It could have been great.

Unknown · January 2014

Exodus.

That's what I'm hoping happens to your game when people finally tire of the way you treat paying customers. Typically I'd say something like "farewell" or "goodbye" but you've used up all the best wishes I had with this most recent "patch." So it's time to move on.

IceX wrote in another post that your developers would listen more to forum posts rather than Google Play 1 star reviews, so I'll create an account to post this and move along to a game where the publisher, developer, and community managers actually value their paying customer base.

You see, I've been playing this game from day 1. I love Puzzle Quest. Had it on the Nintendo DS and played the living hell out of it and enjoyed it immensely. It took the best of puzzle games and added another genre I enjoy immensely, Role Playing Games, and married it into the final coup de grace that I was badly needing at that time in my life, a casual "pick up or put down" game play experience. Total gold. Sales indicated it was a hit as well for it was ported to other handheld devices as well as home consoles such as the XB360, which I faithfully bought and played that as well. Then, one day, I find a random news blurb in my Facebook ticker about a game called "Marvel Puzzle Quest" and I blow up a Google Hangout with some of my closest friends. A new PQ game? With Marvel characters? Surely this didn't fly under our collective radar, but alas, it did. We scoured Google and the internet for early release .apk's to get a first glimpse, but then chose to wait for the official release which was a couple of days away.

Why ruin what could possibly be gaming gold?

Day one hits, the game launches, and it's off to the races! My friends and I begin the game with a vigor not seen since the days we all worked together. We're talking days before wives, children, you know, adult life. We talk strategy, game theory, ideas, the entire gambit of what we *think* a developer wants their plays to do. Updates happen, UI's change, the game improves, and we see progress! We decide that it's okay to put some support behind this "freemium" game because, well, it's legit, right? They're updating it for the better. They seem to want us to have fun! They're making the mission progress easier to understand. The UI is more user friendly, and the graphics are actually improving!

Weeks pass and we get more updates. The leveling of characters gets changed to make it easier to understand, but what's this? It now costs real money to level. Interesting, not sure I agree with this, but it's a business model. I get it, they have to make money right? They're making it a bit easier to managing the leveling of characters so it's a trade off. My group discusses this at length and after some research we figure we can still level the way we want, we just have to plan our moves easier.

And then it goes downhill.

Long time players know what I'm talking about, Storm. The day of reckoning when our beloved girl, whom we worked so hard to level up and master the elements with, was ruined in one update. No warning, no chance to rebound. Your best character perhaps? Strongest card? All that time, effort, ISO, heck, maybe gold/or real currency? Relegated to complete nothingness. Overnight. Poof. Gone. I was angry. Was I an abuser of her power? Absolutely!! I'm not going to sit here and lie and pretend she wasn't OVERPOWERED. Anyone who claims otherwise is just plain lying to themselves. However, to take her from (arguably) #1 to pretty much useless is just wrong. The real issue wasn't that the developers decided to balance her, she needed it – truly! The real issue I take is that there was (and still to this day) no compensation given to the people who paid or played to get her to where she was at the time of the nerf.

So now I’m an angry whiner, right? I have to much time on my hands. “THE DEVELOPERS DON’T OWE YOU ANYTHING KID!” “You don’t like it, uninstall it and go play Candy Crush!” Sure, sure, I get it. I've heard it all before. But think about it. Months were spent playing this game, money was spent playing this game, and time was invested playing this game. We played under a certain set of rules and framework and the Dev’s decided – nay – judged us unworthy of any sort of repayment for that investment. You see, where I come from, that’s just plain ol’ “not right.” So, should I have quit? Damn right. However, my friends were still playing and urged me to continue. Peer pressure, it’s a b!tch!

So I played. I watched as more and more nerfing continued with still no sort of compensation to the effected players. I tricked myself into thinking that maybe things would improve because now the forums were updated with information regarding thoughts on characters that needed balancing. And then it hit. Thor…

Why Thor? Because people use him! *GASP* I thought that was the point of this $@#$#$@ game!! I thought we were supposed to use our best cards/characters. Now, the Devs want us to believe we all used Thor because he was 2 stars and his red + yellow was so over powered that we simply had to, right? How about an alternative theory?

