GLU VIP Council – A chance to have your voices be heard
Houmy
Registered Users, Member 3,889 Posts
Greetings forum friends and members. I mentioned a few months ago that GLU had hinted at the possibility of me and some other VIP members going on a tour of GLU’s studios and have a chance of meeting the developers and share feedback and ideas. I was contacted again last week and was told this may indeed happen towards the end of October and am just waiting on final confirmation from them.
I would like to use this post as an opportunity for all to share ideas of how we can improve this game that we love so much and address some of the issues that we have experienced. Please post your replies with some ideas that you may have in that regard and if the opportunity presents itself I promise to discuss it with the developers and powers to be.
As I am sure they will be a lot of responses to this post please take note of the following:
· GLU is a company in the business of making money for their shareholders so please keep that in mind when commenting. Any changes/additions they make needs to be financially feasible for them but at the same time fair to us
· As there will be a lot of ideas please keep them short and to the point to make it easier to go through and comprehend
· Please refrain from criticizing each other’s comments as this a chance for all to share their opinions and requests
· I will not comment or give feedback on the comments posted but will keep a record of the ones that make the most sense as far as GLU being able and willing to implement
I look forward to any constructive comments and ideas.
Howdy, Stranger!
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Comments
This is awesome news Houmy, congrats!
My biggest criticism is that expensive boxes should have only items of respectable value. There's nothing worse then paying thousands of gold for a box only to get regular xp or evo. This is a sports app, not a gambling app. Also, specific item boxes such as "Legend XP Box" should only contain Legend XP. To offer prime xp or draft picks as an option is infuriating. I think everyone understands that there is a good chance they may not get what they want when they open the box, but when people are paying hundreds of dollars in real money to open boxes, and end up getting the "booby prize" of no usable value, it leaves a very bad taste in one's mouth.
@houmy can you take me as your plus +1? ;)
Best thing to do my friend is just be stright up and honest with all the posts you get from people. I would say that 95% of everyones concerns on this fourms have merit and value in what they say. Just make the game fair an increase the odds or rewards on boxes as states. 2k gold a pull to get evo or cash in a slap in the face for that value.
– The Great Houmy
Wow @houmy that sounds like a great opportunity. As everyone bemoans the usefulness of franchise coins once your team hits a certain level, maybe introducing Legends for four/six coins. That way the coins may have some value again.
Have them make it so there is an incentive to move up levels. Right now I seem to be penalized for moving up to the platinum level. Higher rewards for higher levels would be a good start. It pains me to see silver level teams with all their guys maxed out cycling through events and getting the same rewards that I can’t get because it is so much harder to cycle through at the higher levels. The amount of xp needed really makes it harder to max out the higher level guys.
If I would have known this a few months ago I would have never left the silver or gold level.
Congrats on your trip. Have fun out there.
Make curves hittable with a perfect swing in woh. It’s eveyones biggest prob!!
From a previous post that summed up many suggestions I too have posted about. And a few additional ones.
1- Fan reward players need to have bonus points for that event. If you really think about it not many people obtain the main player in the fan rewards. More incentive for users to spend their gold and buy more gold. Making Glu more money and increasing the competition for those that achieve the feat of obtaining the fan rewards player/s.
2- Event reward tiers should change based on your team level. Incentive for teams to level up for better rewards, again making GLU more money. But also giving the user better chances at better rewards to include players or more useful XP etc. Late round and 2nd round picks for a team stacked with 5* players is useless and annoying. #1 DPs or Prime DPs would make more sense. Odds of pulling a 5* are still low but at least if/when you do it could help your team.
3- While having a player on third in WoH, give us the option to send him home. I mean, that really does happen in baseball. Also, stop sending runners home while on third when a ball is hit to the pitcher. A runner on third with no one behind him would never run home on this play in baseball. It shouldn't happen in the game. Just makes for a less frustrating user experience in the event.
