Adding insult to injury, back-to-back brutal events-- how to restore player goodwill
Hosette
Posts: 12 ✭✭
Yesterday's make-up community day was a brutal slog. It seemed to take a minimum of six hours of play, and it depleted many people's spell casts, spell energy, and potions-- especially tonics for trace detection and exstimulo potions. This came on the heels of an arduous Brilliant event, after which we were told that future events would be updated. Players provided extensive feedback on this, both in this forum, on Reddit, and I'm sure in other places where fine Wizards Unite discussions take place.
I started today's community day with some degree of optimism that y'all would have learned from yesterday. It's not too hard to forgive one miscalculation (though whoever is doing simulations of these events needs to update their models), but the October community day seems to be as grueling as yesterday's. Actually it's even more grueling because most people have probably depleted their supplies of potions and spell energy. We also probably don't have trace charms left because they were critical to completing yesterday's event. This is disrespectful to your player base.
It may be possible for you to restore some of the player goodwill. I would recommend the following:
- Award full completion rewards to anyone who got through at least half of the steps for each community day.
- Gift everyone who hit that bar enough gear to replenish their supplies. An exstimulo crate plus half a dozen tonics for trace detection would not completely repair the inventory damage would go a long way toward restoring goodwill.
- Apologize profusely for the miscalculations and tell us sincerely that you are taking steps to ensure that this does not happen again.
I beg you to also do a thorough internal post-mortem on these events to understand where the internal failures were and to build processes to prevent them from happening again. I'm assuming you already have an internal simulator to understand the time and gear requirements for events, but if you don't that would be an excellent intern project.
Comments
Oh yes. The task to use seven exstimulo potions in wizarding challenges after we used them all up yesterday? That's just twisting the knife. I know it was decided beforehand but it could easily have been replaced with some other task after seeing yesterday's results.
Yep, two days, two events unfinished, and not for lack of trying and playing. I am getting zero event spawns wherever I go, and I've been playing pretty solidly both days. Trace Tonics are only giving one or two event spawns. I am very disappointed.
Absolutely impossible for those of us who have to work weekends.
Saturday's, I couldn't even come CLOSE to completing because of that.
Today's (Sunday), I won't be able to complete due to lack of pops.
I exhausted all my TTDs and they were pretty much useless anyway because almost everything that popped wasn't event related. So...
Beer, laundry, dinner, and a game of Life is Strange.
Agreed, I know its only a game which shouldn't affect our daily lives but if you wanted to get this, it was interfering in a big way! The tasks on both days to return specific numbers of traces was unachievable for a Community day without having your face glued permanently to your phone screen, maybe over a weekend for each event this could have worked.
I missed out completing both days, depleted my stock of potions (I don't actually know how mant TTDS I had to use) and then to use 7 exstimulo potions in wizarding challenges alone? I had to use those on the traces too and still couldn't complete!
I have thoroughly enjoyed this game until recently, it just feels like it's constant events and has become hard work.
It’s not fun anymore. They just seem too greedy with their thinly veiled manipulations to get you to spend gold for keys, potions, etc. I loved this game for a long time, but I don’t even try to finish the events anymore. It’s just become so unsatisfying.
Well said Hosette!
I agree completely
I am with everyone on this. I do love the game, but I feel like the requirements are becoming unreasonable for people who have other commitments.
Nasty, grasping and going to have a short game life, Niantic, if you run games on consecutive days which blast through potions and Spell energy.
Has Niantic responded to complaints yet? Surely they have heard the outpouring of criticism.
It is tragically sad to me that there has been ZERO INPUT from Niantic in even trying to address the 100’s of players complaints. Which is one of two things - one, the idea of trying to address these concerns is too daunting and I feel for Lola as she is 💯 stuck between a rock and a hard place or two - they just don’t care. I truly hope it isn’t number two.
@ClairabusGryff I do too but after fragmentgate and the trace charm fiasco it seems pretty clear they don't care about the players complaints, and even less that the team here is getting all the abuse for what they've done. It's sad and infuriating
I think everyone knows Niantic doesn't pay attention to what players want, except of course those who can afford to spend 6 hours a day on the game and want it to be harder.
You want to get heard? Boot up the Play Store or the Apple equivalent, give HPWU a 1 star rating, and include the comment that the game is beautiful and occasionally fun, but the demand that players spend 6 hours a day to succeed leeches all the fun out.
Low scores in the Play Store will cause fewer people to want to play. Just might get Niantic's attention.
Niantic, let me again give you a clue. You want to make the game more challenging for the hard core players, that's fine. But don't penalize those who can't play at that level. How? Quests which have no time limit. Quests which can be started at will and completed when the player gets around to it. That way the guys who want more can do quest after quest, racking up all the books they want. Make the quests VERY HARD - as long as there is no time limit for completion, no one will feel that they are denied the DADA and other important resources just because they have a daytime job and families who need to spend time with them.
For example, find a hard core player and see just how long it takes him to complete one of your recent task sets. 12 hours total? More? Whatever. Make the task as hard as you want, but don't set a cut off time. For example a 100 hour task might take the hard core player a week, whereas the casual player might take several months to complete it. As long as both CAN complete it; as long as no one is CHEATED out of the chance to get the high level resources, people will tend to be happier. You COULD make all parties happier, by just not penalizing those who don't play as much as you'd like them to, and you'd still make the hard core players happy.
@BionicManster Your idea has some merit, I just fear that more casual players will get bored with not being able to complete the task for so long. On the other hand, I kind feel aimless in the game during the days when there are no brilliant events or game days or weekend challenges. So who who knows.
I don't necessarily think Niantic is doing a conspiracy to anger players. But I also did not complete the last two back to back community days. The traces I needed just weren't showing up. Frustratingly, other traces in the two families WERE showing up. But not the ones on the Community Day registries. So I figured something was tweaked differently. These were the first events I haven't finished.
@VoiceMaster I expect you are right, that several months is too long. But the point I'm trying to make with Niantic is that no one should be able to tell someone else they are playing to little, or too much. Quests without a time limit could fix this, allowing everyone to play the amount they want to play.
I really think they should be complex. First, you should have to find some very rare herb, then use that to make a potion or cast a spell which starts the quest. Then you have the usual list of things to do. But the fun part is, if you are bored (like you said above) you can start a quest. And if family or work means you can't play as much today as you might like, at least the quest will be waiting for you to have more time.
I think that people might like this, and thus might find a way to spend more time in the game, which is something Niantic should also like.
@BionicManster Sounds totally intriguing.