I feel disappointed in the devs, concerning the Abyssal Lord

Can enjoy the game with or without the new hero tho, I see both sides argument should be a shorter grind, but as a supporter of the game paying isn't too bad either as AL is not a "pay to win" condition, at least in my eyes...

To everyone saying that $15 or a month of grinding is reasonable, consider the competition. Why would I spend $15 or all that time on a single hero when there is so much else out there that I can do that is 1) actually fun, 2) not as much of a grind, and 3) not as expensive?

I'm not against paying for content and I understand that Trendy needs to make up for the lack of an entrance fee (a mistake, IMO), but this is ridiculous. They plan on having at least 4 purchasable heroes by the end of the year. For the price of just those heroes, I could instead buy a day-1 AAA title. Add in a few costumes and I've got a AAA game with a season pass. Open up the comparison to indie titles and DD2's pricing gets even less competitive.

And then there's the offer of grinding out the medals for the heroes. Based on all the math I'm seeing in this thread, I'm looking at several hours each day for a little over a month. Why would I repeat the same content over and over again over that much time when I could spend it trying out new content in other games? I wouldn't do that even if the game was actually fun. And I definitely wouldn't do it 4 times plus whatever's required for spheres and other things purchased with medals.

Some of you might consider the pricing reasonable. I consider it uncompetitive.

The map rewards feel completely inconsequential, especially if you can't play at NM4 yet. Uber spheres are very high priced, and if you spend the weeks it takes to grind one of those out, that's just handicapping your ability to reach Abyss Lord even further. New characters requiring you to be capped out on defender medals feels really bad, because there's no room for anything else. You have to spend 100% of your attention on unlocking Abyss Lord, and you aren't able to progress anyone else in the meantime. Buying two ubers is nearly as expensive as buying a brand new character class, and the gameplay change you get from those isn't enough to match a new character.

The pacing of defender medals just overall feels unsatisfying. Even if I finish my monthly, I don't feel like I'm making a large chunk of progress. I feel like I'm finally getting the kinds of rewards I should have had all along. Like I'm catching up to how much time I spent getting this monthly completed.

@CollectorOfBolts quote:Why would I repeat the same content over and over again over that much time when I could spend it trying out new content in other games? I wouldn't do that even if the game was actually fun. And I definitely wouldn't do it 4 times plus whatever's required for spheres and other things purchased with medals.

Some of you might consider the pricing reasonable. I consider it uncompetitive.

I completely agree.

It's not that free players being required to grind is unreasonable, but on top of that $15 for a single hero is completely uncompetitive based on other games.

No one thinks that Trendy employees should starve, but I'm not paying $15 for a hero on a game that I don't even enjoy playing right now anyways, no matter how absurdly overpowered said hero is.

Build a fantastic game first, then start cashing in. If I don't have a reason to play, I damn sure don't have a reason to pay. For that $15 you can buy Undertale (and even have 5 bucks left over!) and it's probably the most unanimously positively reviewed game I've seen in years. Even Yahtzee from Zero Punctuation couldn't shut up praising it, and the man makes a living writing scathing reviews and reading them quickly in an Aussie accent.

@CollectorOfBolts quote:

Some of you might consider the pricing reasonable. I consider it uncompetitive.

Completely agree.  Sure, in the overall scheme of life, 15 might not be a lot but this isn't the only game out there.  Factor in the "is it worth it factor" and you get a big ole question mark.  Like you said, you can get season passes for this amount.  And like I already stated, in DD1 your money got you a lot more.  

Going the F2P route, you've got to spend a lot of time not having fun to get this guy.

@Infernotez quote:

No it's 100-250 so 175 average. So 5250 and lets say people decide to actually play every 2 days that is 750?

total: 6000  = 60 days

I don't really pay too much attention to the dailies, but don't you get one every day?  That means you could play every 3 days and still get the same amount as if you played every day (based on dailies alone).

@Dreizehn quote:

Would you work for free?

yes i work for free at my church all the time you gonna charge jesus money.

right now i am svaeing up all my money for square soft and the ff7 remake collectors edition that will be worth no matter what happens.