4- WoH, pitching in the final two rounds of the event are near impossible even with hitters that are superior to the pitcher rating. The odds of getting enough "touchable" pitches are so slim you can reach the final round 20 times without a chance at beating it. Even with 20% boost. If the pitches are impossible to touch or hit you lose your users. Make it more attainable. Maybe guarantee 1 in every 10 tries there is a sequence of pitches that are hittable. If you miss that is your own fault and hopefully you have time to go through enough times to get another chance at a good sequence of pitches. Make it "possible" to beat and not impossible. More people will continue to try if this is the case and Glu will make more money. People that quit or stop after 1 or 2, or 20 tries will continue to try and spend gold for the reward player if they know they will have at least 1 possible try ever 10 attempts.
5- allow us to trade players somehow within clubs. Make it cost 1500 gold to initiate a trade within your club and require the trade to be the same * rating and if it is a player with skill the other player should have a skill and so on. Guarantees a fair trade. User has to use a fair amount of gold to make a trade keeping people from doing it all the time. Or at least having to buy gold to do it. And have the player revert to bronze 1 after being traded so the new owner has to use their own resources to level it up. If they don't have them they will need to buy them or wait to earn them. Keep the user engaged and striving to achieve something and get that sense of accomplishment. Glu could make a lot of money with this improvement on the game. And users would have a better experience, keeping them willing to open their wallet.
6- Allow us to use franchise players in WoH. We can use our created legend player already. We can buy Slugfest Booster Players on Wednesdays. We can use the franchise players in other events. Make it cost 200 gold or something to select the Franchise player on WoH event days first use. Glu makes some money on it and the user gets a player that could help them out.
7- After a few weeks of introducing prime slugger rewards, offer prime slugger picks to buy. Likewise for when Legend sluggers are introduced. Charge the same 500 and 700 respectively like you do for Store player Prime and Legend draft picks.
8- More achievements would be nice. Keeping the user striving to achieve and play to get the rewards and spending money making Glu more money. have 5 star tiers instead of 3 for each. Add achievements like No Hitters for pitchers or Hitting for the Cycle for batters etc.
9- Event Royale is a fun addition, but I agree with some suggestions others have made regarding this event. Wednesday is not the ideal time to roll this out. Make it a single day during the weekend event. Or make it a cumulative of your clubs points during the individual events during the week. Apply the multipliers at the end and let people know the reward structure ahead of time. Make a tab or something where you can see how you are doing as the week progresses. Keeping clubs striving to do the best they can do each day which will in turn make Glu more money as well.
Another area that they could improve: Series Unlock in Season mode
Seems crazy that the 150 gold to unlock a season series at 8 hours is still 150 gold with seconds left.
There are 480 minutes between each series, making the value of 1 gold every 3.2 minutes . If the gold decreased every 16 minutes by 5 gold, it would be a lot more attractive with an hour to go spending a little gold to play the next series. Especially when you are in the playoff rounds and you want to get through them to get the rewards.
I would likely spend 15 or 20 gold with an hour left to start the next series than I would 150 gold. Or 5 gold with 16 or less minutes left. Etc.
I am no coder or developer, but I have seen this done in other games. Seems it would make sense for this section of TSB18. And more people would be intrigued by the lesser amount of gold and likely spend it than they would if the amount wasn't decreasing. Could be a way to increase their revenue for people using more gold. Wouldn't be huge but any increase is a positive for them.
Awesome opportunity, thanks for letting us weigh in. Probably some of this has been covered, but here would be my list:
Thanks again, @Houmy.
I've suggested it in the past and talked to many, but implementing a pity timer makes a lot of sense. It's very common among rng-based games and is a win/win for all involved. Players are happy that, at minimum, they get expected value and GLU is happy if people are spending.
@dfbb explain a pity timer?
A pity timer is a function where a certain amount of lottery pulls will guarantee a desirable prize. In other words, let's say that if you buy twenty five weekend boxes, your 26th will guarantee a specialty bonus player. But then again, fan rewards can be considered a sort of pity timer. Before they changed the 20k prime reward to a prime only draft.
Congrats on the invitation @Houmy ! Some things I want to see implemented in the game is improvement of the weekend event rewards and a playable Walk Off Hero. WOH somehow decreases the performance of my players compared to prime/bonus games. The unhittable curveballs are also very annoying and a cheap tactic to make people lose.
Enjoy the experience @Houmy if you get the chance to go and decide to accept the invitation.
I agree with most of the points raised by others already, but will jot down my version of the story.
