On Retroactive Rewards

purplemur

Please don’t forget the newbs!!

2* HP loss while “as a rule” not a significant source of resource is important and needed.
Mighty Tokens were well placed in the tree. Players at the start of the game WILL have and use their 2*s, that influx of covers would have been a huge boon. Driven roster slot purchases by showing them “look at all this value possible in leveling up a 2*” and helped them learn the value of farming(iso positive w/exp payout)

The extra 3*-4*shards are a perfect forced commitment to the new system. Generosity here helps get players hooked.

For the vets: I get how the rug might have felt pulled from unda you. Some of you must feel sick w a sense of loss and coulda’s. I get it. I certainly don’t engage in the schadenfreude that is going around over it. 

I consider myself not a vet but past prime.  

So even though I was confused and thought somehow I would be getting 4orch shards I am not upset about what I don’t have and didn’t quite believe they would actually do what they claimed in the announcement-they are kinda tinykitty about server outages and postnerf buyback rates- I am just stoked to get a saved cover for my archangel and knowledge of the pathway to power is 7 covers on reed to shard champ GED. Grateful for the free stuff that I did not see coming a week ago and I am still going to play the game tomorrow. I still think it is a great property with awesome gameplay. I appreciate the public acknowledgement that things are being reviewed: It could have been so much better, and I think it’s fair to ask wha?!?

the biggest FUBAR of this tot hurd of a rollout is definitely the timing.
Step one : give away free shards
THEN
offer 30% HP sale and bundles to finish the “free” partial covers
your timing sucks by a week every time. Buy a whiteboard and put a 90 day calendar onit fer talus sake!

Loosie

Well here is my well reasoned feedback. I think overall the retroactive rewards were underwhelming.

The precedence had been set by previous new feeders. When new 5* feeders were mentioned if you had the 4* character at a high enough level you got the cover. Ex. someone at lvl 300 would get 2 5* covers, if you had a max champed 4 that became a feeder for someone you got 6 covers.

I get the approach with shards, allowing players to apply what ever colour they want. My 5/4/1 5* PX will appreciate that as my 4* PX passes level 300.

However with this retroactive rewards on this one you have players with max champed 4*s that have new 5* feeders getting only 2 covers, I hope you can appreciate that this seems a slight by those players. Fortunately my highest 4* is 299 so I was not affected by this, however at other levels there has been some impact (in my mind at least)

Here is what I would expect people to get.

2*s you nailed it. If you got the cover you don't get anything, If you are about to get the cover in the old system you would get the shards you just passed by so that you get the full 300 shards by that old cover reward. If you 2* is maxed you get nothing.

3*s with only one feeder should be the same as above. Those with a secondary feeder we should have received all the secondary shards that we passed by (meaning max 3s should have received 450 shards for the secondary)

Again the same should happen with the 4*s with new feeders, you get all the covers/shards that you already passed by so someone at level 300 should get one cover and 500 shards. Max 4* should get you one cover and 2500 shards.

The tricky one is the 3 3* who have secondary feeders, but the primary character is new. I feel that we should get the new primary covers/shards that we should have gotten given the level, but not the secondary (which was the old sole feeder from the character), those should just be the future rewards you get, unless you have not passed the first cover (lvl 183), at that point you should get the 40 shards you should have received. If you are past lvl183 just the future shards.

As for the Mighty Tokens, I'm torn on it. If everything was as it was above on the initial release I think most people would have been ok without the Mighty Tokens. But this was not a great result overall, so maybe as a 'goodwill' gesture we get the Mighty Tokens retroactively as well now?

Again just my thoughts. I was looking forward too all the secondary covers/shards that looked like it may have been coming.

jamesh

KGB said:

It can be easily done via a customer service request where you email in what you missed out on and they review your roster at the time and tell you how much you owe back in terms of LT/CP. If you agree, then you get the shards and they take from you the LT/CP. If not, then you accept what rewards you got.

KGB

This suggestion sounds both impractical and inequitable:

1. In the first post in this topic, they say that customer service got overwhelmed when a non-trivial portion of the player base contacted them about perceived missing shards. Those tickets could likely be resolved with a canned response, whereas this would likely require more work per ticket to resolve.
   
2. Users would need to know that they could contact customer support for the resource exchange, and actually go to the effort of sending the email.  Like the old cover swap system, this would provide an advantage to insiders who know about the offer.

Also, the player base isn't made up of just "players with max champ 4*'s" and "players with no 4*'s greater than level 294".  There are a lot of players in between who would benefit if the retroactive rewards were more like what has come before.

Teddybabes

I rather have shards revoked. Not longer worth the benefits. This better get fixed soon or a lot of tired players will leave. The greed took all the fun out of shards. Micro manage is not that fun. Losing rewards, well, that sucks. Slowing progress in a game that already is slow. Well. I have a nice backlog on PS4. Nerfing our progress was not cool. Looking forward to a fix. Nerfing never works. This should be obvious by now.

huktonfonix

Day 1480 player here.  I have 50ish 370 4*, a couple 5s pushing 500, and almost every 5* champed.  Longtime commander of an official, D3-certified top 5 MPQ alliance.  Consistent VIP, a couple of Starks a year, and the occasional impulse buy.  I don't love posting my resume here, just giving context for official feedback.

