Defensive equipment is lacking

You cycle between three types of items with Limited Quantity equipment. Attack heavy, balanced, and defense heavy. Attack heavy and balanced items have been great. the last three or four sets. No complaints.

But the last two sets of defense heavy equipment have had terrible stats. Where Attack heavy items have 330 or higher Attack, for some reason, the defensive items are far closer to balanced, with less than 300 (269 in the recently released Pulverizer set) Defense. it wasn't always this way. I have an Apex vehicle from way back when I started with over 330 Def before upgrades.

Is this a new permanent scale? Or just an oversight? Three weeks ago with the previous Def set, the items held on unsold forever. These are going to sell just as poorly. For the well-equipped player, they are undesirable, since spending 30 UN to go from 200 to 269 is an inefficient use of UN. For forward looking players, they are poor choices. They are just another Balanced set. Balanced is fine for personal gear and starting players that aren't playing long term, but the long view player wants 320+ Def for long term viability, and doesn't care a whit about the Attack (which will ideally be 320+ from Attack sets). 219 attack can be had free from weekend calendars, so you don't buy for that: you get it without UN.

Can you please step it up with the Def gear?

 

Thanks Kreistor, I agree that we can definitely mix up our UN items a bit better stats wise. I know that we've been trying to make sets have two Att/Def biased items and one balanced in a few future offerings, but I'll pass your comments on to our designer.

 

This is a good post!

 

i find the same problem on vc and not just with the defensive items, attack as well. i wont upgrade any of my limiteds on attack or defense unless im getting at least 40 points out of it and since the last time i upgraded i believe the highest number was 378...defense if memory serves me and theres hasnt been anything even close to that for a long time...i can understand mixing things up a bit but i think the time has come to move on and get the numbers rising again

 

pc the same way junk and has been fer a while now ...

 

Okay, Kano appears to be unclear on the concept. The next set of Lim Quantity just appeared on FB. I almost barfed when I saw the stats posted to our chat.

Okay, Mitch, if you did not watch the AG/Kong Lim Quantity sales, this is what happened over the last 9 days since I posted this.

You began with 360 of the set I just complained about. After 7 days, less than 30 of each had sold. Exactly as I predicted. Worse than I predicted, actually. This may be because the Limited Time sales had a 120/300 set up, which seriously out performs, but is still substandard compared to recent high Att equipment. Some might have gone for those ensuring no Lim Quan sold, but we can't see Lim Time sales figures. The system halved the LQ total available a couple times, but there are still 70 of each hanging there not selling. At first week rates, they'll be eating a hole in your sales for two more weeks.

Put on your marketing hat. There are five general types of customers in this game.

1) New players

These will buy anything. They do not know what is good yet. (In other words, the 30 that sold went to people that have nothing, so anything is good to them.)

2) Offensive players

These players direct SP towards Attack, and want high Att equipment to improve the capacity to win fights. They ignore Def on equipment. Consequently, Attack-heavy equipment with low Attack will not sell to them.

3) Defensive players

These players direct SP towards Defense, and want high Def equipment, which inspires players to stop attacking them. They ignore Att on equipment. Consequently, Defense-heavy equipment with low Defense will not sell to them.

4) Optimizers

Optimizers can be of either type 2 or 3, or even of a balanced SP distribution; however, long term, they are looking to maximize combat capability and waste as little Un as possible. These players will want the high Att gear when attacking and high Def gear when defending. Because of this, they look for 2 sets of gear for each squad member. On the high Attack set, def is irrelevant, because when defending a high Def item will take its place. And vice versa. These players do want a little balanced gear, since for personal use (ie. vs bosses), a balanced set is fine, but this is in much lower volume. A PvP set takes far more pieces than a Boss set (4 for bosses, 4x(squad+1) for PvP). Consequently, these players will buy some of any sets that have High Attack or High Defense, but like everyone else, they ignore the secondary stats.

5) Balanced Equipment

Some players may begin with intent to be short term players, so they may choose to buy balanced equipment. They only need one set, which they can complete much sooner. Long term players won't do this, since it is less efficient to then replace Balanced gear with type 4's target gear, since you have essentially in the long run bought three sets, instead of Type 4's two sets. Type 4's two sets will displace all of the balanced equipment, making the balanced squad set wasted UN.

