let's show d3 what we think.

Unknown

So, I know the forums have been ablaze in complaints lately. The community dissatisfied with the way things been going and everybody and their dog have been threatening to quit.

Let's take a different approach.

we received an in-game compensation and an apology for the server issues. This is the kind of thing we've looking for. This is attention from the developers. This is acknowledgement that things are not perfect. This is step in right direction.

Threatening to stop playing hasn't gotten us anywhere, so let's show D3 that this what we want using their native language. Money. I'm going to spend twenty bucks on hero points today. I want to encourage the rest of you to do the same. Spend a little cash, and hopefully the number crunchers will see a spike in sales to coincide with some good customer service and maybe we'll see more of that in the future.

Unknown

You do realize there was just another server issue last night right?

Clintman

thecapnjoe wrote:

So, I know the forums have been ablaze in complaints lately. The community dissatisfied with the way things been going and everybody and their dog have been threatening to quit.

Let's take a different approach.

we received an in-game compensation and an apology for the server issues. This is the kind of thing we've looking for. This is attention from the developers. This is acknowledgement that things are not perfect. This is step in right direction.

Threatening to stop playing hasn't gotten us anywhere, so let's show D3 that this what we want using their native language. Money. I'm going to spend twenty bucks on hero points today. I want to encourage the rest of you to do the same. Spend a little cash, and hopefully the number crunchers will see a spike in sales to coincide with some good customer service and maybe we'll see more of that in the future.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xlA9bNk3b5Q

daveomite

thecapnjoe wrote:

So, I know the forums have been ablaze in complaints lately. The community dissatisfied with the way things been going and everybody and their dog have been threatening to quit.

Let's take a different approach.

we received an in-game compensation and an apology for the server issues. This is the kind of thing we've looking for. This is attention from the developers. This is acknowledgement that things are not perfect. This is step in right direction.

Threatening to stop playing hasn't gotten us anywhere, so let's show D3 that this what we want using their native language. Money. I'm going to spend twenty bucks on hero points today. I want to encourage the rest of you to do the same. Spend a little cash, and hopefully the number crunchers will see a spike in sales to coincide with some good customer service and maybe we'll see more of that in the future.

though I appreciate, in a perfect world, it may help...I think many of us have already spent well over 20 bucks in the game. I know I have, and I still get hit with server issues, and never get any real resolution over any CS ticket to this day.

They've made it abundantly clear, they want your money. And they've certainly gotten quite a lot of people's money up to this point. But, they continue to change things to try and get even more money in more situations. Not just shields, not just boosts, not just health packs, or even needing to pay to level characters.

So, just not sure putting in $20 is really going to solve anything other than continuing to line their pockets.

Unknown

Unknown

They announced the end of prologue healing, so they're not getting my money right now. If they can go a week without doing something infuriating then I'll consider spending money on this game again.

Unknown

The devs are like Pinky and the Brain but instead of taking over the world, they just want to invent new ways to piss off their players...

Unknown

thecapnjoe wrote:

So, I know the forums have been ablaze in complaints lately. The community dissatisfied with the way things been going and everybody and their dog have been threatening to quit.

Let's take a different approach.

we received an in-game compensation and an apology for the server issues. This is the kind of thing we've looking for. This is attention from the developers. This is acknowledgement that things are not perfect. This is step in right direction.

Threatening to stop playing hasn't gotten us anywhere, so let's show D3 that this what we want using their native language. Money. I'm going to spend twenty bucks on hero points today. I want to encourage the rest of you to do the same. Spend a little cash, and hopefully the number crunchers will see a spike in sales to coincide with some good customer service and maybe we'll see more of that in the future.

This is the singular worst thing you could possibly do. Their compensation was meaningless to the players actually affected by the outage (i.e. who ended up just shy of a reward or placement as a result). Token gestures are no replacement for actual customer service.

Spending money in this game does not get you better service. The game is geared towards making you spend money. I got to max **'s through tough love grinding. It was a chore, but was doable. The only thing you don't realize there is leveling past a certain point (maxing your **'s) will start making you have to tank and or shop hop. You're promised a return to semi-casual via 3-stars, but as soon as I leveled a 3-star high enough (was able to take things easier for a couple PvP's and still place okay), they went all death brackets on us. They seem to have eased that off on account of all the forum rage, but in its place they've instated something different where you get hammered constantly from a much earlier point value - so effectively a wash. We're still in death brackets, just without the high point values.

Likewise in PvE, they made some solid strides during prodigal sun by having achievable goals, and giving players a clear idea what their final placement would be if they kept playing. It was a bit of a grind, and until the end it was a solid first step forward. Then they took several steps back this PvE by mucking with the node refreshes to require even more grind and instituting weird point penalty systems that people are still trying to figure out. So again, one step forward, one or more steps back.