This is messy, confusing, feels bad, and disproportionately penalizes the most engaged, loyal, and spendy (is that a word?) players.  I personally lost out on 38 5* champion rewards I was expecting based on previous feeder updates.  This is purely from the 11 "new" feeders, as I was not expecting to get shards where I had already been awarded full covers under the old system.

I'm willing to accept some compromises.  I'm willing to accept that some "Mario Kart" mechanics need to come into play here to let others catch up or the game will die.  I also recognize that D3 & Demi might have created a problem for themselves with the way that retro rewards for feeders were first implemented, as that widens the gap between new and established players which in turn threatens the continued viability of the game.

I don't care about "missing" shards I would have gotten for the many many 266 3* I've sold.  I don't care about "mighty tokens" that I got other rewards for instead.  I don't care that I got fixed 5* covers that sometimes hurt me with bad builds on characters that now give colorless covers instead.  I don't care that HP, ISO, and CP were removed from rewards for the same net total 5* covers that characters gave before.  This is mildly annoying, but a nerf I'm willing to tolerate without complaint.

All I care about are 5* covers, because that is the only thing that matters at this level of the game.  Even there I'm willing to compromise.  If you want to say "You already got 6 LTs and 62 HP from each maxed character, and that averages out to a little over 1 5* pull" and give us 2000 shards instead of 25000, I'd get it.

Here's what I do care about, which has caused me to bother posting this, change my iOS app store review to 1*, and pull my financial support from the game:

1) For each 4* character I have max champed among the new feeders, I get 1/3 the meaningful rewards of someone who hoarded tokens or covers and does so tomorrow.  I got 2 covers each for my un-champed Gambit and Banner from my 370 Rogue and Hulk, and I had every reason to expect 6 like someone who applies those covers tomorrow will get.

2) For each 4* that doesn't yet feed a 5* character, I'm going to be faced with this choice:  level the character naturally and enjoy them as they are meant to be enjoyed while knowing that I'm likely sabotaging my long term progress in the game or leaving them on the bench unleveled and playing with the same characters as always so that I don't experience this feel bad moment again.  I'll leave it to you to guess what that Sophie's choice is going to do to your player retention.

3) For characters somewhere between 280 and 370, I have a weird partial mix of rewards that is in some cases actively worse than if the character were a few levels lower - for example, I got 1 Kitty cover and 200 Shards for my 324 Emma Frost.  If she was 319 instead I'd get the cover,  250 shards, and 250 more in one more level.  For my 350 Professor X I got 1 5* PX cover and 400 shards.  If he was 349 I'd have gotten 550 shards with 250 more next level.  In the Professor X example I burned significant resources yesterday to get him from 349 to 350 in anticipation of that cover reward, and would have been far better off if I had not.

4) For all of my characters who got some weird interval of shards not divisible by 500, 400, or 300, I have no clean way to see who has some shard "progress" that I could utilize.  At 288 roster spots and counting, the current UI is not manageable to take advantage of these partial cover rewards.

5) Lack of Bagman shards - I currently only have 3 champed Bagmen, having sold one max champ in a fit of weakness and roster crunch.  My alliance mates get upset when I send them non-champed Bagmen TUs, and I assume this is because the teamups are not as strong as they could be if I leveled him further.  Please allow me a way to make meaningful progress on this very important character.

Daredevil217

I would encourage you all to stay away from responding the troll posts and the “double dipping isn’t fair to newbs” posts. They take us off topic. The purpose of this thread is to respond to D3 about this rollout and to give them our feedback. Not to get into these petty bickering wars about “entitlement”, “fair”, etc. While I enjoy sparring with these folks as much as anyone, there are plenty of other threads for that. Let’s keep this one on topic!

SophieH

Thank you for looking into this, it's true that it's been a disappointment because when I calculated, I got that I lost around 20 cover I should have get in the old system. It's certainly not good to older players/vets. I'm curious how it can be changed to make it better. Thanks again! 

skittledaddy

jb5357 said:

I am sure this is felt by others and already said, but wanted to add my reaction. Since the update was announced, I strategically worked my roster to try and get past points where a mighty token would be issued and secondary shards, because in prior updates, replaced awards were issued. When none of these were issued, it felt like punishment for leveling, and I would have been better off not playing for 5 days, instead of using my resources in game, as I would be getting more/better stuff today vs the last 5 days.

i am not as high is my 4 star champing, so that did not affect me, but i feel penalized for working to max out and level my 3 stars.

This! Except I didn't do a bunch of leveling since I simply pull as I go.

I stood to gain very little today in retro rewards, no matter how they approached it (60+ 4* champs, but highest is only 295; 2/3rds of 3* max champed, dupes unleveled). All I was really hoping for was a pile of Mighty Tokens and maybe some secondary 4* shards - instead, neither.

