Yet another overlapping PVE event...

I believe the new dev said before that they wanna move everything 1 day earlier, so this overlap is probably for that adjustment...

Luckily, the developers read these forums and have followed these sorts of debates so far -- and said so! I hope that in the future they will see that players have different opinions, and won't act immediately when someone tells them "this is bad for all players."

@Scofie said:

@entrailbucket said:

@Scofie said:

@entrailbucket said:

@LuxAurae said:

@bluewolf said:
Putting aside whether it really matters or not to overlap PVEs, the key thing to consider is this:

This game is built and survives on habit formation. Encouraging us to log in and expect the same things at the same time to operate in the same way is crucial.

You log in, you do your thing, you check the offers (maybe) etc. The people who are here after all this time are mostly people who like routines and seek out that structure in some way. Some may shrug and adapt but others will feel frustrated and annoyed and therefore might change their habits around game engagement.

Your (dear fellow forumite) routine being different, being able to accommodate double or triple or quadruple PVEs does not invalidate anyone else's routine. The game threw out the routine of swapping for latests and started losing hundreds of thousands of dollars of revenue - PERMANENTLY, month after month, 1.5 years later - because whales decided, wisely, that spending the same amount of money wasn't worth it at all to them anymore without the ability to 550 the new character.

6s, so far, have at best (for one month) moved revenue up to a middling level prior to Dec 2024 so that's not solving any problem (yeah, I know. they don't bother to put offers up.).

There are extremely good reasons to move the events back a day but you're still disrupting patterns and habits that keep the game in business.

It may be that some rewards and offers are being tweaked upwards (the pass MIGHT be better than any standard one before now, I am not someone who has tracked that). But overall right now it seems like they're just changing things for purposes which benefit them, and disrupt many many players. And not really providing much benefit or compensation or acknowledgment (outside if you seek information about the game....outside the game).

The game is in a very risky spot right now, in my opinion, and minimizing disruption is the smartest move.

Casuals may not care at all and maybe everything goes ok, but the invested T100 players are probably a good 3000-5000 players. (SCL10 has 7 brackets where people at least somewhat try for T100, alone).

Thank you @bluewolf for this common sense and well-thought out post. I agree on this.

Routine is underestimated. People just want the game to work first and foremost.

Routine is actually severely overestimated. Who on here is underestimating routine?

Perhaps not underestimating it, but there is a tone to your posts that it doesn't matter. If it matters to someone in this game, it matters a lot. If it doesn't matter, it doesn't matter at all. That's why there are polar reactions to overlapping PvEs.

I don't know the number of people on each camp but it doesn't really make much of a difference. If it bothers you and erodes your enjoyment of the game, then it matters.

The number of people in each camp is literally the entire debate!

If OP shows up and says "cmon guys please stop running overlapping PvE, I hate it" then none of this thread happens at all. Why can't anybody just say "I don't like this" instead of "this is bad for most players, and bad for the game?" Express your own opinions and let others express theirs.

Instead one side is saying "everyone else agrees with us," with zero evidence to support that.

Yes, but nobody can possibly know the number in each camp. It is easy to assume that the customer segment that just plays DDQ and the occasional PvE doesn't care. It may, in fact, be that they're time poor and would love to play all the PvEs but can't. Having 2 to miss out on in a day is worse for them in terms of lagging behind and might be more frustrating. The assertion that 900 people don't care is therefore just a set of assumptions. Same as for example, "everyone in my line group is annoyed, therefore everyone is annoyed" (which I know nobody is actually saying!).

Anyone can argue your assumptions are more sound than anyone else's, but it's all fundamentally subjective.

Then we agree 100%. Nobody can say "this is what the majority of players want," because it's impossible to know that.

So what are we arguing about?

@Scofie said:

@entrailbucket said:

@Scofie said:

@entrailbucket said:

@Scofie said:

@entrailbucket said:

@LuxAurae said:

@bluewolf said:
Putting aside whether it really matters or not to overlap PVEs, the key thing to consider is this:

This game is built and survives on habit formation. Encouraging us to log in and expect the same things at the same time to operate in the same way is crucial.

You log in, you do your thing, you check the offers (maybe) etc. The people who are here after all this time are mostly people who like routines and seek out that structure in some way. Some may shrug and adapt but others will feel frustrated and annoyed and therefore might change their habits around game engagement.