In short, when Pulverizer LMG at 209/269 sells the worst of any weapon I have seen since I started 194 days ago, an Icicle Grenade 209/272 Isn't going to sell any better. Players want the 320+ stuff, be it Att or Def.

PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE! There is ENORMOUS demand for 135/345 weapons and vehicles. (A high Def gear popped with a high Att weapon and vehicle recently.) We haven't seen any with even close to these stats in MONTHS. Take your item designer out into the alley and have him SHOT. (Not the artist, unless it's the same guy, in which case shoot him in the left side of the brain -- the right side's the artsy side.) Not only did he ignore this feedback after you said you passed it on, but he gave a repeat of exactly what we demanded we did not want, and what even cursory examination of the AG/Kong LQ market demonstrated no one wants. Stop saying you're paying attention and actually PAY ATTENTION. Seriously, this egregious error is completely embarrassing for your company. And now are we going to have to wait 2 weeks after the crud Pulverizer set finally dies out for the crud Icicle set to die out for an actually desirable set to appear? Or can we walk up to the boss, shove his face in this thread, show him the sales figures on Pulverizers, and say, "Let's break with being complete idiots by sticking to a failed process on LQ set replacement, re-do the stats on the next set after Icicles to what people are actually asking for, throw them up right now and dump Icicles entirely, and not put them through the pain of waiting?" Alternatively, break out some of the previously sold items (Apex vehicle anyway, I don't have a high def weapon to recommend) and slam them back up as a stop-gap?

One other thing: if your designers are really dumb enough to use a random number generator to pick stats (which is the only reasonable explanation for this stupidity), then remember this:

If anything is statistically possible, then it will eventually happen. Trusting to luck only ensures failure.

 

Lol, the next limited quantity its almost the same type again, you can relax Kreistor...
When they want to sell any of them, they will pay attention to their stats. I would liked to buy the vehicle, but I never buy any semi-balanced equipment either.

Ice Cleats 209 272
Icicle Grenade 209 272
Ice Cream Truck 220 285

previous set:
Heavy Helm 269 209
Pulverizer LMG 209 269
Zombie Pulverizer 219 283

 

Thanks for the feedback, we appreciate the effort you all have put into composing your thoughts around item stats. This is duly noted and we will better evaluate this moving forward.

 

We're gamers, Smack. We've heard all that before from dozens of your predecessors in dozens of games. After just posting in News that you're not corporate like your competitors, that statement is pure, raw, marketing spew, straight from the corporate dustbin. We've heard it before, and generally interpret it as "We're ignoring you again." Been there, done that, smoked the postcard. (Desperate times.)

Please post the result of the five minute meeting you need to have in order to get this resolved. It may take longer to fix, but tell us the resolution decision, ASAP, please.

1) Are we going to be forced to watch the Pulverizer set rot unsold?
2) Are we going to have to suffer more weeks with the Icicle set?
3) If both are yes, is someone assigned to watch Sales of both?
4) What are the stats of the next set?
5) Can we have a fixed date for the wasted Icicle set to be deleted and replaced by items with actual demand?
6) Can we get the algorithm for determining set stats corrected to tighten the range of Att and Def focused gear toward the high demand extremes, and eliminate the clearly undesirable tweener sets? (Retain the truly balanced sets, of course. Demand is obviously there for it.)

 

I can definitely tell you're a gamer. Smack meant no offence by his comment and we've already adjusted stats for some upcoming Limited items and will be making a better effort to release sets with more variety than we have had in recent weeks. He was merely acknowledging that he had seen your post and would be doing something about it, unfortunately that type of response has been ruined by other companies as you said. You've raised your concerns and we've said we're going to address them shortly. I apologize if there's a disconnect between the time-frame on these changes that you want and one we're realistically able to provide.

 

WOW is all I can say, I know Smack and took him at his word in his post.

 

What word? the market buzz ones? I still don't have answers to my listed questions, just like the corporate monsters that rule games elsewhere. "We're smarter than you, so we're going to do what we want without consulting the player base, and you'll like it, we promise." Like that has ever gone well, anywhere. That sort of response only proves Kano does not study history, and is doomed to make the same failures other companies already suffered. Smart people learn from other people's mistakes.

