Player Perception: What the metrics aren’t telling you.

PorkBelly

Ludaa wrote:

If I were D3, I'm not sure it would matter if veterans left the game. Those first 60+ days are probably pretty profitable. If vets left it would open up the top reward spots and delay any negative feelings transitioning players might have for a few weeks.

Sadly, I think this is dead on.

Someone posted an article a few weeks ago that showed that most mobile F2P gamers stopped playing games after less than two weeks.

D3 seems to want to squeeze as much cash out of them during that time before they bail for something else.

They don't seem to care about longevity.

Unknown

I have some mixed feelings after reading this post.

First, I wholeheartedly agree that character packs set at 6.1% is abysmally low, but I disagree on bringing back the guaranteed cover packs back as well. In a previous thread, I stated that those guaranteed packs were a bad thing for competitiveness. Why should I even try in a previous event when at any event of my choosing I can just plop down $25 dollars to get the required character and make things easier for myself? It defeats the purpose of a competitive system. At 20%, it was fine, I would go so far as to say 15% chance, but no lower.

The risk vs reward structure I cannot get behind at all. Why should there be any kind of incentive, at all, for a player to play a same level team as the one they are running? The only point I see this being viable is in the 2* to 3* transition, but that's it. Two full teams of level 141's should not get more rewards than two teams of 85's. It's the same challenge and risk. At these points, it can't really be considered a risk vs reward, because the standard rewards would just degrade, with of course the baseline being teams of equal leveling to you. What's even worse here is that this becomes a detrimental system to those that have full covered 3* characters because it now deprives them of ISO that is crucially needed.

I don't think they should get rid of 2* in heroics, but create another token that doesn't give anything below a 3* cover. This would allow them to offer heroics as a lower progression reward/ lower tier event reward (which would help newbies progress at a steadier rate) and place these "epic" tokens higher on the totem pole.

As for season competition, I can't say for myself, but it would appear that the hardcore competitive players and alliances are asking to be less competitive but receive the same prizes. This is how I am personally interpreting it, and that kinda defeats the purpose of saying you are competitive.

Unknown

I think sharding is terrible. I have a 2* roster and I need 750 to even place in the top 50 and everyone has 141s

Unknown

With all the changes to tokens and lightening rounds I'd like to see the tokens given out in lightening be a 3* token with a chance to win any 3 or 4 star out.

Unknown

It all went to **** when they put 1100 point 3* cover rewards. At first people was dumbfounded and not many tried to reach it but after a while, some people did it and more people tried it and did it as well bringing us to the current state of death brackets. Now I reach 600 points once and leave it and let it drop as much as it could. I don't have the time to play till I reach 900 points every PvP or any PvP.

That 1100 cover reward is probably making them a lot of money though with people spending money on shields I assume. In fact I think they must be really well off to ignore every complaint about the game, not do anything about server outages (they probably did something to fix it but I'm not talking about that), no new announcements, no anything. The 1100 cover reward probably was a good decision for them but I hate the game for it now. One can't play casually and get 3* covers anymore. There are two options for me now. Play casually and rely on cover lottery or just quit it completely. I will play a bit more and see what happens. I haven't left my alliance yet because I'm hardly a burden. There are less active people than me.

Unknown

Suggestion to D3
Hire Clintman as a paid community representative.
He is making many thought out eloquent responses, clearly understands the playerbase and meta of the game and people are listening to him
In the past IceIX was a great liaison on the forums but he himself admitted he has too many other hats to wear and it is showing.

Unknown

Clintman wrote:

Now they need to just make them affordable... and figure out a Risk Vs. Reward Structure to incentivize us to fight each other instead of incentivizing us to find ways to game the system in order to make it fun.

So much this. I would love a system that *rewarded* me for trying challenging fights, rather than punishing me for it. Also, I cannot believe D3 *still* isn't talking to us on any kind of regular basis.

Spoit

KevinMark wrote:

It all went to tinykitty when they put 1100 point 3* cover rewards. At first people was dumbfounded and not many tried to reach it but after a while, some people did it and more people tried it and did it as well bringing us to the current state of death brackets. Now I reach 600 points once and leave it and let it drop as much as it could. I don't have the time to play till I reach 900 points every PvP or any PvP.

That 1100 cover reward is probably making them a lot of money though with people spending money on shields I assume. In fact I think they must be really well off to ignore every complaint about the game, not do anything about server outages (they probably did something to fix it but I'm not talking about that), no new announcements, no anything. The 1100 cover reward probably was a good decision for them but I hate the game for it now. One can't play casually and get 3* covers anymore. There are two options for me now. Play casually and rely on cover lottery or just quit it completely. I will play a bit more and see what happens. I haven't left my alliance yet because I'm hardly a burden. There are less active people than me.

