Al's Game Blog

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Originally linked in the Venture article series about MPQ, a new blog post went up yesterday @ http://almnop.tumblr.com

It is a never-ending challenge to keep our live games balanced. In Marvel Puzzle Quest, there are no mechanisms to self-balance overpowered characters and so if a single character is overly powerful, our spenders will tend to gather around them. All players have access to these characters so it’s not unfair, but it results in gameplay that lacks variety, which is ultimately bad for everyone’s enjoyment and ultimately our long-term retention.

In free-to-play, the balancing of durable goods presents a particular challenge. Players may have spend real-world dollars to upgrade the character and those who haven’t may have invested many hours grinding away. We’ve been through a few of these re-balancing passes and have learned some valuable lessons:

- This too shall pass – While you need to expect and accept that there will be a backlash and the first couple of days will be painful, give it a few days before you judge the results. In the early days of MPQ, Ragnarok was massively overpowered and the day we changed it players were furious. A week later, it was no longer a topic of widespread conversation.

- Telegraph the change – As soon as you know a character is overpowered, make sure you let your players know that you know. Months ago, we published a list of the top-5 incorrectly balanced characters. A week ago, we published the specific changes that were coming to Spiderman. This week we expect to roll out the change

- Listen to Blizzard – “Make Everything Overpowered” is a design motto at Blizzard and we try to adhere to that here at Demiurge. At the end of the day, you need to think not just about the numbers but the emotional impact of a character. When you’re done, aim to have players think you didn’t go far enough!

- Give players an out – If players truly feel that your balance changes have made the durable no longer useful, then selling it for hard and soft currency should be a no-brainer. During the period after a balance change, we massively increase the sale price of characters.

When we made that sale-price change, there was only a small bump in the rate at which players sold those characters. Here’s a chart showing the number of people who sold those cards in the window surrounding the nerf:

(Chart didn't copy, click the link for it.)

We playtest the changes a ton and run them through some mathematical analysis that we’ve developed since launch. The end result is that if you’ve taken the time to max out your Spiderman ahead of your other rare cards, he’ll remain your best character.

Linkster79

We playtest the changes a ton and run them through some mathematical analysis that we’ve developed since launch. The end result is that if you’ve taken the time to max out your Spiderman ahead of your other rare cards, he’ll remain your best character.

Do they bollocks. I refuse to believe that any play testing of the Spiderman changes show that most players will still use him as much. Is Ragnarok still as popular post nerf as he was pre-nerf? Outside of Lightning Rounds who really uses Rag?

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Linkster79 wrote:

We playtest the changes a ton and run them through some mathematical analysis that we’ve developed since launch. The end result is that if you’ve taken the time to max out your Spiderman ahead of your other rare cards, he’ll remain your best character.

Do they bollocks. I refuse to believe that any play testing of the Spiderman changes show that most players will still use him as much. Is Ragnarok still as popular post nerf as he was pre-nerf? Outside of Lightning Rounds who really uses Rag?

I think they do playtest him. What they didn't do though is comparing him to other heroes (support chars especially). So yeah, they reworked him. Yeah, he's not lame. And yeah, he's last in the line when you choose Your team.

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Linkster79 wrote:

We playtest the changes a ton and run them through some mathematical analysis that we’ve developed since launch. The end result is that if you’ve taken the time to max out your Spiderman ahead of your other rare cards, he’ll remain your best character.

Do they bollocks. I refuse to believe that any play testing of the Spiderman changes show that most players will still use him as much. Is Ragnarok still as popular post nerf as he was pre-nerf? Outside of Lightning Rounds who really uses Rag?

It's a marketing blurb, you have to read between the lines. They are essentially saying that the change is done without any involvement of the community, using the same high-quality design process that brought us the first version of Spider-Man. Also, if Spider-Man is the only character you leveled to max he'll still be better than your base level rare chars.

Unknown

Emeryt wrote:

Linkster79 wrote:

We playtest the changes a ton and run them through some mathematical analysis that we’ve developed since launch. The end result is that if you’ve taken the time to max out your Spiderman ahead of your other rare cards, he’ll remain your best character.

