What if it isn't the devs...

Marvel Puzzle Quest MPQ General Discussion
1

Demi and d3 have taken a lot of heat here lately for a variety of issues: broken characters, lack of communication, uninspired anniversary, no solution to dilution, the list goes on. But let me throw out a possibility.

First: I have never worked with Demi, d3, or Marvel directly or indirectly, nor do I know anything about their business practices. (Nor do I have any friends or relatives that work there, nor have any direct ownership or financial interest, yada yada yada) However, I have worked with many other large companies that will remain nameless, so what I am about to suggest is taken from my experiences in contractual negotiations with those other large companies. Suffice it to say they include companies whose annual revenues are measured in the billions and most folks reading this (if not all) will have eaten at, shopped in, listened to, or touched in some way.

In my experience, the larger the company and the scarcer the product they provide, the more “control” they can and usually do assert over a contractual relationship.

Marvel has a very popular product, one for which there is no ready substitute. Do you think DC Puzzle Quest would be nearly as popular? Dark Horse Puzzle Quest? Likely not (no offense to DC and Dark Horse).

Demi and d3, on the other hand, provide services that are readily available from many other competitors.

I don’t think it’s that far out of the realm of possibility that the contract with Marvel puts a TON of limitations and controls on what Demi and d3 can do. That would include needing to go to Marvel to grant approval on all communications, game changes, new characters, special offers, elements of community interactions, etc.

So extrapolating a bit, I don’t think it’s wide outside the realm of possibility that what we’re seeing (or rather not seeing) is outside the control of Demi and d3, and that Demi and d3, per the contract, would not even be able to say it’s outside their control. Most of these contracts include such non-disclosure provisions. The first rule of Fight Club is you don’t talk about Fight Club.

Now, you might have some evidence to suggest that Demi and D3 have acted similarly with other products from less valuable franchises. And that would be evidence that I’m totally off-base, so please tell me so.

But absent that evidence, it’s possible we might be barking up the wrong tree. That the folks we’re complaining to and about are restricted in what they can do and in addition restricted from telling us they’re restricted. So all they can do is cringe, remain silent, and take the repeated beatings, which then only intensfiy because of said forced silence. Only when folks get unpolite or when they get approval from the higher power to do so does something different happen.

I’m just saying it might be possible…

2

What you say is certainly plausible. I, too, have no way of knowing if it’s merely conjecture or perhaps spot-on, but I do understand the overarching theme you present of control within larger financial entities and the resulting inability of many to say much of anything about it if that’s the directive coming from above their pay grade. Am also interested to see if others have additional information on whether or not this has been par for the course with lesser properties.

3

While they do need to go to marvel for approval of characters to use in the game they do have a lot of flexibility in how to use the characters power levels and content. For instance they could say 5* banner is just too underpowered and buff his stats without getting approval from Marvel. They could have given out double CP in the anniversary week. They could have given us 5 new 5* feeders if they wanted to.

4

Not being confrontational, just trying to gather all the facts: what is your source for this? Or are you (like me) just making a supposition based on some other theory or experience and if so, can you share said theory or experience?

5

I get what you’re saying and to a certain extent I agree. But, there’s no excusing the fact that they made a new PVE and they barely mentioned it. Even though the reaction has been mixed to it, they did do something different. They should promote their hard work, not bury it.

6

so, what you are saying is that in order to ask for changes or express our complains our last resort is to go straight to the big honchos?

Because that doesn’t sounds like a good plan, ask the Jonas brothers

7

Here is an old article (still relevant) about the challenges that other game developers face:

Read this and see how many boxes it ticks for MPQ community.

8

Which boxes does it tick exactly? By the way, just because this guy works in the industry doesn’t mean he is the last word on anything. He has a terrible attitude towards the people responsible for his paycheck.

Want people to “move on” when your game sucks? I wonder how long might that be a relevant business model. Constructive criticism is important if you want to improve. Being a pompous ass who calls out everyone for being delusional about anything they might think, quite frankly is pathetic. Learn to get out of your feelings a little bit when dealing with your customer base, it’s part of being a professional.

I’m surprised he didn’t get canned for that little outburst.

Nobody here is making statements about how they know better than the developers how to implement anything…people are expressing their disappointment as paying customers for what they are receiving. Some companies spend good money for that kind of information, because, well…it’s valuable if you care to use it.

You are on a roll today. Next find me an article about how Doctors don’t like to be sued or held accountable for malpractice because us stupid folk don’t have any understanding of the medicine.

9

The boxes are:

Forums and comment sections are full of dunning-kruger specialists who are just waiting for any reason to descend on actual developers.

See any thread where some dumbass comments how ‘easy’ it would be to, say, add multiplayer or change engines. Any dev who talks candidly about the difficulty of something like that just triggers a wave of people questioning their entire resumé."

I think the devs was being candid when they said there isn’t any obvious feeders. One of the obvious feederz is Rogue and Gambit, which they are aware, as you can see in the loading screen for cutest couple. Their reply to feeders triggered a certain reaction which this developer experienced:

There are still topics I can’t touch because I was candid once and it resulted in dumb headlines, misunderstandings, and harassment.
By a player:

I’ve seen what happens when devs are publicly candid. They get called shills, complainers and piled on by the hate brigade.

