Stop Giving Players Tokens for Compensation.

Marvel Puzzle Quest MPQ General Discussion
1

I know a lot of you folks consider me a MPQ ‘white knight’, but the honesty of it all is I’m just saying what I think. Here’s one of those times I am saying what I think and it’s not in MPQ’s favor. Enjoy. icon_lol.gif

It’s not cool. I’ll be the first person to go out on the limb and say you guys (“the devs”) are only human and mistakes are going to happen. That’s totally cool with me. I’m not going to hold you to any higher standards than I would anyone else. That being said, when my buddy drinks my last Mountain Dew, I expect he is going to pay me back in a manner that is somewhat equal.

That being said, I’ll reiterate, tokens are not okay compensations for your mistakes. It isn’t. Even Heroic Tokens are not okay. Even a ten-pack of Heroics are not okay. Event Tokens are not okay. If we were talking Anniversary Tokens, it might be okay for certain things, like a couple hours of downtime, or the forums went down or something. That’s minor. Minor compensation makes sense there.

…but I am beyond disappointed about hearing players say they got three tokens as compensation for being locked out of the game for upwards of two weeks. This isn’t okay. It’s just not, for so many reasons.

I’m going to step away from this hot button for a second and talk about the other times you guys have handed out compensation;

  • Alliance Roster Size Changes: Originally, the cut off of one month refunds was quite the underwhelming decree, but you quickly followed up (in about a week’s time), and decided to give an extremely over generous full refund to everyone. I think everyone would have been happy with three months and some bonus Hero Points (say 300).
  • Anniversary Tokens for Combined Arms PvP and Venom Heroic PvE: After mistakenly using the normal prize template for these two events, instead of giving out the Anniversary Tokens, they decided to give everyone the chance to earn them during 48 hours of Lightning Rounds – both in placement and progression – within 20-man brackets (plus double ISO, but that was the norm for that week). A lot of people were apprehensive at first, but form what I remember, most people ended up loving the 20-man brackets and apologizing afterwards. Realistically, a lot of people echoed a sentiment (within the thread about it) that they would be happy with two Anniversary Tokens, but in the end, a lot of us ended up with a lot more.
  • Downtime during the original run of Deadpool versus MPQ: Game servers were down for roughly six hours (I don’t remember exactly at this point) in the dead of night, and for compensation, they gave everyone that participated in that PvE a Thick as Thieves token (which had a high drop chance of Deadpool), and anyone that had participated in the Thor PvP that was also going on got two Unholy Outlaw Tokens. Yes, the servers went down again the next day, I’ll give you that, but my counter-point is since then (August?) there hasn’t been a single issue. Point being, they gave away three Event Tokens, which isn’t the best reward in the world, these particular Event Tokens at least had high rating for good characters (Hood and Deadpool). )I’d also note this was before the Anniversary Token existed.)

These are examples of doing the right thing. You gave your loyal fanbase a fair piece of compensation - and in some cases a lot more - and maintained a good bit of composure.

Now, back on point, where are we now? Some users were left out in the cold, completely locked out of playing MPQ, from anything to a day to upwards of two weeks. We’re not talking about someone making their own mistake and screwing themselves out of numerous PvP and PvE rewards (not to mention season placement). We’re not talking about users having issues on a beta release operating platform. We’re talking about a mistake you guys made that locked, maybe not “a lot” of users out, but more than enough for it to matter, for upwards to two weeks. I don’t care that the mistake was made, like I said earlier, you guys are all human and you’re intitled to make some mistakes here and there…but you’re giving these guys three Event(/Groot) Tokens? What?!

Let me get this straight. You’re giving these guys the equivalent to what you gave everybody, when the game went down for a few hours in August, when they could have been locked out for weeks? Color me confused. How in the world does this make any sense to anyone? Somebody explain this to me, please.

sigh Now that I got the rant out of the way, let me be constructive.

I will be more than happy to agree that “fair” is a pain in the ass, especially in a lot of these customer support issues. What exactly is okay to give out? And when?