Maybe we used Thor because that’s what we had? Did that ever cross your mind? Maybe because your “random” card reward system (see the quotes in there? There’s no way in hell that thing isn't programmed to spit out the garbage is does.) gives us Thor more than other, more desirable cards? I know I’d love to use my Magneto (either, but certainly Classic!), Hulk, Punisher, or hell even Spider-Man more, but you've capped their level to non-usefulness and I can’t pull anymore of them. Captain America, Thor, 1 star Iron Man, Black Widow (1 and 2 star), various Hawkeyes (Hawkii?); how many would you like? Thor was just the best of what I had to offer.

Now that you've taken Storm and Thor from us, how do you expect us to compete on the level 230 mobs? We’re capped at 85/141! Oh, maybe I can use a boost. I’ll just dip into my dwindling ISO bank…

[SCREECHING HALT] There goes that idea!! You've taken THAT from us too. It’s not gold to get +3 all color boosts and you’ve increased the ISO costs to boost other starting colors. This stealth nerf brought to you by the greedy suits known most likely as, the Publisher. There’s simply no earthly design reason I can fathom that warrants changing the currency or upping the ISO cost for the boosts, other than to punish your once loyal customers.

Which is what this entire post is about. Hi, I’m Mike, and I’m a former Once-Loyal customer. I spent money on this game (not a ton mind you, but money is money in this rough economy) and I will no longer support you. As someone who has worked in the gaming industry in the past, I always sided with the gaming industry and workers. I cheered for their success, but this experience has shown me why customers are fed up with publishers like EA and now apparently, D3. You release a game, charge money to advance and enjoy, and then change things so that we can no longer enjoy it – all of this with no recourse.

Look, I get that Thor and Storm were not envisioned to be top-tier characters. However, we played within the framework given. You want to change the rules mid-game? Fine, we understand. As gamers, we’re uniquely keen to this aspect of our lives changing. However, refund us the cards. Let us rebuild the characters back the way WE want within the new rules. I’d have never sold my Thor for 35k ISO and 650 gold if I had a one-time chance to rebuild him back to level 85 and re-distribute his powers so I could build him 5/3/5 or 4/4/5 or however I saw fit. But we don’t have that option, do we? No. We just sit here and take it, without lube. And it hurts. A lot. /tear.

So now I cheer for an exodus. I truly hope you reap what you sow. I've encouraged my friends to move along to something else, and we’re pretty much in agreement at this point, enough is enough. Being able to sell back a card for ISO and a paltry 650 gold coins will not allow us to rebuild Thor to usefulness, nor will it allow us to finish the current events we've spent money on to remain where we were. You instituted changes without a single thought (and yes, I really believe that) as to how players would receive these changes as long as it would bring you money in the long run, which it’s going to force people to do if they remain playing.
So now it’s time to move on. I wish you all the worst and hope this game fails in a fiery crash the likes of which haven’t been seen since the Hindenburg disaster. Hopefully YOUR time, money, and investments turn to worthless choices just as mine and my friends have. Then maybe someday you’ll remember back to the decisions you made and realize what a gem of an opportunity you had. You really CAN mess up a wet dream, can’t you? Inconceivable.

With bile and complete and utter distaste,

Mike
Ex-Marvel Puzzle Quest player.

TL;DR: I’m tired of the designers/publisher changing the game w/o giving the players a meaningful way to rebuild what *THEY* broke. We did nothing wrong other than play within the framework given, it’s THEY who made the mistakes, and we’re made to suffer. So I’m taking my ball and going home, and I encourage everyone else to do the same.

Unknown · January 2014

Thanks for writing it all up.

Indeed it's quite "interesting" that amidst all the waste on "improving" look&feel that was fair and had completely different problems than addressed no one found the 3 hours needed to deploy the "3-color hero respec Mark I."

It was not put in the pipeline even when decision on complete overhaul was decided or publicly announced. Instead people are offered to dump it at half price and rebuild from scratch if they see fit.

And you get it right, those who don't care about customers don't deserve them as should part with them for the better.

Unknown · January 2014

Lokanna, that was simply and utterly beautiful. Here here.

