Beta wasn’t going to solve a problem it couldn’t identify and yeah it can be an emergency in the context of the game. If people are on the tipping point to leave and this is really bad they absolutely have to act fast to keep that from happening.
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Yup. They learnt from that Tell/Vela debacle. They reacted a tad too slowly. They lost enough players for their metrics to move firmly south.
Then they went overboard with their 2nd and 3rd nerf. The 3rd nerf was totally unnecessary. Most had already moved on with the 2nd nerf.
Perhaps players were still leaving but enough were leaving because of the nerfs. Not because they didn’t think the nerfs weren’t enough. Oh well
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Errr…, when SGG nerfed other heroes before C Krampus, there was no monetary compensation. They can’t give monetary compensation cos :
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They, as a developer, will find it difficult to issue refunds to the consumers. Everything goes through the Playstore, be it Apple or Google. For this to go through, SGG needs to write in with reasonable explanations and probably compensate Playstore for extra administrative work. It’s a nightmare yah.
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Assuming (1) was possible, SGG will need to refund owners of other nerfed heroes too. Like me for Tell/Vela. I spent money to pull them too. If I follow your logic, I am doubly entitled to a monetary refund since SGG nerfed BOTH ORIGINAL heroes to oblivion. Now it’s only Krampus’ costume that is nerfed. Not his Original who is now boosted with Costume boost.
This is akin to opening up a barrel of worms. No longer a can but a regular sized barrel at least.
What SGG should have done, like what other games do, is release compensation enough for :
- At least 1 free gem summon. Say 350 gems
- A few EHTs, say 3x, to soothe further, and at least allow player to plan a replacement
- Reset emblem (priceless)
- A taster portion of emblems, say 20-30 emblems per class
- Some ham n iron crates to help with re-emblemming
Cost of this compensation package : $16.00
• gems n EHT = $9.00
• emblems 200x = $6.00
• ham n iron = maybe $1.00
All in Singapore Dollars, about US$10.80
From a financial standpoint, the compensation package will sound terribly expensive multiplied by 1.25m accounts = US$13.5M
However the goodwill that SGG will receive back in return will be worth more than that. At least that package will help to stem some exits, helping to stabilise their metrics.
In my other games, Dev usually issues enough gems for 1 free summon. Sometimes enough for 2 free summons plus other hard to get rewards. To pacify spenders who pulled for a seriously OP hero, who was slightly nerfed post release. I have never encountered a nerf exercise that totally eviscerated 2 useful heroes at the same time, before Tell/Vela.
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I agree with your points.
“Full” compensation in regards to C Krampus would be very tricky to do in a fair way, because you don’t purchase the hero directly but rather purchase gems that give you a chance at him. For example if you purchsaed enough gems for a 10 pull chasing C Krampus but you got C Santa and the HOTM in the same 10-pull how much of those gems are attributable to C Krampus only? Should you return all other heroes that you pulled in your chase of C Krampus if there was some means to fully ‘refund’ C Krampus?
Some non-token but not overboard compensation would have been good for goodwill.
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Answering part 2 of your post.
The answer to that is also because their revenue metric went south.
Both December 2021 and January 2022 had the same US$18m revenue per month.
See for yourself. The average is about us$22m for 2021. Revenue needs to boost significantly for next 2-3 months to pull average revenue north to at least us$20m per month, at least that.
This is a business decision. SGG is a regular business. They have guidelines handed down to them by Zynga. They need to comply or explain why they can’t.
I am not saying that I agree. I am saying that I can understand why they did that.
I hope my account doesn’t get banned for this. Lol
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I agree
When i said compensation, i didnt mean financially. Its difficult to return us the money, but they can give us gems / summons / emblems as a token of apology.
But they gave us some pathetic flasks.
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I know what you mean. That was really sad.
At least for the first Tell/Vela nerf, they issued a hamper of emblems. Think it was 50 emblems per class? Can’t rightly remember now.
Affected players started baying for a reset emblem. What good are emblems without a reset emblem ?
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If they wanted to eliminate winter heroes dominance in the arena they would have gotten rid of the minions knowing Pengi thrives with them instead of nerfing ckrampus stats. So BS. They want more $$$ come December then nerf Pengi after. Same routine from greedy devs.
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The sequence of events indicates that this all happened to only balance your balance sheet. So please SGG stop gaslighting us here.
While everyone appreciates that you try to avoid another Velluria gate, the Christmas Family was much less of a problem.
Also, post-Release nerfs hard hitting the trust in your game, so if you have to… give a reasonable explanation, excuse and compensation BEFORE the outrage.
and changing the hero class is still not acceptable.