Let me set one thing straight. If the problem is a Puzzle Quest problem, do not give us a gamble. Give us something ‘tangible’. Give some Hero Points, throw them a truckload of ISO, and, if the case is severe enough, give them an applicable cover(s). Stop giving people a chance to get something as compensation. It’s simple not fair.

That being said, if Joe Blow screwed something up himself, or if it was a problem your company didn’t attribute to, then yeah, fine, give them a couple Event Tokens, but please, throw them a bone and give them a small form of gratitude that they know is a guarantee too. I know it wasn’t your fault, but what’s 100 Hero Points? Honestly.

Being perfectly blunt, I feel like giving out covers should be a last resort. There are few things that are a promise in Puzzle Quest. There’s not promise you were going to hit /x/ progression reward when the season ended early, so no, I don’t think you deserve a free cover. I think you deserve a bit more than a couple tokens though, that’s for sure. There’s no denying a lot was on the line for a lot of people and there was a lot of potential in those three hours for everyone.

There’s not a lot of things that MPW can give out. There’s ISO, there’s token, there’s Hero Points, and there’s covers. i guess there is Boosts and Health Packs too.

Now, there’s two big hot button issues floating around right now; there’s the Android issue that had a lot of users locked out of the game and there’s the season ending thing from the other night. I want to talk about both. First, let’s get something out of the way; individual compensation won’t/can’t happen. Plainly, it’s just too much freaking work and it’s too much guesswork based on too many variables (which leads to too much research). It’s a black hole of resources, and I think we all agree their resources are better spent on game content and not a stupid cover reward/compensation. Let’s be real.

That being said, let’s start with the season ending error, because it’s the easiest one to try and tackle. Like I said before, I don’t think giving covers out if generally okay, because there’s too many variable to tell if someone would earn it or not, and if we’re giving them out globally, well, yeah, no. And obviously some tokens are too little. Here’s what I feel is fair, as a flat, global piece of compensation; 3x of the retired +3 rainbow Boosts, 800 Hero Points, 3x Anniversary Token, and 5000 ISO. Yeah, it’s a handful of things that individually are nothing, but I feel like giving out the retired boosts would be a cool way to say thank you, and it’s not like three of them are going to break the ecosystem (but it could definitely help secure position in a future event), 800 Hero Points is enough for at least one Rooster Slot for most MPQ players, a few tokens that have an awesome prize pool, and the ISO is just icing on the cake so if you do pull something you can hopefully level it.

Next on the list is the terrible Android bug that prevented people from playing. Let me say this. There’s no real way to compensate this. It’s not really measurable. For the folks that missed the whole two weeks, that’s a ton of PvE and PvP placement and progression rewards, not to mention season standings. There’s a lot to account for. They completely missed out on a chance to earn 4* Thor covers. They completely missed out on a chance to get Gamora. They completely missed out on a chance to get Rocket & Groot (I think). This is a case I feel like giving out covers is doable. I honestly think they should be receiving a single cover for each release they missed. I think they should be gifted a fairly hefty amount of Hero Points – somewhere in the range of 1000, if not more — and I also feel like they should be gifted at least two tokens from each event they were not able to participate in. That ridiculous part is, all that really covers is part of what they missed in PvEs. I feel like at least one Heroic Token should be given for each PvP they were unable to participate in, plus at least 2500 ISO per event. I don’t even begin to know how to gauge season gains, so I will just say a 5-pack of Anniversary Tokens and some Hero Points.

I think I am done rambling now. If you have something constructive to add, feel free to do so. I would be happy to hear from the people affected by these events to say what they think is “fair”. Please do not turn this into a mud slinging contest or a flame war. My entire point here is that they’re been doing so good lately and I’m dumbfounded by this recent lack of attentiveness.

2

It was great time having you as moderator. Your nick will turn back to blue in 10 … 9… 8… 7…

Just kidding icon_e_wink.gif

3

Good post. I must say I have seen a distinct change in the forums over the past month. usually, when there is an issue, people (probably rightly) rant and rave about it. That’s what happens at a customer service station in a shop, so it’s to be expected really.

