Spider-Ham, oh where art thou....

The rockett
The rockett Posts: 2,016 Chairperson of the Boards
in MPQ General Discussion
Back when Spider-Ham was released as a limited character, the question was asked if he will be a limited Dino type character or like Howard the Duck.  We were told by @Brigby that he will be a Howard type of limited. 

https://forums.d3go.com/discussion/76471/mpq-winter-holidays-celebration-updated-12-31-18/p2

Spider-Ham was released on 12-24-18.  Since his release, Webbed Wonder (where you get a Howard cover on the last sub on the last wave) has ran 2 times since.  So I wonder when we will get this “Howard-type limited release”.  
Thoughts?
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Comments

  • Shintok17
    Shintok17 Posts: 620 Critical Contributor
    Same questions for TaskMaster. 
  • therightwaye
    therightwaye Posts: 459 Mover and Shaker
    I expect July. For Spider-Man Far From Home release.

  • Tony_Foot
    Tony_Foot Posts: 1,790 Chairperson of the Boards
    Shintok17 said:
    Same questions for TaskMaster. 
    Taskmaster was stated at the time as being a anniversary character. Not that bothered about limited 4* anymore. 
  • bluewolf
    bluewolf Posts: 5,733 Chairperson of the Boards
    I'd like more chances at Spider-Ham.  His purple could be a useful TU for special tile removal.  I have 9 covers....

    It would be nice to see some communication about this.  Until I got to the final node yesterday, I imagined that maybe Webbed Wonder would give me a Spider-Ham cover.
  • DAZ0273
    DAZ0273 Posts: 10,101 Chairperson of the Boards
    Well I would imagine he would be a prime candidate as the progression (or even placement) rewards for Bags to Riches. Otherwise...
  • Rhadamanthus23
    Rhadamanthus23 Posts: 48 Just Dropped In
    Pretty sure Porker is a standard progression reward in Sinister 600, if they run that one, again.
  • bluewolf
    bluewolf Posts: 5,733 Chairperson of the Boards
    Rhadamanthus23 said:
    Pretty sure Porker is a standard progression reward in Sinister 600, if they run that one, again.
    Should have been!  But wasn’t. S600 ran on 12/13, prior to Spider-Ham being in game on 12/24.

    It would be a natural place to offer his cover.  Maybe that was the plan until the community had the overwhelmingly negative reaction to S600.
  • DAZ0273
    DAZ0273 Posts: 10,101 Chairperson of the Boards
    bluewolf said:
    Rhadamanthus23 said:
    Pretty sure Porker is a standard progression reward in Sinister 600, if they run that one, again.
    Should have been!  But wasn’t. S600 ran on 12/13, prior to Spider-Ham being in game on 12/24.

    It would be a natural place to offer his cover.  Maybe that was the plan until the community had the overwhelmingly negative reaction to S600.
    S600 is totally fixable though, so that is back on the Devs.
  • BearVenger
    BearVenger Posts: 453 Mover and Shaker
    edited March 2019
    First, let me preface this by saying that I like new events with new plots and formats, and I appreciate the devs taking a chance on running them, rather than more hash-outs of the cookie-cutter Story events.

    I think for new branching/alliance/Boss events, it would be nice for Day 1 to act like a Prologue: Nothing counts for the Alliance progression, and everyone can get the scoring mechanism under their fingers and figure out what's optimal for the rest of the weekend.

    Alliance and individual daily rewards can be given on Day 1, but you haven't scrod yer teammates over by being the ninth person in the same node or something.
  • ThaRoadWarrior
    ThaRoadWarrior Posts: 9,388 Chairperson of the Boards
    I was convinced the final node of the Savage Land sub in that 5* Carol event we just had was going to give out a Spider-Ham based on the story, but then it didn't. So I'm back to being baffled also.
  • bluewolf
    bluewolf Posts: 5,733 Chairperson of the Boards
    This is just another example of where a little communication would be nice.....This thread brought up two big questions:

    1.  Where is Spider-Ham?
    2.  What is the plan for raid events/S600?

    Crickets.
  • HoundofShadow
    HoundofShadow Posts: 8,004 Chairperson of the Boards
    From last year FAQ:

    While we usually say little about future plans*:

