Any Way To Bring Back The Positivity Players Used To Have?

I like this! And I would appreciate if the kills still counted towards my hero/raid chest, too.

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Agree with both. More information seems appropriate, especially on things that they’ve dangled forever but stay coy on the details. On the other hand, to their credit, this game has more information flow between devs and the player base than any I’ve personally played.

Things like this forum, where real dev staff can be summoned with an @, or beta players that are allowed to share info with the wider community, this blew my mind when I found the forum.

Shoot, the last similar game I played wouldn’t even announce the next event until 2-3 days before, refused to do their events on a regular schedule (which repeated a few styles, like E&P), never asked for player input, never asked for community beta testers, and literally the only way to get an answer to anything was through in-game support.

I walked into this place like it was wonderland, and am still slightly agog compared to what I accepted as normal before. More information flow would be better, for sure, but what we have is pretty great on it’s own, in my humble new-ish player opinion.

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I am playing for 4 months too absolutely free to play.

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I must admit I go through stages with the games. But I have a good alliance and we chat.

The own grip I have is it seems I get the same characters when I do pulls. For example the current maskarade. I think I have pulled 4 characters and had these 4 last time. I accept it is a lottery and open to change. But when I get the same characters, I think why bother.

Apart from that generally happy with the game.
Carpe

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To anyone wondering how these type of games are designed to operate and who of their customer base contribute the most money,… watch South Park “freemium isn’t free” episode. Won’t post direct link here but it is season 18 episode 6. Sums up the whole operation fairly succinctly. :joy::rofl::joy:

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Soory guys, i atached wrong pictures last time. Now i edited, but i atached one more here. This is what i achive in 4 months completly free to play, and i think is not bad. My strategy is, do not expect nothing good, enjoy what.when is happenneing. Ofc i did a lot of grind. Hope yo help to make some ideas.

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Just wanted to note that SG posted something about the Path the Valor to the effect of “we heard you and will make changes next POV.” I believe them and am happy to hear them.

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I agree

But i can also say that the dev+player communication in this game can keep what we have goin much longer than their competitors.

SG slogan = “Small team that does big things”

Well opening the door for player & developer communications is one of those big things. Huge actually, as without it we would have rode the 2017 struggle bus for ascension mats and other issues for much longer and a lot of heroes & new features would be worse off than they are now

For the longevity of the game, player retention, and to stay steps ahead of their competitors i think improving communication between devs and the playerbase is a key part.

Again i don’t expect them to respond to every tag or post. And i don’t expect every idea to be implemented.

But some kind of feedback more than “thanks! We’re looking into it!” or other auto replies would be nice especially on big issues.

Hate to bring it up but the most recent example is the nerf telluria thread. Does no one else shake their head when they read the title that says “dev response in post 14xx”…1400 posts to get 1 response. And it wasn’t even close to a legitimate response. It was an autoreply pacifier that was so meaningful to the discussion that the thread is still going 2500+ posts later since their response…

Hero academy…500 days since announced and we’ve had nothing to go on besides “we’re working on it, will be in beta soon” for months on end…

Alchemy lab, have we heard any feedback from them at all on that pile of crap? If so then guess i missed it somewhere

Notice how the high counts of raid tournament complaints dwindled down from having an active dedicated thread to just mere mentions in conversatiom about other topics…why? Cause devs flat out said “this is the way it is, we’re not doing further changes” so we moved on

Other issues we’re either still completely in the dark about or they’re still danglin the carrot by using the “looking into it”, “discussing it”, “soon” replies. Soon in my mind is by the end of the month and even that is giving a ton of leadway(pretty sure if i told someone I’d call them back soon, they wouldn’t expect me to wait 30 or more days before doing so…)

Hero academy. Ok still in production…but at the very least tell us if we’ve wasted years and a ton of gems on roster space to hold dupes or not

Alchemy lab…are they even thinking about fixing it?

Etc etc I’ll stop there before this goes into mysteryspin territory…

Point being:
sure maybe they don’t “owe” us any answers…but it would be pretty damn nice if they’d work with us anways

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I wholly agree that I want developers to be more transparent and up front about the state of the game and where it is going. Too often they communicate with us only reactively, and then often leave us hanging. Witness the Telluria thread. If we knew that they were actively looking at the situation and analyzing what needs to be done then a lot of the toxicity of the Telluria threads would be decreased. As is they tell us “we’ll keep this in mind when evaluating possible hero balancing in the future updates” which really means nothing. I would prefer more proactive communication from them.

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Honestly, would it be too much to ask for one of the devs too do a weekly thread on what they are working on and what the progress is? Maybe, some of this stuff is quite difficult to do and not as easy as we think… so ex … “joe working on “xxxx” project figures it’ll be x months to even test in Beta or “Mary” knocked up and she was working on HA so that’s 9 months away or “Ragnor” in rehab because he sold some shares for huge profit and doesn’t give a ■■■■- so Telly will be jacked up until ■■■■ gets rehabilitated as well

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Waiting for whiteout of flags …

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Lol and this week on EmpiresWeekly…

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…nothing has changed. Thanks for tuning in and be sure to check in next week for the latest from your Empires & Puzzles Team!

(It needed finishing)

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I still try to maintain a generally positive attitude. Mostly by keeping my expectations low.

But here are a few things that don’t exactly help my attitude towards the game:

  • Telling me that Atlantis Rises duration has been reduced
  • Telling me that I can no longer get Atlantis coins from chest loot
  • Telling me that you’re reducing the number of loot tickets
  • Telling me that you’re permanently removing old HotM from AR and putting them in an even smaller draw pool

I mean seriously, SG. I know what you’re trying to say. Enough skipping around the rose bushes, just come right out and say it bluntly to my face.