Should I trust them? I did that once. Up there, at the top. Didn't work, did it? Fool me once, shame on you: fool me twice, shame on me.

So, Pulverizers have halved twice since my last post, and not been deleted. By this standard, Icicles are going to come in, rot in LQ items for another 10-14 days, meaning this issue will remain unresolved and grinding on my patience for up to three more weeks, before I know if they really understood the issue. Trust them? Not even in the slightest. Not one issue I raised has been addressed, except with rhetoric. When Icicles finally appear on AG/Kong I will have my answer, and justification for this thread and my attitude of distrust.

If it looks like a duck, and quacks like a duck, it's a duck. If it acts like a corporation, and talks like a corporation, it's a corporation. You actually have to act differently, to prove you are not. I've been dealing with ignorant game designers in MMO's since Everquest in 1999. They all act like this, until someone slaps them upside the head the way I am now.

Would you like the most egregious failure? Learn a little lesson from someone that has done this all before?

1999, EQ releases. My class -- Shaman. Initially a design mistake made them solo players where no one was supposed to be, so they drastically changed our spells, which grated on the player base. many weren't happy with the designers for that, so that set the attitude low when the next issue arose.

At L30, the Shaman gained the Alchemy skill, which he could train. The community team began getting messages from Shamans after they started reaching L30. "Alchemy is broken, fix it." Verant investigated, "Working as intended." Over and over, like a broken record. They even posted something along the lines of "Stop bothering us about this." The issue was aggravated by the existence of two shamans that could do Alchemy, which might have shown in their logs proving it was operating and just not interesting enough to do. But thousands of shamans couldn't make a single potion, which was the point of the feedback.

Another class had an even more minor issue, and crashed a server to get attention. They got it, and some changes. Shamans began talking about doing the same, even though warnings went out that this could lead to suspensions. Finally, as teh Shaman that literally wrote the book on how to be a Shaman, I begged the entire Shaman community to hold off, and I used my backdoor. I had helped and spoken to the Spell designer (note, not the skill designer), so I decided to call in a marker.

"You know me. I'm a L42 Shaman and pretty sharp guy. I've provided inspiration for the solution to at least one of your problems. I need your help. The Shaman class is not getting through to the Skill designer. Yes, this is about Alchemy not working, which isn't your thing, but you're my last resort.

I have trained all my spell skills to over 100. Since I gained one at L10 and another at L15, obviously I know how to train a new skill. But my Alchemy is 0. It won't train. There is a piece of code that sets a new skill's level equal to character level when you first train it. I can't buy skill points past 25 for all the other skills. The system is trying to set my skill to 30, and being rejected because it's higher than 25. It will not train. That's why it's "broken".

"There are two shamans that can do Alchemy. I spoke to one. His account was hacked when he was L33. He was handed a new account with a pre-made L33 Shaman, with a pre-trained skill at 33." I then went on to describe how to prove that the team was not properly testing the real world scenario of leveling from 29 to 30, and training the new skill, but instead creating a L30 Shaman and testing only the recipes.

I don't know if my words helped. I do know that the next day, we had an update, the ability to train Alchemy at any character level, an apology to all Shamans, and unique new items for our class that used a slot for stats that no other class received. They were so embarrassed, they paid overtime to create a new item class to ensure we got a true apology.

So, I'm not going to apologize, nor am I going to trust. I know that ultimately, marketspek is meaningless, the questions I asked are only being ignored because of a corporate mentality that seeks to protect the ego-driven idealism of the designers and managers that screwed this up. For some idealistic reason, the stats for the set after Icicles have to be hidden from us, because asking us if they might be in demand is somehow beating on someone's ego. Someone in kano probably has a theory that players will actually save UN and buy the new set if we know it has demand, creating competition for the Icicle set that ensures it won't sell. Newsflash, you already know the Icicle set won't sell. We're saving our UN anyway, because there is nothing to buy. Telling us now can only look good on you, because you're responding positively to an obvious mistake. Dump Idealism: it doesn't work, ever.

