Upcoming Bonus Character Release (8/5/22)

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  • JimboJambo
    JimboJambo Posts: 132 Tile Toppler
    edited August 2022
    The new devs have done a lot of good things and people on this forum have recognised that and continue to do so.

    However the fact that a number of 5*s don't have a feeder is something that the old devs allowed to happen over a long period of time - it isn't something the player base bears any responsibility for. It is now a problem to be addressed, as acknowledged by the new devs. Players are entitled to question the method of addressing this, especially if it is being sold to us as a 'bonus'. Personally I feel there are better ways of catching up with the feeders so I hope this doesn't turn into a regularly monthly additional release. I recognise that at this point this is just being presented as a one off so I hope that is all it is.
  • DarthDeVo
    DarthDeVo Posts: 2,178 Chairperson of the Boards
    edited August 2022
    ThaRoadWarrior said:
    I would say that increasing the release pace to one character a week without boosting the economy would wipe out a ton of those goodwill moments, yes. I’m not asking for anyone to get fired, or burned at the stake, or anything else so over the top, just calling this gift what it is, which is a bit of a white elephant. (If you are unfamiliar with the idiom, a White Elephant is a gift that seems extravagant on its face but places a burden on the receiver to own. Imagine I literally gave you a white elephant, and now you need to figure out how to house it, feed it, etc)
    I think a better example is like when Oprah gave away all those "free" cars to her audience. Everyone flipped their lid when she announced it. 

    Then they found out they had to pay like $6,000 in gift taxes to actually keep it. Now, $6K for a brand new car is a pretty good deal any way you slice it. But it dang sure ain't free and can hardly be considered a bonus. If I remember right, I think some people had to end up forfeiting the car because they couldn't come up with a way to pay that gift tax. 
  • Bad
    Bad Posts: 3,146 Chairperson of the Boards
    I think it's pretty funny that the most vocals posters against a bonus character and game economy are actually players who supposedly don't have any problem to roster, champ characters or earning HP.
    And about new players, there are a few threads showing how a new player can compete and build a 5* roster in few months. So they will be fine.
    Now, devs starting changes in September: it's perfectly understandable as there are summer vacations and less people playing right now.
    Imo they are doing great until now. They had mistakes but the compensations offered in exchange by far exceeded the problems occasioned.

  • ThaRoadWarrior
    ThaRoadWarrior Posts: 9,439 Chairperson of the Boards
    Again, not speaking for anyone else, just clarifying my misgivings are not because I think giving away free things is insidious, it’s that I really don’t want an accelerated release cadence, particularly one that comes with short notice off-schedule new releases. It’s true, I’m pretty likely able to keep up with it, but I still don’t really want a faster release schedule. 

    To those that are saying “but this is how we catch up to the unfed 5*s” while also saying “greedy players will want double feeders!” I would pose the question: if all new releases are going to feed somebody, and there are what, ten 5* characters unfed maybe? What ARE those next releases going to feed after we catch up? They are either double-feeding, or accelerating the 5* pace to make more characters that need feeding, or we will get back to some new 4*s don’t feed anyone. There are just under twice as many 4*s as there are 5*s in the game currently. 
  • jsmjsmjsm00
    jsmjsmjsm00 Posts: 268 Mover and Shaker
    HoundofShadow said:

    And here are the negative events that have happened: 
    1) First Heroic restricted to DA
    2) planned 3*/5* and 4* release per month, beginning in September
    3) one additional release in August
    None of these are objectively negative. I support all of these and am not the only one. 
  • HoundofShadow
    HoundofShadow Posts: 8,004 Chairperson of the Boards
    @Timemachinego you're also one of the biggest dev critics, I guess, and whatever the dev has done csn't make you happy. Why play a game where the dev won't do things the way you want it? It has been like this for you for at least a year or so :o

    Next, the point is, there are always give and take. And players can't be expecting the dev to look at every issue negatively. This extra roster slot for August is a pain for some. However, the big picture is that the new dev has been really generous and you can't expect them to keep giving without getting something back in order to make the bean counter happy. The ex-dev team has said talked about such tradeoff before. The new dev team (probably) has to do this as well.

    Every new character requires roster slot. It has been this way since the existent of the game. Roster slots contribute to the majority of the games' revenue. Do players really expect the dev to create a thread that goes something like

    Title: Additional roster slot required for upcoming Bonus Character Release

    Message: There will be an additional character release this month and we won't be reducing the price of roster slot or give everyone one free roster slot. On the flip side, we'll give everyone 1 cover for this bonus character. 

    The dev has publicly said that they'll be doing something to alleviate the pain from cost of extra slots in September when 3*/5* comes around. However, please keep in mind that the dev didn't say that they will increase hp income for veteran players by 2000 a month.

    There're 18 unfed 5* actually, including Chasm. The ex-dev said something back in 2014 and while they're not handling MPQ anymore, but it still rings very true today.

