New UI Update: Gameboard

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  • Valuk
    Valuk Posts: 6 Just Dropped In
    Also have no vision problems, and don't get headaches from this - but it just looks... worse? It's harder to see the special tiles, harder to see the different colours, overall more drab and dreary where it used to be bright and colourful. Makes the game less enjoyable - and obviously the fact that it's much worse for some people means it definitely needs changing.

    Having said that, I'd wager it pretty likely that an alternative board UI be made available soon. They've made enough of a change that we might not get the old one back, but a brighter version and no dimming shouldn't be hard? Then I just hope the tile differentiation is clear enough!
  • Aweberman
    Aweberman Posts: 443 Mover and Shaker
    The rockett said:
    pheregas said:
    supergarv said:
    Kwahder said:
    sweegy said:
    I'm confident they'll fix it, but I'm guessing Tuesday the earliest. 
    This is almost certainly correct. Apparently, Apple will only let you push one update a week. If that’s true, there can’t be a fix before Tuesday.
    Not exactly true. They don‘t officially limit the number of updates per week, but their review process can take some time and will take longer if you „spam“ them.

    Apart there‘s an „expedited review“ you can request in certain conditions: https://developer.apple.com/app-store/review/

    Pretty sure the current situation would warrant an emergency patch like this, when health hazards are apparent. 
    I seem to recall an expedited required update when LT's were giving 50% 5* returns.  Or something.  Some crazy stuff has gone down in this game over the years.

    There has been more than a few times they did a push. Here are the ones that I can remember.

    $2 for 7CP....*don't go down this rabbit hole...don't go down this rabbit hole... don't go down this rabbit hole*

    25% LT drop rate, 2 different times.

    4* Starlord less than 24 hours Winfinate

    4* Cage screen shake, which was fixed within 48-72hrs.  https://forums.d3go.com/discussion/52120/board-shaking-please-stop/p1


    Perhaps whatever would need to be changed requires an actual update, rather than a simple data push.  After all, this went live with the update; it wasn’t a case of something being updated in the background and then going live at a particular time. 

    And perhaps (further), they don’t know exactly what to do to fix it, since this obviously caught them quite flat-footed. I mean, I got an actual email from them
    touting this change. And since the release notes prominently mention the UI change, this is also one of the first things you see mentioned, at least on the Apple App Store.
  • entrailbucket
    entrailbucket Posts: 5,971 Chairperson of the Boards
    Chameleon said:
    entrailbucket said:
    The only way to untangle this is for the devs to look at player engagement and see what the drop looks like.  If you're "toughing through" this update despite suffering migraines or seizures, you're still engaging with the game and throwing off those metrics.
    What if you're having a family member play for you?  I've written it out to ask CS if this is ok under the ToS.  I don't want my alliance to suffer.
    Obviously I can't speak to their specific metrics or how they make decisions internally, but I've been around this community for a very long time and I've seen a lot of changes and player reactions to those changes. 

    Almost every change they've ever made has been met with overwhelmingly negative feedback from players.  I can think of maybe one or two times that a change like this was reverted, so it seems clear at this point that they're not paying much attention to written player feedback.

    That said, every thread like this includes a ton of players who say "I'm never playing again/spending again unless this is changed," and then those same players continue to turn up in brackets and in buyclubs for years.  So it's possible that the devs view overwhelmingly negative feedback as something that happens after every change but never affects their bottom line.
  • Red_Rooster23
    Red_Rooster23 Posts: 7 Just Dropped In
    edited March 2021
    Red_Rooster23 said:
    I tried to play late last night in a very dark bedroom and the blue and green tiles are virtually indistinguishable from one another when you have Apple's Night Shift on and the brightness turned down low. It felt as if I had developed sudden colorblindness. This was not an issue with the original tile colors and shapes.

    My biggest issue with the new UI update is thematic: These new colors do not reflect the Marvel Universe at all. They are dark, dull, drab, and just plain unpleasant to look at. Marvel is all big, bold primary colors, but it feels like the team was trying to turn this into a DC tile-matching game.

