CatDaddy, do you hate us?

[Bud_McSmoker]

Re: CatDaddy, do you hate us?

CD's motto: if it ain't broke, break it.

[Sir Master Tim]

Re: CatDaddy, do you hate us?

no, we don't hate you.


want to say at the top: that's an awesome amount of games, man, and i'm flattered that you have as much dedication to NBA as you do. it really sucks that you're not feeling great about the directions we're heading in. maybe i can help.


i don't want to be reductionist, but i feel like your thesis goes something like this: "i feel like the game is quickly becoming too restrictive and as a free-player that bothers me." correct me if this isn't the case. if it is, there's a few things we can unpack here.


our goal is to make the game competitive, engaging, and fun. to that end, yeah, we are ramping up the strategic diversity by getting rid of the 3/2. we want you to use your five best cards, and think about what each of those cards brings to the table. more so, when you get an awesome card, we don't want your first response to be "oh, i shouldn't use this." rather, we want you to be execited and want to use it.


the reason why obtaining pros is hard is because obtaining great cards, in general, takes time. events, as you've discovered, are a great way to win cards that may or may not drop in the near future for you. i'm sorry the reward structure frustrates you.


many avenues are still available to you, though. you can sell some great stuff at the auction house and then acquire what you want. you can also just earn credits outside of that, too.

Make the game competitive and fun eyy? 9000 games that you described as "awesome" and "flattered" seems pretty dam competitive to me. Ever since you guys dropped the AH you have used it as the get out of jail free card for you "impovements". You claim that players can simply go to the AH and buy whatever card they need. Now explain how we are supposed to do that when you take a third of our cuts. I can make a mathematical equation that shows how much that screws us but im not going to as its been done before and its clear you don't give AF.


How does eliminating 3/2 make the game more engaging? Im not a psychologist but im pretty sure most people don't enjoy losing and most don't enjoy being told how to go about their business. So how does losing make the game more enjoyable? Beats me, Must be some kind of CD witchcraft based on no logical/statistical reasoning.


What really baffles me though is you cut the rewards for seasons/RC and then have a problem that players are not using their best cards. Maybe if good rewards were not retsricted to the top 1000, players might not relly on 3/2 as much. Nobody wants to play 2000 QGs for a single star so they go hard as possible to win two stars for about 1000 RC games. Why not look at this as a problem rather then 3/2? 2000 games to get a single star!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Are you kidding me!! That statement alone makes my a++ hurt.


"many avenues are still available to you, though. you can sell some great stuff at the auction house and then acquire what you want. you can also just earn credits outside of that, too." Im sorry but I believe you got your definition or EARN and BUY mixed up.


I like it better when you don't say anything because when you do you make things worse.

[Dextro]

Re: CatDaddy, do you hate us?

What I personally don´t like about CD, is their incredibility. And that is exactly the reason, why I don´t support this company.
Each time they announce something, you have to expect the worst.

We don´t expect that you let us participate in all your internal discussions, but if you announce something, be reliable.
The best example is this "given" rule of Star rewards in a RC has to be a current player and this is why we had to choose Nick Young as a reward.
A few weeks later, welcome Mr. Bob Lanier, he might be active in the retirement homes basketball team, but not in the NBA.

Take away the Dupes from RC and telling us you can get them from the AH? Sure you can, but you have to earn credits for that. And please let us be honest, what is selling? Trained cards or cards like Lebron James. So if you want to earn credits, you have to train them up, and what happens if you do this? You limit your own success, as it takes some time to train your players. You can sell it afterwards, but your exchange was games vs credits - tax. Daily Bonus and season rewards are negligible.

And this are only two examples, there are many others. It is really not our fault, if you are not able to fix that stuff already in your design phase. Cause already there, you should have recognized that there are workarounds - you can live with them or get rid of it before you release it. Not after months.

The 3/2 was some kind of strategy, now it goes back to simply tapping. I don´t expect that you change matchmaking, so there is absolutely no chance that you can compete against a higher tier - that is per definition the case. (As long as the deck is not total out of balance from your opponent)
Instead of improving the game you are focusing on this. Try to fix the obvious bugs first, it is a bit annoying if you the same bugs again and again since months and you are not able to fix them.

[Aladnan]

Re: CatDaddy, do you hate us?

I'm just here to complain about the 30% selling tax... You're literally robbing us. It makes it so much harder to save enough credits to get those high level cards when 30% is taken away... Not even eBay takes 30%


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[iluvnug]

Re: CatDaddy, do you hate us?

I'm just here to complain about the 30% selling tax... You're literally robbing us. It makes it so much harder to save enough credits to get those high level cards when 30% is taken away... Not even eBay takes 30%


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No other game takes that much in tax. It's literally robbing us of our precious time and hard earned cards and credits. Is CD really that greedy? Or is that a rhetorical question?

[Aladnan]

Re: CatDaddy, do you hate us?

No other game takes that much in tax. It's literally robbing us of our precious time and hard earned cards and credits. Is CD really that greedy? Or is that a rhetorical question?

It makes no sense why they would take that much except to give us the middle finger.. I say we start a petition to get it lowered!


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[etched Chaos]

Re: CatDaddy, do you hate us?

No other game takes that much in tax. It's literally robbing us of our precious time and hard earned cards and credits. Is CD really that greedy? Or is that a rhetorical question?

This is a company that removed the 2x leg and 2x epic rewards in RC so people would use the AH more and be victim to the tax. I have no doubts that the first answer to any idea or tweak is 'will this make us more money?'

[tyecopeland]

Re: CatDaddy, do you hate us?