    Progression in any RPG eventually slows down, and speeding things up in one place often just hastens the moment when things get slow. 
  • shardwick
    shardwick Posts: 2,121 Chairperson of the Boards
    ThaRoadWarrior said:
    Yepyep said:
    BriMan2222 said:
    Yepyep said:
    KGB said:
    <snip>

    I imagine these extra characters are the way they are going to catch up on feeders. If that's the case, then for all those complaining, Shardmas is what's caused this to have to happen since they don't want another retro reward debacle.

    <snip>

    KGB

    How was it a debacle? I thought it was great...
    It was great only after they gave us full rewards. They didn't intend to.  They only gave like 1/3 of the rewards at first. 

    It was only after huge back lash of players bombarding them with negative comments on the forum and face book and review bombing the game in the app store and stopping any spending they did on the game that they gave us full retro rewards.

    They've never updated feeders since then.  So players have inferredfrom this that don't want to give us full rewards for retro feeders but also know the fans will riot if they update feeders and don't give 100 percent of the retro rewards.
    Wow, @KGB and @BriMan2222 I'm not at all trying to challenge you. But I have no memories of any of this controversy over Shard+(Christ)mas, i.e. the raining down of gifts of shards that one day. It was all 100% seamless for me and right on the day it dropped.

    I wonder if it (the debacle) might not have been just platform hiccups and players terrified of being left behind -- whether justified or not. And yo! I'm no apologist for the devs on this forum... But seriously, it was a good thing and things have been mostly good since then. It was a welcome recalibration of power (maybe less so for the 550 club, because there's nowhere to go north of GOD).

    Is there a concise history of this debacle memorialized anywhere, please?
    The shardmas “debacle” came about when shards were worked into champ rewards all over, and rather than keep with the tradition that had long been in place of giving players all the updated rewards 1:1, for some reason it was decided that if your character who was already a feeder was past level 280 you would only get a flat 100 shards regardless of how many historical covers you would have earned under the old retroactive reward system. I believe newly minted feeders gave out 1:1.

    https://forums.d3go.com/discussion/80703/r192-champion-rewards-updates

    when people talk about “Shardmas 2.0” they are referring to the “fix” when all the shards people expected they would have gotten were paid out after the aforementioned review bombing, complaints everywhere, presumably actual spend stops, etc, and that was the last time a character was retroactively made into a feeder. Since then we have seen sporadic and arbitrary characters launching as feeders to older 5s which I think is fine and frankly should have been the way it was done always (minus the arbitrary part - it feels way better to be able to predict based on lore which character will feed another). 
    You're thinking of Shardpocalypse which was when the old devs gave out very little shards and people freaked out. Shardmas was when the devs corrected things, and Shardmas 2.0 was when people were thinking that the devs would put out another round of 5* feeders but it never happened.
  • HoundofShadow
    HoundofShadow Posts: 8,004 Chairperson of the Boards
    edited August 2022
    This is a discussion forum, *redacted*. If players want to hear only things they want to hear, they should go back to Line and start their own chat rooms that. Any normal discussion will see at least two points of views. If players have problems handling different points of views, I wonder how they survive in the real world.

    **Mod note: Removed inappropriate comment. -fight4thedream
  • Bad
    Bad Posts: 3,146 Chairperson of the Boards
    Daredevil217 said:
    This thread…. geez. Some posters (not a bunch mind you), post their dislike of this release. I think this is 100% fair on a forum about MPQ. 

    Then the usual white knights come in and go after the posters for stating their opinion. I can like 99 things the developers do and dislike 1 thing simultaneously. I can hold both.  Which means disliking one decision does NOT take away all the goodwill brought forth by the decisions I’ve loved.  It feels like the knights fail to grasp the concept of holding good AND bad simultaneously. I actually think that feedback is important.  I haven’t seen the massive death threats, promises to rage quit, review bombing, or anything like that over this. Just some people pointing out their displeasure. But it’s the people who complain about the complainers from their pulpit that make the forums so much more of an unpleasant place. 

    Oh, sorry about me taking the horse.
    On my initial post I didn't , and it was very positive.
    However if people start making it sound like the sky is falling because of just one bonus character, then I take the horse, because as I said it's unfair to the new devs and first is needed to see how they will do, even it's needed to see the character who is it and if he worths it, not just shooting first and asking questions later.
    Actually I think it's disingenuous to see a bonus release and to make it sound like the new devs are going to be milking us with slots, so as you can see it's the opposite approach.
    And white knights approaches can be as awful as black knights' ones, only depends on the eyes which are watching it.
  • dianetics
    dianetics Posts: 1,631 Chairperson of the Boards
    What did this thread devolve into?
    One extra 4* this month isn’t a big deal. If it is a trend it will cause issues later, but there has been no word from the new devs one way or the other.
    The new devs did plenty of good things since taking over and in my opinion have earned enough good will to not complain too much, and let them see where they are going with it.
  • HoundofShadow
    HoundofShadow Posts: 8,004 Chairperson of the Boards
    Let's be realistic, it's impossible that the dev isn't aware that players would be upset with this extra character release. For the past two months, they've been getting questions about roster slots/HP. They are aware of  concerns about roster slot costs. Despite such awareness, they still went ahead with this extra character release, which is a one-off event. They didn't pair this bonus release with a free roster slot for everyone, neither did they give every player 1000-2000 hp as an apology for releasing an extra character in August.

