"Lazy" characters

I put this in another thread but I think its relevant here: If they're going to do 2* Lazy versions, I wish they'd use it to release alternate versions that are actually alternate versions: 2* Gray Hulk, for example. Pair up a 3* Fuzzy Beast and a 2* Boring Beast. 2* Angel/3* Archangel. Etc.

Ben Grimm wrote:

If they're going to do 2* Lazy versions, I wish they'd use it to release alternate versions that are actually alternate versions: 2* Gray Hulk, for example.

I think Grey Hulk would make a fantastic 2* character, hell he's already sort of in the game on Patch's cover, but making him a lazy copy/paste of 3* Green Hulk would be a terribly wasted opportunity. Green Hulk is rage personified, Grey Hulk is far more subtle (by Hulk standards, of course ). A Joe Fixit 2* Hulk could have tweaked versions of 3* Hulk powers that better represent his personality, like some kind of targeted board shake more akin to GSBW's Pistol rather than 3* Hulk's random destruction, which makes sense for him but not necessarily for the more intelligent Grey Hulk. Instead of an Anger passive he could have some kind of passive intimidation power, themed after his role as a mob enforcer, that steals AP when you hit him instead of causing random carnage. And that's just off the top of my head. There are so many cool things they could do it's such a waste to squander it on minimum effort palette swaps.

HailMary wrote:

Of course we're just sharing opinions. You've made it pretty clear, though, that papa07, if he doesn't change his mind, should at least have the decency to STFU for the good of the playerbase, because his comments are "part of the problem," what with him being all "defeatist and sad."

To be fair, what I said was that his position and way of thinking of things was defeatist and I thought that was sad, I did not call him personally those things. There is a difference. You are the one who seems dead set on making this into some kind of personal attack that I've perpetrated against him and it simply isn't true. I already apologized for coming on a little strong and now here you are still being very aggressive in response. I'm not sure what you want from me, but I will try to be more civil and tempered in how I communicate moving forward. I would appreciate the same courtesy from you.

And for the record, I never told him or anyone else to shut up. My comments on being part of the problem were more about the spreading of ideas, perhaps a point I didn't make clearly enough, which I will try to do better momentarily.

HailMary wrote:

Thugpatrol wrote:

The "cool-guy" comment you've taken somewhat out of context. It was in response to his position that this was just a cute like game that I play on my phone and I don't really care that much but here I am posting about it on the forum all day. I thought it was a cheap card to play, so I called him on it.

I thought it was pretty clear that he's invested enough in this game (as something fun) to post about it, but not enough to turn his forum commentary into a strategic political campaign to compel the devs to change multiple significant aspects of the game. Similarly, I'm invested enough in certain aspects of this game but I'm not invested enough in other ways to give a s--- about whether or not my forum comments make me an enabler of changes that random forumites personally feel to be "bad."

What I took exception to was that he seemed to be using a variation of the "it's just a game so nothing really matters" argument when he made a comment about not having energy to fight over it vs energy spent on job, family or whatever. It's a line of reasoning I've heard many times before and I don't particularly care for it. If you care to play, and you care to talk about it, then you care enough to address it as a serious enough topic to not demean it with the "just a game" logic. True my comeback was a little snippy, but it irked me. It happens. But I'm not here to belittle anyone's contributions or judge the extent or anyone's passion for anything. My comments were merely a response to what I saw as a cheap cop-out.

HailMary wrote:

I, for one, really don't mind True Healing (even though I was a pretty avid prologue healer), like the new level bumps, really like the newish 2* cover drops (even though I'm in 3* land already), don't care about recruit tokens, and like the 3* Gold characters they've released so far (except for MoStorm, with her expensive red). According to you, I'm simply enabling "shady" actions and pretending that garbage is treasure, because it's clearly impossible for anyone to actually like 2* cover drops. The casual arrogance involved in such idle declarations would be amusing were it satirical.