3zw38h

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Lol yea those things definitely didn’t help

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Agree fully!

There are 2 kinds of Customer Service (ok probably more but I’ll focus on 2):

  1. We’re here to listen to your complaints and make soothing sounds so that you go away until next time

  2. We’re genuinely interested in how to make interacting with us a positive experience, and in creating a quality product that is the best out there, so that you’ll hardly ever have complaints.

I know what kind of company I want to spend my money with. (And the second does exist… just very rarely).

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#2 would be nice

I still think complaints would be very common but would be easier to cope with if there was better communication

“I don’t like alchemy lab because of blah blah blah”

“Ok, well we understand it’s not ideal but when we drew up other possibilities and talked them over with the design team, the designers came across too many red flags and this is the version they felt was the best fit, we’re still reading feedback and looking at possible upgrades and fixes though” is a whole lot better than silence, locking a thread, or “we’re lookin into it, cya in 6 months”

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Personally, I think “improving” is the key word here. I see the issue more as an ineffective use of existing communication, rather than flatly needing to share more information.

This, I believe, has more potential to exacerbate the problem than alleviate it.

I’ve been in management & operations for 25 years, and one of the rules I follow is “you cannot manage by committee”. Input, feedback, suggestions: absolutely. But decision making, organizational growth, planning, forecasting, product development & expansion: no way. Democracy is a wonderful thing, and a business needs feedback from it’s customers, but enabling clients to assume they have some control over the direction of the business only sets up emotionally-driven conflicts of interest since, obviously, clients and businesses have very investments geared toward very different goals.

Applied here, of course this concept doesn’t cover all the bases. The Alchemy Lab would still be junk, Telluria would still be as strong as she is and hated for it. But expectations were allowed to run amok which imo only led to even harder disappointment when things turned out differently. The Hero Academy is a good example, since we wouldn’t know any better one way or the other if it was never dangled in front of us; then things only got progressively worse by the LACK of follow-up communication as players made assumptions about what’s coming and while popular suggestions wove their way into perceived possibilities. All of this animosity could have been managed better or avoided completely with a better use of communication. Not more, just better.

The beta brawls are the granddaddy example around here of inefficient communication by sharing too much information, and the real shame is that blame keeps getting hurled at the testers themselves. If I worked for SG, my #1 suggestion would be to close-off beta activity entirely. Keep players involved, keep everything within the beta program the same, but stop sharing beta information with the wider community. It’s a nice gesture but any appreciation for the practice is completely overshadowed by the frustration of unmet expectations. Teasers are good, previews of finished heroes are great, but a play-by-play of hero development is only inviting a lot more criticism than necessary. When I first found the forum I thought the idea was amazing, but I’ve since realized that it’s more of an open door to inviting your basic case of “customer dissatisfaction”. For sure, there would still be complaints about exceptionally strong or weak heroes, that should be expected, but every damn HOTM wouldn’t need to blow up into a pitchfork rebellion just because everyone knows how it evolved.

To be clear, I’m not advocating for the mushroom approach (ie, keep us in the dark and feed us sh!t). Communication flow is necessary and important. But I don’t believe simply sharing more information is the answer either. The quality, quantity, type, methods, and follow-through of communication would all benefit from a complete overhaul towards a more strategic use. The reputation of the game, the perceived “fairness” of the company & its product, as well as the satisfaction of players, are all suffering more than they should or need to. Of course there will always be some level of discontent, but the irregular and haphazard communication only amplifies the problem.

Absolutely, and this should happen more often. Ignoring issues to leave them flapping in the breeze does more harm than good to all facets of this relationship. Make a decision and make it stand. Explain yourself, apologize if you think you should, and finish the discussion. If there’s one thing that Nerf Telluria thread needs it’s a statement thanking players for the feedback, some summary of what they (devs) have taken from it, and an affirmation that they know what they’re doing and that with 6 months of new heroes planned with new applicable skills, sometimes there are growing pains as the new collection unfolds. After 2 months and 4000 posts there can’t possibly be any usefulness left and it’s basically just a rant thread at this point - which is fine, whatever, but the “poll” and intended feedback has made it’s point long ago, and devs should say so.

tl;dr - Yes there is a satisfaction problem here and players are part of the problem. We’ve been allowed to assume some form of responsibility towards the product, but that fault gets unevenly shared with the company. The problem is growing, and can/should be engaged with a strategic & proactive communications strategy, but it can started with players realizing their role in this relationship and adjusting their expectations accordingly.

(apologies to @Rigs and @Texas1970 , I’m probably speaking more to SG than to you, just using your quotes to illustrate a larger point.)

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I’m offended, let me get my flag brb

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I don’t think SG ever has a solid relationship with the player, their clientele, or they ever intend to have a relationship to such an extent. I simply say this based on how responsive they are to anything on this forum. They created a good game and the mechanism of the game works and benefit those who choose to play in certain ways, but that’s it and that’s always it.

The solution I suggest is simple: the devs themselves play the game just like the players’, so the players and they are consistently on the same page on many certain issues (otherwise we just don’t speak the same ‘language’).

1/ The devs themselves create an alliance with members of their own and be active just like any active alliances.

2/ The devs may spend some limited money on the game for summoning heroes and buy deals (to be reimbursed by SG).

3/ A couple of devs are assigned to be active on the forum and be responsive to any legitimate requests or inquiries.

I think, however, there need to be some real competitors in this kinda of game for SG to start genuinely care about their clientele. Otherwise, average players will just come and go and play and live the game at their mercy.

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