    My take? There's always give and take. The new dev team has been giving a lot to the players for the past two months and some are unhappy with this one off event. The value of all the stuffs they've given us is definitely worth more than 2000 HP. I wonder what kind of meltdown is going to happen in September when 3*/5* rotation kicks off. 

    As for longevity of the game, they've been doing well for the past 8 years despite the dev being stingy and putting up paywalls after paywalls.
  • Bad
    Bad Posts: 3,146 Chairperson of the Boards
    What's my knight's point of view on this issue?
    Well, I don't know if this character will be a feeder. I don't know if he will be a tie-in. I don't know if he will be a one really asked by the fans. I don't know if he will interesting, fun, or meta.
    So I reserve my opinion until later as I don't have data.
    In my country this is called prudence, and is a wise man's trait. Prudent men usually don't have to eat their words later.
    Oh, but in a forum that can be solved easily, just put a like on this character announcement if it's ok and everything is cleared then, no matter how much you badmouthed before lol.
  • jsmjsmjsm00
    jsmjsmjsm00 Posts: 268 Mover and Shaker
    The forums literally complain about every single change that isn't directly putting money into the players' pockets, and even then might complain that it should be more money. 

    Also, and again, the devs said that every released character would be a feeder so this will be a feeder. 
  • ThaRoadWarrior
    ThaRoadWarrior Posts: 9,439 Chairperson of the Boards
    Again, not "complaining" about the character, just worrying about the effective release cadence increase. 
  • liminal_lad
    liminal_lad Posts: 474 Mover and Shaker
    edited August 2022
    HoundofShadow said:
    This is a discussion forum, *redacted*. If players want to hear only things they want to hear, they should go back to Line and start their own chat rooms that. Any normal discussion will see at least two points of views. If players have problems handling different points of views, I wonder how they survive in the real world.

    **Mod note: removed inappropriate comment- fight4thedream
    Comparing people to *redacted* for disagreeing with you is incredibly rude and also potentially triggering to anyone who has dealt with family members in *redacted*. Please find a minimal level of civility and consideration please.

    **Mod note: Removed references to a previous inappropriate comment - fight4thedream
  • fight4thedream
    fight4thedream GLOBAL_MODERATORS Posts: 1,972 Chairperson of the Boards
    **Mod note: I have removed a few off-topic posts. Additionally, please refrain from using charged or inflammatory language and inappropriate metaphors. While I know we have many adult users, please keep in mind this is supposed to be family-friendly site and a place welcoming to all with an interest in the game. Thank you.
  • KGB
    KGB Posts: 3,229 Chairperson of the Boards
    edited August 2022
    HoundofShadow said:
    The value of all the stuffs they've given us is definitely worth more than 2000 HP. I wonder what kind of meltdown is going to happen in September when 3*/5* rotation kicks off. 

    As for longevity of the game, they've been doing well for the past 8 years despite the dev being stingy and putting up paywalls after paywalls.
    Here's the other thing no one's considered. How many players would pay 2K in hero points to turn a 4* into a feeder? I bet a LOT of players would be happy to pay 2K to turn character X into a 5* feeder (no retro rewards, just straight turn a 4* into a feeder).

    That's essentially all that's happening. We are paying 2K to get a 5* feeder. Given how players constantly ask for feeders for the unfed 5* you'd think there would be a lineup around the block to pay 2K because that's VASTLY cheaper than buying out one of the limited vaults for 500 shards given you can earn up to 6 covers for a max champed 4.

    KGB

    P.S. I expect the newly released 3* will dual feed 4*s in order to start catching up on the crazy number of unfed 4*.
  • ThaRoadWarrior
    ThaRoadWarrior Posts: 9,439 Chairperson of the Boards
    For sure - I think at the heart of the retroactive feeder debate is the idea that it takes a LONG time to grow a 4* either from new release or even baby champ, so it felt good to have your time investment in a retroactive feeder conversion pay off. For instance when I was still chasing my first 5*, it was in the pre-shard bonus hero days, and I spent about 10 months chasing America Chavez up to 360 to finish Jessica Jones. That was one character being actively force fed to chase another character. It took so long to feed my way to a finished character that I'd actually champed 2 other 5*s in the meantime. Once you're in the 5* game, with very few exceptions 4* characters only exist to be reward factories that push your 5* roster up. So sure, add more feeders so at least they get fed eventually. I am still curious if the dev team would truly want to immediately catch up to new releases though, since it would mean that at some point you will have newly released 4*s feeding characters currently in latest.

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