    On the basic usability front, the entire playing screen overall is far too dark--even at full brightness it feels like I'm looking at the game through a tinted window. Certain things like charged tiles or "ready" hero powers are also far too subtle to clearly read now.

    I could get used to the new shape of the board and tiles, but these color scheme and brightness issues are game-breaking.
    Last night I found that also the red and purple tiles cannot be distinguished in low light conditions. They look virtually identical when the same hero controls both. The whole game board in fact just kind of smears together.

    Enemy special tiles are basically invisible now that they are colored black.

    Again, the old UI handled low light perfectly fine with no issues.

    This update is just the gift that keeps on giving...
  • Mayo
    Mayo Posts: 156 Tile Toppler
    edited March 2021
    Btw, is there any goverment agency that supervises and sanctions games that are hurting users? If i recall a pokemon game that caused seizures had to be retired from the market else incurring in several legal demands from users some years ago...
  • Bad
    Bad Posts: 3,146 Chairperson of the Boards
    That pokemon episode really induced epilepsy as a well know cause on multiple flashes.
    That this game is hurting users is yet to be proved by medical experts, as many other games use darkening screens wich never induce epilepsy. 
    Against medical experts the argument "I have colorblind issues and you not, so just shup up" it doesnt work anymore. 
  • Chameleon
    Chameleon Posts: 183 Tile Toppler
    Polares said:
    I find INCREDIBLY that we still have had not communication from Devs, acknowledging all the health issues with an ETA for a fix. This is just pathetic. This is a new low for this game.


    PS: And for those people that say that Apple or Google are the problem, another game I play released a patch the same day as MPQ, they also broke something, and today we already (Friday) have an update. So it is not Apple or Google, it is these guys.

    Edit: Of course the announcement came just after my post....
    April 4th, devs?? https://d3go.helpshift.com/a/marvel-puzzle-quest/?s=news&f=upcoming-gameboard-fixes-3-19-21&l=en

    What game is that?  Maybe we should be throwing our support behind it instead of MPQ.
  • Chameleon
    Chameleon Posts: 183 Tile Toppler
    Bad said:
    That pokemon episode really induced epilepsy as a well know cause on multiple flashes.
    That this game is hurting users is yet to be proved by medical experts, as many other games use darkening screens wich never induce epilepsy. 
    Against medical experts the argument "I have colorblind issues and you not, so just shup up" it doesnt work anymore. 
    https://forums.d3go.com/discussion/84797/what-causes-the-new-board-migraines-and-how-to-cope

    It isn't just the darkening, though removing it could go a ways toward improving this literal headache.  Why do we need medical experts?  Want each of us to provide a doctor's note?  That's going to get costly fast!
  • fight4thedream
    fight4thedream GLOBAL_MODERATORS Posts: 1,978 Chairperson of the Boards
    **Mod note: Removed a few posts as the discussion was heading into an inappropriate direction. Please keep the discussion on topic and remember to be civil with each other. Thank you. 
  • Akoni
    Akoni Posts: 790 Critical Contributor
    Motren said:
    ThaRoadWarrior said:
    This dev team is almost certainly very small, and working with very limited resources. I think it's a mistake to assume every game you play has an army of people behind it, particularly a free to play mobile game of this vintage, so I find it highly unlikely there is room in the budget for specialty consultants or user focus groups when you're feeding the content furnace as often as this game is. I don't know if they are, but you could keep this game going with a full time designer and a full time engineer, with a contract artist and a shared QA asset if your tools are good. I've known personally late stage F2P games that were being maintained by a single full time designer. And again I'd like to be very clear I don't know anyone at this studio working on this game, just saying that this is how the sausage is made generally. So really I'm just advocating for a little grace for them, I am sure they are doing the best they're able.

