Let's talk compensation!

Marvel Puzzle Quest MPQ General Discussion
1

With nerfs (and buffs) inbound, the boards will soon be aflame with consternation over lost power.

But when the dust settles, players will be offered higher sale prices for characters that have been changed. Is demi/d3’s current practice adequate for providing compensation?

I don’t think it is. Consider:

(1) cyclops is my most recent strong 4* champ. I champed him just a few weeks ago. Let’s assume that cyclops is wrecked on Monday. A real sentry-job so that he will obviously have no use in high level play.

(2) the increased compensation demi offers is roughly the iso cost to level him, plus 1.5k HP and 50cp (these are just guesses, but I think they are fairly generous).

(3) assume I sell cyclops. My gross income is (i) several weeks’ play with a strong 4*, (ii) enough iso to champ a different 4* of my choice, and (iii) some HP and CP. But my gross losses are (i) the opportunity cost of not having champed a different 4* earlier, (ii) any special resources that spent to acquire cyc covers, be it tokens, hp, or cp, and (iii) how ever many cyclops covers I had gathered.

The first loss is mostly offset by the iso recovered by selling cyc. But the second and third losses are not at all addressed by demi’s increased sale price. If I had spent taco tokens mining out a cyclops cover, or HP emptying a pve vault, they are gone, and I cannot not use them to target another high value cover. And worst of all, I don’t even have cyclops covers any more. I can’t try to beat his 4ddq. And for all but a handful of players, gathering 13 4 covers for any given character takes 6 months at a minimum. That is a huge inconvenience for which the player gets nothing.

By forcing players to completely sell revised characters, demi/d3 are pretty clearly strong-arming players to just accept nerfs. I use this fairly harsh language advisedly, as find this particular business practice very distasteful. I hope demi/d3 do not continue as they have in the past.

At a minimum, compensation for character revisions should include: (i) the full iso cost of raising the character to their level at the time of the revisions, (ii) as many covers as the player has for the character at time of sale (champions should sell for 15 covers, 5 if each color, so the player can build to their preferred spec), (ii) special compensation offered case-by-case for players who can demonstrate that they expended special resources chasing particular covers.
Such special compensation need be 1:1, and should not be offered for resources expended more than three months prior to the revisions.

2

You wot, mate? You want to sell a character and then keep that character?

Sorry, fixed price with invested ISO. Take it or leave it. No special treatment for anyone.

3

Do we know what their current practice is, given that I think the last rebalance happened before the switch from HP to CP as a cover boosting mechanism?

I don’t think it is. Consider:

(1) cyclops is my most recent strong 4* champ. I champed him just a few weeks ago. Let’s assume that cyclops is wrecked on Monday. A real sentry-job so that he will obviously have no use in high level play.

(2) the increased compensation demi offers is roughly the iso cost to level him, plus 1.5k HP and 50cp (these are just guesses, but I think they are fairly generous).

Isn’t referring to that as generous at odds with your assertion that the sellback values would be inadequate?

(3) assume I sell cyclops. My gross income is (i) several weeks’ play with a strong 4*, (ii) enough iso to champ a different 4* of my choice, and (iii) some HP and CP. But my gross losses are (i) the opportunity cost of not having champed a different 4* earlier, (ii) any special resources that spent to acquire cyc covers, be it tokens, hp, or cp, and (iii) how ever many cyclops covers I had gathered.

Okay, but what resources did you gain over the life of the character which you otherwise would not have had you not champed the character? Any changes to Cyclops, or anybody else, aren’t happening in a vacuum. You may be losing the ability to leverage that character for future rewards following a rebalance, or at least suffering a lessening of that ability, but what happened previously didn’t get negated.

The first loss is mostly offset by the iso recovered by selling cyc. But the second and third losses are not at all addressed by demi’s increased sale price. If I had spent taco tokens mining out a cyclops cover, or HP emptying a pve vault, they are gone, and I cannot not use them to target another high value cover. And worst of all, I don’t even have cyclops covers any more. I can’t try to beat his 4ddq. And for all but a handful of players, gathering 13 4 covers for any given character takes 6 months at a minimum. That is a huge inconvenience for which the player gets nothing.

By forcing players to completely sell revised characters, demi/d3 are pretty clearly strong-arming players to just accept nerfs. I use this fairly harsh language advisedly, as find this particular business practice very distasteful. I hope demi/d3 do not continue as they have in the past.

