On Retroactive Rewards

IceIX

Hi all,

To say that there has been feedback on the recent retroactive rewards for new 4->5-Star characters is putting it mildly. We’ve seen people with opinions and takes across the board from positive to negative on the changes, and we’re reading every bit of it that we get.

We are investigating internally whether this update met the goals of what was intended. This will not be instant, but we are looking into things as quickly as we can. Well reasoned feedback on the forums or elsewhere are certainly helpful data points that can be used for that, so to those of you that are giving constructive feedback, thank you. We will have an update for you all as soon as we have one available.

One thing we would ask in the mean time is to *not* direct this feedback via Customer Support. Issues with what was received or other gameplay issues, most definitely. That’s exactly what Customer Support is there to handle. However, CS is having a harder time than usual dealing with normal tickets due to sorting through players who do not actually have any direct CS concerns and are simply using that avenue for feedback. It would be far better for that feedback, when reasoned, to be posted on the forums instead. That way it will be read by the appropriate parties directly and not waste time being sorted, compiled, and sent in batches.

Vhailorx

Feedback is good (even when it isn't exactly what we players want to hear).  Tha is for this update; i look forward to more information as soon as possible.

captainheath

Thanks for this post.  I was about to quit my alliance and drop out for a while.  I'll put that on hold for now.

shinnaruto

Thank you for the post, Ice!
I am sure everyone is waiting anxiously to get a sense of what went right or wrong with this.

Anon

Curious to see what follows.

Nabistay

Thank you Ice!

as per before, my main feedback is the feelbad of getting more shards for OML from my 4* wolverine than i did for rescue from my 302 Hulkbuster.

And the feelbad of not getting retroactive shards for 4*s that have new 3* feeders. But, that i can live with easier, even though I went from 13 3* covers away from championing OML to something in the neighborhood of 30 plus bonus 4* shards.

I sympathize with the deluge of feedback you are getting, and appreciate the second look.

GrimSkald

If you want my dead-honest and level-headed assessment, the retroactive rewards are distinctly unfair.  If we advanced a character through those levels, we would have gotten up to six covers.  As it was, we got two at most (occasionally with a few shards left over, something to do with how proximate we were to the next level.)  That's just plain bunk, and penalizes players who have older, well developed rosters. 

It's not like a 4* farm has anything resembling a high-turnover. I don't care about the 3* rewards because I know I'll get them eventually - each character probably goes through a full rotation somewhere around once to twice a year.  At this time, I have one, one duplicate 4* above 280, and that's Captain Marvel, whom you gave us a lot of covers for.  I only have two dupe champs, period (her and Peggy, another 4* who's been heavily featured.)  While it's not impossible I'll see levels again for 4* characters, it's very unlikely and it will take years.

I'm not talking about the ones for whom were already feeders, that's fine (I got some from those, which I don't quite get, but whatever.)  I'm also not talking about the CP, HP, and Iso taken away from champ levels - I deem that to be a pretty minor issue and champ levels represent a tiny fraction of my "income."  But this change in retroactive levels was terrible.

Daredevil217

To be fair, your post on how retroactive rewards were to be handed out was VERY unclear. You had long term MPQ vets on Line arguing about how to interpret that post. So I’d expect some people earnestly contacting customer service saying “I didn’t get what was promised!” Because of the vague wording. Just an FYI if the traffic is higher than usual, that’s one piece I think you could own on your end. 

That aside, thanks for looking into this. 

The rockett

Just did my count. I lost 34-5* covers due to this switch.  How can you think this would be acceptable.  I really hope this is looked into. 

Dogface

The current set-up might be unfair to vets, but wouldn't it be unfair to newer players if veteran players got retroactively rewarded 6 covers additional to the rewards they got in the process? 

pheregas

Thank you for the acknowledgment. This has been a very frustrating experience from the unclear rollout, to the actual payouts, which were significantly reduced compared to every other rewards update.

For my own two cents, I’m not looking for rewards for double dipping previously established reward covers, I’m looking for new rewards that previously did not exist. These rewards that are now available to lower level characters currently being champed, but bypassed by relatively higher level characters.