3* covers were totally doable even back before shields. It's just that you had to do it during off hours, to limit the number of hits, especially since you were hitting people for like 15 points a go, since there wasn't the point base to support it. But on the other hand, you didn't have heat seeking MMR piranhas, so you mostly only lost points to retaliations

HairyDave

Spoit wrote:

KevinMark wrote:

It all went to tinykitty when they put 1100 point 3* cover rewards. At first people was dumbfounded and not many tried to reach it but after a while, some people did it and more people tried it and did it as well bringing us to the current state of death brackets. Now I reach 600 points once and leave it and let it drop as much as it could. I don't have the time to play till I reach 900 points every PvP or any PvP.

That 1100 cover reward is probably making them a lot of money though with people spending money on shields I assume. In fact I think they must be really well off to ignore every complaint about the game, not do anything about server outages (they probably did something to fix it but I'm not talking about that), no new announcements, no anything. The 1100 cover reward probably was a good decision for them but I hate the game for it now. One can't play casually and get 3* covers anymore. There are two options for me now. Play casually and rely on cover lottery or just quit it completely. I will play a bit more and see what happens. I haven't left my alliance yet because I'm hardly a burden. There are less active people than me.

3* covers were totally doable even back before shields. It's just that you had to do it during off hours, to limit the number of hits, especially since you were hitting people for like 15 points a go, since there wasn't the point base to support it. But on the other hand, you didn't have heat seeking MMR piranhas, so you mostly only lost points to retaliations

And if you were only aiming for one cover it was even easier. A couple of times I was trying to get the triple 2* rewards I accidently overshot and got a 3* I didn't want at the time (no roster space, no chance of more covers, etc). Aquired my first Loki like that

atomzed

Kiamodo wrote:

I had three friends that loved the guaranteed character pulls. When those stopped they stopped buying and slowly stopped playing. Has anyone run across that?

I missed the guarantee covers so I can't comment. At 20%, I bought it so that I can get the color covers which I missed. So that I could purchase the specific colour directly.

At 6%, I will not buy it.

kensterr

You guys forgot about the guaranteed 3* tokens from Lightning Rounds, be it Villains or Heroes. You can either buy it from IAP as a daily deal or a pack deal, or get it as placement rewards (top 25 or top 50, can't remember).

Unknown

HairyDave wrote:

Spoit wrote:

3* covers were totally doable even back before shields. It's just that you had to do it during off hours, to limit the number of hits, especially since you were hitting people for like 15 points a go, since there wasn't the point base to support it. But on the other hand, you didn't have heat seeking MMR piranhas, so you mostly only lost points to retaliations

And if you were only aiming for one cover it was even easier. A couple of times I was trying to get the triple 2* rewards I accidently overshot and got a 3* I didn't want at the time (no roster space, no chance of more covers, etc). Aquired my first Loki like that

Yeah, in one of the tournaments I clearly remember, there was black OBW covers as reward. I wanted them. So, I did my usual minimum, 600 points then and I ended up getting a 3* cover instead. I could of course score lower but I was already in an alliance, so I didn't want to score lower.

Unknown

Just to add my grain of sand to the pile:

I also have a wife who is very casual and a brother-in-law who is very competitive but newer to the game than I (and so is transitioning to 3*s). The results are eerily similar to Clint's: my wife can score rewards more easily and makes me jealous with her war stories, my brother-in-law is basically locked out of progression by super competitors, and I just have to work a little harder to enjoy exactly the same rewards as before.

And, as long as I'm adding: I no longer see any reason to believe that D3 has any interest in the integrity of this game, nor do I see any reason to trust any of the statements that have been made to us regarding their decision making processes. They are trying to take our money because they think that they can get it, and they have a game that's just good enough to make people desperately hope that they aren't villains. As of the change to roster slot purchases, though, I'm pretty sure they're just villains.

Clintman

Skyedyne wrote:

I have some mixed feelings after reading this post.

First, I wholeheartedly agree that character packs set at 6.1% is abysmally low, but I disagree on bringing back the guaranteed cover packs back as well. In a previous thread, I stated that those guaranteed packs were a bad thing for competitiveness. Why should I even try in a previous event when at any event of my choosing I can just plop down $25 dollars to get the required character and make things easier for myself? It defeats the purpose of a competitive system. At 20%, it was fine, I would go so far as to say 15% chance, but no lower.