Well, I mean…if a “nerf” happens, it’s happening whether or not you sell back the character. You can decide you don’t want the character anymore and would rather invest that ISO in leveling a different 4*, but that doesn’t change that the nerf happened. If you’re protesting the scarcity value of the 13 covers, then that implies that the character still has some tangible value to you. If that’s the case, then what we’re discussing is more of a business transaction - Demiurge are offering to buy the character back and you’re trying to extract maximum value from the sale. Let’s call it what it is.

At a minimum, compensation for character revisions should include: (i) the full iso cost of raising the character to their level at the time of the revisions, (ii) as many covers as the player has for the character at time of sale (champions should sell for 15 covers, 5 if each color, so the player can build to their preferred spec), (ii) special compensation offered case-by-case for players who can demonstrate that they expended special resources chasing particular covers.
Such special compensation need be 1:1, and should not be offered for resources expended more than three months prior to the revisions.

That sounds less like a sellback than a rollback. “I still want the character at whatever cover level I previously had, I just want to reallocate the resources to a different strong 4* so I can continue to reap the benefits I’ve been enjoying.” Not sure it’s realistic to expect Demiurge to go along with that shell game, especially when, as you point out, “for all but a handful of players, gathering 13 4* covers takes 6 months, at minimum.” A rollback benefits that handful disproportionately to the benefit someone with fewer covers enjoys. A sellback for ISO, HP, and/or CP is something whose benefit scales to the level of the character in question instead of being a direct benefit to players at the top and an “…okay. so?” to everybody else.

4

Wow, really surprised by the pushback on this.

I don’t think I am asking to for anything unreasonable.

A player makes a choice to invest a very large amount of iso into a character when champ’ing. And that investment cannot be made until a player has already invested a lot of time into covering that character. Nerfing retroactively changed the facts upon which players decided to invest in a a character. That’s a really big deal. Demi’s compensation model does something to compensate the player for the iso investment, but basically nothing for the cover investment. My proposal is intended to fix that oversight.

So yes, I think that after a revisions, players should efectively be able to break down a leveled character into their original components (iso + covers). Theoretically, a player should be able to sell their nerfed character and then use the proceeds to rebuild that character (though that would be pointless).

My thinking is this: nerfs result from game design imbalances. Such problems are 100% demi/d3’s “fault.” the costs of fixing such problems should rest on demi/d3, and not the players.

Dfi: team of you sell a character, you did get then use of that character for however long they were leveled. But don’t forget that but you you hadn’t leveled that one character, you would likely have leveled another character. So the “bonus” value that seems to concern you is the gap between the a strong and less strong champ, rather than the gap between a strong leveled character and a scrub.

Also. I say my sale value is “generous” meaning that it is a generous offer relative to the rewards demi/d3 have offered in the past. Not that it is generous in the abstract. I am on record many many times saying that demi/d3 are too tight with their digital reources and have monetized this game too aggressively.

5

How is it special treatment? I am proposing better compensation for everyone.

6

There’s no guarantee there’s about to be a nerfstorm.

(Even if that IS a reasonable guess based on what the Devs usually get up to).

But, assuming they are going to be sensible, what we SHOULD be seeing is rolling tweaks and rebalanced with a focus on improving weak characters over crippling established ones.

Besides which since this will be an ongoing rebalancing act, not a one-and-done hatchet job, anyone who keeps a nerfed champion would get the last laugh when it gets rebalanced again and they already have the Champ.

TL:DR; the sky isn’t falling until it actually falls.

7

My post expressly says let’s think about what happens “when the dust settles.” I am trying to have a non-hysterical discussion.

And whether it’s a “nerfstorm” or not, we know character changes are coming and we know that “increased compensation” is coming. So it seems like a very good idea to discuss compensation, both how much it should be, but also what purpose it should try to accomplish.

Aesth: yea, I tried to guess at the very very high end of what we might expect demi/d3 to offer given their past compensation. That way we can avoid any sidetrack of "they will offer more than your example. . . " my point is that even the,most generous offer I can conceive of demi offering is insufficient.

8

You absolutely are. There have been nerfs before and there will be nerfs again, the fact that you’re offered anything in return is more than generous. The idea that just because you no longer think a character has value entitles you to anything is ridiculous. You got what you paid for at the time and you got whatever that character won you in the meantime. Your idea is like if a new meta-king character was released and everyone with OML demanding they should get it for free because it’s better.

9

No one has said demi can’t change characters at their whim. They deserve the right to do that in their eula.

An no one is suggesting that compensation be offered unless a character is revised.

