MORE DISCLAIMER THAN NECESSARY: I have a L115 5/5 Rag and spent ~$40 to up his red 2 to 5 about 2 months ago, disposable income well spent as a life-long gamer. I earned all 5 of his greens through loss of sleep, a dash of token luck, calculated HP hoarding, and an outright addiction to this amazing, albeit frustrating at times, game. I generated hundreds of thousands of ISO from him, and finished top 10 dozens of times, he will be sorely missed. I am not associated with D3 or Demiurge but I love to guess a lot. I also tend to be arrogant, I hate accountants, and I abuse comma splices (and parenthetical asides) overtly.
Short version:
In my humble opinion, the Ragnarok nerf was a decision based on $, not player delight. Everyone just calm down, blame the publisher to make yourself feel good, and remind yourself that video games are a business. This was echoed by several others already, but I have a different theory on the motivation behind it, FWIW.
Long version: – because I actually care about this game - despite its issues - and the game industry
As a Producer for a video game company, I’ll let you in on the dirty secret. This nerfing almost certainly came directly from the business guys that fund development, not the guys that care if you have a good experience as a gamer or not. Decisions at any Agile software business are driven not by a desire to “keep everyone happy” but by “keeping the revenue stream flowing and growing intelligently, forever” – with Bandai Namco Games Inc. (owner of D3Publisher) at the top of this particular foodchain. There are jobs on the line if this game stops being profitable, but you know who’s jobs are really on the line? Not the publisher (D3), it’s the development house (Demiurge). If funding gets cut, they’re the first to go. Don’t EVER expect to get “developer” interactions directly out of the guys at Demiurge here (actually it’s Software Engineers, QAAs, Testers, Sysadmins, Artists, Sound Engineers, Scrum Masters, Product Owners, Release Managers, and a special nod to administrative assistants…) in regards to something as sensitive as this, they are definitely not calling those shots. This is for the same reason the forums are hosted on the d3pforums.com domain, not Demiurge’s. My embroidered Ragnarok hat goes off to the hardworking folks at all ranks at D3 for putting up with boneheaded nerfing decisions that are guaranteed to piss off those with the highest degree of emotional investment in the game. I bet the only ones at D3 that feel the pain of nerfing decisions like this are customer service and technical support. Guys like Yoji Takenaka (CEO, D3) and Peter Andrew (VP of Product Dev, D3) don’t give 2 craps about how you “feel” about your investment, they’ve already spent your $100 and my paltry $65 total investment (gotta get those character slots!) on their development partnership with Demiurge. They are probably still in the hole to Bandai/Namco for Marvel licensing fees until next Christmas - their question is will the game be profitable in 2014.
My theory = new players (certainly the largest percentage of the game base) need to buy HP for character slots to compete - that’s the biggest cash cow users, not the whales that pay to max level their characters. We in the forums (the ones who care enough to be here, BEGGING for a response… please do not hold your breath…) are clearly the minority here folks, wake up. If we were the majority, the publisher and Product Managers would participate here, gathering requirements to feed to the developer, maybe even conducting a POLL (gasp!). The business model appeals to the mute masses that sign up and start buying character slots (without even knowing these forums exist) with dreams of (yeah, we know they’re useless so far) 4 star characters twinkling in their eyes. You know who hears those players? Accounting.
I consider the guys at D3 brilliant - the business model is no doubt amazing, when coupled with the hook of randomized prizes and enough licensed content and storytelling to keep it interesting enough for us to lose sleep over. However, the vacuous threats of even a hundred power users invested in one character quitting add up to squat when you have thousands of new users monthly purchasing HP for slots. Their beancounters (yeah, you non-gaming accounting tripe can all please go die in a fire) just gave their end-of-year powerpoints to HQ and now have probably over-promised their 2014-Q1 quarterly profit projections above what their current Mobile business model is capable of. Great work guys, applause all around for arrows pointing up into the unknown ether. Your financial prognostication affects us on the ground because it influences the likes of Albert Reed (CEO, Demiurge) and Josh Glavine (Game Designer, Demiurge) in their decision-making against balancing what’s “good for the players” and “what’s good for the publisher”. To you accounting guys & gals, I honestly hope someone keys your BMW 5 Series tonight in that parking lot in LA, it would be me if I weren’t 2000 miles away, sober.
A Product Management thought leader told me once, “Give your users what they need, not what they want, and certainly don’t let them tell you the questions to ask.” If you had asked me going into the Hulk tournament how I “felt” about having to face level 240 characters without my Ragnarok, I would have puked a little in my mouth, but the result and reality was I had to beef up my other characters (primarily Thor) to compete [my buddies and I saw that as a big fat upcoming nerfing flag at the time]. Give the highest percentage of your financial base (the newbies buying HP for character slots) a chance by nerfing their biggest threat to actually staying with the game to buy more character slots - we are that threat. On beancounter spreadsheets, if those upper eschelon of players drop off the map, myself included… GOOD! They’re blocking the newbs from buying more slots. I will not be scared off, but I’m not spending another dime and I will crush newbs with more glee than ever from now on. Accountants aren’t gamers, so they don’t give a crap if you’re whining about it or not - they are detached from the emotional experience of investing in the characters, but their pivot tables only show a small portion of the story, we tell the rest here and I for one are not going anywhere. I’m Demiurge’s b**** at this point, and will continue to evangelize the game, but when the cuts are this deep to player pockets, it hurts the larger MPQ community and the reputation Demiurge, not D3.
Bad reviews will come and go, but I doubt any of use that are involved at a competitive level in this game will regret the experience this game delivers. Now… off to earn some Spidey blues, light a pyre in Ragnarok’s honor (some of us are actually going through the 5 stages of grief here), and hold my breath waiting for a personal response from D3 executive management while they look up my account details and real name…
–Pentagoon
\m/ (_)/ \m/
