Devpool's Taco Token Community Challenge

DAZ0273

@MegaBee said:

@DAZ0273 said:
Oh and dunno about Hellfire Costume, not seen that.

The Hellfire costume is the one for Patch where he's not wearing an eyepatch.

Ah yes! The old double double disguise!

BriMan2222

Based on their response last time of "go gather the community!" It seems like the goal of these is try and increase their social media presence by getting all of us to go out and spread the word about it on facebook, twitter, reddit, etc.

Scofie

@DAZ0273 said:
I'm not sure Wolvie and Deadpool have that much in way of costumes? I think DP has three and Wolvie has maybe 1? I only have 4* DP pirate costume I think.

There's a full costume list (along with some formatting help that I've completely failed to understand) here: https://forums.d3go.com/discussion/90433/costume-list#latest

KGB

@Scofie said:

@DAZ0273 said:
I'm not sure Wolvie and Deadpool have that much in way of costumes? I think DP has three and Wolvie has maybe 1? I only have 4* DP pirate costume I think.

There's a full costume list (along with some formatting help that I've completely failed to understand) here: https://forums.d3go.com/discussion/90433/costume-list#latest

I've updated my post there at the bottom showing you what you have to do to replicate the table format at the time of my post.

KGB

DAZ0273

@BriMan2222 said:
Based on their response last time of "go gather the community!" It seems like the goal of these is try and increase their social media presence by getting all of us to go out and spread the word about it on facebook, twitter, reddit, etc.

The Facebook MPQ feed feels like it is about 5 years behind the game whenever I check it. Also can you imagine trying to explain this fairly complicated challenge on the character limited Twitter/X platform?

DAZ0273

@Scofie said:

@DAZ0273 said:
I'm not sure Wolvie and Deadpool have that much in way of costumes? I think DP has three and Wolvie has maybe 1? I only have 4* DP pirate costume I think.

There's a full costume list (along with some formatting help that I've completely failed to understand) here: https://forums.d3go.com/discussion/90433/costume-list#latest

What is Deadpool Manga?!?!? Otherwise as I thought.

ProfShoehorn

@DAZ0273 said:

@Scofie said:

@DAZ0273 said:
I'm not sure Wolvie and Deadpool have that much in way of costumes? I think DP has three and Wolvie has maybe 1? I only have 4* DP pirate costume I think.

There's a full costume list (along with some formatting help that I've completely failed to understand) here: https://forums.d3go.com/discussion/90433/costume-list#latest

What is Deadpool Manga?!?!? Otherwise as I thought.

The black and white newsprint costume for Deadpool (Ghost Rider).

DAZ0273

@ProfShoehorn said:

@DAZ0273 said:

@Scofie said:

@DAZ0273 said:
I'm not sure Wolvie and Deadpool have that much in way of costumes? I think DP has three and Wolvie has maybe 1? I only have 4* DP pirate costume I think.

There's a full costume list (along with some formatting help that I've completely failed to understand) here: https://forums.d3go.com/discussion/90433/costume-list#latest

What is Deadpool Manga?!?!? Otherwise as I thought.

The black and white newsprint costume for Deadpool (Ghost Rider).

Oh right, that is quite a cool one.

Godzillafan67

Another item to add would be a post-node pop up, like the ones that tell us we earned a token or whale points, that tells us, at a minimum, how many community points we just earned. Even better would be some sort of breakdown of how we got those points, which those popups are sort of doing now by showing a pic of the character... a more detailed or nuanced version might be needed depending on the community challenge.

DAZ0273

Yeah I have no idea where you **** kids are with this and I may need a nap soon.

bluewolf

As predicted, as it winds down, we have cleared Tier 3 and it seems incredibly unlikely we will clear Tier 4.

All the things already mentioned (communication mostly, also some visual indicator as taco points were earned, also - for the love of Odin, why isn't the costume multiplier defined in the rules?) could have helped if the goal was to support the community in completing 5 tiers which would have been no big deal, really, in terms of a reward push to everyone.

Anyway this whole challenge seems commensurate with the general state of things around here as we are told to wait and wait until a really cool engine update makes things better but no matter how fun the PVEs are, the game just gets more and more diluted making rewards less and less meaningful as far as your total roster need, or at least the hundreds of thousands of covers it could absorb before you even got close to being "done" with everyone.

entrailbucket

@bluewolf said:
As predicted, as it winds down, we have cleared Tier 3 and it seems incredibly unlikely we will clear Tier 4.

All the things already mentioned (communication mostly, also some visual indicator as taco points were earned, also - for the love of Odin, why isn't the costume multiplier defined in the rules?) could have helped if the goal was to support the community in completing 5 tiers which would have been no big deal, really, in terms of a reward push to everyone.

Anyway this whole challenge seems commensurate with the general state of things around here as we are told to wait and wait until a really cool engine update makes things better but no matter how fun the PVEs are, the game just gets more and more diluted making rewards less and less meaningful as far as your total roster need, or at least the hundreds of thousands of covers it could absorb before you even got close to being "done" with everyone.

No offense, but that's by design, and it's never going to change.