But as I have tried to argue (apparently without success), players make reasonable choices about deploying their in-game resources based upon the facts of the game as they currently exist. Nerfing (and buffing) is retroactively changing the rules upon which those rational choices are made. That’s inherently unfair. Demi can do it because they have given everyone notice that they might, so it’s not wrong, per se. But it is unfair. Players can’t buy HP and then decide that they should have bought HP during a sale and give themselves 20% more. But demi CAN do that with characters.

All I want is for demi to make give players a chance to make the their same rational choices with knowledge of the new rules. So if you want to keep your champ post nerf, go for it. And if you want to info your decision to champ character A and champ character B instead, they should be Ble to do that top. And do it without an onerous tax of collecting covers for the first character again. Especially since this game heavily Incentivizes players to roster everyone.

10

Ah the entitled generation. You know most major games do class balances all the time and there is never compensation. Move on

11

File a class action lawsuit! Also, organise a multi city protest! We also need to contact the media and get some press releases out.

12

You will note that d3’s eula includes a binding arbitration clause and class action waiver. . .

13

That’s it. I’m kneeling on one knee Everytime the load screen plays until these injustices and inequalities are addressed and fixed.

#NerfedLivesMatter #EntitledMuch

14

To the extent that nerfing/compensation is a zero sum game, demi/d3 are the ones getting hurt by my proposal. So why are so many players dead set against it?

If you have a good character who is nerfed and get fair compensation, you are clearly better off. But if you don’t have a powerful character and don’t get compensation you are still better off. Other people may still have stronger rosters than you do (just like they did before), but now they can’t expoit whatever strong character was nerfed. Plus all players can invest money/resources in the game freely, knowing that they don’t risk wasting anything buy investing in strong characters moving forward.

What is the problem with that!?

15

You aren’t asking for fair compensation. You’re asking to have had your cake and to eat it too.

16

Surely the debate is what is “fair.”

I really don’t see how what I proposed is too much. A player can keep the character they have. Or they can transfer the iso they have spent on the nerfed character to a different character. If a player feels like they spent special resources chasing a particular character shortly before a nerf, then they can ask CS for more compensation on a case by case basis (which, btw, is what we can do now).

That’s it, that’s my proposal. How is that is that having cake and eating it? The player has to give up their investment in one character. Its a trade, not getting everything.

Are you all concerned because a player got to use their character pre nerf? So what? If they didn’t level one character pre-nerf they would have leveled a different one instead. The that difference is trivial. Requiring a player to throw away months of cover collection in order to get any comlensation because demi/d3 decided to change a character is not trivial. They dont have to do, but they should. (though they obviously won’t do anything now since more than half of the players don’t even want more compensation.)

17

What I’d like to see is the ability to just get the ISO spent back, without selling the character.

For example I have a level 330 5-cover OML. If he gets nerfed hard I’d still like to keep him, but reset his level to 255 so it doesn’t affect my scaling like it does now.

18

The fact is you’re just plain wrong about this. Imagine for a moment you have the best character in the game. You’ve spent iso and CP and hours of effort to level and champ this character. Then a new character is released that is better in every way, trumps your old character on every level. Would you honestly expect to get all the resources you need to champ this new character just because you’re willing to sell the old character you no longer appreciate? There is no character who will be the best forever, or even one that will be useful forever. Did you complain when you transitioned from one star rank to the next that your old characters were useless? Did you sell them all? You have already gotten the value of any spent resources, you don’t deserve ANY compensation. Be thankful for any you get.

19

That bolded sentence is where I think you’re completely wrong. The difference between leveling Cho and leveling Teen Jean isn’t trivial (to use the most egregious example). Hell, the difference between leveling RHulk and leveling Miles or Carnage(who I think are considered a mid-level 4*) isn’t really completely trivial either. If someone is powerful enough to get the nerf in the first place, then you received some value in having them champed, and truthfully the longer you’ve had them champed the more value you’ve received.

Also, I don’t think you should be compensated for trying to whale a character (specifically spending money/HP on trying to get covers) outside of direct CP buys, because that then ignores any other rewards you got in your attempt to get that character. To use your example of emptying out a vault, it seems like you’re saying that you should get all your HP back because you were chasing that one cover, ignoring the benefit of the 20-80 other tokens you received in the meantime (even if that benefit was only ISO for selling the covers, which it probably wasn’t because nearly every high level player at this point has started a 2 star farm, which clearing out vaults would seriously help with).

20

Yeah, that’s special treatment.

You’re asking to trade up instead of selling your character. When you trade in something old for something new, you’re giving part of the original sales price. You’re asking to get the new stuff for free in exchange for the old stuff. Yeah, entitled much?