Now talking about giving them money, I bought a stark salary before the death brackets started to fill out my roster and make it more competitive. I got covers for Lthor and Mags. I was also going to get some Spidey covers, but held off because I had no yellow for him. They nerfed spidey, and they're nerfing Mags soon. Spending money on characters in this game is generally a poor investment since your inclination is to spend on the best characters you have available - which also makes them nerf targets. So that's a case in point really. The strongest characters are probably the ones people spend the most on, which usually signals to Demiurge that they're "overused" and "trivilialize gameplay". Instead of just reworking systems so that health packs aren't required to play, they nerf any characters who reduce the probability of you taking damage during matches. i.e. you're expected to take damage, and you're expected to spend money on health packs that only last a couple matches.

The only really clear, solid investment of HP is in shields, and you don't need to spend $20 to have a HP reserve for that. If anything, I'd say even that is less compelling. These days, they keep seeming to rework things to try and make shield hopping required for high placement, and now it's not even guaranteed. This last pvp I didn't even bother shielding because it was such a bloodbath.

I've said before that Demiurge are more like drug dealers than the type of game devs I normally support. They give you something free to get you hooked, and keep demanding more time/money for you to keep getting your "fix". Since I try to avoid any interaction with those kinds of people in real life, I'm not giving them another penny until I see serious movement in a direction to be more consumer friendly and less greedy. Right now, giving them money just encourages them to make additional changes to try and milk even more money out of us. So if you want to send them, speak with your wallet by NOT giving them money. They need to accommodate their player base more and their basest interests less.

HailMary

Just to comment on the bits that stood to me...

theHappyDance wrote:

The strongest characters are probably the ones people spend the most on, which usually signals to Demiurge that they're "overused" and "trivilialize gameplay".

Counterpoint: OBW. She's everywhere, she's been around since forever, and there's been more than forum thread calling for her nerf. Are you seriously that pre-nerf Spidey's stun wasn't broken? Even people who raged massively about post-nerf Spidey generally agreed that Spidey stunlock was completely broken.

theHappyDance wrote:

Instead of just reworking systems so that health packs aren't required to play, they nerf any characters who reduce the probability of you taking damage during matches. i.e. you're expected to take damage, and you're expected to spend money on health packs that only last a couple matches.

Why would you ever want to do away with health packs? Why is that a good idea at all?

Unknown

HailMary wrote:

Just to comment on the bits that stood to me...

theHappyDance wrote:

The strongest characters are probably the ones people spend the most on, which usually signals to Demiurge that they're "overused" and "trivilialize gameplay".

Counterpoint: OBW. She's everywhere, she's been around since forever, and there's been more than forum thread calling for her nerf. Are you seriously that pre-nerf Spidey's stun wasn't broken? Even people who raged massively about post-nerf Spidey generally agreed that Spidey stunlock was completely broken.

theHappyDance wrote:

Instead of just reworking systems so that health packs aren't required to play, they nerf any characters who reduce the probability of you taking damage during matches. i.e. you're expected to take damage, and you're expected to spend money on health packs that only last a couple matches.

Why would you ever want to do away with health packs? Why is that a good idea at all?

Counter counterpoint: People only abused spiderman because the health pack system has been massively broken since ***'s became the meta. If they fixed that, they'd have no need to nerf him. He was slow on O, weak on D, and generally not the most conducive to PvP - more effective in PvE taking down all those unreasonably high scaled goons.

I think doing away with health packs would be a great idea. Instead have a blanket 5 min cooldown for *'s, 10 min for **'s, and 20 min for ***. Maybe the numbers should be more conservative, but I personally think those are more or less right. Encourage variety in the teams people field if they want to keep playing when a character's downed. And maybe have characters who haven't been downed stay at full health.

Unknown

the solution is so easy...

as someone already suggested, make all characters heal to 100% after a match ends if the character didn't die. if it did, then use a health pack. health pack regeneration rate can stay the same or maybe slightly faster. make it so that dead characters do not come back unless a health pack is used. bam, no more 9 hour waits for hulk to be usable again.

to compensate for this, raise the AI intelligence maybe 10-20% to make games more challenging.

imagine a world where you don't need healers in a match... imagine a world where people would only use obw or any healer if that was their particular playstyle, where it wasn't seen as a crutch, where it wasn't seen as a weakness not to have obw... in this world healers would be used to compliment a slow-starting team, not as a way to just make it to the next fight at full health... healers would be totally optional to a team comp, not necessary... imagine a world where no one need to grind story mode for healing...

over_clocked

Ben Grimm wrote:

They announced the end of prologue healing, so they're not getting my money right now. If they can go a week without doing something infuriating then I'll consider spending money on this game again.

When was that? All I remember is Ice saying 'we are thinking of something that might enrage playerbase, so nothing in stone yet'.

ClydeFrog76

What a ridiculous idea.