- FIX THE SOFTWARE: glitches, feezing, crashes that are inherent in the game from its release or are added as updates are released. The number of errors in the software from what appears to be rushed releases before sufficient real world testing has been accomplished and the number of mistakes when sending out gifts, new boxes, and similar daily offers/interactions is unreal. Improve the attention to detail and stop what appears to be rushed and sloppy work. However, it certainly seems that some of the never fixed glitches in the game have been intentionally left to increase the rate of user failure.
- STOP DUPLICATE DRAFT PICKS: there's no way in any purely random generator that the same exact result can be reproduced multiple times. Of the hundreds of actual mlb players available for any draft pick, there's only ever a handful that actually show up as a result when opening the pick. ...over and over again. I've lost count how many times I get the same players over and over again, and guess what, the xp means nothing because most users will immediately Cap the player they get in drafts if they want him in their roster.
- IMPROVE FAIRNESS & ODDS IN BOXES: you charge a lot for various boxes and 2.5% or less chances of getting the good player(s) in those boxes leaves many users pissed off and feeling used/cheated. If going 0-10 attempts is not bad enough, going 0-20,30 even 50 attempts is obnoxious beyond words. Many of us don't believe that your stated odds to Apple users are actually what is programmed into the algorithms. In addition, you fill the boxes full of "secondary" prizes that feel like a slap in the face (blue cash, evo, multiple amounts of xp, low level players no one wants). You've established the addiction factor pretty well in this game of chance, but as the disatisfaction and the feeling of being cheated increases by users, even the addicted walk away.
- MAKE WINNING REASONABLY ATTAINABLE: it's bad enough that the preceeding points I've made exist in the user experience and now we can add in the manipulation of events that no one can win unless they spend the entire day playing and spend thousands in gold for restarts. It's clear I don't quite understand your business model because the way you've structured the game, it requires users who can afford a loooot of time and usually money. Those that cant afford to spend hundreds of dollars in the game require and incredible time commitment (to slow play, to restart without gold, to watch videos and complete offers to raise gold, etc etc) to stay somewhat competitive. Those that can afford to pay hundreds of dollars in the game, still require significant time commitments to win and that would seem to be a conflict or a small target market. Playing all day to complete events is for the idle rich or the unemployed/underemployed. Work from home users I'm pretty sure are having personal internal conflicts about work vs play time during business hours... Having said all the above, to not be able to win even after spending the whole day playing and spending thousands in gold, leaves a very bitter taste in user's mouths. Walk of hero the last few weeks is the most obvious example of where the majority of uses will simply not be able to win. Getting 15 straight pitches that cant be hit because they are the infamous bizarre Glu curve & slider that are outside the strike zone and batters box and therefore 95% unhittable, literally makes it impossible to win when that sequence just repeats itself all day long. People are fed up.
- FIX THE ATTITUDE: there are more than just a few customer care staff and developers that could use an attitude adjustment. That's not to say that there aren't wonderful, dedicated and helpful personnel on staff willing to help users deal with whatever issues crop up. But unfortunately there are several who treat users like dirt. Be honest with yourselves, your product has a loooot of software issues and negative stuff frequently happens to users. They come to customer care to quickly and painlessly have it resolved, no matter how real world insignificant it may seem. But here's the thing, when someone doesn't get the reward they've been promised in a game that makes money selling these promises, it becomes significant. Be a fair and reliable company and treat people fairly. By all means, sanction cheaters, but be damn sure who they are. All too often people are accused of cheating without any proof or explanation and they have to fight and claw to maybe be reinstated, despite it being the fault of a glitch in the game itself. It amazes me how many users stick with the fight to be able to play again instead of just seeking refunds and telling the company where to go.... and this is coming from a guy who's had a pretty good experience overall with any issues usually quickly and politely resolved.
Bottom line? You have had a loyal and even addicted base of users who have defended the game and the company for a long time, despite the huge number of problems that exist and a significant number of users who feel they've been wronged and cheated. As of today, the loyal users are now also feeling wronged and cheated and are leaving the game...it started with choosing to play fewer events, then stop spending money, then stop spending gold... the last step is to stop playing the game at all. Fix the things I've mentioned and improve the game play and user experience that others have mentioned and your app will continue to thrive...don't fix it and you will eventually stop having a reason to release new versions.