Unknown · January 2014

Thanks for the support. Unfortunately from reading the majority of the rest of the general discussion forum, it's apparent D3 doesn't care about our views of this patch, and even my customer service contact has gone unanswered for over 24 hours. I suppose you get what you pay for though. Good luck to those who decide to stick it out. I hope you all come to your senses sooner rather than later. Hopefully some enterprising investor will see the amount of frustration in this player base and make a similar product that we can move to. I don't need the Marvel license... though that does raise the question. I wonder what Marvel thinks of all this nonsense and how D3 is treating their customers while using their brand?

Where's Stan when you need him? EXCELSIOR!

Unknown · January 2014

Its a money scheming borderline fraudulent practice to force people to spend money.

Now that the game is a year old, the new customers dried out and now they want to squeeze every dime out on all the suckers that stayed and have emotional attachment to this game.

I've played alot of these 'ftp' games, but I've never had to force myself to pay to keep the pace that this game is heading to.

This game is DONE folks! Any suggestion to keep this game enjoyable to a sane person is out of the window. Its now time for them to reap every dime out of the loyal customers that stayed w/ this game.

Unknown · January 2014

Before they started to alienate paying players they should've at least tried to squeeze every last cent from them by releasing Deadpool!

Unknown · January 2014

ABSOLUTELY DREADFUL!!!!! From 5 stars to maybe a 1.5 but who wants to get their **** kicked over and over. I loved the fair balance before that if I played really carefully I might be able to win a 230 match, with one wrong move sealing your fate. Now you don't even get a chance to get involved.

THUMBS DOWN, wayyyyy down

Unknown · January 2014

This is a fantastic post (although you forgot Ragnarok). I'm halfway convinced that there must be some new insurance policy for game publishers that if their game tanks in the first six months, they get a big payout. I'm also more than halfway convinced that this is the first game most of the people on the dev team have ever made. Because they seem really inexperienced, making some unbelievably poorly thought out decisions. Maybe it's Demiurge's first mobile platform, F2P type game? I'm too lazy to research. Demiurge has contributed to some good games in the past. Contributed is the operative word here. I think they actually helped with some of the PVP design in Borderlands? If so, that's mighty ironic...

Seriously, the changes made in the past three weeks are just inexplicable. They make no sense from a game design standpoint. They make no sense if the goal is to encourage player loyalty, increase fun, and make a long lived game that people will play for years. If you want to alienate your player base, ring the death knell for the game, and create a feeling of hostility toward Demiurge in general, then continue on the current path. I really feel like we've been bent over and are being whacked with a stick. It really feels like a punishment. Like cruelty for cruelty's sake. I'm not being melodramatic. This is really the way I feel. I'm straight up stumped by the majority of the decisions made over the past few weeks.

Unknown · January 2014

pumkin wrote:

This is a fantastic post (although you forgot Ragnarok). {..snip..}

Seriously, the changes made in the past three weeks are just inexplicable. They make no sense from a game design standpoint. They make no sense if the goal is to encourage player loyalty, increase fun, and make a long lived game that people will play for years. If you want to alienate your player base, ring the death knell for the game, and create a feeling of hostility toward Demiurge in general, then continue on the current path. I really feel like we've been bent over and are being whacked with a stick. It really feels like a punishment. Like cruelty for cruelty's sake. I'm not being melodramatic. This is really the way I feel. I'm straight up stumped by the majority of the decisions made over the past few weeks.

I did not forget Rags, I mentioned "watching other characters nerfed." It's just that, as I alluded to, I never really had enough Rags cards to make him viable so he wasn't in my rotation and I used Thor pretty heavily. My Wolverine wasn't build correctly so he wasn't as OP as the typical build, but he was still useful, but I never pumped the ISO into him exclusively like I did Thor. Typically, I used Thor as my main hitter and would use whatever the game forced as a slot (so, for example, if Loki was the tourney main character, I'd have Loki, Thor and...) and a support character. Daken worked well by pumping green into Thor to charge his ability and creating strike tiles even though Thor cannibalized them eventually, Wolverine of course, Storm until she was negated to nothingness, etc. Now I'm using Ares, whom I enjoy, but he hurts himself to much and my Widow/Spidey cards aren't boosted enough to heal him back before the next round, and ESPECIALLY against the 230's, there's just no way.