Your (dear fellow forumite) routine being different, being able to accommodate double or triple or quadruple PVEs does not invalidate anyone else's routine. The game threw out the routine of swapping for latests and started losing hundreds of thousands of dollars of revenue - PERMANENTLY, month after month, 1.5 years later - because whales decided, wisely, that spending the same amount of money wasn't worth it at all to them anymore without the ability to 550 the new character.

6s, so far, have at best (for one month) moved revenue up to a middling level prior to Dec 2024 so that's not solving any problem (yeah, I know. they don't bother to put offers up.).

There are extremely good reasons to move the events back a day but you're still disrupting patterns and habits that keep the game in business.

It may be that some rewards and offers are being tweaked upwards (the pass MIGHT be better than any standard one before now, I am not someone who has tracked that). But overall right now it seems like they're just changing things for purposes which benefit them, and disrupt many many players. And not really providing much benefit or compensation or acknowledgment (outside if you seek information about the game....outside the game).

The game is in a very risky spot right now, in my opinion, and minimizing disruption is the smartest move.

Casuals may not care at all and maybe everything goes ok, but the invested T100 players are probably a good 3000-5000 players. (SCL10 has 7 brackets where people at least somewhat try for T100, alone).

Thank you @bluewolf for this common sense and well-thought out post. I agree on this.

Routine is underestimated. People just want the game to work first and foremost.

Routine is actually severely overestimated. Who on here is underestimating routine?

Perhaps not underestimating it, but there is a tone to your posts that it doesn't matter. If it matters to someone in this game, it matters a lot. If it doesn't matter, it doesn't matter at all. That's why there are polar reactions to overlapping PvEs.

I don't know the number of people on each camp but it doesn't really make much of a difference. If it bothers you and erodes your enjoyment of the game, then it matters.

The number of people in each camp is literally the entire debate!

If OP shows up and says "cmon guys please stop running overlapping PvE, I hate it" then none of this thread happens at all. Why can't anybody just say "I don't like this" instead of "this is bad for most players, and bad for the game?" Express your own opinions and let others express theirs.

Instead one side is saying "everyone else agrees with us," with zero evidence to support that.

Yes, but nobody can possibly know the number in each camp. It is easy to assume that the customer segment that just plays DDQ and the occasional PvE doesn't care. It may, in fact, be that they're time poor and would love to play all the PvEs but can't. Having 2 to miss out on in a day is worse for them in terms of lagging behind and might be more frustrating. The assertion that 900 people don't care is therefore just a set of assumptions. Same as for example, "everyone in my line group is annoyed, therefore everyone is annoyed" (which I know nobody is actually saying!).

Anyone can argue your assumptions are more sound than anyone else's, but it's all fundamentally subjective.

Then we agree 100%. Nobody can say "this is what the majority of players want," because it's impossible to know that.

So what are we arguing about?

I didn't think we were... 🤣.

I'm just saying it's an entirely fair assumption to make that if the hardcore T100 players all think it's bad, that might be 70% of the play time of the game because the other 90% of players don't play much. They might claim to be the majority. You might use a different metric. That's all fine and the debate has been about which view is representative of the whole player base. Just as one cannot say "most players hate it" one cannot say "most players don't hate it".

That's what I've been saying this whole time!

I don't like this.

@Bullroarer said:

@entrailbucket said:

The number of people in each camp is literally the entire debate!

If OP shows up and says "cmon guys please stop running overlapping PvE, I hate it" then none of this thread happens at all. Why can't anybody just say "I don't like this" instead of "this is bad for most players, and bad for the game?" Express your own opinions and let others express theirs.

Instead one side is saying "everyone else agrees with us," with zero evidence to support that.

On more than one occasion I have said that this change or that change has been bad for most players, and/or bad the game.

Every single time I've done that there has been someone who has denied it and tried to should me down.

I'll give you one guess who that person has been.

PS, if you or anybody else believes that it's only the T100 alliance players who care about this then that's still 2,000 players, and I bet that, on average, those 2,000 players spend far, far more on this game than non-T100 alliance players.

This is an interesting concept because I would imagine a large amount of those Top 100 players don't need to spend because of accumulated resources. It is actually far more statistically likely that players trying to advance are spenders. But I don't know for sure.

We of course have no data though so all of this is just blowing in the wind.

