Development does take awhile. Sometimes seemingly small changes require a cascade of complex changes to the software, nobody has anticipated. It means small features - can take unexpectedly long time to implement.
In the end, there is exhaustion. The Business leadership says: “we invested enough in this feature already. That what it is - let us move forward”.
But what if the customers are not happy enough?
I’d like to praise SGG for the Tully/Vela nerf processes - it was much needed and it is being done carefully with a number of iterations. It is not clear how it would end - but even if I feel like Tully is being nefed a bit too much, I do trust a solid process to be reliable, ahead of my immediate impression. (Disclaimer: I own 2 x Tully, one is fully ascended).
It seems like the Hero academy is handled not as well, and here the Lean Startup methodology comes into hand:
The hero Academy is uber-anticipated (and needed) feature. 5* heroes are hard to acquire, so let players do something useful with duplicates, and be exposed to a larger variety of heroes during the game.
Instead of developing a functional beta (several weeks of development work?!), and then getting an initial (bad?) feedback from the community - I would strongly recommend SGG publish a Manifesto first. In a few hours of work to publish the PLAN of the hero academy - get community feedback and iterate over the plan for a while, before approaching beta development.
This will allow more feedback to be processed, more iterations, and lower exhaustion from the SGG development team / business management.
Even now, it is not too late. Please read user feedback and publish a proposal for discussion of how the Hero Academy can be improved.
SGG probably has the reserves for 3-5 development iterations around the academy in beta, or 20+ iterations - done on the forum.
It would be a waste not to use one of the more practical methodologies in Software Development - to make a better game.
@zephyr1 - if this post is liked, any chance you can hint the SGG team about this post?
(If it is ignored, so be it. I probably missed the point here)
If each hero is a Minimum Viable Product… of course we will see nerfs and buffs post release.
Since SGG limits communications for what they are up to, it causes a lot of speculation in this community… increasing friction. The most frustrated players (even if they are a minority) become the loudest and often times the most toxic in their interactions here.
Agile method is great in theory, but it’s a struggle in actual application to find great insights through all the noise and chaos of community feedback. That takes resources, talent and enough bandwidth allocated to strategic thinking ~ meaning it should be an ongoing program with clear annual cadence (VS reacting to minority community outrage by nerfing one or two heros.)
I support Lean and Agile… but for many people here who have no idea what it takes to develop, launch and maintain a platform or game… their feedback often focuses on the trees in spite of the forest and are biased by personal agendas and frustrations.
increasing transparency in big picture communications will help both community and devs. (Eg their brand facebook page is embarrassingly underused. It doesn’t offer interesting content, nor provide utility as a corporate communications platform to a wider audience.)
communicating “why” before changes launch would help both sides (eg new beta news is implying a nerf to titanium shields… but reasoning is available yet.)
investing further into data > insights process for feedback > improvements then into communications - can yield growing loyalty through consumer satisfaction
That being said… respect to SGG for making and maintaining a game like this while keeping to their goal of being small in size as a company.
The loudest and most toxic people on this forum doesn’t represent the majority of players.
We may not know it, but they may already be following lean principles. It’s just hard to tell… so these types of questions are coming up due to their limited comms bandwidth.
What they need to do is pivot from acting like a Purchase brand (outdated model) and engage the consumers more like a Usage Brand (what works best in digital economies):