I am a unique type of engineer. As a Field Application Engineer, I interpret marketspek for engineers, and techspek for marketers. I analyze customer and company needs, and represent the customer to the company, and the company to the customer. I carry both ends of this stick.

The greatest and most glaring problem today is in software companies. Unfortunately, in many companies, ego drives marketing, and they make decisions based on opinion, instead of consultation with clients. This is a gross violation of Edison's rules for invention, and it leads to jaded development staffs. On the other hand, the developers are used to being the smartest people in the room, and convince themselves that they know better what the customer wants, without ever talking to one. That is also a gross violation of Edison's rules of invention, and it leads to accusations of arrogant developers. What was recently posted in news, that this company is small and mostly development, means that there may actually be a failure to understand the needs of retaining the marketing aspect of invention. It is taught to engineers, because Edison was one of us, but I find it is missing from the Math and Computer Science programs that create programmers which Engineers have to work with. It is a grossly overlooked and vital lesson in how the real world works.

1) Identify a need -- find a potential customer base/market, where you might solve a problem in a new way.
2) Identify potential ways to fill that need -- speculation based on experience and insight, not experimentation. Check the state of the art for new materials and methods that were not considered for this problem before.
3) Confirm solution with customer -- figure out the best proposal to fit the need, and ask the customer if the trade-offs would be acceptable.
4) Find funding -- schlep the idea to investors.
5) Experiment -- only after securing funding do you spend resources developing the idea.
6) Market product.

Developers that reject marketing input fail in steps 1-3 because they think they know better what the customer wants than the customer does, and in doing so ignore the greatest inventor of all time -- the one that invented inventing. Edison was a genius, not just in the lab, but in marketing. It's a rare combination in any era -- having the technical knowhow and the people skills to understand non-technical people is rare: even I am better at the former than the latter. Kano is, like far too many small gaming companies, using marketspek and corporate methods, without actually doing the marketing a true corporation would insist on, because investors in tech understand Edison's method. If kano understood the demands of marketing, I would already know what the redesigned set stats are, and know what is happening with Icicles. "Trust us, we know what we're doing." No, you clearly don't, and you're trying my patience.

So, no, I see nothing to trust. Act trustworthy, and you'll earn my trust. You lost it when Icicles released. Now I don't, and Smack's message -- pure, unnecessary marketspek -- only reinforced the conclusion that Kano is not trustworthy.

 

im all for better limited items but cut em some slack...its a group of about 20 people and not all of them are devs....and realistically, do you really expect the numbers to just continuously jump on a weekly basis?? then its just like buying a new phone or a pc, its obsolete in a couple months...for people that spend money its no big deal but for the people that cant or dont, theyre not going to be able to keep buying items just to add a few points on att or def. i think the way theyve been doin it is fine...every few months or so they raise up the limiteds to a point where its worth upgrading...has it been a while since the numbers have jumped? yes. are they about due for another jump in points? yes. and as smack said, its coming....i dont know what more you expect from a small team working on multiple games on multiple platforms

 

Where's the like button? I totally agree with you DEMONIK

 

"cut em some slack"

They don't cut anyone else slack. Why should I? You'll see what I mean, below. Look for the quote from TGIF last Friday.

"not all of them are devs"

More people involved = longer meeting. Fewer is better, and faster. If it's one dev responsible for item stat selection, it's a 5 minute discussion to come up with a resolution and plan for correction.

"jump on a weekly basis?"

Please pay attention to the time frames I have been quoting: I am talking much longer timeframes than you're pretending I am discussing. My faction and I think it's been 5 months, since Sept, since we've seen anything like the Apex vehicle. We aren't asking for every week or even every month. We're talking seasonal scale. But this is drastically, incredibly long, when we've had four-five 320+ Att weapons and 340+ Att Vehicles in the same time frame. That's why I'm handing them the excuse of "We used a random number generator. Sorry, we obviously made a mistake there. We're changing the process for stat determination to X." It's a feeble excuse for many programmers, who as Mathies should have more statistics background than me. All I got was one University level course and ton of analysis in my various jobs, where I actually applied Stats. One of kano's staff should have had two courses.