Click on that dev twitter to find out the discussion with other game developers. If this guy isn’t big enough for you. How about this developer from Overwatch:

And if you’ll allow me to speak openly for a moment – it’s scary. Overall, the community is awesome to us. But there are some pretty mean people out there. All of our developers are free to post on these forums. Very few of us actually do because it’s extremely intimidating and/or time consuming. It’s very easy to post the wrong thing and make a “promise” to the community that no one intended to make. Once we say we’re working on something, we’re not allowed to “take it back”. It’s set in stone.

Most great developers I know just love being head’s down making or playing games. The “public speaking/posting” part of the job is downright scary and intimidating. It often feels like there is no winning.

As a result, there are a small few of us who do most of the posting here. Two weeks ago, I was offsite all week without posting access (I cannot make forum posts from my phone for security reasons). The week after that, I came into the office 1 hour later than I normally do (I was feeling extremely fatigued and rather than waking up at 5:40am like I do most days, I woke up at 6:30am). The end result was that for 2 weeks I haven’t posted at my normal rate. I apologize that it’s been a quiet two weeks but that doesn’t mean that we – the OW team – haven’t been working just as hard as we always do and are not dedicated to making this game great.

Recent Apex Legends Saga:

I’ve been in the industry long enough to remember when players weren’t complete ass-hats to developers and it was pretty neat. I forged a bunch of long lasting relationships from back then. Would be awesome to get back there, and not engaging with toxic people or asking “how high” when a mob screams “jump” is hopefully a start.”

“So it’s fine for you all to call us liars, full of shit, and other personal attacks when we communicate an apology and update to the event but we’re “immature” when we call people out on it. Got it.”

There are more from other game developers echoing similar things. The difference is how they position it, whether they want to be politically correct or be blunt about it.

10

The rest of your post is just recycled information that I have already responded to, though ironically all these Devs are providing more communication than we receive…

Do you disagree then that Rogue feeding Gambit was a clear choice? That the candid answer was most likely not genuine because it is such an obvious choice? What about the fact that there are many other obvious choices? Better choices thematically than what has been used in the past even.

It’s also so flippant. “Nothing jumped out at us, so we just didn’t do it.” Is how it sounds. Very dismissive. Spin it how you will, it isn’t going to turn into cotton candy because it is bullshit not sugar.

11

Love this quote! Can’t wait to use it in my Monday morning staff update. Thank you @jp1!

12

@HoundofShadow , I think you’ve done so much twisting and contorting on behalf of the developers that you actually proved our point.

  1. You say that the developers are aware that there is an obvious feeder as it is on their loading screen (they also both link to anniversary as an event since BOTH were anniversary releases).

  2. Then you also say they were being honest about there not being an obvious feeder link, absolutely contradicting yourself.

So which is it?

13

And the fact that the event (LIT) is a 3 day event, not a 4 day event shows a lack of caring. In the past they would have corrected this. Now what? Are they going to blame Columbus Day weekend for the lack of communication/board maintenance/etc?

14

Do you mean… /weren’t/ being candid? What you wrote here directly contradicts your next sentence.

15

I’m befuddled by developer apologists. Everything in this world gets critiqued: Art, music, films, and games. If you put something out into the world and expect people to pay for it, you should be prepared for people to have a reaction. Living in the modern-day fishbowl is stressful for all of us: That doesn’t mean we shouldn’t be allowed to politely express an opinion because it might hurt the team’s feelings.

16

I used the wrong word because I was switching between tabs and I got things mixed up. That’s why there’s contradiction.

Let me restart again:

When they said that there isn’t any obvious feeder, they were either jesting or it’s an indirect way of saying there won’t be any feeder.

Note: I was not in the discord room when that happened, so I have no idea how the chat environment or atmosphere was like when this question was being asked. This will affect the interpretation of that particular sentence.

If anyone take that sentence about there being no obvious feeder at face value, I think you need to take a deep breath and meditate to calm your nerve.

17

Wow, you are really in their head. You know the intent behind their statement without even having been in the conversation?

Also, you make him sound even worse FYI by implying he was just being a smart ass, you are saying that it couldn’t have possibly been a lapse in judgement and the worst possible outcome is the only conclusion.

I’m having trouble understanding your intent with these posts. Serious question, is English a second language for you? I don’t want to assume either way.

18

You are confusing between opinions and facts. I’m stating an opinion based on whatever limited context was provided. The context that I had was that a user of this forum asked whether there will be a feeder and this was the answer that he got. I see this being mentioned in a number of threads. In my opinion, I think they were jesting.

I thought that this place is a discussion forum, and not an interrogation room to find out who is right or who is wrong. I’m also not here to explore all possibilities of how that sentence can be interpreted.

19

I can assure you having been in the chat that the dev was not “jesting”. It may have been an excuse etc but that was a serious answer.

20

Nice try. This is an official forum directly controlled by D3Go and they can not only release any statements they like which are pre-approved by any number of lawyers or PR departments but they even use disclaimers on the sneak peek threads. So, no, the information that could be provided is entirely within the control of both the publisher and developer of this game on this forum. If they choose to say nothing,: that is an official statement as much as any actual statement would be.We are not all down the pub having got Brigby drunk as he gigglingly leaks that 5* Paste Pot Pete is the next release and then he gets a text from Marvel legal with a cease and desist…