Update to Heroes for Hire (6/23/17) *Updated (6/26/17)

broll · June 2017

I wonder if they decided to make this change because they vaulting debate was heating up again and they wanted to redirect everyone's rage.

Frustrated1 · June 2017

@Brigby Here's the reality:

I'm on Day 1201. I have spent SOME money here and there but am not a whale by any stretch. I play Deadpool daily, don't compete in PVP, and play PVE to the 4 star progression. My alliance always competes in the big boss events and usually finish the 6th round.

I need 180 COVERS to finish off my 4 stars. If Deadpool daily introduced a daily 4 star, and it fell just perfectly with my needs (which would be miraculous), I would still need to play for half a year just to complete my roster, and that's assuming no more 4 stars were introduced (which I'm assuming they will be).

That obviously doesn't take into account my ISO needs.

That also doesn't take into account my 5 stars, which are just powerful enough to use in PVE and to completely screw me out of competing in PVP (which is why I stopped playing).

So what's my incentive to keep playing?

PVP is flat out broken.
ISO distribution is terrible.
Character distribution beyond 3 stars is broken.

Just tell us, the players of your game, WHAT SHOULD WE DO? HOW SHOULD WE BE PLAYING THIS GAME?

I wouldn't be complaining if I didn't love the game and think it had great potential to be fun. But compared to other games, it's a chore. And it's turning into a chore where the devs view their players with contempt.

I know you are the liaison, so bring a dev in here. Have him/her actually explain their decisions, and answer any questions WE have about the game. As your customers, we deserve it.

veny · June 2017

Frustrated1 said:

@Brigby When are they shutting down the forums? Nothing we say really matters, so why have them?

So they can say "We listen" (tho they dont react adequately, but it doesnt fit into "listen/read" part)

Starfury · June 2017

The only explanation my cynical self can come up with is that they noticed that by linking HfH to the Burrito targetted primarily new players. And that's a demographic that is notoriously short on HP anyway and won't waste 3.6 roster slots on a single 4* cover that they couldn't roster anyway.

But I can't see how slowing the rotation isn't going to massively reduce sales so I'm still stuck at: WHAT WERE THEY THINKING?

MissChinch · June 2017

IlDuderino said:

I can't remember the last time one of these announcements didn't make the game worse. Please listen to us and spend your valuable time making changes that people want and make the game better

No, until this Dev team changes composition they need to not touch anything.

Don't try making it better, certainly don't try pushing some change (the reality is they don't know what to do from a design perspective and they would probably hose the implementation side pretty badly anyhow, just look at what they do on a regular basis)

I was pretty jazzed about the scaling changes... For the love of all that's good and pure in this world, this Dev team needs to shelve that immediately and dust it off once they've cleaned house... Some manager needs to take all merge privs away and burn their Dev environment, changes only go in one direction... I'd say bug fixes would be ok, but I don't think this team really does that, they post that they do but....

Seriously NO changes please, some things are pretty bad but there's always some way to make it worse...

MissChinch · June 2017

This announcement is actually pretty humorous if you step back and think about it though...

It's like you've been at a lunch meeting and everytime this guy at the end of the table talks you get this passive aggressiveness vibe, always some negative aspect hurled your way... You just chalk it up to social incopentence and move on...

This announcement is when that guy waits till everyone's looking at the presentation, turns around, locks eyes with you and shoots you the bird.

animaniactoo · June 2017

fwiw, I already thought the HFH store was overpriced - I had 9k in HP and still couldn't bring myself to buy 4* deadpool and luke cage covers just to finish the characters and be able to champ them before an extra cover expired. Why? Well because they were both vaulted or about to be. So champing them wasn't really going to increase their usability to me that much nor was it going to get me access to their championship rewards and avoiding wasting future extra covers for them in anything like a time scale that made sense to spend that kind of HP for it.

I'm a VIP player, but no money beyond that, because I simply can't afford it. I will never be a whale.

