Shardmas was wildly unpopular. As I recall, many of the things being disussed as player retaliation at the time were review bombing, going into the app store and changing your rating from high to 1, cancelling VIP, stopping spend, etc. Essentially coordinated boycot. These things, if done at an appropriate scale, would cause a material impact on the game because mobile titles live and die by discoverability, which is driven in large part by their aggregate ratings in the various stores. At the time, I had exactly one 4* (rogue) who was high enough level to just barely be affected by the weakening of the reward payout, and I was pretty hot about it just the same. I was actually more upset though about losing out on retroactive Sabretooth rewards, since I was struggling to champ him and really needed tools to combat the Kitty/Rocket stranglehold on the single 5* MMR. But that’s neither here nor there I suppose.
Even before all that, I was regularly advocating moving to new release 4s just coming out with 5s already in the tree rather than doing retro rewards. It really does solve all the problems of all of that. Why there doesn’t seem to be any reasonable or predictable timeline to when it happens, who gets them, etc is what makes it pretty frustrating for players at this point. Like just…include them after they’ve been in classic long enough, what’s the problem? Anyway, I do think that care should be taken with how they handle rewards - we’re talking about months/years of hard play to earn what you’ve earned at the 4 and 5* tier, so walking back a long-established precedent of full retro rewards is a huge rug-pull when it comes to player trust. I think they should have been able to predict that wasn’t going to go over well at all.
I have the same recollection as @ThaRoadWarrior. Though I barely benefited from the extra rewards being given out after the outcry, I felt that it people were being given what was promised. I’m a firm believer in communicating change before it happens and spinning it to your advantage. You may then have to remain in communication/outreach mode, but sometimes you have to put in the work to get things to roll your way.
Shards themselves are bittersweet for me. The moment they introduced them, I championed them in every thread, possibly annoyingly so. For me, it still is an awesome idea as it’s allowed me to roster 4* characters and get Kitty from 4 covers to 8 covers (from 2/0/2 to 2/4/2… and she’ll be 2/5/2 shortly). Where I would constantly complain was in the reduction of the HP in multiple locations. While I’m still rostering everybody Pokémon style, it’s HP that I want; once I’ve got everyone, I’ll be up in arms about iso drought. (Don’t get me wrong, I’m iso poor, but it’s baby step slow progress and Im not missing out on anything, unlike losing a cover.)
Except, because of that reaction, we went from a situation where we got partial retro rewards in big batches to a situation where we get zero retro rewards ever. Potentially they planned to make every 4* a feeder, or feed 5* with multiple 4*, and that is now completely off the table.
For many players that’s ok. The new system works better for them. For other players it’s not – they’re being deprived of partial retro rewards that they could use, because a small, loud group would find that offensive. How do we know how big the groups are? We don’t.
Was the devs’ reaction/the new system predictable? I’m not sure. I do think that any sort of player/fan rebellion is probably going to have some unintended consequences, because players and fans don’t have control over decisionmaking and will never have control.
This strikes me as an example of those unintended consequences – “ok, if you’re so upset by reduced retro rewards, we’ll give you no retro rewards at all from now on.”
I think the current rollout is fine except for the fact that feeders are few and far between - it would be ideal if old 5s just got a feeder after a certain amount of time rather than will they/won’t they every 4* release. The way they tried to do it at Shardmas was like how gift cards used to work so long ago where they would just quietly hemmorage money if you didn’t use them fast enough, which is a trash value proposition to the customer.
its almost time (maybe… lol)… was hoping for some annoucement today…