@donttreadonme2234 quote:

@Dreizehn quote:

Would you work for free?

yes i work for free at my church all the time you gonna charge jesus money.

I assume you misunderstood my question. You are talking about voluntary work. (like I did myself at Red Cross) What I was referring to was about the kind of work that brings food on the plate. (although I want to say that I find it pretty cool that you do voluntary work)

Of course it is obvious that all of us have different opinions, I respect that. From my point of view free 2 play games should charge no money for installing and playing. That's what I understand as free 2 play game. If a game is pay2win or not does not interfere with the pay2win state. I see games like War of the Dragons or Runes of Magic as pay2win while I see DD2 (as it is now) and Super MNC for example not as pay2win. Both games offer to unlock additional characters by playing the game or by purchasing with real money.

The major problem, I think, is that DD2's heroes are too expensive right now.

I think they wanted to see how long it takes the hardcore players to unlock the heroes. In my opinion the heroes should not be free but the users should have had the chance to use wyvern tokens for the heroes. That way a lot of frustration would have been avoided and a lot more people would continue playing.

they quoted a long time ago all heroes were free and costumes  cost money. trendy said you would never pay to get and advantage in the game. they lied  you get the new hero with buffed stts and its  a advantage in game play. ity gose aginst there morals as a company foundation but ***ted all over it.

and yes i voluntary a lot at my work for free trash pick up on the side of the road for free and other stuff. to makie it a better world

@donttreadonme2234 quote:

they quoted a long time ago all heroes were free and costumes  cost money. trendy said you would never pay to get and advantage in the game. they lied  you get the new hero with buffed stts and its  a advantage in game play. ity gose aginst there morals as a company foundation but ***ted all over it.

It doesnt have buffed stats, its just a different way of playing.  If they gave it superior stats then having new characters would be the only thing ever to get used, that makes no sense design wise.  

right now its buffed until they nerf him in a later patch meaing hes stronger then the other chracters meaning you buy him for real money and wow  your paying trendy to gain and advangte in the a gane no matter what

@AussieMark quote:

What about if they gave us the first new hero free but set the expectation that we need to pay for all future heroes?

ANy better?

HERE'S YOUR UNDEAD ABYSS LORD!

"But sir, I don't like summoner classes."

YOU'LL PLAY IT BECAUSE WE GAVE IT TO YA FOR FREE, AND IT'LL APPEASE THE PLAYERBASE.

NEXT UP, WE HAVE THIS FAR MORE INTERESTING EV2 SERIES META-MAKING BUFF-TOWER GIVING ROBO-BABE FOR $19.99!/30,000 GRINDCOINS! ORDER NOW AND GET A ROBO-BAG THE SIZE OF THREE BAGS IN ONE BAG!


Heeeeeeellllllll naaaaaaaaw. BAD IDEA

@King of Sorrow quote:META-MAKING BUFF-TOWER GIVING ROBO-BABE

How long is a character name allowed to be? I think I just found mine.

@Dreizehn quote:

@donttreadonme2234 quote:

@Dreizehn quote:

Would you work for free?

yes i work for free at my church all the time you gonna charge jesus money.

I assume you misunderstood my question. You are talking about voluntary work. (like I did myself at Red Cross) What I was referring to was about the kind of work that brings food on the plate. (although I want to say that I find it pretty cool that you do voluntary work)

Of course it is obvious that all of us have different opinions, I respect that. From my point of view free 2 play games should charge no money for installing and playing. That's what I understand as free 2 play game. If a game is pay2win or not does not interfere with the pay2win state. I see games like War of the Dragons or Runes of Magic as pay2win while I see DD2 (as it is now) and Super MNC for example not as pay2win. Both games offer to unlock additional characters by playing the game or by purchasing with real money.

The major problem, I think, is that DD2's heroes are too expensive right now.

I think they wanted to see how long it takes the hardcore players to unlock the heroes. In my opinion the heroes should not be free but the users should have had the chance to use wyvern tokens for the heroes. That way a lot of frustration would have been avoided and a lot more people would continue playing.

