Or whether some changes are too much to even expect from the game and its code at this point.  

I think it's worth noting that the Cosmic Chaos PVE seemed to specifically include several suggestions/addressed complaints made many times here and on Discord, among other places, about other PVEs. 

I do believe they have the interest and capacity to address issues that we bring up when the issues dovetail with their interests.  But they obviously can't and won't get to all of them, ever.  And if they do, their answer may not be the most player-friendly one.

Dragon_Nexus

While I hate live service games these days coming out with barely any content and a Road Map for how they're going to add content over the next 12 months to make it finally feel like a full game...

...having a road map for MPQ would be nice about now.

Malcrof

Just an FYI , in case this thread poofs before next week, bookmark it so when Brigby is back he can see it, or tag IceIX

bluewolf

You know, after thinking about it, some dev communication would be nice in light of the fact that the former lead designer, Casey Malone, is now working for Marvel Strike Force.

Is there a new one?  Maybe they were caught by surprise and trying to work things out.

HoundofShadow

It's sad to see Casey leave because he has been working on MPQ since the birth of the game? Is Will still around?

Glockoma

I’m just bringing this thread back to the front row because I truly herald the thoughts being impressed here.

Quality of life for the game deserves overdue attention from character rebalances to CP/LT acquisition rates to time slice devotion. 

The newest 5* is 2 weeks ahead of anticipation and those of us hanging on to the game by the smallest of margins could use a little “state of the union” attention right now.

theomen

Well stated Jredd. Everything you said would improve the game. Of all the issues, I think character rebalances would inject the most fun back into the game. I'm still holding out Hope that 5* Wasp gets rebalanced and becomes useable.

DyingLegend

I would like to know how they are going to address Dilution or if they will ever address it.

St_Bernadus

I agree with much of what has been said in this thread, I for one would be interested in a proper State of the Union address from the devs, saying what they think is the current state of the game and what they see coming down the road.

After yesterday's announcement of Hela, I'd certainly like to know if there are going to be an increasing number of 5-stars being released. As an example.

marshall

We can barely champ new 5*s as it is.

bluewolf

DyingLegend said:

I would like to know how they are going to address Dilution or if they will ever address it.

Last July someone started this thread:

https://forums.d3go.com/discussion/73864/dilution-fix-incoming-or-working-as-intended

It seems obvious that the answer is "We are continuing to ignore it."  I don't know if it will ever be addressed.  It seems like it would have to feel quite bad to players for the devs to do something, but the fact that everything is RNG hides its effect in the short term for a lot of players.

HoundofShadow

Let's look at their responses towards dilution from the past till the most recent time:

May 2017 
https://forums.d3go.com/discussion/64068/answers-to-the-8-questions-about-vaulting-5-2-17

Jun 2018
https://forums.d3go.com/discussion/73160/update-to-4-star-pack-odds-6-4-18/p1

bluewolf

OK.  The June 2018 was NOT a response to dilution whatsoever.  It did two things:

1.  Introduce full dilution - framed in a positive way by slightly increasing the odds of pulling a vintage 4 - to tokens so you no longer saw any concentration of characters in your pulls.

2.  Made the PVP token stores a more reasonable purchase by stopping the weighting of 3* characters to the detriment of pulling 4* characters.  Which helped the devs by making the stores more appealing, and players (very slightly) who mostly only pull their free tokens from those stores anyway.

Again, it made dilution WORSE in terms of your pulls being spread equally among all possible characters and has been the status quo for 9 1/2 months now.  We pointed out the issues that the change brought and devs had nothing to say.

HoundofShadow

I remember reading reply by the devs(?) about this selected 12 vs the current arrangement. I think they said something about champed rewards being more evenly gained, rather than champed rewards gained being concentrated on the top 12.