Week 33. BW , Hela, Knull, Heimdall

Timemachinego

I had a big old nested replies and **** response going, but I erased it because I think DD217 hit the nail exactly on the head.

I've not been here terribly long, under 2 years, but all I've seen the game design trending towards is making the upper reaches of the game easier to get to and I make suggestions along those lines, looking at more "walls" and how they could be more smoothly approached through the given play experience. In response, I usually get a handful of OG prolific posters telling me how the game had always been and why it's a bad idea, either gloriously looking past "recent" changes in apparent game philosophy or suggesting that I and people like me are asking that we get top-meta 550s for simply signing on in bizarre slippery-slope arguments and what-abouts. Those guaranteed, some likes or insightfuls from players who are smarter than me than to fully engage if I managed to say something smart.

Now, the dev team could outright state that they want the game to be more approachable for new players and state the various changes that they made that fed that. They could say all of that and I suppose massively turn-off the last bastion of old-school maybe not even paying anymore players? I'm not saying that was the intent of milestones or shards or anything else, but having been a newer player that benefited from those things they did seem to make it much easier to raise myself out of the muck than what ya'll describe as the good old days, so I'm thankful for those changes.

Within my own alliance family I still see lots of people spending, many of those at what can be understood as the very top of the game, so they must still feel that their dollars are being spent well? I also don't see them complaining about changes that aid the new player becoming a functioning member of our strange society, so it can't possibly be that bad that they're getting a leg-up now, right?

If you're no longer competing, I don't know what sense there is in even registering complaints to any changes at all, especially those deemed positive for the player.

Is it an inability to deal with change? fwiw, I had a panic attack when my neighbor cut down his mature tree that shaded many of "our" lawns earlier this week, so I do understand that. It screwed up my idea of our block and very possibly some of our resale value but after talking to him, I learned the roots were encroaching on his foundation so it was literally the tree or his house. Fair enough, I still hate it but do at least recognize it as for the greater good of our neighborhood. We're having actual surveyors in to deem if any of our yards can support an old tree without similar damage.

If you are competing, Are you just mad that someone with less time put in can fill "your spot"?

Life is full of people that can steal your spot if they're actively working for it. This game is still alive enough to have people that want your spot and that's a wonderful thing! That's what keeps the updates coming!

entrailbucket

I'm really, really confused now.  Are you saying that customer service doing 550 swaps is a benefit to new players, that allows them to get "a leg up?" Which new players are taking advantage of this policy?

Sekilicious

DAZ0273 said:

So anyway, that Knull guy, he sure is a healthy fella.

Stupid health pool slowing my climb. I’m not sure I can make it to 1200 to get to progression and I’m blaming him. I guess I will have to learn to shield hop

Timemachinego

entrailbucket said:

I'm really, really confused now.  Are you saying that customer service doing 550 swaps is a benefit to new players, that allows them to get "a leg up?" Which new players are taking advantage of this policy?

It's my fault for distilling a dozen replies down to a blanket statement, sorry for that, and while I was referencing your words to some extent there's another another good lot of you encompassed in these thoughts.

550 swaps are of course not a new player nicety, it's something they instituted in the past for the real whaley whales that you reference, however discontinuing that would be a disservice to anyone who came after and as such they've kept doing it, possibly opening the door for more players to creep up? It's a service to new players to keep offering them what old players relied on.

Maybe in the same way the "premium" customer service you talk about is now available to a player like me who definitely doesn't qualify as a whale in your eyes but does still spend... I've yet to reach the mmr guy in the janitor's closet, but I've received nothing but prompt, exacting care for my stupid petty concerns and until I hear otherwise, I'll assume that's the general experience.

You've said no one should be interested in what you want, but I am. It'd be a lot easier to bounce ideas off/through you if it wasn't just what you hated but instead what you wanted? Even after reading hundreds of your replies I don't know what you actually want from this game other than for it to keep continuing (I'd like it to go on forever too!) but if your every reply is a rejection we can't even begin to talk together about what's next. That usually begins with statements such as "I'd like..."

entrailbucket

Timemachinego said:

entrailbucket said:

I'm really, really confused now.  Are you saying that customer service doing 550 swaps is a benefit to new players, that allows them to get "a leg up?" Which new players are taking advantage of this policy?