Khazaq

To keep things short, here is my situation that seemed odd and not working as expected.
When I saw the change coming, I noticed that 4* Prof X would feed his 5*. Since my 4* was at 319, I cracked enough tokens to bring him to 320.
Meanwhile, my 4* Iron Man would soon feed Rescue and was at 318 
When I got the rewards on Tuesday, I received one cover for Prof X 5* and Rescue. But for shards I had 450 for Rescue and 200 for 5* Prof X. Thus I received fewer shards from my higher level character and that does not seem right according to the math.

What would have helped is a table indicating what would be generated for each feeder character. 

Being at day 1958, this is the first time I really felt like our time spent in the game (and money) was disregarded.

Hopefully a good solution can come out of this.

Thanks for reading.

bahamut685

I will send a ticket regarding missing retroactive rewards, but based on my limited prior experience, I'm expecting roughly, "Our records do show that you should have received those things, but did not. As such, we will close the ticket, and not fix our mistake." Happened with a Juggernaut cover from an event progression, and is what closed my wallet to this company (until fixed, which probably means permanently).

If only we had a 'Customer Support' Support, to go to when there's a bug in Customer Support...

froggerjohn

Another way to look at the general principle, is that shards are a great benefit (monetization) to D3/Demi, so if you make it a great benefit to the players as well (as opposed to a tradeoff), then you end up with a win-win.

whitecat31

IceIX said:

Hi all,

We are investigating internally whether this update met the goals of what was intended. 

Well if your goal was to anger, disrespect, and disappoint a vast segment of your veteran player base instead of reward them for their loyalty to the game, you succeeded. 

The change from bonus heroes to shards system, I found cumbersome, and slowed the game down. But I held back severe judgment and assumed there was a grand plan that would reward people like me who have played this game for many years.
This new addition was like a kick in the teeth.  You changed all the rules about how rewards are done.  You have displayed a lack of loyalty to the ones who have been loyal, and have been consistently introducing new players to the game.
It feels like you guys deliberately stopped adding new feeders, until this shard system would be introduced. 
You had created an expectation by past performances and betrayed that expectation, in the most spectacular fashion.
You broke a promise given in November of 2017 "Any future 4-Star characters that have their Champion Rewards changed to offer 5-Star covers, will also retroactively credit those covers to players that had already achieved those levels."
https://forums.d3go.com/discussion/comment/749081#Comment_749081
One could argue you guys owe us veterans of the game nothing, because that is what it feels like the message is. 
It also has me questioning for the first time.
"Why should I be loyal, to a game that is not loyal to me?"

DAZ0273

My general feedback is simply one of confusion but I would add that announcing vital updates/information in the way it was done was either a massive mistake or an attempt to bury bad news. I happened to be online in the UK when Ice posted so I saw it but most of America will have been asleep and that is the largest playerbase. I didn't really understand it as it was mostly about 2* and the 4* stuff was, if I am honest, I felt deliberately vague and felt it lacked the whole picture (for example total silence on the new 3* feeders). I definitely agree with one thing HoundofShadow said - it should have been in a new thread.

Chrynos1989

while I appreciate retroactive rewards, since they aren’t a must but a gift, I really have to say the wording was very confusing on what would be given out. The majority of readers got it wrong and thus were frustrated with what they got.
i have a BA in international business industrial engineering and should easily look thorough the notes and the maths behind it but even I totally misunderstood what I would get.
while I wasn’t that super frustrated, it was still a letdown.

fight4thedream

In the future, I think it best that nothing be mentioned about incoming changes until all the significant details have been ironed out and are ready to be presented in a clear, easy-to-understand manner. I know in terms of marketing it is important to hype things but it seems more often than not such tactics end up causing unnecessary disappointment and frustration.

Ideally, when making significant changes, I would like to see the following information:

• What exactly is being changed
• Clear example(s) of how that change will affect the player base
• The reasoning behind the change
• Expected timing of implementation (doesn't have to be specific date as I know there are outside factors but whatever you are best able to provide)
• A dev or forum adminstrator on hand to answer questions and take feedback

Unfortunately, in regards to the retroactive rewards, a lot was left unanswered until the last minute and the answer that was provided was difficult to understand.

I know some people would prefer information as soon as possible but after this fiasco I think placing priority on having the details fully worked out and in a presentable form would be the wisest way to avoid setting expectations high.

Bubba3210

We were punished for advancing our roster. As with previous rewards, any new feeder rewards should have been given out for this.

All 3* that added secondary feeders for 4* should have given out those rewards. We already received the original 4* covers so I did not anticipate receiving that same cover again. I did expect the changes to be rewarded including shards and mighty tokens. 

All new 5* feeders should have given all rewards that would have been earned by leveling up through game play. 

I am happy I received nine 5* but I expected my 4* to be rewarded from my 3* feeders and dupes.

WEBGAS

Never in my wildest dreams I could have imagined to be fooled like this, once again.
Beware D3, you created al lot of angry and disillusioned players 

spatenfloot

If you knew that the retroactive rewards would be handled differently than every other time ( which you damn well did), you should have stated that in the announcement before players spent their in game resources and real money on their rosters.

HoundofShadow

I think they did say rewards will be handled differently.

Chrynos1989

HoundofShadow said:

I think they did say rewards will be handled differently.

They actually did