Do they bollocks. I refuse to believe that any play testing of the Spiderman changes show that most players will still use him as much. Is Ragnarok still as popular post nerf as he was pre-nerf? Outside of Lightning Rounds who really uses Rag?

I think they do playtest him. What they didn't do though is comparing him to other heroes (support chars especially). So yeah, they reworked him. Yeah, he's not lame. And yeah, he's last in the line when you choose Your team.

The guy seems unaware about even basic stuff like "you don't max your spiderman". And sure maxed he will be your best thing on the roster as long as you restrict it to just having cHawk, yelena and bagman, maybe with bullseye.

Spoit

So.... When are we getting the bonus sell for ragman, then?

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- This too shall pass – While you need to expect and accept that there will be a backlash and the first couple of days will be painful, give it a few days before you judge the results. In the early days of MPQ, Ragnarok was massively overpowered and the day we changed it players were furious. A week later, it was no longer a topic of widespread conversation.

No longer a topic of widespread conversation where? Around the d3p office? Has there been a single day where how **** rags is hasn't been mentioned at least in passing, much less when we're forced to use him?

Unknown

In the early days of MPQ, Ragnarok was massively overpowered and the day we changed it players were furious. A week later, it was no longer a topic of widespread conversation.

I'm taking this as proof that the devs do not actually read the forums.

Unknown

They mentioned Blizzard and Blizzard had some hilariously imbalanced stuff in all their games too. If there's supposed to be a takeaway from that, it's that you can have any crazy imbalance issues if you have a good disaster control. There are some rather egregious imbalance issues in the life of World of Warcraft, but they're always able to convince the players that it's not that big of a deal, even when it is.

Devs generally see the world in an ivory tower view. While you're out there instantly dying to a Shaman with Unstoppable Force with Windfury Weapon, the dev in his ivory tower is saying like 'just don't let him get close duh', even though if he actually tried to play the game he'd get one shot by Windfury as well. But on the flip side if you ask players for feedback it'd be like 'this guy beat me, nerf him!' I don't know of a game that is ever able to reconciliate these two views, so maybe invest more in a PR department like Blizzard is the way to go.

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gamar wrote:

- This too shall pass – While you need to expect and accept that there will be a backlash and the first couple of days will be painful, give it a few days before you judge the results. In the early days of MPQ, Ragnarok was massively overpowered and the day we changed it players were furious. A week later, it was no longer a topic of widespread conversation.

No longer a topic of widespread conversation where? Around the d3p office? Has there been a single day where how **** rags is hasn't been mentioned at least in passing, much less when we're forced to use him?

Also just because we stop letting a topic be our main focus point doesn't mean we aren't still pissed off about it. We just stop talking about it because we've gotten our opinions out and now sit in the phase of waiting for you to hopefully fix an issue. Apparently now we know why nothing ever gets fixed, because some1 up top is using flawed logic in judging the player base.

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- Listen to Blizzard – “Make Everything Overpowered” is a design motto at Blizzard and we try to adhere to that here at Demiurge. At the end of the day, you need to think not just about the numbers but the emotional impact of a character. When you’re done, aim to have players think you didn’t go far enough!

Oh god, the toxic influence of David Sirlin raises its ugly head again

Unknown

HOOOOLYYYY **** i wouldn't have guessed that the incompetency at D3 was THIS strong. All i can say is that any faith i had left in the devs is pretty much gone at this point.
I'm not quitting the game yet but seriously all its going to take at this point is another huge bone head move or two.
Which given their track record lately is bound to eventually happen.

xKOBALTx

gamar wrote:

- This too shall pass – While you need to expect and accept that there will be a backlash and the first couple of days will be painful, give it a few days before you judge the results. In the early days of MPQ, Ragnarok was massively overpowered and the day we changed it players were furious. A week later, it was no longer a topic of widespread conversation.

No longer a topic of widespread conversation where? Around the d3p office? Has there been a single day where how **** rags is hasn't been mentioned at least in passing, much less when we're forced to use him?

I wasn't even playing MPQ when this went down and I've seen it discussed dozens of times all over this forum. If you ignore it that means it isn't really happening?

_RiO_

BelligerentGnu wrote:

In the early days of MPQ, Ragnarok was massively overpowered and the day we changed it players were furious. A week later, it was no longer a topic of widespread conversation.