Your sentiment about feeling punished is pretty much how I feel as well. We did our best to play the game as it was given to us, and now we're being told we did something wrong, and it's our faults. It's not right. They need to seriously apologize, fix it, or hopefully this game falls by the wayside and people lose jobs over it. Sad to say that's where my head is at, but that's how I feel after the treatment of late from this publisher. It's sickening.

Unknown · January 2014

That was a really fantastic post, and I agree with most of it. It makes me so sad to see the direction the game has taken.

Unknown · January 2014

I agree 100%.
You made a good faith fatal mistake: you spend money in a F2P.
We all know that this would be a gem of a game if it was a regular game.
But we have to bear the cancer of gaming that it is F2P.
We say to ourselves "it's it OK, it could be better, but it is a solid game, and Marvel rules... we'll enjoy the ride. F2P well done can be at least enjoyable for a while". People like you, naively, try to support the developers and the game by spending money. Others, like me, realize that F2P is both a scam and a cancer and refuse to support them with money, enjoying and suffering the game at the same time, hoping also at the same time that the game flourishes, in order to enjoy it (as I said, we all know is a gem hidden inside), and at the same time hoping for it to be a failure (so the next Puzzle Quest game will be a glorious regular game instead of F2P ****).
Both have to bear the most inept and disrespectful developers on Earth, for all the reasons you state and a few more (the endless array of broken/flawed PvP and PvE mechanisms; how they "forgot" to mention in the patch preview that R47 was going to include such "minor" changes as the Thorverine nerf -it seems that "upcoming weeks" now means "one week"- and the Boost pricing change; or the timing of those "minor" changes it the single worst moment in time, in the middle of a broken PvE in which you need all your resources to try to do something, in the middle of a new type of PVP in which you spend HP to enter...). They have an utter lack of coherence, vision, balance, imagination, common sense, proper testing, and, I'll say it again because is the worst offense, respect for their userbase.
To all reading this, learn the lesson: DON`T SUPPORT F2P games: their goal is not for you to enjoy, is for you to get hooked and spend, or to hope and spend, or the get tricked by the "bait and switch" tested scam and spend... If you absolute want to test them, try to do what they want to do to you: get as much as you can giving them the minimum possible.

Unknown · January 2014

I'm ashamed to say that I was one of those who got hooked on this game and actually spent almost $100 of real money on this game, both on my mobile AND on Steam account (bought the damn 66% discount pack evening knowing some nerf is coming).

I've spent sleepless nights grinding through the tournaments for rewards and missed a couple of real life activities because of the game.

I must say I am really lost now on what to do. I can't seem to progress much with the PVE tournament now with the nerf, and I can't seem to progress much in the PVP with the change in boost costs....
Sigh....

Unknown · January 2014

I couldn't agree with you more Lokanna. I've petitioned the Steam Store for a full reimbursement of all my purchases in Marvel Puzzle Quest: Dark Reign and I recommend that everyone ask for a Refund. File tickets, complain here and downgrade your reviews of the game.

What they have done to this game is unforgivable.

Unknown · January 2014

Unfortunately, I don't believe they're willing to refund anything. My tickets have gone unanswered for 48 hours now, and IceIX has stated on these forums that they don't listen to 1 star reviews, hence the reason for my post. As it stands, it doesn't appear to make a lick of difference anyway. They're clearly happy with the changes, they've defended their reasoning in other threads, and other than another promise of "working on a respec option" (which I haven't seen an official citation of), I don't really see how it will make the changes introduced PRIOR to that tolerable.

It's just time to move along. I just hope Marvel is okay with their brand being dragged through the mud.

Unknown · January 2014

Very well said! I'm a long time player/lurker, since the first week actually and finally decided to uninstall the game last night. This could have been an absolutely fantastic game if it wasn't F2P, I'm not entirely sure why the decision was made NOT too be a full game like the other Puzzle Quests but it really is a shame it wasn't done right.. I spent around $50.00 in the game, played this more than I've touched my PS4 because I kept thinking it would get better, but after all the recent changes it seems the devs just don't care/are incompetent so I'm done, I just wanted to post because IceIX said they listen/read the forums so I just thought they'd like to know they lost a long time player.

It could have been great.

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