    <Snipped off unrelated parts>

    *: Reasons for this: software development, creative work, and entertaining people are all messy and unpredictable, and when you cross the three together in a live game, making very many promises can lock you into disaster. And we know most of you are happiest with more detail and dislike when something you're expecting changes, so we typically talk about new things when we're certain of the details. Because of the nature of game development, that's usually when the feature's about to come out.
  • Kojubat
    Kojubat Posts: 142 Tile Toppler
    HoundofShadow said:
    From last year FAQ:

    While we usually say little about future plans*:

    <Snipped off unrelated parts>

    *: Reasons for this: software development, creative work, and entertaining people are all messy and unpredictable, and when you cross the three together in a live game, making very many promises can lock you into disaster. And we know most of you are happiest with more detail and dislike when something you're expecting changes, so we typically talk about new things when we're certain of the details. Because of the nature of game development, that's usually when the feature's about to come out.
    (Emphasis mine.)

    Considering they specifically said that Spider-Ham would be similar to Howard, that would imply they were "certain of the details". Note that this detail was during the release of Spider-Ham (already out at time of this thread), not the currently vaporware event that awards him (not yet "about" to come out as of me typing this).

    So, either:
    A ) They are being uncommunicative because that is the modus operandi, not some justified stance.
    B ) They were not certain of the details and made a statement they cannot admit was at least misleading if not outright incorrect.

    There is a difference between "We had planned on an event that would award Spider-Ham, but it is not yet ready for production. Sorry about that, please enjoy this other new thing we just put out while we figure it out." and "The new event scheduled for April 1 awarding Spider-Ham had flognarns interacting with gusmelons in a way the programmers tell us would impact red ISO sales. We are rescheduling it for April 7, pending new art agreements with Marvel and a contract negotiation with a freelance animator."

    Most people are not asking for the second answer. The first answer would go a long way towards customer satisfaction. Note that there are no specifics, yet recognizes there is an issue/question and provides a statement addressing it.
  • The Viceroy Returns
    The Viceroy Returns Posts: 493 Mover and Shaker
    HoundofShadow said:
    From last year FAQ:

    While we usually say little about future plans*:

    <Snipped off unrelated parts>

    *: Reasons for this: software development, creative work, and entertaining people are all messy and unpredictable, and when you cross the three together in a live game, making very many promises can lock you into disaster. And we know most of you are happiest with more detail and dislike when something you're expecting changes, so we typically talk about new things when we're certain of the details. Because of the nature of game development, that's usually when the feature's about to come out.
    I would counter with this and say that almost every other dev out there gives "State of our game" updates every now and then, even those that are the dreaded "games as a service".  I would almost say especially those that are "games as a service", because they need to keep the info popping to have people stick around and know the game is supported.  Talking into a vacuum gets pretty old.

    And the thing is, they don't even have to get specific on anything if they are afraid of painting themselves into a box that now they MUST DELIVER!! on some vague thing they said in a post in some obscure response.  Just generalities of "we are thinking of doing this type of thing" or "yes, we hear your concerns about ____, and it's high on our list.", etc.
    Example set of Questions (with what are a combo of me putting on my dev hat & hopeful answers....):

    Q: Are their plans to re-balance Classic 5-Stars?
    A: It is on our radar.  It's a two-fold process - First, decide which ones are in the greatest need of a re-balance. Second - , once chosen, how best to re-balance them.  Is it just simple number tweaking with their powers, or does a power need a complete overhaul?

    Q: In that balance pass, is 5-Star match damage & Hit Point going to be looked at to bring them more in line with more recent releases?
    A: We did this with the Doctor Octopus re-balance that happened a while ago, so I would expect something similar.

    Q: What is the timetable for the next 5-Star re-balance and how often would they happen after the first one?
    A: It's a bit tricky to give a time window.  This is mainly due to the support content & occasional feature we have to implement for tie-ins, such as a certain high profile movie coming out Soon that you may have heard of.
    So it's hard to say.  Ideally the first one would happen between tie-ins and 5-Star releases.  Optimistically, there will be at least one re-balance within the next month or two.
    That being said, until we go through the process of one 5-Star re-balance, we don't know how often they would happen.  We'd like to try and establish a pattern of some kind, perhaps every other month until just about all of the classics have been touched at least a little bit, especially the older ones and the outliners that are noticeably "worse" than their fellow 5-Stars.  Internally we have our own ideas on who these are, but I'm sure the community could tell us who they think those might be. :)
  • bluewolf
    bluewolf Posts: 5,733 Chairperson of the Boards
    Short answer:

    This dev team is apparently A-OK with saying "SCL10 Coming Soon" in-game for about a year and a half now.