I admit I was sorely tempted by those two. Mostly because they would have been the first 4*s I COULD champ. But I didn't. Just couldn't bring myself to do it. Likewise on spending the CP there... why when I could go spend that in the classic legends store for the opportunity to build characters to more useable levels? 10-12 covers is pretty useable for a 4* depending on what you get. It was a better place to direct my "spending".

I did think that in time, I might build up enough HP that the HFH store seemed like a negligible buy, but I figured that was a ways out... and in the meantime I started a 2* farm. Which I won't really get around to champing most of them until I get past some 4* iso needs, but that'll come sooner than a stockpile of HP big enough to make the HFH store a negligible buy.

I don't know what the devs are planning and how this will work out. But many people seem to think that this is a money grab and it's targeted specifically at whales and the game being changed to monetize it as much as possible. If that is what's going on - I'll say one thing in response to that. I've been through several games. Yes, devs needs to make money. But at the end of the day, a freemium game relies on f2p users just as much as minimal/moderate spenders and the whales for the lifeblood of the game. Because you need a big enough community to keep it going, you need people for the whales to play with/against. And if you have enough whales that you don't need that anymore, then stop offering the game for free because it's soul-crushing to be edged out of a "free" game that you really enjoy because you can't dedicate your life (hours and hours a day to compete for the drippings of placing well, etc.) or your money to it which are the only 2 choices a f2p user ends up with when devs are focused on monetizing the game.

I dunno if the devs are trying to squeak more money out - maybe there's a longer range plan that they're not doing a very good job of communicating/strategically introducing. But if monetizing is the primary concern... I'm just saying... it is possible to break a game by focusing on whales over minimal and moderate spenders.

MissChinch · June 2017

animaniactoo said:

I don't know what the devs are planning and how this will work out. But many people seem to think that this is a money grab and it's targeted specifically at whales and the game being changed to monetize it as much as possible. If that is what's going on - I'll say one thing in response to that. I've been through several games. Yes, devs needs to make money. But at the end of the day, a freemium game relies on f2p users just as much as minimal/moderate spenders and the whales for the lifeblood of the game.

I don't think it's a money grab, it's more a move to preserve an exploitable scarcity of retired 4* covers. Covering them with 3600HP is somewhere between $25-$50. Covering them with CP is $100 with optimal buy clubs, around $1800 without buy clubs. Seems like someone didn't want to sell that scarcity away at ~$30 a pop as quickly as they were.

Regarding a need for f2p players... They don't need it in games like this, players never play against each other. Plenty of other games simulate users... They could take averages over the last 6 months and throw us all in PvE and PvP brackets by ourselves with 999 or 499 simulated players and it wouldn't impact our gameplay in any meaningful way. There would be less participation in Line and forums, but those tools only draw more serious users anyhow.

MPQ_Daywalker · June 2017

I am generally a very positive person. If you look at my comment history, you will see that very rarely do I complain about something in the game. I tend to just adjust my strategies and my resource spending (ISO, HP, CP, etc.) accordingly with each change in the game.

When Bonus Heroes were implemented, I didn't complain -- I saw the real problem this game has with character dilution and while BH wasn't perfect I didn't have any better ideas to suggest. Instead I focused on the active 12 characters, champing them as quickly as possible, to make the most efficient use of my LT pulls and eventual champion levels.

There are few ways to get covers for vaulted characters in the game, and even fewer to get an exact cover. The Bonus Hero feature is great to generate random covers of a character, but once you max out one of those covers, now 1/3rd of the time your bonus cover will be useless, and once you max out a second color, 2/3rds of the time that cover will be useless.

Bonus Heroes only happen 5% of the time you pull a 4*, so they are a relatively rare resource that you want to always be useful. I'm a pretty active player -- I'm not in the top echelon (I don't try for 1200 in PVP) but I do play PVE to full progression and PVP to the 900 level. Since Bonus Heroes began, I've opened 245 4* covers from tokens (LTs, Heroics, events -- not counting vaults) and have gotten 15 bonus 4*s, for a percentage of 6.12%. That's almost five months of playing this game (an admittedly ridiculous amount) every day. Because BH pulls are so rare, I never "favorite" a 4* character that has a power maxed out, since I don't want to run the risk of pulling a useless cover.