OnesOwnGrief

Let's say just for a moment that I will buy Hero Points. What exactly would I use them on? I have every 2* cover fully covered. The price of covers for 3* is nonsense. Then there's the issue of Heroics not even giving me a 3* on a 10 pack. At the stage in at in the game, it does not benignity me to buy HP.

I can even state the same thing for ISO. $20 in ISO doesn't even begin to dent the post 100 levels on 3*. Give me reasonable prices and I'll give it thought.

Unknown

thecapnjoe wrote:

So, I know the forums have been ablaze in complaints lately. The community dissatisfied with the way things been going and everybody and their dog have been threatening to quit.

Let's take a different approach.

we received an in-game compensation and an apology for the server issues. This is the kind of thing we've looking for. This is attention from the developers. This is acknowledgement that things are not perfect. This is step in right direction.

Threatening to stop playing hasn't gotten us anywhere, so let's show D3 that this what we want using their native language. Money. I'm going to spend twenty bucks on hero points today. I want to encourage the rest of you to do the same. Spend a little cash, and hopefully the number crunchers will see a spike in sales to coincide with some good customer service and maybe we'll see more of that in the future.

Pissing into the wind, my friend, pissing into the wind.

HailMary

theHappyDance wrote:

Counter counterpoint: People only abused spiderman because the health pack system has been massively broken since ***'s became the meta. If they fixed that, they'd have no need to nerf him. He was slow on O, weak on D, and generally not the most conducive to PvP - more effective in PvE taking down all those unreasonably high scaled goons.

Ummm, in PVE? I think not.

theHappyDance wrote:

I think doing away with health packs would be a great idea. Instead have a blanket 5 min cooldown for *'s, 10 min for **'s, and 20 min for ***. Maybe the numbers should be more conservative, but I personally think those are more or less right. Encourage variety in the teams people field if they want to keep playing when a character's downed. And maybe have characters who haven't been downed stay at full health.

atlasspeaks wrote:

the solution is so easy...

as someone already suggested, make all characters heal to 100% after a match ends if the character didn't die. if it did, then use a health pack. health pack regeneration rate can stay the same or maybe slightly faster. make it so that dead characters do not come back unless a health pack is used. bam, no more 9 hour waits for hulk to be usable again.

to compensate for this, raise the AI intelligence maybe 10-20% to make games more challenging.

imagine a world where you don't need healers in a match... imagine a world where people would only use obw or any healer if that was their particular playstyle, where it wasn't seen as a crutch, where it wasn't seen as a weakness not to have obw... in this world healers would be used to compliment a slow-starting team, not as a way to just make it to the next fight at full health... healers would be totally optional to a team comp, not necessary... imagine a world where no one need to grind story mode for healing...

Congratulations. You've just made every average/high-health 3* functionally immortal. Imagine a world where there's literally no limit to the length of any 3* player's push... imagine a world where everyone would get hit 10 times as often because every high-level player can do back-to-back-to-back PVP fights with immortal characters for as many hours as they'd like, nonstop. People complain about being forced to shieldhop or getting hit 4 times per fight? That's skipping through a field of daisies compared to what would happen with auto-instaheal.

That "solution"is terribly easy, but also simply terrible.

locked wrote:

Ben Grimm wrote:

They announced the end of prologue healing, so they're not getting my money right now. If they can go a week without doing something infuriating then I'll consider spending money on this game again.

When was that? All I remember is Ice saying 'we are thinking of something that might enrage playerbase, so nothing in stone yet'.

Some people just gotta rage.

Unknown

HailMary wrote:

atlasspeaks wrote:

the solution is so easy...

as someone already suggested, make all characters heal to 100% after a match ends if the character didn't die. if it did, then use a health pack. health pack regeneration rate can stay the same or maybe slightly faster. make it so that dead characters do not come back unless a health pack is used. bam, no more 9 hour waits for hulk to be usable again.

to compensate for this, raise the AI intelligence maybe 10-20% to make games more challenging.


imagine a world where you don't need healers in a match... imagine a world where people would only use obw or any healer if that was their particular playstyle, where it wasn't seen as a crutch, where it wasn't seen as a weakness not to have obw... in this world healers would be used to compliment a slow-starting team, not as a way to just make it to the next fight at full health... healers would be totally optional to a team comp, not necessary... imagine a world where no one need to grind story mode for healing...

Congratulations. You've just made every average/high-health 3* functionally immortal. Imagine a world where there's literally no limit to the length of any 3* player's push... imagine a world where everyone would get hit 10 times as often because every high-level player can do back-to-back-to-back PVP fights with immortal characters for as many hours as they'd like, nonstop. People complain about being forced to shieldhop or getting hit 4 times per fight? That's skipping through a field of daisies compared to what would happen with auto-instaheal.