It's my fault for distilling a dozen replies down to a blanket statement, sorry for that, and while I was referencing your words to some extent there's another another good lot of you encompassed in these thoughts.

550 swaps are of course not a new player nicety, it's something they instituted in the past for the real whaley whales that you reference, however discontinuing that would be a disservice to anyone who came after and as such they've kept doing it, possibly opening the door for more players to creep up? It's a service to new players to keep offering them what old players relied on.

Maybe in the same way the "premium" customer service you talk about is now available to a player like me who definitely doesn't qualify as a whale in your eyes but does still spend... I've yet to reach the mmr guy in the janitor's closet, but I've received nothing but prompt, exacting care for my stupid petty concerns and until I hear otherwise, I'll assume that's the general experience.

You've said no one should be interested in what you want, but I am. It'd be a lot easier to bounce ideas off/through you if it wasn't just what you hated but instead what you wanted? Even after reading hundreds of your replies I don't know what you actually want from this game other than for it to keep continuing (I'd like it to go on forever too!) but if your every reply is a rejection we can't even begin to talk together about what's next. That usually begins with statements such as "I'd like..."

Don't misunderstand -- their customer service is pretty good as far as these things go, and when you put in a ticket, they'll respond to you in a reasonable amount of time and do their best to resolve your issue.  The "white glove" service I was talking about is CS doing cover swaps.

If the swap policy is meant to help players catch up, why does it only apply under such limited and outdated conditions?  When it was put in place, it was meant to be an incentive for high spending players to continue to be high spending players, not to be used once or twice in a players' career.  If it's intended to do what people think, wouldn't it also apply to the other 25cp stores?  Why can't lower tier players make use of it?


If you've read hundreds of my posts without putting me on your ignore list...my condolences.  Sometimes I forget people are reading this stuff.  But I've been pretty clear about what I want, I think!  I want balance, or something approximating balance.  There's always going to be a best team, but the best characters should not be +200 levels ahead of the worst characters. 

New players should be able to succeed with any 5*, not just the best of the best.  They shouldn't have to hoard and wait for a good set of 3, they should all be good enough.  If someone's favorite character is Iron Man or Magneto, they should be able to champion that guy and do well.

Daredevil217

entrailbucket said:

When it was put in place, it was meant to be an incentive for high spending players to continue to be high spending players, not to be used once or twice in a players' career.

Can you point me to where this was stated by the developers?

entrailbucket

Daredevil217 said:

entrailbucket said:

When it was put in place, it was meant to be an incentive for high spending players to continue to be high spending players, not to be used once or twice in a players' career.

Can you point me to where this was stated by the developers?

Where was anything about this policy ever stated publicly by the developers?

Anyway, how do I know why they did it?  Many, many years ago, players I knew with multiple 550s (not me, mine are recent) had been using CS to swap covers for some time when the policy was suddenly changed.  They were told that they could no longer use CS in that way unless they had the 3 latest championed.

ThaRoadWarrior

When saved covers went live, there was a thread Brigby put in that CS would no longer honor 1:1 swaps, but I haven’t found it yet.

entrailbucket

ThaRoadWarrior said:

When saved covers went live, there was a thread Brigby put in that CS would no longer honor 1:1 swaps, but I haven’t found it yet.

That's different -- before saved covers, if you had, say, Iron Man at 0/3/5 and you pulled another yellow cover, CS would exchange it for a red or a blue (your choice).  That service was also never really publicized but was widely used by folks who knew about it.

I don't think they've ever publicly acknowledged doing the 550 swaps, or publicly stated what that policy is.

ThaRoadWarrior

https://forums.d3go.com/discussion/comment/811800#Comment_811800

entrailbucket

ThaRoadWarrior said:

https://forums.d3go.com/discussion/comment/811800#Comment_811800

There's a lot going on in there.  It sounds like initially Brigby said they weren't doing any cover exchanges for anyone, and then at some point they reversed course on the 550 thing, probably after whales objected.

That is a public acknowledgement though!  Even though it's buried in a 4 year old forum thread.  If they offer this service, why doesn't everyone know about it?  It's not listed in the in-game help.