But the last little while, the outcry seems to have been far less. I mean, over the past 24 hours I have seen numerous posts which actually say “we feel really sorry for you guys to have to work on these issues, sorry”. It’s like a lot of people have gone from anger, to apathy, to just sympathising. Which seems really, really odd. The alliance FB group I am in currently has a thread about the season ending early, someone being locked out for ages, and someone levelling a character and a few hours later the level has been reset. There are only 20 of us, yet we have all been hit by at least one issue recently.

I’m not even ranting here really. I agree that Tokens are not the way to go (I would say HP, to help people save for a particular cover they have probably missed out on, or to help shield to help them get a specific cover in PVP) this but I guess I have given up on expecting the devs to sort this stuff out properly in the first place to the point where compensation isn’t an issue, let alone then have the developers properly compensate people according to the problem.

I have totally adjusted my expectations on this game. I have stopped spending, and I will not be gunning for a season long event when this last one has been effected by a change in the PVP difficulty for me and the season ending early so we stayed at 114 when we were all pushing and swapping people in (and I totally get that we may not have hit top 100, but we weren’t even given the opportunity).

Anyway, yeah, not tokens, HP icon_e_biggrin.gif

4

First, let me say that my alliance was in a pretty safe position at the “early” end, so I shouldn’t get anything from that. As to the personal progression, I was about 400 points away from 7500. So I might not have even reached the Mysty cover. So, I’m one of the ones that this will have a minimum effect on, if any at all. But either way, I’m not upset. This game has given me so much over the past year, and like the OP, I understand mistakes happen.

However, I do understand why and how some people will feel they got “screwed”. Which they have a right to, Especially those individuals and teams that were less than 100 points away from the next award threshold or t100. And if I were in that group, I honestly do not know how I would feel. Probably not the way I do now, but not angry enough to slam my tablet against the wall. (Not again anyway. Wife won’t buy me another one after last time, so I gotta be careful).

So, something I thought about, (actually thought about this months ago, just never bothered to post it), was what if, (if this is even possible), what if D3 gave the players a choice. As I said, I won’t be getting any compensation, but thought I’d throw it out anyway. Let me explain.

Every person was affected differently, has different rosters, different play styles, etc., etc.,.. So, instead of giving each player something like 5 tokens, 800hp, and 5,000iso. Let them have options. Maybe 1 player needs 0 hp and 10,000iso, and another needs 1,200hp and 0 iso. So what if there were 2 or 3 things to choose from. You could pick option A with 5000iso, 800hp, and 5 tokens. Option B with 0 iso, 1,200 hp, and 5 tokens. Or option C with 500 iso, 100 hp, and a 42 pack of tokens. Of course these numbers/amounts/values are just examples.

This way, it’s less of a “gamble”(which the OP pointed out, no one cares for very much), and more of “Which of these 3 options would help you out the most?”.

Again, not sure if something like this is possible or not, or how difficult it would be to do. But it is something that can be used again and again. Not just for this situation of the early ending or android players getting locked out, but for any and all things in the future that would merit some form of refund or compensation. Just an in game pop up that says "Pick one of the following ".

Sgt. JJ

5

Tokens suck and are a lottery scam. period.

6

May I also add to the list, the R65 bug that shut down chatroom and invoked obscenely high data consumption on Android users. Well, it doesn’t actually belong to the list, because there was no compensation of any sort involved. Nor any official acknowledgement or announcement on the data consumption issue. Quite promptly hushed over. The effects are still stinging on those affected - through no fault of their own, a player either has to bite the bullet and pay for the extra data charges, or voluntarily lock him/herself out of the game until the next month. Together with the Lollipop issue, I consider these as two of the bigger outrages of recent times, which were finally remedied with R65.1, or as HiFi termed it, “a small update”. To those affected, this is anything but a ‘small issue’.

Yes the team did not really cover themselves in glory by the way they handled these two issues, but let’s give them an opportunity to handle this latest one right. To have such a large player base, they must be doing something right.