I'm taking this as proof that the devs do not actually read the forums.

I'm going one step further and taking it as proof of gross incompetence. Someone in Al's position should not be publicizing articles of this nature when the official open forums for the subject game are being choked to death by a thick stream of complaints that have gone unanswered for months on end.

Unknown

I guess it's a good thing they're offering the extra ISO and HP for those wanting to sell their Spider-Man back. Seems like the offer might be taken up by a lot of affected players.

Unknown

@Rags: People have accepted the change and moved on. Prolly because they're powerless to get action of a buff. Doesn't mean they think he's not **** and not want the buff though.

@Spidey: Taking months to release what looks like a days work is not something I'd be proud of.

@make everything OP: Except it's not everything. Only the new characters aka powercreep. Forces players to ditch old characters and get (buy) the new ones.

@selling: Again, not something I'd be proud of. As far as I'm concerned, the more characters sold can be interpreted to the more worse of a job you did at supposedly "balancing" the character. Imo the ideal rebalance should result in 0 sold characters.

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Amanda1983 wrote:

I guess it's a good thing they're offering the extra ISO and HP for those wanting to sell their Spider-Man back. Seems like the offer might be taken up by a lot of affected players.

The increased cost is laughable.. We should get 13x1250 HP and all the ISO for a maxed spoderman, but the sell price was only 1500 HP and a few thousand ISOs

Unknown

- Give players an out – If players truly feel that your balance changes have made the durable no longer useful, then selling it for hard and soft currency should be a no-brainer. During the period after a balance change, we massively increase the sale price of characters.

When we made that sale-price change, there was only a small bump in the rate at which players sold those characters.

This statement also pisses me off. They've trained us not to sell covers in fear of them being included in future events; it's the only reason why we keep them around. How many players were burned when they sold their Wolverine and Thor, only to have their PvP events come up right afterwards??

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iPulzzz wrote:

Amanda1983 wrote:

I guess it's a good thing they're offering the extra ISO and HP for those wanting to sell their Spider-Man back. Seems like the offer might be taken up by a lot of affected players.

The increased cost is laughable.. We should get 13x1250 HP and all the ISO for a maxed spoderman, but the sell price was only 1500 HP and a few thousand ISOs

To be fair, if I could get anything close to that I would pump my spidey to 141just to sell it In a heartbeat. Trade 13 covers of spidey for 6 fury covers? Sure. That said, yea, the sell back.is a joke.

Unknown

That post is beyond infuriating

- This too shall pass – While you need to expect and accept that there will be a backlash and the first couple of days will be painful, give it a few days before you judge the results. In the early days of MPQ, Ragnarok was massively overpowered and the day we changed it players were furious. A week later, it was no longer a topic of widespread conversation.

Really ? Really ?! If you don't read the forum than maybe you don't see it talked about anymore.

- Listen to Blizzard – “Make Everything Overpowered” is a design motto at Blizzard and we try to adhere to that here at Demiurge. At the end of the day, you need to think not just about the numbers but the emotional impact of a character. When you’re done, aim to have players think you didn’t go far enough!

Fear the OP Bagman and the out of control Yelena! At least he's right about the emotional impact. I have very distinct emotions when I open a token and get a bagman!

- Give players an out – If players truly feel that your balance changes have made the durable no longer useful, then selling it for hard and soft currency should be a no-brainer. During the period after a balance change, we massively increase the sale price of characters.

Yeah but make sure they only get half their ISO and 1/6 HP back

We playtest the changes a ton and run them through some mathematical analysis that we’ve developed since launch. The end result is that if you’ve taken the time to max out your Spiderman ahead of your other rare cards, he’ll remain your best character.

Yeah, the same mathematical analysis that brought you gems like scaling and "slight shove" into veteran brackets. Oh and Spidey got balanced around the premise that you overlevel him ??! Maybe you should have raised his levelcap then, he needs a hundred more I guess to be useful....

daveomite

That was wonderfully written PR ****.

Obviously...either they don't read the forum at all, or they don't care. "This too shall pass".... yeah, nerf the p from pass and see what you get.