That "solution"is terribly easy, but also simply terrible.

immortal characters? i guess you failed to read the part about upping the difficulty of the AI. icex has stated that the AI used to be much more advanced, aka, wiped players like it was taking a giant dump on them with glee in its eyes. if the ability of the AI was boosted to wipe a team maybe 10% of the time, it'd be perfect and would not make any 3* "functionally immortal". plus it'd make games challenging and would make people think about their actions and future cascades instead of how now people can relatively safely just connect the first 5 match then 4 match then 3 match that they see, ad naseum.

assuming that each game a player plays on average is around 5 minutes, that would mean one complete wipe every 45 minutes or so. most players that have good 3* rosters have their A and B team, so assuming they have 2 full 3* teams they'd get an average of around 1.5 hours of playtime before their teams are wiped, then they have their 5 health packs to fall back on, giving them another almost full 1.5 hours (minus one health pack) which is a very reasonable amount of time. of course the exact specifications would need to be tested and vetted, but as it stands, my solution is leagues better than the current system.

so yeah, your inconclusive thinking about my solution was terrible, not the solution. my solution gives players extreme amounts of freedom, flexibility, a challenge and most of all, more fun.

Unknown

Nice try D3.

HailMary

atlasspeaks wrote:

immortal characters? i guess you failed to read the part about upping the difficulty of the AI. icex has stated that the AI used to be much more advanced, aka, wiped players like it was taking a giant dump on them with glee in its eyes. if the ability of the AI was boosted to wipe a team maybe 10% of the time, it'd be perfect and would not make any 3* "functionally immortal". plus it'd make games challenging and would make people think about their actions and future cascades instead of how now people can relatively safely just connect the first 5 match then 4 match then 3 match that they see, ad naseum.

Apologies. I couldn't translate "raise the AI intelligence maybe 10-20% to make games more challenging." into "tweak the AI so it consistently & completely wipes a wide array of team comps 10% of the time, using a similarly wide array of team comps". I'll make note of that for the future.

Also, I rarely run OBW in my PVP teams, and don't have a viable Spidey, so when it comes your fantastical world of wondrous healer-optional joy, it seems I'm already in it. It's the current system.

atlasspeaks wrote:

assuming that each game a player plays on average is around 5 minutes, that would mean one complete wipe every 45 minutes or so. most players that have good 3* rosters have their A and B team, so assuming they have 2 full 3* teams they'd get an average of around 1.5 hours of playtime before their teams are wiped, then they have their 5 health packs to fall back on, giving them another almost full 1.5 hours (minus one health pack) which is a very reasonable amount of time. of course the exact specifications would need to be tested and vetted, but as it stands, my solution is leagues better than the current system.

So... your major overhaul of MPQ's basic PVP mechanics is designed for players with 4+ well-leveled 3* characters? I fall into that group, but as you've described it so far, I don't see how that's "leagues better" for players in general.

atlasspeaks wrote:

so yeah, your inconclusive thinking about my solution was terrible, not the solution.

Sorry I couldn't read the paragraphs you hid and continue to hide between the lines.

atlasspeaks wrote:

my solution gives players extreme amounts of freedom, flexibility, a challenge and most of all, more fun.

You've essentially replaced health-pack wait times with boosted-AI wipeout wait times, and made the AI vaguely harder, resulting in somewhat longer time limits on 3* PVP pushes. I don't see the extremeness.

Unknown

HailMary wrote:

Apologies. I couldn't translate "raise the AI intelligence maybe 10-20% to make games more challenging." into "tweak the AI so it consistently & completely wipes a wide array of team comps 10% of the time, using a similarly wide array of team comps". I'll make note of that for the future.

Also, I rarely run OBW in my PVP teams, and don't have a viable Spidey, so when it comes your fantastical world of wondrous healer-optional joy, it seems I'm already in it. It's the current system.

So... your major overhaul of MPQ's basic PVP mechanics is designed for players with 4+ well-leveled 3* characters? I fall into that group, but as you've described it so far, I don't see how that's "leagues better" for players in general.

Sorry I couldn't read the paragraphs you hid and continue to hide between the lines.

You've essentially replaced health-pack wait times with boosted-AI wipeout wait times, and made the AI vaguely harder, resulting in somewhat longer time limits on 3* PVP pushes. I don't see the extremeness.

It would eliminate most of the last minute grinders, and possibly eliminate the increasing need to constantly shield in order to get any decent placement. In terms of A.I. I'd go for scaled A.I. based on ranking score. If you're at 1100 points, the game should give your opponent a much tougher match than if you're at 300 points. I'd also set the max A.I. toughness increase a lot higher than 10%

BTW guys, let's try to keep this chat friendly No need for "inconclusive thinking" or name-calling guys

Unknown

WORST.IDEA.EVER.

Servers screw up on a regular basis? I know, i shall give them some money. Quick everybody, throw some cash at them. That'll teach em.