ThaRoadWarrior

It’s an interesting artifact from what I consider the “good old days” of forum communication, when Brigby would give us at least some kind of party line about what was happening with a reasonable degree of lead time.

TheEyeDoctorsWife

I recall playing one week recently ( anniversary week?) where all my metas were 550 like whales have every day . It was my  worst gaming week here in 3 years . Boring , monotonous victories over all teams in 3 to 6 moves . Play time cut by over 50%.  Why would you spend 8 years in something with zero challenge or thought needed to succeed ? To me that game would be a living hell. 

  On a different topic of Ultron, I’m finding the Valtronaris ( can I coin that ?) team can stun lock usually in 4 moves . ( Unless I ever saw a Surfer some day ). 

Daredevil217

entrailbucket said:

ThaRoadWarrior said:

https://forums.d3go.com/discussion/comment/811800#Comment_811800

There's a lot going on in there.  It sounds like initially Brigby said they weren't doing any cover exchanges for anyone, and then at some point they reversed course on the 550 thing, probably after whales objected.

That is a public acknowledgement though!  Even though it's buried in a 4 year old forum thread.  If they offer this service, why doesn't everyone know about it?  It's not listed in the in-game help.

There’s plenty about the game that they don’t announce.  It’s pretty common knowledge that most information is found on FB, Line and buried in these here forum threads. I’d venture to say that the reason it isn’t plastered all over in-game help is 2-fold. 1) It affects .01% of the playerbase who let’s be honest, if they reach that level of hoarding/spending, probably already know about the policy. I want to know why leveling up 5*s wrecking MMR isn’t a thing that players are told about up front. That’s way more useful information that effects way more people (as an example). 2) Going through all those swap tickets took a lot of time and resources from CS.  So they weren’t shouting it from the rooftops, but still willing to help players out in that situation. 

Yes, it’s a 4-year old thread, but you have been referencing players (old school whales) and policies way older than that thread and talking about developers providing this special service only to big time whales as an incentive to spend. I still don’t know where that was posted and am waiting for a source. I know you say there’s a lot going on in that thread. I personally found it pretty easy two follow, but the two big posts from Brigby relevant to this situation are: 

“This was a temporary service that Customer Support provided through Support Tickets. We wanted to help alleviate the concern of unusable covers, but it quickly grew to consume a significant portion of their CS efforts. This was one reason why the team developed an in-game feature instead, that accomplishes the same goal, with the added benefit of applying to 2-Star, 3-Star, and 4-Star characters as well”

and

“Update: For players that have a Latest Legends 5-Star character maxed out at level 550, we will still be offering cover exchanges from the maxed out Latest Legends character to another Latest Legends character. The same is true for if players have all 3 of their Latest Legends 5-Star characters maxed out, and wish to exchange their extra Latest Legend covers for any other character cover of their choice.”

Nothing in here about this only being for whales, spenders or anything else. Just that people who max champ all the LL can exchange covers to alleviate concern about those rare unusable covers. He names both who it’s for (anyone in that situation regardless of money spent) and why they’ve done it historically (goodwill to the players and again, nothing about money spent). 

Thank you @Road_Warrior for finding this and putting this issue to rest!  It answers a lot of my questions. I think there has been a lot of assuming going on here, and we have been postulating answers to questions without asking whether the context is even accurate. I questioned whether this was ever a whale-only service and there’s nothing from the developers mouths that seem to indicate that was the case. Obviously whales are more likely to have 550s than non whales, so they’re more likely to take advantage of that service, but it doesn’t mean it was just for them, even if they were the prominent benefactors initially.

entrailbucket

In 2018, hoarding for 550s was not a thing.  Players with 550s were, universally, massive spenders.  It would've been understood from that thread that those were the only players who'd benefit from the policy.


Let's try this -- if this wasn't originally an incentive to spend and continue spending, why does it only apply to the latest 3?  Wouldn't it also apply to anyone else who hoarded and unloaded on any 25cp store?  If it's meant to reward hoarders, why aren't those stores covered?