7

lol OP…

It’s not like they will get any 3*** worth keeping. MPQ gonna MPQ.

8

I’m in the sympathising group. Reason why is, I’ve been a mod on a forum, and I know that there is an attitude of users like, I’m the criminal, they are the police, so I don’t have to follow rules, but they do. When a problem arises? THEY ARE UNPROFESSIONAL. When they award bonus rewards by accident (as I got three LCaps and a Ragnorok a month or two back, as many did), I GET TO KEEP IT. No matter what, users expect everything in their favour always, even the ones who pay nothing and do it all FTP.

So, when something bad goes down, at the very least, I don’t want to be part of the chorus of bitchers. I allot the programmers the respect I would want if there was an error in my own job: at the very least, time to deal with it.

9

The OP is written extremely well. I know that the devs actively read posts on this forum since I actually had at least one of my questions answered by them. This in itself is shocking to me as the devs for most games that I have played so far automatically send a “thank you for contacting us, we will respond within 24-72 hours” but never get back to you. The only thing that I want to add is that I hope that the devs really listen to what people like the mod who wrote the OP. I used to play a game which was #1 in the app stores but the company got so greedy and ignored what the customer’s said and would only give the same 1 card pack compensation and ultimately forced the game to lose so much interest that majority of the customers stopped enjoying the game and quit. I will say that since I am fairly new I am still enjoying the game though. Also I really do not know if that data consumption thing affected me because I still have an unlimited data plan thanks to my “grandfather” effect back from the original iPhone icon_e_biggrin.gif

Edit: It looks like I was typing my comment when Square did and also agree with that comment. When Demiurge makes a mistake if it is in the favor of us the player base they do whatever is favorable for us. The example that I can give is the “easy sub bug” in this Iso8 pve event. If they really wanted to, they could have acknowledged their mistake and taken the server down for a few hours to fix the bug and given a piss poor 1 Iso8 token globally as compensation for downtime and restarted the event. They decided to let the event continue as is and as a result people like me gained a ton of free hp, Iso8 tokens, and ISO(and in my case an XF cover, 1 of each cover for capt marvel, and 100 hp). I will say thank you for the early Christmas gift!

10

At the least. it should be one (or more) of those 3* tokens from the elite 12 hr tournaments

11

In my case, and I’m just speaking for myself, appropriate compensation is easy to figure out. One black Gamora. Keep the iso, keep the HP, keep the tokens. I know they can’t go case by case, but for the subset that was within a couple hundred of 2400 (86 for me), that compensation would directly reflect what was “lost”.

12

I think the best way to handle the early season end is actually pretty simple.

Change the bracketing for rewards slightly for the last time shard PvP and for the overall season, along with possibly for the sim. It wouldn’t be unprecedented, as it’s happened at least once in the past in a PvE. Instead of top 1, top 2-3. Instead of top 50, top 75. Instead of top 100, top 125-150. For the progressions, drop by a set percentage. As an example, rewards for 1000 becomes 900, 2000 becomes 1800. 2400 becomes 2160. No, it’s not perfect and my numbers are probably off, but it goes a long way towards correcting the 3 hour difference.

13

Their level reset? I haven’t heard about anything like that since the whole level cap rise thing, quite awhile back, and even then, they didn’t reset, they just got stuck. If you advise them to make a thread in the bugs section, I’ll try and help them figure out what went wrong (meanwhile, a support ticket would be a good idea too).

The biggest problem with this is resources. Who knows how many people actually play this game, but let’s just use this as a benchmark; there’s a solid lineup of one hundred Alliances, each with 20 members – that’s 2000 people, which we can agree doesn’t even come close to encompass the amount of players playing this game – and let’s say only 10% are affected by this occurrence - that’s 200 people - and let’s assume it takes about ten minutes (which I feel is super relaxed) to completely solve the issue on an individual level and hand out compensation — 2000 minutes (or 33 hours and 20 minutes). That’s a lot of manhours, especially considering I have a strong feeling they don’t have real helpdesk reps, but rather the devs themselves do it. Now, realistically, the amount of players is exponentially higher than 2000 – it’s probably closer to triple that, if not more – and I can say personally, I don’t want the developers wasting entire days just reading through support tickets and compensating people.