As has been stated before, gaining the equivalent of two covers for a newly rewarded 5* from a max champed 4* is distinctly unfair when, if I started leveling them post-update, i’d get 6 covers.

also, nobody got new 3 to 4* rewards. That’s another serious oversight. 

Basepuzzler

Dogface said:

The current set-up might be unfair to vets, but wouldn't it be unfair to newer players if veteran players got retroactively rewarded 6 covers additional to the rewards they got in the process? 

No because the vets earned those covers by spending years and $ leveling said characters.

AndiTi

Daredevil217 said:

To be fair, your post on how retroactive rewards were to be handed out was VERY unclear. You had long term MPQ vets on Line arguing about how to interpret that post. So I’d expect some people earnestly contacting customer service saying “I didn’t get what was promised!” Because of the vague wording. Just an FYI if the traffic is higher than usual, that’s one piece I think you could own on your end. 

That aside, thanks for looking into this. 

First of all, thank you IceIX. I appreciate the fast response and the fact your are willing to at least examine this. That's a very proactive message we appreciate hearing.

The quote above sums it up for me. I think it should have been made explicit and very clear that we would NOT be receiving retroactive rewards for champed characters. It's natural that we would expect things to work in a similar manner to what they have in the past, and there was already so much information in the post that it really needed to be spelled out much better.

If I had found this out earlier when I read the initial post about champ reward changes I still will have been unhappy with the change, because I do not understand why it should work differently. However, finding out today only after seeing the rewards makes me feel misled. I don't blame you specifically (I realize those posts are likely crafted with lots of eyes on them prior to go live), but minimally I think we would like to see much clearer communication when we are changing things that have a previous precedent in a way that gives less to players than they are used to.

Dogface

Basepuzzler said:

Dogface said:

The current set-up might be unfair to vets, but wouldn't it be unfair to newer players if veteran players got retroactively rewarded 6 covers additional to the rewards they got in the process? 

No because the vets earned those covers by spending years and $ leveling said characters.

So vets deserve more than I do? 

tupacboy

good thing i didn't rage quit and throw my new pixel 4 against the wall =P      on a side good news... i finally got my black friday oled TV delivered today.... so excited

DAZ0273

I'm still none the wiser what was the original intention so I am fairly interested in hearing more. 

Crowl

The obvious issue with the retroactive rewards is that you had established a precedent in the past that players would not lose out on covers when a feeder was changed from award LT's to awarding covers and for the amounts awarded this time to be so much lower than that has obviously disappointed many of us.

The doling out of shards also highlights once again that the current ui and character-specific shards are not a good combination, shards should either be generic per star level for increased flexibility or the ui should give us some means of seeing shard totals on characters without manually going in and out of every single character to find the dozens out of hundreds that have shards.

jtmagee

@IceIX, isn’t there a way to program a CS ticket and have it categorized when it is received?

AlexNapalm

Dogface said:

The current set-up might be unfair to vets, but wouldn't it be unfair to newer players if veteran players got retroactively rewarded 6 covers additional to the rewards they got in the process? 

No, because that is the way it has been done in the past when existing 4*s were made 5* feeders. 

shinnaruto

Dogface said:

Basepuzzler said:

Dogface said:

The current set-up might be unfair to vets, but wouldn't it be unfair to newer players if veteran players got retroactively rewarded 6 covers additional to the rewards they got in the process? 

No because the vets earned those covers by spending years and $ leveling said characters.

So vets deserve more than I do? 

Dogface, if the "vet" gets what they should have, how does this wrong you?

CathexisZero

Looking at this, I lost 13 5* covers due to the switchover, assuming previously-obtained 5* covers were not intended to be retroactively awarded via shards (which I'm OK with).  
I have effectively lost 1 Black Bolt cover because I was not retroactively awarded the Level 356/358 shards for my Level 359 Medusa.  I lost Level 300 champ reward covers for: Cable, Professor X, Archangel, and Hulk.  I lost Level 320 + 300 champ reward covers for:  Storm, Rescue, Gambit, and Iceman.  

I am quite upset at this change.