    They certainly could speak to things they intend to implement at some point in time.

    I believe it is highly probable that they are hard at work at Endgame tie-in shenanigans (new characters....new event maybe?....new background art like for Ant-Man/Captain Marvel?....new Supports?.....certainly new costumes.....).  And therefore the other things they might have thought about are way on the back burner.

    Would it be so hard to say that to us?  
  • HoundofShadow
    HoundofShadow Posts: 8,004 Chairperson of the Boards
    I think they touched on that as well:

    <Snipped>

    It's challenging to do satisfying stand-alone Q&A - so many of the things that people naturally want to know are "when is X coming" or "how will Y change in the future", and those aren't questions that can really be honestly answered until there's an announcement to make. Maybe the solution there is to have that sort of interaction around announcements, and then there will be a bunch of questions about whatever change we're talking about that have a more interesting answer than "we're looking into it".

    <Snipped>

    If I were to interpret both responses, it would be:

    The players want to know when X is happening. The devs can't give a firm answer because of reasons A, B, C etc. If the devs gave an estimate of when X is happening, for example, "X is probably happening in 3 months' time" and it didn't happen, the players will be very unhappy, which is true.

    In another scenario, let's say the devs gave an approximate answer on when X is happening and somewhere down the line, something else with higher priority pops up and delays the implementation of X. The devs informs the community about this but maybe due to contractual reason, they can't reveal  what that higher priority event is about. The same thing happened again and X gets delayed again. The devs says the same thing. Will this kind of communication makes you happy? I doubt so. Sooner or later, you will be tired of this answer, which I think the devs is trying to avoid.

    Also, will you really be satisfied if the devs said they are looking into re-balancing some older 5-star without giving you a specific timeline? Chances are you want to know when that is happening... And we are back full circle again.

    There's nothing wrong with asking the devs these questions but if there isn't any answer, based on my interpretation of their responses it means it's not happening soon. Take Support as an example, the players have been asking for months when they can get a better way to earn Support. There was silence for many months and one day Brigby revealed in one of the Support thread that details will be coming.

  • crackninja
    crackninja Posts: 444 Mover and Shaker
    I don't need specifics and I don't want false promises.  What I would like is a brief update every once in awhile, even if the answer isn't what I hoped for.
    Is SCL10 actually still coming?  I'd accept "yeah, we had to push this back but it's still coming" or "it turns out we aren't prepared to go there, we had to scrap it".
    Are you content with the two main phases of the game (story and versus), or have you considered adding another component, or adding a new wrinkle to those such as objective based missions?  "We love the format of the game and want to stick with the formula that has made it successful" or "you know, we are always looking for ways to improve the game, and we're excited to see if we can implement something like this" both work for me.
    When can I get another spider-ham cover?  "Not as soon as we'd hoped, but you'll get your chance" or "we had to push this character back indefinitely, we do apologize to the Peter Porker fans out there" are both reasonable.  Hearing nothing at all, not so great.
    Just give me a little insight into the direction of the game I spend so much of my life playing, because from where I sit, it feels like they don't really care if I keep playing or not.
  • HoundofShadow
    HoundofShadow Posts: 8,004 Chairperson of the Boards
    edited March 2019
    I don't see the point of forcing an answer out of the devs if they can't or aren't ready to reveal what's going to happen in the future or what they plan to do.

    If the players are happy with seeing replies like these to their questions:

    1) "we are looking into this..."
    2) "this is something in our to-do list but..."
    3) "we can't reveal anything yet due to contractual reason(s)."
    4) "X will be delayed due to..."
    5) "X will be delayed again due to..."

    Then, personally, I think the responses are quite meaningless. 

    In a way, the devs has already answered those questions by not answering. If you ask something and there isn't any reply from the dev or Brigy and others within a week or so, you can infer that it's not likely to happen anytime "soon". 

    Take character rebalance/rework as an example, which is a very popular question here. When is X character going to be rebalanced? I think the answer is when that character checks all the dev's buff/nerf/rework criteria plus some special criteria, not the players' criteria of simply increasing match damage or raw power damage/ap, decrease ap cost to below 9 etc.

    Take 5* Dr Ock's rework as an example. The devs didn't reveal months in advance that they are going to rework him. They simply reveal when the details are certain.

    Or...

    Take Support as an example. Someone started a thread about Support availability in Oct 18. Brigby replied about something being in the work in Nov 18. The "work" was revealed in late Jan 19. 

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