If they change the 3/2 strategy without changing the +5 games some it will be pointless to play those games. If they change the rttc strategy it will take it back to almost impossible to get the card one above your rttc tier.

If they do those but leave seasons alone where you can run a common bench and stay down a tier way longer than you should be able to, it will be a farce.

[Dextro]

Re: CatDaddy, do you hate us?

Correct - I already mentioned that in the community manager thread. And just finished a season where I played against a guy with several Star Pros - he hidden them on the Bench. And why? Cause he will get a Star and 400 credits. Instead of just a Star, as he can't win in Star Season with his deck.

But CD is not interested in changing the rewards - and it would be so easy. But they didn't even gave us feedback on this. As always ...


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[seedykiwi]

Re: CatDaddy, do you hate us?

Yeah same thing happened to me in my last season (leg) taken out in the first round by a guy with like 8 star pros and commons... And looks like a similar sort of thing is gonna happen in my current season

[Dextro]

Re: CatDaddy, do you hate us?

Yes, easy 400 Credits for them. But CD is not willing to give us at least any feedback on it. That is a bit frustrating for all those regular Legendary players. You invest a lot into the season and suddenly you got beaten by somebody you beat 4 times during the season


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[popsicle1228]

Re: CatDaddy, do you hate us?

Yes, easy 400 Credits for them. But CD is not willing to give us at least any feedback on it. That is a bit frustrating for all those regular Legendary players. You invest a lot into the season and suddenly you got beaten by somebody you beat 4 times during the season


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While I agree with much of what you say, be careful in suggesting to them to amend season rewards because it will not go in our favor if amended. They already made season rewards worse once.

[Burdetem]

Re: CatDaddy, do you hate us?

Just a thought wouldn't it be helpful to modify season credit rewards to compensate an AH purchase of that caliber? Example provide the Epic season champ 2000 credits to bid on a legend, Legend season champ 5000 to bid on a star?

Sure beats the 250 I got for winning an Epic Season (which can only get me 2 hot streak packs).

[brad_nicholson]

Re: CatDaddy, do you hate us?

B Rad. Can I call you B Rad? Lemme call you B Rad.

I think what frustrates a lot of players here is that loopholes, vulnerabilities and exploits are closed before the masses get a chance to have a crack at them.

Cases in point:

a. Scripts: The fix came way too late and people running these had progressed way ahead already and made a stack of credits off the AH with their illegitimate cards

b. 3 Star Season Rewards & horrible season matchmaking: You weren't around then but lots of users used to just post saying "I'm starting a star season, stay out", they would try their best to be faced with less human opponents (bots were easier to beat), they'd then cash in 3 stars every 4-5 days (3 Stars - it seems insane now!) and sell them on the AH. Those credits were then used to strengthen their lineups (again, to beat who? bots?) and so on.

c. 3/2 lineup: It's pretty much become the norm really, especially for RC. I agree with what someone said in the main thread. Winning +5 games should be high risk high reward sort of scenario, but instead +5 with 3/2 and hot streaks is pretty much the norm.

Now, you combine those 3 points above and you have the perfect storm:

A player who scripted their way to many games played/wins or demolished star seasons very early, and all the while used those gains to sell lots and lots of cards early on, then used these credits for Hot Streaks to fund RCs and RttCs as well as the best packs.

These players are few and far between and most aren't a complete mix of traits I outlined above, but regardless they are miles ahead now and the rest don't have the same 'generous' opportunities to catch up.

Now. I agree with the 3 fixes outlined above, but what I would say, is that these should've been in place since day 1 and you probably wouldn't be dealing with the criticism as much. That said I understand hindsight is 20/20. And as a developer myself that has built websites, games, and competitions used by hundreds of thousands of users I understand that sometimes real world scale reveals patterns and issues that never arose in testing/staging.

Ultimately the player base, this forum and gameplay stats will probably tell you that you guys have built a hell of a game, for something so simple it is quite addictive and fun, particularly for us NBA fans and ex card collectors. So good job there!

My thoughts are that a lot of 'lower' players are just not thrilled that all these opportunities afforded earlier are being closed and as a result some 'fairness' is lost. Thus, the game seems to be being made 'harder' for them, but in actual fact all you guys are trying to do is fix exploits that shouldn't have been there in the first place.

thanks for the thoughtful opinion. i do agree on the points. it's definitely a challenge to run a game as a service because when you do make sweeping changes that address balance or exploitation, you often create pain points. it's literally changing the game as you're playing, right? sometimes it can feel weird. also, since this is a free title, the addition of "paid" elements also introduce pain points. to that end, we've always tried to make it so players can get the things the want by playing.


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on a wider point: i'm here to listen and bring what i can to the table as a relations guy. you can be angry or chill or passionate or annoyed. i'm going to find the great feedback, give you context when possible, and celebrate the game with you.


the personal attacks, tho? leave that at home. if you want responses, ya gotta be civil.

[Sir Master Tim]

Re: CatDaddy, do you hate us?

Yes, easy 400 Credits for them. But CD is not willing to give us at least any feedback on it. That is a bit frustrating for all those regular Legendary players. You invest a lot into the season and suddenly you got beaten by somebody you beat 4 times during the season


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Ima hold off on the tanks problem at least until the new tier drops. The current star season setup has many different types(mvp,PnP,RC) that are pro. Since their is players with stronger then the average star pro, there will be a new tier that puts these players in a different tier. In return it will make it easier for star players to win their seasons, legends to win their seasons, and so on without having such a problem with tanks. My worry with this though is it might just screw up star seasons instead of legends seasons and if that is the case then we will need to figure out the solution. Ill wait and see how the new tier effects it.