Games like MPQ don't have an ending. You can't beat the game. You can't even "catch up." You fall further "behind" every day. It's a treadmill -- that's the entire idea.

The treadmill might not be enjoyable for you, and that's ok, but that's all MPQ will ever be.

bluewolf

I get the treadmill, the game is designed that way, etc. An infinite series of goals serves the devs who want an infinitely extending project that generates revenue, and players who want an ongoing thing to engage with.

The point here is the challenge being difficult to complete can’t be justified by “if we have all this stuff to everyone they would make too much progress” imo as the progress is always towards goals that are receding from you. And there weren’t any endgame-ish rewards like the stones, just some 5* shards and some support tokens.

This challenge is yet another failure from a “let’s keep the players interested and engaged with a little extra thing” perspective as it doesn’t offer meaningful rewards and also made it impossible to get a sense of progress that was being made other than this website (and clicking a link to another website, and didn’t communicate the actual rules to everyone ingame, and ALL THE THINGS we’ve already pointed out.

entrailbucket

@bluewolf said:
I get the treadmill, the game is designed that way, etc. An infinite series of goals serves the devs who want an infinitely extending project that generates revenue, and players who want an ongoing thing to engage with.

The point here is the challenge being difficult to complete can’t be justified by “if we have all this stuff to everyone they would make too much progress” imo as the progress is always towards goals that are receding from you. And there weren’t any endgame-ish rewards like the stones, just some 5* shards and some support tokens.

This challenge is yet another failure from a “let’s keep the players interested and engaged with a little extra thing” perspective as it doesn’t offer meaningful rewards and also made it impossible to get a sense of progress that was being made other than this website (and clicking a link to another website, and didn’t communicate the actual rules to everyone ingame, and ALL THE THINGS we’ve already pointed out.

Eh. There's a way to do these challenge things like you're talking about -- give us a global score bar in game that shows the community's progress. Publish the criteria and rewards in game, too.

They haven't done that, for whatever reason. I don't know what they think these challenges are doing, but they're not doing much of anything that I can see.

That said, I don't get the sense that these are some major investment on their side. I don't do anything different during them, and I get some amount of extra stuff. It's a missed opportunity, I guess, but it ranks pretty low on the list of those.

bluewolf

A challenge for a player base that is long established, likely never growing beyond where it is (probably slightly reduced over the past year) should be about propping up morale and excitement among the existing players who are probably by and large kind of playing out of habit that they stick with but kind of wonder about continuing somewhat regularly.

If they can't pull that off, or plan for that, then why bother? Yeah, this was low effort (no need to spend resources making extra ingame notifications) but also added extra requirements/knowledge and never communicated that ingame, not once.

I get the idea of making a challenge around playing DDQ - how do you make it somehow a "challenge"? - and using different characters than usual, and putting costumes on them, etc is a decent idea, but you need to communicate that clearly if your goal is to help the community meet the challenge of earning the meager prizes you are offering (2 Advanced tokens offering an above-50% chance of just being rank 2 supports, and about 88% of being rank 2 or 3, and not even half of a 5, and some iso and riso).

The design for all challenges at this point should be that we can easily earn Tier 4 rewards and 5 is a stretch goal, so they should build the points that way and plan the rewards that way. If this means no more Infinity Stones.....fine. whatever.

As I've said even giving say a free 5* cover at tier 4 is basically a tiny drop in the bucket with 98 5s now, who you need at least 13 covers for to reach the goal of "every 5 champed" which translates to 1,274 covers you need to collect from scratch in the highest rarity tier.

None of this makes sense given where the game is and what you would think the goals would be.

entrailbucket

I disagree that the player base isn't growing -- I don't think we know or can know that, and it's likely that it still is. I don't know that the high level player base that we talk to is growing, but I think we're the least significant group of players.

I also disagree that there's any point in trying to engage and prop up morale among the disaffected folks who continue to play the game out of habit, despite not enjoying it. I don't think that's actually possible at this point (these players have been disaffected and uninterested in the game for 10 years now, and are still here complaining), and I think the game would be better off (both financially and as a community) without them.

DAZ0273

@entrailbucket said:
I disagree that the player base isn't growing -- I don't think we know or can know that, and it's likely that it still is. I don't know that the high level player base that we talk to is growing, but I think we're the least significant group of players.

I also disagree that there's any point in trying to engage and prop up morale among the disaffected folks who continue to play the game out of habit, despite not enjoying it. I don't think that's actually possible at this point (these players have been disaffected and uninterested in the game for 10 years now, and are still here complaining), and I think the game would be better off (both financially and as a community) without them.

You keep saying these players are the least important group but then I have to ask who are continued 5* releases for? Who is Ascension for? Who is placement in Boss Battles for? None of these things are for players at the 3* tier particularly so why do they form major parts of the Devs strategy? These 5* players must have a certain amount of utility for the Devs to always be trying to keep their engagement.

entrailbucket

@DAZ0273 said:

@entrailbucket said:
I disagree that the player base isn't growing -- I don't think we know or can know that, and it's likely that it still is. I don't know that the high level player base that we talk to is growing, but I think we're the least significant group of players.

