balance, between what you truly want, and what you ask for.

Xair

Players in every game, always complain about the game design.

I don’t think that anyone can create a perfect design that will cause players to stop complaining.

I am enjoying MPQ, I enjoy the gameplay, and the progression.

I have a lot of things that bother me in the game, like dilution, UI issues, favourite frequency… and much more.

But I am not sure that fixing those “problems”, will make me like the game more.

I was a world of Warcraft player for 13 years. The first version of the game was awesome, and incredibly difficult, very buggy, and very imbalanced. As the years passed, the easier the game got, the more “problems” were fixed, the less players (me included) liked the game. Today that game is as close as can be to what people asked for, and it’s the worst version of it. Almost all Players stopped playing it.

So, what is the solution? Give players what they ask for, and possibly ruin the game. Or keep ignoring the outcry, and cause some players to be frustrated enough to quit?

Another thing to consider is the size of the development team. I see some UI bugs that weren’t fixed more than a year, and that indicates that the dev team is probably small and overworked. So they can’t deal with any idea, they probably don’t have time to read the forums.

Another thing to consider, is the amount of players that speak in the forum vs the total amount of players, and how representative they are of the total player base?

From my personal perspective, nerfing champions is the most upsetting thing the dev team can do. Especially since it takes so long to collect these champions, and since it takes so much planning ahead.

 

Summery:

What am I saying?

Players will always complain.

Dev team should constantly work on fixing bugs, but be very wary about changing the core design.

Players should get what they want, not what they ask for.

HoundofShadow

I think it's a problem of perspective, and expectation and priorities.

Expectation, Goals and Risks

From players' point of views, they only care about how the changes will affect their gameplays. For example, how much more resources they can gain or how fast they should be progressing by then.

The people they are "answerable" for their goals are to themselves, and at most to their alliances. 

What if the players can't achieve their goals that they set for themselves? Their bosses are not going to fire them from their jobs or their families are not going to fall out with them simply because of that. The worst case scenario is that the alliance leaders kick them out.

From the devs' point of views, they have company goals or KPIs that they have to fulfill. They are answerable to many groups of people like the players, publisher, Marvel, their company directors/shareholders, finance-in-charge etc.  Each group is likely to have different goals from one another. Therefore, the devs have to strike a balance among all these groups.

What happens if they can't fulfill the company goals? They could get fired and it will impact their personal lives and families.

The players' risks is getting kicked out of alliances for not fulfilling the alliances' goals.

The devs' risks is getting fired for not meeting company KPIs.

Priorities
The players' priority is simply this: to champ the characters that they want as soon as possible so that they can meet their goals or alliances' goals, or to ask the devs to implement their solutions that benefit themselves. 

As seen above, the devs have to handle many group of stakeholders. When you have hundred of tasks to do, you have to prioritise. It's a fact that they don't have big team to deal with these tasks quickly. So, they have to prioritise. 

So, what we seeing today is that players think that the solutions they came up with are the best and the devs should implement it as soon as possible. If not, they are not listening to the them. "It's so simple to implement!" is a common feedback.

The reality is, they have to go through these with various stakeholders. The devs have mentioned a number of times that bean counters are the one who have a big say whether something could be implemented or not.

Xair

OJSP ofc, every person says his opinion. no one has a monopoly on the player base opinion. i don't understand why you would think that i presume to speak for anyone other than myself? if i qualify every word i say would that make my words less or more my opinion? 
if i write this before every opinion would that make it better? "i am sorry about what i am about to say, everyone reading this, shouldn't take offence, i only speak my opinion."
sorry for what i said, and for what i will say.

what i was trying to say was, there are probably a million games in the world. i can play any of them,  i play this game cause i like it. some player stopped liking this game after liking it for a long time, and he wants the game to change. so he comes to the forum and says i quit if u don't do this and this. and then another player says the same, and another... at first you try to stop the players from leaving, you indulge them, not really succeeding in stopping them from leaving but instead causing other players to be discontent. and then you start becoming indifferent, u stop listening all together, because its all just noise. 
what i was trying to say was, the person that comes to forum doesn't see how his complaint might hurt the player that didn't come to the forum. the player that complains doesn't hear the player that doesn't complain. 
i don't have the all the answers, i just see from my personal view how the "outcry" of 30-50 vocal player might ruin the game for a single silent player. 

if the game will be "too easy" that will make me lose interest. 
i am just saying ofc i want to get all the champion cards now, but i realise that i appreciate my roster more because it wasn't easy to aquire.
i am saying that there is a balance between what's really needed to make the game better and what the players are asking for. i don't know what it is. but nighter do all the players that come to the forum to demand the game needs to change, or they will quit.

HoundofShadow

Let's keep it to the players of MPQ in general because it's not relevant to touch on this ethical/moral/whatever you name it issues.

I would be very happy if all my clients think like some of the players here where they would simply implement those solutions given to them. The reality is, I have to go through different layers of approval process, have meetings with stakeholders of various departments before I can close the deal. I believe the devs also go through a similar process, which is kind of proven based on their responses. 

To summarise both posts:

Players won't get exactly what they want at the timeframe that they stipulated because the devs have more groups of people to deal with. Because of that, they have to prioritise the tasks they have on hand. Because they also have to satisfied the goals of other stakeholders, players won't get exactly what they want. That's why there are always tradeoffs. However, players, based on past responses, seems to hate tradeoffs. 

I think all these are simple concepts to understand but some are blinded by their needs for instant gratifications or blinded by their visions of what MPQ should be like, and how things should be run. That's why devs and players will never see eye to eye.