I don’t really feel like I see much in the way of advance notice of things these days. They kinda just show up and there they are.
I kinda miss the 10 minute vlogs they used to do where they explained the changes coming up and what their intentions were.
I think developers are way too scared of suggesting things or engaging with the communities in case they mention something and everyone later screams “YOU PROMISED!!!” when they did no such thing.
The question posed by OP is about the state of MPQ, not the holiday abscence. I think the point being, are we really getting that much more info even if they’re not actively here. Which from my view, isn’t all that terribly different. Communication never comes in timely manner, often is incorrect, or never comes at all.
No clue when/if another PvP fix will be attempted or what that might look like.
No clue when/if more 4* champ rewards will be switched to 5s.
No clue what the rotation pattern is for 5 essentials except LLLCC.
We got very little details about what was planned for the holiday events.
As part of above they randomly changed DDQ orders as part of this and never announced it.
Communication is pretty low right now in both quality and quantity.
I think I have my concerns and issues well know. The communication is getting worse and It is sad. They just had the best day ever for MPQ last Friday with the amount of money that was spent. My hope for the game is fading.
This is pathetic. Maybe they don’t have faith in their own product or maybe they don’t have a sack. Never seen devs who get all scared from their own player base.
It’s not a hard line to draw; money talks as does engagement. The money continues to pour into the game, despite all the previously mentioned concerns and issues.
If you were in their seat, what would you do? Option A: Pull back the curtains, open the doors and expand the flow of information.
Option B: keep doing exactly what you’re doing as there is literally no downside.
We are the minority, the margins, the outliers. We can vocalize and stomp our feet, and send emails, and have meaningful conversations all we want, but there activities or inactivity should tell that what we’re asking for isn’t anywhere on their radars of cares. Even simple requests like a schedule of 5* toons for pve is a big secret.
I will continue to beat the drum for transparency and communication, but I have no expectations that anything will change.
To quote the last time a dev actually showed up here:
“Thanks everyone for receiving this update with an open mind. I won’t be able to monitor this thread and reply to questions directly going forward, but your feedback will for sure make it back to the rest of the development team quickly - your feedback was instrumental in this change, so we want to make sure we got it right. “
Translated; they forced me to make this post, I won’t come back here, don’t expect anyone else to either.
There’s a huge downside in making changes that are polarizing that could hurt the engagement and continued investment of established players. See Vaulting and Win based PvP as examples… Sure the game might be making money, even a lot of it, but that doesn’t prove it wouldn’t make more money with better/increased engagement in knowing what their customers want (or tank it if enough or bad enough decisions are made).
Finding out what the players want before you develop it is beneficial in many ways:
Produce a better product.
Increase brand loyalty / build faith.
Increase word of mouth from players happy to be heard.
Decrease wasted development time by not making unwanted features.
Right now they seem to be half listen and hardly talking back. it’s like a one way telephone call through a translator and some things get lost in translation. We screamed at them what the issues with Win-Based PvP were and several good ways to fix it, instead they plowed through with their original concept and had to knee jerk take it back when it threatened the stability of the game.
I’ve been recently watching a lot of postmortems on games that failed/died. In almost all of them the biggest issue was making changes without engaging/listening to audience. It’s like buying Christmas presents without considering/asking what the person wants, all you’re doing is giving them a chore of returning it…
If they actually cared, tapping would’ve been fixed 10 months ago when they said it was bad. Just because there was much gnashing of teeth regarding win based pvp doesn’t mean that’s why it’s changed, or that it won’t be back in a new form. All it means is they didn’t find the solution they liked yet.
Theyve rolled out many iterations of pve before landing on the current model (which seems to be pretty universally disliked because of many different factors) and they’re not in any rush to fix.
Theyre not listening, and they’re selling you a bill of goods if you think otherwise. They will do whatever they choose for the reasons they want and it has little to nothing to do with what we say here.
As a professional game dev that doesn’t work for this studio, I’m sympathetic to their situation in regards to community engagement. I don’t feel especially informed about the state of the game, but I also don’t feel entitled to more information than we get. I’m 100% F2P though, and if I’d dumped a bunch of money into it I might feel differently. That being said, I would never dump a bunch of money into a product like this, because without a doubt this game will be gone eventually, and I would have nothing to show for that expenditure as a consumer. That’s the curse of all virtual goods, really.
I feel somewhat informed based on this info. We have an idea of whats next, just not what or when. MPQ mostly stays with the status quo, new season updates, new characters every 2 weeks, movie or tv release tie ins, etc. Current state is pretty predictable, I feel like I know whats going on enough.