The risk vs reward structure I cannot get behind at all. Why should there be any kind of incentive, at all, for a player to play a same level team as the one they are running? The only point I see this being viable is in the 2* to 3* transition, but that's it. Two full teams of level 141's should not get more rewards than two teams of 85's. It's the same challenge and risk. At these points, it can't really be considered a risk vs reward, because the standard rewards would just degrade, with of course the baseline being teams of equal leveling to you. What's even worse here is that this becomes a detrimental system to those that have full covered 3* characters because it now deprives them of ISO that is crucially needed.

I don't think they should get rid of 2* in heroics, but create another token that doesn't give anything below a 3* cover. This would allow them to offer heroics as a lower progression reward/ lower tier event reward (which would help newbies progress at a steadier rate) and place these "epic" tokens higher on the totem pole.

As for season competition, I can't say for myself, but it would appear that the hardcore competitive players and alliances are asking to be less competitive but receive the same prizes. This is how I am personally interpreting it, and that kinda defeats the purpose of saying you are competitive.

I would like to say that I am sorry to see you getting downvoted for expressing your opinion, you were not rude or belligerent in your response and provided support for your stance on it, and I respect that.

To your first point on removing guaranteed covers in the 10 packs, that is purely subjective to the population. Clearly people are willing to accept even less than you will and are apparently buying 10 packs with a 6.1% chance. I like the idea of guaranteed covers, it allows you to catch up if you miss an event, and incentivizes you to buy the cover so you can do the locked nodes in the PVE. I see no harm in that and it makes sense to me to allow people to play that way. The whole point of restricted nodes is to drive sales and provide advantage to the customers who either bought the covers or earned them. I mean really, do you think you are getting away with something when you pay $25 for a single cover? I can't believe people are willing to pay $125 to buy Daken covers to max him out, but they do. So clearly I do not understand just how people justify value, though I believe if they made things cheaper rather than more expensive they would sell a hell of a lot more and make the game more accessible, and by extension extend the life of the game.

The second point is one that I made more clearly in previous posts and I am guessing I did not present clearly enough to make sense without having read the previous support for the idea. The basics of it as similar to most every other game you ever play, where you have a starting area that has easy fights for low rewards, as you get more powerful, you do harder fights, but the rewards increase. If you got the epic rewards for killing starter level foes you would never leave the starting area and you would kill easy foes all day long. That is what has happened with Tanking and MMR. People look at risk vs reward, they want to earn ISO faster and do fights faster so they can get the reward. How many of us kill Seed Teams then quit after you get real opponents in Lightning Rounds? Most people who do this, stop because it is not profitable to fight a full 212 opposing team for the same reward that they got for the seed team. Why do a fight that takes 4 minutes when you can do a fight in 1 minute and get closer to your REAL goal which is earning enough ISO to level up your Falcon cover? This leads to further abuse of lower level teams when people tank their MMR, they do it because it is faster, and easier and makes more ISO. People game the system because they do not want to fight pure 141 teams when there is an easier alternative.

If you incentivize people to fight teams that are equal to them in difficulty, then lower level teams are less attractive. That is all there is to it, when I play World of Warcraft, I do not kill level 1 kobolds, there is no value to me. They did not have to create complex dynamics to get me to stop, they simply made it so that there were better targets for me to hit.

Once you hit the veteran level where you have a team of 3*s this changes to a collection game, where you get new characters to play with new combinations. New guys that show up are fun and you want to try them, so you want ISO. You do not care about challenge in every fight because you are grinding your **** off just to get enough ISO to take the Sentry to a level where he can do something. It is such a common mechanic for other games to make leveling of subsequent characters faster. Take Marvel Heroes for example, or... god pretty much every other successful game.

Giving more ISO to veteran players to allow them to level faster for beating up on each other takes the strain off of the new and intermediate players who get slaughtered because they are the fastest source of ISO. Me getting ISO faster does not make me any more dangerous in PVP, I already have 11 Maxed out 141's I can kill any team anyway. Now i just want to try new stuff, making it a unbearable grind makes me hate playing, so rather than drive people away once they hit the top, incentivize them.

As far as 2* in heroics, I do feel that point is clear enough. Ask yourself honestly, do you think 2* covers have any value to you in a heroic pack? You get them from doing PVP matches, they are just fluff in the heroic packs, just get rid of them and let people be honestly excited when they open them.