Due to the randomness of Bonus Heroes, it needed to go along with something else to get specific color covers. That was Heroes for Hire. Yes, there are other ways to get specific colors -- top placement in PVP and PVE events (achievable by the 1% of all players), 900 progression (achievable if you have one or more boosted 4*s for that week, much more difficult if you do not) and PVE progression (achievable by anyone who has the time to put in, but vaulted 4* characters are appearing rarely there, in a random order with an unpredictable color cover). You could get lucky and find a vault containing the exact color cover you need for a vaulted character, but that's completely RNG. With 900 progression and the number of 4*s we have in the game now, it's about 5 months until a character rolls around again, with the next color, and 15 months before the same color comes up again.

So that leaves Heroes for Hire as the only way in the game to get exact color covers in a somewhat reasonable timeframe. I say somewhat reasonable because, with 52 4*s in the game now you are looking at around 50 days between each color rotation and at least 150 days until the same color comes up again. If you're rocking a 1/5/5 character (like my Spider-Gwen was at the time of Bonus Heroes) then you may have picked up one cover for her in Heroes for Hire, and will be waiting about 5 months for that color to come back. Unless this Heroes for Hire change goes into effect, in which case it will not be 5 months when that color comes up but more than 2 years.

@Brigby: please let the developers know there are only downsides to this change and no positives. Heroes for Hire wasn't perfect as it was (50 days between a character being highlighted is still a pretty long time) but it was at least something someone could plan for. This planned change, however, isn't something that can be planned for. Waiting for more than 2 years for a specific color to come up (in my 1/5/5 example) is crazy.

There are several suggestions in this thread that seem reasonable: if Demiurge wants the Crash of the Titans character to show up in Heroes for Hire, just have that one added in and showing for those 5 days. Problem solved, and the other covers stay where they are. Or run the Crash of the Titans every day, cycling through them in the same order as Heroes for Hire.

fmftint · June 2017

I tried to flag this announcement as abuse, it's not allowed

animaniactoo · June 2017

MissChinch said:

animaniactoo said:

I don't know what the devs are planning and how this will work out. But many people seem to think that this is a money grab and it's targeted specifically at whales and the game being changed to monetize it as much as possible. If that is what's going on - I'll say one thing in response to that. I've been through several games. Yes, devs needs to make money. But at the end of the day, a freemium game relies on f2p users just as much as minimal/moderate spenders and the whales for the lifeblood of the game.

I don't think it's a money grab, it's more a move to preserve an exploitable scarcity of retired 4* covers. Covering them with 3600HP is somewhere between $25-$50. Covering them with CP is $100 with optimal buy clubs, around $1800 without buy clubs. Seems like someone didn't want to sell that scarcity away at ~$30 a pop as quickly as they were.

Regarding a need for f2p players... They don't need it in games like this, players never play against each other. Plenty of other games simulate users... They could take averages over the last 6 months and throw us all in PvE and PvP brackets by ourselves with 999 or 499 simulated players and it wouldn't impact our gameplay in any meaningful way. There would be less participation in Line and forums, but those tools only draw more serious users anyhow.

Good points... I suspect it feels more like a money grab for f2p or newer players who are going to be pinched by the essential characters they need being vaulted and harder to acquire and build to reasonably playable levels.

Which if anything would make me suspect that they're trying to slow down that end of the game, but are then exacerbating the problem by releasing new characters too quickly on the other end of it.

I would be curious to know how many players have the majority of the 3 and 4 star roster maxed champion levels or close to it.

Königsmacher · June 2017

I just don't know what to say about this change.

It was already pointed out that the rotation of a specific color would now increase to two years(!) until that color comes around again. But then I think back to the anouncement of the h4h store and how it would finally help people to get specific covers. It's like a cruel joke now.

If it's meant as a way to make me spent more, it fails miserably. All it does is giving me more time to save hp needed to buy the covers I need (when they finally come around). I just can't wrap my head around this.