     I'm sure that walking back a change like this one is going to be non-trivial, but I'm also sure enough people are reporting health reactions to this that they will definitely have to address at least the screen dimming. I'm sympathetic (but I also as a player would like this problem addressed lol). 
    Limited resources? Are u joking? With all the money they gain from players, they have enough to use to make something decent on the game. Anyway, money or not, health is the most important thing, they showed us they didn't even think to player's health, the incompetence was so high that not 1 in the team supposed that could be dangerous a change like this, OMG, not 1 that was able to imagine. And also, u want to tell me that inserting a warning before opening the game was costing too much? U speaking of limited resources when was enough that devs put into this thing only little attention and nothing else. Maybe u think money are essential but be sure this is not the case. Many things are possible to do just using ur damn own brain correctly and with responsability. Now tell me what could happen if someone cause of the game gets an epileptic episode fall and hurts his head and must go at the hospital? Incompetence, disinterest, not enough money, bad or good intentions, doesn't matter... It Will be d3's fault. There is no justification
    I would like to respectfully argue that your statements are not completely fair. Starting at the top, the amount of money players spend is not the only variable utilized in determining profit. Profit and Loss (PNL or P&L) statements detail various expenses and revenue streams. Player purchases are merely a revenue stream. If the game brings in $1,000,000 per year, but expenses equate to $999,000 per year, that only leaves $1,000 profit for the entire year. In most developed countries, $1,000 in profits per year is not good. If we are honest with ourselves, we do not and can not know this company's revenue and expenses. We should not assume that revenue equals wealth and, therefore, buying power.

    To your second point, it has been identified that common sense is not common. To many of us, it makes sense that if you alter the color or physical appearance of two objects that you can really screw with people who have vision-related disabilities. However, if you grew up in a perfect little community where no one had visual impairments of any sort, the thought would never cross your mind. It doesn't become common sense to you until you are exposed. An IRL example of this is the racist sink. Those wonderful hands-free sinks you see in many establishments only worked for people with lighter skin tones such as whites and lighter-skinned African-Americans. It so happens that the sinks or the people who made them weren't racist. The engineers just simply forgot to test their product on darker-skinned folk. In this case, devs (of which none are probably epileptic or color-blind) tested the product amongst themselves and thought "it works". Unfortunately, much of the world has yet to catch up with those with disabilities. As a result, we are still redesigning sidewalks, street lights, entryways, etc. Should devs have taken those people in consideration? Yes. Did they? No. Are they meanies who only want to see the world's eyes burn because of this? No. They're human beings who made a mistake (ok, a few health affecting mistakes).

    I get where you're coming from. I really do. We want to believe that anyone who does anything less than good is a bad person or just doesn't care. Your statement was very aggressive and absolutist, but does that make you a bad person? No. Just another human being who is passionate about this little form of entertainment.
  • Jacknife
    Jacknife Posts: 15 Just Dropped In
    Untill these day all patches was good or better than the good. This time it was terrible. Im afraid of something that is developers change somethings and make new patch. But it wont helpful for me. I want odl style back.

    It wouldnt be last too long that remove new patch. What I undestand now? They still impose somethings new to us.
  • BeetleGeorge
    BeetleGeorge Posts: 76 Match Maker
    Thanks to the links Chameleon posted I'm now sitting here dreaming about getting a new version in maybe two weeks where I can switch off darkening and I can switch off all kinds of flashing.
    This are the two main points causing headaches I think but I'm aware that other people, e.g. color-blind ones, might need other changes - so let's dream of a color scheme or tile scheme button too :-)
    Until then I will try to hold out by playing less and only in bright surroundings.
    And I hope I will not wake up too hard when I first play-test the new version.
  • ThaRoadWarrior
    ThaRoadWarrior Posts: 9,471 Chairperson of the Boards
    edited March 2021
    This was the most recent high profile game reaction I’m aware of - the Cyberpunk 2077 Un-skippable brain dance cinematic that was intentionally design along the lines of a medical seizure inducer for some reason: https://www.washingtonpost.com/video-games/2020/12/31/cyberpunk-2077-seizure/

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