Other About the rift battle and the catalyst issues

[Pepperlunatic]

As we can all see, there has been overwhelming negative reactions to catalyst and you developers would probably be in real shock. From the moment I saw what catalyst truly was, I knew it would be a PR disaster for sure. The reason is pretty simple: rift battle is still unpopular due to unfair match ups and stress-inducing design. By adding this ridiculous idea of "buy gacha to get modifiers", which is a very grindy mechanism, you guys just made the game mode for worse than it could have been. Not only you guys made it for a new players to be more difficult to establish an optimal base, you guys also set the diamond tier bar so high that only the top players can reliably get diamond key which discourages new players and thus losing your potential customers. Basically, I would rate rift battle as "Rastakan's Rumble" considering how Rastakan's Rubmle expansion in Hearthstone was so bad that many players and streamers left the game to play autochess and league of legends.

Okay enough with harsh words and lets get to the important part of this: problems and solutions
Right now the current problems that I think SGM is facing are this: stupid matchmaking, not enough diamond keys for everyone below diamond tier, catalyst, and rift battle itself.

Not enough diamond keys are pretty simple: Just make a prize fight or a weekly event that gives diamond key. Considering how difficult it is to change rift battle, it would be a piece of cake for you guys to just simply make something that allows players who hates rift battle to get diamond keys consistently. This way, not only the new players have opportunities to grow their natural diamonds but also players will consider this act as noble and forgive you guys a bit.

Stupid matchmaking and rift battle in general is very difficult to deal with because the solutions that everyone has thought of as of right now aren't all that perfect. In my opinion, it would be best to just either leave the rift battle as it was while reverting the rating system changes and deal with this mode when you guys found better plans for it.

Now here is the hot topic: catalyst. The part about customizing your modifier on each room is cool stuff but making them as collectible that you have to get using gacha is just a PR suicide move. Also, I don't really think it these catalyst modifiers will be balanced at all and will cause even more stagnation in gameplay and have potential to cause even more players to get disappointed and leave. For now, you guys need to scrap this catalyst immediately and apologize for this mess so that players can still have faith in you the developers and focus on the fun part of the upcoming update like Robo fortune.

I am asking you guys to do this NOT for it is morally right or something. I am asking you guys to do this so that you guys can quickly extinguish the hate flame and show the players that you guys are player-friendly developers. It has been two or three days since the announcement and it might be a bit late but it is way better to do something right late than do nothing. So please Hidden Variable devs... .... deal with this mess ASAP and use this opportunity to show us that you guys listens to our constructive criticism and are great developers as we expected before this mess happened.

 

[Dusty00]

I respect your courage to speak up about the state of this game. Which ever direction the devs decide to move forward, it’s detrimental that the game goes through a phase of reorganization of existing content rather than releasing new stuff. It would be a very stupid business decision to hope that new features would attract AND retain players when broken existing content drives players away. Then again, the reality is probably that the game is being maintained by investors rather than actual paying customers, so what do they care about what we think. New ideas and game mode can fool investors into pouring money into development whereas fixing a broken mode won’t. Keeping players logged in the game for 40hrs a week is data they can use to fool investors that we love the game so much so they need to invest more money. Why would they make a Finish rift function or reduce the overall play time if that will hurt their portential investments? Some of these game designs and decisions don’t make any sense to us players, but what power do free-to-play users or even occasional paying customers have on the future of this game?

 

[Pepperlunatic]

I respect your courage to speak up about the state of this game. Which ever direction the devs decide to move forward, it’s detrimental that the game goes through a phase of reorganization of existing content rather than releasing new stuff. It would be a very stupid business decision to hope that new features would attract AND retain players when broken existing content drives players away. Then again, the reality is probably that the game is being maintained by investors rather than actual paying customers, so what do they care about what we think. New ideas and game mode can fool investors into pouring money into development whereas fixing a broken mode won’t. Keeping players logged in the game for 40hrs a week is data they can use to fool investors that we love the game so much so they need to invest more money. Why would they make a Finish rift function or reduce the overall play time if that will hurt their portential investments? Some of these game designs and decisions don’t make any sense to us players, but what power do free-to-play users or even occasional paying customers have on the future of this game?

Sad but I agree with what you said and I am very worried about their short-sighted viewpoint. Sure they may have idiot investors but it is not like they have other good cash cows like how EA has all those sports games and Bilzzard has WoW. If they lose the good reputation they had, then there will be loss of users and more negative reviews on app stores. Sure, there will not be an immediate impact yet, but not solving this problem by at least addressing that they did something wrong and they will fix it, will definitely hurt them slowly and bring no significant growth which can make the investors unsatisfied later. Basically, this whole thing can slowly drain their precious players who serves as free advertisement and eventually the investors. Also, do not forget that some unsatisfied players can be very active at publicly criticzing this game and review bomb to cause further trouble. (So yes f2p players do actually have power, its just not as visible as we think)
I personally don't think completely fixing the rift battle is the priority that they should have. What they should do at least is to delay catalyst and release official apology to buy back trust of the moderate players who, in return, will continue to advertise this game for free. All that I expect them to do is just an official address of this issues to control the damage done and keep loyal fans on their side for further advertisement use. It is a very simple and easy way of maintaining a decent reputation that can benefit them in long term.

 

[vucaar]

It's a shame but it's the reality, like Jaz00 said, so I can't say anything more about it.
You have all my respect buddy, to express something I wanted to say but I didn't have the support and courage to say it. I guess we, as a free-to-play users (that I have paid, just as a little thank you, but only one time) have a power, like other people do in other games, so I have stayed disappointed from how we, as a community, didn't organize to request for a better product or to search chances to all the community and not to a specific group or players, but if there's a moment to react, I guess that time is now. I really want people here can watch your post and beyond to agree or not, to express their thoughts and opinions about the topic.