Daredevil217

I’m not going to pretend to know their reasoning but my guess (since it was stated in the Brigby quote I posted) was to cut down on all the support tickets they’d get. Everytime a OML store pops up that’s a free cover for whoever you want and another ticket submitted. Since I’m sure every character is close to a 550 by someone that’s a lot of tickets to submit. They had to draw the line somewhere for the good of their team but didn’t want to take everything away from the player at the same time. Felt like a good middle ground to me honestly. You disagree?

shardwick

TheEyeDoctorsWife said:

I recall playing one week recently ( anniversary week?) where all my metas were 550 like whales have every day . It was my  worst gaming week here in 3 years . Boring , monotonous victories over all teams in 3 to 6 moves . Play time cut by over 50%.  Why would you spend 8 years in something with zero challenge or thought needed to succeed ? To me that game would be a living hell. 

  On a different topic of Ultron, I’m finding the Valtronaris ( can I coin that ?) team can stun lock usually in 4 moves . ( Unless I ever saw a Surfer some day ). 

I mean nobody is forcing you to use meta characters. Use more characters on your roster that aren't meta or boosted if you want more of a challenge from the game. 

entrailbucket

Daredevil217 said:

I’m not going to pretend to know their reasoning but my guess (since it was stated in the Brigby quote I posted) was to cut down on all the support tickets they’d get. Everytime a OML store pops up that’s a free cover for whoever you want and another ticket submitted. Since I’m sure every character is close to a 550 by someone that’s a lot of tickets to submit. They had to draw the line somewhere for the good of their team but didn’t want to take everything away from the player at the same time. Felt like a good middle ground to me honestly. You disagree?

You're assuming I'd do that.  I wouldn't.  I don't pull on those stores and I wouldn't even if they gave cover swaps.  They're a bad deal.  But besides that, how many other 550 OMLs do you think are out there?  I know of about 2 or 3 among active players.  That's significantly less than the number of swap tickets they had to handle during the SW/Colossus latest 3.

What I know about this is that at some point well before 2018, a player with a 550 character could convert covers of that character to any other character of their choice. 

One day they stopped doing those, and told players who requested it that they'd only do exchanges according to the policy posted in that thread (latest 3 only).  This was done during a particularly bad latest 3 that very few people wanted to buy.  The whale community's assumption at that time was that they were being forced to buy bad characters.  (Many of them did anyway, though)

That change wasn't posted or announced anywhere that I know of.  In fact, if you read that thread, the latest 3 policy significantly predates it.  Where was the announcement of that policy?

HoundofShadow

I remember that cover swap was actually done for a few players and words spread (in Line). The CS did say it's a temporary service or goodwill and you don't need 550 to do cover swap. I remember they did cover swaps for those latest 5* with poor cover distributions like 6/6/1 to 5/3/5 etc. It was stopped when Saved Covers were introduced. This was pretty memorable because I can't believe how ungrateful and entitled some of the players are when cs decided to stop 1:1 cover swap.

I didn't know such thing exists until some players mentioned it in the forum (before Saved Covers). Now, cover swaps are only done for 550 in only Latest store. If you 550 in special store, they won't do cover swap.

Besides, non-spending or low spending new players will need to hoard for over 2 years to 550. By then, are they still even considered new players when they have been playing competitively for such period of time? 

So, cover swap was done out of goodwill for a small number of players and they decided to spread their experiences around and overloaded cs. 

TheEyeDoctorsWife

shardwick said:

TheEyeDoctorsWife said:

I recall playing one week recently ( anniversary week?) where all my metas were 550 like whales have every day . It was my  worst gaming week here in 3 years . Boring , monotonous victories over all teams in 3 to 6 moves . Play time cut by over 50%.  Why would you spend 8 years in something with zero challenge or thought needed to succeed ? To me that game would be a living hell. 

  On a different topic of Ultron, I’m finding the Valtronaris ( can I coin that ?) team can stun lock usually in 4 moves . ( Unless I ever saw a Surfer some day ). 

I mean nobody is forcing you to use meta characters. Use more characters on your roster that aren't meta or boosted if you want more of a challenge from the game. 

Yes because in an entire year of 5* tier PvP NOT ONCE did I ever face a team without at least 1 meta character. (average 2.2 metas per opponent). It’s a shame every other player hasn’t had this idea . Or maybe I’m just the only player that enjoys challenges.