Maybe it’s the moral choice but is it the logical choice?

EDIT: I missed the bit about the pop-up. I dunno how doable that is with whatever interface they use, but at the end of the day, they could create a basic event with three nodes (or however many), and make them all close after you finish one of them. It’s still a resources question there, though. If they could do a pop-up, that would be a fabulous option, though. I don’t think you can argue with a few options.

I would be curious to know if they would be able to search and create a group based on final event score, so they could award anyone within, say, a 300 point threshold of the Gamora cover a free one. Honestly, I still think giving a free cover on a chance is a bit much, but it’s pretty unlikely in three hours any of those folks weren’t going to get it, unless they didn’t play at all. I think this is reasonable, though, if the threshold isn’t something like 1000 points. At the end of the day though, it’s a matter of having the tools to do it, which I have no idea if they do (though I feel like a simple Python script would be easy enough to make(?)).

EDIT:

This is why I said Anniversary Tokens, because their drop rates and drop pool where pretty fantastic. No, it’s not optimal, but it’s a metric ton better than a Heroic. Heck, there’s even a chance to get (tons of) Hero Points in an Anniversary Token.

14

Giving out tokens would be like saying “Oh, sorry for the mix-up on your paycheck. Our system broke down and didn’t give you your overtime pay. Here, have a lottery ticket. Hopefully that’ll make up for the losses”

15

I find it funny how many people treat MPQ like a job. The hard part for d3 is do they give different rewards based on how seriously the player plays or pays, or do they give everyone affected the same thing? Regardless of what happens, the hardcore player base is going to feel screwed.

16

I’ll take one of those ‘automatic top award in any event of my choice - tokens’ and call it a night

icon_e_smile.gif

17

it is always frustrating to receive a random compensation, id rather get 200 HP than a token for something like that, and for all of the people who like the token, they can just use the HP to buy one on a daily deal.

It is also frustrating to get tokens for a long “investment” event, like season 10-pack, ive had 2 seasons in a row not with all 2*. They should be like the old 10 packs get one good thing for sure, it doesn’t have to be a guaranteed good thing it could be one random gold coin

Don’t get me wrong I like the idea of the 10-pack at 4k progression, but getting no 3* makes me feel like it’s a wasted season because I don’t have the time and roster to hit those huge multiple ten pack season rewards (I don’t have an issue with that, I think people who earn those deserve them) , the 4k is pretty much it for me and for 3 seasons it’s been 2500 iso

18

The “Android bug” locked me out for a little while. 1 week? 10 days? I dont know, I lost track.

They can keep all their compensation, send 2 GREEN devil Dino covers my way and I will be happy. During anniversary I was able to amass 14 Barney pulls, drops and rewards.

I would have gladly turned 5 or even 10 purples into a single green…

So, yeah. If compensation has actually have been said to be coming… Still waiting.

19

Two of them have it, they have emailed support a few days ago. Nothing back as yet, but they may well be looking into it.

Also had another guy who couldn’t log in the entire of yesterday but was fine on other games. Maybe we are just shockingly unlucky.

20

The whole token system is a mess. I work hard towards a prize that most likely will be useless. What’s the point? giving “ISO in disguise” and making us spend HP on hero’s abilities we really need?
Since Xmas is coming i will ask for my present right away icon_lol.gif

I would like to have somekind of choice with token rewards. Either we could choose between 2or3 chars each time we open a token or the colour of the char we got. Even better if it were a really good prize -let’s say top 5 for example- we could choose both.
I realise this way many people would just stop buying hero abilities but let’s be honest: unless you have deep deep pockets you will NEVER spend more than 50-100€ in MPQ. Which -in my opinion i must say- is already an outrageous amount.
So please baby Thor give us what we need and let us enjoy this great game.