You're attempting to apply my logic generally in a way that I never attempted or even implied. Nowhere did I say anything about the healing or level changes or even the quality of the lazy 3* characters. In fact my very first post on this topic, way back when, I said myself that I think three of them are very good. This conversation turned into the effect that lazy characters have on their 2* versions and the game as a whole, and almost all of my comments following were pertaining to that aspect of it. As an aside, that last line of yours is an absolute bombshell, and I may have to steal it for my own use at a later date in another place. Very well done.

HailMary wrote:

Not only is your core criticism based on a gross overestimation of the influence that all forum comments (much less any one member's comments) have on dev decisions (see: True Healing, Spidey nerf, cover pack probabilities, etc.), but it uses that overestimation to warp "I don't like your opinion" into "your opinion hurts The People, and you're part of the reason stuff is s---ty."

Okay, let's get to this now, because I think this is where I failed to make my point clearly. Do I really imagine part of the development team wandering in here and reading a random post from someone who really likes the idea of more lazy 2* characters and immediately running back into the boardroom yelling, "It's a hit! They love the lazy 2*s! Quick, copy/paste ten more!"? No, of course not. That would be absurd. What this is about is how information and opinions about things spread and propagate.

Let's take token drop rates as an example. The fact is the rate at which they gave out featured 3* characters in event tokens used to be much higher, to the point where you used to get a guaranteed featured cover in a 10-pack. Those rates have dropped significantly over time to the point where they would be funny if they weren't so awful. And yet still you hear stories of people who desperately buy the very expensive (relatively speaking) bulk packs, rage at not getting the featured character they wanted, and then rage buy two more. People buying packs equals big success, so they just keep turning the drop rates further down. They want to charge as much as possible for as little return as possible, and as long as people keep buying the cycle continues and the problem persists.

But hold on, what if that guy who was about to buy a 42-pack wandered in here by chance and saw the thread from a while back where someone (apologies, I don't remember who) crunched the numbers and saw just how terrible the chances were of getting what he wanted. Then he read further and saw a whole bunch of people chiming in about how bad a deal the packs were and warning people not to buy them. Suddenly he doesn't go and buy a bunch of packs, he buys none. Not only that, he tells his friend about how he almost got ripped off. His friend plays the game too and he decides not to buy any packs at the current rates either. And so on and so forth. This is how information spreads. Ideas are contagious and this is how they take hold. Not because one person posts something on a forum, but because a thousand people read that post, and that thousand interact with more thousands.

Now extend that logic to the lazy 2* argument and you have something like what I've been trying to get at. By his own admission, lazy 2*s were "the least desirable solution" to the lack of 2* characters. Supporting that idea and calling it a compromise is madness. If the choices are something super but prohibitively expensive to produce, something good and fairly cost effective, or a rock, you might say, "Hmm...I really want the super one, but you know what, I see your side of it. You need to make money too. Let's agree on the good one and I'll buy it." If their response is to peg you in the dome with the rock, that is not a compromise. What I referred to as defeatist was not taking the rock (and your new head wound, free of charge!) and even maybe being content with the rock because at least it's better than nothing (plus, free head wound), but to actively cheer for the rock and then stick out your face and stand very still so they don't miss when they go to hit you with it. That is what I think is sad, to believe you have no option but to vote for the worst possibility.

The TL;DR version, and this post badly needs one, is that it isn't one forum post that is somehow going to cause sweeping changes across the universe, but that doesn't mean they don't have power. Ideas have power. Information has power. They influence behavior and that behavior on a mass scale is how change happens. These are the metrics that are used to plot the course of future actions. That's really all I was getting at.

Did I come on a little too strong? Maybe. And I do apologize for that. But if I see someone spreading ideas that I see as somewhat poisonous, then I'm going to say something. You counter ideas with ideas, that's what debate is discourse is for. Just next time I'll do it with a little more tact. Lesson learned.