Also pay attention that I am not asking for better than what already exists. I am asking for something in a range that includes worse than what was released last Sept, six months ago. You are assuming I'm greedy and saying things I never stated, and I most certainly am not. I mena exactly what I said. A 320+ def Weapon, where 340+ Att weapons already outclass it.

"for people that spend money its no big deal"

That's part of the problem: no one is spending money on this crud, so Kano isn't making money off it. When you overlook marketing theory, you overlook supply and demand. No supply builds up demand, and unfulfilled demand leads to customer complaints. Failure of a monopoly to supply the demand means failure to sell any product, which is in this case UN for $. That's one of Kano's primary goals, after all, or else they'd go out of business and we'd be able to buy nothing. They need to create items with demand, so that you can get people to pay money for UN, so they get a paycheck, and feed their families. Undesirable items mean no sales, and turning the heat off to feed yourself.

On the good news front, Pulverizers just disappeared on AG/Kong.

"i dont know what more you expect from a small team"

We make a point of not operating the way some big jerky companies do *coughzyngacough*, and it makes us sad when people think that we are like them. Aardvark, TGIF, Fri Mar 28, 2014.

I expect them to act according to the standard they set themselves, and not be hypocritical. I am kicking them in the teeth, because they just insulted someone else for being a big, jerky company and turned around and acted like a big, jerky company. In this thread, with no responsiveness and a completely defensive attitude, Kano are have done what they seemed to pretend to themselves is impossible.

Big jerky companies, like Microsoft, put out deficient products like Windows 8.0, force them down people's throats, fail to respond to customer complaints by recognizing that their products fail to meet customer expectations, and then end support for customer favorites (Windows XP) because the managers responsible for the decisions that made a decent product have moved on, so no one points out that there's no OS to replace it for enormous numbers of the poor that retain older computers. Windows is the way it is, in all versions, because marketing managers with design control get ego-protective. They refuse to admit that they made mistakes during the Alpha design phase, when they failed to acknowledge customer feedback about deficiencies, and instead forced their personal opinion of what onto the programmers. The managers get away with it, because they have a monopoly and can force the world to the drum of one very arrogant, egotistical designer that can't accept that they want something the rest of the world hates. When trying to get Microsoft to change, you are facing the challenge of fighting a VP's precious ego, not facing a rational, non-objective, impartial designer that can see his design failure without emotions getting in the way and forcing the defense of a poor decision.

At this point, my complaints are far less about the original issue, and far more about the way the issue was dealt with. Kano is layering mistake upon mistake.

There is no competition from another product designer in this game, so the monopoly model applies. We can only choose to leave the game, not buy different product from an array of different designers' concepts.

This is what Smack should have said. "Wow, that's a significant oversight. I don't think we've ever replicated stats in two successive sets before, and this was certainly the wrong set to repeat, obviously. I've scheduled a meeting with the developer for 3PM PDT, and we'll have a response soon after, at worst by 5PM. I doubt we can do anything in hours, but a few days should give us time to clear this up. But I'll know better after I'm out of that meeting."

Why is this non-corporate?

1. It takes personal responsibility. "We" is the corporate dodge to protect your butt. "I" takes personal ownership of the issue. If Smack could not take ownership, then he shouldn't post at all, and should get the person that can to respond instead. Customers do not need to know "I've seen the post", which was all he actually said, after the marketspek is converted to English. And Mitch continues to fail in the same vein. the major concern, waiting weeks until we can see resolution, remains unaddressed.
2. It sets a timeframe for a response. Failure to provide that is another corporate dodge, which let's them ignore the issue as long as they feel like. It can go to the backburner with zero priority, because no one has committed to a resolution. It means the designer is trivializing the complaint and proceeding with other development plans already in queue, instead of dealing with the obvious, shorter term issue. typically, this means the designer in charge has a pet project they think everyone will love, but without the customer feedback usually flops; meanwhile, the more important issue continues to frustrate. Management of emergency issue priority vs. long term development priority is a major problem for software companies, who often fail to design into their schedules time for emergencies. We freed up 20% of each developer's time for emergency bug solving, which gave customers immediate resolution in emergencies, without delaying delivery dates. But idealists assume there will be no such emergencies, and wind up with either embarrassing issues remaining unresolved, or dropped delivery dates.
3. It acknowledges a mistake has been made. Failure to acknowledge there was a mistake is another corporate dodge. It's done for legal reasons, usually, because admission of mistake can hurt you unnecessarily in court. (That's why corporations that appear to have made a mistake don't apologize until after the court case. Apologies are admissions of fault and admissible in court, but it's the court's job to assign fault which you just accepted. In some cases, it's not the corporation's fault, so they'd lose a case to an apology that they should never have made, letting the responsible party off the hook. Once the case is over, there's nothing to go to court with anymore, so the apology can be made without repercussion.) That is not a fear here: this is about virtual property, which gets tossed out of every courtroom, even if there were any grounds for items up for sale being bad turning into a court case. Being ultra-careful is unnecessary, when there's no chance of a legal battle.