Regarding season competition... try not to be so cynical in your interpretation of the intent. I am guessing that you must not have had players burn out and quit because they feel too much stress to perform in their alliance. The decisions the Devs make regarding seasons and alliances drive the player base to behave a certain way. My point is that constant stress drives people away and I do not think anyone wants that.

Unknown

how does the op only have 58 thumb ups?

Unknown

sup123 wrote:

They really need to rethink the rewards, specially after implementing the random covers after pvp matches.

The 600 points reward of a 2* cover is pretty unexciting when you are selling 2* in droves from all the pvp matches.
It's laughable seeing "7 more days until heroic token" in SHIELD Resupply like that is a big deal, when the chance of getting something useful is pretty slim.
SHIELD Simulator rewards are a joke, half of it are 1* that you can get in a single LR, the other half are some 2* and two 3* at the absolute top that no one who actually needs them will be able to reach.
Taking 2* out of heroic tokens would help that, but then they would need to remove some stuff like the 10-pack progression from seasons because I don't see them handing 10 3* to everyone who gets 5k points.

I agree about the rewards being underwhelming, but I can't see them removing 2* from the heroics. The tokens then (1 guaranteed 3*) would gain too much value and they would need to reduce their numbers drastically. They don't want to do that since tokens are a significant part of the reward system they use. The problem with heroics right now is that the character pool is becoming to large and getting something you can use is extremely rare. Let's not forget that when you have a 0.8% to get "Hero X" you essentially have 0.267% to draw one of his covers (At least for those heroes they bothered to complete with 3 covers). That % is abysmal and not even worth considering. The only reason they keep making money from token purchases is because most players don't check the forums and they don't know yet just how bad a deal these are.

I think a more elegant way to make tokens exciting again is to give players the option to "redeem" Heroics for a chance to get a cover from limited groups, like the Avengers, the Dark Avengers, the X-Men, ... with a 5-10% to drop a 3*. If some of these groups have too few heroes, like the Fantastic Four, they could all be part of a large generic group. I really don't see any other way to make them useful again.

Unknown

CptNoraa wrote:

This game is going down faster than me after drinking a bottle of Knob Creek.

I totally forgot I bought me a beer today! On my way! Thank You!

Unknown

Alecrizzle wrote:

I think sharding is terrible. I have a 2* roster and I need 750 to even place in the top 50 and everyone has 141s

+1
This Daken PVP bracket was a lot more lenient - there even was a 2* roster in my top 10 )
Still, 720+ to get 49th is a lot of work for very little pay

CNash

Cryptobrancus wrote:

Suggestion to D3
Hire Clintman as a paid community representative.
He is making many thought out eloquent responses, clearly understands the playerbase and meta of the game and people are listening to him
In the past IceIX was a great liaison on the forums but he himself admitted he has too many other hats to wear and it is showing.

If this happened, Clintman would find himself severely restricted as to what he'd be allowed to say on these forums. IceIX is an employee of Demiurge and is subject to an NDA agreement, plus whatever policies they or D3/Capcom have in place regarding community interactions. Games publishers and developers take their "secrets" incredibly seriously; any attempt by an employee to tell us what's really happening with this game - not just the sanitised, deliberately vague patch notes, but the strategy for the game in general and the real reason behind any of the decisions - would result in them being slapped with a gross misconduct disciplinary charge and potentially fired.

Unknown

Skyedyne wrote:

-snip-

First, I wholeheartedly agree that character packs set at 6.1% is abysmally low, but I disagree on bringing back the guaranteed cover packs back as well. In a previous thread, I stated that those guaranteed packs were a bad thing for competitiveness. Why should I even try in a previous event when at any event of my choosing I can just plop down $25 dollars to get the required character and make things easier for myself? It defeats the purpose of a competitive system. At 20%, it was fine, I would go so far as to say 15% chance, but no lower.

-snip-

Well i'd be competetive to save 25 dollars, to potentially get 3 covers not 1 and because although 1 pack would give a colour the ammount you'd have to spend to have a good chance of getting one of EACH colour so you can buy covers to upgrade afterwards (since our hypothetical person seems to be spending lots of money) is pretty huge.

Having guaranteed covers in packs stopped the anti-snowball effect. People miss out on a new hero in PvE because they don't have the featured hero to do the essential nodes, which means either they win that hero in the 1, or if you're lucky 2, or if unlucky zero PvP events they are given out in before the next PvE or they are screwed in that one too because they lack the essential hero.

All you're suggesting is people should be increasingly beholden to the RNG gods and therefore, on average, spend more money to get the cover. Not so much promoting competetion as D3 greed IMO.