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It’s obvious that the data will show that treevil is absolutely crushing the meta at 3* (very fast) tourney level.
Before you nerf him a lil… maybe build a mechanic where the more treevils you use on defense lineup the more they are penalized in speed or defense instead for the tourney?
I know everyone will get irked by the multiple treevil defenses (it’s not even that imaginative); but before nerfing maybe figure out a different mechanic like duplicate usage penalty.
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You mean like how SG could not identify a problem in the beginning and still “solved” it ?Trying to do something in Beta about it would have been at least helpful from communication point of view.
Hmmm… So they prevent some people from leaving and make others leave 
?
Not to mention that your logic is flawed at best.
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They could have intervened before becoming an “emergency”. They have real time metrics access. It’s not like things changed over night, they changed gradually over December and January.
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The Christmas teams only affected the highest level of raid tier. There, already some of the people have those heroes and don’t want them nerfed or they don’t have them and can also re-roll.
Basically the ones affected are the ones that were in 2400-2600 cups and were fighting 2700+ cups.
I highly doubt that people were leaving the game because they were losing in front of some specific teams at 2700+ level. And if there were, I doubt their number was higher than those that would leave the game because of the nerfs.
In the end not even SG can know exactly why people left, unless people give their reason for leaving in a survey on deletion of the game. Not to mention that “leaving” the game, usually happens more gradually, people slow their play time, don’t play from longer periods of time and finally uninstall the game.
Anyway, claiming an “emergency” is laughable.
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Many thanks for that!
2 cents from my end, SG has a huge no of players in Russia. With sanctions in place it’s highly unlikely they will be able to recover the average revenue to 2021 numbers.
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You got a valid argument.
However,
Just like beta, SG simulations … actual game - play also provides lots of info / data about what is good / bad for the meta & overall game.
&
If I go by Feb-2022 balance update follow up communication, that is what SG has said = their monitoring of game play showed the OP aspects & found Krampus to be the king-pin …
so,
they re-balanced him !
Yeah I heard about them. Keep well yah.
Tough times ahead for everyone.
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i do think it would be way smothier if they just take their time to share something like this every balance.
Thanks
Yes. And this did not prevent in any way SG to discuss with players (especially Beta) about their findings and discuss the alternatives. This could have been organised over a week.
And especially for Buddy, Frosty and Rudolph about which they did not not think about, something could have been done instead of writing now that they are going to “monitor” their situation.
Anyway, this conversation has become kind of stale. There is a group that will continue to defend SG no matter what and another group that will criticize it no matter what and less room for clear argumented discussions and looking up for solutions together. Just like in real life with actual major issues…
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Sometimes, I wonder if the testers were given the right resources to really identify problems, well I am not in beta…but after reading the update statement…I was just full of questions…
- were beta testers given specific directives on what to look for in their testing?
- were they given adequate resources / equipped to test?
- knowing that they are all volunteers, were they given adequate time to do comprehensive test with feedback?
- were their feedbacks really treated as important to the game’s health?
Well, I just felt the same mistake is repeated not too long … Teluria…now C Krampus…and it doesn’t look like it’s not going to come up again… Yeah from the statement, SG hinted about simulator, have data and metric gathering systems, yet couldn’t detect some flaws prior to production? Isn’t something stll wrong with the system/ process?
When C-Krampus was nerfed, some starfall were buffed here and there why and on what basis?
My idea of beta testing is to give testers access to all heroes in the game ( including new ones that are pre production and critically need testing) , all pre maxed on one part,. Fully emblemed on second part and fully level- broken on the other part, Also they should have access to build any type of defense they want to attack, not necessarily looking for their mates to constitute such defense…this way they can all test various types of synergy within a considerable time!
As it is, it doesn’t take so long after release of some heroes that you will find some strong combinations on defenses from players and then many of them would be prevailently OP! How does that beat testing and simulation processes?
My guess with winter issue is, people spent a lot during that season and so many came away with winter heroes? What if the case is shifted to other events…would it call for another nerf of another identified hero?
Sorry SG, I would have liked your update statement if only you just did adjustment to C-Krampus alone and not buff some already strong starfall heroes!
And thank you for acknowledging your mistakes, but please exert more in-house efforts to avoid those mistakes, it destroys credibilities!
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Please keep in mind always, that beta testers can’t do anything. Our suggestions are just… suggestions.
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Dude, I just wanted to say you are a great poster. Your thoughts are spot on and you present them in a way that is perfectly understandable, even by those blinded by rage. Keep it up pal!!
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I like this idea BUT… I cringe thinking of the outrage of the people that maxed and limit broke 5 treevils. The idea of not having duplicate heroes on tournament defenses is very intriguing however.
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