If I ever say to a customer what Smack did, my manager would hand me my walking papers. We are a small corporation, with close ties to our highly specialized customers -- exactly what Kano wants to claim they are. I actually do what they want to be interpreted as being. I know how to do it, because I was carefully trained and got feedback from my manager in the rare instances where I messed it up. But, then, my managers actually understood the importance of customer feedback, responsiveness, and responsibility.

I am holding Kano accountable to the standard that their own belief system set as their goal.

 

Wish in one hand and "you know what" in the other. Being as BLUNT as your being, I'd IGNORE YOU as well. LOL

 

Agree 100% with Kreistor on this issue. Although Kano has had the same model for stats for a long time, so it's not really random.

Mostly attack
Balanced, but attack skewed
Balanced
Balanced, but defense skewed
Mostly defense

They do like to mix it up with the middle three types though. It has always been one of those types, with the total SP on an item increasing over time.

I think if they actually looked at the purchase rates, they would see what was more popular. They cycle them really randomly, it seems. I personally buy nothing but high attack items. The balanced types don't seem useful. Even if you were balanced, wouldn't you want a set of mostly attack and a set of mostly defense?

More attack items!

 

Such a silly response. Ignore wise advise? Everything he is saying is true. There is no real connection with the player base, and they are not listening to those that play the game. I remember some time last year I got an email from Kano about some sort of player summit, to have a real discussion about the game and what people want to see. I don't think that happened.

The forums are rife with ideas, highly rated, that are never implemented. Dozens upon dozens of ignored posts. The moderators try their best, but they are not the developers and have no influence in changes to the game. Releasing new servers is fun, but is not fixing the game.

 

According to you,Kriestor, people are not buying ,spending?? well you forget to take into the equation, with 4 games on multiple platforms I doubt those that spend are spending less ZS is not the end all be all game there are others in the equation and people spend on other things besides limited items.Me personally I don't rely heavily on limited items in any of the 4 games for my strength, they are just one part of that equation. I suggest if ya don't think the items are worth it then don't buy them, easy peasy And keep in mind this is a game not some world changing event.

 

Limited Quantity gear is there for a reason, Linda. It has a function. If you don't know why some people desire it, then criticizing their decision to desire it is only evidence of your choice to ignore other people's analysis of game mechanics.

AG is actually their least profitable portal, but for other reasons I have presented to Kano in private. Kong made them some money, though. Not sure if it's actually making them money still, and I'm not sure how long the AG/Kong server will remain relevant. The ZS player base is dropping fast. That is, after all, part of the problem. With drastically fewer numbers, the preset 360 LQ product availability means many sets won't sell enough to sell themselves out, even if there is decent demand. 360 is fine for 2000 people. It's far too much for 600, which we are rapidly approaching.

I wasn't going to post the rest below yet, but heck, Linda wanted to chat. So...

Guess what? What a surprise, Icicle gear did appear to replace Pulverizers. In the first day Kano sold 3 Grenades, 2 trucks, and 2 Cleats. [Edit: Day 2 saw 3 grenades, 2 Cleats and 1 truck sell.] Obviously, no one blew their birthday money on it.

The argument I will make in my next post is based on Pavlov's Dog, which I believe in very firmly. Shall we forgo that and delete Icicles now, please? My point is made in absolute, stunningly clear numbers, now that we have sales figures. I predicted no sales for Pulverizers. I predicted no sales for Icicles. Reject my debating points and attitude all you want, you can't argue with my foresight.