Is this common practice?

feralicious

I confess that I don’t play other games like this. I’ve played this one for years, but that’s all I’ve had time and energy for.

What CG did in unilaterally devaluing toons that we developed over years at a significant cost of time and resources and according to a reasonable understanding of the implied contract between the developers and their customers seems to me totally outrageous.

Do other companies get away with such chicanery? There’s no question that in other sectors such behavior would be a company’s downfall, but maybe it’s just business as usual in gaming. I doubt it, though.
Why aren’t there more pitchforks here?

Mephisto_style

feralicious wrote: »

I confess that I don’t play other games like this. I’ve played this one for years, but that’s all I’ve had time and energy for.

What CG did in unilaterally devaluing toons that we developed over years at a significant cost of time and resources and according to a reasonable understanding of the implied contract between the developers and their customers seems to me totally outrageous.

Do other companies get away with such chicanery? There’s no question that in other sectors such behavior would be a company’s downfall, but maybe it’s just business as usual in gaming. I doubt it, though.
Why aren’t there more pitchforks here?

Yes
They are toothless paper-tiger pitchforks.
If you are truly "upset" about the business practices of CG then I implore you to never read of the chicanery of the telecom transnational corporations. They make CG look like Ghandi.

Edit - in all seriousness their end-user license agreement that you agree to everytime you load their game is like you going swimming at someone else's house; you do so at your own risk and if they pee in the pool it was your fault for going in the water.

Winterwolves

Plenty of pitchforks around here. But then people just keep spending anyway, so it makes no difference what feedback is given. The people with the pitchforks are just peasants. They don't care about them.

Artumas

I've had items in MMOs nerfed that took well over a year to farm with zero alternative methods of acquisition. You couldn't even whale on them.

So, yes.
It's quite normal practice in gaming.

...on top of that, there's not a single character that got "nerfed" (I still consider GAS a straight buff) that's actually useless now - Every single one of them is still incredibly useful, or was nerfed in a way they were never used for anyway (did anyone actually use Greedo for GL counters...? Like even a single person, ever?)
So it's still better than the completely expected and normal power creep of 99% of live service games ever made - Almost all other mobile games just go "Yeah, that character's now completely and utterly outclassed by this other unit, and everything you invested in them is now utterly wasted because this other character's just straight better in every way". And even non-mobile games, like MMOs, generally have expansions and major updates that add new gear levels that completely outclass all previously existing gear, generally including level cap increases, etc. that mean your previous BiS hard-farmed gear is now outclassed by basic leveling gear from normal enemies or vendors.

...I'm really starting to get convinced that 99% of this game's playerbase just doesn't and hasn't play(ed) any other game, ever. Because the kind of stuff that gets spam complained about is literally standard practice in so many other games and no one cares. ...and again, it's not like any character affected by the balance patch is even remotely close to useless now <.<

Shaddess

In most other games it’s give and take when it comes to this, in WoW they may nerf one specialization while buffing another, but sometimes they just straight nerf something with no other alternative, but when it comes to games like this it’s usually just take take and take some more.

jonnysiniwal

The gaming industry as a whole is entirely incapable of predicting the outcome of their own power creep. So this basically happens everywhere. Creep creep creep until they can't get around their own mechanics, then it is nerf nerf nerf.

Harthal

Yes, it's extremely normal. This is EA we are talking about.