Nobody is saying it should be available for all thus making their work free. We're all saying that the grind and price isn't justifiable. A happy userbase = free advertisement and from what I can tell it's a mix of 'get a job' and 'sorry man, I'm just not seeing X hours/$15 worth' which isn't not healthy for the game's word of mouth. $15 isn't even a lot of money, it's like 2 hours of minwage for the US, it's the perceived value isn't there whereas a cosmetic item is in an entirely different realm since it offers no new gameplay so somehow $20 mounts are acceptable or $10 gold gif in Hearthstone, which blows my mind tbh. The moment you throw in new gameplay, people expect it to be 'reasonable'. Dota2/PoE it's everything free, but cosmetics. Though they're an edge case, so we can overlook them. Marvel Heroes it's every hero is paid or unlocked through something like 20-40 hours of gameplay, but we can argue if this is a grind or not since you can get random ones at like 15 hours and be able to stack for future unlocks. I don't play League, but it seems like average play can unlock a hero every 1-2 weeks. War Thunder vastly varies where in the tree, but I never felt like it was a grind and I'm right before jets. I played Smite for a few hours and unlocked a couple if I recall, again it didn't feel like a grind. I can keep going on about f2p games where how long it takes to unlock things it just doesn't feel like an immense grind and keep in mind there are people who think all of those are still an insane grind, which is true when you start to have a huge collection of X to unlock, but in the meantime you're content with what you can unlock. At least personally I was.

DD2 makes doesn't that goal not achievable, but it's a rather distant goal and so from the looks of things it doesn't even register as reachable even though you can with just dailies+monthly over two months. Again, see a lot of the comments where by the looks of things we're looking at a couple months. The interesting thing is to see how it turns out when there are a dozen heroes as the current rate/price.

i agree with the original poster. maybe it's that the trend of app games has spoiled F2P games for me, but i think the old model of pay for game, pay for heroes was better

The point isn't about it being F2P. Everyone keeps saying "oh but its free", "you were happy buying the characters in DD1". Each hero in DD1 cost 4 dollars. In DD2 it costs 16 dollars.

http://i.imgur.com/9QK1Ue3.png

Regardless of obtaining it in a free way, it's too difficult. They shouldn't simply remove it, but they definitely need to lower the amount of medals. Even 8k would be much better.

Reminder: When the game first came out, the entire thing was $15. A single new hero costs more than the whole game did originally.

I'll tell you what guys, here's a simple solution, if you don;t want to buy it, then don't.

Whoaaa, i know, this is a bit of a revolutionary idea, but hold on just a second, I'm sure you'll be able to comprehend it soon.

In a game that is singleplayer/coop and is not a competitive PvP game, it doesn't matter if Joe over there in a completely different game and you'll never see or play with is using something you don'y have. I know, I know, it's a hard concept to grasp. But I'm sure that it you study hard enough and apply some actual ***ing logic to the situation you'll maybe, just maybe, be able to understand that sometimes people need money, and sometimes you might not have money, and sometimes ***ing like a pathetic little entitled brat of a child doesn't make you seem particularly respectable. 

@Snowcat quote:

Gone are the days where every single expansion pack of every single game costed money. Gone are the days where F2P was an unknown concept. In DD1, all extra Heroes had to be bought. You couldn't even farm them with gameplay victories, you had to buy them with real monees.

Yeah sure, but we didn't have to pay for extra slots to use the heroes we paid for.

My turn to chime in. 

Why are people surprised that the Abyss Lord is behind some sort of paywall? Gems or Defender Medals? They should not have been a surprise to anyone with a lick of common sense. I'm fairly confident that heroes are going to be one of the main revenue streams for the game. 

Is the defender medal cost too high? Possibly. Is it set in stone? Nope! This is the first hero that has been released for this new currency. Trendy now have to take the data they receive and plan changes accordingly. 

Is the Gem cost too high? Again possibly. Is it set in stone? Again nope! These figures could be reduced based on the received data and constructive feedback. What figure is a good price for a hero? $4 $7 $10? 