Changing the COTT into a daily thing with the store changing daily as well would help, but this will never happen. They'll never give out a daily LT. So if this is gonna happen, the Crash reward would be toned down to something like 5 cp.

I hope they've got something genuinly good coming around soon, or this game won't last long enough to complete the new h4h cycle.

Felonius · June 2017

I thought the HfH store was a poor value before, and as an unused screen I have to regularly flip through, it was nothing but a waste of my time.

Now, I think the HfH store is a poor value, and as an unused screen I have to regularly flip through, it remains a waste of my time.

Reecoh · June 2017

Brigby said:

@deadtaco
The reason we wanted to provide this news on Friday was not to avoid backlash, but to give players a couple more days to decide if they'd like to take advantage of a current Heroes for Hire opportunity before the update is implemented on Tuesday.

If that's true why wasn't it announced in game? I imagine a large percentage of the player base won't see this on the forums, or any other related boards like Reddit.

If it was, then I'll file a bug b/c it's not in my news in-game.

nycjonny · June 2017

I used the H4H store more than I'd like to admit. It got me a fully covered Peggy and pretty close on Iceman. I'm not going to use this store for one cover for Crash. One cover isn't going to help me win a crash anyway. As an alternative to the vault situation, H4H was an expensive but useful choice for me. Now it's a hard pass. Don't they actually want our money?

deadtaco · June 2017

@Brigby

Compromise - Why not at least let the third color cycle finish before making this change? Then it could have at least completed one full cycle before this ridiculous change goes through. It would not add that much time to it.

Edit - Reecoh brings up a good point - if you wanted players to have adv. notice - in game is the way to go.

Stuff like this and claiming that users "preferred" the higher HfH price point make it hard to trust.

zodiac339 · June 2017

fmftint said:

What do people who want/need a Big Enchilada character 4 star supposed to do now?

More to the point, you can usually complete a Burrito with 1 cover on a Legendary, and let the other 2 do the work. Except for the rare invisible Crash (Duck, Prof, and Sue), you're going to waste a lot of time losing with a 1 cover Legendary and probably never win, unless you somehow just keep getting match 5 cascades in your favor. Maybe they... don't want our money? Because this seems like the least profitable change they could have made.

Warbringa · June 2017

This is extremely stupid of the devs and/or D3. The store was already a rip off for what it offered, but at least it was a viable option that cycled through fairly quickly. Now it will take forever to get to that one cover you needed. Why not wait until the third and final rotation of covers was done as well. For example I really needed an Iceman purple cover, which was coming up in the third rotation, and now I will have to wait for a long time to get it. I am sure many other people are in the same boat. The issue to fix the Crash of the Titans to be more viable is to make 4* covers more available. This doesn't do this at all, in fact it does the opposite by making 4* covers less available. 5 days per cover is way too long to cycle through all of the 4* covers.

I am very disappointed as I am seeing more and more poor decisions by the development team. Vaulting was already a big issue and you are simply making it even bigger with this change.

What I really don't like is that this is going to negatively impact revenue, so that means they will try to make it up somewhere else. Don't be surprised when it happens.

TheWerebison · June 2017

Feeling totally justified in no longer supporting this company. Confused, greedy, tiny kitties.

sinnerjfl · June 2017

MissChinch said:

I don't think it's a money grab, it's more a move to preserve an exploitable scarcity of retired 4* covers. Covering them with 3600HP is somewhere between $25-$50. Covering them with CP is $100 with optimal buy clubs, around $1800 without buy clubs. Seems like someone didn't want to sell that scarcity away at ~$30 a pop as quickly as they were.

Ding ding ding! That's the only logical conclusion I can come up with as well.

3600 HP is too cheap for a single 4* cover in the eyes of D3/DU, you're reading that right.

Someone thought "omg were losing revenue with this incredible deal in the HfH store, we better slow down the flow of those insanely cheap covers so that people lose patience and spend even more to acquire CP instead!"

And let's disguise this change by saying its to help people complete the Crash... HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA.

*SIGH*

Update to Heroes for Hire (6/23/17) *Updated (6/26/17)

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