I myself tend not to finish Top 100 on PvE am a 10+ year vet but have already spent this month and last.

@Bullroarer said:

@entrailbucket said:

Justify "this game is built on routine" with evidence. You can't. It is for you, and that's great. It's not for lots of others.

Every event runs to a schedule.

Things appear at set times of the day.

Someone who is on this forum as much as you are can't be unaware that when things don't happen at the times that people expect them to there is a reaction.

@entrailbucket said:

Hang on, though, because that second part is actually interesting. I was told that all players who'd ever participated in buyclubs were boycotting all spending, because they had a widdle tantrum when their free swapsies got taken away by those mean ol devs.

Is that not true? Did you guys just stop spending in buyclubs? If that's the case that is one of the funniest things I've ever heard! Do you guys not know what "boycott" means? Are you still curious about what they haven't put swaps back when you've all just been spending money anyway?

Pot, kettle, black.

It's funny: when I make reasonable observations about player behaviours and reactions that I've seen on four different platforms (here, Discord, Reddit, LINE) you're quick to dismiss them, question their accuracy, etc.

Yet here you are making a black and white statement — that a certain group of players is buying nothing at all — even though you have no proof of it, and I'm not allowed to question it.

Talk about hypocrisy.

---

I'm not going to answer anything you just asked for several reasons, first because I was only an occasional participant in the main buy club, and second because you're now being very silly.

I was willing to engage with you while you were being a deliberate contrarian. I'm not willing to engage with you if you're going to be a deliberate troll.

---

You may mock buy clubs, you may mock players who spend more than you're willing to spend on a game, etc but even you must understand that it's the players who spend money that make the game possible.

If the game is very profitable its future is secure.

If the game isn't as profitable, or if it's losing money, then its future isn't so secure.

So the more money players spend on the game, the better it is for everybody who plays the game.

You're obviously smart enough to know all that.

For someone as invested in the game as you are — 8,211 forum posts to my 78 forum posts — you can't even pretend that you don't care about this game and its future health.

---

Kindness is free.

I wholeheartedly recommend it.

---

Feel free to have the final word, as you usually do.

Unless you revert back to being civil, I doubt that I'll be responding, so thanks for your kind words, yet again.

I'm really sorry that you think I'm not being civil. I don't understand why you think that.

The proof that a group was boycotting is that those players said they were boycotting, until CS swaps were put back. There was a big manifesto and everything. That's not trolling or making things up. That happened.

I guarantee you that I've spent several times what you've spent over the years. I've been spending quite a bit more since the boycott was announced, because I'm happy that they took the swaps away and wanted to get that point across. Spending is indeed important because without it, the game dies, which is why I've always spent significantly.

I mock buyclubs because they subvert the purpose of alliance CP. Buyclubs are selfish. Alliance CP was meant to help your team. When I spend (and again, I have spent significantly more than you both in the past and currently) I buy in my alliance, because I want my alliancemates to get the CP. I get less, and that's fine with me. I have zero interest in "fairness," and even less interest in maximizing my own resources at the expense of my teammates.

Kindness is indeed free. I have been kind, to you and to other players. Perhaps you could take your own advice?

@Scofie said:
OK, I think we've gone enough round this particular buoy. If I may summarise:

The game works around timers, but some players don't play that way.

Nobody knows how many people play in any sort of way or what they like and as such cannot be produced as a statistically verified venn diagram.

The game is built around rewards and some people want to earn more, others want to earn those that are expected through historic play probably because of routine.

There are different amounts spent by different players. Nobody knows who or how much.

Some people like buy clubs. Others do not.

Everybody agrees being kind is a good thing. Nobody thinks the people on the other side of the argument is being kind. The only person skirting with being unreasonable in my view is @entrailbucket with his "widdle tantrum" post which had an unnecessarily snarky tone.

Did I miss anything?

Please keep future posts on topic and preferably building on the points and not repeating them.

I dunno why I am asking this because I agree let's let it go but...where did anybody go off topic? I get you want to shut this down but I can't agree that any posts have been array? This is important - we should trust our moderation is fair and consistent and I think you do an awesome job but we can all see which side you are on here and I feel your post had as much of a "snarky tone' as EB.

If this costs me a ban or whatever so be it but I can't see anywhere that people have gone off topic or are being out of order.