I also disagree that there's any point in trying to engage and prop up morale among the disaffected folks who continue to play the game out of habit, despite not enjoying it. I don't think that's actually possible at this point (these players have been disaffected and uninterested in the game for 10 years now, and are still here complaining), and I think the game would be better off (both financially and as a community) without them.

You keep saying these players are the least important group but then I have to ask who are continued 5* releases for? Who is Ascension for? Who is placement in Boss Battles for? None of these things are for players at the 3* tier particularly so why do they form major parts of the Devs strategy? These 5* players must have a certain amount of utility for the Devs to always be trying to keep their engagement.

All players need something to chase. We're advertising, basically.

Creating placement for bosses gives players a reason to try for placement in boss events. It creates a shiny new leaderboard that they could be on, rewards they could earn, if they just spent a bit more, or hoarded more, or whatever, to get that last character they need. It shows them who all those players are, and what their rosters look like -- and you, too, could have a roster like this!, if only you spent some cash.

bluewolf

@entrailbucket said:
I disagree that the player base isn't growing -- I don't think we know or can know that, and it's likely that it still is. I don't know that the high level player base that we talk to is growing, but I think we're the least significant group of players.

I also disagree that there's any point in trying to engage and prop up morale among the disaffected folks who continue to play the game out of habit, despite not enjoying it. I don't think that's actually possible at this point (these players have been disaffected and uninterested in the game for 10 years now, and are still here complaining), and I think the game would be better off (both financially and as a community) without them.

Over the past...6-8 months I have been screenshotting various PVPs, PVEs, boss events etc after they ended. I did not do them all...it's more of a hobby/side interest. But let me list some of the alliance counts I have recorded.

PVP seasons (ended):
12/2/23 - 10,706
3/4/24 - 10,253
4/2/24 - 10,251
4/29/24 - 10,181
5/28/24 - 10,140
6/24/24 - 10,099

Bosses:

3/4/24 Heroic - 8,397 Main - 7,998
4/24/24 Heroic - 7,912 Main - 8,888
6/24/24 Heroic - 7,893 Main - 8,899

PVPs.... highest alliance count was one on 5/8/24 with 7,435. Lowest I recorded was 4/14/24 with 6,704
3 recents: 7/22 - 7,056
7/24 - 7,332
8/7/24 - 7,254

PVEs - some highlights
Feb '24 - biggest count was 2/27 with 9,086
April '24 - biggest count was 4/23 with 9,101
May '24 - 5/21 - 9,313
July we had 9,751 play the first run of DPW v MPQ, the first "new" PVE since they introduced Operation Spider Silk several years ago.
8/1/24 - 8,762
8/6/24 - 9,379
(If I were to guess I would say that DP v MPQ pulls in more of the casual players who can make more progress with less effort vs the same number of days with 4x24s)

Bracket counts are basically always the same in SCL 10, almost always the same number of flips. Suggesting at that level the number of players is basically static at best.

Alliances do not represent 20 players, not by a long shot, and certainly not 20 actives (look around and you find plenty with a few actives and many who left the game long ago but are still in the alliance). But as a proxy of player count it seems that generally speaking....well, it wavers a bit but I see nothing to say the trend line isn't a plateau. Growth doesn't seem to be consistent by any stretch, the engagement level waxes and wanes a lot. I think there are a lot of players who play DDQ consistently and then dip into events when they have some interest in rewards or something new, etc (new character PVPS seem to draw more people) then skip other things. But nothing in my attempt at a record suggests a growing group of players.

Hence, my statement that the game's player count isn't going up at this point seems well-founded. Which is what you would expect in an (almost) 11 year old roster-building game where just having played for a long enough time locks in a basically permanent advantage over people who might join today, at least on a consistent basis (certainly a newer person can more easily compete in certain events when you have the right boost list or happen to have the essentials covered/champed). Where there are 345 characters to collect. Where you as a player who is new are competing with players who have been here for 11 years, once you get into SCL10, who will steamroll you without trying. Did you miss Aunt May Golden Oldie in Latests? the free R5 Chimi? etc? too bad.

Other people could tell you how things have fallen but I also have a screenshot from a season that ended around 1/14/19 and there were 15,110 alliances that took part in it. The normal PVP that had ended had 10,145 that played in it. A PVE (Simulator) ended 1/10/19 had 14,940 alliances in it.

Sinister 600, run on 12/17/18, had 16,483 alliances playing. A Reality Season ended around 12/17/18 had 15,337 alliances in it.

To say we have not seen a significant contraction in player count over the years is simply not true.

entrailbucket

Tracking this sort of thing is weird -- I knew a guy who used to do that because he was praying for the game to die (so he'd be proved right about all the "opportunities" he felt were being missed).

I imagine player counts ebb and flow to some extent though. I very much doubt that the game started with some huge number of active players and has steadily decreased to this point.

I'd also remind you that correlation is not causation. I'd be willing to bet this game hit its peak player count during the height of the MCU. Can you think of any reason (cough...Eternals...cough...The Marvels) that the general populace might have less interest in a Marvel game today?

No, I'm sure the problem is that players are angry about BCS's challenges , or a lack of ISO, or the fact that character X isn't able to oneshot every fight in the game.