As for future heroes we can all now earn these defender medals and save up for when EV2 is released and technically do this for every new hero from here on out. Never spend a gem again on heroes... IF you play the game. It's a simple scenario of Time or Money. What do you use to buy your heroes? 
Player 1 - Plays DD2 alot - Earns Defender Medals - Buys hero
Player 2 - Plays DD2 less - Purchases Gems - Buys hero
This didn't work for the Abyss Lord because no one could farm up defender medals for his release but can currently happen EV2.

@--E@T TH3M!-- quote:

@donttreadonme2234 quote:

right now its buffed until they nerf him in a later patch meaing hes stronger then the other chracters meaning you buy him for real money and wow  your paying trendy to gain and advangte in the a gane no matter what

If there ever was a perfect personification of the term 'moron', this would be it...

you cant come up with anything better . i work hard for my money.  i exepedct to get more stuff for higher prices.  lioke dd1 on ps3 it was only 4 charcters only that was it. ps4 is still way behind. if call of duty makes new maps and gameplay all the systems and pc get ti the same day there is no wating. trendy pust the ps4 on back hold cAUSE THEY THINK PC IS WORTH MORE ATTETION FIRST. MORE PEOPLE PLAY ON A SYSTEM NOW A DAYS THEN THE PC DOSE. PC HAS WENT DOWN HILL ON GAMES BEING MADE FOR IT. IF THEY MADE A NEW AGE OF EMPIRES AND CHARGED FOR EXPANSIONS I WOULD BUY IT NOT TREDNYS CRAP. I PLAY WOWO SOMETIMES. AND YOU PAY 14 DOLLARS A MONTH FOR UNLIMITED CHARCTERS. THERES NO GAIN IN THE GAME TO GET AHEAD YOU GOT TO EARN IT ALL WITH GROUPS TEAM WORK AND HARD PLAYING.  i got 765k gold in wow for farimg a lot and selling items o autcion house for 1 gold a picec a lot of times. i keep my gold up and do very well.

@King of Sorrow quote:EV2 SERIES META-MAKING BUFF-TOWER GIVING ROBO-BABE 

You realize that the moment the abyss lord came out the meta shifted to "three abyss lords" right?

One of the skeletal archers out-DPSes a cannon ball tower and you get TWO of them (for the measly price increase of 25% more DU).

Skeletal orcs have more HP than a spike blockade, deal more damage, and cost the same.  Colossus?  Tops out at over 2 million HP at tier 1 when using a buff aura.

And that's before we get into the abyss lord's activated abilities.  Did you notice that Direct Command scales on both ability power and defense power?  The 100 mana cost for it is actually pretty trivial if you've got a group of mobs to leech for mana right after.  2 mana per tick per mob damaged.  That's 5 ticks worth of damage per Direct Command use, which if there's a group of 5 mobs is 5 seconds of direct DPS in order to get 100 mana (you'll probably want the skill sphere that upps your blue mana pool to 300, it's super easy to top off and forget to use an ability).

Hi all! 

Hope everyone is enjoying the update and thank you all for posting feedback. 

Keep in mind that any feedback should be as  constructive as possible. 

Personal attacks will not be tolerated. 

Even if we might not agree with one another, we are all part of the DD2 community and should treat each other with respect when interacting both in game and on the forums. 

Keep the feedback coming :) 

The more I think about this issue, the more I agree with gigazelle. All heroes should be free, but players must earn or purchase hero slots.

I know I was considering checking out the Abyss Lord right up until I saw the price and thought, "I'm neck deep in Regrowth (Minecraft mod pack) and the new Ratchet and Clank game is out next week. I'm not spending a month on this and $15 is too much to just check out the Abyss Lord" and I decided not to bother.

And as I think about it more, I just don't see that changing in the future Even if they improve gameplay mechanics and add some good maps, I'll still be looking at that $15 or a month of grinding per additional hero, then looking at whatever else I'm playing or looking forward to and deciding to skip DD2 for the alternatives.

The hero deck changes and the strategic revamp had me hopeful. This has me once again considering giving up on the game.